Week 7 — Quiz (auto-graded) · Political Institutions I: Legislatures & Executives

Course: Introduction to Political Science (POLS 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Halloran
Objectives tested: Objective 5 — legislatures and executives; head of state vs. head of government; parliamentary/presidential/semi-presidential systems; government formation and removal.
Points: 10 (1 each) · Assignment group: Quizzes (10% of grade) · Due: end of Module 7.

This is the human-readable quiz with its vetted answer key and feedback. The import-ready Classic QTI is in F-quiz-week-07-qti.xml (generated by the shared validated script — parses with 10 items, every single-answer item exactly one correct). Fact-and-source-accuracy gate — PASS: the country classifications (UK/Germany/Japan/Canada parliamentary; US/Mexico/Brazil presidential; France semi-presidential), the head-of-state/head-of-government pairings, the no-confidence vs. impeachment distinction, and the Linz attribution ("perils of presidentialism" as his real, documented argument) were each verified against the record. The Canvas placement block is at the bottom of this file.

Blueprint

No trick questions; distractors target the Week 7 misconceptions named in the lecture outline (assuming any president-titled office means a presidential system; confusing no-confidence with impeachment; treating semi-presidential as an even split; picking a "winner" in the Linz debate).

Questions, key, and feedback

Q1 (MC). Which of the following is a core function of a legislature?
- A. Enforcing existing law day to day
- B. Commanding the armed forces
- C. Overseeing the executive — including, in some systems, removing it ✅
- D. Presiding over the judiciary's caseload
Feedback: Legislatures represent, legislate, and oversee — and in parliamentary systems, that oversight power includes the ability to remove a government via a no-confidence vote. (A and B are core executive functions; D is not a legislative role.)

Q2 (True / False). "A bicameral legislature always has more democratic legitimacy than a unicameral one."
- True
- False ✅
Feedback: False. This is a genuinely contested institutional-design question. Proponents of bicameralism argue a second chamber checks hasty lawmaking and represents territorial interests; critics respond it can create gridlock or, if the second chamber is unelected or malapportioned, actually dilute democratic accountability rather than protect it. Neither structure is automatically "more democratic."

Q3 (MC). Germany has a Federal President as its head of state. Based on what you learned this week, which of the following is TRUE?
- A. Because Germany has a president, it is a presidential system.
- B. Germany is a parliamentary system — the President is a largely ceremonial head of state, while the Chancellor (chosen by and accountable to the Bundestag) is head of government. ✅
- C. Germany has no head of government at all.
- D. The German President and Chancellor are the same person.
Feedback: This is the classic trap: an office's title never determines the system — the constitutional design does. Germany, like several other parliamentary democracies (e.g., India, Israel, Italy), has a ceremonial president alongside a legislature-accountable head of government.

Q4 (Matching). Match each country to its institutional system.
| Country | System |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom | Parliamentary — Prime Minister drawn from and removable by Parliament |
| United States | Presidential — separately elected President serves a fixed term |
| France | Semi-presidential — an elected President with real powers plus a Prime Minister accountable to the legislature |
| Brazil | Presidential — separately elected President serves a fixed term |
Feedback: Fusion (parliamentary), separation (presidential), and the dual-executive blend (semi-presidential) sort real countries cleanly once you check how the executive is chosen and removed, not what title it holds.

Q5 (MC). What is the key difference between a no-confidence vote and impeachment?
- A. They are two names for exactly the same procedure.
- B. A no-confidence vote can remove a government for any reason, including policy disagreement; impeachment is reserved for serious wrongdoing and has a much higher legal bar. ✅
- C. Impeachment happens more often than no-confidence votes.
- D. No-confidence votes apply only to presidents, never to prime ministers.
Feedback: A no-confidence vote is a routine political tool in parliamentary systems — it can end a government simply because it has lost majority support, for any reason. Impeachment, the presidential-system analog, requires proof of serious wrongdoing (in the U.S., "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors") and is rare.

Q6 (Multiple answer — select all that apply). Which of the following countries use a parliamentary system?
- A. United Kingdom ✅
- B. Germany ✅
- C. United States
- D. Canada ✅
- E. Mexico
Feedback: The UK, Germany, and Canada are parliamentary — their executives are drawn from and accountable to the legislature via no-confidence. The United States and Mexico are presidential — separately elected executives serving fixed terms.

