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Week 16 · Final study guide

Final Exam — Study Guide

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

Coverage — what the final covers

The final is cumulative: its questions reach all eight course objectives, across the fifteen teaching weeks. It is given in Week 16, the finals week, which has no new material. The exam has 40 questions, and every question counts the same. Thirty-two are multiple choice with one best answer, four ask you to select every choice that fits, and four are true-or-false statements. There is no time limit, and you get one attempt. It opens in Week 16, in Canvas, when your instructor sets it to open.

The questions were drawn from the course's question bank, and every objective appears at least once. The draw leans hard on the second half of the term. Here is what this form actually contains:

The final's 40 questions by source week, with the objectives each week's questions assess
Week Topic Questions Objectives assessed
1 What is political science? 1 Objective 1 (1)
9 Judiciaries and judicial review 6 Objective 5 (5), Objective 4 (1)
10 The U.S. case 7 Objective 6 (6), Objective 5 (1)
11 Parties, elections, and voting systems 9 Objective 6 (7), Objective 3 (2)
12 Public opinion and the media 2 Objective 6 (2)
13 Comparative politics 6 Objective 7 (6), Objective 4 (2)
14 International relations 2 Objective 8 (1), Objective 2 (1)
15 Political economy and global issues 7 Objective 8 (5), Objective 3 (2)
The eight course objectives with their teaching weeks and their share of the final's 40 questions
Objective What you do Weeks Questions on this exam
Objective 1 Use the discipline's tools and keep empirical and normative claims apart 1, 8 1
Objective 2 Explain power, authority, legitimacy, the state, and the social contract 2 1
Objective 3 Compare the ideologies and normative theories, each at full strength 3, 4 4
Objective 4 Compare regime types, constitutions, and the rule of law 5, 6 3
Objective 5 Analyze legislatures, executives, and courts 7, 9 6
Objective 6 Explain the U.S. case, elections, voting systems, and public opinion 10, 11, 12 15
Objective 7 Apply the comparative method and read governance indices 13 6
Objective 8 Explain international relations and global political economy 14, 15 6

Two of the Week 13 questions count under both Objective 7 and Objective 4, so the objective column adds to 42 for 40 questions. That is 39 of 40 questions from Weeks 9–15, and one from Week 1. American government and participation (Objective 6, 15 questions) is the heaviest objective, and Week 11 carries 9 questions, the most of any week. The Week 1–7 ideas still earn their place: nine questions assess Objective 1 through Objective 4, and eight of them sit inside a later week's material. The habit of naming a claim's kind runs through nearly everything.

Topic-by-topic review

Each unit gives the idea in plain words first, then the course's exact definitions, then the mistakes students make most often and the cure for each. The "deeper review" line tells you where to look in that week's materials. Units 6–12 carry the weight of the exam, so they get the most space.

Unit 1 — The discipline's tools (Weeks 1 and 8)

  • Key idea. Political science studies how groups make decisions that bind everyone, and it checks its answers against evidence anyone can inspect.
  • The field. Politics is collective, binding decision-making wherever scarcity and disagreement meet, whether in a nation, a city, a campus, or a workplace. Political science is the systematic study of politics, which starts from a question and checks its answers against rules of evidence that anyone can apply. Lasswell (1936), Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, and Easton (1953), The Political System, with its "authoritative allocation of values", give the shorthand.
  • Five subfields, as lenses. Political theory and philosophy asks what ought to be. Comparative politics compares how systems work inside countries. International relations studies politics between states. American government studies one country in depth. Political methodology supplies the tools for weighing evidence.
  • The toolkit. Concept application uses a defined idea to sort or explain a case. Argument analysis takes an argument apart into its claim, its premises, and the assumptions it needs. An unstated premise is an assumption the argument needs but never says; finding one is not the same as finding a flaw. Evidence evaluation asks what a source shows, what it does not, and whether a pattern is a correlation or a cause. The comparative method places cases side by side on defined dimensions.
  • The distinction that runs the course. An empirical claim is about what is, can be checked against evidence, and can turn out to be false. A normative claim is about what ought to be, and it is argued well or badly from values and premises. Smuggling slips an ought into a sentence presented as fact. Shrugging treats a value question as mere opinion, as if reasons did not matter.
  • The three-layer read (Week 8). Every claim about an institution sits on one layer. The design layer reports what the rules say. The practice layer reports what actually happens. The verdict layer says what ought to happen. Design and practice are empirical; the verdict is normative.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. Sorting a claim by its topic instead of its kind: "the Senate has 100 members" and "the Senate ought to be proportional to population" share a topic and differ in kind. Reading "empirical" as "true": an empirical claim can be checked and found false. Rendering the Declaration's trio as "life, liberty, and property": the National Archives transcript reads "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", and the property trio is Locke's.
  • Deeper review: the Week 1 chapter's four moves on the Declaration and the Week 8 layer sort.

