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Term | Definition
Adaptation | Adjustment to environmental conditions: modification of an organism or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under the conditions of its environment.
Agenda setting | The determination of what legislation will be considered for passage and implementation
Anecdotal evidence | One or two examples that support a specific hypothesis or theory.  Generally considered unacceptable for scientific research.
Astroturfing | A form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement.
Autonomy | The ability to act independently of external forces.  Understood as both domestic and international.
[NAME] | An inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of (possibly equally valid) alternatives.
Bully Pulpit | A prominent public position (as a political office) that provides an opportunity for expounding one's views.  Typically seen as a prerogative of the POTUS as he commands the majority of media coverage, but if the president leaves the bully pulpit vacant and fails to publicly advocate for his policies the bully pulpit is surrendered to the leaders of the opposition.
Capacity | The facility or power to produce, perform, or deploy.
Corruption | Political corruption is the abuse of public power, office, or resources for personal gain.
Countervailing Power | Balancing the power of one group with the power of another group.  This is a part of pluralist theory.  When an interest group is formed to achieve a political advantage, those who would be disadvantaged by this policy preference will organize an interest group of their own.  This new interest group is a countervailing power.
De facto discrimination | Racial discrimination that results from practice rather than the law.  IE new voter registration laws that disproportionately suppress the voting of racial minorities.
De jure discrimination | Racial discrimination that is a direct result of law or official policy.  IE Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Southern states had laws severely proscribing the actions, employment, and education of racial minorities.
Deflation | A decrease in the general price level of goods and services.  Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0% (a negative inflation rate).  Deflation is considered to be worse than inflation as it can cause credit markets to freeze.
Democracy | Rule by the many in their own self-interests.
Depression | A period of low general economic activity marked especially by rising levels of unemployment, depressions are both more severe and of longer duration than a recession.
Dogmatic | Characterized by or given to the expression of (authoritative) opinions very strongly or positively as if they were facts.
Domino theory | A theory from the Cold War era that suggests that if one nation fell to communism that neighoring nations would likewise fall in a domino effect.
Duopoly | Two sellers facing a market, the American two-party system is often seen as a duopoly.
Economic elite | Those at the top of the economic ladder who enjoy greater wealth, and therefore influence, than the ordinary citizen.  They typically attempt to exploit these advantages politically, using them as leverage to obtain still greater wealth and influence.
Exchange rate | The rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another.
False consensus | A tendency for people to (inaccurately) assume that their own opinions, beliefs, preferences, values and habits are 'normal' and that others also think the same way that they do.  An individual with an extreme viewpoint will see government as acting against the wishes of the public.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac | Originally developed to provide a secondary market for mortgages in the frozen credit markets of the Great Depression, Fannie Mae served as a successful government program for 40 years until it was privatized in the 1970s.  Freddie Mac was developed to provide competition to Fannie Mae when it became privatized.
Fiscal Policy | The use of government expenditure and revenue collection to influence the economy. (tax and spend)
Focus groups | A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging.  It is used by political parties to test messaging to develop public support for a political agenda.
Focusing event | An event that draws the attention of the public to a particular issue and gets it moved up on the public policy agenda for immediate action.  Examples: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the oil crisis, or a presidential campaign.
Framing | A frame defines the packaging of an element of rhetoric in such a way as to encourage certain interpretations and to discourage others.  Example: stagflation of the 1970s was the result of the oil crisis OR it was the result of the "failure of the New Deal".  The first frame would encourage the development of alternative sources of energy and conservation, while the second would justify the dismantling of New Deal policies.
Gate keeping | The process of keeping people out of positions of authority with political priorities at odds with the gatekeeper.
GDP per capita | Often considered a measure of a country's standard of living, it is the GDP divided by the population of the state.
Gerrymandering | The drawing of congressional districts to produce a particular electoral outcome without regard to the shape of the district.
Gini Coefficient | A specific measure of income disparity in which perfect equality is a score of 0 and perfect inequality is 1.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) | The total market value of all goods and services produced in country during a year.
Gross National Product (GNP) | The market value of all products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the residents of a country.
Ideology | The integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program
Idiotes | An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs.
Income disparity | Economic inequality as measured by annual income; in contrast to wealth disparity which is inequality in accumulated wealth.
Independent | Not looking to others for one's opinions or for guidance in conduct: not bound by or committed to a political party.
Indoctrination | To imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle.  The indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned.
Inflation | A rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.  When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services.
Iron triangle | The relationship between an interest group, government agencies, and legislative committees to advance the economic interests of the interest group.  Typically, this includes a revolving door.
Judicial activism | judicial ruling suspected of being based on personal or political considerations rather than on existing law.
Judicial restraint | a theory of judicial interpretation that encourages judges to limit the exercise of their own power. It asserts that judges should hesitate to strike down laws unless they are obviously unconstitutional.  [NAME] is given both to legislative acts and previous Supreme Court decisions.
Legitimacy | The popular acceptance of a governing law or régime as an authority.  Understood as both domestic and international.
