Chapter 3 Quiz Political Science

Which of the following is not one of the general conditions of a federal system?

Each level of government must have identical powers to foster the greatest possible competition

When the federal government makes a block grant

It gives an exact amount of money to spend for some purpose

The New Deal was innovative primarily because of which of the following?

Its size and scope

In the nineteenth century, the Senate had both the motive and the means to defend state prerogatives against national encroachment because of which of the following?

State legislatures picked the senators and each state had equal representation in the Senate regardless of population.

A commitment to the decentralization of authority on the belief that it leads to greater government innovation and policies that fit the preferences of residents is a ________ argument.

States' rights

The ___________Clause in Article VI of the Constitution has the most profound consequences for federalism

Supremacy

Article IV of the Constitution requires that the national government ensure which of the following?

That all states adhere to a republican form of government

Today's constitutional litigation over federalism typically concerns which of the following direct efforts?

Efforts by the federal government to regulate the activities of state and local governments and their employees

The Constitution opened the door to nationalization by granting the federal government ultimate power to determine within certain bounds which of the following?

The extent of its authority over the states

The net effect of the Supreme Court decisions in McCulloch v. Maryland and Gibbons v. Ogden was

creating a powerful precedent that allowed future national policy to develop free of the constraints of state prerogatives.

Which of the following statements about preemption legislation is accurate?

While Congress has steadily increased the number of laws substituting federal policy for the states, the federal government is also more likely to join with the states in formulating policy.

Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution lists the enumerated powers reserved to _________

Congress

____ are stipulations that a state, to remain eligible for full federal funding for one program, must adhere to the guidelines of an unrelated program.

Crossover sanctions

Which amendment provides the most explicit endorsement of federalism found in the Constitution?

10th

Ratification of the __________ mandated the direct, popular election of senators.

17th Amendment

Roosevelt's New Deal was which of the following?

A comprehensive set of economic regulations and relief programs intended to fight the Great Depression

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty are both examples of

sudden bursts of national policymaking in which the federal government assumed jurisdiction over public policy once reserved to the states.

American federalism is which of the following?

A two-tiered system comprising the national government and the state governments

Cross-cutting requirements, since the 1960s, have been widely used to enforce ____

Civil rights laws

Which clause has the federal government utilized to expand its jurisdiction over policymaking as the scope of economic transactions has increased?

Commerce

_________ made it clear that local governments are "creatures of the state."

Dillon's Rule

Local governments in the United States

Do not exercise independent, constitutional authority because they are not mentioned in the Constitution.

Environmental damage is an example of an _________ that affects more people than just the one who chose to cause it.

Externality

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal was the first effort to expand the scope of federal authority.

False

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution provides the strongest protections to the states against the expansion of federal authority.

False

The United States has moved from a system of shared federalism to a system of dual federalism.

False

With block grants, the federal government provides the states with funds that must be used following programmatic guidelines

False

Under the Articles of Confederation, each state was free to conduct its own international trade policy. This meant which of the following?

Foreign governments and merchants could exploit competition among the states to negotiate profitable trade agreements.

When modern state governments have encountered the same dilemmas of collective action that prompted their eighteenth-century counterparts to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, they have solved the dilemmas by shifting responsibility from which of the following?

From the state to federal authorities

Debates over federalism

Have not fully resolved as debates over the Affordable Care Act, the legalization of marijuana, and recognition of same-sex marriages demonstrate

National campaigns for legislation banning automatic weapons, regulating hazardous waste disposal, and mandating special education are all examples of which of the following?

Instances in which state issues have been strategically shifted to Washington, D.C., by their advocates

In Gibbons v. Ogden, the Supreme Court settled a conflict between New York and New Jersey over each state's efforts to establish an interstate steamship monopoly by ruling that only Congress had the authority to regulate

Interstate commerce

A confederation is a form of government best described as which of the following?

Lower-level governments possess primary authority

What was the largest program within President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty?

Medicaid

____ provides health insurance to low-income families, senior citizens in nursing homes, and disabled Americans.

Medicaid

Dual federalism leaves the states and the national government to preside over which of the following?

Mutually exclusive spheres of sovereignty

___ shifted the indefinite authority James Madison assigned to the states to the federal government.

Nationalization

Under what circumstances could Congress destroy an established state by, for example, cutting it in half to create a new state?

Only with the consent of the established state

Matching grants create a moral hazard because

People may behave differently or take more risks because they do not have to pay all of the costs of their actions

The experience surrounding the creation and adoption of Common Core standards illustrates which of the following?

President Obama's administration offered grant money to the states if they adopted common learning goals.

