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Test your basic knowledge |
AP Government
Start Test
Study First
Subjects
:
civics
,
ap
Instructions:
Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
If you are not ready to take this test, you can
study here
.
Match each statement with the correct term.
Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.
This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. Police targeting of racial minorities as potential suspects of criminal activities.
Means-tested entitlements
Political socialization
Shays's Rebellion
Racial profiling
2. The formal process for making regulations.
Internationalism
Prospective issue voting
Proportional representation
Rule-making process
3. Initial proposal at the Constitutional Convention made by the Virginia delegation for a strong central government with a bicameral legislature dominated by the big states.
Internationalism
Virginia Plan
Decentralists
Indictment
4. Court order directing an official to perform an official duty.
Socialism
National supremacy
Writ of mandamus
Race
5. Presidential refusal to allow an agency to spend funds that Congress authorized and appropriated.
Commerce clause
Impoundment
Multilateralism
De jure segregation
6. Agreement between a prosecutor and a defendant that the defendant will plead guilty to a lesser offense to avoid having to stand trial for a more serious offense.
Affirmative action
Plea bargain
Safe seat
Hold
7. A philosophy that encourages individual nations to act on their own when facing threats from other nations.
Full faith and credit clause
Soft money
Commercial speech
Unilateralism
8. Holding incumbents - usually the president's party - responsible for their records on issues - such as the economy or foreign policy.
Cross-cutting requirements
Retrospective issue of voting
Initiative
Speaker
9. The right to renounce one's citizenship.
Civil disobedience
Right of expatriation
Keynesian economics
Restrictive covenant
10. Trial or punishment for the same crime by the same government; forbidden by the Constitution.
Progressive tax
Double jeopardy
Writ of mandamus
De jure segregation
11. Governance divided between the parties - as when one holds the presidency and the other controls one or both houses of Congress.
Attentive public
Divided government
Civil disobedience
Labor injunction
12. A national meeting of delegates elected at primaries - caucuses - or state conventions who assemble once every four years to nominate candidates for president and vice president - ratify the party platform - elect officers - and adopt rules.
Civil disobedience
Political socialization
State of the Union Address
National party convention
13. Segregation resulting from economic or social conditions or personal choice.
De facto segregation
Checks and balances
527 organizations
Referendum
14. The current holder of the elected office.
Idealism
Socialism
Incumbent
Closed shop
15. A meeting of local party members to choose party officials or candidates for public office and to decide the platform.
Caucus
Soft power
Seniority rule
Reapportionment
16. An election system in which each party running receives the proportion of legislative seats corresponding to its proportion of the vote.
Party caucus
Affirmative action
Proportional representation
Permissive federalism
17. Constitutional division of powers among the legislative - executive - and judicial branches - with the legislative branch making law - the executive applying and enforcing the law - and the judiciary interpreting the law.
Iron triangle
Delegate
Separation of powers
Connecticut Compromise
18. Constitutional arrangement in which power is distributed between a central government and subdivisional governments - called states in the United States. The national and the subdivisional governments both exercise direct authority over individuals.
Deregulation
Federalism
Candidate appeal
Three-fifths compromise
19. Views the national government - 50 states - and thousands of local governments as competing with each other over ways to put together packages of services and taxes. Applies the analogy of the marketplace: we have some choice about which state and ci
Precedent
Department
Cycle of decreasing influence
Competitive federalism
20. Theory that opposes governmental interference in economic affairs beyond what is necessary to protect life and property.
Laissez-faire economics
Economic sanctions
Progressive tax
Class action suit
21. The process by which we develop our political attitudes - values - and beliefs.
Dissenting opinion
Proportional representation
Political socialization
Full faith and credit clause
22. How groups form and organize to pursue their goals or objectives - including how to get individuals and groups to participate and to cooperate. The term has many applications in the various social sciences such as political science - sociology - and
Political socialization
Collective action
Enumerated powers
Hard money
23. Quality or state of a work that taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex by depicting sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and that lacks serious literary - artistic - political - or scientific value.
Exclusionary rule
Caucus
Obscenity
Executive agreement
24. A technique of Congress to establish federal regulations. Federal grants may establish certain conditions that extend to all activities supported by federal funds - regardless of their source. The first and most famous of these is Title VI of the 196
Ex post facto law
Independent expenditures
Cross-cutting requirements
Entitlement programs
25. Employment cycle in which individuals who work for governmental agencies that regulate interests eventually end up working for interest groups or businesses with the same policy concern.
