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Political Science Exam 4

Terms in this set (92)

Adjudication
Every society creates and enforces rules and laws regarding the proper forms of behavior for individuals and groups. Ambiguities regarding the rules of a legal system are resolved through this.
Administration
The general term used to describe the machinery and processes through which the rules and policies of an organization are applied and implemented.
Authoritarianism
1.) A political system generally characterized by little or no commitment to equality or democratic participation and by a strong emphasis on order and stability. In many countries, authoritarian regimes are dominated by a military elite.
2.) A personality syndrome, associated particularly with political and social attitudes and behavior, in which the individual tends to revere strong leadership, draw sharp boundaries between the identity group and all others, be intolerant of unconventional behaviors, and exhibit considerable hostility towards minority groups.
Authority
The legitimacy attached to the decisions of the political system, in the sense that the people will willingly accept those decisions as binding, independent of their own self-interest.
Bureaucracy
Particular structure and style through which administration can cooperate. Structurally characterized by hierarchical organizations and a highly specialized division of labor.
Capitalism
System that corresponds loosely to a market economy. In this system, private economic actors are generally free from state constraints and the state engages in only limited efforts to shift resources among private actors.
Class Approach
An analytic explanation of the value allocation process based on a core notion of stratification - structured inequality in the distribution of key values in society.
Classical Liberalism
The highest value is placed on each individual's natural rights to life, liberty, and property and the freedom of the individual to pursue these rights as an independent actor. Government plays a very limited role.
Command Economy
An ideal type political economy in which the state assumes total control of almost all significant factors of production.
Communism
Key to communism is the socialization of resources - the notion that the state must maintain control of society's land, labor, and capital.
Conservatism
Commitment to sustain traditional values and forms of behavior to maintain social order. Tradition and religion, rather than reason, are viewed as the most reliable sources for guiding society.
Constitution
A set of statements that describes the fundamental rules of a political system including a characterization of the core activities of major political structures.
Council System
A political system in which a small group shares collective leadership and is responsible for both executive and legislative functions.
Coup
Occurs when the top political leader or leadership group is replaced by violence or the explicit threat of violence.
Democracy
A political system in which governance is accomplished by leaders whose authority is based on a limited mandate and who are elected by a universal electorate.
Democratization
The effort to institutionalize democratic political regimes more fully and deeply, especially in countries with limited democratic processes.
Dictatorship
A political system in which political leaders are not subject to a limited mandate but have absolute power and authority.
Dual Executive
A political system in which one actor, the head of state, performs the more ceremonial aspects of top leadership while another actor, the head of government, is responsible for the more political aspects of the executive role.
Economic Development
This occurs as more and more households and firms within a country are engaged in ever-higher levels of production and consumption.
Electoral System
The framework by which the votes of citizens are converted to specific selections of candidates who have a mandate to hold office.
Elite Approach
An analytic explanation of the value allocation process in which the political world is characterized by a political stratification, the segmentation of the population into separate groups with greater or lesser power. Two groups are the political elite and the mass.
Fascism
A political ideology that places fundamental importance on the unity and harmony of government and society and defined particularly by its opposition to forces that might weaken that collective unity. The top leader is the embodiment of the natural will and that all individuals and groups must obey the will of the leader. Antisocialist and antidemocratic.
Federation
A political system in which there is a constitutional division of power and functions between a central government and a set of regional governments usually known as states, provinces, or cantons.
Geopolitics
An analytical method that assumes that the particular geographical location and also physical characteristics, natural resources, and human resources of a state can significantly affect the domestic and foreign policy actions of a state.
Globalization
The increasing integration of diverse economic, sociocultural, military, and environmental phenomena by means of dense network of action and information that span vast distances around the world.
Guerilla War
Violent opposition to an existing regime by means of a long, protracted campaign primarily from rural bases.
Hegemony
The existence of an extraordinarily powerful group or country that sustains its domination over other actors for a long period of time.
Ideal Types
An analytic construct that defines pure forms of a phenomenon. These forms are distinguished by the configuration of key characteristics.
