Monday, April 30, 2012

2012 -- Question #8 – country context question



(A)          Describe the most democratic aspect of the Russian regime.
(B)          Describe the most democratic aspect of the PRC regime in China.
(C)          Identify which regime is more democratic.
(D)         Explain why.


See pp. 73-78 and 88-94 in What You Need to Know

1 comment:

Ken Wedding said...

From the great and mountainous state of Colorado came this response:

"A) Some things that Make Russia democratic is the Duma, local governments, and the President are directly elected by the people.

"B) A source of democracy in China is the division of power between the CPC, State, and the Peoples liberation army.

"C) Russia is more democratic then China because Russia had fair and frequent elections for the Duma, Local Governments and the president. And they also have competing political parties even though they don’t stand a chance of winning against the United Russia Party."
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Here's a 4-point question. One point for each of the four parts.

This response is quite good.

The most democratic aspects of the Russian regime are the elections at various levels -- especially the direct election of the president.

It's not a "source" of democracy, but the division of political power between the Party, the state, and the PLA is probably one of the most democratic aspects of the Chinese regime. The other good example would be the elections of village leaders outside of the cities.

This respondent asserted that Russia is more democratic.

And then went on to explain that frequent elections and competing political parties are the factors that make Russia more democratic.

Good. This question earns 4 of 4 possible points.

WARNING 1: be careful about calling Russian elections "fair." Unless you can explain or describe evidence of that fairness, that's a judgement call and you might lose points for including a debatable point without evidence.

WARNING 2: some rubrics are VERY picky. This respondent labeled the answer with "A," "B," and "C." However, the question had parts "A" through "D." SOME rubrics require respondents, IF they use labels like that, to use the exact same labels that the question does.

Some teachers instruct their students NOT to label parts of their responses because some rubrics won't grant credit for a response to part D if it's in a paragraph labeled "C."

ALSO, note that the grammar error in the first line of part A ("things that Make Russia democratic is... ") and the misspelling in the first line of the response part C ("more democratic then China") are ignored. As long as misspelling or ungrammatical structures don't distort the meaning of your response, they won't have any affect on your score.