Political Sociology

Question 1

The ability of people, or groups, to gain access to government and use its power to influence society

Answer 1

Politics

Question 2

Countries where people share a national language or culture

Answer 2

Nation states

Question 3

People can directly vote for their representatives and, in some cases, can even vote on specific rules or policies

Answer 3

Democratic states

Question 4

Permits citizens to contact elected leaders to argue for what they want

Answer 4

Lobbying

Question 5

Believe that states aren’t listening to them and that “normal” forms of influence are inadequate or illegitimate

Answer 5

Activists

Question 6

Groups of people organized for social change and who act in contentious ways

Answer 6

Social (or protest) movements

Question 7

Challenging the state so effectively that the state collapses

Answer 7

Revolutionary social movements

Question 8

The “ultimate authority” within some geographical territory. They tend to have courts, police officers, and legislatures.

Answer 8

States

Question 9

Using the force of government to collect funds that are used to pay for services like the police, schools, and healthcare

Answer 9

Taxation

Question 10

States where a large part of their budget is spent on social services, such as retirement benefits and healthcare.

Answer 10

Welfare states

Question 11

Includes rules of behavior that the state creates, like laws, as well as the services that governments provide for people

Answer 11

Policy

Question 12

The way states are made, acquire power, and use power to further their goals by creating and enforcing policy

Answer 12

Axis of politics

Question 13

Governments that control a single city and the surrounding area

Answer 13

City states

Question 14

People influence the state and its policies by voting for representatives, who then decide which policies to approve

Answer 14

Representative democracy

Question 15

Where people can directly vote on government policies

Answer 15

Direct democracies

Question 16

Eligible voters get to say “yes” or “no” on a specific proposed law

Answer 16

Referendum

Question 17

Where people have a genuine option to vote for alternative candidates

Answer 17

Competitive democracies

Question 18

Kings and queens who inherit their kingdoms

Answer 18

Aristocracy

Question 19

Policies written down in law

Answer 19

formal policies

Question 20

Less like formal organizations and more like vast, amoeba-like networks of people and organizations. Includes the Republicans and Democrats.

Answer 20

Political parties

Question 21

Policies that are not written down in law

Answer 21

Informal policy

Question 22

Democratic government tend to offer policies that reflect the voter who is exactly in the middle (the median) of voter preferences

Answer 22

Median voter model

Question 23

People really care about an issue

Answer 23

Salience

Question 24

Some individuals or groups have high social status, and the government listens to these people more than others

Answer 24

Elite theory

Question 25

Policy doesn't always directly reflect the median voter or elites. Rather, it reflects the balance of interests around an issue

Answer 25

Pluralism theory

Question 26

Each state gets a fixed number of votes equal to its number of Senators and Representatives combined. The winner of each state's popular vote (that is, the vote by the state's eligible voters) gets its electoral votes.

Answer 26

Electoral college system

Question 27

The right to vote in political elections

Answer 27

Suffrage

Question 28

The group of people allowed to vote

Answer 28

Electorate

Question 29

In which most adults are eligible to vote

Answer 29

Universal suffrage

Question 30

The period after the Civil War when the federal government re-integrated the Southern states into the Union

Answer 30

Reconstruction

Question 31

Charging a fee for voting

Answer 31

Poll tax

Question 32

Having to take a test on reading to vote

Answer 32

Literacy test

Question 33

You can only vote if your grandfather could vote

Answer 33

Grandfather clause

Question 34

Barred African Americans from holding certain jobs

Answer 34

Black codes

Question 35

Saw the establishment of racial segregation as the outcome of a failed political struggle where Northern Whites and Southern Blacks joined together to create a multi-racial society but failed

Answer 35

W.E.B. DuBois

Question 36

Best remembered for her research documenting how lynching- mob killings of Blacks and other minorities- was concentrated in the South and was used to strike fear into African Americans

Answer 36

Ida B. Wells

Question 37

One of the main goals of the movement was to attack rules that allowed only Whites to have voting privileges

Answer 37

Civil Rights Movement

Question 38

The law that made discrimination in housing and employment illegal

Answer 38

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Question 39

The Court held that having separate schools for African American students was inherently damaging and that schools must be desegregated

Answer 39

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

Question 40

These voters think governments should collect a lot of taxes so they can support social programs like education, state-subsidized health care, and retirement benefits for older people

Answer 40

Liberal

Question 41

These voters want the state to affirm religious values and what they see as traditional social roles

Answer 41

Social conservatives

Question 42

Systems of ideas

Answer 42

Ideologies

Question 43

Democratic governments that have less regulated markets and provide lower levels of social services

Answer 43

Liberal states

Question 44

Where various functions- such as business owners and labor leaders- are part of state entities that determine social policy

Answer 44

Corporatist states

Question 45

Relatively high taxes that are used to pay for generous social services

Answer 45

Social democratic states

Question 46

Tries to improve the status of women and reduce discrimination

Answer 46

Feminist movement

Question 47

The practice in which peasants were tied to specific estates and served the landowning nobility

Answer 47

Serfdom

Question 48

Tendencies to be prejudiced for or against something

Answer 48

Biases

Question 49

Attempts to be fact-based and as objective as possible

Answer 49

Positive sociology

Question 50

Trying to judge what is good or bad

Answer 50

Normative analysis

Question 51

The process by which people assert influence in official and sanctioned ways

Answer 51

Institutional politics

Question 52

The process by which people work outside the system and challenge the very legitimacy of some government policy or social behavior

Answer 52

Contentious politics

Question 53

People can set up a chapter of a movement in their town and don't need permission from the leadership to do it

Answer 53

Grassroots

Question 54

The individuals and organizations that spend their time organizing protests, challenging authority, and changing public opinion

Answer 54

Social movement sector

Question 55

What is the effect of the movement on the individual who participates, and what factors contribute to movement success or failure?

Answer 55

Social movement outcomes

Question 56

States that, in the Supreme Court's view, there is no Constitutional right to an abortion, but it could be made legal, or illegal, by state governments

Answer 56

Dobbs v. Jackson

Question 57

A style of government that relies on obedience to leaders

Answer 57

Authoritarianism

Question 58

The belief that government should put national interests first by closing borders and waging trade wars

Answer 58

Nationalism

Question 59

Prohibited states from passing laws that discriminated against Black voters

Answer 59

Voting Rights Act of 1965