Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
POLITICS: WHO GETS
WHAT, AND HOW?
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
1
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
WHAT IS POLITICS?
F
or me, the experience is one I will never forget,” says Kenyon College
student Todd Walters. “Some people say they will never forget where
they were when they heard the news about Kennedy being shot, well this was
one of those moments for me.” 1
What was the earthshaking, once-in-a-lifetime event that is seared into
Walters’s memory? Surprising as it may seem, it was not a national tragedy
or a personal triumph but something younger people are not even supposed
to care very much about. It was his first vote in a presidential election.
It took Walters seven and a half long hours of waiting in line to cast that
vote on November 2, 2004. His roommate waited for ten. For Walters and his
fellow students, that election became an exercise not only in democracy but
also in patience, commitment, and determination to show that they could
make a difference.
Long waits to vote were not uncommon in Ohio in 2004. One of the socalled battleground states where the electoral votes were hotly contested and
voter registration drives had been wildly successful; in many precincts there
were not enough voting machines to handle the crowds of new voters. Many
voters around the state tired of waiting or had to leave to go to work or cope
with families.
But at tiny Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, students persevered. Campus groups had done such an excellent job getting students registered at
Kenyon that the two voting machines that normally handled the campus
turnout of a few hundred had to handle thousands instead.
And so they waited. As the day wore on, members of political parties
brought the young voters snacks and bottled water and students took turns
standing in for each other so they could get brief respites from the tedium of
waiting in line. Those who’d had the good fortune or sense to vote early went
to the dining hall and returned with trays of food for those still waiting. The
Politics and Government
Rules and Institutions
Politics and Economics
VARIETIES OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS
AND THE CONCEPT OF CITIZENSHIP
Authoritarian Systems
Nonauthoritarian Systems
The Role of the People
ORIGINS OF DEMOCRACY
IN AMERICA
The Ancient Greek Experience
Politics in the Middle Ages
The Protestant Reformation and
the Enlightenment
Sources of Democracy Closer to
Home
CITIZENSHIP IN AMERICA
The Dangers of Democracy
Madison’s Vision of Citizenship
American Citizenship Today
HOW TO USE THE THEMES AND
FEATURES IN THIS BOOK
WHAT’S AT STAKE
REVISITED
3
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
4
The Young and
the Involved
Bucking the trend of overall
low voter turnout, these
leaders of tomorrow are getting out the vote today. Here,
three student supporters listen
to Democratic presidential
hopeful Sen. Barack Obama
(D-Ill.) speak during a rally
at the University of Oregon,
May 9, 2008, in Eugene,
Oregon, just days before
Oregon held its Democratic
primary on May 20.
president of the college excused their absences from class and the administration
extended the deadline for spring registration, due to end that day. New friendships were forged as the students stood in line, suffused with a sense of camaraderie and purpose.
The Kenyon students were not the only college-aged voters to break records
that day. When the exit poll results came out, the leaders of MTV’s Rock the Vote,
America Coming Together, MoveOn.org, and other groups monitoring the
youth turnout were jubilant. While young people were the same percentage of
the electorate (18 percent) that they had been in 2000, the electorate as a whole
had turned out in numbers much greater than normal, and young voters had
kept pace. Turnout of voters aged eighteen to twenty-nine was 51.6 percent overall (up from 42.3 percent in 2000), and in the battleground states it was 64.4 percent, up 13 points from the previous presidential election.
These statistics would surely have given considerable peace of mind to Benjamin Franklin, who was keenly aware of the importance of popular attention
to the political process. In 1787, when asked by a woman what he and other
founders of the Constitution had created, he answered: “A Republic, Madam, if
you can keep it.” But ever since eighteen year olds had been given the vote in
1972, their voting turnout had been low, their efforts to keep the republic distinctly lackluster.
Young people have generally been less interested in politics than their elders,
and less informed. In one 2002 survey, only 51 percent of those aged eighteen to
twenty-five could name Dick Cheney as vice president of the United States and
only 45 percent said they were interested in local politics, fewer than any other
age group.2 One writer, noting that Americans of all ages expressed increasingly
high levels of distrust in government and dislike for politics, sounded the dire warning that “a nation that hates
politics will not long thrive as a democracy.” 3
For those who believe that political engagement is essential to the prosperity of democracy, a critical question
is whether 2004 constitutes a lasting change in young
people’s political attitudes. Perhaps it was a fluke, a onetime thing, tied to vague rumors about an impending
draft to support the Iraqi war, or to an unusually close
election, or to extraordinary get-out-the-vote efforts
made by the political parties and other activist groups. Is
young people’s political involvement really such a big
deal, or is concern about keeping the republic just an
idiosyncrasy of long-deceased founders and hyperactive
political science professors? What is really at stake for American democracy in
the issue of youthful engagement in the political system? We will be able to address this question better after we explore the meaning of politics and the difference it makes in our lives. ❋
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
What’s at Stake?
5
H
ave you got grand ambitions for your life? Do you want a powerful position
in business, influence in high places, money to make things happen? Perhaps
you would like to make a difference in the world, heal the sick, fight for peace,
feed the poor. Or maybe all you want from life is a good education, a well-paying job,
a comfortable home, and a safe, prosperous, contented existence. Think politics has
nothing to do with any of those things? Think again.
The things that make those goals attainable—a strong national defense, education
loans or tax deductions for tuition money, economic prosperity, full employment, favorable mortgage rates, policies that let us take time off from work to have kids, secure streets and neighborhoods, cheap and efficient public transportation—are all influenced by or are the products of politics.
Yet, if you listen to the news, politics may seem like one long campaign commercial: eternal bickering and finger-pointing by people who are feathering their nests
and those of their cronies at the expense of the voters. Politics, which we would like to
think of as a noble and even morally elevated activity, takes on all the worst characteristics of the business world, where we expect people to take advantage of each other
and pursue their own private interests. Can this really be the heritage of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln? Can this be the “world’s greatest democracy” at work?
In this chapter we get to the heart of what politics is, how it relates to other concepts such as power, government, rules, economics, and citizenship. We propose that
politics can best be understood as the struggle over who gets power and resources in
society. Politics produces winners and losers, and much of the reason it can look so
ugly is that people fight desperately not to be losers.
Contrary to their depictions in the media, and maybe even in our own minds, the
people who are doing that desperate fighting are not some special breed of people
who are different—more corrupt or self-interested or greedy—from the rest of us.
They are us—whether they are officials in Washington or mayors of small towns, corporate CEOs or representatives of labor unions, local cops or soldiers in the Middle
East, church-goers or atheists, doctors or lawyers, shopkeepers or consumers, professors or students, they are the people that in a democracy we call citizens.
As we will see, it is the beauty of a democracy that all the people, including the
everyday people like us, get to fight for what they want. Not everyone can win, of
course, and many never come close. There is no denying that some bring resources to
the process that give them an edge, and that the rules give advantages to some groups
of people over others. But the people who pay attention and who learn how the rules
work can begin to use those rules to increase their chances of getting what they want,
whether it is a lower personal tax bill, greater pollution controls, a more aggressive foreign policy, safer streets, a better educated population, or more public parks. If they
become very skilled citizens, they can even begin to change the rules so that they can
fight more easily for the kind of society they think is important, and so that people
like them are more likely to end up winners in the high-stakes game we call politics.
The government our founders created for us gives us a remarkable playing field on
which to engage in that game. Like any other politicians, the designers of the American system were caught up in the struggle for power and resources, and in the desire
to write laws that would maximize the chances that they, and people like them, would
be winners in the new system. Nonetheless, they crafted a government remarkable for
its ability to generate compromise and stability, and also for its potential to realize
freedom and prosperity for its citizens.
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
6
To help you better understand the system they gave us and our place in it, in this
chapter you will learn
• the meaning of “politics”
• the varieties of political systems and the roles they endorse for the individuals who
live in them
• the historical origins of American democracy
• the goals and concerns of the founders as they created the American system
• the components of critical thinking and how the themes of power and citizenship
will serve as our framework for understanding American politics
WHAT IS POLITICS?
politics who gets what, when,
and how; a process of
determining how power and
resources are distributed in a
society without recourse to
violence
power the ability to get other
people to do what you want
resources assets and advantages
that help us to achieve a desired
end
social order a particular view of
how we ought to organize and
live our collective lives
Over two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle said that we are political animals, and political animals we seem destined to remain. The truth is that politics is a fundamental and complex human activity. In some ways it is our capacity to
be political—to cooperate, bargain, and compromise—that helps distinguish us
from all the other animals out there. Politics may have its baser moments—Watergate and White House interns come to mind—but it also allows us to reach more exalted heights than we could ever achieve alone—from the building of a national
highway system, to the dedication of a new public library, to the dismantling of the
Berlin Wall.
Since this book is about politics, in all its glory as well as its shame, we need to
begin with a clear definition. One of the most famous definitions, put forth by the
well-known political scientist Harold Lasswell, is still one of the best, and we use it to
frame our discussion throughout this book. Lasswell defined politics as “who gets
what when and how.” 1 Politics is a way of determining, without recourse to violence,
who gets power and resources in society, and how they get them. Power is the ability
to get other people to do what you want them to do. Resources in question here might
be governmental jobs, tax revenues, laws that help you get your way, or public policies
that work to your advantage.
The tools of politics are compromise and cooperation, discussion and debate, even,
sometimes, bribery and deceit. Politics is the process through which we try to arrange
our collective lives in some kind of social order so that we can live without crashing
into each other at every turn, and to provide ourselves with goods and services we
could not obtain alone. But politics is also about getting your own way. Your own way
may be a noble goal for society or pure self-interest, but the struggle you engage in is
a political struggle. Because politics is about power and other scarce resources, there
will always be winners and losers in politics. If everybody could always get his or her
own way, politics would disappear. It is because we cannot always get what we want
that politics exists.