Unit 2 — Power, authority, legitimacy, and the state (Week 2)

  • Key idea. Someone can make you obey without having any right to, and that gap is where politics starts.
  • Three ideas, kept apart. Power is the capacity to make another actor comply, with force included among the means. Authority is power that the people subject to it recognize as rightful. Legitimacy is the broad, widely shared belief that a ruler or a whole system has a right to rule. The armed robber has power, no authority, and no legitimacy.
  • Weber's three types. In "Politics as a Vocation" (1919), taught in words, Weber names traditional authority (custom and long practice), charismatic authority (devotion to a leader seen as extraordinary, attached to the person), and legal-rational authority (rules and offices). Each is an ideal type: real systems blend them.
  • The state. The state is the lasting political institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory, with four criteria: territory, population, government, and sovereignty. A nation is a people who share an identity, with or without a state. A government is the office-holders of the moment. Sovereignty is a claim to final authority, not a measure of strength: internal sovereignty is supreme authority at home, and external sovereignty is independence from outside control. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) is the conventional marker for the modern state system, and historians treat it as a simplification.
  • The social contract. Hobbes (1651), Leviathan, pictures life without a common power as "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short" (the 1651 spelling). Locke (1689), Second Treatise of Government, holds that no one can be "subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent". Rousseau (1762), The Social Contract, opens with "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." The hook: Hobbes fears chaos, Locke fears tyranny, and Rousseau places sovereignty in the people.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. Using power, authority, and legitimacy as synonyms: ask who recognizes a right to command. Reading "legitimate" as "elected": traditional and charismatic authority can be legitimate without a vote. Swapping Hobbes and Locke: chaos or tyranny?
  • Deeper review: the Week 2 chapter's four-criteria check and the three-lens comparison.

Unit 3 — Ideologies and normative theory (Weeks 3 and 4)

  • Key idea. Ideologies and theories of justice are studied for what they value, fear, and argue, and the course never ranks them.
  • Ideology. An ideology is a coherent set of ideas about how society should work and who should hold power; it is normative at its core and rests on empirical claims. Liberalism holds that government is legitimate insofar as it protects individual rights; its classical wing joins rights to a limited state and a market economy, and its modern wing holds that real freedom can require an active state. The U.S.-usage trap: "liberal" in everyday American speech means left-of-center, while a free-market, limited-government view is often classical liberal in the theory sense.
  • The other families. Conservatism values established institutions and tested, gradual change. Socialism is a family with a revolutionary branch, communism, and an electoral branch, social democracy. Anarchism, fascism, nationalism (distinct from patriotism), and environmentalism are each defined by what their adherents hold. The left–right spectrum captures real correlations and can flatten the economic and social dimensions.
  • Normative vocabulary. Justice is giving each person their due. Negative liberty is freedom from interference; positive liberty is the real capacity to act on your choices (Berlin, 1958). Equality comes as equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, and the shared premise of moral equality.
  • Mill's harm principle. In On Liberty (1859), Chapter I, power over a member of a community, against his will, is rightful only "to prevent harm to others", and "His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." It rules out paternalism, and harm is narrower than offense.
  • Rawls and Nozick, taught in words. Rawls (1971), A Theory of Justice: the original position, the veil of ignorance, and the difference principle. Nozick (1974), Anarchy, State, and Utopia: entitlement theory and the minimal state. Each gets its strongest case, and the course gives no verdict.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. Conservatism conflated with fascism: they are distinct, and some conservatives opposed fascism. Socialism, communism, and totalitarianism treated as one: an economic commitment, a Marxist theory, and a regime type. Adding "or offense" to Mill. Swapping Rawls and Nozick: the veil is Rawls's, the minimal state is Nozick's.
  • Deeper review: the Week 3 platform sort and the Week 4 harm-principle cases.

Unit 4 — Regimes and constitutions (Weeks 5 and 6)

  • Key idea. Two separate questions decide a regime: how the people rule, and how far protections reach.
  • Democracy. Direct democracy and representative democracy differ in mechanism; a referendum or an initiative is a direct tool inside a representative system. Electoral democracy is the minimal floor of free, fair, competitive elections that incumbents can lose. Liberal democracy adds protected rights, a free press, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law. A hybrid regime holds real elections on a tilted field.
  • Autocracy. Authoritarianism concentrates power and leaves non-political life largely alone, with Linz's limited pluralism. Totalitarianism adds the attempt to remake society around an official ideology (Arendt, 1951, named, never quoted). The difference is scope, not harshness. A republic has no hereditary monarch, which is a separate question from democracy. Democratic backsliding is gradual and done from inside; a coup is sudden and openly illegal. Huntington's third wave (1991) begins around 1974 and is a way of organizing history, not a law.
  • Constitutions. A constitution is the fundamental set of rules for how a political system is organized; it creates, empowers, and, where constitutionalism is practiced, limits. A written constitution is one supreme document (the U.S. model); an unwritten one spreads its rules across statutes, judicial decisions, and conventions (the U.K. model). Entrenchment makes rules harder to change, as Article V's two-thirds and three-fourths thresholds do.
  • The rule of law. Its five elements are generality, publicity, stability, equal application, and independent enforcement. Rule by law is law used as a tool the rulers turn on everyone else. Separation of powers is horizontal, among branches; federalism is vertical, among levels; checks and balances are the tools that make the design operate. The Federalist No. 51 (1788), credited to Madison: "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. "Democracy means elections": that is only the electoral floor. "Unwritten means no real rules": statutes and conventions bind. "Having a constitution means limited government": ask whether the rules bind the rulers. Separation of powers and federalism swapped: branches or levels?
  • Deeper review: the Week 5 regime sort and the Week 6 rule-of-law check.