Interest Group
A group that directly attempts to influence the allocation of public values or other actions of those in the political system.
Intergovernmental Organizations
A political actor whose members are states, not private groups or individuals.
International Law
A broad attempt to establish principles and rules that formalize and constrain the interactions among states.
International Organization
A broad term that refers to many of the cross national institutions whose objectives are to influence the behavior and policies of states.
Judicial Review
In political systems where the judiciary is relatively independent, the judiciary can interpret or even revoke the policy decisions and actions taken by other political structures.
Judiciary
An important branch of most political systems, the system of courts and personnel that determine whether the las of the society have been transgressed, and if so, whether and what type of sanctions ought to be imposed on the transgressor.
Legislature
The political structure in which policy issues are discussed and assessed and public policies are enacted by a set of elected or appointed legislators.
Liberal Democracy
A political system that not only is an electoral democracy but also ensures extensive political rights and civil liberties.
Market Economy
An ideal type political economy in which there is near total private control of land, labor, and capital.
Marxist-Leninist Socialism
1.) It might be necessary to use violence to overthrow the old economic order.
2.) A powerful government is necessary to restructure the economic system.
3.) A small dictatorial leadership group must manage the government and effect the economic and social changes.
Micropolitics
An analytic focus on individual and small group political processes with a particular emphasis on how the individual understands the political world and how the individual acts politically.
Mixed Economy
A political economy that attempts to combine the strengths of both market and command economies while also minimizing their shortcomings. Control of the means of production is shared between the state and private actors.
Nation
A sociopolitical unit defined by a deeply shared fundamental identification among a set of people based on shared ethnicity, language, descent, culture, religion, and/or geographic.
Natural Law
Sensible, widely accepted norms of behavior that direct us to act with goodness and are recognizable through human reason.
Neocolonialism
New forms of domination and dependence between states that have emerged in the decades since the end of colonialism.
Neoliberalism
An approach to economic development that emphasizes a reliance on a local and global free market that is guided by entrepreneurs who shape decisions about the production and distribution of goods.
Non-constitutional Regime
A political system in which there is persistent non-enforcement of crucial limits on the rules and/or protection of the rights of the ruled, especially those limits and rights specified in a constitution and other key legal documents.
Nongovernmental Organizations
National or transnational associations that are not part of the governmental/state apparatus but are committed to the promotion of an issues with national or international policy dimensions.
Normative Political Knowledge
Answers questions about what ought to be rather than simply providing descriptions and explanations of what is.
Oligarchy
Rule by the few. A political system in which a small number of actors dominate the resource allocation process, usually serving their own interests.
Parliamentary Government
A political system in which the executive and legislative functions and structure are fused. People elect the legislature, whose majority empowers a cabinet, which then empowers one of its members to be the chief executive, usually called a prime minister or premier.
Participatory Democracy
Democracy in its classic sense as government of and by all the people. There is active, direct participation by all citizens in the policy process.
Pluralism
An analytic explanation of the value allocation process that is grounded in the concept of the group. Politics can be understood as the interaction among groups that are pursuing their political interests, and policy decisions are the outcome of that group process.
Political Analysis
The attempt to describe and explain political phenomena that strives to make the understanding of politics more general, precise, and systematic, and ultimately to generate and test theories.
Political Belief System
The configuration of and individual's political orientations across and array of political issues.
Political Culture
The general configuration of a particular people's political beliefs.
Political Decay
The phenomena that occur when there is a decline in he capacity of the political system and especially its effectiveness in maintaining order.
Political Development
The specifically political aspects of development and modernization.
Political Economy
The combination, in theory or practice, of politics and economics.
Political Elite
A general term for those individuals who have relatively high levels of power, influence, interest, knowledge, and involvement in political life.
Political Idealism
A perspective, especially in international relations theory, that posits that human nature is basically good and thus states have a natural tendency to be cooperative and even altruistic.
Political Ideology
A comprehensive set of beliefs about the political world, including a specification of desirable political goals and the best way to achieve those goals, based on particular assumptions about human nature, the relation of the individual to the state and society, and the desirability of equality.
