government; public policy;  public goods; unitary government; federal government; confederation; presidential government;  parliamentary government; dictatorship;  democracy; direct democracy;  representative democracy; politics;  majority rule;  minority rights;  compromise; anarchy; gross domestic product; liberals; conservatives

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

2. 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).

 
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 our federal government mobilized the National Guard in New Orleans, Louisana in order to maintain order in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

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. 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.
 

D. 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.
 

E. 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.
 

F. 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.
 

G. 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).
 

H. 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. 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 $2,650 billion 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-fifth of the federal budget), Social Security (more than one-fifth of the budget), and Medicare (about $190 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 $9.4 trillion). [See the National Debt Clock]


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).

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GOVT 2305  American Government and Politics
Cathedral High School, El Paso, Texas
Last updated:  August  2008