
Politics: conflict over the leadership,
structure, and policies of governments.
› Representative democracy (republic)
 Governments are run by elected officials who
represent the interests of their constituents.
› Direct democracy
 Citizens themselves vote on all legislation.
 town meetings, referenda

Groups and organized interests also participate
in politics.
› Groups and organized interests provide funds for candidates,
lobby, and try to influence public opinion.
› The pattern of struggles among interests is called group politics,
or pluralism.

The United States has grown in population from
3.9 million in 1790, the year of the first official
census, to 318 million in 2014.

The government sets policy to determine whom it
allows in and who is eligible for citizenship.

This decision is highly political and has changed
many times over the course of American history.
U.S. Citizenship:

The first census did not count Native Americans (in
fact, it was not until 1924 that Native Americans
could become citizens).

Most people of African descent were not officially
citizens until 1868, when the Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution conferred
citizenship on the freed slaves.
Immigration Policy:

Immigration policy has been historically
biased against nonwhites.
› Until 1870, only free whites could become
naturalized citizens.
› The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 outlawed the
entry of Chinese laborers into the United States.

Twenty-First-Century Americans
› By 1965, Congress lifted strict immigration limits
set in place in the 1920s.
› This resulted in new waves of immigration from
Asia and Latin America.
 2012 Population (U.S. Census)




White: 63 percent
Asian: 5 percent
Black: 13 percent
Latino: 17 percent
Immigration by Continent of Origin (1900–2008)

The age distribution of the population can have
a profound impact on politics.
› Different age groups have very different needs
for public services.
› Different age groups vote differently.

Utilitarian individualism: A form of individualism that takes as given basic
human appetites and fears... and sees human life as an effort by
individuals to maximize their self-interest relative to these given ends.
›

Expressive individualism: A form of individualism that arose in opposition
to utilitarian individualism
›

Utilitarian individualism views society as arising from a contract that individuals enter
into only in order to advance their self-interest.... Utilitarian individualism has an
affinity to a basically economic understanding of existence.
Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and
intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.... Under
certain conditions, the expressive individualist may find it possible through intuitive
feeling to "merge" with other persons, with nature, or with the cosmos as a whole.
Republican tradition: The tradition... that contributed to the formation of
modern Western democracies.
›
›
it presupposes that the citizens of a republic are motivated by a civic virtue as well
as self-interest.
It views public participation as a moral education and sees its purposes as the
attainment of justice and the public good..
Franklin and Whitman, public and
private
 the independent citizen, (old)
 the entrepreneur, (old)
 the manager, (new)
 The therapist (new)


Which of these character types, views of
individualism are compatible with
American democracy?
If Americans do not share a common blood line or
religious or ethnic heritage, what unites the nation?

Political culture

American political culture emphasizes the values of:
› Liberty
› Equality
› Democracy

Liberty: freedom from government
control. This includes:
› Personal freedom
› Economic freedom

Linked to the concept of “limited
government.”

Equality
› Equality of opportunity
› Equality of outcome
› Political equality

Democracy
› People choose their rulers and have some say
over what those rulers do.
› When ultimate power rests with the citizenry, this
is called popular sovereignty.
› In America, the people are sovereign and
majority rules, but the individual rights of the
minority are still protected.