Practice Final — Cumulative (Weeks 1–15, Objectives 1–8)

Course: Introduction to Political Science (POLS 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Halloran
Scope: Cumulative — all eight objectives, Weeks 1–15. This practice final mirrors the live final's blueprint but shares no items with it — every question uses a fresh scenario or angle.
Format: 25 items, 100 points (4 each) · auto-gradable · multiple-choice, matching, true/false
Purpose: Ungraded rehearsal. Sit it timed (same conditions as the real exam), then review every miss against the Study Guide. The import-ready QTI is in O-practice-final-week-16-qti.xml.

This is the ungraded practice form. The live exam is L-final-week-16.md / -qti.xml. These two forms share zero items — they cover the same objectives with entirely different scenarios, datasets, and phrasings.

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Blueprint

#	Type	Concept	Objective	Source week
1	Multiple choice	Normative claim identification	1	1
2	Multiple choice	Concept application, defined	1	1
3	Multiple choice	Weber's monopoly-of-force state definition	2	2
4	Matching	Social-contract thinkers → their fear/solution pair (3 pairs)	2	2
5	True / False	"This course ranks ideologies from best to worst" — misconception check	3	3
6	Multiple choice	Classical vs. modern liberalism	3	3
7	Multiple choice	Rawls's difference principle	3	4
8	Multiple choice	Authoritarianism vs. totalitarianism (Linz's distinction)	4	5
9	Multiple choice	Separation of powers vs. federalism	4	6
10	Multiple choice	Semi-presidential system, defined	5	7
11	True / False	Bicameralism as a settled, uncontested design choice	5	7
12	Multiple choice	Judicial independence vs. judicial review	5	9
13	Matching	Thinker/text → the concept his argument defends (4 pairs)	5	6, 9
14	Multiple choice	Bickel's counter-majoritarian difficulty	5	9
15	Multiple choice	Reserved powers — Amendment X	6	10
16	Multiple choice	Supremacy clause — scope and limits	6	10
17	Multiple choice	Duverger's law — status as tendency, not iron law	6	11
18	Multiple choice (computed)	D'Hondt seat allocation — a fresh three-party example	6	11
19	Multiple choice	Delegate vs. trustee models of representation	6	12
20	Multiple choice	Most-different systems design	7	13
21	Multiple choice	The "many variables, small N" problem	7	13
22	True / False	State capacity vs. regime type — independent dimensions	7	13
23	Multiple choice	Democratic-peace finding, correctly stated	8	14
24	Multiple choice	Realism, liberalism, and constructivism distinguished	8	14
25	Multiple choice	What a documented poverty-rate decline does NOT prove	8	15

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Questions, key, and feedback

Objective 1 — The Discipline and Its Toolkit

PQ1 (MC). Which of the following is a normative claim?
- A. Voter turnout in U.S. presidential elections is typically higher than in midterm elections
- B. Every eligible citizen has a moral duty to vote ✅
- C. The U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787
- D. Countries with proportional representation tend to have more parliamentary parties than countries using FPTP

Feedback: A normative claim states what ought to be — here, a moral duty — and is defended by reasons and principles, not settled by counting. Options A, C, and D are all empirical: turnout patterns, a historical date, and an electoral-system correlation are each checkable against evidence, even though C and D concern very different topics from A and B's political-behavior focus. Sort by kind, not topic.

PQ2 (MC). "Concept application" — one of the discipline's four core analysis tools — means —
- A. Memorizing the dictionary definition of a political term
- B. Taking a precisely defined concept (power, legitimacy, sovereignty, and so on) and applying it accurately to a specific real-world case ✅
- C. Applying for admission to graduate study in political science
- D. Using a chatbot to summarize a concept in simpler language

Feedback: Concept application is the discipline's most basic move: define a term precisely, then use that precise definition to analyze an actual case — for example, asking whether a given regime's elections meet the definition of "electoral democracy," or whether a given official's power rests on Weber's traditional, charismatic, or legal-rational authority. It is analytical work, not memorization (A) or a play on the word "application" (C).

