Pol 1

Front 1

Thomas Hobbes

Back 1

people will rationally prefer an all powerful king even if he is self interested

Front 2

Public Good

Back 2

Clean air, trash-free streets

ex: trashing the classroom

Front 3

Public Goods- the supply problem

Back 3

Rational people, left to their own devices, will undersupply public goods.

-prisoner dilemma incentives

Front 4

Free Riding

Back 4

enjoying the benefits of some good while letting others bear the costs

Front 5

Collective Action- Transaction Costs

Back 5

- Time, effort and resources required to make collective decisions

- Transaction costs rise sharply as the number of people whose preferences need to be accounted for increases

Front 6

Collective Action- Conformity Costs

Back 6

obligations to do something you prefer not to do

Front 7

Conformity and transaction costs relationship

Back 7

inverse- efforts to reduce transaction costs serve to increase conformity costs

Front 8

Democratic Governance

How does anything get accomplished?

Back 8

Delegation and institutions

Front 9

Delegation

Back 9

the transmission of authority to some other official or body for the latter's use

Front 10

Institution

Back 10

routinized ways of solving recurring collective action problems

Front 11

Agency loss

Back 11

the discrepancy between what principals ideally desire and what agents actually do

Front 12

Rationality Principle

Back 12

all political behavior has a purpose

Front 13

Political behavior is...

Back 13

goal oriented, means to an end, instrumental

Front 14

Institutions Principle

Back 14

Institutions shape politics by providing incentives for political behavior

Front 15

Electoral College is an example of what principle?

Back 15

Institutions- the electoral college rules create incentives for particular political strategies

Front 16

Collective Action Principle

Back 16

Politics involves the use of power to make collective decisions for a group of people

Front 17

Policy principle

Back 17

Political outcomes are the products of individual preferences and institutional procedures

Front 18

History Principle

Back 18

Past events shape decisions made today

ex: Keyboard- designed to make you type slower and inefficiently, goes back to typewriters when creators realized typewriters would jam up if you typed fast

Front 19

Population (Measuring Public Opinion)

Back 19

the complete set of people with some characteristic of interest (ex: middle class stay at home moms)

Front 20

Sample (Measuring Public Opinion)

Back 20

subset of population that you're hoping represents the most important part of population

Front 21

Public Opinion

Back 21

aggregation of many citizens views and interests

Front 22

Direction (Public Opinion)

Back 22

which side a majority of people are on

Front 23

Variation (Public Opinion)

Back 23

range of attitudes in the public

Front 24

Salience (Public Opinion)

Back 24

intensity: how important is the issue?

Front 25

Arrow Impossibility Theorem

Back 25

no morally right way to do preference aggregation, impossible to design a decision making process that satisfies basic fairness conditions we desire.

Front 26

Socialization

Back 26

a process through which individuals assimilate community preferences and perspectives through social interactions

Front 27

Measurement Error

Back 27

How you pose a question affects results

Front 28

Preferences (Public Opinion)

Back 28

reflect what people want (money), values (justice) --> basis for peoples preferences in political or public arena

characterized by their intensity- how much people want a certain outcome or care about a given issue

Front 29

Beliefs (Public Opinion)

Back 29

reflect what people know and how they understand the world and consequences of their actions

Front 30

Political Ideology

Back 30

comprehensie way of understanding political or cultural situations. Set of assumptions about the way the world and society works that helps to organize our beliefs, info, and new situations

Front 31

Liberal

Back 31

support for political and social reform, government intervention in the economy,, the expansion of federal social services, more vigorous efforts on behalf of the poor minorities and women, and greater concern for consumers and the environment.

Front 32

Conservative

Back 32

generally support the social and economic status quo, favor markets as solutions to social problems, and are suspicious of government involvement in the economy.

Front 33

Rational Ignorance as a collective action issue

Back 33

the bearing of burdens- such as the cost of being informed- is not likely to have much impact in a mass political setting

Front 34

Condorcet's jury theorem

Back 34

expectation that errors will cancel each other out and so adding up the judgments of many will reduce the probability of a mistake

- adding up judgements of many does a better job of getting truthful information

Front 35

Agenda setting (Shaping opinion)

Back 35

power to bring attention to particular issues and problems

get people to be passionate about an issue, new media does this

Front 36

communication effects (Shaping Opinion)

Back 36

difficult to change what people think, easier to change what people think about

Front 37

Priming (Shaping Opinion)

Back 37

process of preparing the public to take particular view of an event or political actor - psych

Front 38

Framing (Shaping Opinion)

Back 38

power of media to influence how events and issues are interpreted

ex: abortion→ -democrat- woman's right to choose, republican- child's right to live, immoral (killing) --> message matters

Front 39

The ideal for elections

Back 39

elections work through competition, which motivates rational candidates to formulate policies that will please voters

Front 40

adverse selection

Back 40

the problem of incomplete information- of choosing alternatives without fully knowing the details of available options

Front 41

paradox of participation

Back 41

each voter has a very small probability of affecting an election outcome

from a narrow economic value perspective it is surprising that rational citizens would vote

costs>reward

Front 42

Partisan voters

Back 42

voters with strong partisan tendencies

an ideological affiliation to party

tally of experience with party

psychological attachment to a party

Front 43

“Nature of the times” voters

Back 43

peace and prosperity

“floaters”, care about what's going on at the time

Front 44

Retrospective voting

Back 44

voting based on past performance of a candidate

Front 45

Prospective voting

Back 45

voting based on the imagined future performance of a candidate

Front 46

Median voter theorem

Back 46

a proposition predicting that when policy options can be arrayed along a single dimension, majority rule will pick he policy most preferred by the voter whose ideal policy is to the left or half of the voters and to the right of exactly gave the voters

Front 47

Duvergers law

Back 47

two components- strategic behavior of politicians and the behavior of voters

- plurality rule creates two party politics; proportional representation encourages more than two parties

Front 48

Australian Ballot

Back 48

An electoral format that presents the names of all the candidates for any given office on the same ballot. replaced partisan ballot

Front 49

single-member district

Back 49

an electorate that is allowed to elect only one representative form each district- typical method of representation in US

Front 50

electoral college

Back 50

the presidential electors form each state who met in their respective state capitals after the popular election to cats ballots for president and vice president

Front 51

Interest groups

Back 51

organized group of individuals or orgs that makes policy related appeals to government→ primary goal is to influence officials

Front 52

pluralism

Back 52

the theory that all interests are and should be free to compete for influence and the government

outcome is compromise and moderation

Front 53

pluralism ideal

Back 53

through vigorous competition among interests we can produce policy of compromise and moderation

Front 54

The Logic of Collective Action- Macuer Olsen

Back 54

common interests among people do not easily transform into group action

if this was true, it undermines the basic premise of the pluralist ideal.

Front 55

Prisoner's dilemma

Back 55

adherence to self interest in accordance with the rationality principle makes both individuals worse off

Front 56

Ways Pluralist System is Unfair

Back 56

Some groups can more effectively address the collective action problem than yours

upper-class bias

the few are often able to take advantage of the many