OCR F853 Anybody?

Forgot to revise federalism in depth didnt I! Think I just scraped a decent B on that, the choice of questions was just sublime though!

Reply 3

gunner92

OP

Yeah the 1b question was a little bit icky..
For the other questions I answered the Mid term elections, third parties being doomed to fail and whether the senate and hor can be regarded as co equal chambers, that went well :smile:

Reply 4

Mighty Moe

2

Did it, didn't like it, don't care. 61/100 in the Synoptic paper on Thursday gets me my B grade needed for my offer. I did the mid-terms, third parties and co-equal chambers question.

Reply 5

Original post by Mighty Moe

Did it, didn't like it, don't care. 61/100 in the Synoptic paper on Thursday gets me my B grade needed for my offer. I did the mid-terms, third parties and co-equal chambers question.

How did you find synoptic f855? did q's 1 and 2, possibly the broadest questions ever, loved it!

Reply 6

Yeah, I did this too.

Federalism coming up as the compulsory question threw me a little - but GCSE history came in handy and saved me (New Deal, TVA, ABC agencies etc).

The choice of questions was great though - I did 3rd parties doomed to fail, co-equal chambers, and the independence of the courts based on their rulings.

Reply 7

Original post by dodgymonkey

How did you find synoptic f855? did q's 1 and 2, possibly the broadest questions ever, loved it!

Not sure you should be talking about that yet, it hasn't been 12 hours...

Reply 8

Original post by taylorjj

Not sure you should be talking about that yet, it hasn't been 12 hours...

is OCR 12 hours? pretty sure I saw answers for the OCR Maths C4 paper just put up, the exam finished about 5 hours ago..

Reply 9

Original post by dodgymonkey

is OCR 12 hours? pretty sure I saw answers for the OCR Maths C4 paper just put up, the exam finished about 5 hours ago..

Just checked the rules, OCR isn't included - my bad.

Yeah I sat F855 today - I did the question on pressure groups playing a vital role in democracy, then the one on relative judicial power. Pretty nice I thought too!

Reply 10

Mighty Moe

2

Original post by dodgymonkey

How did you find synoptic f855? did q's 1 and 2, possibly the broadest questions ever, loved it!

I actually found it okay today. I did 1, which I thought was delightful, just went through each type of voting behaviour and all the different influences on voting, like past records in government, policies, etc. Then I went onto 5 and thought that wasn't too bad. Hopefully I'll have got the marks I needed. Decent paper overall.

Reply 11

Original post by Mighty Moe

I actually found it okay today. I did 1, which I thought was delightful, just went through each type of voting behaviour and all the different influences on voting, like past records in government, policies, etc. Then I went onto 5 and thought that wasn't too bad. Hopefully I'll have got the marks I needed. Decent paper overall.

what kind of things did you include and how did you structure it?
g+p really gets me sometimes with structure, do I do a clear for and against with analysis? or do I explain why personality does influence voting behaviour in a few paragraphs then mention all the short term factors (economy, campaign, media) and all the long term factors (all the models blah blah)? Incase you didn't realise I did the latter, so i'm slightly worried as others did the former. :s-smilie:

Original post by taylorjj

Just checked the rules, OCR isn't included - my bad.

Yeah I sat F855 today - I did the question on pressure groups playing a vital role in democracy, then the one on relative judicial power. Pretty nice I thought too!

yeah what things did you include?

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 12

Original post by dodgymonkey

what kind of things did you include and how did you structure it?
g+p really gets me sometimes with structure, do I do a clear for and against with analysis? or do I explain why personality does influence voting behaviour in a few paragraphs then mention all the short term factors (economy, campaign, media) and all the long term factors (all the models blah blah)? Incase you didn't realise I did the latter, so i'm slightly worried as others did the former. :s-smilie:

yeah what things did you include?

On pressure groups, I basically went at it from the 2 main perspectives (pluralist, corporatist) - so started by stating that according to the pluralist perspective, they do play a vital role, my main points were participation, education, as an aid to government and as an aid to the judicial system. Then did the corporatist side, explaining what it is etc, unequal influence (NRA, NFU etc), unelected/unaccountable, not being in line with general public opinion, PG failure (Brent Spar Greenpeace case) then a quick bit on Iron Triangles. Bits of evaluation throughout, then a conclusion pulling it all together and evaluating further - eventually coming down on the side that they do play a vital role. How did you do it?

