Week 2: State and Geopolitics

Question 1

Dear (1981)

Answer 1

‘A set of institutions for the protection and maintenance of society’

Question 2

Michael Mann

Answer 2

The state as “functionally promiscuous”

Question 3

Painter (1995)

Answer 3

‘There is nothing natural about the creation of states … created by social and political processes’

Question 4

Held et al., (1999)

Answer 4

‘Imperial systems dominated the history of state formation’

Question 5

Sheehan (2007)

Answer 5

Europe as the most violent continent in history

Question 6

Weber

Answer 6

Key characteristic of modern states was the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a defined territory

Question 7

Richard Falk (1993)

Answer 7

‘The state became sovereign because it succeeded in upholding final power of decision’

Question 8

Michael Mann (2003): The Autonomous power of the state - reading

Answer 8

2 ways in which society exerts its power over states:

1) Despotic - ruler has power OVER its citizens. The range of actions over which an elite is empowered to undertake without routine

2) Infrastructural - the capacity of the state to actually penetrate civil society and implement logistically political decisions through the realm. The power of the state to centrally coordinate activities of civil society through it’s own infrastructure.

Question 9

John Agnew (1994): Territorial trap

Answer 9

Suggests limitation/ “trap” in understanding political dynamics by just focusing on territorial aspects of states

Question 10

MacKinder (1907)

Answer 10

‘our aim must be to make our whole people think imperially’

Question 11

Hartshorne vs. Parker

Answer 11

Geopolitics:
Hartshore - Mobilisations of geographical knowledge in service of state

Parker - Objective geography for international affairs

Question 12

Dodds (2006)

Answer 12

‘Geopolitics offers reliable guide of the global landscape using geographic description … which allow us to advise/inform foreign policy making’

‘We could focus our attention on how geopolitics actually works as an academic practice’

Question 13

5 key actors of geopolitics

Answer 13

Freidrich Ratzel
Rudolf Kjellen
Halford MacKinder
Isaiah Bowman
Karl Haushofer

Question 14

Freidrich Ratzel

Answer 14

• viewed states as an organism and believe they grow and expand through territorial expansion and colonialism
• strong supporter of expanding German sea power

Question 15

Rudolf Kjellen

Answer 15

Expanded on Ratzel’s view - saw states as central actors in geopolitics
- adovcated for expansion of state for national strength and security

Question 16

Halford Mackinder

Answer 16

Heartland theory
- In post- Columbian world seizing absolute territorial advantage through conquest became difficult
- Harvey’s time-space compression
-Advantage shifted from sea power to hegemony over land

Question 17

Karl Haushofer

Answer 17

His idea of lebrensaum was key idea of german expansion of Nazis
- Hitler had Geopolitik outlined in his autobiography

Question 18

Hartshorne - distancing of geopolitics

Answer 18

‘purified’ perhaps rather a-political ‘political geography’