Political Science Midterm

political science

  • Are skeptical of power, seek accuracy , think abstractly, reach tentative conclusions, offer many causes, see long term consequences and plan for the next publication.


legitimacy

  • The mass feeling that a government’s rule is rightful and should be obeyed. Governments can achieve legitimacy by being well-run, implementing fair laws, and ensuring that policies align with the public’s needs. A country that suffers from poor legitimacy may be susceptible to being overthrown or revolutionized.


culture

  • Values transmitted by parents, schools, churches and the mass media. Long term factors are formed by religion, child rearing, land tenure and economic development

rational

  • People know what they want most of the time and they have good reasons for doing what they do. A political system built on presumption of human reason stands a better chance of governing justly and humanely.

irrational

  • People are emotionally dominated by myths and stereotypes and most importantly politics; these people need a rational leader to to lead them(most of these societies are war filled and tryanist; imagnine “ on with big brother”)

socialism

  • Economic system of government ownership of Industry allegedly for good of whole society ( opposite of capitalism) 

state

  • A government structure, usually Sovereign and powerful enough to enforce its writ 


anarchy

  • a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority.


nation

  • A population with a certain sense of itself cohesiveness, a shared history and culture, and often but not always a Common Language 


e pluribus unum

  •  out of many one


regionalism

  • Feeling of regional differences and sometimes break away tendencies 


distribution

  • Distribution of economic Rewards. never really settled because the poor always want more in the wealthy always want to pay less 


penetration

  • The nation must get to all the population ( in far away or separate cultural regions).  paying taxes indicates penetration. 


participation

  • Participation in government at first with the educated or Elite, than for everyone.  Educated and Elite often have money and provide taxes. Eventually people want to vote.  governments are often hesitant to expand voting rights .

identity

  • To feel one as a citizen of a Nation instead of a tribe state or region. in the US you are a citizen of your state and a citizen of the US. for example Africans identify with tribes. 


multinational society

  • A society with multiple ethnic or national groups coexisting, like Canada with its French and English-speaking populations.


Thomas Hill Green

  • Modern liberalism wanted  more government involvement in the economy in less government involvement in the lives of individuals 


transfer of power

  • A transfer of power from one Administration to the next or from one party to the other 


Schenck v. United States

  • A landmark Supreme Court case where Charles Schenck was convicted for distributing anti-draft leaflets during World War I. A 1919 Supreme Court case that established the "clear and present danger" test, limiting free speech during wartime.. 

“guns or butter”

  • A metaphor for a government’s decision to allocate resources between military and domestic needs.


modern liberalism

  • Audiology favoring government intervention to correct economic and social ills; US liberalism today 


constitutions

  • Basic rules that structure government usually written 


federalism

  • Balance of power between a nation's capital and autonomous subdivisions such as US states 


Oliver Wendell Holmes

  • In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt nominated him for the Supreme Court of the United States. Serving on the Supreme Court for more than 29 years, Holmes became one of the most influential judges in U.S. history. In his book “The common law”,  rules of behavior are not the fundamental data of law. Rather, law must be understood as a set of choices, often for unstated reasons, between possible outcomes.


interpreting the U.S. Constitution-judicial review

  • The courts’ ability to assess the constitutionality of laws, established in Marbury v. Madison (the principle of judicial review, an important addition to the system of “checks and balances” created to prevent any one branch of the Federal Government from becoming too powerful).


totalitarianism

  • Political system in which the state attempts  total control of its citizens 


authoritarianism

  • Non-democratic government but not necessarily totalitarian;Sweet dreams that are governed by a small group a party a dictator or the army that minimizes popular input 


civil disobedience

  • a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law, usually aimed at bringing about a change of the law or government policy


representative democracy

  • One in which the people do not rule directly but through elected and accountable Representatives 


pluralism

  • Theory that politics is the interaction of many groups 


direct democracy

  • forms of direct participation of citizens in democratic decision making, in contrast to indirect or representative democracy.  


radical

  • one who desires extreme change of part or all of the social order.


classic liberalism

  • Ideology founded by Adam Smith to keep government out of economy; became US conservatism


moderate

  • People who reside in the center of the political skill and our favorable of some change. These people are a mix of the two views. 

 

the unseen hand

  • regulates And self-corrects the economy. The rational calculations of mid raid individuals and firms all pursuing their self-interest- micro-adjust economy with no government help 


reactionary

  •  a person who wants to reverse political changes and seeks to restore society to a state believed to have existed before.


ideology

  • Believe system that Society can be improved by following certain doctrines usually ends in ism.


Adam Smith

  • Founded classic liberalism with his book entitled The Wealth of Nations. This was fun on three beliefs that the government should be laissez-faire, Society should be free as possible and government should not suppress religion press & speech 


status quo

  • Keeping the present situation 


supply and demand

  • fundamental economic concept that describes the relationship between the quantity of a good or service that producers are willing to sell at various prices and the quantity that consumers are willing to buy.


Edmund Burke

  • Founded classic conservatism because he was turned off by the French Revolution in France.  they turned radicals with the use of the guillotine. Burke worried and irrational man will start Tyranny. 


Karl Marx

  • communist manifesto; the battle between the working class and the ownership class and favors communism and socialism over capitalism so that the working class can be protected by governmental regulations.


proletariat

  • The workers in society who provide labor to the bourgeoisie ( people that own the property and control means of production) 


capitalist

  • an economic system in which private actors own and control property in accord with their interests, and demand and supply freely set prices in markets in a way that can serve the best interests of society.


glasnost

  • Gorbachev’s policy of media openness


libertarians

  • U.S ideology in favor of shrinking all government power in favor of individual freedom 


perestroika

  • program instituted in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s to restructure Soviet economic and political policy


feminists

  • Audiology of psychological political and economic equality for women 


environmentalists

  • Ideology that environment is endangered and must be preserved through governmental regulation and lifestyle changes 


fascism

  • Extreme form of nationalism with elements of socialism and militarism 


communism

  • Marx's Theory merged with leninist organization into a totalitarian party 


public opinion

  • How the public thinks about issues, a public figure or institutions at a given time. Reaction to specific problems and policies rather than long-term values. 


bell-shaped curve

  •  unioidol, center peaked distribution


presidential honeymoon

  • High support for president's early in their term 


U shaped curve

  • bimodal; Distribution where the extremes are bigger than the center 


reliability

  • how consistently a method measures something and how replicable it can be under the same conditions. 


sample

  • Those persons to be interviewed in a survey, a small fraction of a population 


electoral dealignment

  • Major long-term decline in party ID 


plurality

  • The most votes or support for an opinion even if it's less than half of the counted population 


random sampling

  • No picking and choosing among dozens of categories, produces more dependable results than quota systems 


open-ended questions

  • questions that cannot be answered with a simple 'yes' or 'no', and instead require the respondent to elaborate on their points in order to gage the candidates perspective.


gender gap

  • Tendency of American women to vote more democratic than men do 


intensity

  • The firmness and enthusiasm with which an opinion is held 


Pentagon Papers case (NY Times v. US)

  • The New York Times and The Washington Post both gained access to the so-called “Pentagon Papers”— a classified Defense Department study that examined the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsburg was employed at the RAND Corporation, and he worked on the report. Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), defended the First Amendment right of free press against prior restraint by the government.


Watergate

  • In June 1972 a group of spies with ties to President Richard Nixon was caught while attempting to place listening devices in the office of the Democratic National Committee in Washington's Watergate building. After a lengthy investigation, which Nixon attempted to undermine by refusing to turn over tapes of his conversations in the Oval Office, the House Judiciary Committee recommended that the House of Representatives impeach Nixon for obstruction of justice and abuse of power. Rather than face impeachment, Nixon resigned in August 1974, succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford.


mass media

  • Modern means of communication that quickly reach very wide audience 


television (and TV news)

  • Focus on visual representation of news which influenced the public's opinion and stance on certain issues. Children are also highly influenced by television. 


Tinker v. Des Moines

  • a historic Supreme Court ruling from 1969 that cemented students' rights to free speech in public schools. Mary Beth Tinker was a 13-year-old junior high school student in December 1965 when she and a group of students decided to wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam


media event

  • News incident planned to get media coverage 


elite media

  • Highly influential newspapers and magazines read by Elites and the attentive public 


party identification

  • Long-term voter attachments to a given party 


Popular Accountability

  • No one has an inherent right to occupy a position of political power he or she must be freely and fairly periodically elected by fellow citizens. Can also be voted out.


electoral realignment

  • Major long-term shift in party ID 


Popular Support of Government

  • Public trust in government actions and institutions, often linked to legitimacy.


exit polls

  • Voters are questioned just as they leave the balloting place with the three hour time difference between the east and west coast exit pose novel television to predict winners in the East well westerners to have hours in which to cast a ballot 

Alternation in Power

  • The reins of power must occasionally change hands and a peaceful legitimate way. no party or individual should get a lock on executive power 


Volatility

  • Tendency of public opinion to change quickly 


Political Equality

  • Can a democracy all adults over the age of 18 are equally able to participate in politics in a one-person one vote system to avoid inequality 


Political Competition

  • Voters must have a choice either of candidates are parties that means a minimum of two distinct alternatives.


laissez faire

  • French for let it be, economic system of minimal government interference and supervision, capitalist 


Majority Rule

  • Majority decides in relation to minority rights to uphold rights. Most laws started off as minority views and if minority views are silenced, majority views become tyrants. 


Popular Consultation

  • Most leaders realize that the government effectively they must know what the people want and must be responsive to their needs and demands