Final

Which of the following is the correct text of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution?

"A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

In the McCutcheon opinion, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts wrote that limitations on campaign spending must:

"target what we have called 'quid pro quo' corruption or its appearance ... a direct exchange of an official act for money."

Every two years ________ House seats are up for election, and ________ in the Senate.

435/a third

Which of the following best indicates the form and utility of a focus group?

A facilitator asks questions of a group of between eight and twelve people who can engage in a conversation about the topic. Focus groups not only are useful for gaining in-depth insights into what individuals think but also aid in understanding the group dynamics behind public opinion. Focus groups can reveal when people feel comfortable expressing their beliefs, when they will confront others about their views, when they will withdraw from a discussion, and when they are influenced by the opinions of others.

What does the phrase "manipulation by inundation" refer to?

A strategy developed by the Reagan administration and adopted by subsequent presidents whereby journalists are given "well-packaged, premasticated" stories so that they adopt the administration's preferred framing of news events.

What is federalism?

A system where power is divided between national and state or regional governments; a hybrid arrangement somewhere between a unitary style government and a confederal system.

A theory in mass-communication stating that the media have the ability to determine which issues are important to the public.

Agenda setting

Which of these are considered the most powerful committees in the Senate?

Appropriations, Armed Services, Commerce, Finance, and Foreign Relations.

The office of the presidenct and most of its powers are listed in which article of the Constitution?

Article II

Rogers Smith's contribution to our understanding of American political culture can be expressed through which of the following terms?

Ascriptive Americanism

What were major factors contribuing to changes in the distribution of power between the national government and the states?

Attempts to deal with the consequences of industrialization that seemed to require a more nation-centered approach, and a more purposeful national commitment to the enhancement of civil liberties and civil rights after WWII.

This Supreme Court decision ruled that held that racial segregation in public education violated the Constitution.

Brown v. Board of Education

An important influence on public policy involves interest group preasure on government agencies since:

Bureaucrats have leeway to decide what laws mean and how to administer and implement them.

Presidential nominees are selected by both major parties through:

Caucuses and primaries.

The 2010 Supreme Court case that set the stage for larger and larger sums of money to pour into the electoral system, where a majority of justices made clear that they viewed outside spending on election ads as free speech that didn't present any serious danger of corruption.

Citizens United v. FEC

Which of the following properly describes the "compact theory" of federalism?

Compact theory held that states had voluntarily entered into a "compact" to ratify the Constitution, and could therefore "nullify" or judge for itself whether or not an act by the federal government was constitutional and, if it decided to do so, refuse to enforce it. This is no longer considered a legitimate interpretation of states' rights under American federalism.

Which of the following is both a trend and concern with regard to the organization of the American mainstream media?

Concentration of media ownership.

Prior to the ratification of the Constitution, the 13 states were governed by the Articles of __________.

Confederation

f it is to have much chance of becoming law, a bill must be drafted into a proposal that will generate support of:

Congress as well as the public, interest groups, and the executive branch.

Which of the following is historically accurate?

During the New Deal of the 1930s, cooperative federalism, whereby federal and state governments work together to solve problems, emerged and held sway until the 1960s.

What powers does the Constitution grant to the national government?

Exclusive, concurrent, and implied.

The __________ is an independent regulatory agency charged with licensing television and radio stations. Correct!

FCC

The __________ party favored a strong national government.

Federalist

Fireside chats were associated with which modern president?

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The president most associated with the expansion of federal power during peacetime was/is?

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Redistricting is often a highly partisan and contentious activity because it can change the number of House seats each party wins in a state. The party in control of the state legislature can design districts so as to protect its incumbents and increase its House seats. The party in power can obtain more seats by having small but usually safe majorities in several districts and cramming large numbers of the other party's voters into just a few districts. This is achieved through a process known as:

Gerrymandering

Identify two implications of John Locke's justification for government.

Government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and if it acts contrary to its legitimate ends the people are justified in taking action against it.

