What is politics, anyway?
Harold Lasswell famously defined politics using these five words.
What is "Who gets what, when, how?"
The political organization that exercises authority over a defined territory and population.
What is the state?
This form of government is commonly defined as rule by the people.
What is democracy?
A group of people who understand themselves as belonging to a distinctive political community.
What is a nation?
A system in which political power is concentrated in the hands of a leader or small group, with limited meaningful political competition.
What is authoritarianism?
Questions about how politics ought to work, rather than how it actually works, are called this.
What are normative questions?
This concept refers to the ultimate political authority of a state within its territory.
What is sovereignty?
This model of democracy emphasizes the importance of widespread citizen involvement in political decision-making.
What is participatory democracy?
This scholar famously described nations as "imagined communities."
Who is Benedict Anderson?
Unlike authoritarianism more generally, this form of rule seeks to control nearly every aspect of public and private life.
What it totalitarianism?
This approach to studying politics emphasizes systematic observation and empirical evidence.
What is positivism?
Economic, information/technology, transnational problems, migration, etc.
According to the Civic Voluntarism Model, time, money, and these abilities help explain political participation.
What are civic skills?
This principle holds that a people should be able to determine its own political status and form of government.
What is self determination?
This term describes the rules and institutions determining how political power is acquired and exercised.
What is a regime?
Concepts categorize phenomena, theories explain them, and these simplify complex political realities.
What are models?
According to Max Weber, authority based on established laws and procedures reflects this type of legitimacy.
What is legal-rational legitimacy?
The extent to which government policies reflect citizens' preferences is known as this.
What is democratic responsiveness?
A nation that lacks its own sovereign state is described using this term.
What is a stateless nation?
The gradual erosion of democratic institutions, norms, and practices is known as this.
What is democratic backsliding?
This conception of politics emphasizes negotiation, bargaining, and the peaceful resolution of disagreements.
A ruler who maintains obedience primarily through threats and coercion possesses this but may lack legitimacy.
What is power?
The Civic Voluntarism Model suggests that people may participate because they have resources, are psychologically engaged, and experience this form of mobilization.
What is recruitment?
This form of nationalism emphasizes shared citizenship, political institutions, and values rather than ancestry.
What is civic nationalism?
A democracy in which major political actors accept democratic institutions as the legitimate means of resolving conflict has achieved this.
What is democratic consolidation?