final exam Flashcards
What is politics?
Who gets what goods, where, when, how, and why
Exercise of power, distribution of goods
What is a political act?
Example: distribution of water
Everyone needs, society must decide who gets and who decides
What is soverignty?
Absolute power, monarch believes they have power because of natural right
What is legislative power?
Making laws (creating rules)
What is executive power?
Executing the laws
What is judicial power?
Protection of the laws
What is state?
Highest authority in a given society within a territory
They are the people who can choose when to use force (power)
What are the two factors of state?
Level of state intervention into the economy
Level of accountability with its citizens
What are the qualities of a nightwatchman state?
Minimal state intervention in the economy
State is only responsible for security of the people
Ruled by market
What are the qualities of a developmental state?
State intervention in everything
Partners with private sector
restriction of liberties
What is a liberal democracy?
promote free elections
universal suffrage,
personal liberties, individual rights, human rights (more accountable to its citizens)
What is an illiberal democracy?
elections with little protections about rights and liberties,
They will claim its fair, but it isn’t
What is an authoritarian state?
Unfair elections
no accountability of citizens concentration of political power in fewer bodies
leaders not accountable (they may claim)
What is a totalitarian state?
Complete control by state
No respect for individual freedom
What are state theories?
How a state believes political power should function
What is pluralism?
focus of the study of multiple groups in society
fragmented power
state moves around different interest groups
What is elitism?
Societies are led by unified self conscious elite
What is socialism?
Society is ruled by the elite that owns the means of production
What is the new right?
Privatization and minimal state intervention
arbiter of economic power
market decides
What is power?
Dominance, force, coercion, consent
What is authority?
Right to exert power
What is legtimacy?
The reasons one has authority, the idea why one has the right
What is the tragedy of the commons?
Optimizing for oneself over the good of the population
What are the classifications of state power?
Traditional authority
Legal-rational
Charismatic
What is traditional authority classification of state power?
Belief of natural right, nobility
What is charismatic classification of state power?
Comes from personality of leaders, not authority of constitution
Sometimes a challenge of previous authority
What is legal rational classification of state power?
Right to exert power based on previously constituted legal rules
What is democracy?
Political power distributed and rests in the hands of the people
What is are examples of contemporary democracy?
Deliberative: citizens have right to vote, spaces for reflection and debate about political choices
Cosmopolitan: relates to globalization, citizenship is not just linked to states but international institutions have to be accountable to citizens
What is freedom?
Absence of externally imposed coercion (physical, structure, legal, etc)
What is the difference between negative and positive freedom?
Negative: freedom from
Positive: freedom to
What is Justice?
How we distribute and how we punish that didn’t meet society’s rules
What are qualities of liberalism?
Defend negative liberties
Free markets
Private property
Trickle down economics
Individual over state
Constitutions
Rule of Law
Power seperation
What is classic liberalism?
State has no say, should not be involved in economy
Market should decide all
—> Market is ruled by invisible hand (supply and demand)
What is Keynesianism
Classic liberalism, but state should interfere in times of crisis of the economy
What is neoliberalism
deregulation, privatization, liberalism invisible hand, caused 1% of population to be extreme billionaires with lots of more of the population less off, modern classical liberalism except it is in a global context
What are tickle down economics?
Putting money into the hands of the rich and eventually it will make it’s way down to the poor
What is socialism?
Focuses on real equality (in opportunities and freedoms)
Inequality shouldn’t exist
Community over individual
Working class
What is conservatism?
Law and order
Respect for authority
Resistant to progressive ideas
What is fascism?
Extreme form of nationalism
State (leader ) over individual and community
Racial and gender discrimination
“Cleansing”
Extreme targeting to groups
What is anarchism?
Total rejection of the state
Has not been implemented in real life
Collective decision making