American Government Students,
Here are the notes from Week 1. Study them well, and prepare for the final exam. Contact me with any questions.
I. 1/3 – 1/7 The Study of American Government and the Constitution
- There are two major questions about politics: Who governs? To what ends? This class focuses mainly on answering the first
Four answers have traditionally been given to the question of who governs:
Four answers have traditionally been given to the question of who governs:
a. The Marxist—those who control the economic system will control the political one
b. The elitist—a few top leaders, not all of them drawn from business, make the key decisions without reference to popular desires
c. The bureaucratic—appointed civil servants run things
d. The pluralist—competition among affected interests shapes public policy
To choose among these theories or to devise new ones requires more than describing governmental institutions and processes.
One must examine the kinds of issues that do or don’t get taken up by the political system and how that system resolves them.
The distinction between different types of democracies is important. The Framers of the Constitution intended that America be a representative democracy, in which the power to make decisions is determined by means of a free and compeititve struggle for the citizens’ votes.
Key Questions:
- What is political power?
- What is democracy?
- Is Representative Democracy best?
- How is political power distributed?
- Is democracy driven by self-interest?
- What explains political change?
- What values matter most in American Democracy?
- Are trade-offs among political purposes inevitable?
- What is the “problem of liberty?”
- What were some of the revolutionary ideas circulating in the 1700s?
- How was the Confederation weak?
- How did past experience help the framers of the Constitution?
- Who drafted the Constitution?
- What challenges did the framers face?
- What was the Virginia Plan? The New Jersey Plan?
- What was the Great Compromise about?
- What are the key principles of the Constitution?
Key Facts About the Framers:
- Framers sought to create a govt capable of protecting liberty and order
- Unprecedented: based on written constitution, combined the principles of popular consent, separation of powers, and federalism
- Popular consent: choosing House of Reps, limited by indirect election of senators and elector college
- Political authority shared by three branches of govt—intentional conflict created
- Self-interest prevents tyranny—even by a popular majority
- Federalism: system when the national and state govtgs had indpndt authority
- Allocated powers between two levels of govt
- Devising means to ensure that neither large nor small states would dominate the national govt required the most delicate compromises at the Phila. Convention (like doing nothing about slavery)
- Framers’ positions chiefly determined not by economic interests but a variety of factors
- Factors included differences of opinion over whether the state govts or national govts would be the best protector of personal liberty
Test yourself:
- How is political power actually distributed in America?
- What explains major political change?
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