Texas Political Culture
This term refers to broadly shared values, beliefs, traditions, and attitudes about government and politics.
Political culture
Texas ranks this nationally in both land mass and population.
Second
This principle holds that political power is derived from the people.
Popular sovereignty
This system divides governmental power between a central government and regional governments.
Federalism
This cake analogy describes a federal system in which national and state responsibilities remain largely separate.
Layer-cake federalism
Texas has historically been described as having this combination of political cultures.
Traditionalistic-individualistic political culture
These are the four major physical regions of Texas.
Gulf Coastal Plains, Interior Lowlands, Great Plains, and Basin and Range Province
Texas currently operates under a constitution adopted in this year.
1876
This amendment reserves powers not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the states, to the states or the people.
Tenth Amendment
This cake analogy describes federalism in which the boundaries between national and state governments are blurred.
Marble-cake federalism
This term describes a narrow, limited, and self-interested worldview often associated with rural values, traditionalism, and limited government.
Provincialism
These three factors account for Texas's population growth.
Natural increase, international immigration, and domestic immigration
These four major themes shaped the Constitution of 1876.
Strong popular control, limited state government power, economy in government, and agricultural interests
This constitutional provision establishes that the U.S. Constitution, federal laws, and treaties take priority over conflicting state laws.
Supremacy Clause
This New Deal-era form of federalism involves national and state governments working together, often through grants-in-aid.
Cooperative federalism
Along with one-party dominance and provincialism, this pattern has historically been an important feature of Texas political culture.
Business dominance
Originally created to regulate railroads, this state agency now plays a major role in regulating Texas's oil and gas industry.
Texas Railroad Commission
This feature of Texas government divides executive authority among several offices instead of concentrating power in the governor.
Plural executive
This constitutional provision allows Congress to adopt laws necessary to carry out its enumerated powers.
Necessary and Proper Clause, or Elastic Clause
Presidents Nixon and Reagan promoted this approach, which attempted to return greater authority to the states through mechanisms such as block grants.
New Federalism
These are the three major patterns discussed in the chapter that have historically helped define Texas political culture
One-party dominance, provincialism, and business dominance
These are the three major historical economic waves discussed in the chapter that transformed the Texas economy.
Farming and ranching, oil, and technology
These are the four major stages required to amend the Texas Constitution.
Legislative proposal, two-thirds approval in both houses, publication of the ballot language, and majority voter approval
These two early Supreme Court cases strengthened national authority by upholding federal supremacy and broadly interpreting Congress's interstate commerce power.
McCulloch v. Maryland and Gibbons v. Ogden
This contemporary form of federalism occurs when partisan identity shapes whether state officials cooperate with or actively resist federal policies.
Fractious federalism