What would a world without politics be like? There would be no resolution or
compromise between conflicting interests, because those are certainly political activities. There would be no agreements struck, bargains made, or alliances formed. Unless there were enough of every valued resource to go around, or unless the world
were big enough that we could live our lives without coming into contact with other
human beings, life would be constant conflict—what the philosopher Thomas
Hobbes (1588–1679) called a “war of all against all.” Individuals, unable to cooperate
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
What Is Politics?
with one another (because cooperation is essentially political), would have no option
but to resort to brute force to settle disputes and allocate resources.
Our capacity to be political saves us from that fate. We do have the ability to persuade, cajole, bargain, promise, compromise, and cooperate. We do have the ability to
agree on what principles should guide our handling of power and other scarce resources and to live our collective lives according to those principles. Because there are
many potential theories about how to manage power—who should have it, how
it should be used, how it should be transferred—agreement on which principles are
legitimate, or accepted as “right,” can break down. When agreement on what is legitimate fails, violence often takes its place. Indeed, the human history of warfare attests
to the fragility of political life.
Although one characteristic of government is that it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, politics means that we have alternatives, that bloodshed is not the
only way of dealing with human conflict. Interestingly, the word politics comes from the
Greek word polis, meaning “city-state.” Similarly, the word civilization comes from the
Latin word civitas, meaning “city” or “state.” Thus our Western notions of politics and
civilization share similar roots, all tied up with what it means to live a shared public life.
7
legitimate accepted as “right”
or proper
POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
Although the words politics and government are sometimes used interchangeably, they
refer to different things. Politics is a process or an activity through which power and
resources are gained and lost. Government, on the other hand, is a system or organization for exercising authority over a body of people.
American politics is what happens in the halls of Congress, on the campaign trail,
at Washington cocktail parties, and in neighborhood association meetings. It is the
making of promises, deals, and laws. American government is the Constitution and the
institutions set up by the Constitution for the exercise of authority by the American
people, over the American people.
government a system or
organization for exercising
authority over a body of people
Goodwill to Men
Republican senators Mel Martinez
of Florida and Lindsey Graham of
South Carolina share a laugh with
Democratic senator Ted Kennedy
of Massachusetts before a news
conference to announce a compromise on immigration legislation
between the White House and the
Senate on May 17, 2007, in Washington, D.C. Even though their parties
are frequently at odds on substantive policy issues, the kind of camaraderie they exhibit here is in line
with the Senate’s long tradition of
deference and courtesy among
members. Such diplomacy may
strike some observers as archaic
and phony given how much is at
stake in the policy outcomes they
debate, but it serves an important
purpose—limiting hostilities and
enabling members to reach the
compromises that make democratic government possible.
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
8
Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
authority power that is
recognized as legitimate
Authority is power that citizens view as legitimate, or “right”—power to which we
have given our implicit consent. You can think of it this way: as children, we probably
did as our parents told us or submitted to their punishment if we didn’t because we
recognized their authority over us. As we became adults, we started to claim that our
parents had less authority over us, that we could do what we wanted. We no longer
saw their power as wholly legitimate or appropriate. Governments exercise authority
because people recognize them as legitimate even if they often do not like doing what
they are told (paying taxes, for instance). When governments cease to be regarded as
legitimate, the result may be revolution or civil war, unless the state is powerful
enough to suppress all opposition.
RULES AND INSTITUTIONS
rules directives that specify
how resources will be
distributed or what procedures
govern collective activity
institutions organizations in
which governmental power is
exercised
Government is shaped by the process of politics, but it in turn provides the rules and
institutions that shape the way politics continues to operate. The rules and institutions
of government have a profound effect on how power is distributed and who wins and
loses in the political arena. Life is different for people in other countries not only because they speak different languages and eat different foods but also because their governments establish rules that cause life to be lived in different ways.
Rules can be thought of as the how in the definition “who gets what . . . and how.”
They are directives that determine how resources are allocated and how collective action takes place—that is, they determine how we try to get the things we want. We can
do it violently, or we can do it politically, according to the rules. Those rules can provide for a single dictator, for a king, for rule by God’s representative on earth or by the
rich, for rule by a majority of the people, or for any other arrangement. The point of
the rules is to provide some framework for us to solve without violence the problems
that are generated by our collective lives.
Because the rules we choose can influence which people will get what they want
most often, understanding the rules is crucial to understanding politics. Consider for
a moment the impact a change of rules would have on the outcome of the sport of
basketball, for instance. What if the average height of the players could be no more
than 5’10”? What if the baskets were lowered? What if foul shots counted for two
points rather than one? Basketball would be a very different game, and the teams recruited would look quite unlike the teams we now cheer for. So it is with governments
and politics: change the people who are allowed to vote or the length of time a person
can serve in office, and the political process and the potential winners and losers
change drastically.
We can think of institutions as the where of the political struggle, though Lasswell
didn’t include a “where” component in his definition. They are the organizations
where governmental power is exercised. In the United States, our rules provide for the
institutions of a representative democracy, that is, rule by the elected representatives
of the people, and for a federal political system. Our Constitution lays the foundation
for the institutions of Congress, the presidency, the courts, and the bureaucracy as a
stage on which the drama of politics plays itself out. Other systems might call for different institutions, perhaps an all-powerful parliament, or a monarch, or even a committee of rulers.
These complicated systems of rules and institutions do not appear out of thin air.
They are carefully designed by the founders of different systems to create the kinds of
society they think will be stable and prosperous, but also where people like themselves
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
What Is Politics?
9
are likely to be winners. Remember that not only the rules but also the institutions we
choose influence who most easily and most often get their own way.
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
Whereas politics is concerned with the distribution of power and resources in society,
economics is concerned specifically with the production and distribution of society’s
wealth—material goods like bread, toothpaste, and housing, and services like medical
care, education, and entertainment. Because both politics and economics focus on the
distribution of society’s resources, political and economic questions often get confused in contemporary life. Questions about how to pay for government, about government’s role in the economy, and about whether government or the private sector
should provide certain services have political and economic dimensions. Because
there are no clear-cut distinctions here, it can be difficult to keep these terms straight.
The sources of the words politics and economics suggest that their meanings were
once more distinct than they are today. We already saw that the Greek source of the
word political was polis, or “city-state,” the basic political unit of ancient Greece. For
the free male citizens of the city-state of Athens (by no means the majority of the inhabitants), politics was a prestigious and jealously restricted activity. However, the
public, political world of Athens was possible only because a whole class of people
(slaves and women) existed to support the private world, the oikonomia, or “household.” This early division of the world into the political and the economic clearly separated the two realms. Political life was public, and economic life was private. Today,
that distinction is not nearly so simple. What is public and private now depends on
what is controlled by government. The various forms of economic systems are shown
in Figure 1.1.
➤
More
government
control
of the
economy
(substantive
guarantees)
economics production and
distribution of a society’s
material resources and services
Socialism
Complete
government
ownership
and control
(substantive
guarantees)
Examples: China,
North Korea,
Cuba, former
Soviet Union
➤
Social
Democracy
Regulated
Capitalism
Laissez-Faire
Capitalism
Mostly private
ownership but
extensive government control
(substantive and
procedural
guarantees)
Examples:
Sweden, Norway
Private ownership
and some government control
(procedural
guarantees)
Examples:
Britain, U.S.
Private ownership
and no government control
There are no
real-world
examples.
Less
government
control of
the economy
(procedural
guarantees)
FIGURE 1.1
A Comparison of Economic Systems
Economic systems are largely defined by the degree to which government owns the means by which material resources are produced
(e.g., factories and industry) and controls economic decision making. On a scale ranging from socialism—complete government ownership and control of the economy (on the left)—to laissez-faire capitalism—complete individual ownership and control of the economy
(on the right)—social democracies would be located in the center. These hybrid systems are characterized by mostly private ownership
of the means of production but considerable government control over economic decisions.
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
10
Fly Me to the Moon
Private entrepreneurs like billionaire Richard Branson can afford to
invest in unique endeavors like the
SpaceShipTwo, which is projected
to be the first craft to take paying
passengers into space on a regular
basis by 2010. While there may be
relatively few individuals wealthy
enough to afford the novelty,
Branson will be able to keep his
ships out among the stars because
those few people will spend a lot
for the privilege. On the other
hand, government-funded space
exploration and research must
compete with countless other
budgetary concerns for a finite
amount of income from tax dollars
and is often held bound by swings
in public opinion reflected in
government decisions on space
policy and programs.
capitalist economy an
economic system in which the
market determines production,
distribution, and price decisions
and property is privately owned
laissez-faire capitalism an
economic system in which the
market makes all decisions and
the government plays no role
regulated capitalism a market
system in which the
government intervenes to
protect rights and make
procedural guarantees
procedural guarantees
government assurance that the
rules will work smoothly and
treat everyone fairly, with no
promise of particular outcomes
Capitalism In a pure capitalist economy, all the means that are used to produce material resources (industry, business, and land, for instance) are privately owned, and
decisions about production and distribution are left to individuals operating through
the free-market process. Capitalist economies rely on the market—the process of supply and demand—to decide how much of a given item to produce or how much to
charge for it. Take toothpaste, for example. If many people want toothpaste, it will be
quite expensive until the market responds by producing lots of toothpaste, whereupon
the price will drop until production evens out. In capitalist countries, people do not
believe that the government is capable of making such judgments (like how much
toothpaste to produce), and they want to keep such decisions out of the hands of government and in the hands of individuals who they believe know best about what they
want. The philosophy that corresponds with this belief is called laissez-faire capitalism, from a French term that, loosely translated, means “let people do as they wish.”
The government has no economic role at all in such a system. However, no economic
system today maintains a purely unregulated form of capitalism, with the government
completely uninvolved.
Like most other countries today, the United States has a system of regulated capitalism. It maintains a capitalist economy and individual freedom from government
interference remains the norm, but it allows government to step in and regulate the
economy to guarantee individual rights and to provide procedural guarantees that
the rules will work smoothly and fairly. Although in theory the market ought to provide everything that people need and want, and should regulate itself as well, sometimes the market breaks down, or fails. In regulated capitalism, the government steps
in to try to fix it.
