AP Comparative Government and Politics: Introduction
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141 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Advanced democracies | Countries that have a well established democratic government and a high level of economic development; of the six core countries, Great Britain represents this group |
| Authoritarian regime | regime where decisions are made by political elites without much input from citizens; the economy is tightly controlled by the elite; the leaders (elites) have no constitutional responsibility to the public; restriction of civil rights and liberties |
| Bicameral legislatures | Legislature with two houses; one house (usually the upper chamber) represents regional governments and local interests and the seats are usually determined by population, the other house (usually the lower house) serves as a direct democratic link to the voters; used to disperse power |
| Unicameral legislature | legislature with one house |
| Bureaucratic authoritarian regimes | the head of the government exercises almost complete control over the bureaucracies' activities; they usually are headed by someone who supports the government or through the patronage system |
| Bureaucracy | consist of agencies that generally implement government policy; usually part of the executive branch of government, size has generally increased; includes: hierarchial authority structure, task specialization, extensive rules, clear goals, the merit principle and impersonality |
| Cabinet coalition | where several parties join forces and are represented in different cabinet posts; occurs when ministers are also leaders of the majority party or if the country has a multi-party system with no clear majority |
| Causation | the idea that one variable causes or influences another |
| Centrifugal force | oppose centripetal forces; destabilize the government and encourage the country to fall apart |
| Centripetal force | forces that bind people together the people of a state, giving it strength; one of the most powerful is nationalism |
| Checks and balances | allows power to be shared between the executive and legislative branch; part of a presidential system |
| Civil liberties | basic human rights such as freedom of belief, speech, and assembly |
| Civil society | the way that citizens organize and define themselves and their interests; allows citizens to lead private lives and mass media to operate independently from the government; voluntary organizations outside of the state that help people define and advance their own interests |
| Coinciding cleavages | when every dispute aligns the same groups against each other; can be very explosive |
| Crosscutting cleavages | divide society into many potential groups that may conflict on one issue but cooperate on another; these tend to keep social conflict to more moderate levels |
| Command economics | where the government owns almost all industrial enterprises and retail sale outlets; examples include the U.S.S.R. and China; include socialist principles of centralized planning, quota setting, and state ownership; fading |
| Common law | law based on tradition, past practices, and legal precedents set by the courts through interpretations of statutes, legal legislation, and past rulings; practiced in Great Britain |
| Code law | law based on a comprehensive system of written rules of law divided into commercial, civil, and criminal codes; practiced in China, Mexico, and Russia |
| Communism | a theory developed in the 19th century by Karl Marx, where the communist party controls everything; no classes/castes |
| Competitive elections | an essential requirement for a democracy; elections that are regular, free, and fair |
| Confederal system | system that spreads the power among many sub-units (such as states) and has a weak central government |
| Conflictual political culture | when citizens are sharply divided, often on both legiitmacy of the regime and solutions to major problems; may cause political subcultures to develop and can potentionally halt the government from ruling effectively |
| Consensual political culture | although citizens may disagree on some political processes and policies, they tend to generally agree on how decisions are made, what issues should be addressed, and how problems should be solved; accepts both the legitimacy of the regime and solutions to major problems |
| Conservatism | less supportive of change in general than radicalism and liberalism; tend to see change as disruptive, emphasize that it brings unforseen outcomes; consider the state and the regime to be very important sources of law and order and do not want the threaten that by changing the way they operate |
| Constitutional courts | the highest judicial body that rules on constitutionality of laws and other government actions; serves to defend democratic principles of a country against infringement by both private citizens and the government |
| Co-optation | means a regime uses to get support from citizens |
| Corporatism | an arrangement in which government officials interact with people/groups outside the government before they set policy; two types: state, where the state determines which groups are brought in, and societal (or neo-) where interest groups take the lead and dominate the state |
| Correlation | exists when a change in one variable coincides with a change in the other |
| Cosmopolitanism | a univerisal political order that draws its identity and values from everywhere |