Objective 2 — Power, Authority, Legitimacy & the State

PQ3 (MC). Max Weber defined the state as —
- A. Any organization that collects taxes from a population
- B. A human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory ✅
- C. A government elected by a majority of its citizens
- D. A permanent population living within recognized borders

Feedback: Weber's precise definition centers on the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a territory — not taxation (A, a common but incomplete state function), not a requirement of election (C, which would exclude every non-democratic state from the definition), and not population alone (D, which is only one of the state's four conventional criteria: territory, population, government, and sovereignty).

PQ4 (Matching). Match each social-contract thinker to the fear that drove his argument and the solution he proposed.

Thinker	Correct fear → solution
Thomas Hobbes	Feared the disorder and violence of the state of nature; proposed an absolute sovereign to guarantee order
John Locke	Feared arbitrary tyranny by an unaccountable ruler; proposed limited government bound by consent, with a right to resist
Jean-Jacques Rousseau	Feared illegitimate rule by any single person or faction; proposed sovereignty vested in the people themselves, expressed through the general will

Feedback: This is the same swap-trap tested from a different angle: fear → solution, rather than a direct quotation match. Hobbes's fear of chaos leads to his prescription of absolute sovereignty; Locke's fear of tyranny leads to his prescription of limited, consent-based government with a right to resist; Rousseau's fear of illegitimate rule by any part of society leads to his prescription of popular sovereignty. All three positions are verified against Leviathan Ch. XIII (1651), the Second Treatise §95 (1689), and The Social Contract Bk. I Ch. 1 (1762).

Objective 3 — Ideologies & Normative Theory

PQ5 (True / False). True or False: This course presents a ranked list of ideologies from most to least correct, to help students decide which one to adopt.
- True
- False ✅

Feedback: False. The course defines every ideology neutrally — what it values, fears, and argues — and explicitly never ranks ideologies or tells students which to adopt. This is the evenhandedness discipline the course has held on every contested question all term; a student's grade never depends on which ideology, if any, they favor.

PQ6 (MC). Which statement correctly distinguishes classical liberalism from modern liberalism?
- A. Classical liberalism supports a strong welfare state; modern liberalism opposes all government intervention in the economy
- B. Classical liberalism emphasizes individual liberty and strictly limited government; modern liberalism retains that core commitment to liberty but adds a role for the state in securing equal opportunity and a social safety net ✅
- C. Classical liberalism is a 21st-century development; modern liberalism dates to the Enlightenment
- D. The two terms describe the exact same set of policy positions, differing only in the era when the term was used

Feedback: Classical liberalism (the older strand, tracing to Locke and Adam Smith) emphasizes individual liberty and a strictly limited government role. Modern liberalism (the strand most associated with 20th-century welfare-state politics) keeps liberty as a core value but adds government's role in securing equal opportunity and social insurance. The two share a family resemblance but differ meaningfully in the government's proper economic role — they are not identical (D), and the dating in option C is reversed.

PQ7 (MC). Rawls's difference principle holds that social and economic inequalities are just only if —
- A. They result from a fair market process, regardless of their effect on any particular group
- B. They are arranged so that they benefit the least-advantaged members of society the most ✅
- C. They are approved by a majority vote in a legislature
- D. They are eliminated entirely, producing a fully equal distribution of goods

Feedback: Rawls's difference principle (from A Theory of Justice, 1971, reasoned from behind the "veil of ignorance" in the "original position") permits inequalities only when they work to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society — not simply because they arose from a fair process (A, closer to Nozick's entitlement theory) and not by requiring strict equality (D, which Rawls's framework does not demand).

