POLS Exam III
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- Political Participation
- Any activity that seeks to influence public decisions
- Hierarchical
- Arranged in order of increase or decrease to a characteristic.
- Cumulative
- To increase by adding on instead of increasing by substituting new activities for old ones.
- Public socialization
- The process of learning about politics as we learn our language and culture.
- Socioeconomic Status (SES)
- The rank one has in a hierarchy determined by occupational prestige, income, education, and wealth.
- Lobbying
- Personally contacting a public official to influence a decision.
- Grassroots lobbying
- Attempting to influence others to contact a public offical personally.
- Astroturf Lobbying
- The use of various techniques by public relations firms to simulate lobying by individuals. It is regarded as atrificial grassroots lobbying.
- Public hearing
- A meeting at which decision makers listen to the public in order to gather information.
- Appointmenteering
- An attempt to influence appointments to public office.
- Electioneering
- A wide range of activities involved in getting someone elected to public office.
- Retail Politics
- Personal contact with citizens by telephone or door-to-door canvassing in order to mobilize them to vote or participate in some other way.
- Wholesale politics
- Using the mass mesia to reach voters.
- Demonstrating
- Group attempts to bring public attention to an issue and making public officials aware of the intensity of group feelings.
- Litigating
- Using the legal system to influence public policy.
- Salience
- To stand out and be strikingly conspicuous; prominent.
- Powell's paradox
- Despite the fact that they are more predisposed to participate and that they participate in some activities more than people in other countries, Americans vote at a lower rate than do citizens in other industrial democracies.
- Collective bargaining
- The right of workers, after winning a majority in an organizing election, to bargain with management on working conditions such as safety, wages, and benefits.
- Free rider
- individuals who enjoy collective benefits without making a contribution to obtaining or defending them.
- Collective benefits
- Benefits we enjoy whether we helped obtain them or not.
- Interest Group
- A formal organization through which individuals seek to promote or defend a shared interest by influencing public policy
- Public Policy
- Decisions that determine what government does, or does not, do.
- Political party
- any group, however loosely organized, seeking to elect government officeholders under a given label.
- primary election
- an election in which voters choose a party's nominees for public office
- closed primary
- A party nominating election (primary) in which only registered members of the party can participate.
- open primary
- A party nominating election (primary) in which any qualified voter can participate regardless of party affliction.
- party identification
- A voter's sense of psycological attachment to a political party
- runoff primary
- An election between the top two candidates when no candidate recieves a majority in a primary election. The runoff ensures that the eventual nominee will have recieves a majority vote.
- General Election
- Statewide elections held of the first Tuesday after the first Nonday of November of even numbered years. These elections determine who will fill government offices.
- Special election
- Any election that is called at a time that does not conform to the regular election calendar.
- Bond election
- An election for the purpose of cbtaining voter approval for a government's going into debt by selling bonds to private investors.
- Recall
- An electoral procedure for removing an elected official from office before the end of his or her specified term.
- Referendum
- An election that allows voters to determine a policy issue directly.
- Initiative
- A procedure by which individuals can propose legislation by gathering a specified number of signatures and submitting a petition to a designated agency.
- Suffrage
- The right to vote
- Property qualification
- A requirement that an individual must own property to vote.
- White primary
- A type of nominating election used by the Democratic party in Texas to prohibit African American from voting to select the pary's candidates for office.
- Poll tax
- A voting requirement requiring the payment of a tax in order to become eligible to vote. Used as a device to discriminate against minority groups in voting, poll taxes were made unconstitutional by the twenty-Fourth Amendment.
- The Electoral party
- The elected psrty's officials, employees, volunteers, and activists who attend party conventions.
- Precenct Chair
- The permanent party official at the precinct level.