Chapter 1: American Political Culture

Question 1

Define: government

Answer 1

Institutions and procedures through which a territory and its people are ruled

Question 2

Define: politics

Answer 2

Conflict over the leadership, structure, and policies of governments

Question 3

How does the level of trust in the government vary between different ethnic groups?

Answer 3

African Americans and Latinos express more confidence in the federal government than do whites

Question 4

What developments are vital for the health of a democracy?

Answer 4

Politically engaged citizens and public confidence

Question 5

What factors contributed to the decline in trust during the 2000s?

Answer 5

Revelations about the faulty information that led up to the war in Iraq, ongoing concern about the war, inability to get the economy moving, intense partisan conflict over the government’s role in the economy

Question 6

What did 54% of those surveyed believe about the Bush administration?

Answer 6

That the Bush administration had deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction

Question 7

What caused public approval in government to hit a record low in 2011?

Answer 7

When House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama failed to reach a compromise over the federal debt limit

Question 8

Define: political efficacy

Answer 8

The ability to influence government and politics; the belief that ordinary citizens can affect what government does, that they can make government listen to them

Question 9

How does the view that the “government is NOT really run for the benefit of all the people” vary across the age spectrum?

Answer 9

It is widely shared across the age spectrum (57 percent of the public in 2012)

Question 10

How does declining political efficacy affect democracy?

Answer 10

A self-perpetuating cycle of apathy, declining political participation, withdrawal from political life

Question 11

What is the first prerequisite for achieving an increased sense of political efficacy?

Answer 11

Knowledge; political indifference is simply a habit that stems from a lack of knowledge about how your interests are affected by politics

Question 12

Define: citizenship

Answer 12

Informed and active membership in a political community; enlightened political engagement

Question 13

Why do citizens need knowledge?

Answer 13

To assess their interests and to know when to act on them, to be more attentive to and engaged in politics because they understand how and why politics is relevant to their lives, to ascertain what they cannot or should not ask of politicians and the government

Question 14

What two questions are of special importance in determining how governments differ?

Answer 14

Who governs? How much government control is permitted?

Question 15

Define: autocracy

Answer 15

A form of government in which a single individual–a king, queen, or dictator–rules

Question 16

Define: oligarchy

Answer 16

A form of government in which a small group–landowners, military officers, or wealthy merchants–controls most of the governing decisions

Question 17

What is the difference between and oligarchy and a democracy?

Answer 17

A democracy is an oligarchy with more participation and influence from the people over decision making

Question 18

Define: democracy

Answer 18

A system of rule that permits citizens to play a significant part in the governmental process, usually through the election of key public officials

Question 19

Define: substantive limits

Answer 19

WHAT governments are permitted to control

Question 20

Define: procedural limits

Answer 20

HOW governments are permitted to control

Question 21

Define: constitutional government

Answer 21

A system of rule in which formal end effective limits are placed on the powers of the government

Question 22

Define: authoritarian government

Answer 22

A system of rule in which the government recognizes no formal limits but may nevertheless be restrained by the power of other social institutions, such as autonomous territories, an organized religion, organized business groups, or organized labor unions

Question 23

Define: totalitarian government

Answer 23

A system of rule in which the government recognizes no formal limits on its power and seeks to absorb or eliminate other social institutions that might challenge it. Dominates or controls every sphere of political, economic, and social life (i.e. Soviet Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany, prewar Japan and Italy, North Korea

Question 24

What percentage of the global population can be classified as living in a constitutional democracy?

Answer 24

45 percent, those living in 87 countries

Question 25

Who are the bourgeoisie?

Answer 25

A social class in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that became associated with being “middle class” and involvement in commerce or industry. Favored property requirements and other restrictions so as to limit participation to the middle and upper classes.

Question 26

What advancements are the bourgeoisie responsible for?

Answer 26

Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom on conscience, freedom from arbitrary search and seizure

Question 27

Who is John Locke?

Answer 27

English thinker of the 1600s, argued that governments need the consent of the people

Question 28

Who is John Stuart Mill?

Answer 28

Political theorist of the 1800s, helped shape evolving ideas about liberty and political rights

Question 29

Who is Harold Lasswell?

Answer 29

A famous political scientist, defined politics as the struggle over “who gets what, when, how”

Question 30

Define: politics

Answer 30

Conflict over the leadership, structure, and policies of governments

Question 31

Define: power

Answer 31

Influence over a government’s leadership, organization, or policies

Question 32

What is the goal of politics?

Answer 32

To have a share or say in the composition of the government’s leadership, how the government is organized, or what its policies are going to be

Question 33

What forms can politics take?

Answer 33

Everything from blogging and posting opinion pieces online, sending emails to government officials, voting, lobbying legislators on behalf of particular programs, and participating in protest marches and even violent demonstrations