AP Government
Final Exam Study Guide
Supreme Court Cases:
1. McCulloch v Maryland
2. Gibbons v Ogden
3. US v Lopez
4. Seminole Tribe of Florida v Florida
5. Baron v Baltimore
6. Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad Company v Chicago
7. Gitlow v New York
8. Near v Minnesota
9. Hague v CIO
10. Map v Ohio
11. Gideon v Wainwright
12. Escobedo v Illinois
13. Malloy v Hogan
14. Benton v Maryland
15. Brown v Board of Education
16. Plessy v Ferguson
17. Miranda v Arizona
18. NAACP v Alabama
19. Griswold v Connecticut
20. Roe v Wade
21. Rosenberger v University of Virginia
22. Agostini v Felton
23. Planned Parenthood v Casey
24. Shelley v Kraemer
25. Missouri v Jenkins
26. Romer v Evans
27. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
28. United States v Nixon
29. Marbury v Madison
30. Loving v Virginia
31. Engel v Vitale
32. Baker v Carr
33. Shaw v Reno
34. Miller v Johnson
35. Buckley v Valeo
36. Webster v Reproductive Health Services
37. New York Times v US
38. Goldberg v Kelly
39. Cable News Network v Noriega
40. New York Times v Sullivan
41. Masson v New Yorker Magazine
Terms and Concepts:
1. Government
2. State
3. Autocracy
4. Democracy
5. Constitutional government
6. Authoritarian
7. Totalitarian
8. Anarchy
9. Politics
10. Collective action
11. By-product Theory
12. Selective benefits
13. Tragedy of the commons
14. Jurisdiction
15. Agenda power
16. Veto power
17. Principals
18. Transaction costs
19. Pork barrel legislation
20. Principal of path dependency
21. Political principles
22. Bicameral
23. Expressed powers
24. Necessary and proper clause
25. Judicial review
26. Supremacy clause
27. Checks and balances
28. Constitutionalism
29. Expressed powers
30. Implied powers
31. Reserved powers
32. Coercion
33. Full faith and credit clause
34. Compact
35. Home rule
36. Dual federalism
37. Commerce clause
38. Grants-in-aid
39. Unfunded mandates
40. Devolution
41. States rights
42. Sovereign immunity
43. Divided government
44. Executive privilege
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
Civil liberties
Substantive restraint
Procedural restraint
Civil rights
Judicial activism
Affirmative action
Gridlock
Term limits
The saucer that cools the tea
EMILY’s List
Incumbency
Franking privilege
Patronage
Earmark
Sophomore surge
Gerrymandering
Gate keeping authority
Caucus
Cloture
Distributive tendency
Council of Economic Advisors
Permanent campaign
Administrative adjudication
Freedom of Information Act
Administrative legislation
Fiscal policy
Monetary policy
Federal reserve system
Means-tested
Bureaucratic drift
Zero-base budgeting
National Performance Review
Privatization
Criminal law
Civil law
Precedents
Stare decisis
Public law
Trial court
Plea bargains
Jurisdiction
Writ of habeas corpus
Statutory interpretation
Common law
Restrictive covenant
Writ of certiorari
Per curiam
Amicus curiae
93. Brief
94. Judicial restraint
95. Judicial activism
96. Political values
97. Political socialization
98. Gender gap
99. Liberal
100.
Conservative
101.
Salient attitude
102.
Bandwagon effect
103.
Hidden action
104.
Moral hazard
105.
Consent approach
106.
Agency approach
107.
Personal registration
108.
Turn-out rate
109.
Fall-off rate
110.
Majority system
111.
Plurality system
112.
Proportional representation system
113.
Australian ballot
114.
Ticket splitting
115.
Referendum
116.
Initiative
117.
Recall
118.
Agenda-setting power
119.
Retrospective voting
120.
Prospective voting
121.
Median voter theorem
122.
PAC’s
123.
Soft money
124.
Issue advocacy
125.
Recruitment
126.
Nomination
127.
Closed primary
128.
Party activists
129.
Patronage
130.
Interest group
131.
Informational benefits
132.
Solidary benefits
133.
Purposive benefits
134.
Insider strategies
135.
Outsider strategies
136.
Stakeholders
137.
Grassroots lobbying
138.
Equal time rule
139.
Fairness doctrine
140.
Priming
141.
142.
