Comparative Politics and Democratization Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering core political science concepts, government structures, globalization, and economic development as outlined in the transcript.

Democratization

The ongoing process through which countries move toward more democratic institutions, rights, and freedoms, often driven by economic and social modernization.

Socioeconomic Development

The long term process in which economic growth and social improvements such as rising incomes, better education and health, and expanded opportunities reduce poverty and enhance the overall quality of life in a society.

Globalization

The rapid process by which national economies and societies become more open to and dependent on one another through intensified cross-border trade, capital flows, information, and social and political interaction.

Politics

Activities associated with the control of public decisions among a given people and in a given territory, where this control may be backed up by authoritative means.

Public Sphere

The realm dealing with collective decisions that extend beyond the individual and private life, typically involving government action that can be backed up by force if necessary.

Authoritative Sphere

The realm dealing with decisions that are expected to be carried out and respected.

Comparative Politics

The field of political science that involves the crafting of authoritative decisions, who gets to make them, and for what purposes, evaluated by comparing different nations.

Ethnicity

The shared, often subjective sense of common ancestry, physical traits, language, culture, or history that binds a human group together, whether or not any objective genetic or historical relationship actually exists.

Ethnic Groups

As defined by Max Weber, human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration.

Theocratic Regime

A form of government where religious authorities govern and religious law is part of the country's legal code.

Religious Fundamentalism

A movement within a faith whose followers believe in the absolute truth of its sacred texts and doctrines and seek to defend these fundamentals, often opposing secularization and sometimes wanting political life organized according to those religious principles.

Gross National Income per capita

The gross national income of a country divided by its population, adjusted using purchasing power parity, and used as a measure of national affluence and economic development.

Economic Development

The process where people gain new resources and opportunities as economies grow and transform, raising living conditions and income standards so parents can expect their children to do at least as well as themselves.

Social Development

Societal changes such as expanded education and literacy, improved health care, transformed roles and opportunities for women, and greater access to information, which together improve the overall quality of life for most of the population.

Democracy

A political system in which citizens enjoy a number of basic civil and political rights, and in which their most important political leaders are elected in free and fair elections and are accountable under a rule of law.

Human Rights

The evolving set of basic rights and civil liberties that should be granted to all people, whose scope and balance with majority rule democracies continually struggle to define and expand.

Authoritarian

A political system that lacks one or several of democracy's defining features, such as basic civil and political rights and free, fair, and accountable elections.

Oligarchy

A form of authoritarian government in which rule by the few means a small political elite withholds political rights from the majority of the population.

Totalitarian

A system in which a single governing party exercises total top-down control over society, allowing no independent opposition and seeking to regulate all aspects of life based on its official ideology.

Regimes

Different forms of government such as democracies, military dictatorships, and other systems through which political authority is organized and exercised.

Electoral Authoritarianism

A setup where opposition parties are allowed to participate in elections, but they are not realistically allowed to win control of the government.

State of Nature

A hypothetical situation in which no government exists, used by social contract theorists to imagine what life would be like without political authority.

Social Contract

An ideal agreement among people that serves as the foundation on which societies and their governments and rules are built.

Political Culture

A nation's shared public attitudes, norms, values, and expectations about politics and the citizen's role in the political system.

Public Goods

Goods that are non-excludable (if one person enjoys them, they cannot be withheld from others in the community) and non-rival (one person's enjoyment does not detract from anyone else's).

Externalities

The consequences of an economic activity whose costs or benefits are not borne by either the producer or the user.

Rent Seeking

The political pursuit of private gain, where individuals, firms, or organizations try to use government interventions to obtain benefits for themselves rather than to promote social efficiency.

Anarchists

Political thinkers concerned primarily with the threats that governments pose to social communities.

Libertarians

Political thinkers who see the greatest problem of government as its encroachment on individual freedoms.