PLCY Finals Key Terms

Vocabulary flashcards based on PLCY Finals lecture notes.

Biased and Fake News

News that does not accurately tell facts or has an alignment with a political party.

Basic functions of government

Security, Services, Public good, Conflict resolution.

Voluntary cooperation

All parties consent and work together.

Self-government

Right of people to rule independently; people themselves rule as a political unit.

Theoretical Framework

Lenses of analysis to explain what we see empirically; explanations that guide research & statistical framework; what steps one should take as a policy maker.

Path dependency

Historical decisions shape decisions, costs, learning efficiency, coordinations, expectations.

Elite Theory

A theory that only the rich should rule

Pluralism

A theory that multiple groups should rule the government (not common people, activists).

Factions

Groups of people with beliefs that agree over objectives and policies (early political parties).

Two Faces of Power

Direct (influence decisions) & Indirect (influence the agenda and policy-setting).

Scope of Conflict

Who/which groups are involved in a political conflict (smaller= less groups involved).

Policymakers’ Goals

According to Fenno: 1. Get reelected, 2. Gain power, 3. Making good public policy.

Mayhew’s Three Election-Seeking Activities

Credit Claiming, Advertising, & Position taking.

Fenno’s Concentric Circles

District, Supporters, Primary, Personal.

Rationality Principle

All behavior has a purpose.

Visibility and Traceability

Voters must experience some discernible outcome that leads them to inquire about the cause of this outcome.

Purposes of Constitutions

Provide framework & shape behavior, structure government, normative grounding.

Supremacy Clause

Federal constitutions are superior to state constitutions (6th article of the constitution).

Types of Majorities

1. Simple majority, 2. An absolute majority, 3. Supermajority.

Tyranny of the Majority

Monopolize power; hurts minority.

Dead Letters

Parts of the constitution that are not enforced.

Different types of federalism

New, Regulated, Dual, Cooperative, Opportunistic.

Different types of power

Expressed, implied, reserved.

Constitutional terms

Supremacy clause, full faith and credit, privileges and immunities.

Focusing events

Events which cause major change/ agenda setting, usually in a crisis.

Preemption

Laws passed by higher authority take priority over ones by lower courts.

Separation of Powers

3 branches: Legislative, Judicial, Executive.

Checks & Balances

Executive, Legislative, Judicial.

Gridlock

Difficulty passing laws (legislative chambers).

Responsible Parties

Who holds elected officials accountable.

Legislative Professionalism

Full-time body.

Delegate Model of Representation

Elected officials trust that they are there to represent the will of the people.

Trustee Model of Representation

Elected officials are there as the person, and the people trust them to make certain decisions.

Four types of representation

Substantive (policy), Descriptive (whole constituency politically relevant), Symbolic (not politically relevant ), Surrogate .

Essentialism

Everyone has the same viewpoint.

Venue Shopping

Going to different court for cases.

Judicial Role: activist

the judicial and other parts of the government are co equal branches of government.

Judicial Role: restraints

only interfere in the last case scenario.

Judicial Interpretation: originalist

reasonable belief or interpretation at the time.

Judicial Interpretation: textualists

legal text.

Judicial Interpretation: living constitution

now.

Social construction of target groups

SCOTG

Agenda Setting

Determining public policy questions.

Framing

Ways an issue is posed.

Priming

Context used to interpret.

Implicit Bias

Unconscious stereotypes/attitudes.

Visual Primacy

Power of usual images over text (images are more powerful).

Social constructions theory

Characterization of images or persons/groups whose behaviors affected; groups : advantaged, disadvantaged, deviants, contenders.

Tangible policy

Policy that is directly experienced by the public, broad views.

Political efficacy

Beliefs one can participate/understand policy (internal v. external).

Feed Forward

Reacts to changes in environment/ some state of system.

Laws/Bills: the space act

opportunistic.

Laws/Bills: Patriot Act (2001)

tools/ terrorism.

Types of groups

Businesses, professional associations, labor unions, public interests.

Indirect Lobbying

Attempts to influence legislation through attempts to affect the opinions of the general public.

