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91 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What are the three fundamental principles of a democracy?
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Three fundamental principles are, popular sovereignty (majority rules, what the people want), political equality (one person, one vote), political liberty (freedom of speech to assembly & freedom of press).
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What position do your authors take in the Struggle for Democracy regarding majority tyranny?
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Liberty is essential to self-government, and threats to liberty, whatever their origin, must be guarded against by all who value democracy. Majority rule is unthinkable, in fact, without the existence of basic political liberties.
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What is the Supremacy Clause? Where in the Constitution can it be found?
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It maintains all laws// and can be found in article 6.
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In 1913, Charles Beard wrote a provocative, controversial book about the Framers. What did he argue?
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He claimed that the farmers were engaged in a conspiracy to protect their immediate and personal economic interests.
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Who were the Federalists? What did they believe in?
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The federalist were proponents of the Constitution during the ratification fight.// They believed that a bill of rights was unnecessary because of the protection of rights in the state constitutions and the many safeguards against tyranny in the federal Constitution, they promised to add one during the first session of Congress.
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Is the right to privacy explicitly protected in the Constitution?
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Yes, it is in under the 19th Amendment.
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How many of the original thirteen states had to approve an amendment to the Articles of Confederation before the amendment passed?
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Nine of the thirteen original states had to approve.
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What does the so-called “loophole” regarding ratification refer to?
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Article 7, the fact that the framers were supposed to have a unanimous consent (13/13) to amend the Articles of Confederation, yet they wrote a whole new constitution with the consent of 9.
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What form of government do most industrialized countries operate under (e.g. federal, unitary, confederation)?
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A unitary gov’t is what most industrialized countries operate under.
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What does selection incorporation refer to?
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This is the gradual and piecemeal incorporation of the protections of the Bill of Rights by the U.S. Supreme Court
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What are interstate compacts? Why did the Framers include them in the Constitution?
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An interstate compact is an agreement among states to cooperate on solving mutual problems; requires approval by Congress.// The farmers inserted this into the Constitution as a way to prevent the emergence of coalitions of states that might threaten federal authority or the union itself.
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Why are public opinion polls important to democracy?
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It helps shape how people behave politically and what they believe government should do.
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Can they accurately reveal the mood of the public?
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Yes.
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How should these participants be selected?
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These participants should be selected by random sampling.
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What is political efficacy?
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The sense that an individual can affect what government does.
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What does party identification refer to?
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This is the sense of belonging to a political part.
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What political party is also known as the GOP?
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The Republican Party is also known as the GOP.
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What are the Pentagon Papers?
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These are a secret defense department study.
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What does the term “rally around the flag” refer to?
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When the U.S. was attacked on 911, the nation united and became very patriotic.
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How do the media usually report foreign affairs? Do they tend to run stories that compliment or go against US policies?
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Compliment! We are the best nation in the world; the media rarely reports anything to the contrary
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What position do the media usually take regarding our economic system (capitalism)?
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Do they tend to run stories that are critical of it? Of course not, we are the U.S. Capitalism is responsible for the American dream.
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What are the rules of “objective” journalism?
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The rules are to be neutral because the rules of objective journalism require him or her to be unbiased.
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What is an interest group?
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They are a group of people who believe in the same cause and try to influence policy to advance their goals.
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What is a lobbyist? What is the most important aspect of lobbying?
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A lobbyist is a person who attempts to influence the behavior of public officials on behalf of an interest group.// The most important aspect of lobbying is to influence behavior.
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What is “standing”? What interest group strategy does it affect?
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The legal term for is the right to sue. A person must have standing or "injury" in order to sue another.// This affects the IG strategy of "Using the Courts."
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What is the difference between a public and private interest group?
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A public interest group tries to get the gov’t to act in ways that will serve interests that are broader and more encompassing that the direct economic or occupational interests of their own members.// Private interest groups seek to protect or advance the material interests of its members.
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What does the disturbance theory refer to?
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This is a theory that locates the origins of interest groups in changes in the economic, social, or political environment that threatens the well-being of some segment of the population.
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What is the main concern of American labor unions?
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They are private interest groups who focus on labor protections and gains for their members.
