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CHAPTER ONE Study Chapter Summary ·
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'll look at two ways of
thinking critically about American politics: analyzing how our American
political system works and evaluating how well it works. We will 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 political
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 participate in political life
in order to improve their own individual situations and promote the interests of the community at large. We will
carefully evaluate citizenship as a means to determine how well the American
system is working. Learning Objectives After
reading this chapter, you should understand ·
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 |
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