Unit 4 - Vocab Quiz 1

• State: The largest political unit, the formal term for a country.
• Sovereignty: The power of a political unit, or government to rule over its own affairs.
• Nation-State: A nation of people who fulfill the qualifications of a state.
• Multinational State: A country that contains more than one nation.
• Autonomous Region: A defined area within a state that has a high degree of self-government and freedom from its parent state.
• Semiautonomous Region: A state that has a degree of, but not a complete self-rule.
• Stateless Nation: A cultural group that has no independent political entity.
• Multistate Nation: Occurs when a state has a state of its own but stretches across borders of other states.
• Nationalism: A nations desire to create and maintain a state of its own.
• Centripetal Forces: One that helps to unify people within a country.
• Centrifugal Forces: This is a force that tends to divide a group of people, break states apart or even prevent states from forming.
• Imperialism: A broader concept that includes a variety of ways of influencing another country or group of people by direct conquest, economic control, or cultural dominance.
• Colonialism: A particular typ of imperialism in which people move into or settle on the land of another country.
• Berlin Conference: Sometimes known as the Congo Conference, used claims to form state boundaires in Africa.
• Self-Determination: The right to chose their own soverign government without external influence.
• Decolonization: The undoing of colonization in which indigenous people reclaim sovereignty over their territory.
• Genocide: Organized mass killings in which people are targeted because of their race, religion, ethnicity or nationality.
• Cold War: A period of diplomatic, political, and military rivalry between the United States and the USSR or the Soviet Union.
• Devolution: Process in which one or more regions are given increased autonomy by the central political unit.
• Neocolonialism: In this system, economic, political, or even cultural control was indirectly exerted over developing countries.
• Cultural Boundaires: Divide people according to some cultural division, such as language, religion, or ethncity.
• Ethnographic: Meaning they are usually related to cultural phenomena.
• Berlin Conference: Paved the way for colonialism of Africa or what Europeans regarded as "effective occupation" of the continent.
• Geometric Boundaires: A straight line or arc drawn by people that does not closely follow any physical feature.
• Militarized Boundary: One that is heavily guarded and discourages crossing.
• Defined Boundary: Established by a legal document, such as a treaty, that divides once entity from another (invisible line). The entity could range from a country - in which points of latitude or longitude are specified - to a single plot of real easte - in which points in the landscape are described.
• Delimited Boundary: Drawnm on a map by a cartographer to show the limits of space.
• Demarcrated Boundary: One identified by hysical objects placed on the landscape. The demarcation may be as simple as a sign or as complex as a set of fences or a wall.
• Census: A count of population.
• Gerrymandering: The drawing of boundaries for political districts by the party in power to protect or increase its power.
• Cracking: Disperseing a group into several districts to prevent a majority.
• Packing: Combineing like-minded voters into one district to prevent them from affecting elections in other districts.
• Stacking: Diluting a minority-populated district with majority population.
• Hijacking: Redrawing 2 districts in order to force 2 elected representatives of the same party to run against each other.
• Kidnapping: Moving an area where an elected representative has support to an area where he or she does not have support.
• Federal State: Unites separate political entities into an overarching system that allows each entity to maintain some degree of sovereignty.
• Unitary State: Most or all of the governing power is held by the national government.
• Annexation: The process of legally adding territory to a city.
• Devolution: The transfer of some political power from the central government to subnational levels of government.
• Terrorism: Organized violence aimed at government and civilian targets to create fear for the advancement of political goals.