Political Institutionalization
The extent that political organizations and procedures have acquired value in the eyes of the population and the stability to withstand significant pressure.
Political Participation
The term applied to all modes of the political actions by individuals and groups.
Political Party
An organized group that attempts to capture political power directly by placing its members in government office.
Political Realism
A perspective that assumes that people are naturally disposed to behave selfishly and that this self-interested orientation extends to the behavior of states.
Political Resources
Somethings that can influence the actions and decisions of political actors, such as social status, money, legality, special knowledge or skills, ability to mobilize large numbers of people, visibility in the media, and control of productive capabilities.
Political Science
A set of techniques, concepts, and approaches whose objective is to increase the clarity and accuracy of understandings about political phenomena.
Political Socialization
The process through which individuals acquire their cognitive, affective, and evaluative orientations toward the political world.
Political Society
Formed when individuals cede to the state a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, sacrificing their own right to do violence to others in exchange for a similar sacrifice from others.
Political System
A theoretical concept that attempts to model the fundamental structures, processes, and institutions of politics.
Political Violence
The use of physical violence or very serious threats of such violence to achieve political goals.
Politics
The processes through which power and influence are used to promote certain values and interests and to determine who gets what, when, and how in a given social system.
Positivist Law
Explicit written agreements, often enacted by legislatures and interpreted by judiciaries, that specify the appropriate and unlawful behaviors as well as the sanctions for the latter.
Power
Exercised when one actor induces another actor to behave in a manner in which they would not otherwise behave. Taxonomies classifying the forms of power include force, exchange, and mutuality.
Presidential Goverment
A political system in which there is a separation of executive and legislative power and structures.
Privatization
The selling off of state-owned firms to private actors and/or the use of private firms to provide public goods and services.
Prosperity
A fundamental goal for a state and its citizens, with key subgoals including the capacity of the political economy to control resources in order to produce and distribute desired goods and to provide for adequate material well being for its population.
Public Policy
Any decision or action by a governmental authority that results in the allocation of value.
Representative Democracy
A form of electoral democracy in which citizens elect people to represent them in the governing process and to allocate values on their behalf for the collectivity.
Also known as a republic.
Revolution
A rapid and fundamental transformation of the state organization and of the allocation of values in a society.
Security
A fundamental goal of a government and society, with key subgoals including the capacity to survive and to protect its borders from unwanted external intervention.
Socialism
Most important goal is to provide a high-quality, relatively equal standard of living for all. Each individual is encouraged to enhance the collective good of all in an environment that encourages cooperation and sharing.
Sovereignty
The premise that each state has complete authority and is the ultimate source of law within its own borders.
State
1.) The legal notion of the state is that it is a territorially bound sovereign entity.
2.) In the general language of political science, the word sate usually refers to the organizational units, institutions, and individuals that perform the political functions for a national territorial entity.
3.) The state can also be defined as the entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence to enforce the laws and decisions of the society.
Territorial Integrity
A concept closely associated with sovereignty, it is a premise of international law that holds that a state has the right to resist and reject and aggression, invasion, or intervention within its territorial borders.
Terrorism
Premeditated violence serving an underlying political objective, in which the target of violence is a noncombatant.
Totalitarianism
A political regime that demands complete obedience to its extensive rules regarding not only politics but nearly all aspects of life, including culture, economics, religion, and morality.
Treaty
A formal agreement between states that they will cooperate or assist each other militarily, economically, and/or politically.
Unitary State
A political system in which the central government holds all legitimate power.
War
Interstate violence that is sustained, organized, and usually involves hostilities between the regular military forces of states.
Welfare State
A system of state interventions in the political economy whose goal is to implement public policies that provide all citizens with an adequate quality of life in domains such as education, health care, housing, and employment opportunities.
Corporatism
Characterized by extensive economic cooperation between an activist state a set of large organizations that represent actors who control major productive resources.
Party System
The configuration of political parties in a political system.
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