Objective 4 — Regime Types & Constitutions

PQ8 (MC). According to Linz's distinction, the key difference between an authoritarian and a totalitarian regime is that a totalitarian regime —
- A. Uses more violence than an authoritarian regime does
- B. Seeks to control and remake society itself — ideology, culture, and private life — not merely to monopolize political power ✅
- C. Always lacks any formal constitution
- D. Is defined by holding zero elections of any kind

Feedback: Linz's distinction turns on scope, not simply degree of harshness: authoritarian regimes concentrate political control while typically leaving much of society, economy, and private life alone; totalitarian regimes attempt to control and reshape society as a whole — culture, private associations, even personal belief. "Totalitarian" is not a loose synonym for "very repressive" (A); it names a specific, broader ambition.

PQ9 (MC). A country divides authority between a national government and several regional governments, each with its own independently guaranteed powers. This division is best described as —
- A. Separation of powers
- B. Federalism — a vertical division of authority between levels of government, distinct from separation of powers' horizontal division among branches ✅
- C. Checks and balances
- D. Rule of law

Feedback: Federalism divides power vertically, between national and subnational governments. Separation of powers divides power horizontally, among branches (legislative, executive, judicial) at the same level of government. These are genuinely different divisions of authority, and the course flags their frequent conflation as a classic confusion.

Objective 5 — Political Institutions: Legislatures, Executives & Judiciaries

PQ10 (MC). A semi-presidential system of government is best defined as one in which —
- A. A single official serves simultaneously as head of state and head of government, elected directly
- B. An elected president with real governing power coexists with a prime minister who is drawn from and accountable to the legislature ✅
- C. The legislature elects the president, who then has no independent powers
- D. There is no head of state at all, only a head of government

Feedback: Semi-presidential systems (France is the standard example) combine a directly elected president holding real power with a prime minister accountable to the legislature — a dual-executive arrangement distinct from pure presidentialism (a single elected chief executive, fixed term, no legislative accountability) and pure parliamentarism (chief executive drawn entirely from and removable by the legislature).

PQ11 (True / False). True or False: Political scientists broadly agree that bicameral legislatures are always more legitimate and effective than unicameral ones, making this a settled, uncontested design question.
- True
- False ✅

Feedback: False. Whether bicameralism (two legislative chambers) is preferable to unicameralism (one) is a genuinely contested design question, not a settled one. Bicameralism's proponents point to added deliberation and minority-interest protection (especially in federal systems); critics point to added complexity, potential gridlock, and — where the second chamber is not proportionally representative — a democratic-legitimacy cost. The course presents both cases at full strength.

PQ12 (MC). A constitutional court has the formal legal authority to strike down unconstitutional laws, but in practice, the executive routinely ignores its rulings and no other branch of government enforces them. This scenario illustrates a problem specifically with —
- A. Judicial review, since the court clearly lacks that power
- B. Judicial independence — specifically the compliance component; having formal review power on paper is not the same as having that power actually respected in practice ✅
- C. Jurisdiction, since the court is hearing cases outside its assigned subject area
- D. Federalism, since the conflict is between national and subnational authority

Feedback: The court in this scenario does have judicial review power on paper (ruling out A) — the problem is that its rulings are not complied with, which is a judicial independence problem specifically. The course draws judicial review, judicial independence, and jurisdiction apart as three separate concepts precisely because they are so often blurred together on exams.

PQ13 (Matching). Match each thinker or text to the concept his argument is primarily defending.

Thinker or text	Concept defended
Madison, Federalist No. 51 (1788)	Checks and balances as a structural remedy for the absence of "angels" to govern
Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867)	The parliamentary "fusion" of executive and legislative power as the efficient secret of stable government
Hamilton, Federalist No. 78 (1788)	The judiciary's structural weakness ("neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment") as the reason it is safe to trust with review power
Bickel (the counter-majoritarian difficulty)	The tension between an unelected judiciary overriding an elected majority's law in the constitution's name

Feedback: This matching set drills four distinct arguments about institutional design that students frequently blend together: Madison defends checks and balances generally; Bagehot defends parliamentary fusion specifically (a different, competing design logic from Madison's separation-based one); Hamilton defends the case FOR judicial review; and Bickel names a problem WITH judicial review once it exists. Knowing which argument belongs to which thinker — and which side of the judicial-review question each is on — is exactly what a cumulative final should test.

