Final Practice Exam

A study guide says that Marbury v. Madison ended with the Court ordering Madison to hand Marbury his commission. Which correction matches the case's actual holding?

Select one.

• The Court ruled that Marbury had never held any right to the commission at any point
• The Court refused the writ, since the statute giving it original jurisdiction conflicted with Article III
• The Court ordered the commission delivered at once but left the enforcement of that order to Congress
• The Court ruled that Marbury had a right to the commission but that the law gave him no remedy

In Taskel, a country invented for this course, judges serve until a fixed retirement age and cannot be removed because of how they ruled. Which idea do these arrangements protect?

Select one.

• Jurisdiction, because the rules decide which court hears which dispute
• Judicial review, because courts may set aside acts of the legislature
• Concentrated review, because a single court holds the power to strike down laws
• Judicial independence, through secure tenure that shields judges from pressure

Harrowmere and Quell are made-up states (illustrative). Each keeps 6 posts along their shared border. Harrowmere adds posts for defense, Quell reads them as a threat and adds its own, and the two keep matching each other until each has 15. Neither intended an attack, and neither feels safer. Which concept describes this?

Select one.

• The balance of power, because the two sides end up equally matched in posts
• Collective security, because each acts alone to protect the border
• The democratic peace, because neither side ever planned to strike
• The security dilemma, because each defensive move looks threatening

The Coastal Accord (illustrative) commits its 7 member states to act together against any member that attacks another, whichever member it is. What kind of agreement is it?

Select one.

• An alliance, because it targets one named outside threat
• A balance of power, because it stops one state dominating
• Collective security, because it is aimed at any aggressor
• A norm, because the members expect each other to cooperate

A court hearing an ordinary case declares that a statute conflicts with the Constitution and refuses to apply it. What is the name of the power the court is using?

Select one.

• Jurisdiction
• Judicial review
• Judicial independence
• Impeachment

A researcher asks where a group of first-time voters picked up their views about politics. Which of these count as agents of political socialization? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• Parents and other family members
• The field dates printed beside a poll
• Teachers and classes at school
• Friends, coworkers, and major life events
• A survey's stated margin of error
• News outlets and other media

Four made-up countries share one atmosphere (illustrative). Cutting emissions costs a country 9 units and gives 3 units of benefit to each of the four countries, the one that cuts included. Why does each country tend to wait for the others?

Select one.

• Because one country's cut is worth less to the whole group than it costs that country
• Because the physical basics of climate change remain unsettled in the science
• Because each does better letting others pay, though all would gain from cutting together
• Because an international authority forbids any country from cutting on its own

A small island state rejects a larger neighbor's demand that it rewrite its fishing laws, insisting that no outside power may direct its affairs. Which idea is the island state invoking?

Select one.

• Legitimacy, because its citizens accept the government's right to rule
• External sovereignty, because it claims independence from outside control
• Charismatic authority, because its leader inspires personal devotion
• Internal sovereignty, because its government is supreme over its people

Two made-up states watch the same naval buildup by a third: one sees a partner, the other a menace. Which statements reflect how constructivism would explain cases like this? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• States pursue power because no authority above them guarantees their safety
• Shared identities shape whether a buildup reads as help or as a threat
• Treaties hold mainly because joint bodies monitor and publish compliance
• What anarchy means depends on how states interact over time

Two invented regimes both jail their critics. The first leaves churches, private firms, and hobby clubs alone; the second runs every club and workplace and works to remake private life around a state ideology. In this course's terms, what separates them?

Select one.

• Scope: the second reaches into all of society
• Harshness: the second treats its prisoners more cruelly
• Elections: the first holds competitive national elections
• Labels: each regime calls itself something different

An electoral democracy already holds free, fair, competitive elections. Which of these would it need to add to count as a liberal democracy? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• A free press
• Citizens voting directly on each new law
• The rule of law
• An elected head of state instead of a monarch
• Judges independent of the government
• Voting made compulsory for every adult

Amendment I of the U.S. Constitution begins "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Which of a constitution's jobs does this fragment do?

Select one.

• It creates an office and grants it lawmaking power
• It entrenches the text by requiring supermajorities
• It limits Congress by naming a thing it may not do
• It divides power between the nation and the States

Over several years in an invented country, the governing party passes laws letting it appoint most judges, presses independent newspapers with repeated tax audits, and redraws voting districts in its own favor, each step approved by the legislature. How does this course classify the pattern?

Select one.

