Government Terms

1. “closed-ended/open ended” questions – Closed-ended - Yes/no question; open ended – question that can’t be answered with yes/no. Used in surveys.

2. 501c3 - Various charitable, non-profit, religious, scientific and educational organization groups that can’t engage in political activity, but can engage in some voter registration. (501c refers to the IRS tax code).

3. 527 – A type of American tax-exempt organization. Created primarily to influence the nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates for public office. Concerning tax-exempt organization, allows political activity with unlimited soft money, tries to influence elections through voter mobilization efforts or “issue ads,” requires reporting contributions and expenditures to the IRS unless they already file identical information at the state or local level.

4. Agenda setting – influencing what people consider important.

5. Agents of socialization – Family (affects children’s views about religion, politics, etc). School (affects students’ views by conveying lessons about American identity and patriotism). Pop culture (movies, music). College education. Generational effect (Major events that affect the country). Jobs. News media. Marital status. Retirement.

6. American and attention span (soundbites) – Amount of time a person can concentrate on a single activity. As time passed by, the average attention span decreased. (1968-43.1 sec; 1972-25.2 sec; 1976-18.2 sec; 1980-12.2 sec; 1984-9.9 sec.

7. Aspects of social movements – Abolition, populist, women’s suffrage, labor, peace, civil rights, anti-Vietnam, environmental, gay/lesbian, religious.

8. Beat – The assigned location where a reporter regularly gathers news stories

9. Bundling - Common practice for grassroots; practice through which multiple individual contributions from a single industry or interest group are delivered to a candidate over a relatively short period of time.

10. Candidate centered campaigning - as party identification becomes weaker, candidates are forced to invest more time and money in building/maintaining their base of political support themselves instead of relying on party identification to gain them votes.

11. Catalytic events (social movements) – Same as #86?

12. Checkbook membership – After becoming a member of a group, the act of doing little more than paying the membership fees.

13. Civil disobedience – Intentionally breaking a law and accepting the consequences as a way to publicize the unjustness of the law

14. Collective public opinion – The political attitudes of the public as a whole, expressed as averages, percentages, or other summaries of many individuals’ opinions

15. Communications act of 1934 – Replaced the Federal Radio Commission with the Federal Communications Commission; got the government to license radio/TV stations and require them to observe certain rules as a condition for obtaining licenses.

16. Core beliefs – Individual’s views about the fundamental nature of human beings, society, and economy; taken together, they comprise the political culture

17. Corporate ownership of media – Some news media are owned by businesses. Some critics say that the corporate control of the media negatively creates a strong business presence in American politics, less diversity of news and opinion, and bias towards events that are related to their own company.

18. Disturbance theory – A theory that locates the origins of interest groups in changes in the economic, social, or political environment that threaten the well-being of some segment of the population

19. Earmarking – Practice of appropriating money for specific projects of members of Congress

20. Efficacy - Citizens' faith and trust in government that an individual can affect political affairs. Commonly measured by surveys. Increases with age and educational level. Correlated with participation in social and political life.

21. Equal time provision – The former requirement that television stations give or sell the same amount of time to all competing candidates

22. Factions – Madison’s term for groups or parties that try to advance their own interests at the expense of the public good

23. Fairness doctrine – The former requirement that TV stations present contrasting p.o.v

24. Federalist 10 - By James Madison, says how to guard against factions, special interest groups,