Comparative Summer Assignment

7197 Words29 Pages
[TEACHER] | Summer Reading Assignment | AP Comparative Government & Politics | | Olivia Hu | Due September | *Completion of this assignment does not guarantee placement in this course for the school year. | CHAPTER 1- ISSUES IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS: pages 1-29 1. Define: a. political systems Political systems are where political decisions have power. “Political decisions always take place within some community that we may call a political system.” (1) b. governments “Governments are organizations of individuals who are legally empowered to make binding decisions on behalf of a particular community.” (2) c. night watchman state The night watchman state model of government is characteristic of nineteenth century western governments. Such governments provided for basic law and order, defense, and protection of property rights (and gradually, education). (2) d. welfare state The welfare state has various welfare programs (e.g. “unemployment benefits, accident and sickness insurance, old age pensions, public education …” (2)). This type of state started with Otto von Bismarck’s gov’t in the 1880s. Their policies vary from country to country. e. regulatory state The regulatory state regulates sectors of society, including economic factors – savings, investment, inflation, and employment. They developed alongside welfare states, and have come to be criticized. (3) f. State of Nature Ideal state of society, ideal social contract; philosophically, the state that would exist without any government – or the state of society that existed before the first governments had formed (3) 2. How do the private and public spheres influence politics? Private spheres oughtn’t to influence politics much at all, though there is some crossover. Politics “has directly to do only with those decisions that are
Open Document