Contemporary American Political Issues
Exam Bank
Course Introduction
This course examines the major political challenges and debates shaping the United States in the twenty-first century. Topics include the polarization of political parties, the influence of media and technology on public opinion, debates over civil rights and social policies, immigration reform, national security, economic inequality, and the role of the United States in global affairs. Through discussions, readings, and analysis of current events, students will develop a deeper understanding of the forces influencing American governance and the complexities involved in addressing contemporary political issues.
Recommended Textbook
The American Political System 2nd full Edition with policy chapters 2014 Election Update by Ken
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Introduction
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Q1) Which of the following is an example of free riding?
A) taking a free bus without paying
B) not paying off your car separately from others
C) writing a check instead of volunteering
D) not voting in an election
E) working in a humane society
Answer: D
Q2) What is the most accurate statement of the role of government in labor disputes?
A) The government dictates the terms of an agreement unilaterally.
B) The government provides a third party to enforce the agreement.
C) The government must be one of the parties in any dispute.
D) The government plays no role in labor disputes.
E) The government only provides monetary support in labor disputes.
Answer: B
Q3) What is the principal-agent problem? Identify a principal-agent relationship in government and discuss how an agent's actions may create difficulties or costs for the principal.Describe at least two ways that institutions can minimize the negative consequences of the principal-agent problem.
Answer: Answer will vary.
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Page 3
Chapter 2: the Constitution
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Q1) Which proposal made to the Constitutional Convention resolved the conflict between supporters of greater national power and advocates of greater state sovereignty?
A) Virginia Plan
B) New Jersey Plan
C) Connecticut Compromise
D) Three-fifths Compromise
E) Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
Answer: A
Q2) Which is NOT a major feature of the Constitution adopted by the Philadelphia Convention in 1787?
A) unitary executive
B) bicameral legislature
C) Bill of Rights
D) independent judiciary
E) enumerated powers
Answer: C
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Federalism
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Q1) The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,which regulates transportation,commercial interaction,and water management in both states,is an example of ____________________.
A) a federal task force
B) a special district
C) regional government
D) a business district
E) a Department of the Interior
Answer: C
Q2) Which of these systems shares power most between state and national units?
A) monarchy
B) unitary government
C) federalist government
D) anarchy
E) autarky
Answer: C
Q3) In what ways does federalism permit state governments to resolve problems of collective action? To what extent do some types of coordination problems still exist among the American states? What are their effects?
Answer: Answer will vary.
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Chapter 4: Civil Rights and Liberties
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Q1) Why are courts seen as an institution capable of protecting minority rights?
A) Courts have enforcement measures that require legislatures and executives to comply with their rulings.
B) The United States Congress gave the courts this jurisdiction through the Judiciary Act of 1789.
C) As a non-elected body, the Court is immune from electoral pressures.
D) The Court has historically been a better representative body for minorities than the other two bodies.
E) The Court is immune to a Presidential veto.
Q2) Identify and explain the three major standards of review that the Supreme Court uses to judge the constitutionality of state and federal laws that create classifications among citizens.What types of laws trigger review under each standard? Which standard imposes the most difficult burdens on the government defending a law? Why?
Q3) How does the American system of rights and liberties compare to those in other democratic countries? In what ways do Americans have more rights than citizens of other democracies? In what ways do Americans have fewer rights than citizens of other democratic countries?
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Chapter 5: Congress
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Q1) Identify two collective dilemmas faced by Congress.What institutions has Congress put in place to mitigate the negative consequences of these dilemmas? How do the institutions you identify help Congress as an institution overcome the problems that would be created by the uncoordinated activities of its members?
Q2) ____________________ rules allow no amendments while ____________________ rules allow specified amendments.
A) Open/closed
B) Closed/open
C) Open/restricted
D) Closed/restricted
E) Restricted/closed
Q3) What is the most limiting factor for the power of congressional party leaders?
