AP Comparative Government Terms
Exam Questions and Answers (Key terms
to know before taking the AP
Comparative Government exam)
Authoritarian - -a government based on coercion rather than political
legitimacy, such as China
-Bicameral - -a legislative body with two houses; Nigeria, UK, Russia, and
Mexico all have bicameral legislatures
-Causation - -the casual relationship between cause and result, typically in
court, in such a case as an injury
-Charismatic Legitimacy - -legitimacy derived from the ideas and charisma
of a particular leader; these countries usually have week political and
administrative institutions; key examples are Mao Zedong in China and
Joseph Stalin in the former USSR
-Cleavages - -factors that separate groups within society such as culture,
history, geography, economy, and ethnicity
-Code Law - -legislation that tries to cover a complete system of laws such
as labor, education, or health and safety
-Coinciding Cleavages - -divisions which strengthen feelings of difference
and discrepancy, thus weakening the state
-Command Economy - -an economic or political system in which
government decisions determine resource use and output
-Common Law - -a system of law based on precedent and customs, such as
in the UK
-Conservatism - -political ideology that promotes the maintenance of
traditional institutions and supports minimal and gradual change in society
-Co-option - -to assimilate, take, or win over into a larger or established
group
-Corporatism - -a government dominated by representatives of groups
within society
, -Correlation - -a reciprocal relation between two or more things
-Country - -state, government, regime, and people within a political system
-Cross-Cutting Cleavage - -a division that includes people with differences
and therefore strengthens society (opposite of coinciding cleavages)
-Democratization - -the spread of representative government to more
countries and the process of making governments more representative
-Dependency Theory - -a model of economic and social development that
explains global inequality in terms of the historical exploitation of poor
nations by rich ones
-Developed Countries - -countries that have higher average incomes, slower
population growth, diverse industrial economies, and stronger social support
systems; has a higher consumption of natural resources
-Devolution - -a process in a unitary system of delegating some decision
making to local public bodies
-Developing Country - -countries with low standards of democratic
governments, industrialization, social programs, and human rights
guarantees
-Federalism - -a regime in which political authority is shared between a
central government and local governments
-First Past the Post - -(single-member districts--UK) an electoral system in
which voters choose an individual running for office in each legislative
district
-GDP - -the total market value of goods and services produced in a country
in one year; a tool for evaluating economic size
-GINI Index - -commonly used tool as a measurement of economic
inequality; equality = 0 and inequality = 100
-Globalization - -increasing interconnectedness and interdependence of
people, culture, and economies, and nation-states facilitated by technology,
trade, and cultural diffusion
-Government - -the part of the state with legitimate public authority; the
groups of people and organizations that hold political authority in any state
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