U5: Political Participation

Essential Questions

1. In what ways does political culture affect and inform political participation? (For example, students should know that individuals often engage in multiple forms of participation, including voting, protests, and mass movements. Students should understand both why individuals engage in various forms of political participation and how that participation affects the political process. Note: this is a Free-Response question #2 in the 2003 exam)
2. What leads citizens to differ from one another in their political beliefs and behaviors, and what are the political consequences of these differences?
3. What are the demographic features of the American population, and how do the beliefs and behavior systems held by specific ethnic, minority and other groups affect their view of the political process?
4. How have U.S. political parties evolved over the years?
5. What are the functions and structures of political parties and what effect do they have on the political process?
6. How have party reform, new campaign strategies, and financing in the electronic age impacted political parties?
7. What are the ideological and demographic differences between the two major parties, as well as third parties?
8. What are the political roles of the massive number of lobbying and interest groups?
9. Why are some interests represented by organized groups while others are not, and what are the consequences of these differences?
10. What do interest groups do, how do they do it, and how does this affect both the political process and public policy?
11. Why are certain segments of the population, such as farmers and the elderly, able to exert pressure on political institutions and participants in order to obtain favorable policies?
12. What is the role of the media in the political system?
13. How has the media impacted public opinion, voter perceptions, campaign strategies, electoral outcomes, agenda development, and the images of political officials and candidates for public office?
14. Why is understanding the often symbiotic, and frequently conflictual, relationship between candidates, elected officials and the media so important?

Identifications

Civic Engagement Project – Task #3

The purpose of Task 3 is for students to analyze the relationship between their domestic policy problem and both public opinion and political ideology. Students will write a paper that:

1. Presents two public opinion polls from a polling service or website, such as Gallup, the Pew Research Center, a news website, or FiverThirtyEight, that present public opinion data related to the policy problem. Describe the data presented in each poll, describe patterns and trends in the data, draw at least one conclusion based on the data, explain how the poll relates to the policy problem, and account for any differences in the data presented by both polls. Evaluate the veracity of the polls by analyzing the sampling techniques and question types.
2. Describe the stance of the Republican Party, Democratic Party, and ONE third party as it relates to the policy problem based on the information presented in the most recent national party platforms. Also explain the relationship between the Republican Party’s stance on conservatism, and Democratic Party’s stance on liberalism, and the relationship between the stance of the third party and the two major parties.
3. Explain how individual political beliefs related to your topic develop as well as how the policy problem is related to ONE of the core values underlying American political culture (e.g., individualism, equality of opportunity, free enterprise, rule of law, limited government) and how the major parties differ in their attitudes towards this core value.
4. Explain how the information researched in this benchmark might influence the strategic approach of the interest group in attempting to influence policy around the policy problem.