143.
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.
149.
150.
151.
152.
153.
154.
155.
156.
157.
158.
159.
160.
161.
162.
163.
164.
165.
166.
167.
168.
169.
170.
171.
172.
173.
Momentum
Contract
Market standards
Market failure
Omnibus
Discount rate
Monetary policy
Open-market operations
Fiscal policy
Progressive tax
Regressive tax
Redistribution
Power elite theory
Equality of opportunity
Means-tested
Forced savings
In-kind benefits
Automatic stabilizers
National Security Council
National Security Agency
Executive agreement
Neoconservatives
Client state
Multilateralism
Policy of containment
Deterrence
Diplomacy
International Monetary Fund
Bilateral agreements
Napoleonic role
Holy Alliance role
Mixed-motive situations
Agency representation
Political Scholars:
1. Thomas Hobbes
2. Harold Laswell
3. James Madison
4. Morton Grodzins
5. William Niskanen
6. Mancur Olson
7. Richard Wagner
8. George Will
The Constitution:
1. Who has the power to ratify treaties?
2. Where do revenue bills start?
3. How did the framers eek to insulate the President from excessive democratic pressures?
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
Which branch has the power to create lower courts?
What was the 1st Amendment specifically concerned with?
What was the purpose of the Bill of Right’s?
What 3 principles make of the framework of the Constitution?
How did individual rights in the Bill of Rights seek to limit government?
Why does the Constitution encourage diversity in political actors?
Within the system of separated powers, which branch did the framers intend to be supreme?
When did civil rights become part of the Constitution?
Where do civil liberties appear I the Constitution?
What does the establishment clause do?
What is the intended legislative role of the House?
What is the intended legislative role of the Senate?
Who is the most powerful person in the House?
Who is responsible for lining up votes in the House?
What is open rule? Why is it preferred?
What are the vice-president’s constitutional duties?
In what two dimensions does the Constitution define presidential power?
Who appoints federal judges?
Who approves presidential appointments to the courts?
What individual has the greatest influence over the work of the Supreme Court?
How does the Constitution involve the Senate in foreign policy?
How are executive agreements revoked?
Short Answer:
1. What two basic components have historically been included in government?
2. What is the primary purpose of government?
3. What do laws against trespass define?
4. What is it called when politicians plan their activities and calculate their political risk?
5. What does free riding compromise?
6. How do governments attempt to unify and educate citizens?
7. How did Madison intend to stop abuse by temporary majorities?
8. What did anti-federalists argue against?
9. What role does revenue sharing and block grants play in fiscal federalism?
10. What was the intended purpose of the California Civil Rights Initiative?
11. Who do members of Congress owe their primary responsibility to?
12. What do representatives as delegates believe?
13. What do representatives as trustees believe?
14. How do most presidents exercise unilateral power during domestic disorders?
15. In what ways do presidents have the power of life and death?
16. What is the core of bureaucracy?
17. What is the primary task of bureaucracy?
18. What is the primary task of the State Department?
19. What is the most powerful before-the-fact political weapon for controlling the bureaucracy?
20. How do legislators prevent coalition drift?
21. Where are most court cases heard?
22. What shapes political ideology?
23. What is the most important core value for liberals?
24. What is the most important core value for conservatives?
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
What are fully democratic elections?
What is the main reason for adverse selection in American elections?
How do citizens and politicians relate with each other in a representative democracy?
What can explain low voter turn out in the US?
How do Americans seek to influence electoral outcomes?
What has American electoral politics centered on in recent years?
What is the influence of party leaders in Congress based on?
What has been the immediate effect of the elimination of soft money?
What is the benefit of policy entrepreneurship to political parties?
What is America’s fastest growing electoral bloc?
What is the committee system in Congress a product of?
Why are third parties usually only influential for a short time?
What is the most important organization for raising money at the national level for both parties?
What is the intended outcome of pluralism?
What do most interest groups rely on for a sound financial structure?
What is the most important source of news?
What is the relationship between the government and media?
What does the news media have a bias toward?
What changed the traditional relationship between the government and the economy?
When is presidential initiative most important?
What is the greatest long term threat to Social Security?
What did each title of the original Social Security Act identify?
What was the cold war culture of the US built upon?
What role do most new Presidents take?
What is at the center of American foreign policy?
How has the US treated foreign policy through history?