Unit 5 — Legislatures and executives (Week 7)

  • Key idea. Ask how a failing government would be removed, and the design names itself.
  • Legislatures. A legislature represents, legislates, and oversees. Of 188 national parliaments, 81 are bicameral and 107 unicameral, as the Inter-Parliamentary Union counts them, so a second chamber is held by a large minority, not by most.
  • Executives. The head of state represents the state; the head of government runs the government day to day. Teach them by office: the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan pair a monarch with a prime minister; Germany pairs a federal president with a chancellor; the United States, Mexico, and Brazil give both jobs to one president.
  • Three designs. In a parliamentary system, the executive is drawn from the legislature and falls to a vote of no confidence; Bagehot (1867), The English Constitution, named this fusion of powers the "efficient secret" of that constitution. In a presidential system, the executive is elected separately for a fixed term and removed only by impeachment for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors". A semi-presidential system pairs an elected president holding real powers with a cabinet answerable to the legislature, as in France, and cohabitation names a split between the two.
  • The trade-off debate. Linz (1990), "The Perils of Presidentialism", taught in words, worries about the rigid fixed term, dual democratic legitimacy, and winner-take-all stakes. Defenders reply with identifiability and the checks a separate executive faces. A coalition government is a normal mode, not a symptom. No verdict.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. "A country with a president is presidential": Germany, India, Israel, and Italy have presidents and are parliamentary. A no-confidence vote treated as impeachment: one is political support, the other a legal standard for wrongdoing.
  • Deeper review: the Week 7 removal test on three made-up constitutions.

Unit 6 — Judiciaries and judicial review (Week 9)

  • Key idea. Courts settle disputes, and in some systems they can tell elected bodies that a law does not count.
  • Three jobs. The judicial function is resolving disputes, interpreting and applying the law, and, where the power exists, checking the other branches.
  • Three ideas students blur. Judicial review is a court's power to set aside a law or an official act that conflicts with the constitution. Judicial independence is the set of conditions that let judges decide without fear or favor: secure tenure, insulated selection, and compliance with rulings by the other branches. Jurisdiction is the rule that decides which court may hear which case. A court can be independent without the power of review.
  • The text. Article III, Section 1 vests "The judicial Power of the United States" in "one supreme Court", and Section 2 reaches cases "arising under this Constitution". The words "judicial review" never appear. Hamilton's Federalist No. 78 (1788) says the judiciary has "neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment".
  • Marbury v. Madison (1803). Three questions: a right to the commission, yes; a remedy, yes; a writ from this Court, no, because the statute granting original jurisdiction conflicted with Article III and was void. The holding: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." The hook: Marbury got the right, not the remedy, and the Court got the power.
  • Three pinned cases, three kinds of question. Marbury (1803) is about power, McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) about scope, and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) about equality: "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
  • Two architectures. In diffuse review, any court may set aside an unconstitutional law in an ordinary case, as in the United States. In concentrated review, the Kelsen model, one constitutional court holds the power and can often rule in the abstract. Neither is more democratic by fiat.
  • Checking a court claim. A case name, a citation, and a quotation are three separate claims, each checked against the opinion's own text. Chatbots invent all three with confidence.
  • The debate, no verdict. Bickel (1962), The Least Dangerous Branch, named the counter-majoritarian difficulty. Proponents of robust review argue from precommitment and minority protection. Critics respond with the counter-majoritarian worry and the juristocracy critique.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. "Marbury ordered the commission delivered": the Court held it could not. "Judicial review is written into Article III": it is not named there. Concentrated review read as a mark of authoritarian courts: many liberal democracies use it.
  • Deeper review: the Week 9 chapter's three questions and the review, independence, and jurisdiction sort.

Unit 7 — The U.S. case (Week 10)

  • Key idea. One constitution divides power two ways at once: among levels and among branches.
  • Three arrangements. In a unitary system, ultimate authority sits at the center. In a confederal system, it sits with the member units; the Articles of Confederation (1781 to 1789) are the American cautionary case. Federalism divides authority between levels in the constitution itself.
  • Where federal power comes from. Enumerated powers are the list in Article I, Section 8. Implied powers come from the Necessary and Proper Clause: "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers". Reserved powers come from Amendment X (1791). The hook: enumerated is written down; implied is a reasonable tool for a written-down job; reserved is what is left over.
  • The tie-breaker. The supremacy clause in Article VI makes the Constitution and laws made under it "the supreme Law of the Land". It settles a conflict between valid laws and grants no power.
  • Branches and checks. The House has 435 members on two-year terms, apportioned by population. The Senate has 100 members, two per State, on six-year terms. The checks: the veto and the override, Senate confirmation, the power of the purse, and judicial review.
  • McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). A bank is a reasonable means to enumerated ends: "Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional." A State may not tax a federal instrument, because "the power to tax involves the power to destroy". The holding is fact; the broad reading against the narrow reading of "necessary" is a contested interpretive question.
  • The phrase that is not there. Jefferson's phrase "wall of separation between Church & State" comes from his 1802 letter, not the Constitution's text. Amendment I reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
  • The debate, no verdict. Proponents of federalism argue it lets States test policies, keeps decisions close to people, and adds a vertical check. Critics respond that it makes rights and services depend on where you live and slows answers to shared problems.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. Federalism and separation of powers as one division: vertical or horizontal? "Supremacy means the federal government always wins": only a valid federal law is supreme. McCulloch and Marbury blended: scope or power?
  • Deeper review: the Week 10 chapter's clause sort and the two McCulloch questions.

