POLI 100 N. Miller Spring 2008
GUIDE TO THE THIRD TEST AND THE FINAL EXAM
THIRD TEST: The third test will be held in class on the last day of class (Monday, May, 12). It will be in the same multiple-choice format as the two previous tests, and it will cover the material presented since the second test (Topics #24-41). (No questions drawing on Topic #24 were included in Test 2, because we had not completed the topic in both sections). It will be constructed to fairly reflect the fact that a number of these topics (especially #30-34 were covered in class in an accelerated and abridged fashion and others (#27 and #29) were covered only by means enhanced study guides.
The Student Course Evaluation Questionnaire (SCEQ) will be distributed with the test, and you will be asked to fill out the questionnaire if you have adequate time after completing the test. Because most students finished the previous tests early, and because the third test will be slightly shorter than the previous ones, I believe that almost all students will have time to finish the test comfortably and also fill out the questionnaire. But if you are pressed for time, clearly you should give priority to completing the test as well as you can.
Test grades will be posted (for those students who request this) outside of my office and on the course web page once they are ready (probably sometime on Tuesday, May 13). The posting will show your grade on the third test, and also your three-test average.
There will be an optional session to go over the Third Test and answer any more general review questions on Wednesday, May 14, tentatively at 11:00-12:30 in PUP 206. (It may be necessary to change the room and the exact time; if so, the revised information will be posted on the course website and also on the door of PUP 206 prior to 11AM.)
COMBINED FINAL EXAM: Friday, May 16, 10:30-12:30, in PUP 105 (Lecture Hall). Remember to check with me if this time presents you with a conflict; I can be flexible in arranging alternate exam times on an individual basis.
Final Grades. For those students who request it, I will post grades for (i) the second writing assignment, (ii) the final exam, and (iii) the course as a whole outside my office and on the course web page once they are ready. You can also come by my office over the summer or next Fall to collect your second writing assignment and final exam booklet if you wish to get them back
Remember that the earlier tests and quizzes will not affect your course grade at all if you do better on the final exam. Therefore, if you are disappointed with your grade thus far, please bear in mind that you can help yourself enormously by doing well on the final exam. However, it has been my experience in the past that quite a few students do not take the final exam seriously enough and thereby hurt rather than help themselves. In particular, some students do not appear to prepare for the exam adequately or simply do not use all the time they have available at the exam to write complete answers.
The final will be a two-hour written (“blue book”) exam. It will be comprehensive, covering both readings and class lectures and discussion from the entire semester. In both respects, therefore, the final exam differs from the midterm tests.
The final exam will not ask you to write essays (as more advanced political science exams typically do). You will write on twenty-four items for five minutes each and with a limited amount of choice among items. A typical portion of the exam would look like this:
(15 minutes). Select three of the four items below. For each, identify what is being referred to and briefly discuss its significance.
a. New Jersey Plan vs. Virginia Plan
b. Brown v. Board of Education
c. pork barrel politics
d. executive privilege vs. executive prerogative
However, on the test itself, related items (dealing with the same general topic, e.g., the Constitution, judicial review, the Presidency) will be grouped together for choice. If an item is a pair of terms (“A vs. B”), you should make clear the nature and significance of the distinction that is to be drawn between them. If possible, relate the item to other concepts introduced in the course. Here are two further sample questions (drawn from Topics #27 and #36, the former covered by an “enhanced” Study Guide), together with sample answers that would certainly be judged “excellent.” (But considerably less detailed answers could also be judged excellent.)
