AP Gov Semester 1 Exam Review

527 Groups

A group that is a type of tax-exempt organization that is named after "Section 527" of the U.S. International Revenue code. These groups are created primarily to influence the selection, nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates to federal, state or local public office.

Federal Election Campaign Act (1974)

Congress passed this Act to help prevent corruption in campaign finances and to hopefully limit the influence of "fat cats" on the election process

10th Amendment

Constitutional Amendment that states, "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." For those advocating states' rights, the amendment clearly means that the national government has only those powers specifically assigned to it by the Constitution.

13th Amendment

Constitutional amendment that forbade slavery and involuntary servitude. It stated that, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896)

In 1896, _____ vs. _____ was a landmark Supreme Court decision that provided a constitutional justification for segregation by ruling that a Louisiana law requiring "equal, but separate accommodations for the White and colored races" was constitutional. The Court upheld the law, saying that segregation in public facilities was not unconstitutional as long as the separate facilities were substantially equal.

McCulloch vs Maryland

In ______ vs_______, (1819) Maryland decided to set up a law that would tax the national banks in the Baltimore district at least 15,000 dollars a year. The Baltimore Bank refused to pay, and appealed to the Supreme Court for help. U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall held that Congress had certain implied powers in addition to the enumerated powers found in the Constitution.

Liberal (qualities)

Political ideology that supports central government, support policies that aim to promote political equality, spending less money in military spending, taxing the wealthier Americans more than the average middle class or lower class, in favor of affirmative action.

New Deal Coalition

The _____ ____ ___ was the alignment of interest groups and voting blocs that supported Roosevelt's New Deal and voted for Democratic presidential candidates from 1932 until the late 1960s. The New Deal Coalition involved numerous basic elements including; urban dwellers, labor unions, the poor, Southerners, and more.

Matching Funds

The government will match a presidential candidate's funds, if they raise a certain amount of money in a number of different states

Policy Agenda

The issues that attract the serious attention of public officials and other people actively involved in politics at any given time.

Civil liberties

The legal constitutional protections against government. Our civil liberties are formally layed out in the Bill of Rights, the courts, the police, and the legislatures which define their meaning.

Exclusionary rule

The rule that evidence, no matter how incriminating, cannot be introduced into a trial if it was not constitutionally obtained. The rule prohibits use of evidence obtained through unreasonable search and seizure.

Policymaking Institutions

The three Institutions include the Congress, the presidency and the courts. The United States Constitution established the these institutions.

Motor Voter Act

This Act had legislation that required that state governments allow for registration when a qualifying voter applied for or renewed their driver's license or applied for social services.

Establishment clause

This clause is a part of the First Amendment that states that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

Equal protection clause

This clause provides for the protection of "life, liberty, and property," for all American citizens regardless of race, gender, or other factors.

Political Efficacy

This term refers to the amount of faith and trust citizens feel or believe they have upon their government.

Investigative journalism

____ _____ Is a form of journalism in which the journalist investigates a single topic of interest or issue.

NY Times vs Sullivan

____ ______ vs _____ was a court case in 1964, which established the guidelines for determining whether public officials and public figures could win damage suits for libel. In order to do so, individuals must prove that the defamatory statements were made with "actual malice" and reckless disregard fo the truth.

California Board of Regents vs. Bakke (1978)

____ _______ ____ _______ vs ______ forbid rigid racial quotas for medical school admissions. It did not forbid the practice of considering race as a factor when deciding admissions.

Dred Scott vs. Sandford (1857)

____ _______ vs. ______ was an 1857 Supreme Court decision that ruled that a slave who had escaped to a free state received no rights as a citizen and that Congress had no authority to ban slaves in the territories.

Gideon vs Wainright

____ vs_______ This 1963 Supreme Court decision held that anyone accused of a felony where imprisonment may be imposed, however poor he or she may be, has a right to a lawyer.

Near vs Minnesota

_____ vs _____ was a 1931 Supreme Court decision that held that the First Amendment protects newspapers from prior restraint. When the state ordered a newspaper editor's business closed for a comment in one of his articles, the Supreme Court ordered the business reopened, because it wasa violation of prior restraint to close it down.

Mapp vs Ohio

_____ vs _____, in 1969, was a Supreme Court decision ruling that the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures must be extended to the states as well as to the federal government. The Supreme Court ruled that the evidence had been seized illegally and the Court reverse Mapp'e conviction.

Engel vs Vitale

_____ vs ______ was a 1962 Supreme Court decision that declared that state officials violated the First Amendment when they wrote a prayer to be recited by New York's schoolchildren.