When members of Congress pass a law that obligates states to provide particular services, they are doing which of the following?

Responding to some citizens' demands without being held responsible for imposing the costs on others

_____ occurs when national and state governments jointly supply services to the citizenry

Shared federalism

The passage of the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which standardized state driver's licenses for interstate truckers, is an example of the federal government doing which of the following?

Solving a coordination problem among the states

Federalism presents opportunities for two kinds of majorities to pursue their interests in competition with each other. These majorities are which of the following?

State and national

Why did the efforts to partition federal and state responsibilities into separate and self-contained spheres fail?

The combination of modern policymaking challenges and the belief that the government should provide more services and solve more problems

To justify the New Deal's unprecedented intervention in the economy, the Roosevelt administration invoked which of the following?

The commerce clause

The Seventeenth Amendment, which came about amid persistent and widespread charges of bribery, mandated which of the following?

The direct and popular election of senators

In the case of McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall upheld the right of the national government to create a bank based on which of the following?

The elastic clause in the Constitution

Which of the following is a compelling strategic reason for a group to prefer national policy to state policy?

The national arena may be the only place in which it can hope to prevail.

In unitary government systems, which of the following is true?

The national government monopolizes constitutional authority

The original intent of the supremacy clause was to ensure which of the following?

The national government would prevail over states when both governments were acting in a constitutionally correct manner.

The states often engage in cutthroat competition by offering companies tax breaks and other benefits to relocate.

True

There are nearly 90,000 units of government in the United States

True

Although state officials may frequently complain about the policies of the Environmental Protection Agency, which of the following is true?

The presence of national standards insulates environmental protection from cutthroat competition among the states.

Which of the following is true about the states and amending the Constitution?

The states may petition Congress to convene a constitutional convention for the purposes of proposing constitutional amendments, so long as two-thirds of the states are part of the petition

There have been no efforts in the past two decades to increase state control over federal policies.

True

Which of the following is true about the Supreme Court case United States v. Lopez and the Court's overturning of the Violence Against Women Act?

They have not seriously undermined the extensive authority nationalization has thrust on the federal government.

As Madison points out in Federalist No. 10, since the states and the national government combine the citizenry's preferences into different groupings, the two levels of government do which of the following?

They may adopt different, even opposite, policies to address the same problem.

Which of the following best describes scholars who argue that the Tenth Amendment—which provides that the powers not taken by the national government belong to the states—is little more than a truism?

They point to the powerful combination of the supremacy clause and the elastic clause to support their argument

The problems of pollution and conserving natural resources are examples of

Tragedies of the commons

The Supreme Court has begun to take a more circumspect view of federal authority and tried to preserve some semblance of state independence.

True

The United States experienced both a unitary system of government and a confederation in its history.

True

The elastic clause undermines the restrictive purpose of the carefully worded list of enumerated powers

True

In a federal system, the Constitution divides authority between which of the following?

Two or more distinct levels of government

Who is the ultimate arbiter of controversies involving American federalism?

US Supreme Court

The use by the national government of cross-cutting requirements, crossover sanctions, direct orders, and partial preemption are all examples of which of the following?

Unfunded mandates

Across the world, ____________ governments are far more common than federations or confederations.

Unitary

The example of Governor Perry openly courting companies in other states to move to Texas illustrates

all the states might be better-off if no state offered tax incentives, but once one state does it, the rest feel compelled to respond

Supporters of states' rights argue that

decentralization of authority leads to greater government innovation and policies that better suit the preferences of residents of each state

While supporters of policies often try to move decision making to the national level, recent developments surrounding abortion rights and gun rights illustrate that

groups losing at the national level seek smaller victories in states where they enjoy majority support.

The size of state and local governments

is bigger than it ever has been as a result of the nationalizing thrust of the New Deal

Many of the enumerated powers of Congress deal with federalism because

it enabled the national government to address problems the states had not grappled with effectively under the Articles of Confederation.

One of the consequences in the Supreme Court's decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012) was

it gave state leaders new policy discretion on expanding Medicaid as they could accept the money from the federal government if they wanted, but the federal government could not force an expansion of the program.

The so-called elastic clause of Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution provides that Congress can "make all Laws which shall be

necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" the foregoing enumerated powers

The Supreme Court has gained increased power by

overruling state laws inimical with the Bill of Rights, and this expanded the authority of the national government.

The grant money provided through programs created under the Great Society

required state and local authorities to follow detailed programmatic guidelines prescribing how the funds were supposed to be spent.

A system of ________ federalism recognizes that states and the national government jointly provide services to citizens.

shared