• A coup, since the governing party ends up with more power
• A totalitarian takeover, since the press comes under pressure
• No change of any kind, since each step was legally approved
• Democratic backsliding through gradual, legal-looking steps

When lower-priced steel arrives from abroad, a foundry in a made-up river town shuts down, while consumers and the economy as a whole gain. A town council member says the closure shows that comparative advantage is false. What is the best reply?

Select one.

• The council member is right, since one loss refutes any theory of gains from trade at all
• The closure is really an aggregate gain, so the two terms have been swapped here
• The closure is a distributional cost, and total gains can coexist with local losses
• No one really lost anything, because every worker gains from trade in the end

In Corvanne, a made-up country, a presidential candidate wins outright only with more than half the vote. The first round splits 46, 38, and 16 percent (illustrative), so the two leaders face each other again. Which electoral-system family is this?

Select one.

• First-past-the-post
• Majority-runoff
• Proportional representation
• Mixed-member proportional

Writing about the cabinet in The English Constitution, Bagehot names the "efficient secret" of that constitution. As this course quotes him from the Project Gutenberg edition, what is it?

Select one.

• the close union, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and legislative powers
• the complete separation of the executive and legislative powers
• the balance of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers
• the close union of the monarch and the courts of law

True or false: because richer countries tend to be democracies, Lipset's modernization finding establishes that rising wealth produces democracy.

True or false.

• True
• False

Which statement accurately describes the U.S. model of a constitution as this course teaches it?

Select one.

• Its rules are spread across statutes, court decisions, and conventions
• One supreme document, made harder to amend than ordinary law
• It enforces itself, because a written text cannot be ignored
• Congress can amend it by a simple majority of both Houses

A state legislator privately thinks a new toll road is a bad idea but votes for it because a random-sample poll of the district shows most constituents want it. Which view of representation does that vote follow?

Select one.

• The trustee view, which follows the member's own judgment
• The delegate view, which follows the wishes of the represented
• An agenda-setting view, which follows what the news covers most
• A framing view, which follows how a story is told to the public

Surveys find that older citizens tend to vote at higher rates than younger citizens. What does that documented pattern show on its own?

Select one.

• That growing older causes a person to start voting
• That age and turnout tend to rise together, a correlation
• That younger citizens ought to be required to vote
• That younger citizens cannot be reached by random samples

A panel debates whether courts should be able to strike down laws passed by elected legislatures. Which statements fairly report a position taken in that debate, as this course presents it? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• Critics warn of juristocracy: too many value questions shift from voters to judges
• Bickel's book proved that judicial review should be abolished
• Defenders of robust review argue that some rights should not depend on winning a vote
• Defenders of robust review argue from precommitment, a people binding its future self to rules chosen in a calmer moment
• Both sides agree that unelected judges should never set aside a statute

Hamilton's Federalist No. 78 calls the judiciary "beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power". How does this course read that line?

Select one.

• As an empirical-leaning claim about the judiciary's design, made inside a case for guarding it
• As a normative demand that the courts be stripped of the few powers they still hold
• As the counter-majoritarian difficulty, the later worry that unelected judges override majorities
• As the holding of Marbury v. Madison, stated in the words of the Court's own opinion

In an illustrative country, the ruling coalition collapses and a caretaker cabinet takes its place, while the borders, the institutions, and the people's shared identity stay as they were. Which statement applies state, nation, and government correctly?

Select one.

• Only the government changed; the state and the nation carried on.
• The state changed, because a different cabinet now runs the country.
• The nation changed, because the people have new leaders.
• Nothing changed, because the three words name one thing.

True or false: a country can have a president and still be a parliamentary system, as Germany and Italy are.

True or false.

• True
• False

A town survey draws a simple random sample of 400 residents (illustrative). By the course's rule of thumb, roughly one divided by the square root of n at the 95 percent level, about how large is its margin of error?

Select one.

• About 20 percentage points
• About 2.5 percentage points
• About 5 percentage points
• About 10 percentage points

Corla and Venn are made-up countries (illustrative). Corla makes a chair in 3 hours and a table in 9 hours; Venn needs 12 hours for either. Corla is faster at both goods. Which country should make tables, and why?

Select one.

• Corla, because it makes tables faster than Venn does
• Venn, because each table costs it 1 chair of lost output against 3 for Corla
• Corla, because the faster country should make every good
• Venn, because the slower country should always make the good that takes it longer

A national survey of 2,500 adults (illustrative) states a margin of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points, while the course's rule of thumb gives about 2 for that sample size. Which figure should a careful reader report as the survey's margin?

Select one.