For each item below, identify what is being referred to and briefly discuss its significance.
a. patronage (or spoils) system vs. civil service system
b. pledged presidential electors
a.Under the federal patronage or spoils systems used for much government employment during most of the 19th century, Presidents and their parties could and did, upon winning an election and assuming office, dismiss ordinary government employees (such as clerks, postmasters, tax collectors, etc.) and replace them with their own supporters, based on the principle that “to the victors belong the spoils.” This made government employees very responsive to the President’s wishes. It also fostered the development of powerful political party “machines” based on party workers who held, or hoped to get, such patronage jobs, and it produced a lot of corruption. The patronage system was in due course ended by civil service reform, under which government employees are hired and promoted on the basis of “merit” on the basis of competitive exams and neutral procedures and can acquire permanent tenure. Civil service reform increased the technical competence of the government workforce and reduced corruption. It also created a federal bureaucracy that is less responsive to Presidential wishes.
b.The framers of the Constitution expected (or
at least hoped) that Presidential
electors would function as representative trustees of their
states or districts. But
once contested Presidential elections arose in 1796, the voters or
state legislators
who selected the electors quickly realized that they were not looking
for “wise”
electors of the trustee type but electors of the instructed
delegate type who would
cast their electoral votes in a predictable and preferred way. Thus
prospective
presidential electors have been pledged in advance as to how
they would cast their
electoral votes if selected, and they have been chosen exclusively on
the basis of
such pledges, not their personal qualities.
Each 5-minute item on the Final Exam will be evaluated on a scale running from 0 to 5. Both of the sample answers above would be deemed to be complete, accurate, and excellent and would be scored as 5 — and indeed shorter and less detailed answers would earn the same maximum score. Most actual student answers are scored between 2.5 and 4. A test in which all answers are scored 2.5 would get a grade of D+; one in which all answers are scored 4 would get a grade of an A-. Of course, most student exam books include a mixture of stronger and weaker answers.
Every item on the test will be drawn from the Review List that follows. (In fact, only the more significant and heavily emphasized items on this Review List will appear directly on the final exam; however, other items might be used in good answers.) Therefore, the Review List (together with the complete set of Study Guides) should be an important aid for preparing for the final exam. If you have followed something like the Recommended Study Procedure outlined in the syllabus, the material you have accumulated should be especially helpful in preparing for the exam. (In addition, all the PowerPoint slides used in class will remain on the course website until after the final exam.)
In answering these questions, you should aim for precise, accurate, and complete answers — not necessarily long answers. A complete answer to one of these five-minute items will usually require several sentences or short paragraph. In my experience, it is necessary to use most or all of the two hours in order to write complete answers.
REVIEW LIST OF KEY WORDS
Empirical vs. normative statements
Anarchism/anarchy
Legitimacy (empirical and normative)
Consent theory (Hobbes vs. Locke)
state of nature /state of war: law of nature and natural rights
social contract/covenant
limited vs. unlimited government
right of revolution
Declaration of Independence
Anarchic / confederal / federal / unitary systems
delegated vs. reserved powers
Articles of Confederation
government by states (manner of representation)
government of states (manner of exercising delegated powers)
Federal constitutional convention
Virginia vs. New Jersey Plan
representation / commerce / executive / federal compromises
Ratification campaign (Article VII)
Federalists vs. Antifederalists
Federalist Papers
Bill of Rights
Popular government
democratic vs. republican forms
classical vs. factional tyranny
Federalist 51 (Madison)
constitutional “checks and balances” (“ambition vs. ambition”)
Federalist 10 (Madison)
factions / “social checks and balances” / extensive compound republic
Amending the constitution (Article V)
alternate procedures for proposal and ratification
Constitutional interpretation
Judicial review: automatic/abstract vs.“byproduct”
Federalist 78 (Hamilton)
Marbury v. Madison
Federal vs. state courts
district / appeals (circuit) / supreme court
appellate vs. original jurisdiction
judicial decision making
writ of certiorari
court / concurring / dissenting opinions
judicial appointments and tenure during “good behavior”
judicial self-restraint vs. activism: stare decisis
Federalism (vs. decentralization)
federal grants-in-aid and block grants
Phases of Supreme Court activity
1800-1850: delegated (national) vs. reserved (state) power
1875-1935: economic laissez-faire
1940-present: civil rights and liberties
McCulloch v. Maryland
“necessary and proper” clause / “supremacy” clause
Gibbons v. Ogden / Hammer v. Dagenhart
“interstate commerce” clause
Court vs. New Deal
“court packing” plan / “switch in time”
Subject (procedural) vs. citizen (political) rights
Freedom of expression
J.S. Mill, On Liberty
First Amendment rights
“clear and present danger” doctrine (Schenck v. U.S.)
