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Pols-207 > Exam 1 > Flashcards

Exam 1 Flashcards

1
Q

Can state or federal governments infringe on the right to bear arms?

A

No, though they can create regulations, this power is mostly in the power of the states and varies from state to state.

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2
Q

Is it legal to carry a gun on a university campus?

A

It is up to the university, most private universities have prohibited it but public universities have to allow the right to carry a gun in certain public places on campus.

For example, universities can forbid concealed handguns in venues such as stadiums or dormitories, but not in public university classrooms

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3
Q

Why does the American government seem very central to the federal government in the eyes of the people?

A

The media tends to focus on federal news rather than local news, even though state governments are equally as important as the federal government, sometimes more important depending on if you live in the state and the extremity of change that is occurring.

The states tend to think they have majority control over the federal government and that it is not as imbalanced in power as the media portrays it to be. States have the ability to assign two senators and regulate the process of selecting representatives for the state in congress

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4
Q

When does the Texas fiscal (government budgeting) year start and end?

A
  • Starts September 1st
  • Ends August 31st
  • Named by the year they end
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5
Q

Why is it difficult to put a value on the government budget?

A

The budgets change throughout the year, they are not set in stone when assigned but more like a guideline.

For example, if a University is teaching a summer course and needs funding they may be provided the funding, but if not enough students sign up for the course the funding may be dropped. There are too many scenarios where the budget can change to get a true estimation of how the budget is distributed

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6
Q

What is Easton’s definition of politics?

A

Politics is concerned with the authoritive allocations of values in a society

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7
Q

What is Deutsch’s definition of politics?

A

Political endeavor seeks to bring about a maximum degree of change in the opposing group with a minimum change in one’s own group

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8
Q

What is the class definition of politics?

A

Politics involves individuals and groups with varying amounts of power, seeking control and making decisions for a larger group that benefit some more than others

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9
Q

Who are political actors?

A

People involved in politics:
- speakers
- local governors
- Interest groups
- News outlets
- Congress

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10
Q

What are the goals of political actors?

A
  • Seek power to bring about political change
  • Be agreeable to the majority, by any means - to achieve the first goal of achieving power
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11
Q

Who are political scientists?

A

People who use science to describe transparent political behavior

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12
Q

What are the goals of political scientists?

A
  • Scientifically seek out the best empirical information to transparently describe and explain events/behavior
  • Fund research and publish findings, increase status in the field of study - may lead to bias in research to climb in their field of work
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13
Q

What is confirmation bias?

A

Viewing evidence that supports your current beliefs

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14
Q

What is implicit bias?

A

Subconsciously assigning a negative characteristic or aspect to someone because of the group we mentally associate them with.

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15
Q

What is the availability heuristic?

A

A mental shortcut that makes us believe that the most recent information is the best,
- the more recent information is, the more likely it will be used to make a decisions

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16
Q

What is representative heuristic?

A

Assigning characteristics to people based on them being part of a group because a set of characteristics typically occur in this group.
A banker is assumed to be good at maths and be wealthy

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17
Q

Texas ethnicity statistics (2019):

A

Texas legislators:
- 65% NH white
- 21% Hispanic
- 9% NH black

Population:
- 41% NH white
- 40% Hispanic
- 13% NH black
(% do not add up to 100%)

Hispanic population overtook NH whites in 2022 in Texas

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18
Q

What is the scientific method when publishing a study?

A
  • Empirical (measurable) data
  • Transparent Process
  • Rule-based investigation
  • Present criteria (P value/pre-set margin of error)
  • Independently confirmable/Repeatable
  • Falsifiable, if new evidence arises this study should modify itself or be discarded
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19
Q

Why is human behavior so hard to study?

A
  • People seek to avoid observation
  • If someone knows they are being observed they change how they act
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20
Q

What makes social sciences different from natural sciences?

A

Social sciences tend to focus on the human side of the physical world that natural sciences try to understand

  • social sciences are hard to validate because there are multiple rationales that are used to justify actions, such as voting. It is difficult to reliably measure
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21
Q

Why are social sciences hard to study?

A
  • Humans are extremely complicated
  • human interactions multiply the complexity
  • normal human behavior is not defined
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22
Q

What did John Dewey say about political criticism?

