Political borders

Examples of Political borders in the following topics:

• New State Spaces

  • New state spaces are redefining borders, and they may not be ruled by national governments.
  • New York and London are examples of global cities that command vast political, economic, and cultural influence both domestically and internationally.
  • Another example of a new state space is the European Union, a confederation of 27 European states that encourages political and economic cooperation among its members.
  • Recent sociological work has argued that, with globalization, relevant political borders are changing.
  • Not only are global cities important economically, but they are also politically unique.

• Characteristics of the State

  • A state is an organized political community acting under a government.
  • The people of Poland have long formed a nation with a shared language and culture, but that nation has, through history, been cross-cut by various political borders.
  • The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural or ethnic entity.
  • In classical thought, the state was identified with political society and civil society as a form of political community.
  • In contrast, modern thought distinguishes the nation state as a political society from civil society as a form of economic society.

• Global Trade: Inequalities and Conflict

  • Global trade (exchange across international borders) has increased with better transportation and governments adopting free trade.
  • Global trade is the exchange of money, goods, and services across international borders.
  • Sociopolitical arguments against free trade cite social and political effects that economic arguments do not capture, such as political stability, national security, human rights, and environmental protection.

• Types of Governments

  • Holding unlimited political power in the state is not the defining characteristic, as many constitutional monarchies such as the United Kingdom and Thailand are considered monarchies yet their monarchs have limited political power.
  • In political theory, democracy describes a small number of related forms of government and also a political philosophy.
  • Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system that strives to regulate nearly every aspect of public and private life.
  • Such states are often controlled by politically powerful families whose children are heavily conditioned and mentored to be heirs of the power of the oligarchy.
  • The map uses present-day borders.

• State Formation

  • Since the late nineteeth century, virtually the entirety of the world's inhabitable land has been parceled up into areas with more or less definite borders claimed by various states.
  • In fact, for most of human history, people have lived in stateless societies, characterized by a lack of concentrated authority, and the absence of large inequalities in economic and political power.
  • Political sociologists continue to debate the origins of the state and the processes of state formation.
  • Tilly examined political, social, and technological change in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present and attempted to explain the unprecedented success of the nation-state as the dominant form of state on Earth.
  • The Greeks were the first people known to have explicitly formulated a political philosophy of the state, and to have rationally analyzed political institutions.

• Immigration and Illegal Immigration

  • Immigration occurs for many reasons, including economic, political, family re-unification, natural disasters, or poverty.
  • As a significant percentage of employers are willing to hire illegal immigrants for higher pay than they would typically receive in their former country, illegal immigrants have prime motivation to cross borders.
  • -Mexico border, or creating a new guest worker program.

• Colonialism and the Spread of Diseases

  • Colonialism is the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
  • The European contribution to global pathogen exposure created a "global homogenization of disease," where no border was left uncrossed in the spread of infectious diseases.

• Multinational Corporations

  • Walmart is an example of a large multinational corporation that often exerts influence on political processes through lobbying, contributions to campaigns, and threats of market withdrawal.
  • To compete, political entities may offer MNCs incentives such as tax breaks, pledges of governmental assistance or subsidized infrastructure, or lax environmental or labor regulations.
  • Besides holding the promise of economic growth for local and national governments, multinational corporations also exert power over political entities once they are established, through their control over technical and intellectual property.
  • Multinational corporations play an important role in the world economy through the process of economic globalization; in other words, the increasing economic interdependence of national economies across the world through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, services, technology and capital.

• World Health Trends

  • Similarly, while one country may effectively treat cholera and thereby prevent deaths, individuals who cross national borders may spread the disease to countries that do not have the infrastructure to treat it.
  • World (or global) health as a research field emerged out of this necessity and lies at the intersection of the medical and social science disciplines, including the fields of demography (the study of population trends), economics, epidemiology (the study of the distribution of health events in a population), political economy, and sociology.
  • As the above discussion of diseases of poverty and diseases of affluence reveals, health trends are closely related to social, political, and economic patterns.
  • Finally, health interventions could advance by considering the relationship of national and international politics to the establishment of adequate education and healthcare systems.

• Political Opportunity Theory

  • Describe how and why political opportunities are important to social movements according to political opportunity theory.