Lemon vs Kurtzman

_____ vs ______ was a 1971 Supreme Court case that established a criteria for church-related schools to receive financial aid. The court declared that aid to church-related schoole must do the following: 1) have a secular legislative purpose 2) have a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion 3) not foster an excessive government "entanglement" with religion.

Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)

_____ vs. ____ _______ _______ was a 1954 Supreme Court decision that held that school segregation was inherently unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The case was famous because it marked the end of legal segregation.

Gregg vs. Georgia

_____ vs. _____ was a 1976 Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty against charges that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment because minority defendants were more likely to receive the death penalty than were White defendants.

Planned Parenthood vs. Casey

_____ vs. _____ was a 1992 case in which the Supreme Court loosened its standard for evaluating restrictions on abortion from one of the "strict scrutiny" of any restraints on a "fundamental right" to one of "undue burden" that permits considerably more regulation.

Miller vs California

______ vs ____ was a Supreme Court case that avoided defining obscenity by holding that community standards be used to determine whether material is obscene in terms of appealing to a "prurient interest" and being "patently offensive" and lacking in value. In this case, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote that materials were obscene under the following circumstances: 1) the work, taken as a whole, appealed "to a prurient interest in sex," 2) the work showed "patently offensive" sexual conduct that was specifically defined by an obscenity law, 3) the work, taken as a whole, lacked "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

Gibbons vs. Ogden

______ vs. ______ was a landmark Supreme Court case that was decided in 1824. In this case, the Supreme Court interpreted very broadly the clause in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution giving Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, encompassing virtually every form of commercial activity.

Miranda vs. Arizona

______ vs. ________ took place in 1966, it was a Supreme Court decision that set the guidelines for police questioning of accused persons to protect them from self-incrimination and to protect their right to counsel. The guidelines included: that they have a constitutional right to remain silent and may stop answering questions at any time, that what they say can be used against them in a court of law, that they have a right to have a lawyer present during questioning and that the court will provide an attorney if they cannot afford their own lawyer.

Free exercise clause

a First Amendment provision that prohibits government from interfering with the practice of religion.

Federal Election Commission

a bipartisan body, six member group that administers the campaign finance laws and enforces compliance with their requirements.

Electoral College

a body of people representing the US states, who formally cast votes for the election of the president and vice president.

Party machine

a centralized party organization that dominates local politics by controlling elections.

Political ideology

a coherent set of beliefs about politics, public policy, and public purpose. It helps give meaning to political events, personalities, and policies.

Fifth Amendment

a constitutional amendment designed to protect the rights of persons accused of crimes, including protection against double jeopardy, self-incrimination, and punishment without the process of law.

Equal Rights Amendment

a constitutional amendment which stated that, "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

Spin

a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

a landmark piece of legislation that made discrimination against any group in hotels, motels, and restaurants illegal. It also forbade many forms of job discrimination.

Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)

a law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It also requires employers and public facilities to make "reasonable accommodations" for people with disabilities.

Caucus

a meeting of all state party leaders for selecting delegates to the national party convention.

National Party Convention

a meeting of party delegates every four years to choose the presidential ticket.

National Convention

a meeting of party delegates every four years to choose the presidential ticket. The delegates also meet to write the party's platform.

Affirmative Action

a policy designed to give special attention to or compensatory treatment for members of some previously disadvantaged group.

Political party

a political organization that typically seek to influence government policies and laws, usually by nominating candidates and trying to seat them in the political office.

Party Platform

a political party's formal statement of its basic principles, objectives, and positions on major issues.

Populism

a political philosophy supporting the rights of average citizens in their struggle against privileged elites.

Bandwagon effect

a political phrase that refers to the effect that occurs when some people vote for those candidates or parties who are likely to succeed (or are proclaimed as such by the media, polls, etc).

Initiative

a procedure by which a specified number of voters may propose a statute, constitutional amendment, or ordinance and compel a popular vote on its adoption.

National Primary

a proposal by critics of the caucuses and presidential primaries, which would replace these electoral methods with a nationwide primary held early in the election year.

Census

a requirement by the US Constitution, saying that the government must take an actual enumeration of the population every 10 years.

Linkage institution

a structure or format within a society that connects the people to the government or centralized authority.

Dual Federalism

a system of government in which both, the states and the national government remain supreme within their own spheres, each responsible for some policies.

Cooperative Federalism

a system of government in which powers and policy assignments are shared between states and the national government. They may also share costs, administration, and even blame for programs that work poorly.

Mass media

a term that refers collectively to all of the media technologies including newspapers, film, the internet, telvision and radio. The term also refers to the organizations which control these technologies.

