CHAPTER 1

Making Sense of Government and Politics

CHAPTER OUTLINE
I.

II.
III.

IV.
V.

Making Sense of Government and Politics

A. Forms of Government
B. Foundations of Government
C. Why is Government Necessary?
D. Influencing the Government: Politics
From Coercion to Consent
Does American Democracy Work?
E. Delegating Authority in a Representative Democracy
F. The Trade-Off between Freedom and Order
G. The Instability of Majority Rule
For Further Reading
Analyzing the Evidence
How do Political Scientists Know What They Know?

CHAPTER OVERVIEW
American government and politics is extraordinarily complex. At the most basic level, this
complexity stems from the multiple interconnected layers of government national, state,
county, and city. The complexity is not just that there are multiple layers of government, but
these different levels share some powers and responsibilities (which encourages collaboration
and cooperation) while at the same time each layer possess separate and distinct powers that
encourages competition and self-interest. This complexity makes it nearly impossible for citizens
to hold any one person, party, group, agency, or institution responsible and leads some to
question whether the system of government put in place by the framers over 200 years ago has
outlived its usefulness.
It has not. Rather, the framers created this complex system on purpose because they
equated complexity with liberty and political opportunity. That is, by creating a system with
multiple access points, responsive to the will of the people, they believed that the citizens
pursuit of self-interest would create competition but that it would also lead to cooperation and

collaboration, thus protecting the rights and liberties of all citizens from a tyrannical government
(discussed more in Chapter 2).
How a system created over 200 years ago, the likes of which had never existed before
continues to function, if not thrive, is one of the questions that political scientists seek to answer.
Political scientists seek to identify patterns and provide explanations of political phenomena
through posing analytical questions, answering those questions via empirical evidence, and in
many cases, using those findings to make normative arguments about the way governments and
politics ought to function. At the heart of this endeavor is an understanding of the basic
components of government and politics.
Government is the institution and processes through which a land and its people are
ruled. It can take many forms, from autocracy to oligarchy to democracy. The difference between
these forms of government centers on who has vested political authority and how that authority
is constrained, if at all. Although government can take different forms, all governments have two
basic components: a means of coercion and a means of collecting revenue. Furthermore, as
Enlightenment thinkers Locke, Hobbes, and Hume posited centuries ago, without government to
maintain order, protect property, provide public goods, anarchy would prevail.
While the necessity of some form of government is widely accepted, the form of
government, the means used to coerce and collect revenue, the methods used to maintain order,
protect property, and the governments responsibility to provide and/or protect the public good is
far from undisputed. How do we balance the need for order with our guarantee of freedom(s)?
How can we insure that the minoritys rights are protected when we have a system of majority
rule? How can citizens insure that they choose good agents and that those representatives are
acting in their best interest? The answers to these questions are the crux of politics.
Does the system of government set forth by the framers function as they intended? Yes,
in the sense that change which requires collaboration and cooperation comes slowly because
American citizens pursue their self-interest. The degree to which citizens are interested in and/or
participate in electoral politics varies, and is often explained, at least in part, by the complexity
of the government. The lack of participation by citizens may seem at odds with the democratic
philosophy that undergirds the American system of government, but in fact, this too was the
framers intent. The system of government created in the late eighteenth century reflects the
framers understanding of the necessity of government and the delicate balance that must be

attained. But more so it reflects the experiences of the American colonists under British rule and
during the first decade after Independence, which is the subject of Chapter 2.
LECTURE OUTLINE
I.

Introduction: the ubiquity of government

A. Government plays significant roles in most spheres of contemporary society.
B. Americans have a traditional and historically rooted skepticism toward
governmental power.
C. Despite this skepticism and ambivalence in the abstract, Americans across the
ideological spectrum have increasingly turned to government for assistance.
1. Government, especially American government, is structurally complex by
design in order to protect against tyranny.
2. That same complexity is also related to lower levels of political
participation by the citizenry.

II.

What is government?
A. Working definition: the institution in society that has a monopoly on the
legitimate use of force
B. All governments must possess:
1. Legitimacy: related to the type of government. In a democracy, legitimacy
is based on the extent of popular involvement.
2. Coercion: taxation and conscription
C. Types of government
1. Ascending order of inclusiveness
a. Autocracy
b. Oligarchy
c. Democracy
2. Descending order of recognized limits on coercion
a. Constitutional
b. Authoritarian
c. Totalitarian
D. Relationship between government and politics
1. Politics is the conflict or struggle over the form and function of
government.
2. Politics also involves and/or requires collaboration and collective action.

