Poli 110: American Government Study Guide

A comprehensive vocabulary review deck designed for exam preparation in Poli 110 (American Government), covering foundational scriptures, political development, voter behavior, and government institutions.

DC 98:5

A scriptural passage stating that the law of the land which is constitutional, supporting the principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind and is justifiable before God.

DC 98:10

A scriptural instruction that honest, good, and wise people should be sought for diligently and upheld as leaders, warning that whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.

DC 101:79-80

A scriptural passage teaching that it is not right for any person to be in bondage to another, and that God established the Constitution of the land by the hands of wise men raised up unto that purpose.

DC 121:39

A scriptural passage observing that by sad experience, it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, to immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.

DC 134:1

A declaration stating that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man, and that He holds individuals accountable for their acts in making and administering laws for the good and safety of society.

Article of Faith 12

A statement of LDS belief regarding civic duty: 'We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.'

Oaks's Five Inspired Fundamentals

The five structural features of the US Constitution identified by Dallin H. Oaks as divinely inspired: popular sovereignty, federalism (division of powers), separation of powers, the rule of law, and a written Bill of Rights.

False Consensus Effect

The cognitive bias wherein individuals systematically overestimate the degree to which other people share their beliefs, opinions, preferences, and behaviors.

Coordination Problem

A collective action challenge where members of a group share a common desire to act together but encounter difficulty organizing or agreeing on a single focal point or course of action.

Prisoner's Dilemma

A strategic interaction in game theory where two rational actors, each pursuing self-interest, fail to cooperate and ultimately arrive at a Pareto-suboptimal outcome that leaves both worse off.

Free Rider Problem

A dilemma where individuals have no material incentive to contribute to the provision of a non-excludable collective good because they can enjoy its benefits without paying for it.

Tragedy of the Commons

A situation where individuals acting independently and rationally out of self-interest deplete, spoil, or exhaust a shared, scarce, and rival resource against the best interest of the whole group.

Rational Choice Approach

A social science paradigm that explains political behavior by assuming actors possess stable preferences and make purposeful calculations to advance their self-interest and maximize utility.

Psychological Approach

An analytical framework that explains political behavior through social identity, group attachments, in-group/out-group dynamics, emotions, and cognitive biases rather than pure self-interest.

Transaction Costs

The time, effort, bargaining, and resources required to negotiate, establish, and enforce a collective decision or policy agreement in a political system.

Principal-Agent Problem

A dynamic where a principal delegates authority to an agent to act on their behalf, but the agent possesses divergent incentives and private information, resulting in agency loss.

Plenary Power vs. Enumerated Powers

The distinction between broad, general governing authority to pass any legislation not prohibited (plenary power) versus strictly defined, specific authorities explicitly granted by a constitution (enumerated powers).

Supremacy Clause

The clause in Article VI of the US Constitution mandating that the federal Constitution, federal statutes, and US treaties constitute the supreme law of the land, overriding conflicting state laws.

Necessary and Proper Clause

Article I, Section 8 provision empowering Congress to make all laws necessary and proper for executing its enumerated powers; broadly interpreted in McCulloch v. Maryland to establish implied powers.

Commerce Clause

Article I, Section 8 provision granting Congress authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the states; broadly interpreted in Gibbons v. Ogden to expand federal economic jurisdiction.

Selective Incorporation

The piecemeal judicial process by which the Supreme Court applied fundamental protections from the Bill of Rights to state governments via the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.

Strict Scrutiny

The most rigorous standard of judicial review, requiring the government to prove that a challenged law is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest.

Rational Basis Test

The default, most deferential standard of judicial review, requiring only that a law be rationally related to a legitimate government interest.

Civil Rights

Legal protections provided by the government to shield individuals and historically marginalized groups from discriminatory treatment, promoting substantive and procedural equality.

Civil Liberties

Fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms that place limitations on governmental power, shielding individuals from improper state intrusion.

De Facto vs. De Jure

A legal distinction between conditions that exist in practical reality or social practice (de facto) versus conditions that exist by operation of formal law or statute (de jure).

Calculus of Voting

A rational choice formula ($V = pB - C + D$) positing that an individual votes if the expected personal benefit ($B$) multiplied by the probability of casting the decisive vote ($p$), plus a sense of civic duty ($D$), exceeds the participation costs ($C$).

Social Model of Voting

A voting behavior model arguing that individual choices are heavily directed by social networks, family socialization, opinion leaders, and community cross-pressures.