Markets have cycles, with periods of growth often followed by periods of slowdown
or recession. Individuals and businesses look to government for protection from these
cyclical effects. For example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works
Progress Administration to get Americans back to work during the Great Depression,
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
What Is Politics?
11
and much more recently, the Federal Reserve Bank in 2008 extended a credit line to JP
Morgan Chase, allowing it to buy rival investment bank Bear Stearns in the hopes of
stabilizing the financial community. Government may also act to ensure the safety of
the consumer public and of working people, or to encourage fair business practices
(like prevention of monopolies), or to provide goods and services that people have no
incentive to produce themselves.
Highways, streetlights, libraries, museums, schools, social security, national defense, and a clean environment are some examples of the goods and services that
many people are unable or unwilling to produce privately. Consequently, government
undertakes to provide these things (with money provided by taxpayers) and, in doing
so, becomes not only a political but an economic actor as well. To the extent that government gets involved in a capitalist economy, we move away from laissez-faire to regulated capitalism.
Socialism In a socialist economy like that of the former Soviet Union (based loosely
on the ideas of German economist Karl Marx), economic decisions are made not by
individuals through the market but rather by politicians, based on their judgment of
what society needs. Rather than allowing the market to determine the proper distribution of material resources, politicians decide what the distribution ought to be and
then create economic policy to bring about that outcome. In other words, they do not
emphasize procedural guarantees of fair rules and process, but rather substantive
guarantees of what they believe to be fair outcomes.
According to the basic values of a socialist or communist system (although there
are some theoretical differences between the two, they are similar for our purposes
here), it is unjust for some people to own more property than others and to have
power over them because of it. Consequently, the theory goes, the state or society—
not corporations or individuals—should own the property (like land, factories, and
corporations). In such systems, the public and private spheres overlap, and politics
controls the distribution of all resources. The societies that have tried to put these theories into practice have ended up with very repressive political systems, but Marx
hoped that eventually socialism would evolve to a point where each individual had
control over his or her own life—a radical form of democracy.
Many theories hold that socialism is possible only after a revolution that thoroughly overthrows the old system to make way for new values and institutions. This
is what happened in Russia in 1917 and in China in the 1940s. Since the socialist
economies of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe have fallen apart, socialism
has been left with few supporters, although some nations, like China, North Korea,
and Cuba, still claim allegiance to it.
socialist economy an
economic system in which the
state determines production,
distribution, and price decisions
and property is government
owned
substantive guarantees
government assurance of
particular outcomes or results
Social Democracy Some countries in Western Europe, especially the Scandinavian na-
tions of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, have developed hybrid economic systems. As
noted in Figure 1.1, these systems represent something of a middle ground between
socialist and capitalist systems. Primarily capitalist, in that they believe most property
can be privately held, proponents of social democracy nonetheless argue that the values of equality promoted by socialism are attractive and can be brought about by
democratic reform rather than revolution. Believing that the economy does not have
to be owned by the state for its effects to be controlled by the state, social democratic
countries attempt to strike a difficult balance between providing substantive guarantees of fair outcomes and procedural guarantees of fair rules.
social democracy a hybrid
system combining a capitalist
economy and a government that
supports equality
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Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
12
Since World War II, the citizens of many
Western European nations have elected social democrats to office, where they have
enacted policies to bring about more equality—for instance, the elimination of
poverty and unemployment, better housing, and adequate health care for all. Even
where social democratic governments are
voted out of office, such programs have
proved so popular that it is often difficult
for new leaders to alter them.
VARIETIES OF POLITICAL
SYSTEMS AND THE CONCEPT
OF CITIZENSHIP
Just as there are different kinds of economic
systems, there are different sorts of political
systems, based on different ideas about who
No Small Undertaking
should have power and what the social
If the U.S. Postal Service only kept its biggest and most profitable routes open, small rural
sites like this one in Bradley, Michigan, would probably be shut down. Government control
order should be—that is, how much public
ensures that mail delivery is widespread and relatively inexpensive, getting your letters to
regulation there should be over individual
icy outposts in Alaska or the swamps of Florida for less than 40 cents.
behavior. For our purposes, we can divide
political systems into two types: those in
which the government has the power to impose a particular social order, deciding how
individuals ought to behave, and those in which individuals exercise personal power
over most of their own behavior and ultimately over government as well. These two
types of systems are not just different in a theoretical sense—they have very real implications for the people who live in them. Thus the notion of citizenship (or the lack
of it) is closely tied to the kind of political system a nation has.
Figure 1.2 offers a comparison of these systems. The first type of system, called authoritarian government, potentially has total power over its subjects; the second type,
nonauthoritarian government, permits citizens to limit the state’s power by claiming
rights that the government must protect. Another way to think about this, to use the
terminology we introduced in the previous section, is that in authoritarian systems,
government makes substantive decisions about how people ought to live their lives; in
nonauthoritarian systems, government merely guarantees that there are fair rules and
leaves the rest to individual control. Sometimes governments that exercise substantive
decision making in the economic realm also do so with respect to the social order. But,
as Figure 1.3 shows, there are several possible combinations of economic and political
systems.
AUTHORITARIAN SYSTEMS
authoritarian governments
systems in which the state holds
all power over the social order
Authoritarian governments give ultimate power to the state rather than to the people to decide how they ought to live their lives. By “authoritarian governments,” we
usually mean those in which the people cannot effectively claim rights against the
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Varieties of Political Systems and the Concept of Citizenship
➤
Less government control over
individual lives and the social
order (procedural guarantees)
Anarchy
No government or man-made
laws; individuals do as they please.
There are no real-world examples.
Nonauthoritarian System
(such as democracy)
Individuals (citizens) decide how
to live their lives. Government role
limited to procedural guarantees
of individual rights.
Examples: U.S., Sweden, Japan,
South Korea, India
13
FIGURE 1.2
A Comparison of Political Systems
Political systems are defined by the
extent to which individual citizens or
governments decide what the social
order should look like, that is, how
people should live their collective,
noneconomic lives. Except for
anarchies, every system allots a role
to government to regulate individual
behavior, for example, to prohibit
murder, rape, and theft. But beyond
such basic regulation, they differ
radically on who gets to determine
how individuals live their lives, and
whether government’s role is simply
to provide procedural guarantees
that protect individuals’ rights to
make their own decisions or to
provide a much more substantive
view of how individuals should
behave.
Authoritarian System
Government decides how
individuals (subjects) should live
their lives and imposes a
substantive vision.
Examples: China, North Korea,
Cuba, Saudi Arabia
➤
More government control over
individual lives and the social
order (substantive guarantees)
state; where the state chooses to exercise its power, the people have no choice but to
submit to its will.
Authoritarian governments can take various forms:
• A monarchy vests the ultimate power in one person (the king or queen), believing
either that God or some other higher power has designated that person a divine
representative on earth, or that the person’s birth, wealth, or even knowledge entitles him or her to the supreme position. A monarchy is not necessarily authoritarian (for instance, in the British constitutional monarchy, Parliament and not the
monarch is sovereign), but it is when the king or queen holds the ultimate power.
monarchy an authoritarian
government with power vested
in a king or queen
• Some forms of authoritarian government give God or other divinities a more direct line of power. In a theocracy, God is the sovereign, speaking through the voice
of an earthly appointee such as a pope or a prophet. For example, a fundamentalist Islamic leader governs Iran, a country where every element of the legal system
and culture is in strict concordance with conservative Islamic principles.
theocracy an authoritarian
government that claims to draw
its power from divine or
religious authority
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Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
totalitarian government
a system in which absolute
power is exercised over every
aspect of life
authoritarian capitalism
a system in which the state
allows people economic
freedom, but maintains
stringent social regulations
to limit noneconomic
behavior
➤
➤
Totalitarian System
Government controls
all economic and
individual behavior.
Examples: Former Soviet
Union, North Korea, China
•
More government
control of the economy
•
•
oligarchy rule by a small group
of elites
Has never existed.
Advanced Industrial
Democracy
Personal freedom within
a free market economy
(although usually with some
government regulations).
Examples: U.S.,
Great Britain, Japan
•
fascist government an
authoritarian government in
which policy is made for the
ultimate glory of the state
Less government
control over individual
lives and the social order
Communist Democracy
Marx’s hope for a system
embracing personal freedom
and a collectively owned
economy.
➤
FIGURE 1.3
Political and
Economic Systems
Political systems work in
conjunction with economic
systems, but government
control over the economy
does not necessarily translate into tight control over
the social order. We have
identified four possible
combinations of these systems signified by the labeled points in each quadrant. These points are
approximate, however, and
some nations cannot be so
easily classified. Sweden is
an advanced industrial democracy by most measures,
for instance, but because of
its commitment to substantive economic values, it
would be located much
closer to the vertical axis.
➤
14
Less government
control of the economy
Authoritarian
Capitalism
Government allows
market economy but highly
regulates individual behavior.
Examples: Singapore
More government
control over individual
lives and the social
order
• In a fascist government, the state is sovereign. Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini are examples of states run by dictators for the greater glory not of themselves
or God but of the state.
• Sovereignty may be vested in a party or group within a state, often called an oligarchy (government by the few). The authoritarian regimes of the former Soviet
Union were run by the powerful Communist Party.
When a system combines an authoritarian government with a socialist economy,
we say that the system is totalitarian. As in the earlier example of the former Soviet
Union, a totalitarian system exercises its power over every part of society—economic,
social, political, and moral—leaving little or no private realm for individuals.
But an authoritarian state may also limit its own power. In such cases, it may deny
individuals rights in those spheres where it chooses to act, but it may leave large areas
of society, such as a capitalist economy, free from governmental interference. Singapore is an example of this type of authoritarian capitalism, where people have considerable economic freedom, but stringent social regulations limit their noneconomic
behavior. When American teenager Michael Fay was caught vandalizing cars in Singapore in 1994, the government there sentenced him to be caned. In the United States,
people have rights that prevent cruel and unusual punishment like caning, but in Singapore, Fay had no such rights and had to submit to the government’s will.