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What is an “iron triangle”?
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This is an enduring alliance of common interests among an interest group, a congressional committee, and a bureaucratic agency.
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What is the pluralist argument regarding interest groups?
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A pluralist argues that interest groups are easy to create; people in the U.S. are free to join or to organize groups that reflect their interests.
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What is the perspective of your authors (The Struggle for Democracy) regarding corporate political power?
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The authors say that corporations are most powerful when they can build alliances among themselves
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What term describes the norm in Congress in which members refer to the judgment of specialists?
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Fundamental principles of a democracy describe the norm in Congress.
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What is the difference between the delegate and trustee styles of representation?
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A delegate is a voting member of a political party convention.// a trustee is an elected representative who believes that his or her own best judgment, rather than instructions from constituents, should be used in making legislative decisions.
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How long has the US been a two-party system?
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The U.S. has been a two-party system for 173 years since 1836.
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What does party realignment mean?
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This is the process by which one party supplants another as the dominant part in a political system.
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What does the Twenty-Fourth Amendment provide? How does it relate to the Fifteenth Amendment?
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The 24th Amendment provides the right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.// The 15th Amendment states that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
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What did the Court decide in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964)?
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The court ruled in favor of the New York Times. This protects newspapers against punishment for trivial or incidental errors when they are reporting on public officials.
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What is the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CBSC)? How many people were assigned to test all domestic and foreign produced toys in 2007? What presidents are given credit for major deregulation (392-393)?
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)? The CBSC is a consumer product safety commission.// one person in 2007 was assigned to test all domestic and foreign produced toys. // Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton helped deregulate the transportation and shipping industries.
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What is the basic definition of the federal bureaucracy?
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Federal bureaucracy is the totality of the departments and agencies of the executive branch of the national gov’t
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What is civil service? Are these prestigious positions in the U.S.?
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Civil service is a federal gov’t job held by civilian employees, excluding political appointees.// these are prestigious positions given to the elite educated, people of upper-class and aristocratic.
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What is patronage?
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This is the practice of distributing gov’t officers and contracts to the supporters of the winning party; also called patronage.
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What are political appointees? How do they differ from civil servants? Political Scientist Hugh Heclo refers to political appointees as “birds of passage.” What does this phrase mean (407)?
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Political appointees only last 22 months on the job.// civil servants are gov’t employees who work under the merit system.// “Birds of passage” means that those political appointees leave for many reasons and are just there temporarily.
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Who is the formal head of the executive branch? Does this individual have total control over the federal bureaucracy?
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The formal head of the executive branch is the president of the U.S.// The president does not have total control over the federal bureaucracy.
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What is meant by “cutting the fat,” and how did Bill Clinton do this when he was president?
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“Cutting the fat” meant to cut the size and cost of the bureaucracy.// Bill Clinton made cuts such as gov’t employees, excessive gov’t spending, and minimized the uses of gov’t vehicles & planes.
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What is meant by privatization?
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This is the process of turning over certain gov’t functions to the private sector.
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What does red tape refer to?
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Red tap refers to overbearing bureaucratic rules and procedures
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What happened on November 14, 2003 regarding the filibuster and judicial appointments (422)?
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After 40 hours of continuous debate, republicans fell 7 votes short of 60 votes needed to end democratic filibusters blocking senate votes on several very conservative Bush federal judicial nominees.
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What happened in Marbury v. Madison?
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John Adams loses presidential election to Jefferson; Adams sent letters out to appoint judges before his term ended, but Marbury didn’t receive his. The next day, Jefferson became president and denied Marbury. Marbury then took Madison to Supreme Court and calls for writs of mandamus. Supreme Court reviews it and still denies Marbury judgeship.
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What is the difference between a federal district court and a circuit court?
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The federal court system is a three-tiered pyramid system, with the Supreme Court at the top. 13 Federal courts of appeal and 94 district courts, with at least one district in each state.// Circuit Courts have the 12 geographical jurisdictions and one special court that hears appeals from the federal district courts.
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What is “stare decisis”?
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This is the legal doctrine that says precedent should guide judicial decision making.
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What are the norms of the Supreme Court (435)?
