ap hug chapter 8

• A state is an area organized into a political unit and ruled by an official government.
• Since the deposition of Hussein, civil war between Sunnis and Shites,SIS takes over government.
• Government has control over internal and foreign affairs.
• A state contains a permanent population, also known as a country.
• California is a subdivision, like other states in the US.
• Microstates are known as states with very small land areas.
• Vatican City is the world's smallest microstate, only 0.44 square kilometers.
• Other smaller U.N. member states are majority islands, like the Maldives and Micronesia.
• Sovereignty means a state has independence from control of its internal affairs by other states.
• A good example of a formal region is Korea, where affairs are managed by the national government.
• Korea is divided between Democratic People's Republic and Republic, with two zones created by the US after defeat of Japan in WWII.
• North Korea invaded the South in 1950, starting the Korean War, which North Korea has been poorer ever since.
• China and Taiwan claim sovereignty over several small uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, with Japan currently controlling them.
• Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic / Western Sahar is recognized by most African countries as sovereign, while Morocco claims the territory and has built a 2,700-kilometer wall around it.
• Ancient states developed in the Fertile Crescent, leading to the world's first Mesopotamian city-states, which were sovereign states that comprised a town and the surrounding countryside.
• Political stability reached its peak with Roman Empire, controlling Europe/Southwest Asia + Africa, but collapsed in 5th century - fragmented, monarchs took over estates.
• States in the Twentieth-Century Europe were mainly ruled by emperors, kings, and queens, and following WWI, leaders met at Versailles Conference to redraw Europe.
• Ethnic groups have been pushing to create nation-states from the desire for self-determination, with the US breaking free from the UK after they abused their power.
• Multiethnic and Multinational States are political entities with more than one ethnicity with traditions of self-determination and self-government.
• Fragmented states include several discontinuous pieces of territory, and can be separated by water or intervening states.
• On the other hand, Republicans support stacked districts because they are better able to draw favorable boundaries.
• Governments of states are organized according to two approaches: unitary states, where most power is placed in the hands of central governments, and federal states, where strong power is allocated to local units of government.
• Unitary states work best in nation-states characterized by few cultural differences, and are sometimes adapted by multinational states to create nationalistic values.
• Federal states are more suitable for multinational states, as local governments draw boundaries that correspond with regions of different ethnicities.
• Redrawing legislative boundaries to benefit the party in power is called gerrymandering, which takes three forms: wasted vote, excess vote, and stacked vote.
• Redrawing of boundaries in most European countries is entrusted to independent commissions.
• The State Fragility Index measures the effectiveness of the government, as well as its perceived legitimacy, and most fragile states are clustered in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Largest ethnic groups in the US vote Democratic, and majority African or Hispanic districts basically guarantee the election of a Democrat.
• Landlocked states lack a direct outlet to a sea because they are completely surrounded by several other countries, and many landlocked states in Africa are a remnant of the colonial era with Britain/France.
• Elongated states have a long and narrow shape, examples include Malawi, which measures about 850 kilometers, Gambia, which extends along the banks of the Gambia river, and Chile, which stretches south for more than 4,000 kilometers but rarely exceeds east-west distance >150 kilometers.
• Prorupted states are created for two principal reasons: to provide a state with access to a resource such as water, and to separate two states that would otherwise share a boundary.
• The UN identifies 17 places that are "non-self-governing territories", with Western Sahara being the most extensive and most populous, followed by French Polynesia and New Caledonia.
• National governments can be classified as democratic, autocratic, or anocratic, and the world has generally become more democratic due to the spread of democracy.
• Colonies are territories that are legally tied to a sovereign state rather than being completely independent, with the sovereign state running only the colony's military and foreign policy.
• Perforated states are states that completely surround another state, and the surrounded state may face problems of dependence or interference from the surrounding state.
• The Center of Systemic Peace classifies three systems according to three essential elements: selection of leaders, citizen participation, and checks and balances.
• The breakup of the USSR created 15 independent states, consisting of 5 groups: three Baltic states, three European states, five Central Asian states, three Caucasus states.
• Multiethnic Revival in Europe is a movement to create new states with multiple ethnicities.
• Ukraine's prospects for a stable nation-state were favorable before the Russian minority population started an uprising, with a minority Russian population endangered.
• Russia, the largest multiethnic state, was part of the USSR, which was the largest state in land area from 1922-1991.