4.6单元 — 地缘政治学、领域性,以及向心力与离心力

(a) A state is an independent political unit with a permanently populated territory, a defined and internationally recognized set of boundaries, and full sovereignty—meaning it has the authority to govern itself and conduct its own foreign policy without external control.

(b) A nation is a group of people who share a collective cultural identity—commonly based on some combination of shared language, religion, history, ethnicity, or a sense of common destiny—regardless of whether that group occupies its own independent political territory. A nation is a cultural concept, not a territorial or legal one.

(c) A nation-state is a state whose territorial boundaries closely correspond to the territory occupied by a single, relatively homogeneous nation—the population's cultural identity and the state's political boundaries largely overlap. Japan is a commonly cited example: the vast majority of its population shares a common language, history, and cultural identity that closely matches the state's borders. A multinational state, by contrast, is a single state that contains two or more distinct nations within its borders. Nigeria is a commonly cited example: its territory, drawn largely along former colonial administrative lines, contains many distinct ethnic nations—including the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo—each with its own language and cultural identity.

(d) A physical/natural boundary follows a feature of the physical landscape, such as a river, mountain range, or watershed (for example, the Rio Grande forms part of the boundary between the United States and Mexico). A cultural or ethnic boundary is drawn to correspond with a division in language, religion, or ethnic settlement pattern rather than a physical feature (for example, the internal language boundary separating the French-speaking and Flemish-speaking regions of Belgium).

(e) Devolution is the process by which a central government grants increased political power, autonomy, or self-governance to a subnational region—such as a state, province, or minority-populated area—short of that region becoming fully independent.

(f) A region may pursue devolution because its population possesses a distinct ethnic, linguistic, or cultural identity from the rest of the state and seeks greater control over local affairs, education, or cultural policy to preserve that identity. (Other acceptable factors: the region contains a valuable natural resource or economic base and its population believes it is not receiving a fair share of the revenue generated under centralized control; the region is physically distant from the political core and feels underrepresented in national decision-making.)

(g) When one region successfully negotiates greater autonomy from the central government, it demonstrates to other culturally or economically distinct regions within the same state that devolution is an achievable outcome, which can raise expectations and provide a precedent to point to. Other regions with their own grievances—cultural, economic, or political—may then organize similar movements, reasoning that if the central government granted concessions to one region it can be pressured into granting comparable concessions to others, potentially triggering a cascading, domino-like series of devolutionary demands across the state (for example, devolution granted to Scotland within the United Kingdom has been cited as encouraging renewed devolutionary and independence discussion in Wales).

(a) Supranationalism is a political arrangement in which two or more states voluntarily give up a degree of their sovereignty and cede specific decision-making authority to a higher-level, multinational governing body in order to pursue shared economic, political, or security goals.

(b) According to the source, EU member states have ceded control over setting tariffs on goods traded with non-member countries to the European Commission. (An acceptable alternative drawn from the source: euro-zone member states have ceded control over monetary policy to the European Central Bank.)

(c) The source describes free movement of goods, capital, services, and people across internal borders—a common market—as a benefit that motivates states to join the EU. Member states gain expanded, more efficient markets and economic integration in exchange for ceding some individual policy control.

(d) Because ceding power to a supranational institution means that decisions affecting a member state—such as trade tariffs or monetary policy—are made collectively at the EU level rather than solely by that state's own government, a member state can find itself bound by a policy that conflicts with what its own domestic government or population would have chosen independently, which is a direct constraint on that state's traditional sovereign authority to govern its own affairs.

(e) A centripetal force is any force that unifies a political unit and builds a shared sense of loyalty or identity among its population, strengthening cohesion. An example that could unify the EU is a shared economic interest, such as the common market and the euro currency, which gives citizens and businesses of member states a shared material stake in the organization's continued success. (Other acceptable examples: shared institutions such as the European Parliament that build a common European civic identity; a shared external threat or rival economic bloc.)

(f) Supranationalism moves political power upward and outward—individual sovereign states voluntarily transfer specific powers up to a higher-level, multi-state institution above them. Devolution moves political power in the opposite direction—downward—from an existing central government down to a subnational region within that same state. In other words, supranationalism creates a new layer of authority above the state, while devolution redistributes authority within a state to a level below it.

(g) The United Kingdom's 2016 vote to leave the EU illustrates this tension because it was, in large part, a reassertion of national sovereignty by a portion of the British electorate who believed that ceding authority over matters such as trade policy, immigration, and law to EU-level institutions had gone too far and undermined the UK's ability to independently govern its own affairs. The vote and subsequent withdrawal show that even after decades of supranational integration, member states retain the underlying sovereign authority to reclaim ceded powers and formally exit the organization.

(a) Under Plan A, Districts 1, 2, and 3 are won by Party X (12,000 to 8,000 in each), and Districts 4 and 5 are won by Party Y (13,000 to 7,000 in each). Party X wins 3 of the 5 districts.

(b) Under Plan B, Districts 1 and 2 are won by Party X (18,000 to 2,000 in each), and Districts 3, 4, and 5 are won by Party Y (16,500 to 3,500 in Districts 3 and 4; 13,000 to 7,000 in District 5). Party X wins only 2 of the 5 districts.

(c) Districts 1 and 2 illustrate packing: Party X voters are concentrated into these two districts at a lopsided margin (18,000 to 2,000, or 90%), far beyond the roughly 10,001 votes needed to win, which "wastes" thousands of Party X votes on unnecessarily large margins of victory instead of letting them help win additional districts.

(d) Districts 3, 4, and 5 illustrate cracking: the remaining Party X voters are spread thinly across these three districts (3,500, 3,500, and 7,000, respectively) so that in each one they remain a minority and fall short of a majority, ensuring Party X cannot win any of them.

(e) Plan B is gerrymandering because, despite the electorate being exactly 50% Party X and 50% Party Y, the district boundaries are drawn so that the seat outcome does not reflect that even split—Party Y wins 3 of the 5 districts (60% of the seats) while representing only 50% of voters. This is possible because the mapmakers used packing and cracking to control where each party's supporters were placed relative to district lines, translating an evenly divided electorate into a disproportionate, one-sided seat outcome.

(f) Redistricting authority is often assigned to a state legislature, or to a body its elected officials appoint, because the legislature is understood to be the state's normal lawmaking body and redistricting is treated as a routine legislative function following each census. However, because the political party that controls the legislature at the time of redistricting is the same party that will draw the new district lines, that party has a direct incentive to draw boundaries—using techniques such as packing and cracking—that maximize its own number of winnable seats and protect its incumbents, rather than drawing lines based on neutral criteria alone.

(g) One reform is to transfer redistricting authority away from the state legislature to an independent, nonpartisan (or bipartisan) redistricting commission whose members are not elected officials of either party and who are required to draw district boundaries using neutral criteria—such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for existing political and community boundaries—rather than partisan election data, which removes the direct incentive for the party in power to draw self-serving district lines. (Other acceptable reforms: requiring algorithmic redistricting based only on neutral geographic criteria; adopting multi-member districts with proportional representation, which reduces the ability of any single district boundary to determine a winner-take-all outcome.)