Often authoritarian governments pay lip service to the people, but when push
comes to shove, as it usually does in such states, the people have no effective power
against the government. Again, to use the terminology we introduced earlier, govern-
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Varieties of Political Systems and the Concept of Citizenship
15
ment does not provide guarantees of fair processes for individuals; it guarantees a substantive vision of what life will be like—what individuals will believe, how they will
act, what they will choose.
NONAUTHORITARIAN SYSTEMS
In nonauthoritarian systems, ultimate power rests with the individuals to make decisions concerning their lives. The most extreme form of nonauthoritarianism is called
anarchy. Anarchists would do away with government and laws altogether. People advocate anarchy because they value the freedom to do whatever they want more than
they value the order and security that governments provide by forbidding or regulating certain kinds of behavior. Few people are true anarchists, however. While anarchy
may sound attractive in theory, the inherent difficulties of the position make it hard to
practice. For instance, how could you even organize a revolution to get rid of government without some rules about who is to do what and how decisions are to be made?
Democracy A less extreme form of nonauthoritarian government, and one much
more familiar to us, is democracy (from the Greek demos, meaning “people”). In
democracies, government is not external to the people, as it is authoritarian systems;
in a fundamental sense, government is the people. Recognizing that collective life usually calls for some restrictions on what individuals may do (laws forbidding murder,
for instance, or theft), democracies nevertheless try to maximize freedom for the individuals who live under them. Although they generally make decisions through some
sort of majority rule, democracies still provide procedural guarantees to preserve individual rights—usually protections of due process and minority rights. This means
that if individuals living in a democracy feel their rights have been violated, they have
the right to ask government to remedy the situation.
Democracies are based on the principle of popular sovereignty; that is, there is no
power higher than the people and, in the United States, the document establishing
their authority, the Constitution. The central idea here is that no government is considered legitimate unless the governed consent to it, and people are not truly free unless they live under a law of their own making.
anarchy the absence of
government and laws
democracy government that
vests power in the people
popular sovereignty the
concept that the citizens are
the ultimate source of political
power
Theories of Democracy Generally, as we indicated, democracies hold that the will of
the majority should prevail. This is misleadingly simple, however. Some theories of
democracy hold that all the people should agree on political decisions. This rule of
unanimity makes decision making very slow, and sometimes impossible, since everyone has to be persuaded to agree. Even when majority rule is the norm, there are many
ways of calculating the majority. Is it 50 percent plus one? Two-thirds? Three-fourths?
Decision making becomes increasingly difficult as the number of people who are required to agree grows. And, of course, majority rule brings with it the problem of minority rights. If the majority gets its way, what happens to the rights of those who disagree? Democratic theorists have tried to grapple with these problems in various ways,
none of them entirely satisfactory to all people:
• Theorists of elite democracy propose that democracy is merely a system of choosing among competing leaders; for the average citizen, input ends after the leader is
chosen.2 Some proponents of this view believe that political decisions are made not
by elected officials but by the elite in business, the military, the media, and educa-
elite democracy a theory
of democracy that limits the
citizens’ role to choosing
among competing leaders
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Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
16
tion. In this view, elections are merely symbolic—to perpetuate the illusion that citizens have consented to their government. Elite theorists may claim that participation is important, if not for self-rule, then because people should at least feel as if
they are making a difference. Otherwise they have no stake in the political system.
pluralist democracy a theory
of democracy that holds that
citizen membership in groups is
the key to political power
• Advocates of pluralist democracy argue that what is important is not so much individual participation but membership in groups that participate in government
decision making on their members’ behalf.3 As a way of trying to influence a system
that gives them only limited voice, citizens join groups of people with whom they
share an interest, such as labor unions, professional associations, and environmental or business groups. These groups represent their members’ interests and try to
influence government to enact policy that carries out the group’s will. Some pluralists argue that individual citizens have little effective power and that only when they
are organized into groups are they truly a force for government to reckon with.
participatory democracy a
theory of democracy that holds
that citizens should actively and
directly control all aspects of
their lives
• Supporters of participatory democracy claim that more than consent or majority
rule in making governmental decisions is needed. Individuals have the right to
control all the circumstances of their lives, and direct democratic participation
should take place not only in government but in industry, education, and community affairs as well.4 For advocates of this view, democracy is more than a way to
make decisions: it is a way of life, an end in itself.
advanced industrial
democracy a system in which a
democratic government allows
citizens a considerable amount
of personal freedom and
maintains a free-market (though
still usually regulated) economy
communist democracy a
utopian system in which
property is communally owned
and all decisions are made
democratically
These theories about how democracy should (or does) work locate the focus of
power in individuals, groups, and elites. Real-world examples of democracy probably
include elements of more than one of these theories; they are not mutually exclusive.
The people of many Western countries have found the idea of democracy persuasive enough to found their governments on it. In recent years, especially since the mid1980s, democracy has been spreading rapidly through the rest of the world as the preferred form of government. No longer the primary province of industrialized Western
nations, attempts at democratic governance now extend into Asia, Latin America,
Africa, Eastern Europe, and the republics of the former Soviet Union. There are many
varieties of democracy other than our own. Some democracies make the legislature
(the representatives of the people) the most important authority; some retain a
monarch with limited powers; some hold referenda at the national level to get direct
feedback on how the people want them to act on specific issues.
Most democratic forms of government, because of their commitment to procedural values, practice a capitalist form of economics. Fledgling democracies may rely
on a high degree of government economic regulation, but advanced industrial
democracies combine a considerable amount of personal freedom with a free-market
(though still usually regulated) economy. It is rare to find a country that is truly committed to individual political freedom that also tries to regulate the economy heavily.
The philosopher Karl Marx believed that radical democracy would coexist with communally owned property, in a form of communist democracy, but such a system has
never existed, and most real-world systems fall somewhere along the horizontal continuum shown in Figure 1.3.
THE ROLE OF THE PEOPLE
What is important about the political and economic systems we have been sorting out
here is that they have direct impact on the lives of the people who live in them. So far
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Varieties of Political Systems and the Concept of Citizenship
17
we have given a good deal of attention to the latter parts of Lasswell’s definition of politics. But easily as important as the what and the how in Laswell’s formulation is the
who. Underlying the different political theories we have looked at are fundamental differences in the powers and opportunities possessed by everyday people.
The People as SubjectsIn authoritarian systems, the people are subjects of their gov-
ernment. They possess no rights that protect them from that government; they must
do whatever the government says or face the consequences, without any other recourse. They have obligations to the state but no rights or privileges to offset those obligations. They may be winners or losers in government decisions, but they have very
little control over which it may be.
The People as Citizens Everyday people in democratic systems have a potentially powerful role to play. They are more than mere subjects; they are citizens, or members of
a political community with rights as well as obligations. Democratic theory says that
power is drawn from the people, that the people are sovereign, that they must consent
to be governed, and that their government must respond to their will. In practical
terms, this may not seem to mean much, since not consenting doesn’t necessarily give
us the right to disobey government. It does give us the option of leaving, however, and
seeking a more congenial set of rules elsewhere. Subjects of authoritarian governments rarely have this freedom.
In democratic systems, the rules of government can provide for all sorts of different roles for citizens. At a minimum, citizens can usually vote in periodic and free elections. They may be able to run for office, subject to certain conditions, like age or residence. They can support candidates for office, organize political groups or parties,
attend meetings, write letters to officials or the press, march in protest or support of
various causes, even speak out on street corners.
subjects individuals who
are obliged to submit to a
government authority against
which they have no rights
citizens members of a political
community having both rights
and responsibilities
The Struggle for
Democracy Continues
Following the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian
regime in Iraq, officials in the
United States and around the
world hoped that the subsequent
free elections to install a new
government would strengthen
Iraquis’ determination to rebuild
their country along democratic
lines and would encourage peaceful
debate and dissent rather than
violent opposition and oppression.
However, years later the U.S. military, international forces, and the
Iraqi military are still battling insurgents as citizens attempt to keep
some sense of normalcy in their
lives, like these children playing
on a destroyed army vehicle in
the southern city of Basra in
April 2008.
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
18
Profiles in Citizenship
TIFFANY BENJAMIN
was a cool party. So I deHow do you get to be a delegate to the Democratic
cided I would stay.”
National Convention when you are only twenty years old?
Stay she did. Tiffany
According to Tiffany Benjamin, all it takes is a dare from a
threw herself into the busifriend, the willingness to take a risk, and a
ness of politics, active on
little bit of luck. She doesn’t mention that
campus but also volunteering
it also takes some uncommon guts and
“. . .it was a cool
to
work
on
campaigns, starting with John
determination, but that’s clearly the case.
party. So I decided
Hamilton’s
effort to win Indiana’s 8th
Tiffany was an undergraduate at IndiI would stay.”
congressional district in 2000. “That was
ana University when she and a friend dethe best experience for me ever, even
cided it would be a kick to go to the 2000
though we lost. . . . I felt like my views were getting lost,
Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where Al
and the issues I really cared about were getting lost.” It galGore would receive the nomination for president. They
vanized her. “From then on I just got severely, actively inwere both active in the Democratic Party on campus, so
volved.”
both got emails from the party outlining the steps to winAnd that’s where she has been ever since. Reflecting
ning one of the coveted spots at the national convention.
back as a freshly minted lawyer about to move to WashThe chances of getting elected were tiny, they knew, but
ington, D.C., to begin a new career, Tiffany’s deep, abrupt
they badly wanted to go to L.A. “I’ll do this if you’ll do it,”
chuckle is as contagious and engaging as ever, her eyes just
Tiffany told her friend. And he said, “Okay, I dare you,” and
as wickedly full of irony and fun, but there is a core of unshe said, “I dare you,” and she went and got all her forms
derlying seriousness that wasn’t there before. Working as
filled in and sent them out on the very last possible day,
a student public defender with adult clients and juveniles
only to find that her friend had chickened out. “I couldn’t
caught up in the courts, seeing what happens to people
do it,” he told her. “I was too afraid.”
who cannot get the system to work for them, has only
Afraid? If Tiffany’s ever heard the word, she doesn’t let
strengthened the resolve to make a difference that she
on. First, she headed off to the Democratic National Condiscovered as a freshman while she was looking for ways
vention (yes, she won election as an alternate at-large deleto make some friends on campus.
gate, only to step into the shoes of a delegate who couldn’t go). She had a blast, as she knew she would. Cameras
Advice on doing the impossible (like getting to a nomifollowed her around as one of the youngest delegates, and
nating convention in 2008):
she attended party after party, meeting famous politicians,
Don’t be afraid of anything. Listen to yourself first, belistening to speeches, and becoming more deeply inspired
cause a million people told me I wasn’t going to get there.
with the ideas of these people who believe in the same
And another thing is, don’t take it too seriously. And be
things she believes in, and who fight for the same things she
sure to have a lot of fun.
fights for.
