PS 201 Introduction to US Politics
Joseph Boland Fall, 1998

 

Final Examination Review

 

1. The following sections are intended to help you focus on key terms and ideas for the subjects that will be covered by the examination. At least 75 percent of the exam questions will be drawn from the terms and topics that appear below. Definitions can be answered concisely in the spaces provided on the exam.

2. Exam date, time, and location: Monday, December 7th, 1pm, in 242 Gerlinger. You will have one hour and fifteen minutes to complete the exam.

 

VOTING & ELECTIONS

  1. Definitions
    1. political efficacy
    2. Voting Rights Act of 1965
    3. Motor Voter law
    4. new working class
    5. Soft money
    6. PAC
    7. Buckley vs. Valeo
  2. Study Topics
    1. Data about turnout in the text and lecture notes, including historical patterns, contrasting rates in different kinds of elections (Presidential election years, "off-year" elections, local vs. national, etc.) and by demographic characteristics. (You needn't memorize turnout percentages.)
    2. The major explanations for nonvoting: citizen satisfaction, registration as a barrier, demobilization, declining social connectedness (decline of civil society).
    3. The case study of Chicago, 1983 (Harold Washington's campaign for mayor).
    4. The section of chap. 8 called "The Permanent Campaign Game"
    5. The significance of Paul Wellstone's 1990 Senatorial campaign.

 

POLITICAL PARTIES & INTEREST GROUPS

  1. Definitions
    1. parties (What do parties do?)
    2. patronage
    3. single-member district plurality system
    4. dealignment (symptoms)
    5. split-ticket voting
    6. insider vs. outsider interest group strategy
  1. Study Topics
    1. Why we have only two parties.
    2. How American two-party politics differs from European multiparty politics.
    3. How city and state political machines operated, and what eventually weakened and destroyed them.
    4. How Progressive reformers undermined the party system.
    5. The crisis and decline of the New Deal Democratic party.
    6. Pluralist interest group theory and the criticisms of it.
    7. The rise of public interest groups and the main features of the elite countermoblilization.

 

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

  1. Definitions
    1. protest politics
    2. civil disobedience
    3. tokenism
  1. Study Topics
    1. The Montgomery bus boycott.
    2. How social movements differ from interest groups.
    3. Political considerations in the choice of protest tactics.
    4. The requirements for building social movements.
    5. Possible elite responses to social movements.

 

CONGRESS

  1. Definitions
    1. franking privilege
    2. iron triangles
    3. majority-minority districts
    4. racial block voting
  1. Study Topics
    1. Factors that have contributed to the rise of incumbency.
    2. The legislator as career politician and policy entrepreneur.
    3. The Congressional committee system.
    4. The demographics of representation and the explanations for under-representation of women and minorities.

 

THE PRESIDENCY

  1. Definitions
    1. Executive Office of the President (EOP)
    2. "Inner vs. outer" cabinet
    3. line-item veto
    4. Employment Act of 1946
    5. War Powers Resolution of 1973
  1. Study Topics
    1. Federalist and Anti-Federalist views of the Presidency.
    2. Constitutional bases of Presidential authority.
    3. Expansion of the White House staff and of the Executive Office of the President.
    4. The relationship of the Presidency to the bureaucracy.
    5. The relationship of the Presidency to Congress.

 

BUREAUCRACY

  1. Definitions
    1. spoils system
    2. delegation (of authority)
    3. discretion
    4. Pendleton Act of 1883
    5. independent agencies
    6. regulation
    7. cost-benefit analysis
  1. Study Topics
    1. The evolution of the bureaucracy from the Jacksonian period, through the Progressive and New Deal eras, to the Reagan and Clinton administrations.
    2. Bureaucrats as policy makers, and the political environment of bureaucracy.
    3. The bureaucracy and the political economy.

 

WELFARE REFORM

  1. Definitions
    1. means-tested benefits
    2. entitlement
    3. Personal Responsibility Act of 1996
    4. tax expenditure
  1. Study Topics
    1. Welfare stereotypes and AFDC recipient characteristics
    2. Main provisions of the Personal Responsibility Act of 1996.
    3. The two-tiered welfare state.
    4. Workfare and its limitations.