Politics For Dummies (For Dummies Series)

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The campaign period is showtime for political parties and politicians. It provides them with the opportunity to propose the policies and changes they hope to implement if they’re elected. Some of the important aspects of the campaign period include:

The federal government, or national government, looks after things like immigration, foreign affairs and minting money. Other powers, such as taxation, lawmaking and law enforcement are shared between state and federal governments.Political ideology: A belief system (Weltanschauung) that shapes how people see and analyze politics. An ideology affects people’s outlook on the world and the role they play in it. It determines how people see everything and everybody. To be fair, the above was a response to what they all felt was Liberals exerting too much pressure on business and favoring the people too strongly.

Around 620 the Golden Age of Islam begins. This is important as they focus on obtaining and preserving the knowledge of the Greeks during the European dark ages. The basic government types have been known since Ancient times and were noted by Plato and Aristotle. They include, roughly speaking, a monarchy (ruled by one), an oligarchy (ruled by a few), a republic (ruled by elected officials and ruled by law), and a democracy (ruled by the many). [6]. There are different ways to express the classical government types, but generally our mixed-republic and different branches of government reflect this. The judicial branch is made up of American courts, the most powerful being the Supreme Court. For court cases that aren’t quite solved through lower courts, eventually they can make their way up to the Supreme Court where the judges, which are called justices, rule on the dispute. Many cases that make their way to the Supreme Court aren’t answered easily by a simple glance at the Constitution, so justices must read between the lines and make educated guesses on how the situation should be handled. Justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by Congress, and if they’re confirmed to the Supreme Court, they serve lifelong terms. The justices use the Constitution as their Bible for interpreting whether or not laws and actions are allowable. St. Thomas Aquinas, 1225–1274 CE: St. Aquinas integrated Aristotle’s concept of people being able to reason with Catholic doctrines.Those who would typically identify as being on the right tend to live in rural areas and suburbs, especially in the south, Midwest, and extreme rural west. Meanwhile, those on the left tend to inhabit medium and large cities, and live along either the east or west coast. Britain’s political and social scene has changed dramatically over the course of a century, with the result that it’s barely recognisable today. Here are just a few of the important events that have shaped our lives today. Year Political socialization: The term refers to the process of how people acquire their political values.

When we protect the Republic, we protect Democracy and Oligarchies. We don’t protect the oligarchy because we want them to overpower us, we protect them because in the words of Madison: Communism: Communists believe that the capitalist system is damaging to the interests of the masses, and that workers must unite and overturn it by revolutionary means. Communists also believe in the state ownership of all land, natural resources and industry. Strongly opposed to gun control laws; strong proponents of the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms), believing it's a deterrent against authoritarian rule. Minorities and poor people are given the death penalty in disproportionately larger numbers, so criminals with means can escape death row. It's not so much about how heinous the crime is but how much the defendant can afford to spend on lawyers.The executive branch puts into use the laws that the legislative branch makes. The president of the United States leads the executive branch. The President Pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants; moratorium on deportations or prosecutions of undocumented immigrants who are young adults and have no criminal record. When the Court hears a case, lawyers for both sides get a chance to speak. But there are no witnesses, and there is no jury. After hearing the case, the justices meet in private to make a decision. A majority of the justices must agree before the Court can make its decision. By 1777 the Articles of Confederation began to create a unified government, but it wasn’t until 1787 until Madison’s Virginia plan replaced the Confederation with a more perfect Federal Union via the Constitution.

Almost without exception, those on the left support gay marriage, and other gay rights issues like adoption rights and non-discrimination at work or in business. Political power: The ability to get others to do what you want. It can take force or peaceful means, such as persuasion, to achieve this. Political science: An academic discipline that studies the relationship between people and political institutions. The left wing generally supports abortion rights, but does not outwardly and necessarily believe that abortion is a good thing. Those on the right, largely due to religious beliefs, would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned to make abortions illegal. Some majority-right states have enacted legislation recently that would make it harder for women to attain abortions while not outlawing it entirely. Socialism: A political and economic system where most property is owned by the state and a centralized planning agency that plans for all of society replaces the free market.

In the United Kingdom, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and some local authorities in England (such as Greater Manchester) have been given devolved powers - meaning they have responsibility for some key decision making in their area, while central government in Westminster takes control of other matters. Normative theory: A theory that looks at how things ought to and should be and not how they really are. Vladimir Orlando Key Jr., 1908-1963: V. O. Key was one of the most famous political scientists studying American politics. He not only created the concepts of realignment and dealignment but also was the first to study the impact of interest groups on American politics.