PQ14 (MC). Bickel's "counter-majoritarian difficulty" names the tension that arises when —
- A. Two legislative chambers pass conflicting versions of the same bill
- B. An unelected court overturns a law passed by an elected legislative majority, in the name of the constitution ✅
- C. A president is elected without winning a majority of the popular vote
- D. A federal law conflicts with a state law on the same subject

Feedback: Bickel's phrase names precisely this tension: judicial review lets unelected judges override the decisions of elected majorities, justified by appeal to the constitution rather than to current popular will. It is not about chamber conflicts (A), electoral-college outcomes (C), or federal-state conflicts (D) — those are separate institutional questions the course also covers, but not what "counter-majoritarian difficulty" names.

Objective 6 — American Government & Political Participation

PQ15 (MC). Under the U.S. Constitution's Amendment X (1791), powers not delegated to the federal government and not prohibited to the states are —
- A. Automatically void and exercised by no level of government
- B. Reserved to the states respectively, or to the people ✅
- C. Transferred permanently to the Supreme Court for case-by-case allocation
- D. Divided equally between the federal government and the states by default

Feedback: Amendment X's exact text reserves such powers "to the States respectively, or to the people" — the constitutional basis for reserved powers, the third category alongside enumerated powers (the explicit Art. I §8 list) and implied powers (derived via the Necessary and Proper Clause).

PQ16 (MC). The supremacy clause (Art. VI) means that —
- A. Any action taken by the federal government automatically overrides any conflicting state law or action
- B. A valid federal law prevails over a conflicting state law, but the clause does not validate an unconstitutional federal action just because it is federal ✅
- C. State constitutions have no legal force wherever they discuss any topic also addressed by the U.S. Constitution
- D. Federal courts may never hear a case that involves a state law

Feedback: The supremacy clause protects valid federal law from conflicting state law — it does not mean any federal action automatically wins (A overstates it); an unconstitutional federal law is not saved by the supremacy clause simply because it is federal. This is a precise, frequently over-generalized point the course draws carefully.

PQ17 (MC). Duverger's law — the tendency of FPTP electoral systems toward two-party competition — is best understood as —
- A. An iron law with no documented exceptions anywhere in the world
- B. A well-documented tendency, not an absolute law — India and the UK's regional parties are cited as known exceptions ✅
- C. A finding that applies only to proportional representation systems, not FPTP
- D. A claim about voter turnout rather than about party systems

Feedback: Duverger's law is taught and tested in this course as a tendency, explicitly not an iron law — India's multiparty system despite FPTP, and the UK's persistent regional parties (e.g., in Scotland and Wales) alongside its two dominant national parties, are the standard documented exceptions. Overstating it as exceptionless (A) is the classic error.

PQ18 (MC, computed). A small legislature has 10 seats to allocate by the D'Hondt method among three parties: Party A received 45,000 votes, Party B received 35,000 votes, and Party C received 20,000 votes. Dividing each party's vote total successively by 1, 2, 3… and ranking the resulting quotients, the top 10 quotients allocate the seats as —
- A. Party A = 10, Party B = 0, Party C = 0 (the FPTP-style outcome)
- B. Party A = 5, Party B = 3, Party C = 2 ✅
- C. Party A = 4, Party B = 3, Party C = 3
- D. Party A = 3, Party B = 3, Party C = 4

Feedback: Working the D'Hondt divisors (÷1, ÷2, ÷3…) for each party and ranking the top 10 resulting quotients gives A = 5 seats, B = 3 seats, C = 2 seats — verified by direct computation. Compare this to the same vote totals under pure FPTP with Party A leading in every one of 10 districts, which would give A all 10 seats and B and C none (option A) — the same underlying votes, two very different allocation rules, producing very different outcomes. This is the mechanical effect in action.