A

All intelligent political criticisms is comparative. It deals with all-or-none situations but with practical alternatives.
- you can compare different solutions for the same problems and decided which is best for the current situation

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23
Q

What needs to exist to decide if something is the ‘best’ or ‘worst’?

A

Normative measure

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24
Q

What are the three types of measurements?

A
  • count
  • rate (count/count)
  • composite (multiple measurements compiled into one)
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25
Q

What is correlation?

A

A measure of an empirical relationship
- Determining if there is a linear relationship between two variables
- Produces an ‘r-value that varies from -1 to 1

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26
Q

What does the r correlation value show?

A

The positive or negative relationship between two variables
- Positive r values are positively correlated, 1 means it is perfectly directly proportional with no outliers
- Negative r values are negatively correlated, -1 means it is perfectly inversely proportional with no outliers

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27
Q

What’s another word for a trend line in a scatter plot?

A

Regression line/best-fit line

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28
Q

What is the minimum value to achieve correlation?

A

+-0.3

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29
Q

What are some disadvantages of scatter plots?

A
  • Since the axis often does not start at 0, it makes small differences seem excessively large
  • Breaks in scales, when the data has a lower and high portion of data leaving empty space, creating a break in the axis to make the plot look nicer downplays the extreme differences in data
  • Increment sizing is sometimes not evenly spaced and can skew data interpretations
  • Axis are sometimes not included
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30
Q

What are the pros and cons of average data points?

A

Pros:
- can summerise data and give a basic understanding
cons:
- leave out extreme data points/outliers
- Doesn’t tell us the median/distribution of data

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31
Q

What is prospect theory?

A

Weighing risk and reward when making decisions

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32
Q

What are variations of media that are not news but may appear to be so?

A

Fiction and satire

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33
Q

What are some strategies to spot fake news?

A
  • Are you familiar with the source/is it legitimate
  • Read past the headline
  • Check the author
  • Copy right infringement/check the date
  • Confirmation bias
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34
Q

What is empirical data?

A

Measurable statistics

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35
Q

What are some appropriate measurements when comapring states?

A
  • No. people
  • ‘Urban-ness’
  • Income
  • Unemployment
  • No. non-citizens
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36
Q

What does measuring rate do to the possible cause of the data?

A

It removes the denominator as a possible cause since it is being divided out into a percentage or rate, it is all proportional

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37
Q

How is the rate of unemployment determined?

A

Number of unemployed people / state labor force
- state labor force is all employed people + people seeking work

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38
Q

Why is there a higher rate of poverty for children than adults?

A

There are often multiple children associated with an impoverished family

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39
Q

How is the income per capita decided?

A

Total state income / total population

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40
Q

What is the disadvantage of using a heat map?

A

Large bins can group states together when they are actually quite far apart in reality. Especially the last bin which is normally just >n
- This act of painting every state with the same brush in one bin makes data analysis less detailed

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41
Q

What provides the largest share of government revenues?

A

Taxes

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42
Q

Why do states encourage good education?

A

Businesses will move to states where there are highly educated citizens, this will boost the economy of the state

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43
Q

What are some typical links with educational attainment?

A
  • Economic success (individual and communal)
  • Better health
  • Longer life expectancy
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44
Q

What does the scatter plot look like for a plot with an r value of +-1?

A

All points are perfectly aligned on the regression line

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45
Q

What does the scatter plot look like for a plot with an r value of +-0?

A

The regressions line would either be completely horizontal or vertical and the data would he completely random with seemingly no correlation

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46
Q

What is a spurious relationship?

A

When a third variable is responsible for the correlation of two variables
- no. fire engines at a fire scene compared to the damage cost will obviously have a high positive correlation
- but this is only because of the severity of the fire (3rd variable)

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47
Q

What is the result of strong results that go against your hypothesis?

A

Drawing up a new hypothesis

48
Q

What is the difference in approach between scientists and pseudo-scientists when testing a hypothesis?

A

Scientists try to disprove their hypothesis while pseudo-scientists try to prove it

49
Q

What is a casual relationship in scatterplots?

A

When two variables can be compared directly
- number of businesses per state vs state income

50
Q

What is reliability?

