"A very good overview. Covers the key topics well and in an accessible and engaging style."
- Dr Daniel Hammett, Department of Geography, Sheffield University

This is a revised and updated edition of a core undergraduate resource for political geography. Focusing on the social and cultural while systematically overviewing the entire discipline, Joe Painter and Alex Jeffrey explain:

• Politics, geography, and 'political' geography:power, resources, institutions, and the history of the field
• State formation:classical views alongside recent work on governance and governmentality
• Welfare to workfare state:the restructuring of present state strategies
• Democracy, citizenship and law:different models of democracy in European and global contexts
• Identity and social movements:the relation between identity and political action
• Nationalism and regionalism:ethnicity, national identity and "otherness"
• Imperialism and post-colonialism:from world systems theory to post-structuralist accounts
• Geopolitics:the political, economic, and strategic significance of geography.

Comprehensive, accessible and illustrated with real world examples,Political Geographyprovides undergraduates with a thorough understanding of the relationship between geography and politics.