A) size of the chamber
B) level of campaigning of representatives
C) coordination of fellow partisans
D) number of committees
E) number of parties in the electorate
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Chapter 6: the Presidency
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Q1) Which of these presidents was most influential in developing mass political parties as a tool of presidential power and electoral support?
A) Martin Van Buren
B) William Henry Harrison
C) John Tyler
D) James K. Polk
E) Zachary Taylor
Q2) Not voting due to long distances to travel to polling places and lack of interest,and depending on others to vote in a favored direction,is a form of
A) apathy
B) free riding
C) collective action
D) executive decision
E) common goods problem
Q3) What is the electoral college? How does it work? Why did the Founders assign responsibility for electing the president to the electoral college rather than to a direct national election? How does the electoral college influence the choice of president made by the American people?
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Page 8
Chapter 7: the Bureaucracy
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Q1) Which term describes money that the government provides to individuals or organizations to perform tasks in the public's interest?
A) contract
B) grant
C) work order
D) asset
E) certificate
Q2) The three settings for bureaucratic agencies within the executive branch are
A) government bureaucracy, as an independent agency, or as an executive office of the president
B) within a department, government corporation, or government bureaucracy
C) within a department, as an independent agency, or as a government corporation
D) as an executive office of the president, government corporation, or independent agency
E) within a government agency, as an executive office of the president, or independent agency
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Page 9
Chapter 8: the Judiciary
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Q1) United States Supreme Court Justices are ____________________ for ____________________.
A) elected; six-year terms
B) elected; four-year terms
C) elected; life (conditional on good behavior)
D) appointed; six-year terms
E) appointed; life (conditional on good behavior)
Q2) ____________________ cases involve the government prosecuting a person for a crime against society,while ____________________ cases involve one person suing another person for violating the civil code of conduct.
A) Civil; criminal
B) Criminal; civil
C) Criminal; social
D) Civil; social
E) Criminal; non-criminal
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Chapter 9: Public Opinion
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Q1) Anuk likes ice cream better than cake,and cake better than pie.Her comparative enjoyment of ice cream,cake,and pie is a/an ____________________.
A) attitude
B) orientation
C) opinion
D) evaluation
E) preference
Q2) The theory of affective intelligence distinguishes between people's dispositions to act in normal situations and how those dispositions can be interrupted when ____________________ comes into play.
A) money
B) power
C) political office
D) emotions
E) cognitions
Q3) Explain the concept of political socialization.How does the process of socialization influence the opinions a person expresses? What are three likely sources of political socialization for individuals raised in the United States?
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Chapter 10: Political Participation
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Q1) What does the inequality between the costs of voting and citizens' expected rewards from voting create?
A) problem of participation
B) paradox of voting
C) voters' dilemma
D) ballot burden
E) ballot fatigue
Q2) Which is a program that allows voters to mail in their ballots rather than appearing in person at a polling place?
A) voting by mail
B) straight ticket voting
C) proxy voting
D) correspondent elections
E) electoral college
Q3) Which are efforts made by organizations to facilitate or encourage voting?
A) voter mobilization
B) collective suffrage
C) electoral enrollment
D) voting suffrage
E) voter coordination
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Chapter 11: Interest Groups and Social Movements
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT an activity an interest group would undertake?
A) lobbying members of Congress
B) representing workers to their employers
C) influencing bureaucratic policies
D) nominating candidates for elected office
E) earning profits for shareholders
Q2) In Germany,the leaders of some labor unions and workers' rights organizations are designated by the government as official representatives of workers.Government officials meet exclusively with these representatives to discuss and formulate policies related to wages,benefits,and working conditions.This arrangement is indicative of
A) colonialism
B) pluralism
C) corporatism
D) populism
E) coalitionism
Q3) Compare and contrast American-style pluralism with European-style corporatism.How does each system deal with the problem of obtaining inputs from the public into the policy-making process? What are the benefits of each approach to governance? What are the costs to each system?
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Chapter 12: Political Parties
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Q1) Which of these is the best example of the three functions of political parties working together?
