interest group activities designed to influence elected officials by threatening to impose political costs on them if they do not respond. Tactics include marches, demonstrations, campaign contributions to opponents, and electoral mobilization

a federally registered fund-raising group that pools money from individuals to give political candidates and parties

an individuals enduring affective or instrumental attachment to one of the political parties: the most accurate single predictor of voting behavior

-state or local party organizations based on patronage. They work to elect candidates to public offices that control government jobs and contracts, which, in turn, are used by party leaders (often denigrated as “bosses”) to reward the sub leaders and activists who mobilize voters for the party on election day.

-the practice of awarding jobs, grants, licenses, or other special favors in exchange for political support

judicially created rights based on various guarantees of the Bill of Rights. The right to privacy is not explicitly stated in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has argued that this right is implicit in various clauses found throughout the Bill of Rights

-basing votes for a candidate or party on how successfully the candidate or party performed while in office

-a theory describing a political system in which all significant social interests freely compete with one another for the influence over the governments policy decisions

-a vote in which the winning candidate receives the greatest number of votes (but not necessarily a majority-over 50 percent)

-the process by which the public opinion divides and goes to the extremes. It can also refer to when the extreme factions of a political party gain dominance in a party.

a federally registered fund-raising group that pools money from individuals to give to political candidates and parties

-the process by which citizens acquire their political beliefs and values

-the process by which individuals and groups reach agreement on a common course of action even as they continues to disagree on the goals that action is intended to achieve

- speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions, structured as betting exchanges without any risk for the bookmaker

-laws passed by Congress that override or preempt state or local policies. The power of pre-emption derives from the supremacy clause of the Constitution

Principal-Agent relationship-

-a situation in which two (or more) actors cannot agree to cooperate for fear that the other will find in the interest best served by reneging on an agreement 

good that are collectively produced and feely available for anyone’s consumption

-conduct national opinion surveys about current affairs

-the result of cause related activities, such as achieving world peace

-when states “race,” or compete, to provide a minimum level of services (such as welfare spending) or regulation (such as tax incentives for corporations). There remains much debate over whether or not states do indeed race toward the bottom.

in media reports of poll results, the maximum margin of error for any percentage from that poll

 distortion of evidence or data that arises from the way that the data are collected- CHECK

-private goods or benefits that induce rational actors to participate in a collective effort to provide a collective good

-the distribution of government powers among several political institutions. In the US, at the national level power is divided between the three branches in congress: the president, and the Supreme Court

-a system in which the national and state governments share in providing citizens with a set of goods

-Uprising of 1786 led by Daniel Shays, a former captain in the Continental army and a bankrupt Massachusetts farmer, to protest the state’s high taxes and aggressive debt collection politics. The rebellion demonstrated a fundamental weakness of the Articles of Confederation- its inability to keep the peace- and stimulated interest in strengthening the national government, leading to the Philadelphia convention that framed the Constitution.

- facilitates co-operation and mutually supportive relations in communities and nations and would therefore be a valuable means of combating many of the social disorders inherent in modern societies, for example crime

-money used by political parties for voter registration, public education, and voter mobilization. Until 2002, which Congress passed legislation outlawing soft money, the government had imposed no limits on contributions or expenditures for such purposes.

- once a civil government is instituted, the state of nature has disappeared between individuals because of the civil power which exists to enforce contracts

-safeguards against a too-powerful national government that were favored by one group of delegates to the Constitutional Convention. States’ rights advocates supported retaining those features of the articles of Confederation that guarded states prerogatives, such as state participation in the selection of national officeholders and equal representation for each state regardless of population

- occurs when a voter supports a candidate other than his or her sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome

a delegate to the Democratic National Convention who is eligible to attend because he or she is an elected party official. The Democrats reserve a specific set of delegate slots for party officials.

-the amendment that offers the most explicit endorsement of federalism to be found in the Constitution: “the powers not delegated to the US by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

a situation in which group members overexploit a common resource, causing its destruction

-the costs of doing political business reflected in the time and effort required to compare preferences and negotiate compromised in making collective decisions.

-is the crime that covers some of the more serious acts of disloyalty to one's country, aiding its enemies

the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election- CHECK

-act which required that new federal laws pay for the programs and regulations they imposed on the states

-a system of government in which a single government unit holds the power to govern the nation (in contrast to a federal system, in which power is shared among many governing units)

- The values identify those objects, conditions or characteristics that members of the society consider important; that is, valuable. In the United States, for example, values might include material comfort, wealth, competition, individualism

-the formal power of the president to reject bills passed by both houses of Congress. A veto can be overridden by a two-thirds vote in each house

Constitutional blueprint drafted by James Madison that sought to reform the Articles of Confederation. Introduced at the Constitutional Convention, the plan proposed a tripartite national convention, but unlike the subsequent Constitution, it provided for a popularly elected legislature that would dominate national policy-making. Moreover, the national government would posses the authority to veto any state laws.