POLS 3180 Second Exam Review

POLS 3180 Public Opinion and Political Behavior
Second Exam Review

The Organization of Public Opinion

Ideology
- dimensions of ideology/measurement problems
- role/importance of ideology in American politics
  - ideological "sophistication" of the American electorate
    - levels of conceptualization
    - attitude consistency/constraint
Partisanship
- Michigan Model
- changes in role of parties to the electorate
  - affective
    - party affiliation/attachment
  - conative
    - party defection
    - split-ticket voting
  - cognitive
    - use of party labels as cues
- Pomper's typology of elections
- alignment, realignment, dealignment and nonalignment

Content of Public Opinion

Morality Issues

Abortion attitudes
- method of measurement
- determinants
Gay Rights
- Changing American attitudes
- Determinants of support

Foreign policy

dimensions of foreign policy attitudes
- militant internationalism
- cooperative internationalism
relative importance of foreign policy as an issue
changes in foreign policy attitudes

Economic policy

perceptions of economic conditions
- pocketbook v. sociotropic
- retrospective v. prospective
evaluations of economic policy performance
economic policy attitudes

Terms you should know:

accomodationist
attitude constraint
attitude stablity
authoritarians
belief system
Big Five
black political ideology
Bradley effect
converting election
cooperative internationalism
critical election
deviating election

elective circumstances
explicit prejudice
generational (or cohort) effects
hardliners
heuristics
ideological "sophisticates"
ideologically "naive"
implicit prejudice
internationalist
isolationist
"leaners"
libertarians

levels of conceptualization
life-cycle effects
Michigan model
militant internationalism
maintaining election
moral traditionalism
period (or history) effects
pocketbook evaluations
"rally around the flag" event
realigning election
sociotropic evaluations
traumatic circumstances

The exam will feature one of the following essay questions. Your best bet is to be prepared to answer each of them. Furthermore, it is not wise to try to anticipate which one I will select because the decision will be a random choice.

Discuss the importance of ideology to the American public. How, and to what extent, do Americans identify themselves ideologically? How does the way in which we measure ideological "sophistication" effect our understanding of the importance of ideology?
Discuss the role of party identification in the shaping of political attitudes and behavior. How, and to what extent, has this role changed over the past five decades, and how has the partisanship of the American electorate in general changed?
Discuss attitudes about moral issues in the United States. What are the determinants of Americans' attitudes about abortion and gay rights? How has the distribution of these attitudes changed over the last 40 years?