III.

The state in America

A. All governments, the U.S. government included, rely on coercion as a means

of state power.
1. Alexander Hamilton argues in Federalist 23 that the United States central
government needs the means of coercion.
2. Two examples of coercion are military conscription, or the draft, and
revenue collection (taxation) .
3. Governments, especially constitutional democracies, rely on legitimacy
for state building.
4. Importance of popular consent
a. Framers created a representative democracy in reaction to their
experiences under British colonial rule and their knowledge of the
theories of government put forth by Enlightenment thinkers John
Locke, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, etc.
b. Limits on popular participation
c. Limits on power of any one institution/entity within the
government
IV.

Contradictions of American Government

A. There are costs and benefits of all governments. In American government, three
factors help us understand and explain many political conflicts in government and
within the citizenry.
1. In a representative government, the citizens choose individuals to represent
them (a principal-agent relationship). The quality of government is tied to
citizens choosing good agents and agents doing a good job representing the
interests of the principal(s).
2. The need to balance freedom and liberty with order and justice
3. Majority rule can be unstable and can threaten minority rights in certain
circumstances.

V.

Role of Political Science in understanding government and politics

A. Ask analytical questions
B. Discover patterns and test hypotheses using empirical data and methods
C. Based on findings, can inform normative discussions about what should be.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Both conservatives and liberals like government they just like different aspects of
government. When it comes to regulation, most forms of intervention into the economy,

and social welfare, liberals tend to prefer government action to non-action. Still, when it
comes to the role of government in terms of defense spending, crime, and social
regulation (for example, abortion politics), conservatives are more likely to call for
greater government spending and involvement. Consider the politics surrounding
homeland security. Who is in favor of a stronger role for the national government? Who
is opposed? Why do you think the Department of Homeland Security has elicited
opposition from both the Left and the Right? Given the complexity of this question, what
do you think explains the persisting dominant view that liberals want more government
and conservatives want less?
2. It was often said that Mussolini made the trains run on time. However, anyone who has
spent some time around a bureaucratic agency or department at some level in American
government is familiar with jokes about the inefficiency of bureaucratic institutions.
Discuss how this characterization of the efficiency of totalitarian governmental systems
exemplifies the inverse of democratic decision making and the instability of majority
rule. Put in this light, how does this make you feel about the inefficiency of American
government?
3. For American representative democracy to function as intended, a citizen (principal) has
to select a good representative (agent) to act in their stead and pursue the citizens
interest(s). Reciprocity is a key element in this relationship. Broadly speaking, what
would agents/representatives need to know about the principals/citizens in order to
represent their interest(s) well? Are there certain characteristics that would make
someone better suited to serving as an agent? What are the responsibilities of the
principals or citizens in this relationship?
4. Why do people engage in the behaviors that they do? And how are those behaviors
affected by institutions? Students go to college and take courses on American
government, literature, and so on, ostensibly to achieve a broader goal of learning.
Instructors, colleges, and universities usually establish processes that facilitate such
learning. One notable process is the assigning of letter grades to students as a means of
providing both observable standards of comparison of students as well as incentives for
students to learn. But sometimes students will focus more on getting a good grade
(satisfying the rule/process aspect) than on the broader goal of learning. Can process

become a goal? How might this general point be applied to understand the behavior of
political actors?
CLASS ACTIVITIES AND SIMULATIONS
1. Have students break into two or three groups (depending on the size of the class). Assign
each group a type of government (autocracy, oligarchy, democracy) and give all the
groups two realistic scenarios that a government could face unexpectedly (e.g., a
hurricane destroys a major city and a group of citizens takes to the streets to protest poor
working conditions). Ask each group to come up with a list of likely responses by the
type of government they were assigned (i.e., how would an autocracy respond to the
people protesting working conditions?). What things would the government have to take
into account when formulating a response? What would the costs and benefits be (for the
government and for the protestors) if the government responded in that way? As a class,
discuss how the source of a governments legitimacy (in a democracy, government must
have support of the people whereas in an autocracy, the desires of one man/woman is
what matters) could lead countries with different systems of government to respond to the
same scenario in different ways.
2. Government is necessary to maintain order, protect property, and provide public goods.
However, citizens often disagree about how government should achieve these goals.
Perhaps the most controversial is the provision of public goods for two reasons: because
citizens can free-ride and they often disagree about what should count as a public good
and how far the government should go to protect such good(s). Have students come up
with a list of public goods that the government does provide and a list of public goods
that the government should provide. What are the costs/benefits citizens receive from
government provision/protection of that good (i.e., clean water means very few cases of
dysentery occur in the United States). Ask them to evaluate if/how the complexity of the
American system (i.e., the different levels of government, the need to balance freedom
with order, minority rights with majority rule, the imperfect principal-agent relationship)
affects the costs/benefits of these goods.
TEACHING SUGGESTIONS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY DATA SLIDES