Then it was back to Bloomington for her senior year and
On keeping the republic:
a summer as an international exchange student in MauriGet involved. And that doesn’t just mean vote, and it
tius—a tiny country in the middle of the Indian Ocean—
doesn’t just mean go to a political party meeting. It means
before heading off to Harvard Law School.
find out what the issues are, think about how you feel
Maybe Tiffany’s intrepid stance toward life in general
about those issues, and then do something. . . . Whatever
(and political life in particular) is a self-protective byproduct
you do, it does absolutely make a difference. Even if you
of growing up with a Republican dad and a Democratic
think it doesn’t matter, you will be impressed in the ways
mom (divorced since she was a baby). Eventually she dethat, ten years from now, someone will come up to you
cided her views were closer to the Democrats’. Looking for
and tell you that what you did mattered.
activities to get involved in when she arrived at Indiana Uni.
versity, she saw a mass flier advertising a party meeting and
Source: Tiffany Benjamin spoke with Christine Barbour in March 2005.
went. “And I kind of clicked with some of the people, and it
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Origins of Democracy in America
19
Theoretically, democracies are ruled by “the people,” but different democracies have
at times been very selective about whom they count as citizens. Beginning with our days
as colonists, Americans have excluded many groups of people from citizenship: people
of the “wrong” religion, income bracket, race, ethnic group, lifestyle, and gender have all
been excluded from enjoying the full rights of colonial or U.S. citizenship at different
times. In fact, American history is the story of those various groups fighting to be included as citizens. Just because a system is called a democracy is no guarantee that all or
even most of the residents under that system possess the status of citizen.
Citizen Rights and Responsibilities Citizens in democratic systems are said to possess
certain rights, or powers to act, which government cannot limit. Just what these rights
are varies in different democracies, but they usually include freedoms of speech and
the press, the right to assemble, and certain legal protections guaranteeing fair treatment in the criminal justice system. Almost all of these rights are designed to allow citizens to criticize their government openly without threat of retribution by that government.
Citizens of democracies also possess obligations or responsibilities to the public
realm. They have the obligation to obey the law, for instance, once they have consented to the government (even if that consent amounts only to not leaving); they may
also have the obligation to pay taxes, serve in the military, or sit on juries. Some theorists argue that virtuous citizens should put community interests ahead of personal
interests. A less extreme version of this view holds that while citizens may go about
their own business and pursue their own interests, they must continue to pay attention to their government. Participating in its decision-making process is the price of
maintaining their own liberty and, by extension, the liberty of the whole. Should citizens abdicate this role by tuning out of public life, the safeguards of democracy can
disappear, to be replaced with the trappings of authoritarian government. There is
nothing automatic about democracy. If left unattended by nonvigilant citizens, the
freedoms of democracy can be lost to an all-powerful state, and citizens can become
transformed into subjects of the government they failed to keep in check.
ORIGINS OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
Government in the United States is the product of particular decisions the founders
made about the who, what, and how of American politics. There was nothing inevitable about those decisions, and had the founders decided otherwise, our system
would look very different indeed.
Given the world in which the founders lived, democracy was not an obvious choice
for them, and many scholars argue that in some respects the system they created is not
really very democratic. We can see this more clearly if we understand the intellectual
heritage of the early Americans, the historical experience, and the theories about government that informed them.
THE ANCIENT GREEK EXPERIENCE
The heyday of democracy, of course, was ancient Athens, from about 500 to 300 b.c.e.,
Even Athenian democracy, as we have already indicated, was a pretty selective business.
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Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
20
To be sure, it was rule by “the people,” but “the people” was defined narrowly to exclude
women, slaves, youth, and resident aliens. Athenian democracy was not built on values
of equality, even of opportunity, except for the 10 percent of the population defined as
citizens. With its limited number of citizens and its small area of only one thousand
square miles, Athens was a participatory democracy in which all citizens could gather
in one place to vote on political matters. While this privileged group indulged its passion for public activity, the vast majority of residents were required to do all the work
to support them. We can see parallels to early American democracy, which restricted
participation in political affairs to a relatively small number of white men.
POLITICS IN THE MIDDLE AGES
divine right of kings the
principle that earthly rulers
receive their authority from
God
Limited as Athenian democracy was, it was positively wide open compared to most of
the forms of government that existed during the Middle Ages, from roughly a.d. 600
to 1500. During this period, monarchs gradually consolidated their power over their
subjects, and some even challenged the greatest political power of the time, the
Catholic Church. Some earthly rulers claimed to take their authority from God, in a
principle called the divine right of kings. Privileged groups in society, like the clergy
or the nobles, had some rights, but ordinary individuals were quite powerless politically. Subjects of authoritarian governments and an authoritarian church, they had
obligations to their rulers but no rights they could claim as their own. If a ruler is installed by divine mandate, who, after all, has any rights against God? Education was
restricted, and most people in the Middle Ages were dependent on political and ecclesiastical leaders for protection and information, as well as salvation.
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Protestant Reformation the
break from the Roman Catholic
Church in the 1500s by those
who believed in direct access
to God and salvation by faith
Enlightenment a philosophical
movement (1600s–1700s) that
emphasized human reason,
scientific examination, and
industrial progress
Between 1500 and 1700, important changes took place in the ways that people
thought about politics and their political leaders. The Protestant Reformation led the
way in the 1500s, claiming essentially that individuals could pray directly to God and
receive salvation on faith alone, without the church’s involvement. In fact, Martin
Luther, the German priest who spearheaded the Reformation, argued that the whole
complex structure of the medieval church could be dispensed with. His ideas spread
and were embraced by a number of European monarchs, leading to a split between
Catholic and Protestant countries. Where the church was seen as unnecessary, it lost
political as well as religious clout, and its decline paved the way for new ideas about
the world.
Those new ideas came with the Enlightenment period of the late 1600s and 1700s,
when ideas about science and the possibilities of knowledge began to blow away the
shadows and cobwebs of medieval superstition. A new and refreshing understanding
of human beings and their place in the natural world, based on human reasoning,
took hold. Enlightenment philosophy said that human beings were not at the mercy
of a world they could not understand, but rather they could learn the secrets of nature
and, with education as their tool, harness the world to do their bidding.
Not only did scientific and economic development take off, but philosophers applied the intoxicating new theories about the potential of knowledge to the political
world. Thomas Hobbes (who slightly preceded the Enlightenment) and John Locke,
two English philosophers, came up with theories about how government should be
established that discredited divine right. Governments are born not because God or-
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Citizenship in America
dains them, but because life without government is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short” in Hobbes’s words, and “inconvenient” in Locke’s. The foundation of government is reason, not faith, and reason leads people to consent to being governed because they are better off that way.
The idea of citizenship that was born in the Enlightenment constituted another
break with the past. People have freedom and rights before government exists, declared Locke. When they decide they are better off with government than without it,
they enter into a social contract, giving up a few of those rights in exchange for the
protection of the rest of their rights by a government established by the majority. If
that government fails to protect their rights, then it has broken the contract and the
people are free to form a new government, or not, as they please. But the key element
here is that for authority to be legitimate, citizens must consent to it. Note, however,
that nowhere did Locke suggest that all people ought to participate in politics, or that
people are necessarily equal. In fact, he was concerned mostly with the preservation
of private property, suggesting that only property owners would have cause to be
bothered with government because only they have something concrete to lose.
21
social contract the notion
that society is based on an
agreement between government and the governed in which
people agree to give up some
rights in exchange for the
protection of others
SOURCES OF DEMOCRACY CLOSER TO HOME
While philosophers in Europe were beginning to explore the idea of individual rights
and democratic governance, there had long been democratic stirrings on the
founders’ home continent. The Iroquois Confederacy was an alliance of five (and
eventually six) East Coast Native American nations whose constitution, the “Great
Law of Peace,” impressed American leaders such as Benjamin Franklin with its suggestions of federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and consensus
building. While historians are not sure that these ideas had any direct influence on the
founders’ thinking about American governance, they were clearly part of the stew of
ideas that the founders could dip into, and some scholars make the case that their influence was significant.5
CITIZENSHIP IN AMERICA
For our purposes, the most important thing about these ideas about politics is that
they were prevalent at the same time the American founders were thinking about how
to build a new government. Locke particularly influenced the writings of James Madison, a major author of our Constitution. The founders wanted to base their new government on popular consent, but they did not want to go too far. Madison, as we will
see, was particularly worried about a system that was too democratic.
THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY
Enthusiastic popular participation under the government established by the Articles of
Confederation—the document that tied the colonies together before the Constitution
was drafted—almost ended the new government before it began. Like Locke, Madison
thought government had a duty to protect property, and if people who didn’t have
property could get involved in politics, they might not care about protecting the property of others. Worse, they might form “factions,” groups pursuing their own self-interCopyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
22
republic a government in which
decisions are made through
representatives of the people
ests rather than the public interest, and even try to get some of that property for themselves. So Madison rejected notions of “pure democracy,” in which all citizens would
have direct power to control government, and opted instead for what he called a “republic.”
