Week 2 Quiz

A person with a weapon steps out of an alley and demands your wallet, and you hand it over. Using the course's definitions, which of power, authority, and legitimacy does the robber have?

Select one.

• Power only: you complied, but no one recognizes a right to command.
• Power and authority, because you obeyed the command.
• Authority and legitimacy, because the demand was obeyed without a fight.
• All three, because compliance shows the command was accepted.

A county clerk issues building permits, and residents accept the clerk's decisions because the county code assigns that office the job. Which of Weber's three types of authority carries the most weight here?

Select one.

• Traditional authority, because permits have been issued for a long time.
• Charismatic authority, because residents trust the clerk personally.
• Legal-rational authority, because people obey the office and the written rule.
• No type applies, because the clerk was never chosen by voters in any election.

True or false: the Peace of Westphalia (1648) switched on the modern system of sovereign states all at once, so every modern state dates from that year.

True or false.

• True
• False

In the illustrative country of Velmora, a dictatorship has fallen and no functioning government has replaced it. Velmora keeps its territory and its population; other states still treat it as independent, while no one holds supreme authority at home. How many of the four criteria of a state does Velmora fully meet?

Select one.

• 4 of 4, because other states still treat Velmora as independent.
• 3 of 4, because only the government criterion is missing.
• 1 of 4, because a state without a government has only its land.
• 2 of 4: territory and population, with no government and split sovereignty.

After an election in an invented country, the old cabinet leaves office and a new cabinet takes over. Which statement uses state, nation, and government correctly?

Select one.

• The government changed; the state and the nation persisted.
• The state changed; the government and the nation persisted.
• The nation changed, because voters chose new leaders.
• All three changed, because they are one thing.

An invented republic controls its own territory and makes final decisions at home, but a treaty lets a larger neighbor decide which countries the republic may trade with. Which kind of sovereignty does the treaty weaken?

Select one.

• Internal sovereignty, because the republic's laws no longer apply at home.
• External sovereignty, because an outside power controls the republic's choices.
• Neither kind, because sovereignty measures how strong a state's army is.
• Both kinds equally, because signing any treaty at all ends a state's sovereignty.

The fragment "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short" comes from which thinker and work?

Select one.

• Locke, Second Treatise of Government
• Rousseau, The Social Contract
• Hobbes, Leviathan
• Weber, "Politics as a Vocation"

Which statements describe Locke's answer in the Second Treatise of Government (1689)? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• No one can be subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.
• Government is a limited trust the people may revoke if it turns tyrannical.
• People should hand power to a near-absolute sovereign to escape a war of all against all.
• Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Using the Week 1 sort, what kind of claim is Locke's line "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions" (§6)?

Select one.

• Empirical, because it reports how people usually treat one another.
• Empirical-leaning, because it predicts life without a common power.
• Normative, because it says what people ought to do.
• Not a claim, because it is a quotation from a book.

How should Rousseau's line "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." be sorted by kind?

Select one.

• Wholly normative, because the whole sentence is about the value of human freedom.
• Mixed: "born free" is normative, and "everywhere he is in chains" is empirical-leaning.
• Wholly empirical, because people's chains can be observed and counted.
• Neither kind, because it is a metaphor.