Unit 8 — Parties, elections, and voting systems (Week 11)

  • Key idea. The same ballots can produce different winners under different counting rules.
  • Plurality and majority. A plurality is the largest number of votes, whether or not it is more than half. A majority is more than half.
  • Parties. A political party competes under a common label to win office. Its three functions are aggregation, mobilization, and accountability. A party system (two-party, multiparty, or dominant-party) describes a steady pattern, not a judgment of quality.
  • Four electoral-system families, a classroom model. First-past-the-post elects the candidate with the most votes in each single-member district, majority or not. Majority-runoff holds a second round between the top two when no one clears 50 percent. Proportional representation gives each party seats roughly in line with its vote share, usually from party lists and above an electoral threshold. Mixed-member proportional gives each voter a district vote and a list vote, and list seats top up each party's total. Each family has a strongest case and a cost.
  • The D'Hondt method. Divide each party's votes by 1, 2, 3, and so on, pool every quotient, and award the seats to the largest quotients until the seats run out. On the course's illustrative table, 100,000 votes and eight seats land A 4, B 3, C 1, D 0.
  • Duverger's law. Duverger (1951), Political Parties, taught in words: single-member plurality rules tend to produce two-party competition through a mechanical effect and a psychological effect. It is a tendency, and the United Kingdom, Canada, and India are its named exceptions.
  • The 2024 UK general election. The House of Commons Library reports 650 single-member constituencies and turnout of 59.7 percent. Labour won 33.7 percent of the vote and 411 seats, 63.2 percent of the seats, a gap of 29.5 percentage points. Smaller parties with spread-out support won far fewer seats than their vote shares. The result is documented fact. Whether it is fair, and whether a seat majority is a mandate, are normative questions the count does not settle.
  • The debate, no verdict. Proponents of first-past-the-post argue for clear accountability, a local member for every place, and governments that can act. Proponents of proportional representation argue that seats should match votes and that no large group of voters should elect no one.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. Plurality and majority swapped: is it more than half? "The most votes always means the most seats": not under plurality rules. "PR brings stable single-party government": coalitions are more typical. Ranking one party at a time in a D'Hondt table: generate every quotient first, then rank the pool.
  • Deeper review: the Week 11 chapter's D'Hondt walkthrough and the 2024 data read.

Unit 9 — Public opinion, behavior, and the media (Week 12)

  • Key idea. A well-drawn sample of about a thousand people can stand for millions, and a badly drawn one of any size cannot.
  • Sampling. Public opinion is the distribution of attitudes across a population. A random sample gives every member a known, non-zero chance of selection, which is what lets a poll carry a margin of error. A self-selected sample, such as a click poll, carries no margin of error at any size.
  • Four facts a trustworthy poll reports: sample size, field dates, sampling method, and stated margin of error.
  • The margin of error, an approximation. At the 95 percent level, it is about one over the square root of the sample size: about 5 percentage points for 400 people and about 3 for 1,000. The ladder runs 400, 1,000, 1,500, and 2,500 people to about 5, 3, 2.6, and 2. Real polls report their own stated margin, usually a little larger, and that is the figure you cite.
  • Precision is not bias. Question wording and non-response are not in the margin. A bigger sample buys precision; it does not remove bias. Total error includes every source, and the margin covers only the sampling part.
  • The Pew release. Pew Research Center's Americans and AI 2026 surveyed 5,119 U.S. adults on the American Trends Panel, with a stated margin of plus or minus 1.6 percentage points at the 95 percent level, and 44 percent reported they have used ChatGPT.
  • Behavior and media. Political socialization runs through family, school, peers and life events, and the media. Turnout tends to rise with age, education, and income, and each pattern is a correlation. Agenda-setting shapes which issues people think about; framing shapes how they judge a story; whether echo chambers are widespread is debated.
  • The debate, no verdict. A delegate votes as the represented want; a trustee votes on their own judgment of the public's interest. Each side names a real cost in the other.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. "A bigger sample fixes a biased poll": bigger fixes precision, not bias. "Plus or minus 3 means accurate to 3 percent": it is a 95-percent statement about the sampling procedure. "The media tells us what to think": agenda-setting is about what we think about.
  • Deeper review: the Week 12 chapter's dining-hours poll and the Pew walkthrough.

Unit 10 — Comparative politics (Week 13)

  • Key idea. When you cannot run an experiment on countries, you choose your comparisons with care.
  • Two designs. Przeworski and Teune (1970), The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, taught in words. A most-similar systems design compares cases alike in most respects that differ in the outcome. A most-different systems design compares cases unlike in most respects that share an outcome. Both narrow explanations; neither proves one.
  • Many variables, small N. Lijphart (1971), "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method", named the core problem: many possible explanations and few cases. His partial fixes: extend the study across time, narrow the property space, and pick comparable cases.
  • Two separate dimensions. State capacity is whether a state can tax, deliver services, and enforce its laws across its territory. Regime type is who rules and how. All four combinations are real.
  • Explanations of democratization, no winner. Modernization theory, from Lipset (1959), observes that wealthier, better-educated countries tend to be democracies, a pattern found again and again, while the mechanism and the direction stay debated, including reverse causation. Acemoglu and Robinson (2012), Why Nations Fail, put rules first, contrasting inclusive and extractive institutions. Political culture faces the circularity critique. The resource curse (Ross, 2001) links oil and mineral wealth to less democracy, and its strength is disputed.
  • Governance indices. Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2026, covering 2025, scores 25 indicators (10 political rights, 15 civil liberties), each 0 to 4, summed to 0 to 100, and bands countries Free, Partly Free, or Not Free. It rated 88 of 195 countries Free. V-Dem's Democracy Report 2026 counts, for 2025, 31 liberal democracies, 56 electoral democracies, 57 electoral autocracies, and 35 closed autocracies, with 74 percent of the world's population living in autocracies. Write each index with its edition and the year it covers.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. "Lipset proved wealth causes democracy": a correlation with an open direction. An index score read as a raw physical fact: it is expert coding against a published method. A low score read as a verdict on a people: never. "Free" and "liberal democracy" merged: keep each source's categories.
  • Deeper review: the Week 13 chapter's index walkthrough and the capacity grid.

