Wednesday, January 14, 2009

1/14 FIRST DAY OF COMP!

AP Comp Class format:

-WE will cover 6 countries
-NO QUIZZES
-Tests 65% of grade
-Government Country Questions 35%
-All notes will be given in lecture form
-Do not learn to rely on your book it is old and outdated

Comp Gov Overview:

The basic question is how do we compare governments?
& What kind of methods do we use to compare them?

Cause- change in one variable causes a change in another

Correlation two things seem to be correlated but correlation does not necessarily prove causation

In social science you cannot control the variables so the best you can do is compare and see how governments correlate

Politics the struggle in any group for power that will give a person/government the ability to make decisions for a larger group

Government- legitimate use of force w/y specified boundaries to control human behavior

State- the organization that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force on a territory.

The organization into state and countries so state becomes the power exercised over a state or territory through a set of public institutions.

Nation a psychological concept of an area of shared culture and history

Sovereignty states have power and can exercise decisions

There hasn't always been a system of states
Ancient Greece had city states
Now their are more pressures on governments to move on to super natural systems (Ex: European Union)

Regimes the set of rules and institutions that control access to and exercise of political power--- typically endures from gov to gov----found in constitutions so a regimes only changes when a Constitution changes

Constitutions define limits and obligations of government with respect to rights of citizens

When a government exercises state power the need to justify the use of that power arises so we use legitimacy to define it (the popularly accepted use of power by the government accepted at "right and proper" by the citizens)

If we find a system that is not legitimate a public will disagree and need a government to maintain order/ Public is less likely to comply with a illegitimate government.

Belief systems- may form foundation of claims to legitimacy -- if government is founded on a belief system that strengthens legitimacy it will have a positive impact on government control EX: Iran religious belief systems influenced by Islam are the basis of the government

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