A republic, according to Madison, differs from a democracy mainly in that it employs representation and can work in a large state. Most theorists agree that democracy is impossible in practice if there are a lot of citizens and all have to be heard
from. But we do not march to Washington or phone our legislator every time we
want to register a political preference. Instead, we choose representatives—members
of the House of Representatives, senators, and the president—to represent our views
for us. Madison thought this would be a safer system than direct participation (all of
us crowding into town halls or the Capitol) because public passions would be cooled
off by the process. You might be furious about health care costs when you vote for
your senator, but he or she will represent your views with less anger. The founders
hoped that the representatives would be older, wealthier, and wiser than the average
American, and they would be better able to make cool and rational decisions.
MADISON’S VISION OF CITIZENSHIP
The notion of citizenship that emerges from Madison’s writings is not a very flattering one for the average American, and it is important to note that it is not the only
ideal of citizenship in the American political tradition. Madison’s low expectations of
the American public were a reaction to an earlier tradition that had put great faith in
the ability of democratic man to put the interests of the community ahead of his own,
to act with what scholars call “republican virtue.” According to this idea, a virtuous citizen could be trusted with the most serious of political decisions because if he
(women were not citizens at that time, of course) were properly educated and kept
from the influence of scandal and corruption, he would be willing to sacrifice his own
advancement for the sake of the whole. His decisions would be guided not by his selfinterest but by his public-interested spirit. At the time of the founding, hope was
strong that, although the court of the British monarch had become corrupt beyond
redemption, America was still a land where virtue could triumph over greed. In fact,
for many people this was a crucial argument for American independence: severing the
ties would prevent that corruption from creeping across the Atlantic and would allow
the new country to keep its virtuous political nature free from the British taint.6
When democratic rules that relied on the virtue, or public interestedness, of the
American citizen were put into effect, however, especially in the days immediately
after independence, these expectations seemed to be doomed. Instead of acting for the
good of the community, Americans seemed to be just as self-interested as the British
had been. When given nearly free rein to rule themselves, they had no trouble remembering the rights of citizenship but ignored the responsibilities that come with it.
They passed laws in state legislatures that canceled debts and contracts and otherwise
worked to the advantage of the poor majority of farmers and debtors—and that seriously threatened the economic and political stability of the more well-to-do. It was in
this context of national disappointment that Madison devised his notion of the republic. Since people had proved, so he thought, not to be activated by virtue, then a
government must be designed that would produce virtuous results, regardless of the
character of the citizens who participated in it.
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Citizenship in America
23
AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP TODAY
Today two competing views of citizenship still exist in the United States. One, echoing Madison, sees human nature as self-interested and holds that individual participation in government should be limited, that “too much” democracy is a bad thing.
The second view continues to put its faith in the citizen’s ability to act virtuously,
not just for his or her own good but for the common good. President John F.
Kennedy movingly evoked such a view in his inaugural address in 1960, when he
urged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can
do for your country.” These views of citizenship have coexisted throughout our history. Especially in times of crisis such as war or national tragedy, the second view of
individual sacrifice for the public good has seemed more prominent. In the wake of
September 11, 2001, citizens freely gave their time and money to help their fellow
countrypeople and were more willing to join the military and volunteer for community service. At other times, and particularly at the national level of politics, the
dominant view of citizenship has appeared to be one of self-interested actors going
about their own business with little regard for the public good. When observers
claim, as they often do today, that there is a crisis of American citizenship, they usually mean that civic virtue is taking second place to self-interest as a guiding principle of citizenship.
These two notions of citizenship do not necessarily have to be at loggerheads, however. Where self-interest and public spirit meet in democratic practice is in the process
of deliberation, collectively considering and evaluating goals and ideals for communal
life and action. Individuals bring their own agendas and interests, but in the process
of discussing them with others holding
different views, parties can find common
ground and turn it into a base for collective action. Conflict can erupt too, of
course, but the process of deliberation at
least creates a forum from which the possibility of consensus might emerge.
Scholar and journalist E. J. Dionne reflects on this possibility: “At the heart of
republicanism [remember that this is not
a reference to our modern parties] is the
belief that self-government is not a drab
necessity but a joy to be treasured. It is the
view that politics is not simply a grubby
confrontation of competing interests but
an arena in which citizens can learn from
each other and discover an ‘enlightened
self-interest’ in common.” Despite evidence of a growing American disaffection
for politics, Dionne hopes that Americans
will find again the “joy” in self-gover- Building a Foundation to the Common Good
citizenship can take many forms. To help combat homelessness and substannance because, he warns, “A nation that Public-interested
dard housing, volunteers for Habitat for Humanity join together with future homeowners to
hates politics will not long thrive as a de- build low-cost homes, which are then sold to the homeowners at no profit. Katie Tschoeke is
shown here working on a home in San Antonio, Texas, in January 2008. Each year Habitat for
mocracy.” 7
Humanity builds nearly six thousand homes for low-income families in the United States and
nearly twenty thousand internationally.
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
24
Consider the Source
THINKING LIKE A POLITICAL SCIENTIST
This book is an introduction to American politics, and in a
way it is also an introduction to political science. Political science is not exactly the same kind of science as biology or geology. Not only is it difficult to put our subjects (people and
political systems) under a microscope to observe their behavior, but we are somewhat limited in our ability to test our
theories. We cannot replay World War II to test our ideas
about what caused it, for example. A further problem is our
subjectivity; we are the phenomena under investigation, and
so we may have stronger feelings about our research and our
findings than we would, say, about cells and rocks.
These difficulties do not make a science of politics impossible, but they do mean we must proceed with caution.
Even among political scientists there is disagreement about
whether a rigorous science of the political world is a reasonable goal. What we can agree on is that it is possible to advance our understanding of politics beyond mere guessing or
debates about political preferences. Although we use many
methods in our work (statistical analysis, mathematical modeling, case studies, and philosophical reasoning, to name only
a few), what political scientists have in common is an emphasis on critical thinking about politics.
Critical thinking means challenging the conclusions of
others, asking why or why not, turning the accepted wisdom upside down, and exploring alternative interpretations. It means considering the sources of information—
not accepting an explanation just because someone in
authority offers it, or because you have always been told
that it is the true explanation, but because you have independently discovered that there are good reasons for accepting it. You may emerge from reading this textbook
with the same ideas about politics that you have always
had; it is not our goal to change your mind. But as a critical
thinker, you will be able to back up your old ideas with new
and persuasive arguments of your own, or to move beyond
your current ideas to see politics in a new light.
Becoming adept at critical thinking has a number of benefits:
• We learn to be good democratic citizens. Critical thinking
helps us sort through the barrage of information that regularly assails us, and it teaches us to process this information thoughtfully. Critical awareness of what our leaders
are doing and the ability to understand and evaluate what
they tell us is the lifeblood of democratic government.
• We are better able to hold our own in political (or other)
arguments: we think more logically and clearly, we are
more persuasive, and we impress people with our grasp
of reason and fact. There is not a career in the world that
is not enhanced by critical thinking skills.
• We become much better students. The skills of the critical thinker are not just the skills of the good citizen; they
are the skills of the scholar. When we read critically we figure out what is important quickly and easily, we know
what questions to ask to tease out more meaning, we can
decide whether what we are reading is worth our time,
and we know what to take with us and what to discard.
Although it may sound a little dull and dusty, critical
thinking can be a vital and an enjoyable activity. When we
are good at it, it empowers and liberates us. We are not at
the mercy of others’ conclusions and decisions. We can
evaluate facts and arguments for ourselves, turning conventional wisdom upside down and exploring the world of
ideas with confidence.
How Does One Learn to Think Critically?
The trick to learning how to think critically is to do it. It
helps to have a model to follow, however, and we provide
one below. The focus of critical thinking here is on understanding political argument. Argument in this case refers not
to a confrontation or a fight, but rather to a political contention, based on a set of assumptions, supported by evidence, leading to a clear, well-developed conclusion with
consequences for how we understand the world.
Critical thinking involves constantly asking questions
about the arguments we read about: who has created it,
what is the basic case and what values underlie it, what evidence is used to back up it up, what conclusions are drawn,
and what difference does the whole thing make. To help
you remember the questions to ask, we have used a
mnemonic device that creates an acronym from the five
major steps of critical thinking. Until asking these questions
becomes second nature, thinking of them as CLUES to critical thinking about American politics will help you keep
them in mind as you read.
This is what CLUES stands for:
• Consider the source and the audience
• Lay out the argument and the underlying values and
assumptions
• Uncover the evidence
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or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
25
• Evaluate the conclusion
Uncover the evidence
• Sort out the political implications
Has the author done basic research to back up his or her argument with facts and evidence?
Good arguments cannot be based on gut feelings,
rumor, or wishful thinking. They should be based on hard
evidence, either empirical, verifiable observations about the
world or solid, logical reasoning. If the argument is worth
being held, it should stand up to rigorous examination, and
the author should be able to defend it on these grounds. If
the evidence or logic is missing, the argument can usually be
dismissed.
We’ll investigate each of these steps in a little more
depth.
Consider the source and the audience
Who wrote the argument in question? Where did the item
appear? What audience is it directed toward? What does
the author or publisher need to do to attract and keep the
audience? How might that affect content?
If the person is a mainstream journalist, he or she probably has a reputation as an objective reporter to preserve,
and will at least make an honest attempt to provide unbiased information. Even so, knowing the actual news source
will help you nail that down. Even in a reputable national
paper like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal,
if the item comes from the editorial pages, you can count
on it having an ideological point of view—usually (but not
exclusively) liberal in the case of the Times, conservative in
the case of the Wall Street Journal. Opinion magazines will
have even more blatant points of view. Readers go to those
sources looking for a particular perspective, and that may
affect the reliability of the information you find.
Lay out the argument and the underlying values
and assumptions
What basic argument does the author want to make? What
assumptions about the world does he or she make? What
values does he or she hold about what is important and
what government should do? Are all the important terms
clearly defined?
