midterms Flashcards
the study of politics and power from domestic, international, and comparative perspectives. It entails understanding political ideas, ideologies, institutions, policies, processes, and behavior, as well as groups, classes, government, diplomacy, law, strategy, and war.
political science
the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
culture
they type of research that seeks patterns and explanations for general phenomena and specific cases. Attempts to explain various political phenomena, which could include understanding the behavior of voters, or the foreign policy of a country.
empirical
a government structure, with power to enforce its decisions.
state
a population with a cohesiveness, common attitudes, ideals, and usually a common language.
nation
differences found among populations of a nation’s regions results in breakaway movements
regionalism
the nation must get to all the population - in far away or separate cultural region - to get all to obey. Government is centered in the capital, and new governments extend rule from there.
penetration
to feel one is a citizen of a nation, instead of a tribe, state, or region.
identity
the legal right to govern, but also the psychological right to govern - government rule is rightful.
legitimacy
People know what they want, and they have good reasons for doing what they do. It can explain why people break away from the crowd or do something different. People make judgments based on their ability to reason.
rational
the man who classified government as corrupt and legitimate.
Aristotle
a phrase that refers to the trade-offs that nations face when choosing whether to produce more or less military or consumer goods
“guns or butter”
A set of rules and customs, written or unwritten, legally established or extralegal, by which government conducts its affairs.
constitution
He argued that current necessity rather than precedent should determine the rules by which people are governed; that experience, not logic, should be the basis of law.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A political system in which the government has total control over the lives of individual citizens.
totalitarianism
A form of political participation that reflects a conscious decision to break a law believed to be immoral and to suffer the consequences.
civil disobedience
a political philosophy is the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, which is seen to permit the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions, and lifestyles
pluralism
favoring drastic political, economic, or social reforms.
radical
person whose views are between conservative and liberal and may include some of both ideologies
moderate
a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary society.
reactionary
Scottish economist who wrote the Wealth of Nations a precursor to modern Capitalism.
Adam Smith
institutions and traditions are good. They are the result of hundreds of years of refinements, and people have become use to them. These institutions are not perfect, but if they need to be changed, it should be done slowly and gradually - giving people time to adjust. There should be a means of change available.
classic conservatism
minimal government involvement. The free market is still the best way, and the government does a poor job in the economy. Guided by the traditions and religious emphasis of Burke - and so, support for prayer, religious school, opposition to abortion and gay marriage. They combine the economic ideology of Smith with the social ideology of Burke.
modern conservatism
wanted to overthrow the capitalist system
Karl Marx
person who owns or controls the means for producing wealth
capitalist
a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value.
libertarianism
the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.
feminism
a political system headed by a dictator that calls for extreme nationalism and racism and no tolerance of opposition
fascism
what the public thinks about a particular issue or set of issues at any point in time
public opinion
the period of about 100 days when a newly elected president takes office and the opposing party, media, etc. will not be politically critical of him
presidential honeymoon
the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting
reliability
general agreement among various groups on fundamental matters; broad agreement on public questions
consensus
the key technique employed by survey researchers, which operates on the principle that everyone should have an equal probability of being selected for the sample.
random sampling
an individual’s belief that an issue is important or relevant to him or her.
salience
A 7,000-page top-secret United States government report on the history of the internal planning and policy-making process within the government itself concerning the Vietnam War.
Pentagon Papers
television, radio, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and other means of popular communication
mass media
printed products created on a regular (weekly or daily) basis and released in multiple copies. Becoming more obsolete with people getting their news from the Internet.
newspapers
highly influential newspapers and magazines read by elites and the attentive public
elite media
a term that refers to the regular pattern by which women are more likely to support Democratic candidates. Women tend to be significantly less conservative than men and are more likely to support spending on social services and to oppose higher levels of military spending.
gender gap
the change in voting patterns that occurs after a critical election
electoral alignment
the weakening of the party system caused by growing popular indifference to the parties themselves.
electoral dealignment
the number of votes cast for a candidate who receives more than any other but does not receive an absolute majority.
plurality
a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority.
anarchy
the idea that the rights of the nation are supreme over the rights of the individuals who make up the nation.
statism
the extent to which individuals engage in the process of generating solutions and articulating their opinions and perspectives in elections
participation
usually multicultural or multilingual, and is geographically composed of more than one country
multinational society
the passing of political rule from one administration to another
transfer of power
idea that government should stay out of business and economic affairs as much as possible
laissez faire
a system in which society, usually in the form of the government, owns and controls the means of production.
socialism
a political system in which a small group of individuals exercises power over the state without being constitutionally responsible to the public.
authoritarianism
a system of government in which citizens elect representatives, or leaders, to make decisions about the laws for all the people.
representative democracy
a form of government in which citizens rule directly and not through representatives
direct democracy
open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.
liberal
a person who believes government power, particularly in the economy, should be limited in order to maximize individual freedom.
conservative
a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy. An overall plan to improve society - a belief that it can be better than it is now.
ideology
The best system is laissez faire. The market itself would regulate the economy. Efficient producers will prosper, inefficient ones will fail. The public will get the best product at lowest prices - based on supply and demand.
classic liberalism
Government needs to step in, not to infringe on freedoms, but to protect them. Brought the government back into the economic picture to protect people from the unfair economic practices.
modern liberalism
Member of British Parliament and author of Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which criticized the underlying principles of the French Revolution and argued conservative thought.
Edmund Burke
Marx’s term for the exploited class, the mass of workers who do not own the means of production
proletariat
a policy of the Soviet government allowing freer discussion of social problems
perestroika and glasnost
a person who works to protect the natural world
environmentalist
a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs
communism
also referred to as a normal distribution or normal curve, a perfect mesokurtic curve where the mean, median, and mode are equal.
bell-shaped curve
polls based on interviews conducted on election day with randomly selected voters
exit polls
a relatively small proportion of people who are chosen in a survey so as to be representative of the whole.
sample
the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes.
polarity
questions that allow respondents to answer however they want
open-ended questions
willingness to incur the costs or inconvenience of the act of officially registering a preferential choice at the time and place required, not the vote itself.
intensity
events that are purposely staged for the media and that are significant just because the media are there.
media event
commercial organizations, such as the Associated Press, that share news stories and information by relaying them around the country and the world, originally via telegraph and now via satellite transmission
wire services
a citizen’s self-proclaimed preference for one party or the other
party identification
a group of people named by each state legislature to select the president and vice president
electoral college
the proportion of the voting age public that votes, sometimes defined as the number of registered voters that vote
turnout
he felt a free-market had faults, competition was imperfect and manufacturers could rig a market. As such, he felt government needed to step in thereby creating Modern Liberalism
Thomas Hill Green
