TGF 1: Analyzing World Politics

Question 0

Politics

Answer 0

The exercise of influence by competing individuals and groups to affect the allocation of values and distribution of resources; to political scientist Harold Lasswell, the process that determines “who gets what, when, how, and why.”

Question 1

State

Answer 1

An organized political entity with a permanent population, a well-defined territory, and a government; in everyday language, often used as synonymous with nation-state.

Question 2

Actor

Answer 2

An individual, group, state, or organization that plays a major role in world politics.

Question 3

System

Answer 3

A set of interconnected parts that function as a unitary whole. In world politics, the parts consist primarily of states that interact on a regular basis.

Question 4

Sovereignty

Answer 4

Under international law, the principle that no higher authority is above the state.

Question 5

Anarchy

Answer 5

The absence of a higher authority with the legitimacy and coercive capability to make and enforce rules that bind state.

Question 6

Nation

Answer 6

A group of people who feel a common identity due to a shared language, culture, and history.

Question 7

Nation-state

Answer 7

A specific geographic area containing a sovereign polity whose population identifies with that polity.

Question 8

Billiard-ball model

Answer 8

A conception of world politics that envisions states as the the sole movers of global affairs, explains their behavior as unitary responses to external threats, and attributes little importance to domestic sources of foreign policy.

Question 9

Nonstate actors

Answer 9

All transnationally active groups other than states, such as IGOs and NGOs whose members are individuals and private groups from more than one state.

Question 10

Heuristics

Answer 10

Judgmental shortcuts used to compensate for limited information about complicated problems.

Question 11

Schematic reasoning

Answer 11

The process by which new information is interpreted by comparing it to generic concepts stored in memory about certain stereotypical situations, sequences of events, and characters.

Question 12

Cognitive dissonance

Answer 12

The psychological tendency to deny or rationalize away discrepancies between one’s ore existing beliefs and new information.

Question 13

Individual level of analysis

Answer 13

An analytical approach to the study of world politics that emphasizes the psychological factors motivating people who make foreign policy decisions on behalf of states and other global actors.

Question 14

State level of analysis

Answer 14

An analytic approach to the study of world politics that emphasized how the internal attributes of states influence their foreign policy behavior.

Question 15

Systemic level of analysis

Answer 15

An analytical approach to the study of world politics that international structures and processes on the behavior of global actors.

Question 16

Remote causes

Answer 16

Phenomena that are removed in time from the effects that they produce or help to produce.

Question 17

Proximate causes

Answer 17

Phenomena occurring close in time to the effects that they produce or help to produce.

Question 18

Nationalism

Answer 18

The belief that political loyalty lies with a body of people who share ethnicity, linguistic, or cultural affinity, and perceive themselves to be members of the same group.

Question 19

Containment

Answer 19

A term coined by U.S. policymaker George Kennan for determining expansion by the Soviet Union, which had since been used to describe a strategy aimed at preventing at preventing a state form using force to increase its territory or sphere of influence.

Question 20

Contingent behavior

Answer 20

Actions that depend on what others are doing.