PS120 Midterm #1 Study Guide Fall 2024 Essay Questions

PS120: Study Guide for Midterm #1 – Essay Questions Below are six essay questions. One of these six questions will be on the exam, so there will be no surprises. You should be in good shape as long as you are well prepared to answer each of these questions (including all of its parts!) in full. Note that I will make a random choice to determine which of these questions will appear on the exam, using a random number generator. In other words, you are making a big mistake if you think that you will be able to guess what my likely choice will be. Please remember that these are not “essay prompts” that invite you to indiscriminately spill information; they are essay questions to which you are to provide a well-developed answer, including a thesis statement and information that is relevant both to the question and the argument you are making. Also note that your TAs are not permitted to explicitly discuss these essay questions with you. You may ask them factual questions about the class materials, including materials that relate to these essay questions, but that is the extent to which they can be of assistance to you. (1) The medium-sized East-Central European country of Dozyorsk recently democratized. The country’s leadership is deliberating the new constitutional order and has invited you as an advisor. You are asked to outline the advantages of parliamentary and presidential systems with regard to accountability, clarity of responsibility, and efficiency. Where appropriate, reference Lijphart’s differentiation between majoritarian and consensus models of democracy. Conclude by making a clear recommendation to the leadership of Dozyorsk, including an explicit justification for the institutional choice you endorse. (2) In what ways do democracy and liberalism, and democratic and liberty (i.e., liberal) institutions, go hand in hand? Do you agree or disagree that one cannot exist without the other? (3) How are most laws made and passed in parliamentary systems? How does this process differ from presidential systems? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each process? (4) What are the key differences between communism, socialism, social democracy, and what we call “liberal” in the USA? (5) The country of Madisonia recently passed a series of far-reaching constitutional reforms. These reforms were enacted by a coalition government composed of all five major political parties, spanning the political spectrum from left to right. This broad coalition is a novelty in Madisonian politics, which has had governments consisting of two or three parties throughout its democratic history. However, the five-party coalition was necessary to achieve the legislative 1 majority required to change the constitution—two-thirds of members in Madisonia’s unicameral legislature. Among the most important changes is the gradual devolution of limited government power to the authorities of Madisonia’s three major regions – Dream Bay, Chillwaukee, and Eclair. This issue was among the most controversial, and the center-right Madisonian Conservative Union (MCU) was adamant, and ultimately successful, in blocking written constitutional guarantees of regional authority. The other parties grudgingly agreed to this, despite their initial insistence on constitutional guarantees, after the MCU had almost let the reform negotiations lapse over the insistence of the center-left Social Democratic Party of Madisonia (SPM) to create a constitutional court with the power of judicial review. In the end, the constitutional court plan was abandoned in exchange for the Conservatives’ concession to maintain the existing electoral system of proportional representation, to make Madisonia’s central bank independent, and to create a second chamber of parliament. On the basis of this description: • • • Discuss whether Madisonia, after the constitutional reforms, fits Lijphart’s majoritarian or consensus model of democracy, and how it deviates from either ideal type. Indicate if and how the constitutional reforms move Madisonia closer to the majoritarian or consensus model ideal type, compared to the pre-reform situation. Emphasize how each aspect of Madisonia’s post-reform political system realizes the majoritarian model’s objective of concentrating power in the hands of a bare majority or the consensus model’s goal to disperse power and maximize the size of the decisionmaking majority. (6) What is the “scientific method,” and how is it applied in comparative politics? Why is it difficult to study politics using the scientific method? Are there fundamental obstacles that will always limit what we can know? Is it worthwhile to try anyway? 2