Ch01 Wilson Brief 10e Script
In this chapter, we will examine the answer to the question: What should we know about American government?
Consider this question: If citizens are fit to select political leaders, why may they be unfit to make policies?
One obvious reason is that there are over 300 million Americans to come together and make decisions. A deeper answer is that citizens are largely concerned with earning a living and maintaining a family and may have little time or interest in politics, and thus be less able to reason carefully than are people who make politics a career.
Here is another question to consider: What is a democracy, and why is democracy alone not sufficient to protect freedom?
Democracy means rule by the people, either directly or indirectly. But democracy without guarantees of personal liberty may allow popularly elected officials to oppress a minority.
Like most Americans, you may not have much confidence in what the federal government does. Many of us worry that it is too remote from the people, spends more money than it takes in from taxes, can’t solve social problems, and never seems to serve as a remedy for some disasters.
Some people believe that it works that way because it is run by self-servingpoliticians and is dominated by special interest groups. However, government is necessary to protect the people, manage conflict, and provide essential services, and every government in the world is influenced by politicians and interest groups.
What is striking about American government is that the same people who criticize its behavior defend its principles; they like our Constitution and the way it protects personal freedom, sets limits on what government can do, and influences a capitalist economy.
Why have a government at all? It may seem obvious that every nation will have a government, but it is important to understand why.
One reason is that there are many things that people acting on their own or through the economic market cannot achieve. For example, a military force that protects the country will affect everybody whether they pay for this service or not, and as a result nobody will have any reason to spend money on it voluntarily. An environmental law that safeguards the quality of the air we breathe will help everybody, and so no one will have any incentive to pay its costs.
Some believe we need government to compel people to pay for the things that they want but that cannot be supplied by the market.
Another reason is that people disagree about what should be done in society. They will argue about how a military force should be employed or whether we need an environmental law. Because these are important issues, there must be a way to settle them.
Politics exists because people disagree about who should have power and what decisions they should make. Politics is inevitable.
Government exists to manage disagreements; it consists of those institutions that have the right to make decisions binding on the whole society.
Politics is about those decisions that affect all of us, and so can only be managed by an institution like the government that exercises the lawful use of power. Only the government can send you to jail or tax away your money.
What is meant by ‘democracy’? A democracy is government by the people. But what does “by the people” mean? It could mean direct democracy in which all or most citizens make government decisions by themselves. Citizens could do this by coming together in meetings to hear about and vote on various issues.
Our nation’s government is not like this; it is a representative democracy. Voters do not decide policies; they choose leaders. If there is free competition among people who want to hold office and the election process is fair, it is democratic. The framers of our Constitution called a representative democracy a ‘republic’.
But it is not enough for a government to be democratic. After all, the people could elect rulers who would ignore or repress a minority of the population. Americans want not only democracy but also freedom. Americans believe their freedom can be protected by having a government with limited powers, access to courts where they can challenge government decisions, and a clear right to demand new policies or complain about existing ones. The Constitution and its chief amendments were written to do just that.
Because Americans like these arrangements, they see their national government as legitimate. A legitimate government is one whose decisions almost all people will obey because they think the government has the right to make them. Of course, some people will not obey; a few refuse to pay their income taxes or hope to overthrow the government. But if the vast majority of citizens obeys the laws, then the government is legitimate.
There are two common ways of organizing a democracy.
One is a parliamentary system in which all national authority is vested in an elected national legislature that then chooses the chief executive. Parliamentary systems are common in Europe. The prime minister can rule as long as he or she is supported by a majority of the parliament. In a parliamentary system, political power is centralized in the prime minister and his or her cabinet. The bureaucracy works only for the cabinet. The courts usually do not interfere.
America, on the other hand, has a presidential system in which power is divided between a separately elected president and Congress and there are courts that can declare a law to be unconstitutional. The president proposes legislation but cannot be confident Congress will approve it. Indeed, Congress itself may pass laws it likes and the president dislikes; these laws will go into effect unless the president vetoes them. The bureaucracy reports to two masters, the president and Congress. The theory underlying this system is that policies should be tested for their political acceptability at every stage of the policy-making process and not just at election time.
Some ask the question: Who governs in such a system?
Competing groups have access to government; therefore, decisions about public policy usually emerge out of a complicated struggle among many different interests. Our government has become what political scientists call ‘pluralist’, that is, political resources are so widely available that only rarely can any single group dominate decisions.
Moreover, national politics is not the only kind that matters. State and local governments play a much larger role in American politics than is the casein most other democracies. Our Constitution and political culture ensure that the desires of local groups make a difference. In many democracies, education, law enforcement, and the planning of how land should be used are controlled by the national government; here they are controlled by local governments.
Another question that is frequently asked is: To what ends does government serve?
There have been big changes in what the national government does. Consider the following:
In 1935, 96% of all Americans paid no federal income tax; for those who did pay, the average rate was only 4% of their income. Today almost every family pays federal taxes, and the average income tax rate is over 20%.
In 1970, there was not much in the way of federal environmental legislation, but today, federal and state rules powerfully affect how land is used, factories are operated, air is kept clean, and endangered species are protected.
These two questions concerning who governs and to what ends cannot be given the same answer. Most people holding elective national office are white, affluent, middle-aged men. But that does not mean that national policies only benefit middle-aged, affluent, white males. The affluent are taxed more heavily than the less well-off. The rights of blacks and women have dramatically increased.
Our Constitution and habits have four effects on how we make policies. One is the separation of powers; the president and Congress are rivals. As a result, stalemates are the rule, not the exception, and they can only be overcome by a national crisis, a powerful tide of public opinion, or tough political bargaining.
The second is federalism. The states have an independent political position, and members of Congress think of themselves as representing these localities. Hardly any policy becomes law without adjusting it to meet the needs of states, and so states play a large role in managing welfare programs, enforcing pollution-control laws, and building major highways. States also dominate education, law enforcement, and land-use planning.
The third is judicial review. Not only can the federal courts declare a presidential action or a federal law to be unconstitutional, but they may also hear lawsuits brought by people who claim that federal agencies have not acted properly.
Finally, the freedoms of speech and assemblyaffect how we make policies. The First Amendment guarantees the right of people not only to speak their minds but also to lobby Congress. If you dislike some lobbyists, remember that you cannot make them be quiet.
The result of these four factors is that American politics is adversarial; it is a system that by encouraging participation, stimulates disagreement. You can see what adversarial politics means in almost any policy area. When the government does something unpopular, citizens often threaten to sue it or organizea protest march.
And from time to time our government faces a crisis as it did in the struggle to win the Second World War, in Vietnam, in the long competition between this country and the old Soviet Union, and most recently, in the deep recession that caused massive unemployment.
Some further questions are: Why did the government manage the Second World War effectively and the war in Vietnam ineffectively? Why did the government try to end the current recession and simultaneously put in place big and expensive new programs? And since we will soon run out of money to pay for Medicare and Social Security, how will the government respond to these problems?