A

Consistency of results from repeatable measures

51
Q

What is validity?

A

Acceptability of measure as pertinent to the question being asked

52
Q

What are the differences in validity and reliability between social and natural science data?

A
  • Natural science data can often lead to high R and V
  • Social science data can often lead to lower R and V due to the complexity of people and our multiple reasons for doing something making correlations less easy to identify concretely
53
Q

What makes data hard to analyze in social sciences?

A
  • expensive to collect data
  • limited number of data categories are collected by govs that have the money to collect data
  • data updates do not happen often (census is 10 years) and may not be the specific sample you are looking for
54
Q

Why do we often compare data from state-state?

A
  • There is enough commonality to provide context for comparison
  • Yet they are different enough to see the differences
  • To see what policies are best or worse
  • To capture the different outcomes of different policies and characteristics
  • Higher confidence in results when proven multiple times, though uncertainty will always exist
55
Q

Are biases and heuristics bad or good?

A
  • Biases are bad because they skew perception
  • Heuristics are often good because they make thinking more efficient but bad when this efficient thinking misleads us by coming to an incorrect conclusion
56
Q

What are the steps associated with first-impression bias?

A
  • Quick look
  • Incorrect or incomplete assessment
  • No reconsideration
57
Q

What is the basis for anti-scientific beliefs?

A
  • Experiencing conflict between belief and scientific information
  • Lack of source credibility, the people do not find the source credible
  • Associating with anti-science groups
  • Conflict between how scientific information is received and how a person thinks
58
Q

What has caused an increase in anti-science beliefs?

A
  • The role of politics and how people define themselves, if their political leader objects to science they will follow or if it objects their political opinion
  • Increase reliance on social media
59
Q

What characteristic is essential for implicit bias to exist?

A

Groups of people that are different in one way or more

60
Q

Can we ignore our implicit biases?

A

Yes with time to consider other factors when making a decision instead of going based on instinct

61
Q

Is replication good or bad for science?

A

Good, it provides further credibility to a study if it is proven to agree with the original study or falsify an incorrect study and provide new evidence for a new hypothesis

62
Q

When replicating a study should it be identical to the original?

A

Not necessarily, context is important when doing research, the study should be tweaked so that is tests the same thing as the original.

For example, if someone was asked to identify the faces of celebrities from a study conducted 30 years ago, they will do significantly worse than participants at the time because the context is different.

63
Q

What is the difference between Current-year $ and Fixed-year $?

A

Current-year $ includes (hide) inflation effects, Fixed-year $ shows the effects of inflation, the real worth of the money you own

64
Q

What is the difference between Current-year $ and Fixed-year $?

A

Current-year $ includes inflation effects, Fixed-year $ shows the effects of inflation, the real worth of the money you own

65
Q

What is causation?

A

The reason for how and why a pattern exists

66
Q

What is the difference in the measurement of correlation and causation?

A
  • Correlation is factual, causation is theoretical and can never be 100% proven
67
Q

What are the two prerequisites to causation?

A
  • Correlation, without a correlation you cannot theorize a reason
  • Mechanism, the context for the reasoning to be justified,
    time sequencing and directionality (one causes another or vice versa or both cause each other) of the cause
68
Q

Does correlation normally come with causation?

A

No, it is often a coincidence, most correlations are spurious or caused by an external factor

69
Q

What is more commonly talked about by political actors, causation or correlation?

A
  • Causation because correlation is normally spurious and instead of stating something is correlated they would like you to believe that the correlation means causation.
70
Q

Why can count variables be dangerous as data?

A

It is easy to produce spurious results, especially with population as the third variable

71
Q

What is used to calculate interest?

A

The Consumer Price Index

72
Q

What is the definition of current-dollars?

A

Income in the year in which a person, household, or family receives it

73
Q

What are real dollars?

A

Dollars that have been adjusted to take into account the change due to inflation.
For example when comparing the price of milk in 1990 compared to now, for it to be comparable the price of the 1990 and present dollar must be converted to comparable values, like both in terms of the 2023 dollar or 1990 dollar.

74
Q

What conditions must be true for causation?

A
  • The two data points must be related by some kind of mechanism
  • There must be a correlation
75
Q

What are some factors that affect someones voting decision?

