Chapter 1:  Government and the People

Key Terms:

government; public policy; public goods; justice; unitary government; federal government;confederation;  presidential government; parliamentary government;dictatorship; democracy;direct democracy; representative democracy; politics; majority rule; minority rights; compromise;  anarchy; political participation; single-issue groups; political issue; political system; linkage institutions; policy impacts; pluralist theory; elite and class theory; hyperpluralism;policy gridlock; gross domestic product; liberals; conservatives;

I.       Two Central Questions

A. The following concepts are introduced: government, politics, and public policy.

B. This lecture raises two fundamental questions about governing that will serve as themes for the year:
 

1. How should we be governed?
 
a. This lecture examines the workings of democratic government.

b. The lecture evaluates the way American government actually works when compared to the standard of an "ideal" democracy.

c. The lecture addresses the question of who holds power (the capacity to get people to do something they otherwise would not do), and who influences the policies adopted by government.
 

2. What should government do?
 
a. Does our government do what we want it to do?

b. Debates about the scope of government are among the most important in American political life.

A. Government
 
1. Government, politics, and public policy are interrelated.

2. The way government makes decisions about public policies is through politics.

3. What is Government?

a. Government makes and enforces public policies.Government is that complex of offices, personnel, and processes by which a state is ruled, by which its public policies are made and enforced. Public policies of a government are all those things a government decides to do or not do. Examples: imposing an income and property taxes; minimum wages; maintaining an armed force.

b. Four key institutions make policy at the national level:
 

(1) Congress (who create the law);

(2) President (who implement or carry out the law);

(3) the Courts (who interpret and apply the law);

(4) Federal administrative agencies (bureaucracy).
 

c. Every government has a means of changing its leaders.
 
(1) Some have a tradition of orderly and peaceful transition — as in the U.S.

(2) Some changes have occurred through violent revolution — such as the 1917 Russian Revolution

(3) Some changes are less orderly than in the U.S. but less bloody than a revolution — as occurred when the communist government was overthrown in East Germany
 

B. What governments do
 
1. Regardless of how they assumed power, all governments have certain functions in common.
 
a. Governments maintain national defense.

b. Governments providepublic goods — things that everyone can share, such as clean air.

(1) No one can be denied the use of a public good.

(2) Individuals have little incentive to provide public goods because no one can make a profit from them; thus, the task of providing things like public parks and pollution control is usually left to government.
 

c. Governments have police powers to provide order — as when Chinese security forces crushed the student protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and when the National Guard was called in to restore order in Los Angeles after the 1992 Rodney King verdict.

d. Governments provide public services — such as schools and libraries (a justification for assessing taxes).

e. Governments socialize the young into the political culture — typically through practices such as reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in daily exercises at public schools.

f. Governments collect taxes to pay for the services they provide.
 

C. The Purpose of Government
 
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence [sic], promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America."
 
Individuals form governments for the following reasons:
 
1. To Form a More Perfect Union — In union there is strength.

2.  To Establish Justice — The law should be administered reasonably, fairly, and impartially. Justice is the reasonable, fair, impartial administration of the law.

3.  To insure Domestic Tranquility — Without order, people would live in anarchy.

4.  Provide for the Common Defense — The state's security rests on wise defense and foreign policies (relations with other nations).

5.  To Promote the General Welfare — The state has a responsibility to provide a variety of public services. For example, the establishment of schools, protection of the environment, and providing laws to preserve the purity of foods.

6.  To Secure the Blessings of Liberty — Freedom is necessary for a democracy.
 

D. Classifying Government
 
1. No two governments are exactly alike.

2. Governments are classified into three categories in order to analyze them: geographic distribution; relationship between legislative and executive; and number who can participate.
 

E. Geographic Distribution of Power Governments can be formed depending on how governmental power is distributed. The three general forms of government are as follows:
 
1. Unitary Government — Power is held in a single, central agency. A centralized government. Local government is created by central government for convenience and is answerable to central government. Most governments are unitary. Great Britain is an example of unitary but democratic. Do not confuse with dictatorship. The various states in United States have unitary form of government.
 