One argument in favor of a two-party system as opposed to a multi-party system:

Having too many parties can destabilize the system by confusing voters and allowing parties who take extreme ideological positions to become prominent in government.

How did Thomas Hobbes justify the creation of government?

Hobbes argued that without government there would be no security and no order, and people would be doomed to live in the "state of nature," where a war of all against all would cause everybody's lives to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

Identify the purpose of the establishment clause.

It bars Congress from giving any religion an official status.

Which of the following best describes the practice of attaching a "signing statement" to legislation passed by Congress?

It is a controversial practice associated with the also controversial "unitary executive" doctrine where the president claims the right to ignore or refuse to enforce laws, parts of laws, or provisions of appropriations bills even though Congress has enacted them and he has signed them into law.

The famous case of Marbury v. Madison is important because?

It is the case where Chief Justice John Marshall established the power of judicial review.

Identify the purpose of the free exercise clause.

It mandates that Congress shall not prohibit the "free exercise" of religion.

Which of the following is the best summary of Glenn Greenwald's position on the appropriate relationship between media and politics?

Journalists should challenge government claims that secrecy and domestic spying are justified, that mainstream journalism has become far too complacent and connected to official sources to adequately serve democratic ends.

An old story meant to demonstrate the changes television brought to political campaigns:

Kennedy winning a 1960 debate versus Nixon according to television viewers, but Nixon winning it according to those who listened on the radio. Style and appearances clearly influenced the tv audience.

Which of the following is true about lobbyists?

Lobbyists seek access to public officials in all government branches.

How did John Locke justify the existence of government?

Locke believed government was necessary to produce order, and justified to the degree that it protected the rights and liberties of citizens, or as he put it, man "is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property."

Chomsky and Herman argue that there are five classes of 'filters' in society which determine what is 'news' and what isn't. What are these filters?

Media ownership by large conglomerates, influence of advertising, overreliance on 'official sources', 'flak', and scaremongering.

Which of the following states has a law stating that its primary will always be at least a week ahead of every other state?

New Hampshire

From the year 2000 to 2012, the rise of new media and the Internet as a source for news has had what effect on newspaper revenues?

Newspapers have lost approximately 40% of their revenue.

When party loyalty declines and voters base their decisions on short-term, election-specific factors, such as the leadership qualities of a candidate:

Partisan dealignment.

Ross Perot's third party candidacy helped push both major parties to:

Pay attention to the deficit.

How do political parties help Congress function?

Political parties provide Congress with organizational structure and discipline. Parties facilitate lawmaking and are the basis for the most stable coalitions in Congress. They unite individuals who share ideological orientations and policy goals and help them work together to pass legislation.

A particular type of political learning whereby people develop the attitudes, values, beliefs, opinions, and behaviors that are conducive to becoming good citizens in their country.

Political socialization

The controversy over NSA domestic spying involves government attempts to monitor what?

Potentially, everything. Documents suggest the NSA can collect "email, chat (video, voice), videos, photos, stored data, VoIP [internet phone calls], file transfers, video conferencing, notifications of target activity - logins etc, online social networking details" and another category called "special requests".

Which of these help the president set the national agenda?

Presidents try to call attention to issues and proposed solutions using constitutional powers such as calling Congress into session, recommending bills, and informing its members and the citizenry about the state of the union, as well as giving other speeches.

________ is a special type of public opinion where people carefully consider the important issues of the day, contemplate the range of viewpoints, and weigh the consequences of policy prescriptions. Rather than stating positions off the top of their heads, ________ requires people to be knowledgeable about an issue and debate the merits of policies before arriving at an informed opinion.

Public judgment

Which of these best describes the "flak" filter proposed by Chomsky and Herman?

Punitive action -- law suits, efforts, to damage reputation, etc. -- against those who have become moderately successful at challenging corporate-driven propaganda. Business organizations regularly come together to form "flak machines" such as the effort to challenge the credibility of climate scientists and cast doubt on the well-established science behind it.