If these things aren’t clear to you, the author may be unclear about them, too. There is a lot of sloppy thinking out
there, and being able to identify it and discard it is very
valuable. You may be intimidated by a smart-sounding argument, only to discover on closer examination that it just
doesn’t hold up. A more insidious situation occurs when
the author is trying to obscure the point to get you to sign
on to something that you might not otherwise accept. If
the argument, values, and assumptions are not perfectly
clear and up front, there may be a hidden agenda you
should know about. You don’t want to be persuaded by
someone who claims to be an advocate for democracy,
only to find out that democracy means something completely different to him or her than it does to you.
Evaluate the conclusion
Is the argument successful? Does it convince you? Why or
why not? Does it change your mind about any beliefs you
held previously? Does accepting this argument require you
to rethink any of your other beliefs?
Conclusions should follow logically from the assumptions and values of an argument, if solid evidence and reasoning support it. What is the conclusion here? What is the
author asking you to accept as the product of his or her argument? Does it make sense to you? Do you “buy it?” If you
do, does it fit with your other ideas, or do you need to refine what you previously thought? Have you learned from
this argument, or have you merely had your own beliefs reinforced?
Sort out the political implications
What is the political significance of this argument? What
difference does it make to your understanding of the way
the political world works? How does it affect who gets
what scarce resources and how they get them? How does it
affect who wins in the political process and who loses?
Political news is valuable if it means something. If it
doesn’t, it may entertain you, but essentially it wastes your
time if it claims to be something more than entertainment.
Make the information you get prove its importance, and if
it doesn’t, find a different news source to rely on.
Source: Adapted from the authors’ “Preface to the Student,” in Christine
Barbour and Matthew J. Streb, eds., Clued in to Politics: A Critical Thinking
Reader in American Government, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press,
2006).
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
26
HOW TO USE THE THEMES AND FEATURES IN THIS BOOK
critical thinking analysis and
evaluation of ideas and
arguments based on reason
and evidence
analysis understanding how
something works by breaking it
down into its component parts
Our primary goal in this book is to get you thinking critically about American politics. Critical thinking is a crucial skill to learn no matter what training your major or
career plans call for. As we discuss in the Consider the Source box in this chapter, critical thinking is the analysis and evaluation of ideas and arguments based on reason
and evidence—it means digging deep into what you read and what you hear and asking tough questions. Critical thinking is what all good scholars do, and it is also what
savvy citizens do.
As Figure 1.4 illustrates, our analytic and evaluative tasks in this book focus on the
twin themes of power and citizenship. We have adopted the classic definition of politics proposed by the late political scientist Harold Lasswell that politics is “who gets
what when and how.” We simplify his understanding by dropping the when and focusing on politics as the struggle by citizens over who gets power and resources in society and how they get them, although we do occasionally use timelines to illustrate
how the struggle for power and resources can change dramatically over time. (Look
for the Who, What, How, and WHEN feature in each chapter, as well as other timelines
that help to highlight the role of time in determining who gets what and how in American politics.)
Lasswell’s definition of politics gives us a framework of analysis for this book; that
is, it outlines how we break down politics into its component parts in order to understand it. Analysis helps us understand how something works, much like taking apart
a car and putting it back together again helps us understand how it runs. Lasswell’s
definition provides a strong analytic framework because it focuses our attention on
questions we can ask to figure out what is going on in politics.
Accordingly, in this book, we analyze American politics in terms of three sets of
questions:
• Who are the parties involved? What resources, powers, and rights do they bring to
the struggle?
• What do they have at stake? What do they stand to win or lose? Is it power, influence, position, policy, or values?
• How do the rules shape the outcome? Where do the rules come from? What strategies or tactics do the political actors employ to use the rules to get what they want?
If you know who is involved in a political situation, what is at stake, and how (under
what rules) the conflict over resources will eventually be resolved, you will have a
pretty good grasp of what is going on, and you will probably be able to figure out new
situations, even when your days of taking a course in American government are far behind you. To get you in the habit of asking those questions, we have designed several
features in this text explicitly to reinforce them.
As you found at the start of your reading, each chapter opens with a What’s at
Stake? feature that analyzes a political situation in terms of what various groups of
citizens stand to win or lose. Each chapter ends with a What’s at Stake Revisited feature, where we return to the issues raised in the introduction, once you have the
substantive material of the chapter under your belt. We also focus our analysis along
the way by closing each major chapter section with a Who, What, How feature that
explicitly addresses these questions and concisely summarizes what you have
26
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
How to Use the Themes and Features in This Book
Critical Thinking
about American politics
Goal of
the book
➤
Analysis of how the
American political
system works
Power (who,
what, and how)
Evaluation of how
well the political
system is working
➤
➤
Themes through
which these
skills are applied
➤
Skills to reach
the goal
27
Citizenship
(participation
and diversity)
FIGURE 1.4
Themes and Goal of this Book
learned. We reinforce the task of analysis with a Consider the Source feature in each
chapter that discusses ways you can improve your critical thinking skills by analyzing (that is, taking apart) different kinds of sources of information about politics.
Finally, toward the end of every chapter, a Thinking Outside the Box feature helps
you take the analysis one step further: What if the rules or the actors or the stakes
were different? What would be the impact on American politics? How would it work
differently?
As political scientists, however, we not only want to understand how the system
works, we also want to assess how well it works. A second task of critical thinking is
evaluation, or seeing how well something measures up according to a standard or
principle. We could choose any number of standards by which to evaluate American
politics, but the most relevant, for most of us, is the principle of democracy and the
role of citizens.
We can draw on the two traditions of self-interested and public-interested citizenship we have discussed to evaluate the powers, opportunities, and challenges
presented to American citizens by the system of government under which they
live. In addition to the two competing threads of citizenship in America, we can
also look at the kinds of action that citizens engage in and whether they take advantage of the options available to them. For instance, citizen action might be restricted by the rules, or by popular interest, to merely choosing between competing candidates for office, as in the model of elite democracy described earlier.
Alternatively, the rules of the system might encourage citizens to band together in
groups to get what they want, as they do in pluralist democracy. Or the system
might be open and offer highly motivated citizens a variety of opportunities to get
involved, as they do in participatory democracy. American democracy has elements
evaluation assessing how well
something works or performs
according to a particular
standard or yardstick
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
28
Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
of all three of these models, and one way to evaluate citizenship in America is to
look at what opportunities for each type of participation exist and whether citizens take advantage of them.
To evaluate how democratic the United States is, we look at the changing concept
and practice of citizenship in this country with respect to the subject matter of most
chapters in a section called The Citizens and. . . . That feature looks at citizenship from
many angles, considering the following types of questions: What role do “the people”
have in American politics? How has that role expanded or diminished over time?
What kinds of political participation do the rules of American politics (formal and informal) allow, encourage, or require citizens to take? What kinds of political participation are discouraged, limited, or forbidden? Do citizens take
Thinking Outside the Box
advantage of the opportunities for political action that the rules provide
them? How do they react to the rules that limit their participation? How
• Do subjects enjoy any advantages
do citizens in different times exercise their rights and responsibilities?
that citizens don’t have?
What do citizens need to do to “keep” the republic? How democratic is the
• When, if ever, should individuals
United States?
be asked to sacrifice their own
To put all this in perspective, each chapter includes two other features
good for that of their country?
that give you a more concrete idea of what citizen participation might
• Why does critical thinking feel like
mean on a personal level. Profiles in Citizenship introduce you to individso much more work than “regular
uals who have committed a good part of their lives to public service and
thinking”?
focus on what citizenship means to those people and what inspired them
to take on a public role. Who Are We? provides some demographic data to
bring the diversity of the American citizenry front and center and highlight the difficulties inherent in uniting into a single nation individuals and groups
with such different and often conflicting interests.
We have outlined nine features that recur throughout this book. Remember that
each is designed to help you to think critically about American politics either by analyzing power in terms of who gets what, and how, or by evaluating citizenship to determine how well we are keeping Benjamin Franklin’s mandate to keep the republic.
And remember that further exploration of the book’s themes is always available on the
companion web site at republic.cqpress.com.
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
What’s at Stake Revisited
29
WHAT’S AT STAKE REVISITED
W
e began this chapter by asking whether youthful engagement in politics is really a matter of great importance, and what might be at stake in the question
of whether the gains in youth vote we saw in 2004 turn out to be permanent. Since then
we have covered a lot of ground, arguing that politics is fundamental to human life and
in fact makes life easier for us by giving us a nonviolent way to resolve disputes. We
pointed out that politics is a method by which power and resources get distributed in
society: politics is who gets what, and how they get it. Citizens who are aware and involved stand a much greater chance of getting what they want from the system than do
those who check out or turn away. One clear consequence when young people disregard politics, then, is that they are less likely to get what they want from the political
system. This is in fact exactly what happens.
There are also consequences for the system as a whole. Democracy is neither inevitable nor self-sustaining. As we will see in this book, the American system is a work
of political genius that in many ways takes us as we are. It can accommodate the selfinterested citizen, at least some of the time, but it depends for its continued existence
on the presence of public-interested citizens as well.
Ironically, the absence of a public-interested spirit among us can be damaging to
our own self-interest. People who pay attention to politics learn to use the rules of the
system to get the things they want. Many college students complained that the 2000
election, with its focus on prescription drug coverage for the elderly and the financial
solvency of Social Security, was “not about them” or the issues they cared about. A
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Chapter 1 Politics: Who Gets What, and How?
30
WHAT’S AT
STAKE REVISITED
(continued)
glance at voter turnout statistics tells us why: older people vote in far greater numbers
than do young people. By not participating, young people ensure that they are not a
force that politicians have to reckon with.
The increased youth vote in 2004, however, makes it likely that politicians will
not soon risk ignoring the areas of government action that matter to young people.
