Government and Public Policy
Chapter Exam Questions
Course Introduction
Government and Public Policy explores the foundations, structures, and processes of governments and the formulation, implementation, and impact of public policies. The course examines how political institutions, actors, and environmental factors influence policy decisions at local, national, and international levels. Key topics include policy analysis, the role of public opinion, bureaucracy, interest groups, and the challenges associated with policy design and evaluation. Through case studies and theoretical frameworks, students gain insights into tackling real-world problems, promoting effective governance, and understanding the relationship between government actions and societal outcomes.
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American Government Institutions and Policies 14th Edition by James Q. Wilson
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Page 2
Chapter 1: The Study of American Government
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Q1) When the Framers of the Constitution wrote "republican form of government," they were referring to
A) direct democracy.
B) democratic centralism.
C) mob rule.
D) town meetings.
E) representative democracy.
Answer: E
Q2) Individuals have power when they are able to
A) get elected to office.
B) be present at behind-the-scenes political meetings.
C) serve their fellow human beings.
D) get others to do what they want them to do.
E) vote without being influenced by outside forces.
Answer: D
Q3) Marx argued that governments were basically dominated by business owners.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Page 3
Chapter 2: The Constitution
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Q1) This delegate to the Constitutional Convention presented the Virginia Plan but refused to sign the final document approved on September 17, 1787.
A) James Madison
B) Alexander Hamilton
C) Roger Sherman
D) Edmund Randolph
E) William Patterson
Answer: D
Q2) Which statement most accurately summarizes the aftermath of the American Revolution?
A) Many cities were in ruins, many farmers owned large debts, and the British were still a powerful presence.
B) The economy was gaining in strength and the British military had left North America.
C) Cities had strong economies, and the currency was strong.
D) Taxes were low, and the currency was sound.
E) Spain and Britain were no longer relevant on the North American continent.
Answer: A
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Federalism
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Q1) The wording of the U.S. Constitution regarding the federal government's right to make laws is purposely vague and elastic.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) During the 1960s, federal grants to states were increasingly based on
A) the demands of the individual states.
B) what state officials perceived to be important state needs.
C) the power of organized interest groups.
D) what federal officials perceived to be national needs.
E) the demands of coalitions of states.
Answer: D
Q3) In a confederation, the national government derives its power from A) the people.
B) the states.
C) the Congress.
D) the courts.
E) None of the above is True.
Answer: B
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Page 5
Chapter 4: American Political Culture
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Q1) Americans are more willing to tolerate __________ than __________.
A) economic inequality; political inequality
B) freedom of speech; freedom of religion
C) economic liberty; political liberty
D) social inequality; economic inequality
E) civil liberties; civil rights
Q2) Discuss Max Weber's "Protestant ethic" and its influence on American political culture.
Q3) Alan Abramowitz suggests that the culture war might be more real than imagined because people are increasingly choosing their party affiliation on the basis of A) issues.
B) income.
C) competition.
D) social background characteristics.
E) advertising.
Q4) Compare and contrast political culture in America and in Japan.
Q5) Identify and define the two sides in the so-called "culture war." Then, explains Morris Fiorina's viewpoint on red states and blue states in this nation.
Q6) Discuss the four sources of American political culture mentioned in the text.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Civil Liberties
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Q1) Writing for the Supreme Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes proclaimed that the Congress could punish dangerous speech when that speech
A) represented a "clear and present danger" to the United States.
B) incited citizens to commit a lawless action.
C) was False.
D) Options A, B, C, and D are True.
E) None of the above is True.
Q2) The right of free expression, although not absolute, enjoys a higher status than the other rights granted by the U.S. Constitution. This is known as the doctrine of
A) prior restraint.
B) existential priority.
C) neutrality and clarity.
D) least means.
E) preferred position.
Q3) Originally, the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Discuss five key provisions of the USA Patriot Act.
Q5) Discuss how the Supreme Court has ruled on the issue of obscenity.
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Chapter 6: Civil Rights
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Q1) Drawing on rulings by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, the Supreme Court has tried to define sexual harassment by ruling that
A) it is illegal for someone to request sexual favors as a condition of employment or promotion and it is illegal for an employee to experience a work environment that has been made hostile or intimidating by a pattern of offensive sexual teasing, jokes, or obscenity.
B) an employer is not liable if he or she does not know that a subordinate has requested sex in exchange for hiring or promotion.
C) a work environment is not deemed hostile or intimidating by a steady pattern of offensive sexual teasing, jokes, or obscenity.
D) employers are "strictly liable" for a hostile or intimidating work environment even if they did not know about the situation and did nothing about it.
E) sexual harassment claims cannot be made in the absence of at least three witnesses.
Q2) Summarize the Court's decision in Swann and discuss how this ruling has guided subsequent integration cases.
