Political Parties

Study Guide for Mid-Term Examination

Purpose of the Mid-Term Examination:

The mid-term exam is designed to test your ability to synthesize all material covered during the course so far and to apply your analysis to the Ruritania simulation. During the past eight weeks we have explored the nature of party and electoral systems throughout the world while also referencing common knowledge about the US political party and electoral systems. It is now your turn to demonstrate that you have mastered the basic concepts and can apply them to the analysis of both real and simulated situations!

Structure of the Examination:

short answers/  simple analysis	50%
essays	50%

Key Concepts:

Almond and Powell's functions of political systems	the five great concepts
interest articulation	pluralism
definitions of parties	types of party systems
types of interest group	cleavage
Lipset's seven dimension of partisan cleavage	the American party systems
Forming a government	Lipset and Rokkan's (Dalton's) dimension of partisan cleavage
Tudor polity	sequential model of political development
electoral system factors	von Beyme's families of parties
the distribution of preference	unimodal, bimodal, multimodal
Walter Dean Burnham’s theory of critical elections	characteristics of American elections
your RUR party’s stand on issues	your RUR party type