• The survey's own stated margin, which reflects its weighting and design
• The rule of thumb, because it comes directly from the sample size
• An average of the two figures, because both describe the same survey
• Neither figure, because a sample this large carries no margin at all

An illustrative survey of 40 regional assemblies finds that 15 have two chambers and 25 have one. What does this count show about those assemblies?

Select one.

• Two chambers are common but a minority choice
• Most of the surveyed assemblies have two chambers
• Two-chamber assemblies pass better laws than others
• Every assembly in a federal region has two chambers

True or false: political scientists treat the Peace of Westphalia as a conventional, simplified marker for the rise of the modern state system rather than a single moment that created every state at once.

True or false.

• True
• False

A classmate says that the reserved powers under Amendment X are a short, named list of State powers. What is the better description?

Select one.

• A list of specific State powers written out in the text of Amendment X
• Whatever remains once the delegated and the prohibited powers are set aside
• The powers Congress gains through the Necessary and Proper Clause
• The powers that let a valid national law outrank a conflicting State law

Tervale and Mosk are made-up neighbors (illustrative) that honor a river-sharing treaty for generations. One analyst credits a joint water board that measures each side's use and publishes the figures, so any cheating would be seen. Which paradigm does that explanation come from?

Select one.

• Liberalism as an IR theory, because an institution monitors and reports compliance
• Constructivism, because both states now see the treaty as part of who they are as states
• Realism, because each state keeps the deal only so that the other one will
• Collective security, because the members promise to act together against attack

A poll of registered voters states a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points (illustrative). A friend says this guarantees that every kind of error in the poll, including a slanted question, falls within that range. What is the best correction?

Select one.

• The friend is right, because the margin captures every source of error in a poll
• The margin means that 4 of every 100 respondents gave a wrong answer
• The margin covers sampling error only, not question wording or non-response
• The margin applies only when the sample has more than 2,000 people in it

A chatbot presents the Melian Dialogue line "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" as Thucydides' own verdict on power. What is the accurate attribution?

Select one.

• Thucydides, stating his own personal view of how power really works
• The people of Melos, appealing to Athens to spare their island
• The Athenian envoys at Melos, as Thucydides rendered their words
• Pericles, in the funeral oration praising Athenian democracy

An invented regime holds regular elections with several parties on the ballot, but the ruling party controls the election commission, opposition rallies are routinely banned, and power has never changed hands through a vote. Which regime type is it?

Select one.

• An electoral democracy, since it holds its elections on time
• A totalitarian regime, since it bans opposition rallies
• A liberal democracy with a weak and divided opposition
• A hybrid regime: real elections held on a tilted field

A civics handout states, "The House of Representatives has 435 members." What kind of claim is this?

Select one.

• Normative, because it concerns a branch of the national government
• Empirical, because anyone can check it against the official record
• Normative, because people argue over whether the House is too large
• Neither, because a count of seats is not a claim about anything

A study guide labels the split between the national government and the States "separation of powers" and the split among Congress, the President, and the courts "federalism". What is wrong with these labels?

Select one.

• Nothing is wrong, because both terms describe the ways power is divided among the branches of a government
• Nothing is wrong, because both terms describe how power is divided among the levels of government
• Only the courts create a separation of powers, so the second label should read "judicial review"
• They are swapped: federalism is the split among levels, and separation of powers is the split among branches

In an invented republic, officials are obeyed because a written charter assigns each office its powers, and those powers pass intact to whoever holds the office next. Which of Weber's types of legitimate authority does this charter support?

Select one.

• Traditional authority, resting on custom and long practice
• Legal-rational authority, resting on rules and the office
• Charismatic authority, resting on devotion to a leader
• Raw power, resting on the capacity to force compliance

A worker is legally free to enroll in an evening course, but cannot afford the fee or the bus fare to reach the campus. In Berlin's terms, what is the worker lacking?

Select one.

• Positive liberty, the real capacity to act on a choice
• Negative liberty, since someone put a barrier in the way
• Equality of outcome, since incomes end up uneven
• A negative right, since the state must stand aside

If a poll's question is worded to push people toward one answer, quadrupling the size of the random sample corrects the resulting bias.

True or false.

• True
• False

In the Crawley translation of Thucydides, Pericles says Athens "favours the many instead of the few". A student concludes that Athens was a democracy like modern ones. Which response follows this course's method?

Select one.

• Accept it, since a historian recorded the speech word for word
• Treat it as ranking democracy above every other form ever tried
• Read it as persuasion from a city whose citizen body was narrow
• Swap in a more popular modern translation before using it