Political Science Final
Terms
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- Balanced Budget
- A Federal budget in which spending and revenues are equal
- Bargaining strategy
- direct negotiations the White House conducts with other political actors, such as members of Congress and leaders of interest groups, that attempt to reach mutually beneficial agreements
- Blanket Primary
- direct primaries in which voters may cast ballots for candidates of any party but may vote only once for each office
- Bush Doctrine
- A policy, announced by President Bush = U.S. would target terrorist groups and the states that aided them
- Budget Deficit
- Amount by which government spending exceeds government revenues in a year
- Budget Surplus
- amount by which government revenues exceed government spending in a year
- Bureaucracy
- set of government agencies that carry out government policies
- Cabinet
- designation that refers to the collective body of individuals appointed by the president to head the executive departments
- Caucus
- closed meeting of members of a political party to discuss matters of public policy and political strategy, and in some cases, to select candidates for office.
- Closed Primary
- direct primaries in which voters register their party affiliations b4 Election Day
- Cloture
- procedure to stop a filibuster, which requires a supermajority of 60 votes
- Concurring Opinion
- statement from one of more Supreme Court justices agreeing with a decision in a case but giving an alternative explanation for it
- Congressional Budget Office
- agency in charge of assisting Congress in reviewing and coordinating budget requests to Congress
- Conservative Coalition
- appears when majority of southern Democrats votes with a majority of Republicans against a majority of northern Democrats
- Constituent Service
- Favors members of Congress do for constituents, usually in the form of help
- Containment
- emphasized need to prevent communist counties from expanding the territory they controlled (Soviet Union)
- Corporate Welfare
- Government subsidies of tax breaks of questionable value to private corporations
- Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA)
- increase in Social Security or other benefits designed to keep pace with inflation
- Critical elections
- elections that disrupt party coalitions and create new ones in party realignment
- Direct Primary
- election in which voters and not party leaders directly choose a party’s nominees for political office
- Divided Government
- type of government experienced when the president is of one party and the other party has a majority in at least one house of Congress
- Duverger's Law
- Generalization that if a nations has a single-member, plurality electoral system, it will develop a two-party system
- Electoral College
- body of electors, whose composition is determined by the results of the general election, that chooses the president and vice president
- Entitlement Programs
- require the government to pay a benefit directly to any individual who meets the eligibility requirements the law establishes
- Filibuster
- tactic of stalling a bill in the Senate by talking endlessly about the bill in order to win changes or kill the changes
- Flat Tax
- income tax system in which taxable income is taxed at the same percentage rate regardless of the taxpayer’s income
- Free Trade
- economic policy that holds that lowering trade barriers will benefit the economies of all the countries involved
- Frontloading
- decision states make to move their primaries and caucuses to earlier dates to increase their impact on the nomination process
- gerrymandering
- Drawing congressional district boundaries to favor one party over the other
- Globalization
- process by which growing economic relations and technological change make countries increasingly interdependent
- Going Public Strategy
- direct presidential appeals to the public for support. Presidents use public support to pressure other political actors to accept their policies
- Homeland Security
- programs and initiatives designed to make it harder for terrorists to attack targets on American soil and to minimize the consequences of any attacks that do occur
- Independent expeditures
- Funds raised and spent without contact with the supported candidate
- Independent Regulatory Commissions
- promote the public interest by writing and enforcing rules that regulate the operations of some sector of private industry (consumer products safety commission)
- Independent Agencies
- all other types of federal agencies not part of any executive department, and their leaders lack the cabinet-level status of department secretaries
- Isolationism
- avoiding formal military and political alliances with other countries
- Issue Networks
- groups/people in and out of government who interact on a policy issue on the basis of their interest and knowledge rather than just on the basis of economic interests
- Judicial Activism
- overturn laws and make public policy from the federal bench
- Judicial Review
- Supreme Court to review and overturn decisions made by Congress and the president
- Legislative Courts
- administrative courts that Congress establishes
- Line-item veto
- ability of an executive to delete or veto some provisions of a bill, while allowing the rest of the bill to become law
- Majority Opinion
- document announcing and usually explaining the Supreme Court’s decision in a case
- Midterm Election
- Congressional elections that take place midway through a president’s four-year term
- Monroe Doctrine
- says the U.S. will resist further European efforts to intervene in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere
- Multilateralism
- Approach in which three or more countries cooperate for the purpose of solving some common problem
- National Debt
- total amount of money the federal government owes to pay for accumulated deficits
- National Interest
- idea that the U.S. has certain interests in international relations that most Americans agree on
- North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
- military alliance founded in 1949 for the purpose of defending Western Europe from attack. Members of NATO include the U.S., Canada, and 24 European countries
- Open Primary
- direct primaries in which voters may choose which party primary they will vote in on Election day
- Original Intent
- theory that judges should interpret the Constitution by determining what the Founders intended when they wrote it
- Party Dealignment
- trend in which voter loyalties to the two major parties weaken
- Pocket Veto
- power of the president to veto a bill passed during the last ten days of a session of Congress simply by failing to sign it
- Police-Patrol Oversight
- Congressional oversight hearings designed to take a wide-ranging look for possible problems
- Policy Oversight
- efforts by congress to see that the legislation it passes is implemented, that the expected results have come about, and whether new laws are needed
- Political Cleavages
- Divisions in society around which parties organize
- Por-Barrel Spending
- legislation that appropriates government money for local projects of questionable value that may ingratiate a legislator with his or her constituents
- Progressive Tax
- those with high incomes pay a higher % of their income in taxes than those with low incomes
- Proportional Representation System
- legislators are elected at large and each party wins legislative seats in proportion to the number of votes it receives
- Reapportionment
- redistribution of seats in the House amount the states, which occurs every ten years following the census, so that the size of each states delegation so proportional to its share of the total population
- Regressive Tax
- tax system which those with high incomes pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than those with low incomes
- Revenue Neutral
- quality of any tax reform plan that will neither increase nor decrease government revenue
- Rule Adjudication
- determining whether an agency’s rules have been violated
- Rule Administration
- core function of the bureaucracy – to carry out the decisions of Congress, the president, or the courts
- Senatorial Courtesy
- practice a president follows in choosing a nominee for a district or appeals court judgeship
- Senority Rule
- congressional norm of making the member of the majority party with the longest continuous service on a committee the chair of that committee
- Sovereignty
- power of self-rule
- Third World
- to mean the developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America
- Truman Doctrine
- announced by President Truman that the U.S. would oppose communist attempts to overthrow or conquer noncommunist countries
- Turnover
- change in membership of Congress between elections
- Unilateralism
- tendency of the U.S. to act alone in foreign affairs without consulting other countries
- Unit Rule
- winner-take-all system which requires that the candidate with the most popular botes receive all of that state’s electoral votes
- World Trade Organization
- International trade agency that began operation as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
- Writ of Certiorari
- Supreme Court order for a lower court to send it the records of a case – the first step in reviewing a lower court case