Review Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is comparative politics?
The study and comparison of domestic politics across countries.
How is comparative politics different from international relations?
While comparative politics looks at the politics inside countries (such as elections, political parties, revolutions, and judicial systems), international relations concentrate on relations between countries (such as foreign policy, war, trade, and foreign aid).
What are institutions?
Organizations or activities that are self-perpetuating and valued for their own sake. Institutions play an important role in defining and shaping what is possible and probable in political life by laying out the rules, norms, and structures in which we live.
What are politics?
The struggle in any group for power that will give one or more persons the ability to make decisions for the larger group. Politics occurs wherever there are people and organizations.
What is the word that matches the definition to “inform and even challenge our ideals, providing alternatives and questioning our assumption that there is one right way to organize political life?”
Comparative Politics
What is the Comparative method?
A way to compare cases and draw conclusions. By comparing countries or subsets within them, scholars seek out conclusions and generalizations that could be valid in other cases.
What is a correlation?
Apparent association.
What is cause and effect?
A causal relationship.
What are quantitative methods?
They favor a wider use of cases unbound by area specialization, greater use of statistical analysis, and mathematical models often drawn from economics.
What is Selection Bias?
A focus on effects rather than causes, which can lead to inaccurate conclusions about correlation or causation
What is endogeneity?
The issue that cause and effect are often not clear, in that variables may be both cause and effect in relationship to one another
In thinking about the comparative method, why might selection bias or endogeneity matter?
Selection Bias causes us to not receive an accurate representation to study or compare diverse political systems in the world. Endogeneity does not show the causes of effects in which we can not compare methods and research to compare politics globally.
What is one difference between qualitative and quantitative research methods?
Quantitative methods favor a wider use of cases unbound by area specialization, greater use of statistical analysis, and mathematical models often drawn from economics. Qualitative methods entail a set of tools for explaining political phenomena and uses description and observation of non-numerical data to draw inferences.
What are institutions?
Institutions are humanly devised, set constraints, and shape incentives. Institutions vary based on culture, ecology, geography, and climate.
What are formal institutions?
Formal institutions are codified rules in the constitution.
ex: constitutions, codes, laws, contracts and other legal elements
What are Informal institutions?
Informal institutions are used to distribute power, social norms, and equilibrium.
ex: political ideology, corruption, and culture
What are political institutions?
Political Institutions determine the distribution of political power and regulate its use of sources of political power.
ex: Executive, legislative, and judicial
Are the branches of government the only institutions in a liberal democracy? If not, what are other examples?
States are institutions that have an army, police, tax enforcers, and social welfare.
How does federalism differ from a unitary system of government?
Federalism is a system in which significant state powers, such as taxation, law making, and security, are devolved to regional or local bodies. A unitary state is where most political power exists at the national level, with limited local authority.
What is federalism?
Federalism is a system in which significant state powers, such as taxation, law making, and security, are devolved to regional or local bodies.
What is a unitary state?
A unitary state is where most political power exists at the national level, with limited local authority.
How does this federalism and unitary relate to the geographic location of political power?
Different states and different countries have geographically different forms of political power. Federalism may also encourage more geographically diverse economic and social development.
How do states vary in terms of autonomy and capacity? What are some of the elements that make up a strong or weak state?
States have a monopoly of force over a given territory, they have institutions that carry out policy, and they have sovereignty. A state should have a permanent population, a defined territory, government, and capacity to enter into relations with other states.
