Comp Pol Midterm 2

Political Identity

The ways that individuals categorize themselves and others, and how they understand the power relationships of domination and oppression that exist between groups.

Political Cleavage

A deep and lasting salient dimension of political conflict and competition within a given society, such as religion, ethnicity, ideology, or other forms of identity.

Primordialism

An approach to understanding identity that assumes that identities are something people are born with or that emerge through deep psychological processes in early childhood.

Constructivism

An approach to understanding identity that assumes that political identities are malleable, suggesting that we think of identity as an evolving political process rather than as a fixed set of identity categories.

Race

Categorization of humans into large populations supposedly based on heritable physical characteristics such as skin color, facial features, and hair texture.

Ethnicity

A group of people who share an understanding of a common heritage based on religion, language, territory, or family ties.

Secularization

A gradual decline in the societal importance of religion.

Religious Pluralism

A diversity of forms of worship.

Gender

A concept used to distinguish the social and cultural characteristics associated with femininity and masculinity from the biological features associated with sex.

Traditional Gender Gap

A situation in a country in which women are more likely than men to be conservative and vote for conservative political parties.

Modern Gender Gap

A situation in a country in which women are more likely than men to be more liberal and vote for more liberal parties.

Wage Gap

The difference between what a man and a woman earn for doing the same job.

Private Goods

Goods that only one person or a few people can consume.

Public Goods

Goods that everyone can consume, whether they helped produce them or not.

Free Riding

To reap the benefits that collective action provides after other people have put in time, energy, or money to generate collective mobilization.

Social Movement

Organized and collective efforts that make claims on behalf of the members of a group, challenge the power of government authorities, contest established ideas or practices, or advance new ideas or practices.

Political Opportunity Structure

The way a country's political system shapes, promotes, checks, or absorbs the challenges it confronts from organized civil society.

Interest Group

Organized groups of citizens who seek to ensure that the state enacts particular policies.

Pluralism

A pattern of interest group mobilization in which societal interests organize freely in an unregulated fashion.

Corporatism

A pattern of interest group mobilization in which the state plays an active role in organizing groups and mediating between them.

Political Party

A group of people who have organized to attain and hold political power.

Coalition Government

A government comprising several parties that hold at least one cabinet minister, frequently found in multiparty systems.

Political Violence

The use of force by state or non-state actors to achieve political goals.

Civil War

Armed combat within the boundaries of a sovereign state between parties that are subject to common authority at the start of hostilities.

Genocide

A coordinated plan seeking to eliminate all members of particular ethnic, religious, or national groups through mass murder.

Terrorism

Threatened or actual use of violence for political purposes by non-state actors, directed particularly against civilian targets.