Unit 11 — International relations (Week 14)

  • Key idea. No one stands above the world's states, yet most of their dealings, most of the time, are peaceful.
  • Anarchy and the security dilemma. Anarchy is the absence of any authority above sovereign states, a structural fact and not chaos. The security dilemma (Herz, 1950) is the spiral in which one state's defensive step looks threatening to others, leaving every side less secure; no side has to intend harm.
  • Three paradigms, never ranked. Realism treats states as the main actors under self-help, with the balance of power as its picture of order: classical realism with Morgenthau (1948), structural realism with Waltz (1979). Liberalism as an international relations theory stresses institutions, interdependence, and regime type (Keohane and Nye, 1977), and the democratic peace (Doyle, 1983; Russett, 1993): established democracies rarely if ever go to war with one another. Constructivism (Wendt, 1992) holds that what anarchy means is built from ideas, identities, and norms.
  • Pacts. Collective security commits members against any aggressor, even one of their own. An alliance commits members against a named outside threat.
  • The United Nations. Every member casts one vote in the General Assembly. The Security Council has fifteen members, five of them permanent members holding a veto. The International Court of Justice hears disputes between states, and the U.N. has no standing army. Article 2(1) of the Charter (1945): "The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Article 1: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."
  • Why states comply. One explanation per paradigm: reciprocity and reputation, institutions, and internalized norms. Enforcement against a powerful violator is not guaranteed.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. Anarchy read as chaos. Liberal IR theory read as being politically liberal: three different "liberals". "The democratic peace means democracies never fight": only each other, and the mechanism is debated. The Melian line, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must", read as Thucydides' own verdict: it belongs to the Athenian envoys as he rendered them.
  • Deeper review: the Week 14 chapter's three-lens reading of the Charter.

Unit 12 — Political economy and global issues (Week 15)

  • Key idea. Who gains and who pays when goods cross borders is a question about markets and about power at once.
  • The field. Political economy studies how politics and economics shape each other; it works at the seam of the subfields. Every real economy is a mixed economy. Hall and Soskice (2001), Varieties of Capitalism, describe liberal market economies and coordinated market economies without ranking them.
  • Trade. Comparative advantage (Ricardo, 1817) is the descriptive claim that countries gain in total when each specializes in what it gives up less to make, measured by opportunity cost. Trade policy is where the weighing turns normative: the aggregate gains and the distributional costs are both documented. Proponents of free trade argue the gains are large and losers can be helped other ways; proponents of managed trade argue the costs land hard on particular communities a government owes protection.
  • Poverty and inequality. Poverty is having too little to meet a stated threshold; a poverty line is a definition that can change. Inequality is the spread of a whole distribution. Between-country and within-country inequality are separate.
  • The line and the count. The World Bank's International Poverty Line is 3.00 dollars a day in 2021 international prices, replacing 2.15 dollars a day in 2017 prices. Around 831 million people lived in extreme poverty in 2025, down from around 2.3 billion in 1990. Our World in Data puts the share at about 44 percent in 1990 and about 10 percent in 2025. The decline is the finding; why it happened is contested.
  • Climate and migration. Climate change is a collective-action problem: each member does better letting others pay, and a free rider enjoys a shared benefit without paying its cost. The physical basics are stated plainly; each policy response, from carbon pricing to adaptation, has proponents and critics. Migration patterns are empirical questions, and admission policy is a normative one.
  • The debate, no verdict. Has globalization been a net good? Proponents point to aggregate gains and credit trade with part of the fall in poverty. Critics point to concentrated costs, inequality within countries, and shared problems no market solves alone.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures. "A country is either capitalist or socialist": every economy is mixed. "If trade has losers, comparative advantage is wrong": two findings, not a contradiction. Poverty and inequality used as one word. Citing 2.15 dollars a day as the current line. "The science is settled, so the policy is too": the basics are empirical, and the choice of response is normative.
  • Deeper review: the Week 15 chapter's poverty-line walkthrough and the free-rider table.

Representative practice

These are fresh variants, not the exam's questions. Where a worked example reads a real figure, it uses the course's pinned data with a new question; every other scene and number is illustrative, made up for this guide. Work each one, then check it.

Worked example 1 — a bike lane read by kind and layer (Unit 1)

An illustrative city council debates a protected bike lane on one downtown street.

  1. "The city charter requires a two-thirds council vote to close a street to cars." Empirical, on the design layer: check it against the charter's text.
  2. "Since the lane opened, the daily count of cyclists on the street rose from 120 to 180." Empirical, on the practice layer. The rise is 180 − 120 = 60 cyclists a day, and 60 ÷ 120 × 100 = 50 percent.
  3. Correlation or cause? The count rose after the lane opened, which is a correlation. A third factor, such as a change of season, could drive both the timing and the count.
  4. "The council ought to put cyclists' safety ahead of parking spaces." Normative, on the verdict layer: it is argued from values, and no count settles it.
  5. The unstated premise. The verdict assumes that safety gains outweigh shoppers' lost parking. Naming that assumption is not refuting it.

Why it matters: one topic can carry three kinds of claim, and you name the layer before you judge.

Worked example 2 — power, authority, and a choir (Unit 2)

  1. A bully at work threatens a coworker into covering extra shifts. That is power: the coworker complies. It carries no authority and no legitimacy.
  2. The shift supervisor assigns shifts under the posted rules, and staff accept the assignment as hers to make. That is authority.
  3. An illustrative community choir follows its founder's musical vision because members see her gifts as extraordinary. That is charismatic authority, attached to the person. When she steps down, no office carries it forward.
  4. The dates. Rousseau's The Social Contract (1762) came 1762 − 1648 = 114 years after the Westphalia marker, and Locke's Second Treatise (1689) came 1689 − 1651 = 38 years after Leviathan.

Why it matters: power, authority, and legitimacy name three different things, and Weber's types say where a right to command comes from.

