AP US Governemnt: CH1 Vocab
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Created by:
ellengreen on August 16, 2010
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22 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Government | The institutions that make authoritative decisions for any given society. |
| Public Goods | Goods, provided or secured by the state, available to society and which no private person or organization can own. |
| Political Participation | All the activities used by citizens to influence the selection of political leaders or the policies they pursue. |
| Politics | The process by which we select our governmental leaders and what policies these leaders pursue; produces authoritative decisions about public issues. |
| Single-Issue Groups | Groups so concerned with one issue that members cast their votes on the basis of that issue only. |
| Policymaking System | Reveals the way our government responds to the proirites of its people. |
| Linkage Institution | Transmit Americans' preferneces to the policymakers in the government. |
| Policy Agenda | The issues that attract the serious attention of public officials and other people actively involved in politics at any given time. |
| Political Issue | The result of people disagreeing about a problem or about the public policy needed to fix it. |
| Policymaking Institutions | The branches of government charged with taking action on political issues. These three branches are Congress, Presidency, and federal courts. |
| Public Policy | Every decision that the government makes- every law it passes, bugdget it esablishes, and ruling it hands down. |
| Policy Impacts | The effects that a policy has on people and on society's problems. |
| Democracy | A means of selecting policy makers and of organizing government so that policy reflects citizens' preferences. |
| Majority Rule | The political idea that over half of an orgnized group should have the power to make decisions for the whole group. |
| Minority Rights | Basic principles such as freedom of speech and assembly which that majority can't infringe on. |
| Representaion | The relationship between the few leaders and the many citizens. |
| Pluralist Theory | Groups with shared instersts influence public policy by pressing their concerns through organized efforts. |
| Elite and Class Theory | A theory of government and politics contending that societies are divided along class lines and that an upper-class elite will rule, regardless of the formal niceties of governmental organization. |
| Hyperpluralism | A theory of government and politics contending that groups are so strong that government is weakened. |
| Policy Gridlock | A condition when no coalition is strong enough to form a majority and establish policy. |
| Political Culture | An overall set of values widely shared within a society. |
| Gross Domestic Product | The sum total of the value of all the goods and services produced in a nation. |
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