Political Science 171

Study Questions for Shively, Ch. 5

(Questions for Chs. 6 and 9 Below)

 

 

1.      People’s concerns about the economy generally boil down to what two broad concerns? What countries enjoy the greatest prosperity based on their per capita GDPs?  Which are the poorest?  What is Baumol’s Disease?  Compare what happened to the economies of South Korea and Ghana between 1972 and 2005.  What are the major lessons about government economic policy that Shively feels can be drawn from the different experiences of South Korea and Ghana?  What are rents as used in this context?  What is import-substitution industrialization?  What four factors does Shively see as allowing the South Korean government to intervene more positively in its economy?  What are some problems of the South Korean State?

 

2.      What are four factors that can cause inflation?  What are the two bad effects of inflation over five percent according to Shively?  What were the reasons for the worldwide drop in inflation in the late 1990s?  In what two ways does unemployment hurt society?  How do governments try to control inflation?  How about unemployment?  How has Sweden tried to control unemployment?  How does Education lead to low unemployment and low inflation?

 

3.      What two options are used by governments to achieve greater economic equality?  What is a progressive tax?  A regressive tax?  What four lessons about income inequality does Shively feel one can learn by studying Table 5.1? 

 

4.      What is a central bank?  What is the name of the United States’ central bank?  How does inflation in countries with more autonomous central banks compare with those with less autonomous central banks?  What’s an alternative explanation by Javier Batalla to explain the relationship between inflation and strong central banks?

 

5.      How does Shively define political corruption?  What are some of the negative things that political corruption does to the community?  What countries have the lowest government corruption.  How about the highest?  When are countries more susceptible to corruption?  What are Transparency International’s suggestions for limiting corruption? 

 

6.      What are some other policies available to governments to improve their economies?  Why does Shively think that states may be losing their ability to make economic policy?

 

7.      What is meant by political economy?  What are two other perspectives used by political science besides political economy? 

 

8.      What three special things characterize the German political economy?  What is codetermination?  What are the strengths and weaknesses of German economic policy?

 

9.      How did Indonesia achieve sustained economic growth?  What are some problems for Indonesia’s economy?

 

 

 

Political Science 171

Questions for Shively Chs. 6 and 9

(Questions for Ch. 5 Above)

 

 

Chapter 6:

  1. What are the two broad characteristics that almost everyone wants to see in the policies of the state?

 

  1. What are the two aspects of justice (substantive) that appear in Shively?  What are the three aspects of procedural justice that appear in Shively?  What are the three basic rights that seem to have special status according to Shively?

 

  1. What is an effective (or efficient) policy?  Discuss why it’s complicated to calculate costs and benefits.

 

  1. What are the problems of government authority vs. the market as making basic decisions for society?

 

  1. Describe incremental vs. radical change and the advantages of each.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 9:

  1. Define "constitution".  What is meant by constitution with a small "c"?  What do constitutions typically do?

 

  1. What's the difference between older and newer constitutions?  What is the virtue of vagueness in a constitution?  What are some other principles of good constitutional design?  Discuss the difficulties with writing a constitution acceptable to most people in a state.  Apply these thoughts to Iraq.

 

  1. What, according to Shively, is the single greatest cause of political conflict in the world?  Describe a unitary state and a federal state.  How many federal states are there in the world today?  How many are unitary?  What does Shively mean by the distinction between unitary and centralized states?  How much centralization is good?

 

  1. What is meant by "constitutionalism"?  Does Britain have a written constitution?  How many constitutions .did the Soviet Union have between 1917 and its breakup in 1991?  Describe the governmental structure created by the new Russian constitution.