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20 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Social Science
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The study of people and the interactions between them; core principle is positivism: society is no different than nature, therefore society can be studied like nature by observing concrete, material phenomena
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Comparative Politics
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Comparison of similarities and differences among the world's states; goal is to find broad patterns which can help predict political events across a wide range of cases
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Ladder of Abstraction
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Refers to inverse correlation of connotation and denotation; If too many caveats are placed on a definition, the concept becomes too narrow; too few, and it becomes meaningless, allowing totally different cases
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Government
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The political institution responsible for making binding decisions for the people it governs; esp. the highest level of said institutions
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Governance
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The act of making political decisions, not necessarily done by gov't; for example, NCAA decides its student athletes can't have salaries
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Power
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The capacity to produce intended effects; not necessarily the ability to make B do something he wouldn't normally do
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Authority
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Acknowledged right to rule/wield power; does not mean people recognize validity of decisions, just that they must obey
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Legitimacy
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When people recognize a gov't decision as right; decision can be legal/constitutional without being accepted as legitimate by public
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Weber's Three Types of Authority
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Traditional: based on customs and long-established ways of doing things (monarchy); Charismatic: based on intense support of leader and his message (many revolutionary leaders); Legal-rational: based on rules and procedures, following the office, not the person in it (bureaucracy)
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Post-Colonial State
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States formed from four waves of decolonization; CHARACTERISTICS: no effective governance, lack of governing experience, not fully developed, little int'l respect, multinational (many nat'l identities in single state)
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Small N Problem
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Too few similar states in the world make it difficult the independent variable responsible for a particular dependent variable
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Selection Bias
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The tendency to select cases for testing that do not adequately represent the group to which they belong (selection favors safer countries for study, familiar language, etc.); i.e. English speaking democracies are not representative of all democracies
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Quantitative Analysis
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Study of variables and how they correlate; goal is to find independent and dependent variables which can be used to make predictions in other states
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State
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Highest political entity ruling over territorially-bound society; has monopoly on legitimate use of force
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Sovereignty
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Ultimate source of authority in society, having final decision making power; unbound by higher power
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Nation
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Group of people sharing common culture or ethnicity; often associated with territorial homeland
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Expansion and Restructuring of State
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1789-1974: Expansion--state involvement in society goes up; welfare increased, border controls put in place, societies standardized; 1975-2000: Restructuring--welfare trimmed, state involvement in society decreases, income taxes reduced, some formerly gov't responsibilities turned over to private sector
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Clash of Civilizations (Huntington)
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Civilizations transcend states and are comprised of large groups of people sharing cultural identities; future conflicts will be between these civilizations
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All Cultures are Not Equal (Brooks)
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Theoretical Implication: underlying assumption is that culture determines everything; material circumstances are insignificant compared to cultural differences
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Falsifiability
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Ability of a theory to be proven wrong; theory can never be proven true (bird-X example); if theory can't be proven false, it can be applied to any case and thus has no value
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