Book Notes for Jan 29, 2009

Chapter 1 Vocabulary Politics: has the process by which a community selects rules and empowers them to make decisions, takes action to attain common goals, and reconciles conflicts within the community. Power: The capacity to influence or control the behavior of persons and institutions, wheater by persuassion or coercion Authority: Command of the obedience of society's members by a government Legitimacy: The exercise of political power in a community in a away that is voluntarily accepted by the members of that community Legitimate Authority: the legal and moral right of a government to rule over a specific population and control a specific territory, the term legitimacy usually implies a widely recognized claim of government authority and voluntary acceptance on the part of the population directly affected Order: in a political context, refers to an existing or desired arrangement of institutions based on certain principles, such as liberty, equality, prosperity, and security Community: Any association of individuals who share a common identity based on geography, ethical values, religious beliefs, or ethnic origins Government: the persons and institutions that make and enforce rules or laws for the larger community. Republic: A form of government in which sovereignty resides in the people of that country, rather then with the rules. The cast majority ofrepublics today are democratic or representative republics, meaning that the sovereignty power is exercised by elected representatives who are responsible to the citizens. State: In its sovereign form, an independent political administrative unit that successfully claims the allegiance of a given population, exercises a monopoly on the legitimate uses of coercive force, and controls the territory inhabited by the citizens of subjects Sovereignty: a government's capacity to assert supreme power successfully in a political state Country: As a political term, it refers loosely to a sovereign state and is roughly equivalent to "nation" or "nation-state" term of endearment. Nation: Often interchangeable with state or country, term actually denotes a specific people with a distinct language and culture or a major ethnic group. Nation-State: A geographically defined community administered by a government Multinational states: sovereign state that contains two or mores major ethnolinguistic group in the territories in controls, ex. india, nigeria, russia, china Stateless nations: people who are scattered over the territory of several states or dispersed widely and who have no autonomous, independent , or sovereign governing body of their own Justice: Fairness, the distribution of rewards and burdens in society in accordance with what is deserved. Methodology: the way scientist and scholars set about exploring, explaining, proving, or disproving propositions in different academic disciplines. Positivism: a philosophy of science, originated by Auguste Comte, that stresses observable, scientific facts as a sole basis of proof and truth; a skeptical views of ideas of beliefs based on religion or metaphysics. Normative approach: an approach to the study of politics that is based on examining fundamental and enduring questions Behaviorism: an approach to the study of politics that emphasizes fact-based evaluations of actions Number crunchers: a term frequently applied to researchers in the behavioral sciences who rely heavily on computer-based models and programs and use quantitative methods to analyze problems Political realism: the philosophy that power is the key variable in all political relationships and should be used pragmatically and prudently to advance the national interest. Loyal Opposition: The belief, which originated in England, that the out-of-power party has a responsibility to formulate alternative polices and programs, such a party is sometimes called the loyal opposition.