2. Federal Government — Powers are divided between a central government and several local governments. Both act on their own sets of laws, officials, and agencies. In U.S., national government has power and so do states.

3. Confederation — An alliance of independent states. A confederate government possesses little authority to act on its own. The central government has limited power and can only handle matters that the member states have assigned to it. Limited power, and usually in matters of defense and foreign commerce. At the present time, there is only one confederation: the Commonwealth of Independent States, an alliance of 11 of the 15 republics which made up the old Soviet Union.
 

F. Relationship Between Legislature and Executive Branches.  Governments can form depending on the relationship between the executive and legislative branches.
 
1. Presidential Government — Features a separation of powers. In a presidential government, the executive and legislative branches are independent and coequal. The executive and legislative branches each can check the actions of the other branch. President chosen independently of the legislature, holds office for a fixed term, and has powers not subject to direct control of the legislature.

2. Parliamentary Government — Members of the executive branch are also members of the legislative branch (the parliament). Executive is made up of the prime minister or premier and that official's cabinet. Executive is leader of the majority party or of a coalition of parties and is chosen by parliament. Cabinet is chosen from members of parliament. Executive is subject to parliament's direct control. Executive remains in office only as long as policies have confidence of majority. No confidence vote requires executive resign. No checks and balances.
 

G. The Number Who Can Participate.   Governments can form depending on the number of people who can participate in the governmental process.
 
1. Dictatorship — Dictatorships exercise absolute, not limited authority over the people. Participation in government is limited to the individual or group who rules. Those who rule are not responsible to the will of the people. No accountability. Dictators typically gain power by force. All dictatorships are authoritarian, i.e., absolute power and totalitarian, i.e.,authority over nearly every aspect of life. Examples: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Soviet Union and PR of China. One person dictatorships rare: Muammar al-Qaddafi. Usually militaristic, have mock elections, and aggressive.

2. Democracy — In a democracy, sovereignty is located with the people who hold the power and give consent to the government to rule.
 

a. Direct democracy:   Will of people translated into public policy directly by people themselves, in mass meetings. Doesn't exist in any national level, anywhere in the world.

b. Representative democracy:   Small group of people elected by the people to act on their behalf to express their popular will. They are held accountable to the people through elections.
 

H. Politics
 
1. Politics determines whom we select as governmental leaders and what policies they pursue.

2. Politics can best defined as "who gets what, when, and how."
 

a. The media usually focus on the who of politics — voters, candidates, groups, parties.

b. How people engage in politics is accomplished through actions such as bargaining, supporting, compromising, and lobbying.

c. What refers to the substance of politics and government (the public policies that come from government).


I. Political involvement
 
1. Political participation refers to the ways in which people get involved in politics.
 
a. Voter turnout — often used to judge the health of a government
 
(1) The U.S. ranks low when judged by voter turnout, with one of the lowest turnout rates in the world.

(2) Low voter turnout has an effect on who holds political power.
 

b. Politics as a vocation — including those who hold political office
 
2. Single-issue groups — interest groups whose members will vote on a single issue, such as pro-life and pro-choice groups that ignore a politician's stand on everything except abortion.
 
a. Such groups are single-minded and uncompromising.

b. Many politicians feel that single-issue groups complicate efforts to find a middle ground on various issues.
 

J. Public policy
 
1. The end product of government and politics is public policy.
 
a. When people confront government officials with problems they expect them to solve, they are trying to influence the government's policy agenda.

b. Public policy is a choice that government makes in response to some issue on its agenda.
 

2. Public policy includes all of the decisions and non-decisions of government
 
a. Policy can be established if policymakers do nothing, as well as when they do something.

b. The government's first response to the AIDS crisis illustrates government inaction as public policy, even when the epidemic reached crisis levels.
 

3. A government's policy agenda changes regularly.
 
a. Public officials must pay attention to the problems that concern voters.

b. When voters go to the polls, they are partly looking at whether a candidate shares their views on the policy agenda.