One thing third parties can help provide:

Relief from "idea suppression" by the two major parties.

According to Article II, which of the following must confirm all federal judges?

Senate

Supreme Court nominees go to the ________.

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings before being voted up or down by the Senate as a whole.

Which of the following includes the correct list of factors influencing Supreme Court nominations according to at least one scholar mentioned by your text?

Senate composition, timing, public approval of the president, interest groups.

When advocates of federalism say that states are "laboratories of democracy," what do they mean?

States can try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country, and if they are successful, can be adopted by other states or the nation as a whole. For example, the successful healthcare reform signed into law by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts ended up being the model for Obamacare.

What was it about the Stamp Act that helped bring the American colonies together?

Such taxes on commerce alienated powerful interests, including well-off traders in the North and prosperous planters in the South, who complained that the tax was enacted in England without the colonists' input, hence the slogan "No taxation without representation," which expressed a dual concern with political ideals and material self-interest.

Which of the following are known as the Civil War Amendments to the Constitution?

The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendmends, which outlawed slavery, mandated equal treatment under the law, and established voting rights.

This attack ad was designed for the 1964 election campaign of Democratic president Lyndon Johnson. It exploited the fear that Johnson's Republican opponent, Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, was willing to use nuclear weapons.

The Daisy Ad.

In 1848, women and men active in the antislavery movement, meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, adopted a Declaration of Sentiments, which emulated what famous document?

The Declaration of Independence

What were the main compromises reached during the Constitutional Convention?

The Great Compromise - also known as the Connecticut Compromise - dealt with representation in Congress, giving more seats to large states in the House, and equal representation in the Senate; the 3/5ths clause allowed the Southern slave states to count that percentage of its slave population for the purposes of representation in the House and the Electoral College; finally, the creation of that Electoral College system for electing presidents resolved the debate over choosing the executive.

Which of the following is true concerning the Constitution's delegation of powers to the House and Senate?

The House initiates all tax and spending bills, while the Senate approves presidential nominations for the cabinet, federal judges and ambassadors, as well as treaties with foreign countries.

The highest ranking leaders in Congress:

The Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader, also the highest ranking members of the majority party in each house.

People who pay close attention to government and politics in general are categorized as belonging to:

The attentive public.

Which of the following is the best description of judicial review?

The authority of the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court, to decide whether a state or federal law, or the actions of a government official, violates the US Constitution.

At the general level, the American commitment to market values can be described in the following way:

The belief in a free-enterprise system that allows for open business competition, private ownership of property, and limited government intervention in business affairs. Through hard work and perseverance, anyone can be financially successful.

Martin Gilens' research on political equality suggests what about the average person's influence on public policy?

The degree to which the average citizen approves or disapproves of a particular policy has no influence over whether that policy will be adopted or not.

Reasons given that state and local governments are essential parts of federalism:

The federal government routinely needs them to execute national policy. Also, state and local governments are in a position to implement policies flexibly to match their residents' political preferences and needs.

The "elastic clause" refers to what portion of the Constitution?

The final paragraph of Article I, Section 8, which grants to Congress the power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers."

For what reason was a bicameral legislature created instead of a one-house Congress?

The framers of the Constitution feared having any one governmental body become too strong. A bicameral system distributes power within two houses that check and balance one another rather than concentrating authority in a single body.

Which of the following roles did the framers anticipate for the Senate?

The framers thought that the Senate should be constituted as an elite body that would act as a check on the House,

Polling suggests what about the views of the top 1% versus the general public?

The general public holds a much more progressive set of views with regard to questions about public benefits, the role of government in providing jobs, and other such priorities.

One criticism of media coverage of campaigns is that too much attention is focused on:

The horse race.

To what does the "rule of four" refer?

The number of Supreme Court justices needed to grant a hearing to cases that are not part of the Court's original jurisdiction.

What is the difference between "direct" democracy and "representative" democracy?

