Comparative Politics Key Vocabulary

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key political concepts, state structures, systems, regimes, and political theories.

Politics

The process by which a community makes decisions and establishes values that are binding upon its members. Key phrase: "Who gets what, when, and how."

Comparative Politics

The study of politics by comparing political systems, institutions, societies, and states in order to understand similarities, differences, and causes of political outcomes.

Comparative Method

A method of studying politics by systematically comparing cases to identify patterns, similarities, differences, and possible causal relationships.

Institutions

The formal and informal rules, organizations, and structures that shape political behavior and determine how political decisions are made.

State

A legal and physical entity with fixed territory, sovereignty, legal and political independence, and legitimacy/capacity to use force.

Regime

The basic rules and structures governing how political power is organized and exercised.

Government

The institutions and people that exercise political authority and make/enforce decisions within a state, consisting of the executive, legislature, and judiciary branches.

Internal Sovereignty

The state's supreme authority over people and affairs within its own territory.

External Sovereignty

The state's independence from other states and its authority to conduct its own foreign affairs.

Nation

An imagined community whose members share some combination of descent, history, culture, language, customs, or national identity and claim a right to self-determination.

Nationalism

The belief that a particular nation should have unity, loyalty, and often political self-determination.

National Identity

A person's sense of belonging to a particular nation, based on shared history, culture, language, traditions, or political identity.

Ethnic Identity

A person's sense of belonging to a group based primarily on shared ancestry, culture, language, traditions, or perceived descent.

Citizenship

Formal membership in a political state that gives a person legal rights and responsibilities within that state.

Political Ideologies

A set of ideas, beliefs, and values about political relationships, the role of the state, political legitimacy, and desired political goals that provides an action program for achieving those goals.

Negative Rights

Rights to be free from interference, characterized by the phrase "Leave me alone" (e.g., freedom of speech, privacy, freedom of expression).

Positive Rights

Rights to receive or attain something, often requiring action by the government or another institution, characterized by the phrase "Provide me with something" (e.g., education, medical care).

Presidential System / Presidentialism

A system where executive and legislature are elected separately, the president is both head of state and government, terms are fixed, cabinet members generally do not sit in legislature, and neither branch normally can remove the other.

Parliamentary System / Parliamentarism

A system where the legislature is directly elected, the prime minister and cabinet come from the legislature, executive and legislature have a confidence relationship, terms are not necessarily fixed, and the PM is head of government.

Political Culture

The cognitions, values, and emotional commitments that a population brings to politics and the allocation of scarce values.

Public Opinion

The collection of shared attitudes among many people concerning politics, public issues, or policymaking, examined through distribution, intensity, and stability.

Interest Groups

Organizations that attempt to influence government policy without necessarily seeking to directly control government by winning elections.

Political Economy

The study of the relationship between politics and economics, especially how governments and political institutions influence economic activity and how economic conditions affect politics.

Welfare-State Systems

Systems where the government plays a major role in redistributing wealth and providing social programs through high taxes, subsidized services, job security, and regulation.

Liberal Democracy

A democratic system combining popular elections and majority rule with constitutional limits, individual rights, rule of law, and protection of minorities.

Consociational Democracy

A form of democracy designed for deeply divided societies in which different social/ethnic/religious groups share political power through grand coalition, mutual/minority veto, proportional representation, and segmental autonomy.

Electoral System

The rules determining how votes are translated into political seats/offices.

Constituency

The group of voters represented by a particular elected official.

Political Parties

Organizations that seek to gain and exercise political power, usually by winning elections.

Judicial Review

The power of courts to review laws or government actions and determine whether they comply with the constitution.

Advanced Democracies

Highly developed democratic states characterized by competitive elections, established institutions, constitutional government, and relatively high levels of economic development.

Authoritarian Regime

A regime in which political power is concentrated in one person or a small group, political competition is restricted, and rights are not reliably protected.

Totalitarian Regime

An extreme form of authoritarianism seeking total political, social, and economic control over society.

Pluralism

A political system in which multiple independent groups compete to influence government policy, with power dispersed among many groups.

Corporatism

A system in which major organized groups—especially business, labor, and other societal interests—are formally incorporated into the policymaking process, often through state-managed organizations.

Lobbyists

People who attempt to influence government officials and legislation on behalf of an interest group or organization.

Communism

An ideology seeking a classless, economically equal society without private ownership of productive property, traditionally pursued through revolutionary transformation and centralized state control.

Central Planning Economy

An economic system in which the state determines major economic decisions, including production, allocation, and often prices.

Globalization

The increasing economic, political, social, and cultural interconnectedness of countries, including greater movement of goods, money, people, information, and ideas across borders.

Political Violence

The use or threat of physical force to achieve political goals.

Revolution

A rapid and fundamental transformation of a political and/or social order, usually involving the overthrow of an existing regime.

Terrorism

The deliberate use or threat of violence against civilians or other targets to create fear and achieve political goals.

Structural Theories

Theories arguing that political outcomes are primarily shaped by large-scale social, economic, political, or institutional conditions.

Voluntarist Theories

Theories emphasizing the choices, decisions, strategies, and actions of political actors rather than primarily structural conditions.

Modernization Theory

The theory that economic and social modernization tends to produce conditions favorable to democracy.