Texas Government and Politics Module A Exam Flashcards

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering Texas constitutional history, political structures, and federalism as presented in the Module A Exam transcript.

Provincialism

A narrow self-interested view of the world.

Tenant and sharecropping farmers

Groups responsible for producing most of Texas’s cotton in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

$5$ percent

The approximate percentage of the population of Texas today made up of people of Asian origin.

Fort Hood

The location of the U.S. Army’s largest active-duty armored post.

Mexico

The top importer of exports from Texas that would lose the most from tighter border restrictions.

USMCA

The trade agreement that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Texas Railroad Commission

The body responsible for performing the regulation of oil and energy in Texas.

$85$ percent

The percentage of Texans living in urban areas as of the $2010$ census.

Horizontal drilling and fracking

Technological innovations responsible for the post-$2008$ boom of oil and gas production in Texas.

Natural increase

The factor of births in proportion to deaths which contributed the most to the increase in the population of Texas.

Gulf Coastal Plains

The region in which Texas’s political life grew out of.

Texas Constitution of $1845$

The state constitution under which ownership of all public lands and minerals remained with the state.

$$7$$

The number of constitutions Texas has had throughout the course of its history.

$$1974$$

The year of the most recent attempt to fully rewrite the Texas Constitution.

Community property

A shared element with Spanish-Mexican law found in the Republic of Texas Constitution ($1836$) where property acquired during marriage is jointly owned by both spouses.

Article $7$

The section of the Texas Constitution that covers the topic of Education.

State Board of Education

The body intended to oversee the operations of elementary and secondary education throughout the state.

Bicameral legislature

A feature of the Texas Constitution of $1836$ that showed the direct influence of the U.S. Constitution.

$$1876$$

The year the current Texas Constitution was ratified.

Radical Republicans

A group in the U.S. Congress who pushed for African American suffrage and the military occupation of the former Confederacy after the Civil War.

Federalism

A system where power is divided between a central government and regional governments that both have direct authority over people.

Richard Coke

The governor whose election in $1873$ marked the return of Democratic control in Texas politics.

Civil War Amendments

The $13^{th}$, $14^{th}$, and $15^{th}$ Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that ended enslavement and granted the right to vote to all male citizens.

Preemption

A tool of coercive federalism that prevents states from taking certain actions reserved for the national government.

Dual sovereignty

A principle that permits both the federal and state governments to pass and enforce their own laws even if they overlap.

Marble-cake federalism

A term also used to describe cooperative federalism.

DAPA

The Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program designed for undocumented individuals who have lived in the U.S. since $2010$ and have children who are U.S. citizens.

Full faith and credit clause

The part of the U.S. Constitution requiring that a driver's license from Texas be recognized as legal authorization to drive in Kansas.

Public policy exception

A doctrine allowing states to ignore "full faith and credit" for another state's actions if they are viewed as being against the state's policy goals.

Police power

The authority of a state government to regulate public health and safety.

Texas v. White

The U.S. Supreme Court case ruling that any decisions made by Texas during the Civil War were null and void because the state lacked a lawful government.

Reconstruction

The era after the Civil War when much of the former Confederacy was under military occupation.