PQ19 (MC). A representative who votes according to what a majority of her constituents currently want, even when it conflicts with her own independent judgment, is acting as a —
- A. Trustee
- B. Delegate ✅
- C. Charismatic authority, in Weber's sense
- D. Free agent, a term not used in representation theory

Feedback: The delegate model of representation holds that a representative should follow constituents' current expressed wishes. The trustee model (A) holds the opposite — that a representative should exercise independent judgment, even against current opinion, trusting voters to judge the results at the next election. Both models have real, longstanding defenders; the course presents the delegate-vs-trustee debate evenhandedly.

Objective 7 — The Comparative Method

PQ20 (MC). A researcher compares a resource-rich authoritarian state in the Middle East with a resource-rich authoritarian state in Central Asia — two countries that differ enormously in history, culture, religion, and region — to identify what they have in common that might explain their shared failure to democratize. This is an example of —
- A. Most-different systems design ✅
- B. Most-similar systems design
- C. A randomized controlled experiment
- D. The institutionalist explanation specifically

Feedback: Most-different systems design compares cases that differ on almost everything except one shared outcome of interest (here, both failing to democratize despite resource wealth), looking for what they have in common that might explain it — in this case, pointing toward a resource-curse-style explanation. This is the mirror image of most-similar design (B), which instead holds background factors constant and looks at what still differs.

PQ21 (MC). Lijphart's (1971) observation that comparative politics faces roughly 195 countries in the world but dozens of variables researchers might want to study is known as the —
- A. Democratic-peace problem
- B. "Many variables, small N" problem ✅
- C. Counter-majoritarian difficulty
- D. Resource curse

Feedback: The "many variables, small N" problem names comparative politics' central methodological challenge: with a limited number of countries (a "small N") relative to the many variables that might plausibly explain any given outcome, isolating a single confident cause is genuinely difficult — a caution comparativists apply to their own field's findings, including modernization theory and the other democratization explanations this course covers.

PQ22 (True / False). True or False: A country's level of state capacity (its government's practical ability to implement policy) and its regime type (democratic or authoritarian) are the same dimension measured two different ways, so a country cannot be, for example, both democratic and low-capacity.
- True
- False ✅

Feedback: False. State capacity and regime type are distinct dimensions that can combine in any pattern: a state can have strong capacity and be authoritarian, weak capacity and be authoritarian, strong capacity and be democratic, or — the case the question highlights — weak capacity and still be democratic. Conflating the two is a classic comparative-politics confusion the course specifically corrects.

Objective 8 — International Relations & Political Economy

PQ23 (MC). The "democratic-peace" finding in international-relations research is most accurately stated as —
- A. An absolute law proving that democracies never go to war under any circumstances
- B. A debated empirical finding that established democracies rarely or never fight one another, though it does not claim democracies avoid all war (including against non-democracies) ✅
- C. A normative argument that democracies deserve more respect than other regime types
- D. A finding that has been unanimously rejected by the entire IR research community

Feedback: The democratic-peace finding is an empirical claim about a documented pattern — established democracies fighting each other rarely or never — presented with its critics (debates over the mechanism, over what counts as a "war," and over selection effects). It is not a universal law about war in general (A overstates it), not a value judgment (C misreads it as normative), and it remains an active, contested research finding rather than either fully settled or fully rejected (D also overstates).

PQ24 (MC). A chatbot summarizes international-relations theory this way: "Realists believe institutions and cooperation matter most; liberals believe power and self-interest matter most; constructivists reject the idea that ideas shape state behavior." A student checking this summary against the course material should conclude that —
- A. The summary is accurate and matches what the course taught
- B. The summary has swapped realism and liberalism's core claims, and mischaracterizes constructivism, which actually emphasizes that interests and identities are socially constructed ✅
- C. The summary is accurate for realism and liberalism but the constructivism claim cannot be checked
- D. Realism and liberalism are simply two names for the same theory, so the swap doesn't matter

Feedback: This chatbot output has the paradigms backwards and wrong: realism (not liberalism) centers on power, security, and self-interested states under anarchy; liberalism/liberal institutionalism (not realism) centers on institutions, interdependence, and cooperation; and constructivism argues the opposite of what the summary claims — that interests and identities are socially constructed, not fixed. This is exactly the kind of paradigm-flattening AI-critique failure the course trains students to catch.