Worked example 3 — Mill's principle and a liberty sort (Unit 3)

Run each illustrative rule through the two pinned sentences from On Liberty.

  1. A ban on adults skydiving, offered only to protect the jumpers themselves. Their own good "is not a sufficient warrant", so the principle rules this reason out.
  2. A ban on fireworks in a crowded street market. Sparks can injure bystanders, which is harm to others, so the principle permits restraint.
  3. A ban on a rude bumper sticker that offends drivers behind it. Offense is not harm in Mill's sentence, so it is ruled out as a reason.
  4. Late-night band practice in an apartment building. Whether the noise counts as harm or only as offense is a further judgment the two sentences do not settle. A hard case.
  5. Tally: 1 permitted + 2 ruled out + 1 hard case = 4 rules.
  6. A liberty sort, illustrative. A town lifts a curfew on teenagers: negative liberty grows, since an obstacle is gone. A town opens free evening classes: positive liberty grows, since people gain the real capacity to act.

Why it matters: the harm principle limits power, and the word in the text is harm, never offense.

Worked example 4 — regimes, rules, and thresholds (Units 4 and 5)

  1. An illustrative regime holds free, fair, competitive elections that incumbents have lost, but its government can shut newspapers by decree. It meets the electoral floor and lacks the liberal protections: an electoral democracy.
  2. An illustrative homeowners' association posts every rule before it takes effect (publicity, met), applies its rules to board members too (equal application, met), and rewrites the parking rules every week without notice (stability, failed). Two of the three elements checked are met.
  3. Article V's thresholds, in numbers. Two thirds of a full 435-member House is 435 × 2 ÷ 3 = 290 members. Two thirds of a full 100-member Senate is 100 × 2 ÷ 3 ≈ 66.7, so 67 senators, if every member votes. Three fourths of 50 States is 50 × 3 ÷ 4 = 37.5, so 38 States must ratify.
  4. A removal test, illustrative. A 90-seat legislature can remove the prime minister by a majority of all members: 90 ÷ 2 = 45, and 45 + 1 = 46 votes. The president, elected separately and holding real powers over foreign policy, cannot be removed that way. Design: semi-presidential.
  5. The IPU count. Of 188 national parliaments, 107 are unicameral and 81 bicameral, so 107 − 81 = 26 more parliaments have one chamber than two.

Why it matters: a regime's label, a rulebook's form, and a design's removal rule are three separate questions.

Worked example 5 — an illustrative republic's courts (Unit 6)

Sort five statements about an invented republic into judicial review, judicial independence, or jurisdiction.

  1. "The high court may void a regulation that conflicts with the constitution." Judicial review.
  2. "Judges' salaries cannot be cut while they serve." Independence: secure tenure.
  3. "A council of judges and lawyers, not the cabinet, nominates new judges." Independence: insulated selection.
  4. "Only the maritime court hears shipping disputes." Jurisdiction.
  5. "Ministers carry out rulings they dislike." Independence: compliance.
  6. Tally: 1 review + 3 independence + 1 jurisdiction = 5 statements.
  7. The pinned dates. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) came 1954 − 1819 = 135 years after McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and Bickel's book (1962) came 1962 − 1954 = 8 years after Brown.

Why it matters: the power, the conditions, and the court's reach are three different questions.

Worked example 6 — an illustrative federation's powers (Unit 7)

An invented federation's constitution lists its federal powers, ends with a necessary-and-proper clause, and reserves the rest to its provinces.

  1. The federal parliament may maintain a navy. Enumerated: it is on the list.
  2. A federal law builds a shipyard to repair the navy's ships. Implied: a reasonable tool for a listed job.
  3. The provinces set their own hunting seasons. Reserved: neither delegated nor prohibited.
  4. A provincial fee on the federal shipyard clashes with a valid federal law, so the federal law wins under the supremacy clause. A federal law with no listed power behind it would have nothing to be supreme with.
  5. The real chambers. A majority of the 435-member House is more than 435 ÷ 2 = 217.5, so 218 members. A majority of the 100-member Senate is 100 ÷ 2 + 1 = 51 senators.

Why it matters: ask first whether a federal law is valid, and only then whether it wins.

Worked example 7 — a tenants' union, a seat table, and the 2024 result (Unit 8)

  1. Plurality or majority, illustrative. A tenants' union of 52 households elects a chair, and the votes split 22, 18, and 12. The winner has 22 ÷ 52 × 100 ≈ 42.3 percent. A majority needs more than 52 ÷ 2 = 26, so 27 votes. The winner has a plurality, not a majority.
  2. D'Hondt, illustrative. Three parties share 60,000 votes in a five-seat district: Party A 30,000; Party B 18,000; Party C 12,000. Divide A by 1, 2, 3, and 4: 30,000, 15,000, 10,000, 7,500. Divide B by 1, 2, and 3: 18,000, 9,000, 6,000. Divide C by 1 and 2: 12,000, 6,000.
  3. Rank the pool: 30,000 (A), 18,000 (B), 15,000 (A), 12,000 (C), 10,000 (A). The sixth quotient, 9,000 (B), wins nothing. Seats: A 3, B 1, C 1, and 3 + 1 + 1 = 5.
  4. Votes against seats. A has 50 percent of the votes and 3 ÷ 5 × 100 = 60 percent of the seats; B has 30 percent and 1 ÷ 5 × 100 = 20 percent; C has 20 percent and 20 percent. Under first-past-the-post, if A led in all five single-member districts, A would win 5 of 5.
  5. The 2024 UK result, pinned. The Liberal Democrats won 12.2 percent of the vote and 72 of 650 seats: 72 ÷ 650 × 100 ≈ 11.1 percent of the seats, a gap of 12.2 − 11.1 = 1.1 percentage points. The Scottish National Party won 2.5 percent and 9 seats, 9 ÷ 650 × 100 ≈ 1.4 percent of the seats.
  6. Read it. Both parties' seats sit close to their vote shares: the Scottish National Party's gap is 2.5 − 1.4 = 1.1 percentage points, the same as the Liberal Democrats'. Each party's votes were concentrated in particular places. Set them beside Reform UK, which won 14.3 percent of the vote and 5 seats: more votes than the Liberal Democrats, and 72 − 5 = 67 fewer seats. A geographically efficient vote converts into seats, and a dispersed one does not. Whether that is fair is a normative question the count does not settle.

