Latin:Vergil*

• Constitutional Underpinnings of United States Government (5-15%)
  • Considerations that influenced the formulation and adoption of the Constitution
  • Separation of powers
  • Federalism
  • Theories of democratic government

   

• Political beliefs and behaviors of individuals (10-20%)
  • Beliefs that citizens hold about their government and its leaders
  • Processes by which citizens learn about politics
  • The nature, sources, and consequences of public opinion
  • The ways in which citizens vote and otherwise participate in political life
  • Factors that influence citizens to differ from one another in terms of political beliefs and behaviors

   

• Political parties, interest groups, and mass media: mechanisms that facilitate the communication of interests and preferences by like-minded citizens (10-20%)
  • Political parties and elections (including their functions, organization, historical development, and effects on the political process)
  • Interest groups (including pacs)
    1. The range of interests that are or are not represented
    2. The activities of interest groups
    3. The effects of interest groups on the political process
    4. The unique characteristics and roles of pacs in the political process
  • The mass media
    1. The functions and structures of the media
    2. The impacts of media on politics

     

• Institutions of National Government: The Congress, the presidency, the bureaucracy, and the federal courts (35-45%)
  • The major formal and informal institutional arrangements of powers
  • Relationships among these four institutions
  • Links between these institutions and political parties, interest groups, the media, subnational governments, and public opinion

   

• Public policy (5-15%)
  • Policy making in a federal system
  • The formation of policy agenda
  • The role of institutions in the enactment of policy
  • The role of the bureaucracy and the courts in policy implementation and interpretation
  • Linkages between policy processes and the following:
    1. Political institutions and federalism
    2. Political parties
    3. Interest groups
    4. Public opinion
    5. Elections
    6. Policy networks

     

• Civil liberties and civil rights (5-15%)
  • The development of civil liberties and civil rights by judicial interpretation
  • Knowledge of substantive rights and liberties
  • The impact of the Fourteenth Amendment on the constitutional development of rights and liberties

• The Source of Public Authority and Political Power (5-15%)
  • The nature and sources of governments' legitimacy (social compacts, constitutionalism, ideologies, and other claims to political legitimacy)
  • Historical evolution of national political traditions
  • Political culture and socialization: transmission of political values

   

• Society and Politics (5-15%)
  • Bases of social cleavages (class, ethnicity, language, religion, etc.)
  • Depth and persistence of such cleavages and the permeability of social boundaries
  • Political consequences of social cleavages
  • Translation of social cleavage into political conflict
  • Institutional expression of social cleavages (party systems and political elites)

   

• Citizen and State (5-15%)
  • Beliefs that citizens hold about their government and its leaders
  • Processes by which citizens learn about politics
  • The way in which citizens vote and otherwise participate in political life
  • The variety of factors that influence citizens to differ from one another in terms of their political beliefs and behaviors

   

• Political Framework (35-45%)
  • Types of regimes (communist, authoritarian, democratic, corporatist, etc.) and their constitutional frameworks
    1. Political and economic integration
    2. Relationship to domestic politics and laws
    3. International organizations and their impact on economic development
  • The scope of government activity (social and economic policy, planning, and control)
  • The institutions of national government (legislatures, executives, bureaucracies, and courts)
    1. The major formal and informal institutional arrangements and power
    2. Relations among these institutions
    3. Relations to subnational political units
  • Political parties and interest groups
    1. Their functions, organization, and development
    2. The range of interests that are or are not represented
    3. Links to institutions of government and effects on political process
  • Relations between institutions of national government and supranational organizations
    1. Political and economic integration
    2. Relationship to domestic politics and laws
    3. International organizations and their impact on economic development
  • Political leadership: recruitment and succession

   

• Polical Change (15-25%)
  • The internal and external sources of political change (e.g., industrialization, urbanization, economic crisis, international economy, foreign invasions, diffusion of new ideas and ideologies)
  • The nature of political change
    1. Regime continuity and change (revolutionary and evolutionary, violent and nonviolent change of regime)
    2. The changing basis of regime legitimacy
    3. The changing scope of governmental activity
  • Nationalism
    1. Nature of national identity and nationalism
    2. Impact on parties and domestic politics
    3. Relation to supranational movements
  • The consequences of political change (e.g., redistribution of land, change in ownership of means of production, circulation of elites, changing nature of citizen participation, changing party systems, the acquisition and/or loss of citizen rights)

   

• Introduction to Comparative Politics (5-10%)
  • Purpose and methods of comparison
  • Classifying governments and politics
  • Problems in cross-cultural analysis