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Government 1
Government 1
branches: the executive, the legislative and the judicial. This system provides a series of
checks and balances because each branch is able to limit the power of the others.
Nation - a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language,
inhabiting a particular country or territory.
Divine right - The doctrine that kings and queens have a God-given right to rule and that
rebellion against them is a sin. This belief was common through the seventeenth
century and was urged by such kings as Louis xiv of France.
social contract - an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for
social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection.
Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among
theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of
explaining the origin of government and the obligations of subjects.
unitary system - The central government is supreme, and the administrative divisions
exercise only powers that the central government has delegated to them.
Confederacy - Meetings held by the Senate to gather information about candidates for
federal office nominated by the president of the United States.
Republic - a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected
representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a
monarch.
Economics - the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and
transfer of wealth.
Capitalism - an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry
are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
free market - an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition
between privately owned businesses.
free enterprise - an economic system in which private business operates in competition and
largely free of state contro.
Socialism - a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the
means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the
community as a whole.
Command economy - an economy in which production, investment, prices, and incomes are
determined centrally by a government.
Communism - a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a
society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to
their abilities and needs.