| Coup d'etat | a forced take over of the government; literally means "blows to the state"; replaces current leaders of the country with new leaders; often are carried out by the military; new leaders are always vulnerable to a new coup |
| Democratic consolidation | creates a stable political system that is supported by all parts of the society; democracy penetrates all political parties, the judiciary and the bureaucracy |
| Democratic corporatism | interest articulation is institutionalized through recognition by the state, new groups can only form if the state allows it; organizations develop institutionalized and legally binding links with state agencies, acting on behalf of the state, groups and individuals lose their freedoms |
| Devolution | the tendency to decentralize decision making to regional governments |
| Discretionary power | the power to make small decisions in implementing legislative and executive decisions |
| Direct democracy | when individuals have immediate say over many decisions that the government makes; more rare than indirect |
| Economic liberalization | the process of limiting the power of the state over private property and market forces |
| Electoral systems | the rules that decide how votes are cast, counted, and translated into seats in a legislature |
| Elites | leaders of a government; leaders who have a disproportionate share of policy-making power |
| Empirical data | data based on factual statements and statistcis |
| Fascism | like communism, devalues the idea of individual freedom; rejects the value of equality and accepts the idea that people and groups exist in degrees of inferiority and superiority; believes that the state has the right and the responsibility to mold the society and economy and to eliminate obstacles (including people) that might weaken them; usually a powerful authoritarian state |
| Federal system | divides the power between the central government and sub-units; regional bodies have significant powers, such as taxation, lawmaking and keeping order |
| First-past-the-post (aka plurality or winner-take-all system) | the winner does not need a majority to win, must simply get more votes than anyone else |
| Foreign direct investment | purchase of assets in a country by a foreign firm; a part of economic globalization |
| Fragmentation | divisions based on ethnic or cultural identity |
| Freedom House ratings | an organization that studies democracies around the world and ranks countries from 1 to 7 on a freedom scale, 1 being the most free and 7 being the least free |
| Gini Index | a mathematical formula that measures the amount of economic inequality in a society |
| Economic globalization | intensifies international trade, tying markets, producers, and labor together in increasingly extensive and intensive new ways; integrates capital and financial markets around the world so that banking, credit, stocks, and foreign direct investments are increasingly interrelated |
| Political globalization | a counter-trend to the organization of political power by states and it complicates that ability of states to maintain sovereignty since it binds them to international organizations that take responsibility for tasks that national governments normally conduct; breaks down the distinction between international relations and domestic politics |
| Gross Domestic Product (GDP) | all the goods and services produced by a country's economy in a given year, excluding income citizens earned outside the country |
| Gross National Product (GNP) | like GDP, but also includes income citizens earned outside the country |
| GNP per capita | divides the GNP by the population of the country |
| Government | the leadership and institutions that make policy decisions for a country |
| Head of government | a role that deals with the everyday tasks of running the government and usually directs the activities of other members of the executive branch |
| Head of state | a role that symbolizes the power and nature of the regime and its people, both nationally and internationally, and may or may not have any real policy-making power |
| Human Development Index (HDI) | measures the well being of a country's people by factoring in adult literacy, life expectancy, and educational enrollment, as well as GDP |
| Hypothesis | a speculative statement about the relationship between two or more factors known as variables |
| Illiberal democracies | countries that have democratic procedures in place but have significant restrictions on them |
| Independent variable | a variable that influences |
| Dependent variable | a variable that depends |
| Indications of democratization | competitive elections, civil liberties, rule of law, neutrality of the judiciary, open civil society, civilian control of the military |
| Indirect democracy | democracy with elected officials representing the people |
| Informal politics | takes into consideration not only the ways that politicians operate outside their formal powers, but also the impact that beliefs, values, and actions of ordinary citizens have on policy-making |
| Initiative | a vote on a policy that is initiated by the people |
| Institutions | stable, long lasting organizations that help to turn political ideas into policy |
| Integration | a process that encourages states to pool their sovereignty in order to gain political, economic, and social clout; binds states together with common policies and shared rules |
| Interest group pluralism | a pattern in which autonomous groups compete with each other and with government for influence over state policies |
| Judicial review | the mechanism that allows courts to review laws and executive actions for their constitutionality |
| Traditional legitimacy | rests upon the belief that tradition should determine who should rule and how; often involves important myths and legends, rituals and ceremonies help reinforce; basis of most monarchies; can also be based on religion |
| Charismatic legitimacy | based on the dynamic personality of an individual leader or a small group; notoriously short-lived because it usually does not survive its founder |
| Rational-legal legitimacy | based on a system of well-established laws and procedures; highly institutionalized that carry over through generations of individual leaders; often based on the acceptance of the rule of law that supersedes the actions and statements of individual rulers, law can be code or common |
| Liberal democracies | legitimate democracies; includes civil liberties, rule of law, neutrality of the judiciary, open civil society, civilian control of the military |
| Liberalism as a political ideology | places emphasis on individual political and economic freedom; seek to maximize freedom for all people including free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association; believe citizens have a right to disagree with state decisions and act to change the decisions of their leaders |
| Liberalism as an approach to economic and political change | supports reform and gradual change rather than revolution, does not think the system are permanently broken, just that they need to be repaired or improved |
| Linkage institutions | groups that connect the government to its citizens such as political parties, interest groups, and print and electronic media |
| Market economies | two types: mixed economy that allows for significant control from the central government and a pure market economy, that does not |
| Marketization | the state's re-creation of a market in which property, labor, goods, and services can all function in a competitive environment to determine their value |
| Military rule | when the military directly intervenes in the politics of an unstable government to solve the current problems; usually involves a coup d'etat; often restricts civil rights and liberties, keep political parties from forming and elections from taking place; can go in many different directions: democracy, authoritarian, or another coup |
| Mixed economics | an economy that allows for significant control from the central government |
| Mixed electoral system | combines first-past-the-post and proportional representation election system |
| Multi-member districts | electoral system in which more than one legislative seat is contested in each district |
| Single-member districts | an electoral system where the candidates compete for a single representative's seat |
| Multi-party system | system with multiple parties; usually arise in countries with strong parliamentary systems, particularly those that use a proportional representation method for elections |
| Nation | a group of people that are bound together by a common political identity |
| Nationalism | the sense of belonging and identity that distinguishes one nation from another; |
| Normative questions | issues (questions) that require value judgments |
| Parliamentary system | where citizens vote for legislative representatives, which in turn select the leaders of the executive branch |
| Party system | the nature of relationships among an array of political parties operating in a particular country |
| Patronage | system in which political supporters receive jobs in return for their assistance in getting the president elected |
| Patron-client system | system in which leaders provide reciprocal favors and services to their supporters; system in which the state provides specific benefits or favors to a single person or small group in return for public support |
| Plebiscite | a variation of a referendum; a ballot to consult public opinion in a nonbinding way |
| Pluralism | a situation in which power is split among many groups that compete for the chance to influence the government's decision-making |
| Political culture | the collection of political beliefs, values, practices, and institutions that the government is based on |
| Political efficacy | a citizen's capacity to understand and influence political events |
| Political elites | those who hold political power; leaders who have a disproportionate share of policy-making power |
| Political frameworks | structures of a political system that carry out the work of governing |
| Political ideologies | sets of political values held by individuals regarding the basic goals of government and politics |
| Political liberalization | when a state progresses from procedural democracy to substantive democracy through democratic consolidation |
| Political rights | the promotion of equality |
| Political socialization | the communication of political ideas through media, family, friends, or school |
| Politicization of religion | when religion plays a major role in a government's politics |
| Presidential system | where citizens vote for legislative representatives as well as for executive branch leaders and the two branches function with separation of powers |
| Privatization | the transfer of state-owned property to private ownership |
| Procedural democracy | when democratic procedures are in place but have significant restrictions on them |
| Proportional representation | electoral system in which voters cast their ballots for a party rather than for a candidate and the percentage of votes a party receives determines how many seats the party will gain in the legislature |