“Young voters are back, and politicians will ignore them at their peril,” one political
science professor told the Boston Globe. “I’m convinced that we’ve turned the corner and that young Americans will continue to be important players in the electoral
process.” 10
We always rely on government to provide some things—good schools, safe neighborhoods, well-maintained roads, a stable economy—but in times of war or other
national crisis, government looms even larger in our lives. We depend on it to protect us, our families, our homes, and our livelihoods. At that point, our failure to be
able to use the system to get the things we value becomes far more critical. Consider
one issue that has affected many generations of young people during wartime: the
draft. From 1948 to 1973, young American men were drafted into compulsory military service. Although the draft ended in 1973, President Carter made it mandatory
for men aged eighteen to twenty-five to register with the Selective Service; failure to
do so can be punished with a $250,000 fine and five years in jail, and offenders cannot get student loans or government jobs. While there are no current plans to reinstate the draft, officials moved fast after September 11, 2001, to fill vacancies on Selective Service or draft boards around the country.11 Before the 2004 election,
rumors flew fast and furiously that the Iraq war, almost universally believed to need
more manpower, would require a draft.12 Young people can hardly claim that that
issue is “not about them.”
But it is not just young people who have a stake in their own indifference to politics. All American citizens are at risk, for in a very real sense, the future of the
American republic is in the hands of those who are just today learning to keep it. As
we have argued in this chapter, keeping the republic requires constant vigilance and
critical citizenship. As we proceed through this introduction to American politics,
remember what you have at stake in becoming an educated citizen of the U.S. government.
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
To Sum Up
KEY TERMS
http://republic.cqpress.com
advanced industrial democracy
(p. x)
analysis (p. x)
anarchy (p. x)
authoritarian capitalism (p. x)
authoritarian governments (p. x)
authority (p. x)
capitalist economy (p. x)
citizens (p. x)
communist democracy (p. x)
critical thinking (p. x)
democracy (p. x)
divine right of kings (p. x)
economics (p. x)
elite democracy (p. x)
Enlightenment (p. x)
evaluation (p. x)
fascist government (p. x)
government (p. x)
institutions (p. x)
laissez-faire capitalism (p. x)
legitimate (p. x)
monarchy (p. x)
oligarchy (p. x)
participatory democracy (p. x)
pluralist democracy (p. x)
politics (p. x)
popular sovereignty (p. x)
power (p. x)
procedural guarantees (p. x)
Protestant Reformation (p. x)
regulated capitalism (p. x)
republic (p. x)
resources (p. x)
rules (p. x)
social contract (p. x)
social democracy (p. x)
socialist economy (p. x)
social order (p. x)
subjects (p. x)
substantive guarantees (p. x)
theocracy (p. x)
totalitarian government (p. x)
31
Key terms, chapter summaries, practice quizzes, Internet links, and other study aids are
available on the companion web site at http://republic.cqpress.com.
SUMMARY
http://republic.cqpress.com
• Politics may appear to be a grubby, greedy pursuit, filled with scandal and backroom
dealing. In fact, despite its shortcomings and sometimes shabby reputation, politics is an
essential means for resolving differences and determining how power and resources are
distributed in society. Politics is about who gets power and resources in society—and
how they get them.
• Government, a product of the political process, is the system established for exercising
authority over a group of people. In America, the government is embodied in the Constitution and the institutions set up by the Constitution. The Constitution represents
the compromises and deals made by the founders on a number of fundamental issues,
including how best to divide governing power.
• Politics establishes the rules and institutions that shape how power is distributed in political interactions. The most fundamental rules of our political system are those that define and empower our political institutions and the way these institutions interact with
each other and with individual citizens.
• Government is shaped not only by politics but also by economics, which is concerned
specifically with the distribution of wealth and society’s resources. The United States
has a regulated capitalist economy, which means that property is owned privately and
decisions about the production of goods and the distribution of wealth are left to marketplace forces with some governmental control.
• Political systems dictate how power is distributed among leaders and citizens, and these
systems take many forms. Authoritarian systems give ultimate power to the state;
nonauthoritarian systems, like democracy, place power largely in the hands of the people. Democracy is based on the principle of popular sovereignty, giving the people the
ultimate power to govern. The meaning of citizenship is key to the definition of democracy, and citizens are believed to have rights protecting them from government as
well as responsibilities to the public realm.
• The meaning of American democracy can be traced to the time of the nation’s founding. During that period, two competing views of citizenship emerged. The first view, articulated by James Madison, sees the citizen as fundamentally self-interested; this view
led the founders to fear too much citizen participation in government. The second view
puts faith in citizens’ ability to act for the common good, to put their obligation to the
public ahead of their own self-interest. Both views are still alive and well today, and we
can see evidence of both sentiments at work in political life.
• In this book we look at two ways of thinking critically about American politics: analyzing
how our American political system works and evaluating how well it works. We rely on
two underlying themes to pursue this course. The first is the assumption that all political events and situations can be examined by looking at who the actors are, what they
have to win or lose, and how the rules shape the way these actors engage in their struggle. This analytic framework should provide us with a clear understanding of how power
functions in our system. Examining who gets what they want and how they achieve it in
political outcomes highlights the second theme of this text: how diverse citizens partic-
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
To Sum Up (continued)
ipate in political life to improve their own individual situations
and to promote the interests of the community at large. We
evaluate citizenship carefully as a means to determine how
well the American system is working.
PRACTICE QUIZ
5. Which of the following is NOT associated with Locke’s
argument about a social contract?
a. For governmental authority to be legitimate, citizens
must consent to it.
b. People give government legitimacy by deciding it is
better to be governed than not.
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c. People enter into a social contract, agreeing to give up
certain rights for the protection of others.
1. In the definition of politics we have discussed, rules can
be thought of as the
d. If government fails to protect citizens’ rights, then
people are free to form a new government.
a. who.
e. The divine right of kings should provide the legitimacy
of any government.
b. what.
c. how.
d. where.
SUGGESTED RESOURCES
e. when.
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2. Which of the following systems is based on substantive
guarantees?
a. Regulated capitalism
b. Laissez faire
c. Socialism
d. Anarchy
e. Democracy
3. The two competing views of U.S. citizenship
incorporate
a. authority and subjecthood.
b. public interest and private interest.
c. virtue and vice.
d. tolerance and bigotry.
e. democracy and republicanism.
4. Which of the following is true regarding ancient Greek
(Athenian) democracy?
a. It became the model copied in its entirety in the Articles of Confederation.
b. It established a republic in which representatives were
chosen to voice the people’s wishes.
c. It was a participatory democracy, but only a small percentage of the people were citizens.
d. It was the first system in which slaves were given the
right to vote.
Books
Dalton, Russell J., 2008. The Good Citizen: How a Younger
Generation Is Reshaping American Politics. Washington,
D.C.: CQ Press. Trends in participation and policy priorities
reflect a younger generation that is more engaged, more
tolerant, and more supportive of social justice, leading to
new norms of citizenship and a renaissance of democratic
participation.
Dionne, E. J., Jr. 1991. Why Americans Hate Politics. New
York: Simon & Schuster. Why do Americans “hate” politics? Dionne argues that partisan politics make it impossible
for politicians to solve the very problems they promise the
voters they’ll address.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1996. Leviathan. Edited by Richard Tuck.
Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought.
New York: Cambridge University Press. Writing in 1651,
English philosopher Thomas Hobbes described a state of
nature in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short.” His analysis of society and power explains why
citizens agree to be ruled by a powerful state: to preserve
peace and security.
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. 2000. Everything You Think You
Know About Politics . . . and Why You’re Wrong. New
York: Basic Books. In a collection of essays, Jamieson uses
political fact rather than personal opinions to dispel a
variety of myths regarding American politics.
Lasswell, Harold. 1936. Politics: Who Gets What, When, and
How. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lasswell’s classic work on
politics, originally published in 1911, lays out the definition of
politics that is used throughout this textbook.
e. It became the model copied in its entirety in the Constitution.
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
To Sum Up
Locke, John. 1952. Second Treatise on Government. With Introduction by Thomas P. Peardon. Indianapolis, Ind.:
Bobbs-Merrill. Here you’ll find Locke’s influential ideas
about natural rights, consent, the social contract, and the
legitimacy of revolting against a government that breaks the
contract.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community. New York: Simon &
Schuster. In this influential book, Putnam argues that Americans have become increasingly disconnected from the societal bonds that hold its culture together.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1945. Democracy in America. Edited
by Phillips Bradley. New York: Vintage Books. An intricate
and extremely interesting report on American politics and
culture as described by a visiting Frenchman during the
nineteenth century.
33
Rock the Vote. www.rockthevote.com. With star endorsements from Lindsay Lohan to Bono, this campaign uses
music and popular culture to incite young people to “step
up, claim their voice in the political process, and change the
way politics is done.”
SpeakOut.com. This site, managed by an online opinion research company, provides a way for visitors to participate in
online polls, send messages to public officials, and sign petitions on issues they care about.
Movies
Web Sites
Erin Brockovich. 2000. A woman down on her luck manages
to find a job as a legal assistant and by connecting with
others works toward the good of the community by exposing a power company that has been dumping toxic waste
and poisoning a community. This popular film exposes
what’s at stake when an everyday citizen takes an interest
and gets involved.
American Political Science Association. www.apsanet.org.
This Web site of the leading professional organization for
the study of political science offers excellent information
on the study of political science, careers in the field, and its
many publications.
Lord of the Flies. 1963. A group of schoolboys are shipwrecked
on an uninhabited island and turn into savages for their
own survival. While the movie (based on William Golding’s
1954 novel) is chilling, it provides an excellent illustration of
what life would be like without a ruling government.
FirstGov.com. Official information resource for the U.S. federal
government, providing easy access to all on-line government resources.
Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1984. This adaptation of George Orwell’s classic novel depicts a totalitarian society in which
the government controls all aspects of life.
Internet Public Library. www.ipl.org. The Internet Public Library, hosted by the University of Michigan, is a gateway to
countless online sources. Look for the government and political science categories.
V for Vendetta. 2005. Heralded as a modern-day 1984, in this
movie Britain finds itself under the yoke of a repressive and
totalitarian regime in 2020. Inspired by Guy Fawkes’s failed
bombing of the British parliament in 1605, V, the maskwearing antihero, must take drastic action to shake the citizenry from its indifference and effect revolutionary change.
Copyright © 2010 by CQ Press, a division of SAGE. No part of these pages may be quoted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.