Week 5 Quiz

Regime A, an invented regime, elects a parliament that makes its laws. One year it puts a single question about a new national park to all voters. Which description fits Regime A after that vote?

Select one.

• A representative democracy that used a referendum, a direct tool, once
• A direct democracy, because the voters themselves decided a national question that year
• A hybrid regime, because it now mixes direct voting with representative voting
• An electoral democracy that stopped being representative when it held the vote

Regime B, an invented regime, holds free, fair, competitive elections that incumbents have lost, but its government can remove judges at will and prosecute journalists for insulting officials. Which regime type is Regime B?

Select one.

• A liberal democracy, because its elections are free, fair, and competitive and incumbents lose them
• A hybrid regime, because its elections are held on a field tilted toward the government
• An electoral democracy: it meets the election floor but lacks liberal protections
• An authoritarian regime, because it punishes journalists who criticize the people in power

Regime C, an invented regime, holds elections on schedule with opposition parties on the ballot, but allies of the ruling party own the main television channels, opposition candidates are often disqualified, and the opposition has never been allowed to win national power. Which regime type is Regime C?

Select one.

• An electoral democracy, because it holds its elections on schedule and lets opposition parties run
• A hybrid regime: real elections held on a tilted field
• A totalitarian regime, because allies of the rulers control the main television channels
• A liberal democracy with an unusually weak and divided opposition

Regime D, an invented military council, bans parties and imprisons its critics but leaves jobs, worship, businesses, and clubs alone. Regime E, an invented one-party state, runs the schools, unions, and youth groups and sets out to remake family life around its official ideology. What separates D from E in this course's terms?

Select one.

• Harshness: Regime E punishes people for their views and Regime D does not
• Elections: Regime D holds competitive national elections and Regime E does not
• Their names: Regime E calls itself a republic, so it cannot be authoritarian
• Scope: D controls politics; E reaches into all of society

True or false: a state that calls itself a republic must be a democracy.

True or false.

• True
• False

Huntington's The Third Wave (1991) dates a third wave of democratization beginning around 1974. Which statement describes that third wave the way this course teaches it?

Select one.

• His own way of organizing the history of democratization, not a law that predicts the next case
• A law of history, proved by his book, that every remaining country will soon become a democracy
• A definition of the hybrid regime, used today by every index that measures democracy
• A measure of democratic backsliding that counts how many democracies have slid into autocracy

In an invented country, the governing party spends several years filling the election commission with loyalists, changing broadcast license rules to squeeze critical stations, and extending term limits by amendment, each step passed by a legal vote. How does this course classify that pattern?

Select one.

• A coup, because the governing party ends up holding more power than it had before
• A totalitarian takeover, because critical media are squeezed and the commission is captured
• Democratic backsliding: gradual and done through legal-looking steps
• A hybrid regime from the very start, because elections are still being held on schedule

A liberal democracy meets the electoral floor of free, fair, competitive elections. Which of the following does it add on top of that floor? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• Protected rights
• A free press
• An independent judiciary
• Citizens voting directly on every law
• A head of state who is not a hereditary monarch
• One official ideology taught in every school

The Hansard record of the House of Commons in November 1947, column 207, prints Churchill saying "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". What do the words "it has been said" show?

Select one.

• That Churchill coined the line himself in that debate and was proud of it
• That he was repeating a line already in circulation, so he did not coin it
• That the line is an empirical claim that the debate itself proved to be true
• That Hansard misprinted the words Churchill had written down for his speech

In the Crawley translation (1874) of Thucydides, Book II, Pericles says: "Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy." Which reading follows this course's method?

Select one.

• A neutral transcript proving that Athens was a democracy like modern ones
• A normative ranking that places democracy above every other form of government ever tried
• A quotation that should be updated to the popular modern wording before it is used
• An empirical-leaning claim in a persuasive speech, from a narrow citizen body