Line item veto | A privilege of the president that has been rarely granted by Congress and has been subsequently found to be unconstitutional.  It allows the president to veto only those parts of a bill that he finds objectionable while retaining the rest.
Lobbying | The act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies.
Medicaid | A government program that subsidizes medical care for the poor.
Medicare | The federal program that provides medical insurance to elderly or permanently disabled Social Security recipients.
Monetary Policy | The process by which the monetary authority of a country controls the supply of money, often targeting a rate of interest for the purpose of promoting economic growth and stability.
Monopoly | A single seller facing the market, monopolists are price setters, not price takers.
Monopsony | A single buyer facing the market.  This offers leverage to negotiate lower prices from suppliers.  The single-payer healthcare systems of most modern states leverage their monopsony power to keep drug prices at a fraction of what the US consumer pays.
Nationalization | The process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state.
Negative externality | A negative externality occurs when an individual or firm making a decision does not have to pay the full cost of the decision.
Oligarchy | Rule by the few in their own self-interests.
Oligopoly | A limited number of sellers facing a market.  The oligopoly still has market power and the firms will have higher prices and profits than would be realized in a competitive market.
[NAME] | In statistics, an outlier is an observation that is numerically distant from the rest of the data.
Paradigm | A philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly : a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind
Partisan | A firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance.
Plural-elitism | The political theory that interest groups with an economic interest in a specific public policy arena will influence government agencies and legislative committees for the furtherance of their political objectives.  The interest group, agency, and committee is said to form an "iron triangle".
Pluralism | The political theory that politics and decision making are located mostly in the framework of government, but that many non-governmental groups use their resources to exert influence.  Central to this belief is that the distribution of political resources is unequal, but dispersed and noncumulative.
Pluralistic ignorance | A situation where a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but assume (incorrectly) that most others accept it.  This provides support for a norm that the majority may reject.
Political elite | In any society where power is not distributed equally, a smaller number will have more power, these are the political elites.
Political Socialization | The process through which individuals acquire their political beliefs and values.
Politics - [NAME] | Who gets what, when, and how.
Polity | Rule by the many in the interest of the public.
Polls | A method of measuring public opinion in which there is a limited number of questions with a limited number of potential responses.
Post-materialist | Once physical and economic security have been assured, individuals can turn their attention to more ethereal individual pursuits, such as, emotional well-being, personal autonomy, and self-expression. ([NAME])
Pragmatic | Relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters: practical as opposed to idealistic.
Privatization | The incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency, public service or property from the public sector (the state or government) to the private sector (businesses that operate for a private profit) or to private non-profit organizations. The term is also used in a quite different sense, to mean government out-sourcing of services to private firms, e.g. functions like revenue collection, law enforcement, and prison management.
Propaganda | A form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position.  Usually contains the following three characteristics: 1) Intended to produce an emotional response to the information presented, 2) intended to change the the attitude of the target audience toward the subject to achieve a political agenda, and 3) presents facts selectively or facts that are false.
Proxy war | A war that results when opposing powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly.
Recession | A period of reduced economic activity, typically a period of negative GDP growth.
Revolving door | Members of an interest group, government agency, or legislative committee (including both legislators and staffers) shift employment between the private sector, legislative offices, and bureaucratic employment to ensure the success of the interest group's preferred policies within a policy arena.  This facilitates an iron triangle relationship.  Conflicts of interest are apparent.
Secular | being separate from religion, or not being exclusively allied to any particular religion.
Signing statement | When the president signs a bill he may add signing statements indicating his intention not to implement those parts of the bill that he deems to be unconstitutional.  The constitutionality of signing statements has yet to be determined by the courts.
Social Darwinism (PS) | In political science: A broad set of policies rationalized by the concept of the "survival of the fittest" leading to laissez-faire capitalism, the ideas of eugenics, scientific racism, imperialism, fascism, Nazism and struggle between national or racial groups.
Social Darwinism (soc) | In sociology: the belief that society and its institutions must adapt and change to new conditions in order to survive
Surveys | More in depth than a poll, a survey asks substantially more questions with some responses being open-ended.
Theocracy | A form of government in which the official policy is to be governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided, or simply pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religious sect or religion
Venue shopping | The effort by lobbyists, corporations, industries, or interest groups to deploy political resources in the venues where they have the greatest hope of success.  This can be in the legislature, executive, bureaucracy, or courts at the national, state, or local level.
Veto | The formal constitutional authority of the president (and governors) to reject bills passed by both houses of the legislative body, thus preventing the bill from becoming law without further congressional activity.
Veto points | A metaphorical point in the legislative process at which one or a few individuals can prevent the passage of legislation long before it might reach the desk of the president.
Voter suppression | a strategy to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing people from exercising their right to vote.
Washington Consensus | A generalized term for neoclassical policy prescriptions required by the IMF and the World Bank and more recently adopted in the United States.  These prescriptions typically include: reducing tax rates at the upper end and increases in the lower rates, privatization of public assets, deregulation, trade liberalization, and low interest rates.