POL205: take home exam III

Please answer the following ten essay questions (10 points each). The test is due in class on Wednesday, April 21. (NOTE: Since there is no class on Wednesday, bring the test to my mailbox in the political science department, 435 Mahar, by 10:00 a.m.)

Describe at least three ways that context and question wording can influence the results of public opinion polls. If many individuals are politically ignorant, hold inconsistent views, and are influenced by the context and wording of opinion polls, why do Kernell and Jacobson argue that aggregate opinion is nonetheless stable and coherent?

What is the place of the Supreme Court in the separation of powers? How can Congress and the President influence the Supreme Court? What specific tools are available to Congress and the President to exercise their influence?

What are the main categories of bureaucratic agencies (there are four)? Name at least two examples of each, and describe the main characteristics that differentiate them from each other.

Compare President Bush's encounter with a Democratic Congress's tax-increases in 1990 with President Clinton's stand-off with a Republican Congress in late 1995 and early 1996 that resulted in a government shutdown. Who was more successful and why? What do these two cases show about the characteristics of the presidency?

Compare the bureaucracy from the federalist years with that under the spoils system.

Compare and contrast the three eras of the Supreme Court's history and comment on the prospect for a fourth.

Describe and discuss the institutional role of both procedural and substantive judicial doctrine.

Explain why the Literary Digest poll taken before the 1936 presidential election incorrectly predicted the outcome.

Describe two advantages and two disadvantages that Ivo Daalder discusses (in his essay in Principles) with respect to the transition to the new Department of Homeland Security.

Describe four judges who are sitting on the Fourth Circuit Court of appeals (see the Sontag article in Principles).

04/20/2004 7:09 PM