POLITICAL SCIENCE 102

Instructions: Please put your answers to all of the exam’s 10 written questions into one file, and submit it by 11:59PM (one minute before midnight) on Saturday, November 23, to the Turnitin link posted under Assignments on Blackboard. Please make sure to do your responses in order, and number them so that we know which question you are answering. Please do NOT include the text of the questions in the file you submit, only the question numbers of the questions as you answer them. Each of the 10 questions is worth up to 10 points, so the whole exam is worth 100 points total. Your response should be single-spaced and should require no more than 4 pages at maximum. You should need most of the 4 pages to write a good and sufficiently detailed response to each of the questions, but please do not exceed 4 pages total. You should not need to cite any sources other than the lectures, the Kernell text, and Blackboard readings. Please do make sure to indicate when you are quoting from any source, whether from in the class resources or outside them, and make sure to provide full citations for any sources you use that are not included in the class syllabus. Usually, it is a bad idea to use any extracurricular sources because it is at the expense of the sources from class that you should be citing.

1. Please assess the degree to which the U.S. Congress represents the demography of this country.

2. What do you think about term limits for the U.S. Congress? It’s ok to be either in favor of or opposed to them, but please explain your opinion based on the information from lectures and your texts, as well as your own common sense and knowledge of politics.

3. How are war powers divided between the President and Congress? Is it correct to say that Congress in empowered to declare war?

4. Please discuss the way that improvements in the technologies available for both communication and transportation have strengthened the American presidency.

5. If the Electoral College is a mechanism for ensuring that the Presidential election recapitulates for the executive branch the same Great Compromise that exists for the legislative branch, do you think that it is defensible upon that basis? Please explain why or why not.

6. Please discuss the existence of iron triangles and captured agencies; how do the electoral realities of the presidency make his/her control of the executive branch problematic?

7. How do presidents address the problem of their subordinates “going native”?

8. How did Marshall solve his dilemma and strengthen judicial review with his decision in Marbury v. Madison?

9. How did the supremacy clause and the elastic clause play a role in McCulloch v. Maryland?

10. How can we preserve a system of checks and balances if the Supreme Court assumes too much authority for itself?