Race
Revolving door
Independent agency
Attentive public
26. Federal statute barring Federal employees from active participation in certain kinds of politics and protecting them from being fired on partisan grounds.
Hatch Act
Natural rights
Logrolling
Offshoring
27. Mutual aid and vote trading among legislators.
Justiciable dispute
Logrolling
Natural law
Soft power
28. A writ issued by a magistrate that authorizes the police to search a particular place or person - specifying the place to be searched and the objects to be seized.
Pocket veto
Demographics
Immunity
Search warrant
29. A small political party that rises and falls with a charismatic candidate or - if composed of ideologies on the right or left - usually persists over time; also called a third party.
Minor party
Filibuster
Demographics
Trust
30. Those citizens who follow public affairs closely.
Attentive public
Safe seat
Minor party
Manifest destiny
31. A decision made by a higher court such as a circuit court of appeals or the Supreme Court that is binding on all other federal courts.
Sales tax
Precedent
Collective bargaining
Direct primary
32. Programs such as unemployment insurance - disability relief - or disability payments that provide benefits to all eligible citizens.
Entitlement programs
Divided government
Regressive tax
Commerce clause
33. A tax whereby people with lower incomes pay a higher fraction of their income than people with higher incomes.
Crossover voting
Regressive tax
Cloture
Cycle of increasing effectiveness
34. The idea that the rights of the nation are supreme over the rights of the individuals who make up the nation.
Natural law
Joint committee
Statism
Representative democracy
35. Providing automatic increases to compensate for inflation.
Restrictive covenant
Indexing
Federal Reserve System
White primary
36. Conservative Christians who (as a group) have become more active in politics in the last two decades and were especially influential in the 2000 presidential election.
Jim Crow laws
Fundamentalists
Bad tendency test
Caucus
37. A formal agreement between the U.S. president and the leaders of other nations that does not require Senate approval.
Confederation
Executive agreement
Immunity
Safe seat
38. Democratic party primary in the old 'one-party South' that was limited to white people and essentially constituted an election; ruled unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright (1944).
527 organizations
White primary
Political ideology
Regressive tax
39. Candidate or party with the most votes cast in an election - not necessarily more than half.
Inherent powers
Hard power
Plurality
Faction
40. Promoting a particular position or an issue paid for by interest groups or individuals but not candidates. Much issue advocacy is often electioneering for or against a candidate - and until 2004 had not been subject to any regulation.
Government corporation
Random sample
World Trade Organization (WTO)
Issue advocacy
41. An elected office that is predictably won by one party or the other - so the success of that party's candidate is almost taken for granted.
Separation of powers
Safe seat
Race
Block grants
42. The total amount of money the Federal government has borrowed to finance deficit spending over the years.
Mass media
Sound bites
National debt
Name recognition
43. Remedial action designed to overcome the effects of discrimination against minorities and women.
Affirmative action
Federalism
Keynesian economics
Commerce clause
44. Clause of the Constitution (Article 1 - Section 8 - Clause 3) setting forth the implied powers of Congress. It states that Congress - in addition to its express powers has the right to make all laws necessary and proper to carry out all powers the Co
Interstate compact
Public policy
Necessary and proper clause
Weapons of mass destruction
45. Presidential custom of submitting the names of perspective appointees for approval to senators from the states in which the appointees are to work.
Race
Judicial restraint
Minority leader
Senatorial courtesy
46. An election system in which the candidate with the most votes wins.
American dream
Permissive federalism
Winner-take-all system
Public choice
47. The constitutional requirement (in Article II - Section 3) that presidents take care that the laws are faithfully executed - even if they disagree with the purpose of those laws.
Take care clause
National Intelligence Director
Issue network
Hard money
48. The power of a court to refuse to enforce a law or government regulation that in the opinion of the judges conflicts with the U.S. Constitution or - in a state court - the state constitution.
Idealism
Judicial review
Double jeopardy
Implementation
49. The tendency of presidents to learn more about doing their jobs over time.
State of the Union Address
Cycle of increasing effectiveness
Liberalism
Dual citizenship
50. Elections held in years when the president is on the ballot.
Presidential election
Treaty
Excise tax
Winner-take-all system