Comparative Politics Vocabulary
Terms
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- Agricultural Labor Force
- The percentage of the population that makes a living that is based in farming, the larger this percent the less developed the nation is said to be
- Centralization
- The process of concentrating power in one location
- Decentralization
- The process of dispersing or distributing power to other political entities and allowing often for a sharing of power and decision making
- Privatization
- The process whereby a government sells off and turns over control of what had previously been government owned, usually in the name of reducing government expenses, often done by conservatives
- Regionalization
- The idea, usually within a given country, that certain areas of that country can develop and have significance themselves--this can often lead to conflict when one part of a country wishes to free itself from a national government
- Religious Fundamentalism
- A belief that a particular denomination has strayed to far from the true meaning of the Bible and that these secular trends must be removed and replaced by more traditional beliefs and actions
- Service Economy
- A country that features economic production that is based not so much on factory production but on people performing services for others
- Ethnocentrism
- The belief that your culture and your way of life is better than those in other countries
- European community
- The relatively new (and developing) group of countries that is made up of England, France, Germany and others
- Environmentalism
- The awareness that development has produced pollution and other similar problems which have been brought to the attention of various governments who now must take these concerns into account when deciding policy
- GATT
- A trade agreement that sets common trade and tariff policies between a series of nations (primarily European)
- GNP
- The total value of all goods and services that country produces, usually divided by the population creating a statistic that is expressed per capita
- Nation
- A group of people that have a common heritage and culture
- PPP
- A measure of the economic well being of a country that takes into account the cost of living when looking at the average income
- State
- A term that is identified as a country that has geographical borders and a government