A
  • Candidates’ experience in elective office
  • Level of satisfaction with the way things currently are
  • Knowledge of issues or strong opinions
  • Business values
  • Family values
  • Religious values
  • Common sense
  • Wisdom
  • Integrity
76
Q

Are governments active or proactive?

A

Both depend on the situation and equally so

77
Q

What are examples of when a state or government in proactive or reactive?

A

Proactive:
- Education spending and attainment
Reactive:
- Crime

78
Q

Why do governments exist?

A

To address problems and enhance the lives of citizens. Governments are sometimes reactive and sometimes proactive.

79
Q

What is political culture?

A

The shared public beliefs about a political system and political issues.

80
Q

Are Americans avid participants in elections?

A

No, the rates of participation also greatly vary across the country

81
Q

Why do two major parties exist?

A

There is an ideological rift in American politics

82
Q

Why are state governments perusing different policy changes?

A

We are at a point of unified party control over state governments, these governments have different agendas and have the ability to make changes in the state relatively easily due to this control

83
Q

What makes Texas’ political culture so distinct?

A
  • Size and isolation until the geographical 20th century
  • Dislike of being told what to do
  • Mixture of ‘Old South’ and ‘Frontier’ (Wild West) attitudes and influences
    • Unmistakable conservatism (stems from civil war loss and slavery)
      – Extreme individualism (stems from the reality and myth of living on the frontier)
  • Political and societal separation of races/ethnic groups from NHWs
  • Intense Texas patriotism
84
Q

Who was Daniel Elazar?

A
  • Political scientist (1934-1999)
  • Published his causal theory for the difference in values across the US (1966)
  • Described three types of political culture and how they affect each part of the US
  • Believed in one causal force: cluster migration of immigrants bringing culture and values to different parts of the US (colonizers)
85
Q

What is a theory?

A

Ideas that express a specific causal mechanism
- Ideas that propose a possible cause for something
- Different lenses to study the same phenomenon

86
Q

What are elegant theories?

A
  • Offer a lot of explanatory power
  • Simple
  • Focus on the most critical aspects of a phenomenon
  • Ignore unexplainable aspects
87
Q

What are the classifications in Elazar’s individualistic culture type?

A

Government should not get in the way
- Marketplace and individual initiative are primary
— The government should not regulate the growth of the society
- Material self-interest is the key motivator for individuals
— Corruption is tolerated because politics is all about self-interest
— political competition is partisan, they vote for who they like and against who they don’t like
- Locales
— individualistic culture type came primarily from Germany and English people, mid-Atlantic states, lower midwestern, Missouri, and western states

88
Q

How is civil-service bureaucracy viewed in Elazar’s individualistic political theory?

A

Negatively because it is fair and prevents corruption,
- not indivicualistic

89
Q

What are the classifications in Elazar’s moralistic culture type?

A

Government is a positive force for good
- Government advances the public interest and is a positive force for the lives of citizens
— Intervenes whenever necessary, emphasizes ‘commonwealth’, politics revolves around issues
- It is a citizen’s duty to serve in politics
— Runs to advance issues, corruption is not tolerated
- Locales
— Brought by the puritans who settled in New England, reinforced by Scandinavians, N.Europeans, values moved to upper Great lakes, into the midwest, Northwest

90
Q

How is civil-service bureaucracy viewed in Elazar’s moralistic political theory?

A

Favorable, no corruption is tolerated

91
Q

What are the classifications in Elazar’s Traditionalistic culture type?

A

Elite lineage is all that matters
- Government is utilitarian, serves the elite
— maintain the hierarchy
— Ambivalent (mixed feelings) towards the marketplace and common good, can be fine or problematic
- Politicians come from society’s elite
— Family obligation to govern, citizens don’t need to vote,
— Politics is competition between rival factions of the elites
— Civil service bureaucracy is viewed with suspicion so that stays aligned with the elites
- Locales
— Immigrants to the southern colonies from the plantation-centered agricultural systems, moved westward to southern and southwestern states

92
Q

What culture types does Texas fall under?

