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A candidate that is running for reelection. It is beneficial to be an incumbent because voters already know your name and your time in office serves as a major campaigninf device. As long as you do a good job in office the public will trust you rather than somebody they know nothing about.
Significance: Incumbents usually have the upper hand |
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A system in which newly elected officeholders award government jobs to their political supporters and members of the same political party.
Significance: Incompetence and corruption can come into play with the spoils system, can be destructive to fair politics. |
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US FCC regulation that assures free and equal coverage of different parties and different points of view on controversial issues (equal access to airwaves). The doctrine has since been withdrawn by the FCC and certain aspects of the doctrine had been questioned by the courts.
Significance: Was thought to have been an equalizer but was ended because it was thought to be limiting the breadth of public debate. |
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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. By use of outsider tactics the interest groups convince politicians to act as the group desires by altering political forces. As opposed to insider tactics, outsider tactics do not require any personal contact with politicians and may take the form of implicit or explicit threats rather than offers of reciprocally helpful exchanges.
Significance: Reports, news conferences, and demonstrations (forms of outsider tactics) aimed at putting issues ont he agenda and compelling government officials to do something about them depend on media attention. Outsider tactics can be very convincing for politicians because they are usually in the public eye. |
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| *Unanimous Consent Agreement |
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A unanimous resolution in the Senate restricting debate and limiting amendments to bills on the floor. May govern the order in which bills are considered and the length of debate allotted to them.
Significance: Because so much of the Senate's business is conducted under these sorts of agreements (negotiated by paprty leaders), minority party has greater influence in the senate than in the house. |
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The amount of information a communication technology can economically deliver to its audience. The more restricted a medium's carrying capacity, the more selective it must be in the kinds of information it offers. Newspapers have much higher carrying capacities than do television programs.
Significance: Organizes hierarchy of mediums with best journalistic value. Shows how by devoting more or less coverage to a news story, editors can sometimes influence public opinion. |
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Presidents "go public" when they engage in intensive public relations to promote their policies to the voters and thereby induce cooperation from other elected officeholders in Washington. This is a strategy at the presidents' disposal when dealing with a divided government. If presidents can win the public's backing for themselves and their policies, opponents or indifferents in Congress may fear voters' reprisals in the next election.
Significance: If president succeeds in going public (rallying public support for their policies) they may force the accomodation of a Congress otherwise indifferent or opposed to the president's ideas. |
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Also known as "getting out the vote". Mobilization occurs when activists working for parties, candidates, or interest groups ask members of the electorate to vote. Mobilization gets people out to vote but has declined recently becaues candidates are turning away from door-to-door campaigns and turning to television and mailings.
Significance: Fewer people are voting now in part because fewer people are being mobilized/asked to vote by neighborhood activists. Mobilization can affect elections based on WHO is mobilized and who goes out to vote for certain candidates, parties, etc. |
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A government is divided when one political party controls the executive branch and the other political party controls one or both houses of the legislature.
Significance: This often results in policy gridlock because neither side is willing to compromise, so government accomplishes little and may even come to a halt. Can also be seen as a good thing because it allows each party to block the other's more extreme proposals and forces both parties to compromise when making policy. |
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The category of people or groups served by a bureaucratic agency. This speaks to the departments (ex: department of agriculture, labor, commerce) or agencies which are established especially to serve a particular clientele.
Significance: Clienteles are represented by interest groups, which lobby intensely on their behalf. In granting the wishes of the clientele and supporting department budgets, members of Congress are thus able to claim credit for the continuing flow of benefits provided to constituents. |
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| * Necessary and Proper Clause |
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This clause grants Congress the right to institute all laws deemed necessary and proper and to execute those laws. Also known as the elastic clause because it stretched the powers of congress.
Significance: Gives greater power to congress, power to create legislation more freely. |
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Excessive paperwork leading to bureaucratic delay. Red tape is a result of senior officials placement of their desire to monitor agents ahead of the efficiency of the system. The term originated in the seventeenth century, when English legal and governmental docments were bound with red-colored tape.
Significance: Red tape (layers of paperwork, demand for strict adherence to form, labyrthine procedures) make bureaucracies legendary for their complex arrangements. |
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The President's right to withhold information from Congress and the courts. Presidents assert that executive privilege, nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, is necessary to maintain separation of powers among the branches of government. Executive privilege is defined narrowly by early presidents: only valid when secrecy would serve the national interested.
Significance: Can be thought of as a good thing in maintaining separate balance of powers however if exploited (as in Nixon's attempt to cover-up the Watergate scandal) it can be overused and lead to executive corruption. |
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The act of voting for candidates from different political parties for different offices. Ex: Voting for a Republican for president and a Democrat for senator.
Significance: Made possible by the establishment of the "Australian ballot" which lists candidates from all parties and is marked in the privacy of a voting booth. Before this form of the secret ballot voters could not vote a split ticket because each party had their own ballot. |
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Acitivities through which individuals, interest groups, and other institutions seek to influence public policy by persuading government officials to support their groups' position.
Significance: the lobbying of interest groups is controversial because although it is an essential component of modern democratic policy, it is also a continual source of problems for democracy. The American political system could not function without the endlessly busy work of organized interests and their representatives trying to sway policy in their favor, yet interest groups and their lobbying are constantly under attack as threats to democracy itself. (buying support of politicians) |
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Drawing legislative district lines in such a way as to give one political party a disproportionately large share of seats for the share of votes its candidates win (to gain an electoral advantage for one side). For example: packing all of the republicans into one district to win that district (even though democrats win all surrounding districts), or disperse republican vote throughout districts so they never have a majority. Supreme Court holds that a gerrymander is unconstitutional if it is too strongly biased against a party's candidates (vague standard).
Significance: Gerrymandering can distort electoral outcome and is still a point of disagreement as its constitutionality has been challenged in court more than once. |
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| Iron Triangles/ Issue Networks |
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Definition
A stable mutually beneficial relationship between members of a congressional committee, bureaucratic administrative agency, and interests groups that are concerned with a particular policy domain.
Significance: Politics of program administration give agency staff, members of Congress, and organized interest groups powerful incentives to form mutually beneficial alliances to manage policy in their areas of specialization. When successful, these narrowly focused subgovernments control policy in their domains, out of sight or oversight of the full Congress, the president, and the public at large. Iron triangles can prove extremely powerful. Alliance members enjoy concentrated benefits: projects benefiting interest groups, budgets and programs for administrators, and electoral support for congressional sponsors from grateful beneficiaries. |
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Voters who base their votes on candidates or parties' positions on one particular issue of public policy, regardless of the candidates or parties' positions on other issues. (ec: gun control, environmental protection)
Significance: The times can determine which issues become most important to voters and can affect single-issue voters, especially if a lot of voters only care about changing/endorsing ONE area of public policy over all others. The prevalence of single-issue voters and what they are voting for can therefore represent the hottest issues of the time. (abortion, etc) |
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Policy announced by the president in order to test public opinion and floated either by members of Congress or the media. (leaking of a policy idea to the press to gauge public support)
Significance: safe way to test public support before the legislation is cemented. Allows president to gauge the political breezes before committing to a course of action. |
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