Principles of American Democracy and Economics
A comparison of American and world governments; changing interpretations of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the three branches of government; historical documents such as the Federalist Papers and civic literacy
Fundamental economic concepts and the application of tools (graphs, statistics, equations) in economic operations and institutions; micro- and macro-economics, international economics, comparative economic systems, and measurement and methods
Principals of American Democracy - CONTINUED
12.9 THE ORIGINS, CHARACTERISTICS AND DEVELOPMENT OF DIFFERENT POLITICAL SYSTEMS ACROSS TIME, WITH EMPHASIS ON THE QUEST FOR POLITICAL DEMOCRACY, ITS ADVANCES AND ITS OBSTACLES
- How the different philosophies and structures of feudalism, mercantilism, socialism, fascism, communism, monarchies, parliamentary systems and constitutional liberal democracies influence economic policies, social welfare policies and human rights practices
- The various ways in which power is distributed, shared and limited in systems of shared powers and in parliamentary systems, including the influence and role of parliamentary leaders (e.g., William Gladstone, Margaret Thatcher)
- The advantages and disadvantages of federal, confederal and unitary systems of government
- The consequences of conditions that gave rise to tyrannies during certain periods (e.g., Italy, Japan, Haiti, Nigeria, Cambodia) for at least two countries
- The forms of illegitimate power that twentieth-century African, Asian and Latin American dictators used to gain and hold office and the conditions and interests that supported them
- The ideologies, causes, stages and outcomes of major Mexican, Central American and South American revolutions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
- The ideologies that give rise to Communism, methods of maintainig control and the movements to overthrow such governments in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, including the roles of individuals (e.g., Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel)
- The successes of relatively new democracies in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the ideas, leaders and general societal conditions that have launched and sustained, or failed to sustain, them
12.10 QUESTIONS ABOUT AND DEFENSE OF ANALYSIS OF THE TENSIONS WITHIN OUR CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING A BALANCE BETWEEN THE FOLLOWING CONCEPTS: MAJORITY RULE AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LIBERTY AND EQUALITY; STATE AND NATIONAL AUTHORITY IN A FEDERAL SYSTEM; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND THE RULE OF LAW; FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL; THE RELATIONSHIP OF RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT
Principles of Economics -
12.1 COMMON ECONOMIC TERMS AND CONCEPTS AND ECONOMIC REASONING
- The causal relationship between scarcity and the need for choices
- Opportunity cost and marginal benefit and marginal cost
- The difference between monetary and nonmonetary incentives and how changes in incentives cause changes in behavior
- The role of private property as an incentive in conserving and improving scarce resources, including renewable and nonrenewable natural resources
- The role of a market economy in establishing and preserving political and personal liberty (e.g., through the works of Adam Smith)
12.2 THE ELEMENTS OF AMERICA'S MARKET ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL SETTING
- The relationship of the concept of incentives to the law of supply and the relationship of the concept of incentives and substitutes to the law of demand
- The effects of changes in supply and/or demand on the relative scarcity, price and quantity of particular products
- The roles of property rights, competition and profit in a market economy
- How prices reflect the relative scarcity of goods and services and perform the allocative function in a market economy
- The process by which competition among buyers and sellers determines a market price
- The effect of price controls on buyers and sellers
- How domestic and international competition in a market economy affects goods and services produced and the quality, quantity and price of those products
- The role of profit as the incentive to entrepreneurs in a market economy
- The functions of the financial markets
- The economic principles that guide the location of agricultural production and industry and the spatial distribution of transportation and retail facilities
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