Government Chapter 1 Summary - Summary Keeping the Republic: Power and Citizenship in American Politics: The Essentials 7th Edition PDF

Preview

Summary

Chapter 1 Summary of main concepts...

Description

Chapter 1 – Five Principles of Politics Making sense of Government and politics  2 fundamental questions: What do we observe? And why?  What? – aim to identify facts and patterns that are true in the world around us.  Why? – we want to know why the what occurs.  What is Government? - Government: the institutions and procedures through which a land and its people are ruled.  Forms of Government - Autocracy: A form of government in which a single individual rules. - Oligarchy: A form of government in which a small group of landowners, military officers, or wealthy merchants controls most of the governing decisions - Democracy: A system of rule that permits citizens to play a significant part in the governmental process, usually through the selection of key public officials - Constitutional government: A system of rule in which formal and effective limits are placed on the powers of the government - Authoritarian government: a system in rule in which the government recognizes no formal limits but may nevertheless be restrained by the power of other social institutions - Totalitarian government: a system of rule in which the government recognizes no formal limits on its power and seeks to absorb or eliminate other social institutions that might challenge it.  Politics - Politics: the conflicts and struggles over the leadership, structure and policies of government. - Goal: to have a share or say in the composition of the government’s leadership, how the government is organized, or what its policies are going to be. - May take many forms: individuals may run for office, vote, join political parties and movements, contribute money to candidates, lobby public officials, participate in demonstrations, write letters, talk to their friends and neighbors, go to court, etc - 5 principles: 1. All political behavior has a purpose 2. Institutions structure politics 3. All politics is collective action 4. Political outcomes are the products of individual preferences, institutional procedures, and collective action 5. How we got here matters Five Principles of Politics  The Rationality Principle: All Political Behavior has a Purpose - Govts respond to what people want - An individual cares about, and wants to influence, an issue, a candidate, a party, or a cause. - Instrumental: Done with purpose, sometimes with forethought, and even with calculation - “Retail Politics”: involves dealing directly with constituents, as when a politician helps an individual navigate a federal agency, find a misplaced Social Security check, or apply to a service academy. - “Wholesale Politics”: involves appealing to collections of constituents, as when a legislator introduces a bill that would benefit a group that is active in her state or district, secures





money for a bridge or public building in his hometown, or intervenes in an official proceeding on behalf of an interest group that will, in turn, contribute to the next campaign. The Institution Principle: Institutions Structure Politics - Institution: the rules and procedures that provide incentives for political behavior, thereby shaping politics - Jurisdiction  Jurisdiction: the domain over which an institution or member of an institution has authority.  Example: in congress, the “standing committees”  Committee members are granted specific authority within their jurisdiction to set the agenda of the larger parent chamber.  Example: Food and Drug Administration possesses well-defined authority to regulate the marketing of pharmaceuticals but is not permitted to regulate products falling outside its jurisdiction - Agenda Power and Veto Power  Agenda Power: the control over what a group will consider for discussion  Veto power: the ability to defeat something even if it has made it on to the agenda of an institution.  Veto power is possessed by both the president and legislature - Decisiveness  Making decisions  Conditions and qualifications  Decisiveness rules thus specify when votes may be taken and the sequence in which votes may occur, and how many individuals supporting a motion are sufficient for it to pass - Delegation  Delegation: the transmission of authority to some other official or body for the latter’s use (though often with the right of review and revision)  Citizens through their voting delegate the authority to make decisions on their behalf to representatives  Principal-agent relationship: the relationship between a principal and his or her agent. This relationship may be affected by the fact that each is motivated by self-interest, yet their interests may not be well aligned.  Transaction costs: the cost of clarifying each aspect of a principal-agent relationship and monitoring it to make sure arrangements are complied with The Collective-Action Principle: All politics is collective action - It involves building, combining, mixing, and amalgamating people’s individual goals (occurs in committee, legislature, bureaucracy etc) - The most typical and widespread means of resolving collective dilemmas is bargaining among individuals. - Informal Bargaining  Political bargaining may be highly formal or entirely informal  Deals will be struck depending on the preferences and beliefs of the participants - Formal Bargaining  The rules describe such things as who gets to make the first offer, how long the other parties have to consider it, whether other parties must take it or leave it can make counteroffers, the method by which they convey their assent or rejection, what happens





when all of the others accept, or reject it, what happens next if the proposal is rejected, and so on.  Formal bargaining is often associated with events that take place in official institutions – legislatures, courts, party conventions, administrative and regulatory agencies. - Collective Dilemmas and Bargaining Failures - Collective action, free riders, public goods, and the commons The Policy Principle: Political Outcomes are the products of individual preferences and institutional procedures - As students of American politics, we need to consider the link between individual goals, institutional arrangements, collective action, and policy outcomes. - Policies in the united states are sloppy and slapdash for a clear reason: The tendency to spread the benefits broadly results when political ambition comes up against a decentralized political system. The History Principle: How we got here matters - How did we get the institutions and policies that are in place? - Without history, we have neither a sense of causation nor a full sense of how institutions are related to one another. - Path dependency: the idea that certain possibilities are made more or less likely because of the historical path taken. - 3 factors why history matters: 1. Rules and procedures, choices made during one point in time continue to have important consequences for years, decades, or even centuries. 2. Through persistence of loyalties and alliances. 3. The fact that past events and experiences shape current viewpoints and perspectives...