1) What are the functions of political parties?
2) What factors can help in recruiting and motivating
party members?
3) How do party organizations and procedures vary in
different parliamentary systems?
4) What is the most important function of the election
campaigns?
5) How do citizens protest the policies of their govern
ment or the actions of other groups?
6) What are the goals of different groups of people in
direct action?
7) Protests are testing ground for any democracy, aren't
they?
8) Can one achieve any balance between freedom of speech
and assembly and order?
9) What does this balance depend on?
10) When are democratic societies capable achieving this
balance and when they aren't?
Complete the following sentences.
1) Ideology may be an important factor in....
2) Party organizations and procedures....
3) Political parties are as varied....
_____
4) The election campaigns are often....
5) In a democratic society citizens have....
6) Direct action traditionally has been used by....
7) Today, nonviolent protest, often designed to....
8) One special form of direct action is....
9) Protests are....
10) There is no magic formula for....
Insert the English equivalents used in the text.
1) Political parties policy programs for
the government if they are in the majority.
2) - similar economic interests
or social outlook may be more important than ideological
commitment.
3) In a democratic society, citizens have
peacefully and protest the policies of the
government.
4) Today, nonviolent protest encompasses
.
5) One special form of direct action is the right of
labour unions .
6) Protests are for any democracy.
7) peaceful protest in the name of order is to
invite repression.
8) it depends on the majority to
maintaining the institutions of democracy and the precepts
of individual rights.
9) Democratic societies are capable of enduring the
bitterest disagreement among the citizens.
10) But the function is deadly serious:
peaceful and fair method.
Translate paragraphs 3 and 7 in writing.
Find the sentences stating the general idea of each paragraph.
| Part I |
Political science
Summarize the text in 6 sentences.
What do you think concerning
1) political parties;
2) forms of direct action;
3) the legitimacy of democracy itself in Russia.
9. Read the text and answer the following questions:
1. What provisions for political parties does the American
Constitution make?
2. What party system does the United States employ at
the national level?
3. Why do the Republican and Democratic parties exist
for so long?
4. Do other parties play any role in the political life of
the country?
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Political Parties
Political parties are the basis of the American political system. Curiously, the Constitution makes no provisions for political parties nor for the role as the vehicle by which candidates for public office are proposed to the voters.
At the national level, the United States employs a two-party system that has remained remarkably durable throughout the nation's history, even though rival national parties have appeared and disappeared from the political scene.
The Federalists, for example, who rallied around President George Washington, disappeared slowly after 1800; and the Whig Party, which arose in the 1830s in opposition to President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, collapsed two decades later. Today, the Democratic Party, which traces its origins back to the nation's third president, Thomas Jefferson, and the Republican Party, founded in 1854, continue to dominate politics at the federal, state and local levels.
One explanation for the longevity of the Republican and Democratic Parties is that they are not tight ideological
_____
organizations, but loose alliances of state and local parties that unite every four years for the presidential election. Both parties compete for the same broad center of the American electorate, and although Republicans are generally more conservative than Democrats, both parties contain relatively liberal and conservative wings that continually vie for influence.
Nevertheless, other parties are also active, and particularly at the state and local levels, they may succeed in electing candidates to office and in exercising considerable influence. During the early 20th century, for example, members of the Socialist Party were elected to the House of Representatives and as the mayors of over 50 towns and cities. The Progressive Party held the governorship of Wisconsin for a number of years and in 1974 an independent candidate became governor of Maine.
(from An Outline of American Government)
