Political Culture and Participation: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
34 flashcard terms for AP Comparative Government Unit 3, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 18-question quiz — free, no account needed.
The collective, long-lasting attitudes, values, and beliefs a society holds about politics — e.g., British deference to gradualism or Mexican revolutionary nationalism.
Political Socialization
The lifelong process by which people acquire political values, through family, school, media, religion, and events.
Political Ideology
A coherent set of beliefs about the proper goals and methods of politics, such as liberalism, communism, or Islamism.
Political Participation
Any citizen activity aimed at influencing government — voting, protesting, contacting officials, campaigning, or joining organizations.
Formal (Conventional) Participation
Participation through official channels such as voting, joining parties, and running for office.
Informal (Unconventional) Participation
Participation outside official channels — protests, strikes, boycotts, and social-movement activism.
Civil Society
Voluntary organizations independent of the state — unions, religious groups, NGOs, professional associations — that can articulate interests and check government power.
Civil Rights
Protections guaranteeing equal treatment and participation, such as nondiscrimination and voting rights.
Civil Liberties
Individual freedoms from government interference — speech, press, religion, assembly.
Political Efficacy
A citizen's belief that participation can actually influence government; low efficacy depresses turnout and fuels apathy.
Social Movement
A broad, sustained collective effort to change policy or society from outside formal institutions, e.g., Nigeria's #EndSARS protests against police brutality.
Social Cleavage
A deep, durable division in society — ethnic, religious, regional, or class — around which politics organizes.
Cross-Cutting Cleavages
Divisions that pull the same person toward different groups (e.g., class vs. religion), moderating conflict by preventing one all-defining split.
Coinciding (Reinforcing) Cleavages
Divisions that overlap and stack — as Nigeria's north/south split aligns with Muslim/Christian and Hausa-Fulani/Yoruba-Igbo lines — intensifying conflict.
Nigeria's Ethno-Religious Cleavage
The reinforcing split between the largely Muslim Hausa-Fulani north and the largely Christian Yoruba/Igbo south, central to Nigerian party politics and conflict.
Sharia in Northern Nigeria
Since 1999, twelve northern states have adopted Islamic criminal law, illustrating federalism accommodating religious cleavage — and generating tension.
Scottish National Identity
A regional-national cleavage in the UK expressed through the SNP and the 2014 independence referendum, which stayed in the UK 55–45.
Devolution and Identity
The UK's grant of parliaments to Scotland and Wales as an institutional response to national-identity cleavages.
A predominantly Muslim Russian republic that fought two separatist wars in the 1990s; now ruled by the Kremlin-loyal Kadyrov as an example of coerced integration.
Uyghurs
A Turkic Muslim minority in China's Xinjiang region subjected to mass surveillance and internment as Beijing suppresses ethnic-religious identity.
Hukou System
China's household registration system tying benefits to registered residence, creating a rural/urban cleavage and disadvantaging internal migrants.
Persian vs. Minority Identity (Iran)
Iran's population includes Azeri, Kurdish, Baloch, and Arab minorities alongside the Persian majority; Shia Islam serves as a unifying state identity.
Mestizo Identity (Mexico)
Mexico's dominant mixed indigenous-European identity; indigenous communities, as in Chiapas, remain marginalized — fueling movements like the Zapatistas.
Zapatista (EZLN) Uprising
The 1994 indigenous rebellion in Chiapas, timed to NAFTA's start, protesting neoliberalism and indigenous exclusion — a landmark informal participation case.
#EndSARS
Nigeria's 2020 youth-led social movement against the brutal SARS police unit, organized largely through social media and met with the Lekki shootings.
Green Movement (Iran)
Mass 2009 Iranian protests alleging presidential-election fraud; suppressed by the Basij and Revolutionary Guard, showing limits on informal participation.
Basij
Iran's volunteer paramilitary under the Revolutionary Guard, used to police morals and crush protests such as the 2009 Green Movement and 2022 Mahsa Amini protests.
Compulsory Voting
Legal requirement to vote, used in some democracies to raise turnout; none of the six core countries requires it, and their turnout varies widely.
Censorship and the Great Firewall
China's internet control system blocking foreign platforms and filtering content, restricting civil society's ability to organize online.
NGO Restrictions in Russia
Laws forcing foreign-funded NGOs to register as 'foreign agents,' delegitimizing and shrinking independent civil society.
State-Controlled Media
Government domination of broadcasting to shape political socialization — Russia's federal TV channels and China's CCTV are core regime tools.
BBC
The UK's public broadcaster, funded by license fee and formally independent of government — contrasted with state-run media in authoritarian regimes.
Political Apathy
Citizen disengagement from politics, often driven by low efficacy, corruption fatigue, or managed elections — visible in low Nigerian and Russian turnout.
Postmaterialism
A value shift in wealthy societies toward self-expression, environmentalism, and identity issues over pure economic security.