A

A combination of Traditionalistic and Individualistic cultural types
Traditionalistic:
- long history of one-party rule
- Low levels of voter turnout
- Social and economic conservatism
Individualistic:
- Strong support for private business
- Opposition to big governmental interference
- Faith in individual initiatives over government ‘programs’ (government is not the solution to everything)

93
Q

What are private goods?

A

Something you have to purchase, in exchange for equal value

94
Q

What are public goods and what are their qualities?

A

Goods that are available to everyone, for example, national defense or roads
- Must be able to access them for free
- There to take care of the good of the group not the care of the individual
- Consumption does not reduce the availability for others

95
Q

What are hybrid goods?

A

State goods that are paid for, such as toll roads and US postal service

96
Q

Why are public goods sometimes necessary?

A

They do not depend on profit, so they provide honest services, and private markets cannot offer public goods because they need to make money

97
Q

What are the purposes of government?

A
  • Provide public goods
  • Maintain order, and establish law to preserve life and property
  • Promote equality
98
Q

What are the two extremes of governmental power?

A

Anarchy:
- No power
Totalitarianism:
- Complete control/ unlimited power

99
Q

What are the two extremes of the government’s role in the economy?

A

Extreme socialism: (equality)
- Government owns the basic goods and services provided to citizens
Extreme Capitalism: (efficiency)
- Individuals own the basic goods and services provided to citizen

100
Q

What happens to the economy of a country as it becomes more advanced?

A

Shift more towards socialism, accommodates the people instead of individuals

101
Q

What is an argument for moving towards socialism?

A

Even though profit is important, labor is also important and people must be fairly treated, sometimes getting so efficient is not for the benefit of the people.

102
Q

What is an argument against moving towards socialism?

A

When everything is divided evenly there is no incentive to work and innovate, societal growth will slow

103
Q

What is an argument for moving towards capitalism?

A

Maximizes economic growth and promotes freedom of individuals

104
Q

What is an argument against moving towards capitalism?

A

Leaves less intellectually and socially privileged individuals without means to improve quality of life

105
Q

What is the difference in the establishment of economic and social policies in the US compared to many European nations

A

After WW2, many European countries established social policies first which then drove their economic policies, the US was the opposite. First establishing economic policies which then drove their social ones

106
Q

What are the two extremes of the government’s roles in society?

A

Social Freedom:
- Places a value on individual liberties even at the expense of an orderly society
Social Order:
- Prioritizes public stability and decency above individual freedom

107
Q

What are the summarized core values of liberals and conservatives

A

Liberal:
- Social freedom
- Economic equality
Conservatism:
- Social order
- Economic efficiency

108
Q

What are the summarized values of libertarians and populists?

A

Libertarian:
- Social freedom
- Economic efficiency
(minimal role of government, very individualistic)
Populist:
- Economic equality
(A government that benefits the average citizen)

109
Q

What is Texas’ political culture ?

A

Conservative:
- Individual economic issues
- Traditionalistic social issues
- Still advocate for government actions to fix problems, just different from liberal problems
- Minimizes social roles of government (besides when driving out liberal ideas)
- stresses individualism
- Maximises the role of business people in shaping the economy (laissez-faire economy)

110
Q

What is social Darwinism?

A

Survival of the fittest of a socioeconomic system

111
Q
A
112
Q

What are the three components of politics?

A
  • Power
  • Decisions
  • Conflict
113
Q

Why do we compare empirical data?

A
  • To come up with a solution for an issue, based on previous trials and outcomes for a similar problem
  • To capture the different outcomes of differeing policies and characteristics
114
Q

When are rate measurements used?

A
  • To remove a third variable (the denominator)
  • Discussing percentages
115
Q

What are the pros and cons of heat maps?

A

Pros:
- Spacial patterns are easy to recognise
- Makes single variable interpretations easier to see
Cons:
- Binning can lose detail in the data if numerical values are not also provided
- Bins can also skew the opinion if there are too few because at a glance the data is not points are not not easy to separate
- Values from adjacent bins may actually be closer than values in the same bin

116
Q

What makes Texas traditionalistic?

A
  • Long history of one party rule
  • Low levels of voter turnout
  • Social and economic conservitism
117
Q

What makes Texas individualistic?

A
  • Strong support for private business
  • Opposition to hit government interference
  • Faith in individual initiatives over government programs

Pols-207 (2 decks)

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