Political Science Chapter 1 Terms

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Tyranny

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a noun that describes a repressive and arbitrarily cruel regime.

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Aristocracy

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is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best".

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Monarchy

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a form of government in which sovereignty is actually or nominally embodied in one individual reigning until death or abdication.

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Oligarchy

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a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution.

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Polity

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a form or process of civil government or constitution. an organized society; a state as a political entity.

a state or one of its subordinate civil authorities, such as a province, prefecture, county, municipality, city, or district. It is generally understood to mean a geographic area with a corresponding government.

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Democracy

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A system of government in which power is vested in the people, who rule either directly or through freely elected representatives.

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Formal Politics

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defined as political participation under 'rules and institutions' while informal politics is a kind of 'conventions and codes behavior' in the political sphere, such as cronyism and guanxi networks. Both kinds of politics are interacting and functionally inseparable in apolitical system.

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Informal Politics

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Formal politics is defined as political participation under 'rules and institutions' while informal politics is a kind of 'conventions and codes behavior' in the political sphere, such as cronyism and guanxi networks. Both kinds of politics are interacting and functionally inseparable in apolitical system.

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Legitimacy

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is the right and acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a régime. Whereas "authority" denotes a specific position in an established government, the term "legitimacy" denotes a system of government — wherein "government" denotes "sphere of influence".

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Bureaucracy

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is an organization made up of many departments and divisions that are administered by lots of people. If you've ever had to deal with health insurance or financial aid, you're familiar with the dark side of __________.

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Executive Branch

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The branch of federal and state government that is broadly responsible for implementing, supporting, and enforcing the laws made by the legislative branch and interpreted by the judicial branch.

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Legislative Branch

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The branch of the federal and state government empowered to make the laws that are then enforced by the executive branch and interpreted by thejudicial branch. The legislative branch consists of Congress and the fifty state legislatures.

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Judicial Branch

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The judicial branch is one of three branches of the federal government. The judicial branch includes criminal and civil courts and helps interpret the United States Constitution. If the federal government were like a basketball game, the judicial branch is much like the referee that helps settle disputes.

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Authoritarian

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favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.

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Totalitarian

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of or relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.

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Political Science

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the branch of knowledge that deals with systems of government; the analysis of political activity and behavior.

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Plato

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a student of Socrates and later became the teacher of Aristotle. He founded a school in Athens called the Academy. Most of his writings are dialogues. He is best known for his theory that ideal Forms or Ideas, such as Truth or the Good, exist in a realm beyond the material world.

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Aristotle

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a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, making contributions to logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance and theatre. He was a student of Plato who in turn studied under Socrates.

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Machiavelli

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is "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct".

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Hobbes

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a materialist, claiming that there was no more to the mind than the physical motions discovered by science, and he believed that human action was motivated entirely by selfish concerns, notably fear of death.

He argued that absolute monarchy was the most rational, hence desirable, form of government.

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Hume

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?

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Locke

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A seventeenth-century English philosopher.Locke argued against the belief that human beings are born with certain ideas already in their minds. He claimed that, on the contrary, the mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate) until experience begins to “write” on it.

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Montesquieu

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French political philosopher who advocated the separation of executive and legislative and judicial powers

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Rousseau

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French philosopher and writer born in Switzerland; believed that the natural goodness of man was warped by society; ideas influenced the French Revolution

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De Tocqueville

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he analyzed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals, as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Tocqueville was a classical liberal who advocated parliamentary government, but was skeptical of the extremes of democracy.

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Karl Marx

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the political, economic, and social theories of Karl Marx including the belief that the struggle between social classes is a major force in history and that there should eventually be a society in which there are no classes

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Adam Smith

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Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic theory.

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State of Nature

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a concept in moral and political philosophy used in religion, social contract theories and international law to denote the hypothetical conditions of what the lives of people might have been like before societies came into existence.

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Constitutionalism

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constitutional government.

adherence to a system of constitutional government.

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Traditional Authority

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a form of leadership in which the authority of an organization or a ruling regime is largely tied to tradition or custom. The main reason for the given state of affairs is that it 'has always been that way'.

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Legal Authority

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Rational-legal authority (also known as rational authority, legal authority, rational domination, legal domination, or bureaucraticauthority) is a form of leadership in which the authority of an organization or a ruling regime is largely tied to legal rationality, legal legitimacy and bureaucracy.

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Autocratic Authority

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a system of government in which supreme power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection).

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Hereditary Succession

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someone in the family of the ruler takes over when he/she dies. Often, but not always, the new ruler is the legitimate offspring of the ruler who passed away. If there are no legitimate offspring, it often passes to the next closest relative, be that a brother/sister, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew, etc.

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Designated Succession

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?

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Coup D'etat

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a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force. Uprising of the people.

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Conservatism

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Conservatism (or conservativism) is any political philosophy that favours tradition (in the sense of various religious, cultural, or nationally-defined beliefs and customs) in the face of external forces for change, and is critical of proposals for radical social change.

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Centrist

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having moderate political views or policies.

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Socialism

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a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

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Proletariat

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workers or working-class people, regarded collectively (often used with reference to Marxism).

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Democratic Socialism

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a political ideology advocating a democratic political system alongside a socialist economic system, involving a combination of political democracy with social ownership of the means of production.

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Capitalism

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an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

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Laissez Faire

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a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering.

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Facism

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an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. Extremely right-wing.

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Liberalism

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a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.

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Egalitarian

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of, relating to, or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.

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Anarchism

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belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.

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Liberitarianism

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an extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens.

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Communism

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a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

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Authoritarianism

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to describe a way of governing that values order and control over personal freedom. A government run by authoritarianism is usually headed by a dictator.

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Totalitarianism

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absolute control by the state or a governing branch of a highly centralized institution. 3. the character or quality of an autocratic or authoritarian individual, group, or government: the totalitarianism of the father.