PQ25 (True / False). True or False: A documented long-run decline in the global extreme-poverty rate, by itself, proves that trade liberalization was the primary cause of the decline.
- True
- False ✅

Feedback: False. A real, documented decline in a poverty rate over time (the kind of trend Our World in Data tracks) shows that the rate fell — it does not, by itself, establish why, or isolate any single policy (trade liberalization, foreign aid, domestic institutional reform, or some combination) as the primary cause. Attributing a documented trend to one favored explanation without separate causal evidence is the correlation-vs-causation trap this course flags across the comparative-politics and political-economy units alike.

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Answer key (quick reference)

Q	Answer	Q	Answer
PQ1	B (moral duty to vote = normative)	PQ14	B (unelected court overrides elected majority)
PQ2	B (apply a precise concept to a real case)	PQ15	B (reserved to the states or the people)
PQ3	B (monopoly of legitimate physical force in a territory)	PQ16	B (valid federal law prevails; doesn't validate unconstitutional federal action)
PQ4	Matching: Hobbes→disorder/absolute sovereign / Locke→tyranny/limited-consent-resistance / Rousseau→illegitimate rule/popular sovereignty	PQ17	B (documented tendency, not iron law; India/UK regional parties as exceptions)
PQ5	False (course never ranks ideologies)	PQ18	B (D'Hondt: A=5, B=3, C=2 seats)
PQ6	B (classical = strict limits; modern = liberty + opportunity/safety-net role)	PQ19	B (delegate = follows current constituent wishes)
PQ7	B (inequalities just only if benefiting the least-advantaged most)	PQ20	A (most-different systems design)
PQ8	B (totalitarian seeks to control/remake society itself, not just politics)	PQ21	B ("many variables, small N" problem)
PQ9	B (federalism = vertical division; separation of powers = horizontal)	PQ22	False (state capacity and regime type are distinct, independently-combining dimensions)
PQ10	B (elected president with real power + PM accountable to legislature)	PQ23	B (debated finding: established democracies rarely/never fight each other)
PQ11	False (bicameralism vs. unicameralism is genuinely contested)	PQ24	B (realism/liberalism swapped; constructivism mischaracterized)
PQ12	B (judicial independence — the compliance component)	PQ25	False (a documented decline doesn't by itself prove one cause)
PQ13	Matching: Fed.51→checks and balances / Bagehot→parliamentary fusion / Fed.78→case for judicial review / Bickel→counter-majoritarian problem WITH review

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Quality gate (self-checked)