Reply 13

Mighty Moe

2

Original post by dodgymonkey

what kind of things did you include and how did you structure it?
g+p really gets me sometimes with structure, do I do a clear for and against with analysis? or do I explain why personality does influence voting behaviour in a few paragraphs then mention all the short term factors (economy, campaign, media) and all the long term factors (all the models blah blah)? Incase you didn't realise I did the latter, so i'm slightly worried as others did the former. :s-smilie:

I did a little intro, 'We must consider a number of factors to assess whether personality is the key influence on voting behaviour blah blah blah' then launched into a paragraph that supports the view that it is the key. Said something about Blair winning in '97, '01 and '04 thanks to having a personality that stood out compared to opposition (Hague, Smith, Howard), about Obama's personality appealing more to the younger generation, about Cameron appealing over Brown and then said the elections of Borish Johnson and Schwarzenegger both show clear evidence of personality being a key influence in elections.

Then did a similar paragraph on media influence and how it argues against personality, then on past government records affecting voters and so on and so forth. Each time I would say at the end of the point whether it supported the view that personality is the key. I had voting behaviour models within my points, like dominant ideology came within the paragraph about the media influence, so I pointed that out. In all I got about 9 different factors + intro and conclusion, so I'm happy with my attempt. From the sounds of it you did the same layout as me, I wouldn't worry.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 14

Original post by taylorjj

On pressure groups, I basically went at it from the 2 main perspectives (pluralist, corporatist) - so started by stating that according to the pluralist perspective, they do play a vital role, my main points were participation, education, as an aid to government and as an aid to the judicial system. Then did the corporatist side, explaining what it is etc, unequal influence (NRA, NFU etc), unelected/unaccountable, not being in line with general public opinion, PG failure (Brent Spar Greenpeace case) then a quick bit on Iron Triangles. Bits of evaluation throughout, then a conclusion pulling it all together and evaluating further - eventually coming down on the side that they do play a vital role. How did you do it?

I honestly can't remember all the factors I put in there, but I know I included that they weren't vital due to 'modern' (key word) democracies already have established civil rights and they would be more effective and vital in places like Sri Lanka (based that opinion on what I saw on channel 4 yesterday), I also put in a bit about US with their Amicus curiae and judicial review, compared it to the UK's lack of it and parliamentary sovereignty. I also argued that they were vital in the US legislative process because the committee stage comes before the second reading and pluralism is encouraged in that country, but the UK have their committee stage after the second reading, with no vote and a small chance of amendment. Also put in revolving doors being existent in the US, but struggled to include examples for the EU+other democracies, I think I made a few up that I hope the examiner won't check. Seems like we both did pretty well, i'm just hoping the 'quality not quantity' saying comes out because I only did 4 pages per essay, whereas most finished the whole 16 page booklet :s-smilie:

Reply 15

Original post by dodgymonkey

I honestly can't remember all the factors I put in there, but I know I included that they weren't vital due to 'modern' (key word) democracies already have established civil rights and they would be more effective and vital in places like Sri Lanka (based that opinion on what I saw on channel 4 yesterday), I also put in a bit about US with their Amicus curiae and judicial review, compared it to the UK's lack of it and parliamentary sovereignty. I also argued that they were vital in the US legislative process because the committee stage comes before the second reading and pluralism is encouraged in that country, but the UK have their committee stage after the second reading, with no vote and a small chance of amendment. Also put in revolving doors being existent in the US, but struggled to include examples for the EU+other democracies, I think I made a few up that I hope the examiner won't check. Seems like we both did pretty well, i'm just hoping the 'quality not quantity' saying comes out because I only did 4 pages per essay, whereas most finished the whole 16 page booklet :s-smilie:

Don't worry, I did 4 for each too, so did most of my classmates. I really doubt if it's possible to write 8 pages per essay of concise critical analysis and evaluation. Sure, I could write 16 pages of crap in 2 hours, but I think less is more here (up to a point!).

It seems you read into the "modern" bit of it more than me - that did occur to me in the exam, but I didn't dwell on it too much when answering the question. By modern democracies I just took it to mean the western world, more or less.

Reply 16