Why it matters: the rule turns votes into seats, and a vote share, a seat share, and the gap between them are three different numbers.

Worked example 8 — a transit survey and the Pew release (Unit 9)

  1. An illustrative county transit survey draws 1,500 residents at random from the full list of addresses, and 54 percent favor later evening buses.
  2. The margin, an approximation. The ladder gives about 2.6 percentage points for 1,500 people, so the range runs from 54 − 2.6 = 51.4 to 54 + 2.6 = 56.6 percent.
  3. A website poll beside it. The county's website also invites anyone to vote, and thousands click. It is self-selected, so it carries no margin of error at any size.
  4. Two newspapers, one closure, illustrative. One story about a factory closing stresses foreign competition; another stresses management decisions. Same event, different emphasis: framing.
  5. The Pew release, pinned. For 5,119 adults, the approximation gives 100 ÷ the square root of 5,119 ≈ 1.4 percentage points. The stated margin is 1.6, the figure you cite. With it, the 44 percent who reported using ChatGPT reads as 44 − 1.6 = 42.4 to 44 + 1.6 = 45.6 percent.

Why it matters: a random sample earns a margin, a stated margin beats the rule of thumb, and no margin covers wording or non-response.

Worked example 9 — two indices and a capacity grid (Unit 10)

  1. Freedom in the World 2026, covering 2025. Japan scores 40 + 56 = 96, Free, and Mexico scores 26 + 32 = 58, Partly Free. The gap on the 0-to-100 scale is 96 − 58 = 38.
  2. Reading the parts. Mexico's political rights sit 40 − 26 = 14 below the top of their range, and its civil liberties sit 60 − 32 = 28 below theirs.
  3. V-Dem's Democracy Report 2026, for 2025. Electoral autocracies outnumber closed autocracies by 57 − 35 = 22.
  4. What the numbers do not show. Each figure reports conditions as expert coders scored them. It shows no cause, and it is never a verdict on a people.
  5. A capacity grid, illustrative. A made-up country holds competitive elections that incumbents lose, yet its clinics never reach its mountain provinces and it cannot collect taxes there. Low capacity, democratic regime: a weak democracy.
  6. A design, illustrative. Two made-up provinces share a language, an economy, and a climate, and differ in one rule: one funds its schools by local tax, the other by a national grant. Their school results differ. That is a most-similar design, and the funding rule becomes the explanation to test, not a proven cause.

Why it matters: an index is a measure with an edition, and a comparison narrows an explanation without proving it.

Worked example 10 — a pact, three lenses, and the Council (Unit 11)

  1. An illustrative pact. Four lake states promise to defend one another against one named northern neighbor. The pact is aimed at a named outside threat, so it is an alliance.
  2. Three lenses on one rule, illustrative. Two made-up states both keep a shared-airspace agreement for decades. A realist explains it by reciprocity and reputation. A liberal explains it by a joint air-traffic office that tracks every flight. A constructivist explains it by a norm both states now treat as part of who they are.
  3. The Security Council. Of its 15 members, 5 are permanent, so 15 − 5 = 10 are elected.
  4. Kind and layer. "The Council has 15 members, 5 of them permanent with a veto" is empirical, on the design layer. "The permanent members ought to keep the veto" is normative, on the verdict layer. Proponents argue the veto keeps the great powers inside the organization; critics respond that it sits uneasily with sovereign equality.

Why it matters: every paradigm can explain the same cooperation, each by a different mechanism, and none is ranked the winner.

Worked example 11 — two islands, a village, and three countries' sky (Unit 12)

  1. Comparative advantage, illustrative. The first of two islands makes a fishing net in 4 hours and a basket in 2 hours. The second makes either one in 6 hours. The first is faster at both.
  2. Opportunity costs. On the first island, a net costs 4 ÷ 2 = 2 baskets, and a basket costs 2 ÷ 4 = 0.5 net. On the second, a net costs 6 ÷ 6 = 1 basket. The first island gives up less to make baskets (0.5 net against 1), and the second gives up less to make nets (1 basket against 2).
  3. The gains. Each island has 24 hours. Splitting evenly, the first makes 12 ÷ 4 = 3 nets and 12 ÷ 2 = 6 baskets, and the second makes 12 ÷ 6 = 2 nets and 12 ÷ 6 = 2 baskets: 5 nets and 8 baskets in all. Specializing, the second makes 24 ÷ 6 = 4 nets, and the first spends 4 hours on 1 net and 20 hours on 20 ÷ 2 = 10 baskets: still 5 nets, and 10 − 8 = 2 more baskets.
  4. Poverty against inequality, illustrative. In a village of 10 households, those below the village's line rise from 2 to 3, so poverty rises from 20 to 30 percent. The richest household's earnings fall from 9 times the poorest household's to 5 times, so inequality narrows. The two measures moved in opposite directions.
  5. The free-rider logic, illustrative. Three countries share one sky. A cut costs the country that makes it 5 units and gives 2 units to each of the 3. Alone, a country gets 2 − 5 = −3, yet one cut is worth 2 × 3 = 6 to the group, more than its cost. If all cut, each gets 6 − 5 = 1. If two cut and one free rides, the free rider gets 2 × 2 = 4, and each cutter gets 4 − 5 = −1.
  6. The pinned lines. About 10 percent of the world's population lives below 3 dollars a day and about 52 percent below 10, a gap of 52 − 10 = 42 percentage points between two lines.

