PSCI 1100 - Midterm 1 Exam Questions
With Correct Answers.
Politics - answer✔✔- process of making collective decisions despite different preferences
- Significant because each party's success in finding a solution requires the cooperation of others
looking to solve a different problem
Government - answer✔✔- consists of institutions and legally determined process for making and
enforcing collective agreements.
- Governments are significant because they are necessary in solving collective action problems
Institutions - answer✔✔- bodies established by the constitution that follow a set of rules to reach
and enforce collective agreements
- Significant because institutions may confer advantages on some interests over others
- Tend to be stable and resist change because they persist well beyond the tenure of the
individuals who occupy them
- are necessary in solving collective action problems
Collective Action Problem - answer✔✔- difficulty coming to a consensus on an issue
- When successful, entails compromise
Coordination Problem - answer✔✔- difficulty organizing and executing a solution to a problem
- becomes more of a problem with more people
Prisoner's dilemma - answer✔✔- individuals have an incentive not to participate in collective
action because the collective goal and your individual goal are in conflict
- Significant because it makes governments provide incentives to individuals to act with the
collective
Free Rider Problem - answer✔✔- a form of prisoner's dilemma that afflicts large groups when
they perceive their contribution to be small and inconsequential so they will defect on their
obligation but enjoy the collective benefit
- If collective effort is to succeed, it must provide potential participants of free riding with
persuasion to not do so
tragedy of the commons - answer✔✔- a form of the prisoner's dilemma where individuals
costlessly consume resources leading to its destruction
- Institutional design must link individual's personal preference to provision of the collective
good to avoid this
- Regulation: setting up rules limiting access to the common resource and monitoring and
penalizing those who violate them
- Privatization: converting a collective good to a private good
- Ex. Overfishing, deforestation of the amazon
transaction costs - answer✔✔- time, effort, and resources required to make collective decisions
- Pose barriers to political agreements
- Rise as number of participants whose preferences must be taken into account increases
conformity costs - answer✔✔- the extent that collective action obligates participants to do
something they normally wouldn't do
- Institutions must be designed to try and please as many people as possible
private v. public goods - answer✔✔- Private: things people buy and consume themselves in a
marketplace that supplies them according to demand
- Public: goods that cannot be denied to one
- Public goods' costs are borne collectively and no one can be excluded from their benefits
articles of confederation - answer✔✔- America's First Constitution ratified in 1781
- Created a confederation: a highly decentralized system in which the national government
derives limited authority from the states rather than directly from citizens
- Formed a congress in which each state had one vote
- Major laws required 9/13 state votes
- Fundamental changes (direct taxation) required unanimous agreement to amend the constitution
- National Authority was highly restricted, states held A LOT of power
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