A. In general
 
1. The fate of American democracy rests on the people's acceptance of certain basic concepts.

2. The acceptance of the basic concepts of democracy presents Americans with problems and challenges. Those basic concepts of democracy are built on the following:
 

(a) A recognition of the fundamental worth and dignity of every person;

(b) A respect for the equality of all persons;

(c) A faith in majority rule and an insistence upon minority rights.

(d) An acceptance of the necessity of compromise;

(e) An insistence upon the widest possible degree of individual freedom.

Each generation must develop the skills with which to solve these problems.
 
B.      Fundamental Worth of the Individual
 
1. Democracy insists on the worth and dignity of all. Each individual is a separate and distinct being.

2. Sometimes the welfare of one person must be subordinated to the interest of the many. People can be forced to do certain things whether they want to or not. For example, individuals must obey traffic signals, pay taxes, go to school, etc. Consequently, in a democracy, the strongest is not always right.

3. When people are forced to do something, it is serving the interest of many individuals, representing society.
 

C. Equality of All Persons
 
1. Democracy insists on equality of opportunity, not necessarily equality of condition. There is no guarantee that people will have equal abilities, just equal opportunities.

2. Democracy insists on equality before the law.

3. No person should be held back for reasons of race, color, culture, religion or gender.
 

NOTE: The concept we now hold is quite different from the one the Framers had in mind when the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Then, neither African-American or women were equal under existing law. Almost 80 years passed before the Constitution was amended to abolish slavery, and 50 more years until women had the right to vote. Only in the last 40 years has our present concept of "equality" for all people taken shape, 200 years after the Bill of Rights was passed.
 
D. Majority Rule and Minority Rights
 
1. Democracy argues that the majority will be right more often and wrong. The majority have a "right" to be wrong. Thus, the majority rule is the popular rule.

2. Democracy searches for satisfactory solutions to public problems. It can be a trial and error process. Democracy recognizes that seldom is any solution to a public problem so satisfactory that it cannot be improved upon.

3. The majority must recognize the right of the minority, by fair and lawful means, to become the majority. The majority must always be willing to listen to a minority's argument, to hear its objections, to bear its criticisms, and welcome its suggestions.

4. The majority must not use its power to crush the minority.

5. There is no guarantee that the rights of the few (minority) must be elevated above the interest of the many (majority).

6. Democracy places its highest value on the free exchange of ideas.
 

E. Necessity for Compromise
 
Compromise:   The process of reconciling competing views and interests in  order to find the position most acceptable to the largest number.

1. Compromise allows citizens to make public decisions. To reconcile competing views. Must compromise if all are truly seen as equal, and public policy questions seldom are presented in two simple sides.

2. Compromise is not an end in itself but a means to reach a public goal. Not all compromises are good, and not all are necessary.

3. A compromise on the fundamental principles of democracy should always be avoided.

4. Democracy serves the varied needs of its citizens when framing public policies through the compromise of concepts and ideas.
 

F. Individual Freedom
 
1. Freedom cannot be absolute, or anarchy will result. Democracy does not and cannot insist on complete freedom. Anarchy leads to rule by the strongest, best armed, and the ruthless. Individual freedom exists only insofar as they do not infringe on the rights of others.
 
Anarchy:   The total absence of government.
 
2. American democracy strives to strike a balance between liberty and authority. Democracy insists that each individual must be as free to do as he or she pleases as far as the freedom of all will allow.

A. A political system is a set of institutions and activities that link together government, politics, and public policy.

B. Political issues and linkage institutions
 

1. A political issue arises when people disagree about a problem or about a public policy choice.

2. In a democratic society, parties, elections, interest groups, and the media are key linkage institutions between the preferences of citizens and the government's policy agenda.
 

C. Making public policy: the policymaking institutions
 
1. Policymakers stand at the core of the political system.
 
a. The U.S. Constitution establishes three policymaking institutions: Congress, the presidency, and the courts.

b. The power of the bureaucracy is so great that most political scientists now consider it a fourth policymaking institution.
 

2. Working within the government's institutions, policymakers scan the issues on the policy agenda, select some for attention, and make policies concerning them.

