American Political Culture/Foundations
This founding document's weaknesses, including no power to tax and no power to regulate interstate commerce, led directly to the Constitutional Convention.
What is the Articles of Confederation?
This deal created a bicameral Congress with a population-based House and an equal-representation Senate.
What is the Great Compromise?
This article of the Constitution establishes presidential power, in far less detail than Article I lays out congressional power.
What is Article II?
This nineteenth-century practice rewarded political supporters with government jobs.
What is the spoils system?
This concept guarantees government treats everyone the same when it acts.
What are civil rights?
This French observer opened Democracy in America by identifying the equality of social condition among Americans
Who is Alexis de Tocqueville?
This type of benefit, something a member can point to directly like a bridge or federal building, is far easier to claim individual credit for than a collective national good.
What is a particularized benefit (pork barrel spending)?
Neustadt's famous formulation describes presidential power this way.
What is the power to pursuade?
An example of a non-cabinet department?
What is the EPA? Federal Reserve? Securities and exchange commission?
This 1954 Supreme Court case declared state-sponsored segregation in public schools unconstitutional, overturning the doctrine of "separate but equal."
What is Brown v. Board of Education?
This Federalist essay argues that a large, diverse republic controls the effects of faction rather than trying to eliminate faction's causes.
What is Federalist No. 10?
Mayhew's foundational assumption holds that members of Congress have one primary goal
What is getting reelected?
Moe and Howell's term for the moment a unilateral action creates a new status quo, forcing opponents to work to reverse it rather than simply block it.
What is Fait Accompli?
This term describes the stable, mutually reinforcing relationship between an agency, its congressional oversight committee, and the interest groups affected by its work.
What is an iron triangle?
This term describes drawing congressional district lines to favor one political party, as seen in several state maps after the 2010 census.
What is gerrymandering?
This constitutional provision allows Congress to pass laws needed to carry out its enumerated powers.
What is the Necessary and Proper Clause?
Fenno's term for the discretion constituents grant a member to act independently in Washington, even against their stated preferences
What is leeway?
According to Reeves and Rogowski, this belief, alongside presidential approval, predicts support for unilateral presidential power.
What is belief in the rule of law?
This cluster of major federal agencies, including State, Treasury, Defense, and Justice, is each led by a secretary with a direct line to the president.
What is the cabinet?
This Fenno term names the three elements, qualification, identification, and empathy, that make up a member's presentation of self to constituents.
What is homestyle?
This amendment's due process clause became the vehicle courts used to apply most of the Bill of Rights to state governments
What is the Fourteenth Amendment?
This Fenno concept describes a member's most loyal supporters, the base within the base.
What is the primary constituency?
This, according to Moe, is the president's most powerful tool.
What is the executive order (unilateral action)?
Court case overturned in 2024 that now requires courts to use their own independent judgment when interpreting ambiguous statutes
What is the Chevron Doctrine?
This term names the practice of trading votes so that every member's district gets something out of a bill.
What is logrolling?