A) enforcement of a Supreme Court decision by Congress and the president
B) passing into law an organized agenda of partisan policies
C) building a greater number of contacts within government
D) organizing rallies to support prospective policies
E) party functions do not work together
Q2) The political parties have become more reliant on ____________________ organization(s)and less reliant on ____________________ organization(s)in the last forty years.
A) plutocratic/nationalistic
B) national/state
C) state/national
D) systemic/individual
E) horizontal/vertical
Q3) What is a political party? How is it different from an interest group? What are the major functions of parties in government,parties in the electorate,and parties as organizations? How do these three party roles relate to one another? What kind of oversight or organization ensures the effective integration of various components of American political parties?
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Chapter 13: Elections and Campaigns
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Q1) Compare and contrast initiatives and referendums.How are these two forms of direct democracy different? Who are the main agenda setters in each case? What effect does direct democracy have on policy? What are the main arguments for and against the utility of direct democracy?
Q2) The use of campaign ads like Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy" and Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" can best be described as ____________________.
A) free media
B) paid media
C) private media
D) online media
E) public media
Q3) Which is a primary election in which only voters registered with the party may participate?
A) open primary
B) free primary
C) closed primary
D) Australian primary
E) partisan primary
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Chapter 14: Mass Media and the Press
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Q1) A news organization that regularly includes criticisms of a president's policies in news coverage of the economy exhibits ____________________.
A) gatekeeping bias
B) elite bias
C) ideological bias
D) coverage bias
E) statement bias
Q2) Which term refers to a media organization's systematic tendency not to report a specific type of story?
A) gatekeeping bias
B) elite bias
C) ideological bias
D) coverage bias
E) statement bias
Q3) Identify and describe three hypotheses that explain why people choose particular outlets for political news.What assumptions about people's interest in politics or cognitive processes motivate these theories? What evidence supports or contradicts the predictions of these theories?
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Chapter 15: Economic Policy
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Q1) Which refers to the total amount of goods and services produced in a year within the borders of a country?
A) total national output
B) net national product
C) gross domestic product
D) gross national product
E) total domestic product
Q2) A tax is ____________________ if it places a greater financial burden on the wealthy.
A) regressive
B) inductive
C) plenary
D) plenipotentiary
E) progressive
Q3) Regulations in general are intended to ____________________.
A) protect consumers, workers, businesses, and investors
B) harm consumers, workers, businesses, and investors
C) protect consumers, while harming workers, businesses, and investors
D) protect consumers and workers, while harming businesses and investors
E) harm consumers and workers, while protecting businesses and investors
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Chapter 16: Social Policy
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Q1) Democrats and Republicans are most likely to agree that the government ____________________.
A) should ensure that citizens have equal access to resources
B) should ensure that citizens have equal opportunities to earn resources
C) should provide access to higher education
D) should lift benefits restrictions on welfare programs
E) should only approve universalistic social welfare policies
Q2) Aside from health care expenses,federal programs to aid the poor have never exceeded ____________________ of the federal budget.
A) 1 percent
B) 3 percent
C) 5 percent
D) 10 percent
E) 15 percent
Q3) Unlike the EITC,TANF payments ____________________.
A) are means-tested and made for a limited period of time
B) are made through tax credits for an extended period of time
C) are made through tax credits for a limited period of time
D) are made through cash transfers for an extended period of time
E) are made through cash transfers for a limited period of time
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Chapter 17: Foreign Policy
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Q1) Which term is associated with the observation that historically it has been very rare for democratic countries to fight wars against one another?
A) Democratic Peace
B) Pax Americana
C) New World Order
D) neorealism
E) democratization
Q2) Which is a philosophy of international politics based on the assumption that countries have common interests and that they can cooperate effectively?
A) conservatism
B) idealism
C) confrontationalism
D) isolationism
E) realism
Q3) Compare and contrast realism and idealism.What are the important principles of each philosophy of international affairs? Which philosophy is more supportive of U.S.involvement in international organizations like the United Nations? Give an example of a political leader and a policy choice associated with each philosophy.
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