1. Chapter 1 introduces students to political science as a discipline and how political

scientists approach politics differently than journalists, pundits, and everyday political
junkies. Reinforce this introduction by referring students to the American Political
Science Associations website at www.apsanet .org. In light of this approach, examine the
figure on Selected APSA Organized Sections as a means of explaining to students how,
despite our common questions and overall interest in politics and government, there are a
variety of political science subfields and methodological approaches. Examining this
figure can provide not only a good introduction to the discipline but also a nice
opportunity for an overview of the remainder of the textbook and the semester.
2. Examine the figure on Gender Differences in Considering a Run for Office. Ask
students to explore how gender impacts the range of would-be politicians. Does this
figure indicate that women are less ambitious than men or just potentially alternatively
ambitious? Considering the differences in how likely women are, compared to men, to
discuss running for office with community leaders and party leaders, are there structural
factors that deter women from running? In sum, to what extent should we attribute the
gender disparity in officeholding to differential ambitions? And to what extent is this
difference best attributed to bias in the political system? Is it possible that bias in the
political system affects and shapes the goals and officeholding ambitions of women and
men, respectively?

ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE

One of the things that political scientists do is interpret and critique the data presented by
other political scientists. Help students to develop their own critical eye by having them
interpret Table B, Vote by Level of Income: National Exit Polls. The table shows large
differences in support between voters who made less than $30,000 a year and voters with
income over $100,000. While Obama received a large percentage of support from lower
income earners, Romney received a majority of support among voters making more than
$100,000. Ask them to explain both the pattern that emerges when one examines income
level against support for Obama and Romney, respectively, as well as the deviations from
that pattern. Have them discuss in small groups why they think it is that voters in lower
income categories exhibited stronger levels of support for Obama than other groups. Have

them discuss, too, why it might be that the trend seems to be broken at the highest income
level category. Extending this activity, have students identify a use of political data in a
newspaper, a news magazine, on television, or on the Internet (these may be poll data, vote
tallies, congressional roll call data, policy information, or anything related to government and
politics). Ask students to apply the four sets of questions presented in the Be a Savvy
Consumer of Quantitative Data section in their efforts to interpret and critique the use of
political information in the news media. Ask them to articulate what else they would like to
know and how they might present the data differently.
Suggested Videos
1. The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization (PBS Home Video, 2000, 165 minutes). This offers
an informative treatment of the development of the earliest of democracies. The video
examines Greek politics and democracy as well as the eventual fall of the Greek Empire.
2. Democracy Crushed: Tiananmen Square (A&E Home Video, 1999, 50 minutes). In this
installment of The Twentieth Century with Mike Wallace, questions of democracy and
power are pointedly addressed. The documentary covers a contemporary example of the
struggle for liberty and makes clear the stakes of popular control of government and the
value and fragility of democracy.
3. Great Dictator (Twentieth Century Fox, 1940, 128 minutes). This is Charlie Chaplins
satirical look at the dictators of the time, with clear allusions to Adolf Hitler and Benito
Mussolini. It is useful not only for its entertainment value but also as an example of
democracys and popular cultures view of early twentieth-century dictators on the eve of
American entry into World War II.
Suggested Websites
1. For more information on political science, visit the American Political Science
Associations website (www.apsanet.org). Students may have particular interest in exploring
What is political science? (www.apsanet.org/content_9181.cfm?navID=727) and Careers in
Political Science (www.apsanet.org/content_6457.cfm).
2. Since President Woodrow Wilson, a number of presidential administrations have made the
promotion of democracy a part of their foreign diplomacy. The State Departments

Undersecretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights helps in this effort.
Students can check out the State Departments web page on the Bureau of Democracy, Human
Rights and Labor, where there are links to a number of different reports
(www.state.gov/j/drl/index.htm). There are also country reports on human rights records
(www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper).