AP US Government and Politics — the five units

AP United States Government and Politics is organised into five units, and the multiple-choice section draws on all of them. A good deal of it is document work: the course names nine foundational documents and fifteen Supreme Court cases, and expects you to know what each of them actually argued or held, not merely that it exists.

This set takes two questions from each unit. From Foundations, Madison's argument in Federalist 10 — quoted in his own words, so the question is about reading him rather than recalling a summary — and the difference between a categorical grant and a block grant, which is the difference in how much discretion a state keeps. From Interactions Among Branches, cloture and what it is for, and what Marbury v. Madison established. From Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, the move from Schenck's "clear and present danger" to the standard that governs today, and selective incorporation. From Ideologies and Beliefs, a question about what separates two positions reading the same economic figure, and one about what a margin of error does and does not let you conclude. From Participation, the effect of single-member districts on the number of parties, and what interest groups do.

The political content is descriptive throughout. Every question asks what a position holds and on what constitutional or empirical grounds; none asks which policy is better or which party is right. One item is built specifically around that distinction — its most tempting wrong answer is the one that calls one side's reasoning "evidence" and the other's "ideology", and the explanation says why that is a verdict rather than a description. No current officeholder and no election after 2020 is used as an example.

The Constitution, the Federalist Papers and Supreme Court opinions are in the public domain, and where this set quotes them the words are the real words.

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Read a passage of Federalist 10 and state what Madison claims a large republic achieves, distinguishing his actual argument from the summary usually given of it
Distinguish categorical from block grants by the discretion each leaves a state, and explain why that difference matters to federalism
State what cloture does in the Senate and what Marbury v. Madison established about the courts
Explain the two conditions Brandenburg v. Ohio requires before advocacy may be forbidden, and how that narrowed the older clear-and-present-danger standard
Identify what separates two ideological positions reading the same evidence, without treating either as the reasonable one
Say what a margin of error permits you to conclude from a poll, and what it does not

In Federalist 10, James Madison writes: "Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens." What is he claiming a large republic achieves?

Sample question

In Federalist 10, James Madison writes: 'Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.' What is he claiming a large republic achieves?

That a large population will over time come to share one set of economic interests, so that factions disappear altogether.
That a large republic requires a single strong executive able to override factions whenever they form.
That the greater the number of competing interests, the harder it becomes for any majority to find a common motive and act together against a minority.
That the vote should be confined to property owners, whom Madison thought least likely to form a faction.

See the answer

That the greater the number of competing interests, the harder it becomes for any majority to find a common motive and act together against a minority.

Madison's remedy is scale, not agreement. He does not expect factions to go away — the same essay treats their causes as fixed in human nature — so the argument is that a republic large enough to contain many of them makes it improbable that any one, even a majority one, will find the common motive needed to act together. The suggestion that interests converge is the opposite of what the sentence says, and would remove the very diversity he is relying on. A single strong executive able to override factions is the sort of remedy the Federalist was written to argue against. The property qualification is read back into Madison from elsewhere: it appears nowhere in this argument, which turns on the number of interests rather than on who votes.

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