Praxis Government/Political Science cheat sheet

Plato (Republic): justice is each part performing its own function; the allegory of the cave contrasts opinion with knowledge; philosopher-kings rule because they grasp the Forms.

Aristotle (Politics) classifies regimes by who rules and for whose benefit: correct forms are monarchy, aristocracy, and polity; deviant forms are tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.

Hobbes (Leviathan): the state of nature is a war of all against all; individuals authorize an absolute sovereign to escape fear, and no right of revolution is retained.

Locke (Second Treatise): natural rights to life, liberty, and property; government rests on consent and dissolves when it violates trust, grounding a right of revolution.

Rousseau (Social Contract): legitimate authority rests on the general will; citizens obey laws they give themselves, and factional partial wills are excluded from that will.

Rawls (A Theory of Justice): behind the veil of ignorance parties choose equal basic liberties first, then the difference principle allowing inequalities that help the least advantaged.

Mill (On Liberty): the harm principle limits coercion to preventing harm to others; liberty of thought and expression is defended on social and epistemic grounds.

Marx: base/superstructure model in which relations of production shape law, politics, and ideology; class struggle drives historical change and communism ends alienation.

Berlin distinguishes negative liberty (non-interference) from positive liberty (self-mastery); Montesquieu's separation of powers and Burke's organic conservatism complete the modern canon.

Constitution articles: I Congress, II presidency, III judiciary, IV states and full faith and credit, V amendment, VI supremacy clause, VII ratification.

Amendment routes: two-thirds of both chambers plus three-fourths of states, or a convention called by two-thirds of states plus three-fourths ratification.

Supermajority thresholds: veto override two-thirds of each chamber; Senate cloture sixty votes; treaty ratification two-thirds of senators present; impeachment conviction two-thirds of the Senate.

House: 435 members, two-year terms, apportioned by population. Senate: 100 members, six-year terms, one-third up every two years, equal state representation.

Federalism stages: dual federalism (layer cake), cooperative federalism (marble cake), then fiscal federalism through categorical grants, block grants, and unfunded mandates.

Bill of Rights protections reach the states through the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause by selective incorporation, beginning with Gitlow v. New York (1925).

Landmark cases: Marbury (judicial review), McCulloch (implied powers), Gibbons (commerce), Brown (desegregation), Gideon (counsel), Miranda (warnings), Citizens United (independent spending).

Electoral College: 538 votes, 270 to win; electors equal House seats plus two senators per state; all states except Maine and Nebraska use winner-take-all.

Budget categories: mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare, interest) is formula-driven and not annually appropriated, while discretionary spending requires annual appropriation acts.

Executives: presidential systems separate head of state from the legislature with fixed terms; parliamentary systems fuse them and permit votes of no confidence; semi-presidential systems share power between president and premier.

Electoral systems: single-member plurality, two-round runoff, proportional representation by party list, mixed-member proportional, and single transferable vote.

Duverger's law: plurality single-member districts favor two parties; proportional representation with large district magnitude and low thresholds favors multiparty systems.

United Kingdom: uncodified constitution, fusion of powers, prime minister as head of government, monarch as head of state, first-past-the-post elections to the Commons.

Russia: 1993 constitution creates a superpresidential system; State Duma is the lower chamber, Federation Council the upper; United Russia is the dominant party.

China: the CCP leads through the Politburo Standing Committee; the National People's Congress is formally supreme; the nomenklatura controls appointments; the state is unitary with special administrative regions.

Iran: the Supreme Leader holds ultimate authority; the Guardian Council vets candidates and legislation; elected president and Majles operate inside theocratic limits.

Nigeria and Mexico: both federal presidential systems; Nigeria has 36 states and a power-sharing presidency; Mexico was a dominant-party system under the PRI from 1929 to 2000.

Regime types: democracy, authoritarian, totalitarian, and hybrid (competitive authoritarian); Huntington identifies three waves of democratization since 1828.

Levels of analysis: individual (leaders, psychology), state (domestic institutions, interest groups), and system (anarchy, polarity, distribution of power).

Realism: states are unitary rational actors under anarchy; power and survival dominate; balance of power, deterrence, and relative gains are core mechanisms.

Liberalism: institutions, trade interdependence, and domestic democracy lower the likelihood and severity of conflict; the democratic peace is its key empirical claim.

Constructivism: anarchy and state interests are socially constructed through norms, identities, and interaction rather than fixed by material structure.

UN Security Council: five permanent members with veto power (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China) plus ten elected members serving two-year terms; the General Assembly gives each state one vote.

Westphalia (1648) established sovereignty, territoriality, and noninterference; the UN Charter (1945) bans aggressive force except in self-defense or with Security Council authorization.

Cold War sequence: containment (Kennan, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan), NATO in 1949, the Korean War, détente, and the Soviet collapse in 1991.

NATO Article 5 commits members to collective defense; collective security under the UN targets aggression by any state, including members.

International political economy: IMF for balance-of-payments stabilization, World Bank for development lending, WTO for trade rules; interdependence raises gains from trade and vulnerability alike.