Chapter 1 Key Terms

Question	Answer
Government	Institutions that make public policy decisions for a society.
Collective Goods	Goods and services, such as clean air and clean water, that by their nature cannot be denied to anyone.
Politics	The process determining the leaders we select and the policies they pursue. Politics produces authoritative decisions about public issues.
Political Participation	All the activities by which citizens attempt to influence the selection of political leaders and the policies they pursue. Voting, contacting public officials, protest, and civil disobedience are all examples.
Single-Issue Groups	Groups that have a narrow interest on which their members tend to take an uncompromising stance.
Policymaking System	The process by which policy comes into being and evolves. People's interests and concerns create political issues that shape policies which impact people, creating more interests and concerns.
Linkage Institutions	The political channels through which people.s concerns become political issues on the policy agenda. (Elections, political parties, interest groups, the media)
Policy Agenda	Issues that attract serious attention of public officials and other people involved in politics at a point in time.
Political Issue	An issue that arises when people disagree about a problem and how to fix it.
Policymaking Institutions	The branches of government charged with taking action on political issues. (Congress, the presidency, the courts; Bureaucracy can be considered as one too)
Public Policy	A choice that government makes in response to a political issue. A policy is a course of action taken with regard to some problem.
Policy Impacts	The effects a policy has on people and problems. Impacts are analyzes to see how well a policy has met its goals and at what cost.
Democracy	A system of selecting policymakers and of organizing government so that policy represents and responds to the public's preferences.
Majority Rule	A traditional democratic theory that states when choosing among alternatives, the majority's desire must be respected.
Minority Rights	A principle of traditional democratic theory that guarantees rights to those who do not belong to majorities.
Representation	Basic principle f traditional democratic theory that describes the relationship between fellow leaders and the many followers.
Pluralism	A theory of American democracy emphasizing that the policymaking process is very open to the participation of all groups with shared interests, with no single group usually dominating.
Elitism	A theory of American democracy contending that an upper-class elite pulls the strings of government.
Hyperpluralism	A theory of American democracy contending that groups are so strong that government, which gives in to the many different groups, is thereby weakened.
Policy Gridlock	A condition that occurs when interests conflict and no coalition is strong enough to form a majority and established policy, so nothing gets done.
Political Culture	An overall set of values widely shared within a society
Gross Domestic Product	The sum total of the value of all goods and services produced by an economy. (In a country)

Next up

Description

Resource summary

Similar

	Created by emily leventhal over 8 years ago