Federalism

a way of organizing a nation so that two or more levels of government have formal authority over the same land and people. It is a system of shared power between two governments.

Coalition

an agreement for cooperation between different political parties on common political agenda.

FCC (Federal Communications Commission)

an independent agency of the US government. It works towards six different goals in regulating the TV/Radio

Federal Mandates

an order from the central government that all state and local government must comply with. They usually require state and local governments to improve environmental or civil rights issues.

Political culture

an overall set of values that are widely shared within a society.

Internal Efficacy

deals with how a person feels that his or her skills, knowledge, and abilities can have an effect on the political system.

Closed primary

election in which voters choose from candidates only from the party in which they are registered.

Open primary

election that allows a voter to cast his/her vote within whichever contest (Democrat, Republican, Green, etc.) the voter chooses.

Block Grants

federal grants given more or less automatically to states that have no strings attached, no specific condition on how to spend the money.

Categorical Grants

federal grants that can be used only for specific purposes. They come with strings attached, such as nondiscrimination provisions.

Political Action Committees (PAC's)

groups that are organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation.

Party dealignment

occurs when no single political party is dominant. This situation might exist, for example, when neither Democrats nor Republicans hold a majority of the seats in Congress or the Supreme Court.

National Committee

one of the institutions that keeps the party operating between conventions.

Due process clause

part of the Fourteenth Amendment that guarentees that people cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property by the United States or state governments without due process of law.

Civil rights

policies that are meant to protect people against arbitrary or discriminatory treatment by governmental officials or individuals.

Conservative (qualities)

political ideology that supports a less active scope of government that gives freer reign to the private sector, the belief in maintaining peace through strength (when it comes to military spending), want to keep taxes low, and oppose affirmative action.

Implied Powers

powers of the federal government that go beyond those enumerated in the Constitution.

First Amendment

protects freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. This amendment prohibits impeding the free exercise of religion, infringing on the freedom of the press, inhibiting the freedom of speech, and interfering with the right to assemble or prohibiting the right to petition freely.

Exit polls

public opinion surveys used by major media pollsters to predict the electoral winners with speed.

De jure segregation

racial separation that is required by law. The Supreme Court approved of this type of segregation in Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896.

De facto segregation

racial separation that occurs "as a matter of fact." For example, it can occur by housing patterns (where one lives) or by school enrollment (where one goes to school).

Devolution

refers to governmental powers moving from the central government to regional assemblies. So, it is the movement of political power away from the central government to lower order regional assemblies.

Beats

specific locations from which news frequently emanates, such as Congress or the White House.

Hyperpluralism

states that groups are so strong that government is weakened, and as the influence of many groups cripples government's ability to make policy. Also states that many groups are strong enough that government is unable to act.

Broadcast media

term that a wide spectrum of different communication methods such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines and any other materials supplied by the media and press.

Egalitarianism

term that involves equality of opportunity and respect in the absence of a monarchy and aristocracy.

Narrowcasting

term used for communications such as radio or television signals that are limited to subscription customers or otherwise prohibited from being broadcast.

External Efficacy

the belief of the individual that government will respond to his or her personal needs or beliefs

14th Amendment

the constitutional amendment that states, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Party Realignment

the displacement of the majority party by the minority party, usually during in critical presidential elections.

Elastic Clause

the final paragraph of Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to pass all laws "necessary and proper" to carry out the enumerated powers. It is also known as the "Necessary and Proper clause."

Bill of Rights

the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which defines the basic liberties like freedom of religion, free speech and press, and the guarantee of defendant's rights.

Mandate Theory of Elections

the idea that the winning candidate has a mandate from the people to carry out his or her platforms and politics. Politicians like the theory better than political scientists do.

Government

the institutions that make authoritative decisions for any given society

Nomination

the official endorsement of a candidate for office by a political party.

Enumerated Powers

the powers of the federal government that are specifically addressed in the Constitution.

Political socialization

the process by which an individual acquires his or her particular political orientations, knowledge, feelings, and evaluations regarding his or her political world.

Libel

the publication of false or malicious statements that damage someone's reputation.

Demography

the study of human population and their statistics.

Frontloading

the tendency of states to hold their primaries early in the election year to get media attention.

Political Participation

the ways in which people get involved in politics.

Pluralist Theory

theory that states that groups with shared interests influence public policy by pressing their concerns through organized efforts. The Pluralist theory is a very important theory of American democracy.

Elite and Class Theory

theory that states that our society is divided among different class lines and that an upper-class elite controls the government.