Key Terms: Government and Political Philosophy

Flashcards for reviewing key terms related to government and political philosophy.

Government

The institution through which a society makes and enforces its public policies.

Public policies

All of the things a government decides to do.

Legislative power

The power to make laws and to frame public policies.

Executive power

The power to execute, enforce, and administer laws.

Judicial power

The power to interpret laws, to determine their meaning, and to settle disputes that arise within the society.

Dictatorship

Form of government where those who rule cannot be held responsible to the will of the people.

Aristotle

Greek philosopher who viewed the lives of individual humans as linked in a social context. He wrote various types of government and the obligations of the individual citizens.

State

A body of people, living in a defined territory, organized politically with a government, and with the power to make and enforce law without the consent of any higher authority.

Sovereign

When a state has supreme and absolute power within its own territory and can decide its own foreign and domestic policies.

Thomas Hobbes

English philosopher who felt that people and nations were in a constant battle for power and wealth. He thought that an absolute monarchy was the best government for England.

John Locke

English philosopher who wrote about his theories concerning the natural rights of man, the social contract, the separation of Church and State, religious freedom, and liberty.

Autocracy

A government in which a single person holds unlimited political power.

Oligarchy

A government in which the power to rule is held by a small, usually self-appointed elite.

Unitary Government

Often described as a centralized government in which all power held belongs to a single, central agency.

Federal Government

One in which the powers of government are divided between a

central government and several local governments.

Division of powers

An authority superior to both the central and local government on a

geographic basis, where division cannot be changed by either the local or national level

acting alone.

Confederation

An alliance of independent states or the joining of several groups for a

common purpose.

Presidential Government

A system of shared powers in which the executive and

legislative branches have separate powers.

Parliamentary Government

-The executive branch is made up of the prime minister or

premier, and that official’s cabinet, where the prime minister and cabinet are themselves

the members of the legislative branch, the parliament.

Alexander Pope

Pope (1688-1744) was a famous and financially successful poet who

was also a satirist and translator. He was born in London and raised in a Roman Catholic

family. He is most famous for his use of the heroic couplet.

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln (1809-1865) was elected 16th President of the United States,

entering office in 1861 at age 52. He is known for issuing the Emancipation

Proclamation, which declared that “all persons held as slaves… shall be then,

thenceforward, and forever free…

” He was assassinated in 1865

Patricians

Rich upper class, landowning aristocrats of the Roman Republic.

Plebeians

- The common folk in the Roman Republic.

Feudalism

A loosely organized system in which powerful lords divided their land among

other, lesser lords.

Sovereignty

Utmost authority in decision making and in maintaining order of a state.

Legitimacy

The belief of the people that a government has the right to make public policy.

Divine Right of Kings

The belief that God grants authority to a government.

Colonialism

The control of one nation over foreign lands.

Mercantilism

An economic and political theory emphasizing money as the chief source of

wealth to increase the absolute power of the monarchy and the nation.

Francois-Marie Arouet

Also known as Voltaire, Arouet (1694-1778) was an important

Enlightenment thinker and writer. Voltaire’s beliefs in reason, science, and religious freedom

were echoed in his plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. Voltaire

spent much of his life in exile from his home country of France, writing and speaking about his

philosophy.

William Blackstone

Blackstone (1723-1780) was an English judge who wrote the

Commentaries on the Laws of England, a series of four books that had a profound influence on

the writers of America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Blackstone, an important

Enlightenment figure, believed in protecting the rights of the innocent, and in basing judgments

on common law, that is on previous decisions about similar issues

Majority Rule

The principle that the majority of the people will be right more often than they

will be wrong, and will be right more often than they will be wrong, and will be right more often

than will any one person or small group.

Compromise

An adjustment of opposing principles or systems by modifying some aspect of each in order to find the position most acceptable to the majority.

Citizen

A member of a state or nation who owes allegiance to it by birth or naturalization and is entitled to full civil rights

Free Enterprise System

An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods; investments that are determined by private decision rather than by state control and determined by private decision rather than by state control and determined in a free market.

James Bryce

Bryce (1838-1922) was a British politician who served as an ambassador to

the United States from 1907 to 1913. He became especially popular upon writing The American

Commonwealth, which is a favorable study of the U.S. government.

Winston Churchill

Churchill (1874-1965) was a British statesman who served as prime

minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 during most of World War II and from 1951 to

1955. He was the first honorary U.S. citizen and was granted the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

(1841-1935) was a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1902

to 1932 who was nicknamed the Great Dissenter.

Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt (1858-1919) was the 26th President of the United States,

serving from 1901 to 1909. Nicknamed Teddy, he was a hunter, soldier, naturalist, and recipient

of the Nobel Peace Prize who also secured the route for and began construction on the Panama

Canal

George Washington

Washington (1732-1799) was the first President of the United States

from 1789 to 1797 and a Founding Father. Prior to his presidency, he was a general and

commander in chief during the American Revolution