PLS 200 Final Exam Study Guide
Correlation is a sufficient condition for causation.
False
Cross-cutting cleavages increase polarization resulting in a higher likelihood of violence.
False
Democracy only requires free and fair elections.
False
Direct democracy is an ideal form of government and the most common type of democracy in the world.
False
Monozygotic twins have less shared genetic material than dizygotic twins, which is what lets us make inferences about the causes of political traits/attitudes.
False
Moving from dictatorship to democracy is negatively correlated with the relative frequency of revolutions.
False
Political culture is merely anecdotal and has no scientifically measurable impact on political outcomes such as foreign policy and tax policy.
False
Publication bias is the idea that researchers from more prestigious schools are more likely to be published in academic journals than those from less prestigious schools.
False
Puglisi and Snyder (2011) find that all newspaper, regardless of political leanings, have a lot of scandal coverage.
False
Puglisi and Snyder (2011) shows that partisan editorial boards have no relationship to coverage of scandals for news or editorials.
False
Referenda are put on the ballot by citizens; initiatives come from the legislature
False
Referendums are when citizens petition to have something on the ballot.
False
Revolutions are common because collective action is easy to achieve.
False
Shadow governments in parliamentary systems are an example of the legislature's legitimating function.
False
Speech clarity, speaking skills, and critical thinking are the three traits used least by political scientists according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
False
Statutory interpretation is an example of the dispute resolution function played by the judiciary.
False
Studies show that racial bias has no impact on preferences for social welfare programs.
False
Survey data suggest there is no liberal bias among university professors
False
The 'delegate' model of representation means the legislator bases their decisions on their judgments rather than their constituents' opinions and preferences.
False
The Democratic Peace Theory suggests that democracies are less likely to go to war with any other country.
False
The Prime Minister in a parliamentary system is chosen directly by the electorate.
False
The Supreme Court emphasizes the specific identity of the litigants over the broad interpretations of legal matters.
False
The Tragedy of the Commons occurs because individuals are ignorant of the fact that their actions make society worse off.
False
The US President, as the head of government, holds the power to declare war.
False
The fire alarm approach to bureaucracy involves Congress proactively reviewing bureaucratic behavior.
False
The majority of countries in the world have a head of state that is also the head of government.
False
The mutual exploitation model refers to the symbiotic relationship between media and the masses.
False
The shakiness of the qual environment assumption (EEA) in twin studies gives us good reason to doubt most of the political trait/attitude.
False
The subfield of Political Theory is mainly concerned with studying how nations interact with one another.
False
The three components of the Iron Triangle are interest groups, bureaucratic agencies, and voters.
False
There is more policy stability in a parliamentary system than in a presidential system
False
To ensure fairness for those involved in a dispute, appellate courts in the US review all aspects of a case.
False
Tragedy of the Commons example shows how common resources can be depleted because individuals are acting irrationally.
False
Under capitalism, the laborers own the means of production, and under socialism, landowners control the means of production.
False
Voter turnout for ballot initiatives is higher during midterm elections than during presidential election years.
False
Arcenaux et al. (2016) shows that congress members are generally more likely to act as "delegates" when constituents are paying attention.
True
Authority leakage is a miscommunication from top to bottom in the bureaucratic hierarchy; this can be accidental or intentional.
True
Autocratic regimes are those in which there is an absence of meaningful competition for office and ability for citizens to participate in elections.
True
Bicameralism is where a legislature has two houses in order to have more comprehensive representation.
True
Bureaucracy is the unelected policymaking arm within government.
True
Clientelism refers to the practice of "buying" votes, which harms the process of democracy.
True
Conceptual frameworks are created from our personal experiences, preferences, and expectations, which help us to make sense of our world.
True
Constructivism is a way to think about international relations in which everything is socially constructed.
True
Democracy is the only way to credibly guarantee property rights
True
Descriptive representation is how representatives "mirror" the electorate in terms of demographics.
True
Elections act as safety valves to prevent complete blowups like revolution
True
Experiments are powerful research tools because they have high internal validity.
True
Getting accepted to a political science graduate program is as much about how you and your interests fit with the department as your undergraduate GPA.
True
Government is an institutionalized alliance to move out of anarchy.
True
Highly educated voters are always very likely to vote, regardless of the amount of money spent on initiatives, whereas voters with low levels of education are influenced by the amount of money spent.
True
If there were absolutely no political difference among justices, there would not be dissenting opinions in cases.
True
In proportional representation, parties are more important than individual candidates.
True
The labor pool can generate a Tragedy of the Commons.
True
The legislature is an example of a government structure, and the senate is an example of a government institution.
True
The more initiatives on the ballot, the greater the likelihood that someone will go vote.
True
The panopticon is a form of self-policing that governments use to control populations.
True
The proportion of tenure-track teaching positions has decreased over the past four decades.
True
The relationship between variables may be both statistically significant and substantively insignificant.
True
The way in which religion in a geographic area interacts with political action is an example of political culture.
True
There are no pure socialist or capitalist economies, there are only mixtures of these concepts.
True
Unelected bureaucrats at the federal level in the US significantly outnumber elected policymakers
True
We use randomization to control for spurious relationships.
True
Your measure will get on the ballot in Michigan if you can collect signatures totaling at least 10% of votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election within 180 days of when you registered your petition.
True
"Every racial group should have a representative in the legislature." This statement is an example of substantive representation.
False
According to survey data, trust in government has gone up over time.
False
All judges are positivists, which means that when they decide cases they are influenced not only by the law and facts of the case, but also their ideologies, attitudes, personal preferences, and experiences.
