Chapter 1: What Is Politics? - Study Guide

 **1. What phenomena is politics inextricably linked to?** \(a) Power and manipulation **(b) Conflict and cooperation** \(c) Government and ordered rule \(d) Consensus and compromise **2. Who is considered to be the originator of the view that politics is associated with p...

 **1. What phenomena is politics inextricably linked to?** \(a) Power and manipulation **(b) Conflict and cooperation** \(c) Government and ordered rule \(d) Consensus and compromise **2. Who is considered to be the originator of the view that politics is associated with public affairs?** \(a) Lord Acton \(b) Plato \(c) Karl Marx **(d) Aristotle** **3. What approach, influential in the 1960s, attempted to provide politics with a scientific basis?** **(a) Behaviouralism** \(b) Positivism \(c) Traditional institutionalism \(d) Critical theory **4. Rational-choice approaches to the study of politics draw on which other discipline?** \(a) Sociology \(b) History **(c) Economics** \(d) Philosophy **5. The domestic/international divide in politics has been weakened due to the growth of what?** **(a) Spatial interdependence** \(b) Spatial independence \(c) A concern with questions about power \(d) The growth of state-centric thinking **6. Which of the following is *not* an approach to the study of politics associated with the conception of politics as an arena?** \(a) Behaviouralism \(b) Rational-choice theory **(c) Feminism** \(d) Institutionalism **7. How might the traditional view of the discipline of politics best be described?** **(a) That politics is that which concerns the state** \(b) That politics is that which concerns the market \(c) That politics that which concerns human interaction with the natural environment \(d) That politics is that which concerns all human behaviour **8. Who defined politics as the 'authoritative allocation of values'?** \(a) Plato \(b) Niccolo Machiavelli \(c) Joseph Schumpeter **(d) David Easton** **9. With what view of politics is Niccolo Machiavelli most closely associated?** \(a) The view that there is a general will to which politicians should be beholden **(b) The view that cunning, lying and manipulation are key political skills** \(c) The view that politics is about equitable and just distribution of resources \(d) The view that politics is the 'art of the possible' **10. Which of the following is *not* a characteristic tenet of a Feminist approach to the study of politics?** **(a) The study of politics should be concerned with only the 'public' and not the 'private'** \(b) The public sphere of life has traditionally been seen as the preserve of men who have therefore dominated it \(c) Women have traditionally be confined to the domestic, private sphere, which has limited their ability to participate in public life \(d) Gender inequality has been preserved by an assumption that differences between men and women are natural rather than political **11. Who described politics as 'that solution to the problem of order which chooses conciliation rather than violence and coercion'?** \(a) Otto von Bismarck **(b) Bernard Crick** \(c) Hannah Arendt \(d) John Rawls **12. Which of the following is *not* a critique of Crick's view of politics as consensus rather than conflict?** **(a) It is a positive view of politics which advocates collaboration and compromise.** \(b) It is biased towards particular forms of politics that take place in Western democracies \(c) It too closely equates politics solely with electoral choice and party competition \(d) It has little to say about one party states or military dictatorships **13. Which of the following is not one of three 'faces of power'?** \(a) Power a decision-making \(b) Power as agenda-setting \(c) Power as thought control **(d) Power as total submission** **14. Which approach to the study of politics views it, ultimately, as merely the means of organizing one class's domination of others?** **(a) Marxism** \(b) Behaviouralism \(c) Institutionalism \(d) Rational-choice theory **15. Which of the following is a definition of 'normative'?** \(a) External to the observer and untainted by feelings, values and biases \(b) Based on observation and experiment and derived from sensory data \(c) Distortion based on personal sympathies or prejudices **(d) A prescription of values and standards which defines what 'should be' rather than what 'is'** **16. Which of the following was not a proponent of rational-choice theory in the study of politics?** \(a) Mancur Olson \(b) Anthony Downs \(c) William Niskanen **(d) Michel Foucault** **17. Which of the following is *not* a critique of a rational-choice approach to political analysis?** \(a) It tends to overstate human rationality \(b) It ignores the fact that people seldom possess a clearly defined set of preferred goals **(c) It introduces greater scientific rigour into the discussion of political phenomena** \(d) It pays insufficient attention to social and historical factors which influence decision-making **18. Which of the following is *not* true of new institutionalism?** **(a) It has completely abandoned the core institutionalist belief that 'institutions matter' in politics** \(b) It has revised understandings of what constitutes an 'institution' \(c) It has reconceptualised institutions as sets of rules which guide or constrain behaviours, rather than as concrete objects \(d) It has revealed how rules governing institutions are as likely to be informal as formal **19. Which of the following is a definition of deconstruction?** \(a) A way of exploring political problems by explaining how one actor's choice affects the choices of another \(b) A method of constructing social theories only on the basis of observed behaviours \(c) A theory that all forms of enquiry should adhere to the norms of scientific investigation **(d) A close reading of texts with an eye to finding their assumptions, blindspots and contradictions** **20. Which of the following is an argument *against* the idea that students of politics should seek to be objective and politically neutral?** \(a) The study of politics is predicated on a desire to *explain*, and in seeking to make sense of things, personal preferences must be treated strictly as of secondary importance, if not irrelevant. \(b) Systematic enquiry and the pursuit of *objective* knowledge is only possible in the absence of value judgements, prejudice and biases \(c) Free floating intellectuals should be able to stand back from the world they observe in order to see it more clearly **(d) Few people are drawn to the study of politics for disinterested or purely intellectual reasons: knowledge is sought for a purpose which invariably has a normative component** **21. Which of the following statements does *not* pertain to a 'concept'?** \(a) It is more than a proper noun or the name of a thing \(b) It can be thought of as a principle or ideal type \(c) It provides a tool with which to think, criticise, argue or explain **(d) Its proper meaning is always easily agreed and widely shared** **22. What is a 'paradigm'?** \(a) A concept about which there is such deep controversy that it has no settled or neutral definition \(b) A theoretical representation of empirical data **(c) The framework within which the search for knowledge is conducted** \(d) A systematic explanation of empirical data **23. Which of the following is an argument *for* the idea that Politics and IR are best thought of as one discipline rather than as two?** \(a) Political Science and IR emerged independently from one another, with the latter mainly concerned with the pursuit of lasting peace between nations rather than with politics more widely. \(b) Politics and IR constitute separate fields of knowledge: one is concerned more with the 'domestic' and the other with the 'international' \(c) Each discipline has its own distinctive analytical tools and theoretical perspectives **(d) Politics and IR ask very similar and overlapping questions about different but always related spheres of political interaction.** **24. Who championed the use of 'ideal types' in constructing models and theories in the social and political sciences?** \(a) Karl Marx \(b) Karl Popper **(c) Max Weber** \(d) Maurice Halbwachs **25. Which of the following is *not* a reason that it is difficult to construct theories that are purely empirical?** \(a) All conceptual devices contain hidden values or implicit assumptions **(b) Techniques for measuring opinions or behaviours have become more accurate over time** \(c) Concepts such as 'democracy' or 'ideology' are often value-laden or imbued with negative or positive connotations d\. Models and theories are loaded and contain a range of biases