3. Few policies are made by a single institution.
 

D. Policy impacts are the effects policy has on people and on society's problems.
 
1. Having a policy implies a goal: people who raise a policy issue usually want a policy that works.

2. Translating people's desires into public policy is crucial to the workings of democracy.

A. After the Russian Revolution (1917) — and particularly when the Soviet Union expanded its sphere of influence throughout Eastern Europe after World War II — U.S. foreign policy was concerned with preventing the spread of communism.
 
1. Cold war — era of struggle between democracy and communism

2. Winston Churchill — warned that an "iron curtain" had descended across Europe

3. Khrushchev and Nixon — engaged in the famous "kitchen debate" concerning the future of communism vs. democracy
 

B. Defining democracy
 
1. The writers of the U.S. Constitution were suspicious of democracy.

2. In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as "government of the people, by the people, and for the people. "
 

a. One problem with this definition is that there are many different interpretations of "people."

b. No democracy permits government by literally everybody.
 

3. The basic definition used throughout the Government in America textbook is: democracy is a means of selecting policymakers and of organizing government so that policy represents and responds to the people's preferences.
 
C. Traditional democratic theory rests upon several principles that specify how a democratic government makes its decisions.
 
1. Democratic theorist Robert Dahl refers to five criteria that are essential for "an ideal democratic process":
 
a. Equality in voting — the principle of "one person, one vote" is basic to democracy.

b. Effective participation — political participation must be representative.

c. Enlightened understanding free press and free speech are essential to civic understanding.

d. Citizen control of the agenda — citizens should have the collective right to control the government's policy agenda.

e. Inclusion — citizenship must be open to all within a nation.
 

2. In addition, democracies must practice majority rule and preserve minority rights.
 
a. The relationship between the few leaders and the many followers is one of representation: the closer the correspondence between representatives and their electoral majority, the closer the approximation to democracy.

b. Most Americans also feel that it is vital to protect minority rights such as freedom of speech.
 

D. Three contemporary theories of American democracy:
 
1. Pluralist theory (pluralism) contends that many centers of influence compete for power and control.
 
a. Groups compete with one another for control over public policy, with no one group or set of groups dominating.

b. There are multiple access points to our government, with power dispersed among the various branches and levels of government.

c. Bargaining and compromise are essential ingredients of our democracy.

d. Electoral majorities rarely rule; rather, as Dahl puts it, "all active and legitimate groups in the population can make themselves heard at some crucial stage in the [policymaking] process."

e. The recent increase in interest group activity is cited by pluralists as evidence for pluralism.
 

2. Elite and class theory contends that our society (like all societies) is divided along class lines.
 
a. An upper-class elite rules, regardless of governmental organization.

b. Wealth is the basis of class power: a few powerful Americans are the policymakers.

c. Big business and its power is at the center of most elite and class theories.

d. The Reagan Administration strongly promoted big business.
 

3. Hyperpluralism is pluralism gone sour.
 
a. Many groups are so strong that government is unable to act.

b. There are too many groups with access to the different levels and branches of government: these groups have multiple ways to both prevent policies they disagree with and promote those they support.

c. When politicians try to placate every group, the result is confusing, contradictory, and muddled policy (or no policy at all).
 

E. Challenges to democracy
 
1. How can the people confront complex issues?
 
a. Traditional democratic theory holds that:
 
(1) Ordinary citizens have the good sense to reach political judgments;

(2) Government has the capacity to act upon those judgments.
 

b. As human knowledge has expanded, it has become increasingly difficult to make knowledgeable decisions.
 
(1) The power of the elite was once based on property holdings.

(2) Today the elite are likely to be those who command knowledge — the experts.
 

2. Are the citizens doing their job?
 
a. There is evidence that Americans know very little about their leaders or about policy decisions.

b. Many democratic thinkers express concerns about Americans' lack of political participation and knowledge.
 

3. Is American democracy too dependent on money?
 
a. Because of rising campaign costs, candidates have become increasingly dependent on Political Action Committees (PACs)

b. Critics charge that PACs have undue influence on members of Congress: when democracy confronts the power of money, the gap between democratic theory and reality widens further.
 

