• Defined – institutions that make public policy for a society
• Legitimate use of force used to control human behavior
• All forms of government require submission of some freedom
• Purposes:
• Maintaining order
• Providing public goods
• Roads, Clean Air
• Promoting equality
• Many early issues left to states
• Dilemmas:
• Freedom vs. Order
• Freedom vs. Equality
NO RULES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fDcNEUSLPs
• Preserve life
• Protect property
• Leviathan (1651)
• Thomas Hobbes stated:
• Without rules, people would live
as predators do
• Life in a “state of nature,”
would be “solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short”
• Single ruler, or sovereign, must
emerge for civil society to form
• Two Treatises on
Government (1690)
• John Locke stated:
• Basic objective of
government is protection
of life, liberty, and
property
• Natural Rights
• Government built on
consent of the governed
• Influenced Declaration of
Independence
The modern day
“state of nature”
• When individuals
agree to give up a
degree of freedom, or
power, to the state for
the safety and wellbeing of all.
• Thomas Hobbes
• John Locke
• Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
• What exchange exists between citizens and the
government?
Taxes
• Examples:
• Education
• Sanitation
• Parks
• Roads
• Fire/Police
for
Services
Magna Carta
June 15, 1215
• aka – the Great Charter
• Limited the power of the king
• Protected the English people from
feudal abuses
• Beginning of constitutional government
• Habeas Corpus
• Right to due process of the law
Petition of Rights (1628)
• Reaffirmed principles in Magna Carta
• Granted individuals fundamental liberties
• Demanded by Parliament:
• No freeman should be forced to pay any tax, loan, or benevolence, unless in
accordance with an act of parliament
• No freeman should be imprisoned contrary to the laws of the land
• Soldiers and sailors should not be billeted on private persons
• English Bill of Rights – 1689
• Part of the Glorious Revolution
• Written as an act of Parliament
• Limited the power of the English sovereign
• Asserted:
• Englishmen had certain unalienable civil and
political rights
• Protected free speech in Parliament
• Unless Parliament consented, monarchs could not:
• Prevent Protestants from bearing arms
• Impose fines and punishment without trial
• Impose cruel or unusual punishment or excessive bail
The Spirit of Laws – 1748
• Baron de Montesquieu (French Philosopher)
• Stated:
• Best government combined monarchy with
administrative authority
• Separation of powers & Checks and balances
• Punishment should fit the crime
• 8th Amendment (No cruel or unusual punishment)
• Citizens should practice religious toleration
• 1st Amendment (Freedom of religion)
• French and Indian War (17541763)
• Proclamation of 1763
• Banned settlement west of
Appalachians
• Sugar Act (1764)
• Stamp Act (1765)
• Declaratory Act (1766)
• Parliament’s right tax the colonies
• Townshend Acts (1767)
• Taxed imports
• Tea Act (1773)
• Intolerable Acts (1774)
• Boston Harbor closed
• Mass. Governor replaced
• Quartering Act
• Lexington & Concord
• April 1775
• 1st Continental Congress (Sept.
1774)
• Address Intolerable Acts
• Restore harmony between Great Britain
• 2nd Continental Congress
• Began in May 1775
• Common Sense (1776)
• Thomas Paine
• Drafted by Thomas Jefferson
• Ben Franklin
• John Adams
• Robert Livingston
• Roger Sherman
• Expressed arguments in
support of separation from
Great Britain
• Expressed ideas of Locke
• Social Contract Theory
• Approved July 4, 1776
• Second Continental
Congress
• Philadelphia, PA
• John Hancock
• Presided over Congress
VS.
LOCKE
• “Governments are
instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers
from the consent of the
governed. That
whenever any Form of
Government becomes
destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the
People to alter or to
abolish it”
• Preservation of natural
rights
• Consent of the
governed
HOBBES
• Right to resist or
remove rulers
ROUSSEAU
State
• Body of people…
Necessities:
• People
• Land
• Sovereignty
• Government
1. Living within a defined territory
2. Organized politically
3. Power to make and enforce laws
• Nation – ethnic term (ex. – Nation of Islam)
• Country – geographic term (ex. – political boundaries)
Democracy
• Supreme political authority
rests with the people
VS
Dictatorship
• Ruler holds absolute authority
over the people
• But which people?
• Means of selecting
policymakers and of
organizing government so
that policy represents and
responds to the people’s
preferences
• Totalitarian – ruler controls
nearly every aspect of
human affairs
• Autocracy – one person holds
unlimited power
• Oligarchy – small elite holds
the power to rule
Unitary
Federal
• Single, central agency • Central government
holds all government
and several local
powers
governments share
• Most forms of
government are
unitary
• Example:
• British parliament can
redraw local
government boundaries
power
• Example:
• Georgia has
authority over its
citizens
• National govt. can
pass laws that affect
Georgians.
