American Govt: Chapter 4 Quiz

Democracy

A political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them

Autocracy

a system of government by one person with absolute power.

Monarchy

Hereditary rule by a member of an ordained family

Enlightenment

post-renaissance western thought when popular writers called into question the legitimacy of old arrangements

Divine rights

the notion that royal families are ordained by a deity to rule

Thomas Hobbes

Considered the godfather of the Enlightenment

Political Legitimacy

the fundamental truth that in order to survive, all governments must demonstrate their right to exist and exercise power

Contract Theory

the Lockean concept that legitimate governments form an inherently fiduciary relationship

Liberalism

the inherent right of the people to create and place limits on their government

Charles de Montesquieu

believed in separation of powers and having three branches of government; he inspired J. Madison

Negative liberties

the powerful notion of liberty that places specific limits ob government infringement

Majoritarian tyranny

political majorities going too far and voting to take away the rights of those not in the majority

Demagogues

Politicians who exploit the worst of human emotions, such as paranoia, fear, and prejudice, as opposed to reason

"scape-goating"

finding persons or groups on whom to conveniently blame problems, as opposed to offering real solutions

Inalienable rights

fundamental freedoms that no government can legitimately take away

Republicanism

government by chosen representatives

famously predicted that a liberal democracy could only crop up and survive in some remote land away from established democracies

Montesquieu

author of Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes

many people in Hobbes home country were pushing for more self-government/limitations on monarchy by the...

mid-1600s

insisted that a legitimate government by definition forms a fiduciary contract

John Locke

expressed the power of negative liberties

Montesquieu

exposed the truth that people form governments not a religious deity

Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes

traced the evolution of human societies from their prehistoric origins-when life was "nasty, brutish and short" to more civilized contemporary arrangements under monarchies

Nationalism

believing one's nation is superior to others