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The first norm is secrecy, which keeps the conflicts between justices out of public eye and elevates the stature of the Court as an institution.// Seniority is another important norm, it determines the assignment of office space, the seating arrangements in open court, and the order of speaking in conference.// Finally, the justices are expected to stick closely to precedent when they decide cases
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What is “amicus curiae”?
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This is Latin for a “friend of the court”; describes a brief in which individuals not party to a suit may have their views heard.
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How long are cases argued before the Court?
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Each case is argued for one hour, with 30 minutes given to each side in the dispute.
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What is laissez-faire, and how did it affect Court decisions prior to and during the Civil War?
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Laissez-faire is the political-economic doctrine that holds the gov’t ought not to interfere with the operations of the free market.//
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How did the Warren Court affect individual rights and liberties?
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Chief Justice Earl Warren, decided cases that expanded protections for free expression and association, religious expression, fair trials, and civil rights for minorities.
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How did Sandra Day O’Connor vote during her tenure on the Court? Why was she considered the “swing” vote, and how did this set the stage for contention over her replacement (443)?
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Sandra Day most often voted with the conservatives.// O’Connor was considered the “swing” vote because she voted with the majority in 200 in Bush v. Gore that settled the dispute vote in the Florida in favor of Bush and determined the outcome of the presidential election.// As the “swing” vote moving the Court in a less conservative direction in a number of areas is why O’Connor was replaced by Samuel Alto in 2006.
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What happened at the University of Michigan, when a student argued that homosexuality could be treated with psychotherapy? (454)
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The student was accused of violating a campus rule against victimizing people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
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How has the college campus handled the debate over free speech?
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Campus speech codes have been instituted at across the country in an effort to rid campuses of speech that may offend women and members or various minority groups.
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Did the original Constitution (without formal amendments) protect many liberties?
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No, the original constitution protected few liberties from the national government they were creating and almost none from state governments. The farmers preferred to give the national government little power with which to attack individual liberties.
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How do your authors define civil rights and liberties?
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They say that gov’t was to protect liberty from the threat of anarchy, the farmers believed that gov’t might threaten liberty if it became too powerful.// Civil liberties is defined as freedoms protected by constitutional provisions, laws, and practices from certain types of gov’t interference.
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What is habeas corpus?
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This is a legal procedure that keeps gov’t from holding you indefinitely without showing case.
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What are ex post facto laws?
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Ex post facto is a law that retroactively declares some action illegal.
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What does the Third Amendment ensure?
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Congress may not station soldiers in houses against the owner’s will, except in times of way.
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What is the free exercise clause? Does it protect all religious actions?
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Free exercise clause is a portion of the First Amendment of the Constitution that prohibits Congress from impending religious observance or impinging upon religious beliefs.// it does not protect all religious actions
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What is due process?
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This is the part of the 14th Amendment that is stating that no state “may deprive a person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
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What is the legal term for pornography?
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The legal term is obscenity.
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What are the specifics of the three-part test the Court established in Miller v. CA?
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Part 1 states that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the work as a whole appeals to the prurient interest (lust).// Part 2 states that the law must specifically define what depictions of sexual conduct are obscene.// Part 3 states that the work as a whole must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
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What is the “Lemon Test”?
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The lemon test was a major doctrine distilled of the establishment clause which prohibits Congress from establishing an official religion; the basis for the doctrine of the separation of church and state.
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What type of powers does the Patriot Act give the federal government? (482)
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The Patriot Act gave the federal gov’t expanded powers to use wiretapping and electronic surveillance, impose stricter penalties for harboring or financing terrorists, monitor the bank accounts and email of suspect individuals and organizations, turned away from our borders anyone who endorses terrorism, and detain any noncitizens living in the United States whom the attorney general deemed to be a threat to national security.
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What amendments are known as the Civil War amendments? What did they do?
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The 15th Amendment is also known as the Civil War Amendments// it promises of equal citizenship.
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What do the terms “grandfather clause” and “white primaries” refer to?
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Grandfather clause is a device that allowed whites who had failed the literacy test to vote anyway by extending the franchise to anyone whose ancestors had voted prior to 1867.// White Primaries are elections only to whites.