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Chapter 7: Public Opinion
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Q1) Compared with European countries such as Great Britain, France, and Germany, class voting in the United States has
A) also risen sharply.
B) remained relatively steady.
C) also declined sharply.
D) always been more common.
E) increased slightly.
Q2) Discuss what early and later studies of public opinion and voting revealed about the American public. Have the studies on specific issues identified a pattern?
Q3) U.S. Senators were not popularly elected until the __________ Amendment.
A) Fourteenth
B) Tenth
C) Sixteenth
D) Seventeenth
E) Nineteenth
Q4) The Democratic advantage among female voters is obvious.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Describe how polls are conducted.
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Chapter 8: Political Participation
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Q1) VEP measures of turnout might be preferable to VAP measures because they
A) usually render a lower, more conservative, estimate.
B) round fractions up to the nearest tenth.
C) are derived from representative samples in telephone interviews.
D) are based on census data.
E) remove ineligible voters from the equation.
Q2) The steady decline in U.S. voter turnout appears to be the unintentional result of A) strict voter-registration procedures.
B) the poll tax.
C) the fraudulent reporting of election results.
D) literacy testing.
E) media campaigns.
Q3) The most common form of political participation is A) voting.
B) contributing money.
C) writing letters to newspapers.
D) attending political rallies.
E) joining political organizations.
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Page 10
Chapter 9: Political Parties
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Questions
Q1) The supporters of Thomas Jefferson called themselves Federalists, and the supporters of Alexander Hamilton referred to themselves as Republicans.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The term superdelegate refers to
A) elected officials and party leaders who are not required to pledge themselves in advance to a presidential candidate.
B) delegates representing special-interest caucuses, such as those organized to represent blacks or homosexuals.
C) delegates at large who are chosen by a vote of the national party leadership.
D) delegates chosen by primary elections and grassroots caucuses.
E) delegates who received more than 80 percent of the vote necessary to achieve their status.
Q3)
The modern Republican Party
A) was founded by Thomas Jefferson to oppose the policies of Alexander Hamilton.
B) was originally called the Antifederalist party.
C) emerged as a major party only after the Civil War.
D) emerged around 1824 with Andrew Jackson's first run for the presidency.
E) was founded in the South.
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Page 11
Chapter 10: Elections and Campaigns
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Q1) Which type of voting requires a lot of information about candidates and issues?
A) Issueless voting
B) Ideological voting
C) Prospective voting
D) Retrospective voting
E) Sociotropic voting
Q2) The apportionment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives is detailed in
A) Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
B) Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
C) Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.
D) Article I, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution.
E) Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution.
Q3) __________ issues have increased in importance in campaigns over the last half-century.
A) Valence
B) Primary
C) Secondary
D) Position
E) Residual
Q4) Identify and explain four types of primary elections.
Page 12
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Chapter 11: Interest Groups
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Q1) What new regulations were applied to lobbyists as of March 2007?
Q2) Which is NOT an example of an interest group?
A) Chamber of Commerce
B) National Association of Manufacturers
C) American Medical Association
D) Green Party
E) Urban League
Q3) In practice, the reforms of Democrats have allowed reimbursements for travel by lobbyists if
A) the travel consists of one-day trips.
B) the lobbyists do not initiate the trip.
C) the lobbyists do not make the reservations.
D) the lobbyists do not pick up incidental expenses unrelated to the visit.
E) All of the above are True.
Q4) The peak of the labor union movement in the United States occurred in the year
A) 1923.
B) 1932.
C) 1945.
D) 1956.
E) 1978.
Page 13
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Chapter 12: The Media
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Q1) In general, what position has the Supreme Court taken on the government's right to compel reporters to divulge information concerning the commission of a crime?
A) It has ruled against it.
B) It has upheld it.
C) It has avoided ruling on it.
D) It has yet to rule on it.
E) It has ruled in a contradictory manner.
Q2) Which types of news stories cover events that a reporter seeks out because they are not covered by the press?
A) Blockbuster
B) Insider
C) Feature
D) Routine
E) Trade
Q3) There has been a decline in the numbers of daily newspapers that serve large communities.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Identify and explain the three roles that the media play.
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Chapter 13: Congress
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Q1) All measures dealing with taxes or appropriations must originate in the Senate.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Many experts see Congress as the "broken branch."
A)True
B)False
Q3) The "Blue Dog" Caucus consists of Democrats who happen to be
A) extremely liberal.
B) moderately conservative.
C) from the Southeastern United States.
D) from districts that feature coastal waterways.
E) senior to most of the members in their region.
Q4) Congressional power is exercised primarily by committee chairs.
A)True
B)False
Q5) There are 535 members in Congress.
A)True
B)False
Q6) Identify the six distinct stages in the history of the House of Representatives.
Q7) Describe the various ways that members of Congress cast their votes.
