Chap 12 - Politics
Terms
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- traditional authority
- authority based on custom
- unitary state
- form of government in which all power resides with the central government
- proportional representation
- an electoral system in which seats in a legislature are divided according to the proportion of votes each political party receives
- power
- he ability to carry out one's will, even over the resistance of others
- power elite
- C. Wright Mills' term for those who rule the country: the top people in the leading corporations, the most powerful generals and admirals of the armed forces, and certain elite politicians, who make the nation's major decisions
- revolution
- armed resistance designed to overthrow a government
- confederal union
- system of government in which the provinces have most of the powers and the central government has little authority
- democracy
- a system of government in which authority derives from the people; derived from two Greek words that translate literally as "power to the people"
- state
- a political entity that claims monopoly on the use of violence in some particular territory; commonly known as a country
- micropolitics
- refers to the exercise of power in everyday life
- citizenship
- the concept that birth (and residence) in a country impart basic rights
- monarchy
- a form of government headed by a king or queen
- nationalism
- a strong identity with a nation, accompanied by the desire for that nation to be dominant
- oligarchy
- a form of government in which power is held by a small group of individuals; the rule of the many by the few
- dehumanization
- the act or process of reducing people to objects that do not deserve the treatment accorded humans
- charismatic authority
- authority based on an individual's outstanding traits, which attract followers
- war
- armed conflict between nations or politically distinct groups
- universal citizenship
- the idea that everyone has the same basic rights by virtue of being born in a country (or by immigrating and becoming a naturalized citizen)
- macropolitics
- the exercise of large-scale power, the government being the most common example
- rational-legal authority
- authority based on law or written rules and regulations; also called bureaucratic authority
- totalitarianism
- a form of government that exerts almost total control over the people
- representative democracy
- a form of democracy in which voters elect representatives to govern and make decisions on their behalf
- coalition government
- a government in which a country's largest party aligns itself with one or more smaller parties
- coercion
- power that people do not accept as rightly exercised over them; also called illegitimate power
- dictatorship
- a form of government in which power is seized by an individual
- direct democracy
- a form of democracy in which the eligible voters meet together to discuss issues and make their decisions
- authority
- power that people accept as rightly exercised over them; also called legitimate power
- pluralism
- the diffusion of power among many interest groups, preventing any single group from gaining control of the government
- noncentrist party
- a political party that represents less popular ideas