Political and Economic Changes and Development: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
35 flashcard terms for AP Comparative Government Unit 5, 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 intensifying flow of goods, capital, people, information, and ideas across borders, pressuring states economically and culturally.
Economic Liberalization
Reducing state control of the economy — privatization, deregulation, trade opening — pursued in different forms by all six course countries since the 1980s.
Privatization
Transferring state-owned enterprises to private ownership, e.g., Thatcher's sell-offs in the UK and Russia's chaotic 1990s voucher and loans-for-shares schemes.
Neoliberalism
A market-first policy package: free trade, privatization, deregulation, and fiscal austerity, often promoted by the IMF and World Bank.
Structural Adjustment Program (SAP)
IMF/World Bank loan conditions requiring liberalization and austerity; Nigeria's 1986 SAP cut subsidies and devalued the naira, at high social cost.
Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI)
A development strategy protecting domestic industry behind tariffs to replace imports — Mexico's model before its 1980s debt crisis forced liberalization.
NAFTA / USMCA
The North American free-trade agreement (1994, renegotiated as USMCA in 2020) that bound Mexico's economy to the US and symbolized its neoliberal turn.
Special Economic Zones (SEZs)
Chinese regions like Shenzhen opened to foreign investment and market rules after 1978 — laboratories of Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening.
Socialist Market Economy
China's hybrid: market competition and private firms under Communist Party direction, with strategic sectors kept state-owned.
State-Owned Enterprise (SOE)
A firm owned by the government; SOEs dominate strategic sectors in China and Russia (e.g., Gazprom, Rosneft) and Mexico's Pemex.
Shock Therapy
Russia's abrupt 1990s leap from planned to market economy — rapid price liberalization and privatization producing hyperinflation, collapse, and oligarchs.
Oligarchs
Businessmen who captured privatized Soviet assets in the 1990s; under Putin they keep wealth only in exchange for political loyalty.
Resource Curse / Dutch Disease
Resource dependence crowding out other industries and fueling corruption and authoritarianism; oil dominates Nigerian, Russian, and Iranian state revenue.
Rentier State Revisited
Iran and Nigeria fund the state from oil rents rather than broad taxation, weakening the accountability link between citizens and rulers.
NEET / Brain Drain
Emigration of educated youth from Nigeria and Iran seeking opportunity abroad, draining human capital from developing economies.
Remittances
Money migrants send home — a major income source for Mexico and Nigeria that links households directly to the global economy.
Gini Coefficient (Concept)
A 0-to-1 measure of income inequality; liberalization raised inequality sharply in Russia, China, and Nigeria.
GDP per Capita vs. HDI
GDP per capita measures average income; the Human Development Index adds health and education — states can rank differently on each (oil states often score lower on HDI than income predicts).
Economic penalties imposed by outside states — on Russia after 2014/2022 and on Iran over its nuclear program — that reshape domestic politics and self-reliance rhetoric.
Revolution
A rapid, fundamental transformation of regime and society, often violent — Mexico 1910, China 1949, Iran 1979.
Iranian Revolution (1979)
The overthrow of the Shah's modernizing monarchy by a coalition led by Khomeini, producing the world's first modern theocratic republic.
Chinese Revolution (1949)
The Communist victory under Mao establishing the PRC after civil war, followed by collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.
Reform and Opening (1978)
Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao pivot from ideology to growth — decollectivization, SEZs, and foreign investment — that transformed China without political liberalization.
Glasnost and Perestroika
Gorbachev's 1980s openness and restructuring reforms that unintentionally unraveled Soviet control and led to the USSR's 1991 collapse.
Democratic Backsliding
The gradual erosion of democratic institutions by elected leaders — term-limit evasion, court-packing, media capture — exemplified by Putin's Russia.
Coup d'Etat
An irregular seizure of power by military or state insiders; Nigeria experienced repeated coups between 1966 and 1993.
Transition to Democracy (Nigeria 1999)
The military's handover to elected civilian rule founding the Fourth Republic after Abacha's death.
Mexican Democratization
A gradual, negotiated transition: electoral reforms and IFE independence in the 1990s culminating in the PRI's 2000 presidential defeat.
Supranational Organization
A body to which states cede some sovereignty, like the EU; Brexit was a sovereignty-driven exit from one.
IMF and World Bank
International financial institutions lending to states in crisis, typically with liberalizing conditions — key globalization actors in Nigeria and Mexico's reforms.
WTO Accession (China 2001)
China's entry into the World Trade Organization, accelerating its export boom and integration into global supply chains.
BRICS
The Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa grouping through which rising powers coordinate as a counterweight to Western-led institutions.
Belt and Road Initiative
China's global infrastructure-lending program extending economic and political influence across Asia, Africa (including Nigeria), and beyond.
Populism
A political style claiming to champion 'the people' against corrupt elites — e.g., López Obrador's MORENA movement — often paired with skepticism of institutions.
Adaptation of Authoritarianism
How regimes like China and Russia use markets, technology, and managed elections to survive globalization rather than democratize.