14th Amendment: “due process” clause
substantive due process
nationalization of the Bill of Rights
Gideon v. Wainwright
Constitution and slavery
3/5 compromise
Dred Scott v. Sandford
14th Amendment: “equal protection” clause and 15th Amendment
Southern “Jim Crow” system
de facto racial disenfranchisement
de jure racial segregation
“separate but equal” doctrine (Plessy v. Ferguson)
Brown v. Board of Education
Representation vs. legislation
national vs. local (constituency) representation
descriptive representation (similarity)
demographic / personality / experiential / political and policy preferences
sample assembly / election by lot
representation as agency: delegate vs. trustee / Burkean dilemma
pork barrel politics / casework
Apportionment of House seats
Single Member Districts (SMDs) with simple plurality
Congressional districting
“malapportionment” (district size)
“one man, one vote” doctrine (Baker v. Carr)
“gerrymandering” (district shape)
homogenous vs. heterogenous districts
“majority-minority” districts / Shaw v. Reno
Legislative process
centralized/parliamentary vs. decentralized/separation of powers systems
standing committees and subcommittees
agenda power
hearings / markup
House Rules Committee: open vs. closed rule
Senate vs. House contrasts in procedure
House germaneness rule vs. Senate “riders”
limited debate (House) vs. unlimited debate (Senate): “filibusters” and cloture
voice / teller / roll call votes
conference committee
Presidential veto / override / pocket veto / line-item veto
Citizen legislature vs. professionalized legislature
Congressional turnover / term limits
Congressional specialization
committee assignments and tenure
seniority system
Congressional localism: popular members vs. unpopular Congress
Office of Presidentunitary vs. plural executive (Hamilton, Federalist #70)
constitutionally enumerated powers of the President
expansive precedents
inherent executive power
executive privilege
executive prerogative
Presidential leadership
national representation (President) vs. local representation Congress
normative aspects of Presidential power
Congressional vs. Presidential powers
“the two presidencies” (Wildavsky)
Neustadt, Presidential Power (cf. Machiavelli, The Prince)
“powers” vs. “power” of President
Government bureaus and agencies
Congressional delegation: bureaucratic rule-making
independent regulatory agencies
bureaucratic recruitment and tenure
patronage/spoils system
merit system/civil service reform
American liberal political culture (“liberal consensus”)
Tocqueville, Democracy in America
individualism
(individual) rights and liberties
equality of rights and opportunities (vs. results)
origins and maintainence
original settlement and conditions
political socialization
selective immigration
Survey research (polling): random sample / interview questionnnaire
Normative vs. empirical assessments of democratic citizenship
Constitutional consensus vs. policy dissensus
social divisions
vertical vs. horizontal economic divisions
reinforcing vs. crosscutting divisions
Elite vs. mass opinion
party identification (Dem., Ind., Rep.)
political ideology (liberal, moderate, conservative)
economic vs. social/cultural issues
(pure) liberals / populists / libertarians / (pure) conservatives
Participation and intensity of opinion
permissive public opinion
governing public opinion
polarized public opinion
intense minority (distributive / special interest politics)
majoritarian politics
factional (or interest group) politics
Interest groups
trade associations
single-issue groups
“group theory” of politics
Presidential selection
Electoral College: contingent procedure / 12th Amendment
transformation due to party system
pledged electors / popular election of electors / general ticket system
Presidential nominations:
congressional caucus
nominating convention
party-dominant system of nomination
presidential primaries
mixed system of nomination
candidate-dominant system of nomination
Historical American party systems
Partisan realignment
third/splinter parties
dealignment
party government vs. divided government
Whistling Past Dixie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Extension of suffrage (constitutional amendments, Voting Rights Act)
voter registration
voting turnout
Political parties and party competition
market model / jury model
Two-party vs. multi-party system
single-member districts (SMD) + plurality rule => two-party convergence
multi-member districts (MMD) + proportional representation => multi-party divergence
Weakness of American political parties
direct primary
[Items below the line break had not been covered in class as of 05/07/08]