1. Political Geography: State Shapes and Borders
AP Human Geography

2. Territorial Morphology: The Shape of States
Compact
Prorupted
Elongated
Fragmented
Perforated
Micro

3. Compact
Ease of communication; distance from capital to everything else easy
Example: Switzerland; Hungary

4. Prorupted Compact with a large projecting extension
Issues with “devolution” sometimes
Example: DR Congo; Thailand

5. Fragmented
States with several discontinuous pieces of territory; like islands. Devolution an issue
Example: Indonesia

6. Perforated A state the completely surrounds another one
Example: South Africa and Lesotho

7. Elongated
Long narrow shape due to geography or other political or economic reasons
Examples: Chile and Gambia

8. Microstates Tiny, usually homogenous, states
Example: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Singapore

9. Exclaves and Enclaves
Exclaves: small bits of territory that lie separate from the rest of the state by another state; not land locked
Example: Russia and Kaliningrad

10. Enclaves
Enclaves: landlocked pieces of a state surrounded by another state
Example: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh

11. Boundaries
Physical: easy to see and use; water (lakes, rivers, etc..) use the median-line principle
Oceans use: Law of the Sea (1983)- territory goes out to 12 nautical miles
Cultural: harder to define; language? Religion? Ethnicity? “Balkanization” and “shatter belts”(Caucasus Mts.)
Geometric: straight and imaginary

12. Physical and Geometric

13. Balkanization and “Shatter Belts”

14. Boundary Disputes
Positional(definitional): Where is the border? India and China over Assam/Himalayas
Territorial: Who should own what? Pakistan vs. India over Kashmir
Resource(allocation): Who gets to use the stuff? Ex: Kuwait vs. Iraq (oil); GA VS FLA. Over water
Functional(operational): What rules should we use at the border? Ex: USA/Mexico border control and NAFTA

15. India and China