The people directly influence policy in a direct democracy versus choosing representatives who make policy in a representative democracy.

Recent research suggests which of the following about lawmaking?

The policy preferences of the middle class do not effect lawmaking and the preferences of the lower economic strata are actually negatively correlated with policy.

Which of the following is the process for selecting federal judges, including members of the Supreme Court?

The president nominates judges who must then be approved by the Senate.

From what James Madison says in Federalist No. 10, what economic interest was the Constitution designed to protect?

The right to acquire and maintain property.

Which of the following are protections found in the main body of the Constitution, that is, not in the Bill of Rights.

The right to request a writ of habeas corpus giving the reasons for one's arrest, the prohibition of bills of attainder (laws punishing a named person without trial), and the prohibition of ex post facto laws (laws retrospectively making actions illegal).

Which of the following concerning Congress and term limits is true?

There are no term limits.

This is the term used to refer to an organization that is not affiliated with the two major American parties—the Democrats or Republicans:

Third party.

Which of these is among the most important of the constitutional powers assigned to the president?

To take care that the laws of the land are "faithfully executed."

How is the Constitution different from the Articles of Confederation?

Unlike the Articles, the Constitution derived its authority from The People rather than the states, provided for a separate executive branch and federal courts, gave the national government the right to regulate commerce, and Congress the power to tax.

Democratic candidates tend to do very well in ________ districts while Republican candidates do better in ________ ones.

Urban/rural

Which of these best articulates the paradox inherent in democratic decision-making identified by Condorcet?

While individuals can have coherent preferences, it is not clear that groups of citizens do. One consequence of this is that the order in which preferences are considered by democratic institutions may determine policy outcomes.

In what way is the Declaration of Independence's idea that "all men are created equal" a democratic principle? In what sense are people equal if, in practice, they are all different from one another?

While people are endowed with different talents and abilities, a basic democratic principle holds that all should be equal participants in making the laws they will live under, and take part in choosing the leaders who will represent them.

As part of an anonymous smear campaign during the 2000 Republican presidential primary, prospective voters in South Carolina were asked "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" This sort of poll, intended to influence the opinions of respondents rather than gain information about voters, is known as ________.

a push poll.

The dominant profile of a member of Congress is ________.

an older, wealthy, white male.

The audience for network news has ________.

decreased by about half since the 1980s.

The number of reporters in mainstream newsrooms has ________.

dropped by about 30% over the last 10 years.

Federal judges are appointed to __________ terms.

life

How many justices currently serve on the Supreme Court?

nine

Modern political science sees a positive role for interest groups through the democratic theory of:

pluralism

People who have a strong sense of ________ feel that they have the skills and resources to participate effectively in politics and that the government will be responsive to their efforts.

political efficacy

The Fourth Amendment prevents the government from conducting "unreasonable searches and seizures." A reasonable search is conducted with a warrant issued by a judge and based on what standard?

probable cause

The Office of Communications' main job is to ________.

promote the big picture message on an array of topics that the president seeks to have influence over.

ALEC is an organization that _________.

provides corporate-friendly model legislation that state representatives propose in their various legislative bodies. Its success complicates the notion that government closer to the people is more democratic since this example of corporate influence suggests that policy in smaller state and local governments can be more easily "captured" by concentrated private interests.

With regard to public trust, ________.

public confidence in Congress has declined over the past three decades. Congress has the lowest approval ratings of the three branches.

People do not need to join an interest group voluntarily when they can benefit from its activities without becoming a member. This is the problem of collective goods, and is known as:

the free-rider problem.

The judicial philosophy associated with deciding cases on the narrowest grounds possible, thereby shying away from invalidating laws and the actions of other government officials and branches, is known as?

the philosophy of judicial restraint

Which of the following rights is NOT mentioned in the Bill of Rights?

the right to adequate health care

Why are executive orders less enduring than formal laws?

they can be reversed by future presidents.

Who has the role of breaking a tie in the Senate?

vice president