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Chapter 14: The Presidency
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Q1) The text asks: "Does gridlock matter?" Summarize the discussion on this topic.
Q2) The popularly elected president is
A) an American invention, and our nation is one of a few democracies that have elected presidents.
B) common in European democracies.
C) a key feature of a parliamentarian system.
D) a powerful figure in the Japanese government.
E) the same as a prime minister.
Q3) More than twenty-five hundred presidential vetoes have been made since 1789. Congress has overridden approximately what percentage of these?
A) 4 percent
B) 25 percent
C) 38 percent
D) 45 percent
E) 86 percent
Q4) When Bill Clinton was sworn in as president, many commentators spoke approvingly of the "end of gridlock."
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 15: The Bureaucracy
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Q1) Among the pathologies commonly attributed to bureaucracies are all of the following except
A) conflict.
B) synergism.
C) duplication.
D) imperialism.
E) waste.
Q2) To reduce waste in government, one will probably have to increase
A) synergism
B) duplication
C) taxes
D) imperialism
E) red tape
Q3) One bureaucratic pathology described by the text is imperialism, meaning the tendency of agencies to
A) work at cross purposes with one another.
B) spend more than is necessary to buy some product or service.
C) grow, irrespective of the benefits and costs of their programs.
D) generate complex and sometimes conflicting rules.
E) complicate matters that are better left to commonsense solutions.
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Chapter 16: The Judiciary
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Q1) One basic difference between a constitutional court and a legislative court is that A) constitutional court judges handle cases that need not be decided by the Supreme Court.
B) constitutional court judges cannot be fired.
C) legislative court judges handle cases that need not be decided by the Supreme Court.
D) legislative court judges cannot be fired.
E) legislative court judges are not confirmed by the Senate.
Q2) Today, most cases make their way to the Supreme Court when at least four justices agree to hear a case, and a writ of certiorari is issued.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Write an essay in which you discuss the ways that Congress can check the judiciary.
Q4) Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Sandra Day O'Connor are the only current female Supreme Court justices.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 17: Domestic Policy
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Q1) This president created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
A) John Kennedy
B) Lyndon Johnson
C) Richard Nixon
D) Jimmy Carter
E) Harry Truman
Q2) Environmental issues are receiving less support today than in the past.
A)True
B)False
Q3) In this decision, the Supreme Court ruled that states should comply with EPA decisions, even if not explicitly authorized by statute, provided they are reasonable efforts to attain the goal of law.
A) Union Electric Co. v. Environmental Protection Agency
B) Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council
C) Whitman v. American Truck Association
D) Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency
E) Gibbons v. Ogden
Q4) Discuss the unique features of U.S. environmental politics and how these features shape environmental policy.
Q5) Explain how public opinion changed and AFDC lost its legitimacy.
Page 19
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Chapter 18: Economic Policy
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Q1) When voting behavior and economic conditions correlate at the national but not at the individual level, it can be said that the voters are
A) heliocentric, or earth conscious.
B) sociopathic, or self-absorbed.
C) homeopathic, or group related.
D) socialistic, or ideology driven.
E) sociotropic, or other-regarding.
Q2) Lower income earners tend to vote Democratic.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The executive agency in charge of economic forecasting and preparing the president's annual economic report to Congress is the
A) Council of Economic Advisers.
B) Treasury Department.
C) Office of Management and Budget.
D) Federal Reserve Board (Fed).
E) National Security Agency.
Q4) What tools does the Fed use to implement its monetary policy?
Q5) What are the arguments in favor of and against globalization?
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Chapter 19: Foreign and Military Policy
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Q1) The War Powers Act mandates that within 60 days of the president ordering troops into hostile situations, the Congress must authorize the use of military force.
A)True
B)False
Q2) This president sent the U.S. navy to fight the Barbary Pirates.
A) George Washington
B) Thomas Jefferson
C) George W. Bush
D) Andrew Jackson
E) Abraham Lincoln
Q3) The National Security Act of 1947 created the Department of Defense.
A)True
B)False
Q4) In a typical survey, who is more likely to support the use of military force?
A) Germans
B) the French
C) Russians
D) Italians
E) Americans
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Chapter 20: American Democracy, Then and Now
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Q1) The rapid increase in the number and variety of interest groups and their enlarged role in government are
A) an unintended consequence of federalism.
B) a rational response to the fact that elected officials can tend to only a few things.
C) the inevitable result of a two-party system.
D) the primary cause of increased voter turnout.
E) the primary cause of divided government.
Q2) By 2009, the federal government had become the majority stockholder in what was once the world's largest __________ company.
A) Steel
B) Railroad
C) Automotive
D) Telephone
E) Internet
Q3) Identify the areas that the Founders probably felt were to be limits of federal government.
Q4) Compare the presidency in the New System with the institution in the Old System.
Q5) Describe some of the primary features of the Old System of American politics.
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