Psychological Model of Voting

A model of voting behavior conceptualized as a funnel of causality, where enduring partisan identification acts as a core psychological identity and perceptual screen filtering political information.

Duverger's Law

The political science principle stating that single-member district plurality electoral systems structurally favor and entrench a two-party system, whereas proportional representation encourages multiparty systems.

Single-Member Plurality Election

An electoral format where an geographic district elects a single representative and the candidate who receives the highest number of votes wins, regardless of whether they achieve an absolute majority.

Thermostatic Model

A model of public opinion dynamics where public preferences respond like a thermostat to policy changes, moving in a conservative direction when policy shifts left, and vice versa.

Sampling Error

The statistical discrepancy that arises from observing a random sample rather than measuring the entire population, commonly expressed as the poll's margin of error.

Non-Response Error

A polling bias that occurs when individuals who decline to participate or cannot be reached differ systematically in characteristics and opinions from those who do respond.

Measurement Error

The distortion in polling data caused by faulty survey instruments, including biased framing, priming, confusing wording, double-barreled questions, or social desirability bias.

Fourth Estate

The societal role of an independent press and news media acting as an essential watchdog on political leaders to expose abuses of power and minimize agency loss.

Political Action Committee (PAC)

A federally registered private group that collects contributions from members and donates directly to candidates or political campaigns under legally restricted contribution limits.

SuperPAC

An independent expenditure-only committee permitted to raise and spend unlimited funds from individuals, corporations, and unions to advocate for or against candidates, prohibited from coordinating directly with campaigns.

Insider Tactics

Interest group activities designed to influence policymaking through direct interactions with officials, such as lobbying, drafting legislation, and offering expert testimony.

Outsider Tactics

Interest group strategies that aim to pressure government officials indirectly by mobilizing grassroots supporters, influencing public opinion, generating media coverage, and organizing protests.

Bicameralism

The institutional design dividing a legislature into two separate, distinct chambers—in the US Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Gerrymandering

The intentional manipulation of electoral district boundaries to create an artificial political advantage for a specific party, incumbent, or demographic group.

Incumbency Advantage

The structural, electoral edge that current officeholders hold over challengers, stemming from name recognition, casework, staff resources, fundraising networks, and franking privileges.

Delegate vs. Trustee Representation

The contrasting theories of legislative representation between an official who strictly mirrors the explicit instructions of their constituents (delegate) versus one who relies on their own conscience and judgment (trustee).

Conditional Party Government

The theory positing that rank-and-file members of a legislative party delegate strong centralized agenda-setting authority to their leadership only when the party caucus is ideologically homogeneous and polarized from the opposing party.

Filibuster and Cloture

Senate legislative procedures where prolonged speech is used by a minority to obstruct or delay a vote (filibuster), which can be brought to an end only by a three-fifths supermajority vote (cloture).

Continuing Resolution (CR)

A temporary, stopgap spending measure enacted by Congress to keep executive agencies funded at previous budget levels when regular annual appropriations bills have not been passed, preventing a government shutdown.

Stewardship Theory

An expansive philosophy of the presidency asserting that the president is a steward of the people authorized to do anything necessary for the national interest unless specifically forbidden by constitutional or statutory law.

Going Public

A presidential strategy of bypassing Congress and delivering direct appeals to the American electorate to generate popular pressure on lawmakers to support presidential initiatives.

Police Patrol vs. Fire Alarm Oversight

The distinction between proactive, centralized, and routine congressional investigation of executive bureaucracy (police patrol) versus decentralized, reactive oversight triggered only by complaints from citizens or interest groups (fire alarm).

Stare Decisis

The core common-law judicial doctrine requiring judges to respect and adhere to previously decided precedents when ruling on legal questions with similar facts.

Judicial Review

The authority of the judiciary to review legislative statutes and executive actions, and declare them null and void if they violate the US Constitution; affirmed in Marbury v. Madison.

Originalism vs. Purposivism

The competing judicial philosophies between interpreting constitutional and statutory text based on its original public meaning at the time of enactment (originalism) versus interpreting text according to its broad goals, values, and evolving context (purposivism).

Merit Plan

A judicial selection method (also known as the Missouri Plan) involving an independent nominating commission that selects candidates, followed by executive appointment and subsequent nonpartisan retention elections.

Culture of Contempt

A polarizing political culture characterized by treating political adversaries not merely as mistaken, but as fundamentally unworthy of respect, morally compromised, and contemptible.