Interest Groups
An organization that tries to influence public policy decisions
What is a interest group?
A set of interrelated institutions that link people with government
What is the political system?
The means employed in mass communication; traditionally divided into print media and broadcast media but now includes the internet and social media.
What is mass media?
The collective attitudes of citizens concerning a given issue or question.
What is public opinion?
Unconventional participation that involves assembling crowds to confront businesses and local government to demand a hearing.
What is direct action?
An organized effort to persuade voters to choose one candidate over others competing for the same office.
What is an election campaign?
The process by which new issues are brought into the political limelight
What is agenda building?
The statement of policies of a national political party.
What is a party platform?
The belief that television is to blame for the low level of citizens' knowledge about public affairs.
What is the television hypothesis?
This term refers to the most frequent response to a survey question.
What is the mode?
The terms suffrage and franchise both refer to this definition.
What is 'the right to vote'?
A British term for elections conducted in single-member districts that award victory to the candidate with the most votes
What are first-past-the-post elections?
An interest group organizer or leader
What is an interest group entrepreneur?
A centralized party organization that dominates local politics by controlling elections.
What is a party machine?
A process whereby the media tries to increase ratings by tailoring the delivery or content of their news to the desires of their audience
What is market-driven journalism?
The complex process by which people acquire their political values.
What is political socialization?
Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.
What is terrorism?
A method used to select delegates to attend a party’s national convention. Generally, a local meeting selects delegates for a county-level meeting, which in turn selects delegates for a higher-level meeting; the process culminates in a state convention that actually selects the national convention delegates.
What is a caucus/convention?
The Supreme Court held that the free speech clause of the 1st amendment prohibits government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications by corporations and labor unions. This reuling gives interest groups much greater influence in electoral politics.
What is Citizens United v. FEC?
A committee of a political party composed of party chairpersons and party officials from every state.
What is a national committee?
The exception to the rule of government restraining information disseminated by the press.
What is wartime?
Name the following in the correct order:
1. What is learned first is learned best.
2. What is learned first structures later learning.
What are the primacy principle and the structuring principle?
A legal action brought by a person or group on behalf of a number of people in similar circumstances.
What is a class action suit?
This piece of legislation that took effect in 2004 raised the old limits on individual spending and indexed them for inflation in future years.
What is the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act?
Interest groups often deal with 'free riders', individuals who benefit from the activities of interest groups but do not contribute. To overcome this, interest groups offer selective incentives to contributors, of which there are three primary kinds.
(Name two selective incentives)
What are:
-Material Benefits (stuff)
-Solidarity Benefits (social)
-Purposive Benefits (good feelings)?
Listed are four principles:
Parties should present clear and coherent programs to voters.
Voters should choose candidates on the basis of party programs.
The winning party should carry out its program once in office.
Voters should hold the governing party responsible at the next election for executing its program.
These principles formalize the ideal role of parties in a majoritarian democracy.
What is responsible party government?
The view that information online is essential for modern democratic life and should not be restricted by internet service providers.
What is net neutrality?
Opinions about how the country as a whole is doing affect political preferences more strongly than one’s own personal circumstance.
What are sociotropic responses?
The model defining a relationship between socioeconomic status and conventional political involvement: people with higher status and more education are more likely to participate than those with lower status.
What is the standard socioeconomic model?
A bipartisan federal agency of six members that oversees the financing of national election campaigns.
What is the Federal Election Commission (FEC)?