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What happened in Harris v. Forklift (1993)?
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The Supreme Court was able to define sexual harassment in the work place unanimously because of the many complaints that were submitted to the Equal Employee Opportunity Commission.
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What did the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 do?
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This act prohibited employment discrimination against the disabled and requires that reasonable efforts be made to make places of employment and public facilities accessible to them.
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What happened in the 1930s that made it clear to most people that the market economy, if left alone, would suffer periodic collapses?
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The U.S. went through a Great Depression, if left alone a country can fall into an economic recession and collapse.
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Do most governments in modern capitalist societies play a substantial role in managing and directing their economies?
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Yes, these governments set a goal of economic policymakers to sustain economic growth defined as an annual increase in the gross domestic product which is a measure of the total value of goods and services produced in a nation on an annual basis.
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What is a social welfare state?
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A gov’t with a broad set of safety net programs which is referred to as hand-outs to the “undeserving poor.”
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What is meant by a nation’s “balance of payments”?
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This is the annual difference between payments and receipts between a country and its trading partners.
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What is the objective of macroeconomic policy?
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This is a policy that has to do with the performance of the economy as a whole.
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What do government fiscal policies involve?
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Fiscal policies involve gov’t efforts to affect the supply of money and the level of interest rates in the economy.
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What is the difference between Keynesians and Monetarists?
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Keynesians are advocates of gov’t programs to stimulate economic activity through tax cuts and gov’t spending.// Monetarists are advocates of a minimal gov’t role in the economy, limited to managing the growth of the money supply.
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What is the New Growth theory?
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This is the economic theory that ties economic growth to innovation and invention.
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What did President Bush say about America’s allies in his 2002 State of the Union address? (578)
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Bush said The U.S. will reserve the right to “strike first” and to act unilaterally if need be. “The U.S. will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community, but we will not hesitate to act alone to exercise out right to self-defense by acting preemptively.” He has an intent to fuse power and principle, claiming that American power must be used not only to protect the U.S. from attack, but to spread American ideas or liberty and representative democracy, even if that caused distress among traditional allies.
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What other countries were involved in negotiations over The North American Free Trade Agreement?
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Canada and Mexico are countries involved in negotiations over the NAFTA.
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Who is the commander-in-chief of the US armed forces?
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The president of the United States is the commander-in-chief.
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What department runs American embassies abroad?
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The department of State runs the embassies.
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What is meant by America’s “soft power”? Does this prevent anti-American sentiments (588)?
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America’s “soft power” is the attractiveness of its culture, ideology, and way of life for many people living in other countries.// it does help prevent some anti-American sentiments especially since the dramatic invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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What is hegemony?
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This term is used to refer to the dominant power during various historical periods that takes on responsibilities maintaining and protecting a regional or global system.
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Regarding weapons of mass destruction, what types of actions has the Bush administration taken against North Korea, Iran, and Libya? (594)
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The Bush administration chose direct military action towards Iraq; however, no weapons of mass destruction were found.// A mix of diplomatic pressure, multilateral, organized sanctions, International Atomic Energy Agency inspections, and threats of force have all been used. North Korea eventually agreed to stop its program but has not been forthcoming about the details nor has it been open to inspections.
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What is meant by nuclear proliferation? How did the 2006 treaty between the U.S. and India affect it?
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Nuclear Proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries or to terrorists groups.// this treated in 2006 between the U.S. and India gave India the go-ahead to speed up its weapons program and allows India to import nuclear fuel and technology from abroad and keep its military facilities free from inspections.
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What is meant by nuclear proliferation? How did the 2006 treaty between the U.S. and India affect it?
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Nuclear Proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries or to terrorists groups.// this treated in 2006 between the U.S. and India gave India the go-ahead to speed up its weapons program and allows India to import nuclear fuel and technology from abroad and keep its military facilities free from inspections.
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What area does Congress play a more active role in, foreign or domestic affairs?
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Congress plays more active role in domestic affairs. Members of Congress not only recognize the strong constitutional foundations of the president’s preeminence in these areas, but generally believe that their constituents care more about polices that are close to home than those that are far away, unless when a war goes badly wrong.
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