False
Anarchy, by definition, is chaotic and dangerous.
False
As the Head of State, the political views of the Queen of England are essential to policymaking in the United Kingdom, especially under conditions of divided government.
False
Associate professors are the lowest on the hierarchy at doctoral institutions like MSU.
False
Bureaucrats and representatives are both elected, so they are both directly accountable to constituents.
False
Classical liberalism promotes government involvement to reduce inequality.
False
Collective action is a coordinated group action designed to achieve a common goal that could also be achieved individually.
False
Conflict narratives are difficult to sell- people prefer uplifting stories rather than stories of conflict.
False
Conflict on a single dimension leads to more opportunities for compromise.
False
Exposure to judicial symbols (things like judges in robes, scales of justice) make people more likely to accept a decision they oppose, but do not increase support for decisions.
False
Gerrymandering refers to the practice of drawing districts evenly and with no bias towards one party or another.
False
Idealism has more explanatory power than realism in political science.
False
If percent change is high, the raw numbers being used must also be high.
False
If we have a free and fair vote on an issue, then the choice of the largest group of voters will be the winning outcome.
False
In a parliamentary system, divided government is when the prime minister is from a different party than parliaments' majority.
False
In an effort to heal the party, candidates often choose rivals from the current election as their Vice-Presidential running mate.
False
In autocracies, there are no elections or legislative bodies.
False
In general, pro-individual judicial decisions are conservative and pro-government judicial decisions are liberal.
False
In theory, lack of overarching authority in an anarchic state, most people live safely and comfortably.
False
Institutions are differentiated by how much centralization of power there is. A confederation has the most centralized power.
False
Kalla and Broockman's (2016) research on Congress shows us that people who have donated have more influence over members of Congress.
False
Large research institutions like MSU prioritize a professor's teaching abilities and student reviews over his/her research.
False
Law in action always reflects law on the books.
False
Level of education has no impact on likelihood of voting in ballot initiatives.
False
Liberalism solves the Stag Hunt through the principal of anarchy.
False
Marvel and McGrath (2016) shows that hearings increase bureaucratic performance.
False
Military regimes are the longest-lived because they are more interested in self-preservation than political power.
False
A field experiment is considered the gold standard in social science research because it employs randomly assigned conditions.
True
A natural experiment occurs when conditions are randomly assigned by nature; social scientists can exploit these natural occurrences for empirical studies.
True
Agency theory is a solution to the problem of unelected bureaucrats: the legislature hires bureaucracy.
True
Anarchy's lack of structure allows strong individuals to exert their power and achieve their goals.
True
In social science, it is important to develop measures of phenomena that are both valid and reliable, meaning they measure what they are supposed to measure and they can be consistently reproduced.
True
In socialism, society controls the means of production.
True
In the Stag Hunt example, trust between actors is important for the community to achieve the best outcome.
True
In the realist school of thought, war is assumed to be inevitable
True
Institutions in the United States cause intentional delay in policy enactment, which protects minority rights.
True
It is difficult to transfer the "pure" scientific method to political science because our subject matter is social in nature.
True
Joshua Kalla and David Broockman (2016) find that meetings with a member of congress are rare, but when people do get meetings it is because they have donated.
True
Judicial review in the US is when the courts determine if a law violates the Constitution.
True
Leaders primarily seek wealth, power, and prestige.
True
Liberalism in international relations takes into account domestic politics to show why countries are not always at war.
True
Media is our primary source of agreement reality, so it is important to understand the bias inherent in the stories that are chosen to be reported on.
True
Motivated reasoning is the process of confirming our existing beliefs and discounting information that goes against our beliefs.
True
Natural resources, per capita income, country size, state weakness, and regime type all influence the relative frequency of revolutions.
True
News is both big business and a public service.
True
One way to decide whether you want to pursue political science is to work as a research assistant.
True
Percent change is calculated as ((T2-T1)/T1) x 100. This allows us to observe relative change (e.g., change in average NAPS score between assignments).
True
Policymaking refers to implementation of laws.
True
Political Science has borrowed heavily from other social sciences, such as sociology and economics.
True
Political capital is the reserve of power that leaders use to pursue their goals
True
Political culture affects institutions.
True
Political culture is the shared social context from which people make political choices.
True
Political ideology (i.e. liberal/conservative) has a substantial genetic component. However, political party (i.e. Democratic/Republican) does not.
True
Pork barrel spending is wasteful spending in which services are delivered to a very localized area to strengthen an incumbent.
True
Power is shared between national and local governments in a federal system.
True
Presidents are more likely to declare natural disasters when they expect elections to be competitive races.
True
Security is an example of a collective action problem.
True
Sometimes conflict in a country serves as a positive purpose.
True
Studies show that ideological agreement predicts senator voting in judicial confirmations.
True
Studies show that in general, Republicans are slightly more pro-security and Democrats are slightly more pro-civil liberty. However, partisanship does not perfectly predict these beliefs.
True
The American elections use the 'first past the post' system wherein the candidate that gets the most votes wins.
True
The Comparative Politics Subfield focuses primarily on foreign countries.
True
The Gini Coefficient is a relative measure of income inequality.
True
The Meltzer-Richard model states that redistributive preferences are only based on income, so voters below the median income should prefer higher taxes.
True
The Robin Hood Paradox persists because it is highly internally valid, but the mechanism is not borne out empirically.
True
The executive is in charge of implementing policy in the government.
True
The first-past-the-post system favors moderate candidates and a two-party system.
True