Political Sociology Flashcards
The ability of people, or groups, to gain access to government and use its power to influence society
Politics
Countries where people share a national language or culture
Nation states
People can directly vote for their representatives and, in some cases, can even vote on specific rules or policies
Democratic states
Permits citizens to contact elected leaders to argue for what they want
Lobbying
Believe that states aren’t listening to them and that “normal” forms of influence are inadequate or illegitimate
Activists
Groups of people organized for social change and who act in contentious ways
Social (or protest) movements
Challenging the state so effectively that the state collapses
Revolutionary social movements
The “ultimate authority” within some geographical territory. They tend to have courts, police officers, and legislatures.
States
Using the force of government to collect funds that are used to pay for services like the police, schools, and healthcare
Taxation
States where a large part of their budget is spent on social services, such as retirement benefits and healthcare.
Welfare states
Includes rules of behavior that the state creates, like laws, as well as the services that governments provide for people
Policy
The way states are made, acquire power, and use power to further their goals by creating and enforcing policy
Axis of politics
Governments that control a single city and the surrounding area
City states
People influence the state and its policies by voting for representatives, who then decide which policies to approve
Representative democracy
Where people can directly vote on government policies
Direct democracies
Eligible voters get to say “yes” or “no” on a specific proposed law
Referendum
Where people have a genuine option to vote for alternative candidates
Competitive democracies
Kings and queens who inherit their kingdoms
Aristocracy
Policies written down in law
formal policies
Less like formal organizations and more like vast, amoeba-like networks of people and organizations. Includes the Republicans and Democrats.
Political parties
Policies that are not written down in law
Informal policy
Democratic government tend to offer policies that reflect the voter who is exactly in the middle (the median) of voter preferences
Median voter model
People really care about an issue
Salience
Some individuals or groups have high social status, and the government listens to these people more than others
Elite theory
Policy doesn’t always directly reflect the median voter or elites. Rather, it reflects the balance of interests around an issue
Pluralism theory
Each state gets a fixed number of votes equal to its number of Senators and Representatives combined. The winner of each state’s popular vote (that is, the vote by the state’s eligible voters) gets its electoral votes.
Electoral college system
The right to vote in political elections
Suffrage
The group of people allowed to vote
Electorate
In which most adults are eligible to vote
Universal suffrage
The period after the Civil War when the federal government re-integrated the Southern states into the Union
Reconstruction
Charging a fee for voting
Poll tax
Having to take a test on reading to vote
Literacy test
You can only vote if your grandfather could vote
Grandfather clause
Barred African Americans from holding certain jobs
Black codes
Saw the establishment of racial segregation as the outcome of a failed political struggle where Northern Whites and Southern Blacks joined together to create a multi-racial society but failed
W.E.B. DuBois
Best remembered for her research documenting how lynching- mob killings of Blacks and other minorities- was concentrated in the South and was used to strike fear into African Americans
Ida B. Wells
One of the main goals of the movement was to attack rules that allowed only Whites to have voting privileges
Civil Rights Movement
The law that made discrimination in housing and employment illegal
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Court held that having separate schools for African American students was inherently damaging and that schools must be desegregated
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
These voters think governments should collect a lot of taxes so they can support social programs like education, state-subsidized health care, and retirement benefits for older people
Liberal
These voters want the state to affirm religious values and what they see as traditional social roles
Social conservatives
Systems of ideas
Ideologies
Democratic governments that have less regulated markets and provide lower levels of social services
Liberal states
Where various functions- such as business owners and labor leaders- are part of state entities that determine social policy
Corporatist states
Relatively high taxes that are used to pay for generous social services
Social democratic states
Tries to improve the status of women and reduce discrimination
Feminist movement
The practice in which peasants were tied to specific estates and served the landowning nobility
Serfdom
Tendencies to be prejudiced for or against something
Biases
Attempts to be fact-based and as objective as possible
Positive sociology
Trying to judge what is good or bad
Normative analysis
The process by which people assert influence in official and sanctioned ways
Institutional politics
The process by which people work outside the system and challenge the very legitimacy of some government policy or social behavior
Contentious politics
People can set up a chapter of a movement in their town and don’t need permission from the leadership to do it
Grassroots
The individuals and organizations that spend their time organizing protests, challenging authority, and changing public opinion
Social movement sector
What is the effect of the movement on the individual who participates, and what factors contribute to movement success or failure?
Social movement outcomes
States that, in the Supreme Court’s view, there is no Constitutional right to an abortion, but it could be made legal, or illegal, by state governments
Dobbs v. Jackson
A style of government that relies on obedience to leaders
Authoritarianism
The belief that government should put national interests first by closing borders and waging trade wars
Nationalism
Prohibited states from passing laws that discriminated against Black voters
Voting Rights Act of 1965