| Purchasing power parity (PPP) | a figure like GNP, except it takes into consideration what people can buy using their income in the local economy |
| Radicalism | a belief that rapid, dramatic changes need to be made in the existing society, often including the political system; believe that the current system cannot be saved and must be replaced; often leaders of revolutions |
| Reactionary beliefs | similar to conservative beliefs in that they both oppose revolution and reform, but reactionaries also find the status quo unacceptable; want to turn back the clock to an earlier era reinstate a system from the past, willing to use violence |
| Recruitment of elites | ways to select and identify people for future leadership positions |
| Referendum | a national ballot, called by for the government, that allows the public to make direct decisions about policy itself |
| Reform | a type of change that does not advocate the over-throw of basic institutions, instead wants to change some of the methods leaders use to reach their goals |
| Regime | the rules that a state sets and follows in exerting its power |
| Revolution | involves a major revision or an overthrow of the existing institutions; usually impacts more than one area of life |
| Revolution of rising expectations | a period of relative improvement in the standard of living that precedes a crisis that leads a country to political discontent |
| Rule of law | provides for equal treatment of citizens and due process |
| Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" | Huntington argues that one of the most important and dangerous future conflicts will be clashes of different civilizations or cultures around the world |
| Semi-presidential system | where a prime minister coexists with a president who is directly elected by the people and who holds a significant degree of power |
| Separation of powers | occurs between branches to ensure that power is shared and that one branch does not come to dominate the others |
| Social boundaries | how the mix of social classes, ethnic groups, racial groups, religions, and languages separate people from one another within a nation |
| Social capital | democratic and civic habits of discussion, compromise, and respect for differences, which grow out of participation in voluntary organizations. |
| Social cleavages | within a nation, divisions between religion, ethnic groups, race, social and economic classes |
| Social movements | the organized collective activities that aim to bring about or resist fundamental change in an existing group or society |
| Socialism | shares the value of equality with communism but is also influenced by the liberal value of freedom; accept and promote private ownership and free market principles; believe that the state has a strong role to play in regulating the economy and providing benefits tot he public in order to ensure some measure of equality; stronger in Europe than the United States |
| Societal corporatism (neo-corporatism) | corporatism when interest groups take the lead and dominate the state |
| Sovereignty | the ability to carry out actions or policies within their borders independently from interference either from the inside or the outside |
| State | territory in which a government controls what happens inside the border |
| State corporatism | corporatism where the state determines which groups are brought in |
| Subject activities | how citizens contact the government; in an authoritarian regime it involves obedience: obeying laws, following military orders, paying taxes; in a democracy it includes voting, attending political meetings or rallies, contributing money to campaigns, and joining political clubs or parties |
| Substantive democracy | a type of liberal democracy where citizens have access to multiple sources of information |
| Succession | the process that determines the procedure for replacing leaders when they resign, die or are no longer effective |
| Supranational organizations | cooperating groups of nations that operate on either a regional or international level |
| Technocrats | civilian bureaucrats |
| "third wave" of democratization | began in the 1970s; characterized by the defeat of dictatorial or totalitarian rulers in South America, Eastern Europe, and some parts of Africa |
| Third world | nations that are economically underdeveloped and deprived |
| Three-world approach | a comparing model that includes three "worlds", the U.S. and its allies, the U.S.S.R. and its allies, and third world nations |
| Totalitarianism | similar to communism, more negative connotation; almost always used to describe a particularly repressive, often detested, regime |
| "transmission belt" | interest groups that have been agents to extend the party's influence beyond its own membership to shape the views of its citizens |
| Transparency | a government that operates openly by keeping citizens informed about government operations and political issues and by responding to citizen's questions and advice; high levels are found in democratic regimes, while low levels are found in authoritarian governments |
| Two-party system | when only two political parties dominate the political system |
| Tyranny of the majority | the tendency in democracies to allow majority rule to neglect the rights and liberties of minorities |
| Unitary system | a political system that concentrates all policy-making powers in one central geographic place and the central government is responsible for most policy areas |
| Bourgeoisie | middle class professionals or businessmen |
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