Confederation
• An alliance of
independent states
• Most or all of
power is held by
the components
(ex. – individual
states)
• Example:
• Article of
Confederation
Presidential
Parliamentary
• Divides power between the
branches
• Power resides with the legislative
branch
• Independent and coequal
• Branches share power
• Executive branch consists of prime
minister or premier and that
official’s cabinet
• Chief executive (president)
chosen independently of
legislature
• Are members of the legislative branch
• Prime Minister is leader of the
majority party
• Executive branch is chosen by, and
therefore subject to, the legislative
branch
The Prime Minister and his/her cabinet are subject to the will of the legislature
• Can therefore be replaced by the Legislature
• “vote of no confidence” – loss of support of the majority
Democracy
OR
Republic
• Supreme political
authority rests with the
people.
• Government with a chief
of state who is not a
monarch
• Direct
• Representative
• Supreme power resides
with citizens who can
vote
• Exercised through
representatives
Democracies MUST practice majority rule while preserving minority rights
Direct Democracy
• Also referred to as a
pure democracy
• Will of the people
translated into public
policy directly through
mass meetings
Representative Democracy
• Group of people, chosen
by the people, act as
representatives
• Express the popular will of
the people
• Does not exist at national • Accountability?
level
Pluralist
Majoritarian
• Mass public controls
government action
• Popular election is
necessity
• Referendums
• Initiatives
• Citizens must be:
• Willing
• Knowledgeable
Elite (Class)
• View that a small
• Government
group of people
operates through
(minority) make
competing interest
most important
groups
• Competition for
power/control
• Examples:
•
•
•
•
Branches
Levels of Govt.
Political parties
Interest groups
government
decisions
• Powerful few
(wealthy) control
policy and impact
decision making
• The Articles of Confederation – a failed attempt
• Daniel Shay’s rebellion exposed a lack of order
• Virginia Plan
• Separation of powers (3 branches of govt)
• Bicameral legislature
• Executive chosen by the legislature
• Judiciary appointed by legislature
• Legislature could override state laws
• Representation based on state’s population
• New Jersey Plan
• Involved amending of Articles of Confederation
• Unicameral legislature
• Act of legislature would be “supreme law of the respective
states”
• Executive elected by legislature
• States would have equal representation in legislature
• Great Compromise (Connecticut Compromise)
• Proposed by Roger Sherman
• House of Representatives – apportioned by population
• Senate – equal representation for all states
Preamble to the Constitution
“We the People of the United States, in Order to Form a
more perfect Union…
• Establish Justice
• Insure domestic Tranquility
• Provide for the common defense
• Promote the general Welfare
• Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…
do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States
of America”
• Limited Government
• Government is restricted in what it may do
• Rule of law – govt and its officers are subject to law
• Individuals have rights govt. cannot take away
• Natural rights (Locke)
• Popular Sovereignty
• Supreme power of a people to shape and authorize their
government
• People are the source of all power held by the government
• Federalism
• Divides power between central government and the states
• Separation of Powers
• Establishes three separate parts (branches) that share govt’s
power
• Executive, Legislative, Judicial
• Checks and Balances
• Ensures none of the three branches of government can become
too powerful
• Judicial Review
• Power of the courts to decide what the Constitution means
• Based on interpretation
Constitution – body of fundamental laws setting out principles,
structures, and process of government
MAKES
THE LAWS
ENFORCES
THE LAWS
INTERPRETS
THE LAWS
Federalists
• Wealthy, well-educated
• Wrote 85 essays under the
name “Publius”
• Printed in various New York
newspapers
Anti-Federalists
• State’s rights advocates, farmers,
debtors, lower class
• Feared government’s potential to
become corrupt
• Result of experience with the British
• Published to urge New Yorkers • Wanted to protect individual
liberties
to ratify the Constitution
• Alexander Hamilton
• James Madison
• John Jay
• George Mason
• Samuel Adams
• Patrick Henry
Federalists
• Articles of Confederation were
weak/ineffective
Anti-Federalists
• Articles of Confederation were a
good plan
• National government needed • Opposed strong central
to be strong in order to function
government
• Men of experience should
govern
• National government would
protect rights of people
• State constitutions protected
individual freedoms
• Constitution favored the wealthy
• Strong national government
threatened state power
• Threatened rights of people
• Constitution lacked Bill of Rights
• Needed to protect individual liberties
• Over 100 amendments
were proposed
• Ratification:
• December of 1787
• Narrowed to 12
• 10 approved by ¾ of states
•
•
•
•
• Bill of Rights
• Guarantees:
•
•
•
•
Political Participation
Respecting of personal beliefs
Privacy
Protection from an
overreaching govt
• Additional guarantees
• Right to bear arms
• Powers of states & people
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Delaware
Pennsylvania
New Jersey
Georgia
Connecticut – Jan. 1788
Massachusetts – Feb. 1788
Maryland – April 1788
South Carolina – May 1788
New Hampshire – June 21, 1788
Virginia – June 1788
New York – July 1788
North Carolina – Nov. 1789
Rhode Island – May 1790