ABSTRACT
This chapter explores marginality and marginal regions in political systems, using different scales, from global to regional and local. It focuses on geopolitics and the changing global power game and political boundaries and transborder relations. The political perspective is particularly linked to the economic sphere, as could be guessed from the section on Africa and on Switzerland. Geopolitical models are comprehensive: every country is incorporated, none is excluded. Exclusion from a geopolitical perspective would result in a power vacuum that had to be filled immediately. The marginality of a border zone largely depends on the permeability of the boundary. A city on a closed border is more marginal than a rural area on an open boundary. Marginality has also been the result of the demarcation of the Finnish-Russian border in Karelia after Finland was granted independence in 1917.