Why it matters: gains in total and losses in particular are two findings, and a poverty share depends on the line you name.

Self-check questions

  1. A neighbor says, "Ridership fell last year, so the city ought to lower bus fares." Which part is empirical and which is normative? Self-check: "ridership fell" is empirical; "ought to lower fares" is normative. Why: one can be checked against a count, and the other is argued from values.
  2. A people who share a language and a history but have no state of their own: state, nation, or government? Self-check: a nation. Why: a nation is a shared identity, with or without a state.
  3. Which social contract thinker fears chaos, and which fears tyranny? Self-check: Hobbes fears chaos; Locke fears tyranny. Why: Hobbes builds a strong sovereign for order; Locke builds a limited government by consent.
  4. Whose theory defends the minimal state, Rawls's or Nozick's? Self-check: Nozick's. Why: the minimal state belongs to entitlement theory; the veil of ignorance is Rawls's.
  5. Does the United Kingdom lack a constitution because it has no single supreme document? Self-check: no. Why: its constitution is unwritten, spread across statutes, judicial decisions, and conventions, and unwritten does not mean unconstrained.
  6. What removal rule identifies a semi-presidential system? Self-check: the cabinet can fall to a no-confidence vote, while the separately elected president cannot. Why: the design pairs an elected president with a cabinet answerable to the legislature.
  7. Which essay calls the judiciary "beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power", and who wrote it? Self-check: The Federalist No. 78, by Hamilton (1788). Why: it argues for protecting a branch with "neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment".
  8. What does the power of the purse let Congress do? Self-check: check the other branches by granting or withholding money. Why: control over spending is one of the tools of checks and balances.
  9. An illustrative list system sets a 3 percent threshold, and a party wins 2.4 percent of the vote. How many seats does it win? Self-check: none. Why: 2.4 is below 3, so the party never reaches the seat-sharing stage.
  10. A poll reports its sample size, its field dates, and its sampling method. What is missing? Self-check: its stated margin of error. Why: a trustworthy poll reports all four facts.
  11. Does the democratic peace say democracies never go to war? Self-check: no. Why: established democracies rarely if ever fight one another, they fight non-democracies at ordinary rates, and the mechanism is debated.
  12. Which line did the 2.15-dollar line itself replace? Self-check: 1.90 dollars a day in 2011 prices. Why: each line is a definition, and older figures on the 1.90-dollar line are a superseded measure.

Check yourself — choose one. (a) Which unit in this guide felt least familiar, and which worked example would you redo first? (b) Pick one Week 1 tool, such as the empirical/normative sort or the three-layer read, and explain in two sentences how it changes the way you read one Weeks 9–15 topic. Either choice is a good use of ten minutes.

Watch before the exam

These videos come from the course's own weekly readings. Use them to retrieve what you already learned and to connect weeks, not for new material.

Study plan

A short countdown sized to a course that meets twice a week. Count backward from the day the final opens in Week 16.

  • Two weeks out: review Units 1–5 in one sitting and redo Worked examples 1 and 4 from scratch. These tools return inside later questions.
  • Twelve days out: review Units 6 and 7. Redo Worked examples 5 and 6 until each step comes with its reason.
  • Ten days out: review Unit 8 and redo Worked example 7 without looking. Week 11 carries 9 of the 40 questions, more than any other week.
  • One week out: take the paired practice exam once, closed-book and under exam-like conditions, then sort every miss by week. Remember that it leans on Weeks 1–7 far more than the final does and barely touches Weeks 11 and 13.
  • Five days out: review Units 9 and 10 and redo Worked examples 8 and 9.
  • Four days out: review Units 11 and 12 and redo Worked examples 10 and 11.
  • Three days out: run the paired exam-prep tutorial (the copy/paste chatbot tutor, or its no-AI route) on the two units that felt weakest, with at least one from Units 6–12.
  • Two days out: answer the twelve self-check questions cold, then retake the practice exam.
  • The day before: skim the "Predictable mistakes → cures" lines in every unit and watch one video from the list above. Sleep.

Use the exam-prep tutorial and the practice exam for active recall; this guide is for review, and those two are where you rehearse. Rereading alone does less for you than retrieval practice does.

Exam format and scoring

The final is scored automatically, and all 40 questions count the same. The questions appear one at a time, and you cannot go back to an earlier question once you move on. You have one attempt and no time limit. AI tools are not permitted on the final.

Test-taking strategies for this material:

  • For any claim, name its kind before you judge it: empirical or normative, and for an institution, design, practice, or verdict.
  • For votes and seats, keep the vote share, the seat share, and the gap in percentage points apart, and ask whether a total is more than half.
  • For a pinned case, quotation, or date, check the match before anything else: the thinker, the work, and the year travel together.
  • For a contested question, pick the statement that reports what a position claims, not the one that declares a winner.
  • For a poll or an index, ask what is measured, over whom and when, and whether the pattern is a correlation or a cause.
  • For a pair of look-alike terms, name the one word that separates them: branches or levels, power or conditions, threshold or spread, any aggressor or a named threat.
  • Since you cannot go back, settle each question before you move on.

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