| Term | Definition |
| Shatterbelt | Region of continuing and persistent fragmentation due to devolution and centrifugal forces |
| Satellite state | A nominally independent country that is politically, militarily, and economically controlled by a more powerful state |
| Electoral College | A body of 538 electors in the United States; a majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the president; a state's number of electors equals the number of members in its congressional delegation (one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for its senators) |
| Median line principle | An approach to dividing and creating boundaries at the midpoint between two places |
| Superimposed boundary | A boundary that is placed on a area without regard to existing boundaries |
| Effective sovereignty | The idea that a state's power to enforce its sovereignty may extend beyond its territory and varies over time and from coutnry-to-country |
| Relic boundary | A boundary that no longer functions as an international border |
| Delimited | Describing how boundaries are fixed or defined to identify their limits |
| Packing | Gerrymandering a voting district by concentrating all of the opposition party into one district, thereby creating a large majority of that party in the district while ensuring that it cannot win any election |
| Core area | A small territorial nucleus from which a country grows in area and over time |
| Ethnonationalism | A form of nationalism in which the nation is defined in terms of ethnic identity |
| Voting district | A territorial division for casting votes in public elections; generally, only those who live in the voting district are permitted to cast their votes there |
| Frontier | A region at the margins of state control and settlement |
| Subsequent boundary | A political boundary that developed with the cultural landscape |
| Consequent boundary | A boundary that is drawn to accommodate existing cultural differences |
| Multistate nations | Ethnic groups territorially divided by one or more international boundaries |
| Devolution | The movement of power from the central government to regional governments within the state |
| Choke point | A narrow passage that restricts traffic to another region |
| Borderland | A region straddling both sides of an international boundary where national cultures overlap and blend to varying degrees |
| Independent state | A state that rules itself and is not subject to the authority of another state |
| Autonomous region | A subdivision or dependent territory of a country that has a degree of self-government, or autonomy, in its decision making |
| Nation-state | The ideal political geographical unit; one in which the nation's geographic boundaries (a people and its culture) exactly match the state's territorial boundaries (governance and authority) |
| Nationalism | Sense of belonging to and self-identifying with a national culture; people with a strong sense of nationalism derive a significant part of their social identity from a sense of belonging to a nation |
| Strait | A narrow body of water connecting two larger bodies of water |
| Neocolonialism | The set of economic and political strategies by which wealthy and powerful countries indirectly maintain or extend their influence over less wealthy areas |
| Electoral geography | A subfield of political geography that analyzes the geography of political preferences and how geography can shape voting outcomes |
| Antecedent boundary | A boundary that was identified before an area was settled |
| State/Country | An independent political unit with a centralized authority that makes claim to sole legal, political, and economic jurisdiction over a region with defined boundaries |
| Peripheral states | States that have relatively little industrial development, simple production systems focused mostly on agriculture and raw materials, and low levels of consumption of manufactured goods |
| Nation | A community of people bound to a homeland and possessing a common identity based on shared cultural traits such as language, ethnicity, and religion |
| Geometric boundary | A boundary that has regular, often perfectly straight, lines drawn without regard for an area's physical or cultural features |
| Arctic Circle | Area defined by the 66 degrees, 34 minutes north latitude line |
| Semiautonomous region | A subdivision or dependent territory of a country that has some degree of, but not complete, self-government |
| Exclave | Part of a national territory separated from the main body of the country to which it belongs |
| Multinational state | A country containing multiple national, ethnic, and religious within its boundaries |
| Enclave | A territory surrounded by a country but not ruled by it |
| Political map | A map that shows the spatial organization of the countries and territories on the entire globe at a given point in time |
| Political geography | A branch of human geography concerned with the spatial analysis of political systems |
| Boundary | A clearly demarcated line that marks both the limits of a territory and divisions between territories; often called a border at the global scale |
| Demarcated | Describing how boundaries are set apart to distinguish their limits |
| Demilitarized zone (DMZ) | An area in which treaties or agreements between nations, military powers, or contending groups forbid military installations, activities, or personnel; usually lies along an established frontier or boundary between two or more military powers of alliances |
| Redistricting | The process of drawing new boundaries for US congressional districts to reflect the population changes since the previous US census |
| Self-determination | A nation's ability to determine its own statehood and form its own allegiances and government; the freedom of culturally distinct groups to govern themselves in their own territories and form their own states |
| Reapportionment | The process by which the 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are divided proportionately by population among the 50 states following every US census |
| Exclusive economic zone (EEZ) | Zone that extends 200 nautical miles from shoreline in which coastal states have the sole right to exploit, develop, manage, and conserve all water resources lying beyond the land |
| United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) | Conference organized to define territorial boundaries and rights to the sea |
| Escarpments | Abrupt slopes that break up the general continuity of the terrain |
| Sovereign state | A state that possesses the sole authority over the land and people within its boundaries |
| Cracking | Gerrymandering a voting district by dividing opposition votes into many districts, thus diluting the opposition's votes to ensure it does not form a majority in any district |
| Nation-state ideal | The idea that political authorities govern in the name of all a country's citizens, modern mass communications link all residents, and state-based citizenship rights reinforce the idea of a national identity |
| Stateless nation | An ethnic group or nation that does not possess its own state and is not the majority population in any nation-state |
| Core states | States that have the most advanced industrial and military technologies, complex manufacturing systems, external political power, and the highest levels of wealth and mass consumption |
| Gerrymandering | The manipulation of voting district boundaries to favor a particular political party, group, or election outcome |
| Buffer state | A politically and economically weak independent country that lies between the borders of two powers |