4. Can the political system adapt to today's rapidly changing world?
 
a. Politics always changes but the rate of change has increased greatly over the last three decades.

b. Some observers of American politics wonder if American political institutions are capable of keeping up with this pace of change.

c. The feature "Since Kennedy" will be used in subsequent chapters to illustrate changes in the American political system since the early 1960s.
 

5. Does American diversity produce governmental gridlock?
 
a. There is a diverse array of interest groups in the United States.

b. The decentralized nature of American government allows one or a few such groups to block policy, thus creating policy gridlock and the inability of government to deal with important national problems such as health care.
 

F. Some key questions about Democracy
 
1. Are people knowledgeable about matters of public policy?

2. Do they apply what knowledge they have to their voting choices?

3. Are American elections designed to facilitate public participation?

4. Does the interest group system allow for all points of view to be heard, or are there significant biases that give advantages to particular groups?

5. Do political parties provide voters with clear choices, or do they obscure their stands on issues in order to get as many votes as possible?

6. If there are choices, do the media help citizens understand them?

7. Is Congress representative of American society, and is it capable of reacting to changing times?

8. Does the president look after the general welfare of the public, or has the office become too focused on the interests of the elite?

A. How active is American government?
 
1. National, state, and local governments in America collectively spend about one out of every three dollars of our gross domestic product (the value of all goods and services produced annually by the United States).

2. The national government alone spends more than $1.5 trillion annually, employs five million people, and owns one-third of the land in the United States
 

a. Most of the money goes to individuals or to state and local governments.

b. Big-ticket items include national defense (about one-sixth of the federal budget), Social Security (more than one-fifth of the budget), and Medicare (about $160 billion per year).
 

3. One measure of the size of government is the size of the budget deficit and the national debt.
 
a. Budget deficit — occurs when taxes do no not grow as fast as spending (recently as high as $290 billion a year).

b. National debt — the entire sum of money owed by the national government (now about $5 trillion).
 

B. Liberal and conservative views of the scope of government
 
1. Probably the most important issue that divides liberals and conservatives results from their differing views on the appropriate scope of government. Liberals support a more active role for government in most spheres, along with higher spending and more regulation.
 
a. Liberals generally favor:
 
(1) More governmental regulation of the economy

(2) More policies to help disadvantaged groups

(3) More policies to redistribute income
 

b. Conservatives generally favor:
 
(1) Fewer governmental regulations and a greater reliance on the market

(2) Fewer governmental policies in the name of disadvantaged groups

(3) Fewer tax laws that discourage business growth
 

c. However, there are areas where conservatives favor governmental action (such as using the power of government to restrict or prohibit abortions and to organize prayers in the public schools), and areas where liberals oppose governmental interference (such as governmental restrictions on individual freedom in non-economic matters).
 
C. A comparative perspective on the scope and size of government
 
1. Outside the sphere of national defense, the government of the United States actually does less — and is small — compared to the governments of similar countries.
 
a. Compared with most other economically developed nations, the United States devotes a smaller percentage of its resources to government.
 
2. The tax burden on Americans is also small, compared to other democratic nations.

3. Government in America uses the feature "America in Perspective" to compare the United States with other countries.
 

D. American Individualism
 
1. American individualism is a dominant theme in American political culture.
 
a. It developed from immigrants' desire to escape government oppression.

b. As Louis Hartz points out, it has helped limit the scope of American government.

c. The existence of a western frontier up until the early twentieth century allowed people to escape government almost entirely; this ethos still infuses American individualism.
 

E. Questions about the scope of government
 
1. Debate over the role and size of government is central to contemporary American politics.

2. The role and size of government is a theme that Government in America examines in each chapter:
 

a. Part One examines the constitutional foundations of American government.

b. Part Two looks at those making demands on government, including the public, political parties, interest groups, and the media.

c. Part Three focuses on governmental institutions, including elected institutions (Congress, the President) and non-elected institutions (courts, bureaucracy).

Main Page | Course Outline

Chief Justice Richard Barajas
Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics
Cathedral High School, El Paso, Texas
Last updated:  July 17, 2000