Political geography

Course goals

• present a broad overview of the field of political geography, including main themes, major concepts and approaches, and ongoing debates;
• identify and understand some major theoretical approaches to the field of political geography, and (in general terms) apply these approaches in the analysis of a specific form of nationalism;
• grasp the intricate interrelationships between major political, economic, societal and geographical phenomena, and how changes in one of these field have consequences for the others and how these are constantly changing over time.

Content

The politics in the world, within states and in cities is rapidly changing. This course gives an overview of the backgrouds of these changes using established and new conceptualisations used in Poltical Geography.
Political Geography studies the links between power and space. This course focuses on the channging role of territorial states in our world. This role has developed over time, is being challenged by processes like globalisation and now by increased geopolitical rivalry. The relation between states and their territories constantly changes but has remained important to understand geopolitical changes related to for instance climate change and territorial disputes related to different conceptualisations of what a nation-state is. 
This course deals with questions such as how states control their territories, and how the political order of different geographical areas is organised and changes over time. It also analyses the links between the political organisation of these territories on the one hand, and the way their societies and economies change, on the other.
The course offers students an overview of contemporary political geography its background as a sub-discipline, its main subjects, concepts and theoretical underpinnings, as well as exposure to a selection of ongoing debates on issues where power and space are at stake. Some major themes covered in the course include: the nature and formation of states and the global state system, the role of nationalism and territorial identities, how and why political systems change over time and how this relates to dynamics in other fields, the growing support for populist political parties, the role of geographical scale levels in politics and how and why political systems vary between different parts of the world. While different scale levels are discussed, the emphasis is on the macro-level of the transforming nation-state, their geopolitical relations, and how citizens react and relate to these political structures and how this affects the governance of cities and regions.