Direct Lobbying

Attempts to influence the legislative body through direct communication with a member or employee.

Electioneering

Aiding candidates financially and getting group members out to support them; there are limits on electioneering efforts on election day, to try to sway public opinion especially by the use of propaganda. (compared to regular lobbying which is policy issue & value judgement)

Hard Money

Campaign money raised for a specific candidate in federal elections and spent according to federal laws and restrictions.

Soft money

Money campaign raised apart from the federal regulation and can be given directly to one candidate, Money raised in unlimited amounts by political parties for party-building purposes.

Partisanship Michigan Model

Psychological attachment of an individual to an institution (Group attachments, parent’s views, demographics, experiences).

Partisanship Downsian Model

Agreement on policy issues (rational beings).

Ideology

What is good, who gets what, who rules.

Cognitive Dissonance

State of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes.

Motivated Reasoning

Confirmation bias to the next level confirms previously held beliefs.

Affective Polarization

Tendency to dislike and distrust people from the other political party.

Issue Based Ideology

traditional notion of politics, where ideology is based on increasing distance between rep and dem issues.

Social Ideology

Increasing distance between dem and rep and made up of partisan bias, increased emotional reactivity and activism.

Inter-group conflict

Conflict that occurs between groups or teams in an organization.

Aggregate Public Opinion

Accumulation of hundreds of millions of individual opinions, attitudes, and choices, there is power in numbers.

Individual Public Opinion

Self, emotional partisanship (changes in how choices are presented).

Policy Responsiveness

Policy should be responsive to the opinions of the people.

Policy Congruence

Do we have policies that people want? type of policy.

Receive, Accept, Sample (RAS) Model

Model to explain how individuals respond to political information they may encounter; Elites (Framed, primed, 2nd face of power), Attention ( intellectual/ cognitive engagement), Political predisposition ( individual-level traits regulate acceptance).

Political Participation

The mechanisms by which people communicate their and their community’s needs with policymakers, also the ways that the people put pressure on their policymakers to respond.

Voting Age Population (VAP)

People over the age of 18.

Voting Eligible Population (VEP)

People over the age of 18 allowed to vote.

Internal Efficacy

Personal understanding of the process (motivated because they understand the process).

External Efficacy

Policymakers care about me (motivated by what they think about the outside system).

Participatory Distortion (or Bias)

People or groups who do not have the same preferences as the general population have a greater impact.

Reapportionment

the process of dividing seats for the house among the 50 states following the census.

Redistricting

Determines which neighborhoods and communities are grouped together.

Gerrymandering

Drawing of district lines that value one group over another.

Packing

Combining as many like-minded voters into one district as possible.

Cracking

Dispersing a group of voters into several smaller districts.

Stacking

When low-income/ less educated minorities are grouped together to create a perceived voting majority but placed with a more politically active minority.

Activists and Policy Demanders

Animated by demand (or set of demands), politically active on behalf of their demands, numerous enough to be influential

Median Voter Theorem

States that strategic candidates will try to get the median vote to win (moderate), the candidate close to the median vote should get the most votes

Reform Social Movement

Seeks limited by significant changes in an aspect to different political systems.

Revolutionary Social Movement

Seeks to overthrow the existing government to bring about a new way of life.

Religious Social Movement

Tries to block social change or reverse social changes that have been achieved.

Self-help Social Movement

Tries to improve aspects of personal lives.

Reactionary Social Movement

Social movements with a goal to reverse current social trends, conservative movements.

Right

Given by anyone to claim legal guarantees or moral principles.

Responsibility

Being held accountable for something within one’s control or management.

Privilege

Benefit enjoyed by only a person beyond the advantage of the most.

Black Codes

A series of laws that were passed right after the Civil War and limited the rights of Black Americans' ability to own property and conduct business.

Jim Crow

A series of state and local laws that were passed that were designed to enforce racial segregation and ensure black people were kept separate and treated as second-class segregation.

Redlining

Grading the neighborhoods in areas where the presence of black people resulted in D- grades which meant the area was considered hazardous.

De Jure

Written in the law, and there is clear discriminatory intent.

De Facto

Implications of the written law that has caused discrimination.