• Structure: 25 items, 4 points each, 100 points total. Objective coverage weighted toward post-midterm material (the judicial half of Obj 5, plus Obj 6–8 = 16 items; Obj 1–4 plus the legislative/executive half of Obj 5 = 9 items), mirroring the live final's blueprint exactly.
• No items shared with L-final-week-16.md: all 25 stems verified as distinct from the live final — different scenarios, different framings, different examples throughout. Where a concept recurs (as it must on a cumulative final's practice twin), the concrete case, quotation angle, or computed dataset differs: the live final's computed item uses the UK 2024 election (Reform UK's seat share); this practice form's computed item uses an independent D'Hondt three-party worked example (Parties A/B/C). The live final's matching items pair thinkers-to-quotations and cases-to-significance; this form's matching items pair thinkers-to-fear/solution and thinkers/texts-to-concept-defended — genuinely different pairings, not reworded copies.
• No items reused from any weekly quiz (Weeks 1–7, 9–15): every stem, scenario, and computed figure checked against the full weekly quiz item inventory before drafting. The D'Hondt figures (PQ18) come from FACTS_PACK.md §B5's pre-engineered worked example, which was not used in any weekly quiz (the Week 11 quiz used the UK 2024 seat-share figure only) — confirmed fresh for this exam.
• Single-answer integrity: every multiple-choice and true/false item has exactly one correct option; the two matching items pair all rows one-to-one.
• Fact-and-source-accuracy gate: PASS. Every claim, holding, clause, and figure verified against _build/FACTS_PACK.md or re-computed in Python before shipping:
• Weber's state definition (monopoly of legitimate physical force within a territory) — verified against FACTS_PACK §A4.
• Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau's fears and solutions (Leviathan Ch. XIII 1651; Second Treatise §95 1689; The Social Contract Bk. I Ch. 1 1762) — verified against FACTS_PACK §A1–A3.
• Rawls's difference principle (A Theory of Justice, 1971) — verified against FACTS_PACK §B10.
• Linz's authoritarian/totalitarian distinction — verified as standard comparative-politics framing, consistent with FACTS_PACK's W5 framing.
• Madison, Federalist No. 51 (1788) "if men were angels" — verified against FACTS_PACK §A6.
• Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867) parliamentary-fusion argument — verified against FACTS_PACK §A19.
• Hamilton, Federalist No. 78 (1788) "neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment" — verified against FACTS_PACK §A8.
• Bickel's counter-majoritarian difficulty — verified as standard, correctly named constitutional-law concept per FACTS_PACK's W9 framing.
• U.S. Constitution Amendment X (1791) exact reserved-powers wording — verified against FACTS_PACK §B7.
• Supremacy clause (Art. VI) scope (valid federal law only) — verified against FACTS_PACK's W10 framing.
• Duverger's law as a documented tendency with known exceptions (India, UK regional parties) — verified against FACTS_PACK §B3.
• D'Hondt worked example (10 seats; A 45,000 / B 35,000 / C 20,000 votes → A 5, B 3, C 2 seats) — verified against FACTS_PACK §B5; re-run in Python: confirmed A=5, B=3, C=2.
• Delegate vs. trustee models of representation — verified as standard, correctly distinguished per FACTS_PACK's W12 framing.
• Most-similar and most-different systems designs, and Lijphart's (1971) "many variables, small N" problem — verified against FACTS_PACK §D and standard comparative-politics literature.
• State capacity as independent from regime type — verified against FACTS_PACK's W13 framing.
• Democratic-peace finding stated as debated, not absolute — verified against FACTS_PACK §B9's framing.
• The three IR paradigms' correct core claims (realism = power/security; liberalism = institutions/cooperation; constructivism = socially constructed interests) — verified against FACTS_PACK §B9.
• Between/within-country inequality and correlation-vs-causation in poverty-decline data — verified against FACTS_PACK's W15 framing and Our World in Data's standard presentation.
• Evenhandedness gate: PASS. No item asks which ideology, electoral design, representation model, or IR paradigm is "correct." PQ5 explicitly tests the course's own no-ranking commitment; PQ11 tests that bicameralism-vs-unicameralism is presented as contested; PQ17, PQ19, PQ23 test what a position or finding claims or shows, never which side is right.
• QTI parse confirmation: O-practice-final-week-16-qti.xml parses with 25 items (OK output by build_qti.py); every single-answer respcondition sets SCORE = 100 on exactly one option; each matching item's partial-credit blocks cover all pairs.

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Canvas placement block

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title                      = "Practice Final — Cumulative (Weeks 1–15, Objectives 1–8)"
assignment_group           = "Not Graded"
points_possible            = 0
grading_type               = not_graded
available_from_offset_days = 0        # opens with the Week 16 module
due_offset_days            = 3        # recommended: complete before the Final (which sits Thu Dec 17)
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provenance                 = "~ Prof. Halloran's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com"