Q7 (MC). A semi-presidential system is best described as:
- A. A presidential system that happens to also have a legislature
- B. A parliamentary system with an unusually powerful Prime Minister
- C. A dual executive — an elected president with real independent powers, plus a Prime Minister who is responsible to and removable by the legislature ✅
- D. A system in which power is always split exactly 50/50 between the president and the Prime Minister
Feedback: Semi-presidential systems (e.g., France) combine features of both other designs through two separate offices — not an even split, since the actual balance of power between president and PM varies by country and can even shift, as it does during French "cohabitation."

Q8 (True / False). "If a country's constitution creates the office of 'president,' that country must be a presidential system."
- True
- False ✅
Feedback: False. Germany, India, Israel, and Italy all have presidents and are parliamentary systems — their presidents are ceremonial heads of state, while a Chancellor or Prime Minister answerable to the legislature actually governs. Always check the constitutional design (how is the executive chosen and removed?), never just the office's name.

Q9 (MC). Political scientist Juan Linz's "perils of presidentialism" argument centers on which set of concerns?
- A. Rigidity of the fixed term, dual democratic legitimacy between president and legislature, and the "winner-take-all" stakes of a single presidential election ✅
- B. The claim that legislatures should always be unicameral
- C. The claim that monarchies are inherently less stable than republics
- D. The claim that coalition governments always fail within one year
Feedback: Linz argued presidential systems face real structural risks: a failing or gridlocked president is hard to remove short of the fixed term ending; both the president and the legislature can claim separate democratic legitimacy with no built-in referee when they clash; and a single election producing one winner raises the stakes. (This question tests what the theory claims — not whether it is correct.)

Q10 (MC). Which of the following is the strongest reply presidentialism's defenders make to Linz's worries?
- A. Presidential elections never actually have a clear winner, so the "winner-take-all" worry is baseless.
- B. Voters in a presidential system know exactly who they are electing as chief executive and can hold that one person directly accountable — an "identifiability" advantage some coalition-heavy parliamentary systems lack. ✅
- C. No political scientist has ever criticized parliamentary systems.
- D. Presidential systems have never experienced any political instability.
Feedback: The identifiability argument is the most-cited reply: presidential voters directly choose their chief executive, while parliamentary voters — especially where coalitions are common — may not know which parties will govern together until after the election. (This question tests what the reply CLAIMS, not a verdict on which side wins the debate.)

Answer key (quick reference)

Quality gate (self-checked): each single-answer item has exactly one correct option; the multiple-answer item lists the three true parliamentary systems (A, B, D) and requires C and E to be left unselected; the matching item pairs each country with its verified real system. Fact-and-source-accuracy gate — PASS: the country classifications (UK/Germany/Canada parliamentary; US/Brazil presidential; France semi-presidential), the head-of-state/head-of-government pattern for Germany, the no-confidence-vs-impeachment distinction, and the Linz attribution (a real, documented comparative-politics argument) were each verified against the record. Evenhandedness check: Q9 and Q10 test what Linz's theory and its reply CLAIM, not which side is correct; no item declares parliamentary or presidential "better."

Item-bank entries (for variants + the midterm/final)

All ten items are tagged course=POLS1 · week=7 · objective=5 · topic=legislatures-executives-institutions and deposited in Item Bank: Week 7 — Political Institutions I. The midterm (Week 8) and the per-term variant updates draw fresh items from this bank. (Tags: q1 legislature-oversight, q2 bicameral-unicameral, q3 head-of-state-trap, q4 country-system-matching, q5 noconfidence-vs-impeachment, q6 parliamentary-multi, q7 semi-presidential-defined, q8 president-title-misconception, q9 linz-perils, q10 identifiability-reply.)

Canvas placement block

canvas_object    = Quizzes::Quiz
title            = "Week 7 Quiz — Political Institutions I: Legislatures & Executives"
assignment_group = "Quizzes"
points_possible  = 10
grading_type     = points
due_offset_days  = 6        # 6 days after module start
published        = true
shuffle_answers  = true
provenance       = "~ Prof. Halloran's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com"