Chapter 1

Question 1

State

Answer 1

an organized political entity with a permanent population, a well-defined territory, and a government; in everyday language, often used synonymously with nation-state

Question 2

Politics

Answer 2

the exercise of influence by competing indiviudals and groups to affect the allocation of values and distribution of resources; to political scientists Harold Lasswell, the process that determines “who get what, when, how and why?”

Question 3

Actor

Answer 3

an individual, group or state, or organization that plays a major role in world politics

Question 4

Nation-State

Answer 4

a specific geographic area containing a sovereign polity whose population identifies with that polity

Question 5

System

Answer 5

a set of interconnected parts that function as a unitary whole; in world politics, the parts consist primarily of states that interact on a regular basis

Question 6

Sovereignty

Answer 6

under international law, the principle that no higher authority is above of the state

Question 7

Anarchy

Answer 7

the absence of higher authority with the legitimacy and coercive capability to make and enforce rules that bind states

Question 8

Nation

Answer 8

a group of people who feel common identity due to a shared language, culture and history

Question 9

Billiard-Ball Model

Answer 9

a conception of world politics that envisions states as the sole mover of global affairs, explains their behavior as unitary responses to external threats, and attributes little importance to domestic sources of foreign policy

Question 10

Nonstate Actor

Answer 10

all transnationally active groups other than states, such is international government organizations whose members are states and nongovernmental organizations whose members are individuals and private groups from more than one state

Question 11

Heuristics

Answer 11

Judgmental shortcuts used to compensate for limited information about complicated problems

Question 12

Schematic Reasoning

Answer 12

the process by which new information is interpreted by comparing it to generic concepts stored in memory about certain stereotypical situations, sequences of events, and characters

Question 13

Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 13

the psychological tendency to deny or rationalize away discrepancies between one’s preexisting beliefs and new information

Question 14

Individual Level of Analysis

Answer 14

an analytical approach to the study of world politics that emphasizes the psychological factors motivating people who make foreign policy decisions on behalf of states and other global factors

Question 15

State Level Analysis

Answer 15

an analytical approach to the study of world politics that emphasizes how the internal attributes of states influence their foreign policy behavior

Question 16

Systemic Level of Analysis

Answer 16

an analytical approach to the study world politics that emphasizes the impact of international structures and processes on the behavior of global actors

Question 17

Remote Causes

Answer 17

phenomena that are removed in time from the effects that they produce or help to produce

Question 18

Proximate Causes

Answer 18

phenomena occurring close in time to the effects that they produce or help to produce

Question 19

Nationalism

Answer 19

the belief that political loyalty lies with a body of people who share ethnicity, linguistic, or cultural affinity, and perceive themselves to be members of the same group

Question 20

Containment

Answer 20

A term coined by U.S. policymaker George Kennan for deterring expansion by the Soviet Union, which was since been used to describe a strategy aimed at preventing a state from using force to increase its territory of sphere of influence

Question 21

Ockham’s Razor

Answer 21

a rule of thumb attributed to the fourteenth century logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham that holds a simple casual account is preferable to a complex one if the latter does not provide additional explanatory power

Question 22

Contingent Behavior

Answer 22

actions that depend on what others are doing