Central Message:
• Government is the institution through which a society makes and enforces its public policy .
• Public policy is all of the goals a government sets and the various courses of action it pursues as it attempts to realize these goals.
• Our institutions are Congress, the president, the courts, and federal agencies
• AKA “the Bureaucracy”

Central Message:
• Legislative Power: the power to make laws
• Executive Power: the power to enforce laws
• Judicial Power: the power to interpret laws

Central Message:
• A state is a body of people living in a defined territory who
have a government with the power to make and enforce law without the consent of any higher authority.

Central Message:
• Force Theory
• Evolutionary Theory
• Divine Right Theory
• Social Contract Theory
• Thomas Hobbes
• John Locke

of the State
The Force Theory The Force Theory
• The force theory states that one person or a small group took control of an area and forced all within it to submit to that person’s or group’s rule.
The Evolutionary Theory
• The evolutionary theory argues that the state evolved naturally out of the early family.
The Divine Right Theory
• The theory of divine right holds that God created the state and that God gives those of royal birth a “divine right” to rule.
The Social Contract Theory
• The social contract theory argues that the state arose out of a voluntary act of free people.

Central Message:
Preamble to the
Constitution
• Form a more perfect union.
• Establish justice.
• Insure domestic tranquility.
• Provide for the common defense.
• Promote the general welfare.
• Secure the blessings of liberty.

Government
5 Functions of a National Government
1.
Maintain a National Defense
 Govt. protects its national sovereignty, usually by maintaining armed services
 Nuclear age has sophisticated weapons
 U.S. spends over $300 billion/year on defense

Government
2. Provide public services
 Aka public goods (goods that everyone shares)
 Schools, libraries, highways, public parks, clean air and water
 Provided for those not able to access privately owned services (i.e. private schools)

Government
3. Preserve Order
 Govt. may resort to extreme measures to restore order when people protest in large numbers
 1970: Kent State
 1992: LA Riots

Government
4. Socialize the Young
 Most modern govts. pay for education and use it to instill values among the young
5. Collect Taxes
– Used to pay for the public goods and services
– Approx. 1 out of every
3 dollars earned by
American citizen is used to pay for national, state, and local taxes

Government
• Govt. functions = weighty decisions by political leaders
 How much should we spend on national defense as opposed to education?
 How high should taxes for Medicare and SS be?
 The way we answer those questions is through politics

Unitary Government
• A unitary government has all powers held by a single, central agency.
Confederate Government
• A confederation is an alliance of independent states.
Federal Government
• A federal government is one in which the powers of government are divided between a central government and several local governments.
• An authority superior to both the central and local governments makes this division of power on a geographic basis.

Government
Government Types
1. Autocracy
 Absolute Monarchy, Constitutional Monarchy,
Dictatorship
 Unitary System
 Queen, King, Dictator, King or Queen w/leg.body
 AM : Saudi Arabia, Qutar, Bhutan, Swaziland
 CM : England, Netherlands, Denmark, Nepal,
Sweden
 Dict : Cuba, North Korea

Government
Constitutional Monarch:
• Shares govt. powers with elected legislatures or serve as ceremonial leaders
Queen Elizabeth II
(Great Britain)
Absolute Monarch:
• Has complete and unlimited power to rule
King Fahd
(Saudi Arabia)

Government
Dictators
 Govt. not responsible to the people and people lack the power to limit their rulers
Fidel Castro
(Cuba)
Kim Jong
(N.Korea)

Government
Government Types
2.
Oligarchy
 Unitary
 Small group rules
 Membership based on wealth, lineage, military power, religion
 China

Government
Government Types
3. Democracy
 Federal
 Direct Democracy – people rule directly
 Citizens come together to discuss and pass laws, and select rulers (most turn to mob rule)
 Indirect Democracy (Representative) – people rule through elected representatives
• Aka republic
 DD: Switzerland has mixture of DD and ID
 ID: U.S., Canada, Australia, Italy

Democracy
• Word comes from two Greek words – Demos (people) and Kratos (authority of the people)
 Supreme political authority rests with the people
 Government is only conducted w/ people’s consent

Democracy
Basic Concepts of Democracy
(What is necessary for the establishment and maintenance of a Democracy?)
1.
Individual Liberty (Effective Participation)
 Citizens must be as free as possible to develop and express their preferences through the decisionmaking process

Democracy
2. Majority Rule with
Minority Rights
• Govt. decisions must be based on the will of the majority (over half the voters)
• Will of minority always heard and protected
• Interest groups protect minority rights and promote minority opinion
3. Free Elections
• People have chance to choose their leaders and voice opinions on issues
• Every vote carries same weight
• Citizens free to support issue or help candidates get elected
• Racial, ethnic, religious tests cannot restrict voting
• Citizens vote by secret ballot w/out fear of punishment for their vote

Democracy
4. Competing Political
Parties
• Voters must have access to competing ideas
• Democrats and
Republicans (2 major U.S. parties)
5. Education
• Voting makes little sense unless a large number of voters can read and write to express their interests and opinions

Democracy
6. Equal Distribution of Wealth
• Relatively prosperous nation with equitable distribution of wealth
• Extreme amount of wealth or poverty lessens possibility of healthy democracy

Democracy
7. Inclusion
• Citizenship open to all if Democratic

The American concept of democracy rests on these basic notions:
(1) A recognition of the fundamental worth and dignity of every person;
(2) A respect for the equality of all persons;
(3) A faith in majority rule and an insistence upon minority rights;
(4) An acceptance of the necessity of compromise; and
(5) An insistence upon the widest possible degree of individual freedom.

• Free enterprise system is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods; investments that are determined by private decision rather than by state control; and determined in a free market.
• Decisions in a free enterprise system are determined by the law of supply and demand.
• An economy in which private enterprise exists in combination with a considerable amount of government regulation and promotion is called a mixed economy.