Civics Basics
A system with two levels of government over the same people; neither level can take away the other's powers.
What is federalism?
When one government's policy choices are influenced by the policy choices of other governments.
What is policy diffusion?
The effect an existing policy has on later politics, for example when a program creates a group of beneficiaries who organize to defend it.
What is policy feedback?
A voluntary organization whose main job is political advocacy for a constituency or a cause. PhRMA, the AMA, and AARP are examples.
What is an interest group?
Partisanship as a social identity: the party is a group you belong to, not a means of getting the policies you want.
What is expressive partisanship?
Congress has two chambers, and a bill must pass both in identical form to become law. The name for this arrangement.
What is bicameralism?
A state cuts its Medicaid benefits so that it is less generous than its neighbors and does not attract people who would use the benefits.
What is the race to the bottom?
A tax credit buried in a refund lacks these two features.
What are traceability and visibility?
When civil servants go to interest groups for information and support instead of waiting for the groups to come to them.
What is reverse lobbying?
Early news stories described the HPV vaccine as a cancer vaccine; later stories described it as a vaccine against a sexually transmitted infection. What is this media effect.
The states' power to regulate health, safety, and welfare. It is the basis for school vaccine requirements, licensing of clinicians, and quarantine.
What is the police power?
The federal government pays 90% of the cost of Medicaid expansion for any state that adopts it. The mechanism of diffusion this represents.
What is coercion?
Most people expect to be 65 someday and can picture themselves on Medicare; few expect to use SNAP. The program feature this describes.
What is proximity of beneficiaries?
The two kinds of interest groups: one offers agencies technical data and draft rule language, the other offers public support and media attention.
What are business groups and citizen groups?
Accepting or rejecting evidence depending on whether it matches what your group believes.
What is identity-protective cognition?
The vote that ends a filibuster in the Senate, and the number of votes needed.
What is cloture (60 votes)?
A state copies another state's law word for word without any evidence about whether the law worked.
What is immitation?
A program creates beneficiaries, organizations, and budgets that would lose if it were cut, so repeal gets harder over time.
What is self-reinforcing feedback?
Committees that can raise unlimited money from individuals, corporations, and unions and spend it on political ads, as long as they do not coordinate with a candidate.
What are super PACs?
The FCC policy, in force from 1949 to 1987, that required broadcasters to present contrasting views on public issues.
What is the Fairness Doctrine?
A temporary committee with members from both chambers that writes one version of a bill when the House and Senate have passed different versions.
What is a conference committee?
A policy that takes from some people to provide for others, like Medicaid.
What is a redistributive policy?
Social Security lasts from age 65 until death, so it pays to fight for it. Unemployment benefits last a few months. The program feature.
What is program duration?
The theory of change in which policy changes when a problem, a ready solution, and a favorable political climate come together at the same time
What is the policy windows (agenda-setting) theory?
The HPV mandate fight ended in 2007. In 2011 a presidential candidate's remark in a debate brought coverage back to the same level of politicization. The term for this.
What is stickiness?