06 Oct Part II: Take a few moments to
POL 2301, United States Government 1
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit I Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
1. Summarize the origins of American political thought. 1.1 Define the key characteristics of American democracy. 1.2 Explain the importance of various components of a democracy.
Course/Unit
Learning Outcomes Learning Activity
1.1 Unit Lesson Chapter 1, pp. 9–31 Unit I Scholarly Activity
1.2 Unit Lesson Chapter 1, pp. 9–31 Unit I Scholarly Activity
Required Unit Resources In order to access the following resource, click the link below. Throughout this course, you will be provided with sections of text from the online textbook American Government 2e. You may be tested on your knowledge and understanding of the material presented in the textbook as well as the information presented in the unit lesson. Chapter 1: American Government and Civic Engagement, pp. 9–31
Unit Lesson
Democracy is an idea that has a variety of meanings. In its most basic form, democracy refers to a political system in which the government is established by citizens, and citizens live by the laws they make (i.e., the rule of the people). In Unit I, key characteristics and practices of American democracy, such as direct democracy, indirect democracy, government, common good, and civic engagement, will be introduced and explained. These fundamental concepts will lay the foundation for the remainder of the course.
Origins of American Democracy As this is a course in American government, the idea of democracy is an appropriate place
to begin. In its pure form, direct democracy means that all citizens must engage in creating
the laws under which everyone lives. However, as Greek philosopher Aristotle pointed out over 2,000 years ago, democracy can exhibit negative qualities.
UNIT I STUDY GUIDE
U.S. Government and Civic Engagement
(McLeod-Simmons, n.d.)
Plato and Aristotle (Image Editor, n.d.)
POL 2301, United States Government 2
In order to access the following podcast, click the link below. Listen to the podcast 60-Second Civics: Episode 3700, which is sponsored by the website Center for Civic Education and speaks on Aristotle’s influence on modern U.S. government. The transcript for the podcast 60-Second Civics: Episode 3700 is also available for your viewing.
Though the Athenian city-state’s democracy was a popular form of government for ancient Greeks, Aristotle considered it an imperfect or deviant political system (Aristotle & Ellis, 2009). Like many later political theorists, Aristotle considered democracy, or rule by the poor masses, to mean mob rule. People are attentive to advancing their own interests and, if given political power, will more than likely use that power to their own advantage. Centuries later, Thomas Hobbes made a similar argument about human nature. In order to access the following podcast, click the link below.
Listen to the podcast 60-Second Civics: Episode 91, which is sponsored by the Center for Civic Education and speaks on Thomas Hobbes’s view on human nature. The transcript for the podcast 60-Second Civics: Episode 91 is also available for your viewing.
The Hobbesian view saw life without government as “poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes & Gaskin, 1998, p. XLIII). However, for Aristotle, democracy had a redeeming quality. While individuals may be self-interested, they are not entirely egocentric and selfish. They possess a spark of virtue, which, under certain circumstances, allows them to work together toward a collective good. Thomas Jefferson, who had similar reservations about a direct democracy, also held that mob rule can be tempered by the collective wisdom of the people and that the average citizen can pursue not only private interests but also those things that benefit everyone in a democratic republic (Jefferson, 1801). View the video Thomas Jefferson Biographical Vignette to learn more about his life and work (transcript for the video Thomas Jefferson Biographical Vignette). One of the key features of Aristotle’s seminal work on government, The Politics, is his typology of different types of government. He categorized governments based on the chief aim of government and the number of leaders. Can you guess what he considered to be good constitutions (i.e., good government)? Using the types of governments provided in the following interactivity activity, fill in the chart, and see how many you get right.
In order to access the following activity, click the link below. Interactive Activity 1.1: Types of Government Click here to access the PDF version of Interactive Activity 1.1: Types of Government.
A key Enlightenment-age political philosopher who championed democratic government was John Locke. In his Two Treatises of Government written in 1689, Locke argued that government should be based on popular consent and majority rule, and he suggested that government’s primary function is to protect individuals’ natural rights to life, liberty, and property (Locke & Shapiro, 2003).
Thomas Hobbes (Wright, 1670)
Thomas Jefferson (Peale, 1800)
(Chernetskaya, n.d.)
POL 2301, United States Government 3
In order to access the following podcast, click the link below.
Listen to the podcast 60-Second Civics: Episode 92, which is sponsored by the Center for Civic Education and provides insight into John Locke’s philosophy. The transcript for the podcast 60-Second Civics: Episode 92 is also available for your viewing.
Following in the tradition of Hobbes in the Leviathan, which was written in 1651, Locke argued that government is formed as a social contract between citizens and government. In exchange for protecting the rights of citizens and maintaining order and stability, citizens agree to submit themselves to the rule of government (Locke & Shapiro, 2003).
Government, Politics, and Power
The ancient Greeks and Enlightenment philosophers were engaged in discussion of the best form of government. In doing so, they laid the foundation for the great American experiment in democratic government. According to acclaimed political scientist Harold Lasswell (1936), politics is about who gets what, when, and how. Power centers on the capacity to engage in decision-making. Political power is defined as the ability to acquire political position and determine resource distribution. Government refers to the institutions, procedures, and people who have the political power to conduct politics by establishing rules that are binding on everyone in order to ensure that society runs smoothly, safely, and peacefully. In the United States, four key institutions operate at the national level to make such decisions: Congress, the presidency, the courts, and the federal administrative agencies (bureaucracy). These institutions use established procedures to develop and implement public policies, including elections, lawmaking (Congress and the president), judicial proceedings (courts), and administrative discretion (bureaucracy). Working in tandem, these institutions and procedures produce a variety of public goods for citizens, such as security, health care, clean air and drinking water, education, and transportation infrastructure.
Who Governs As a republic or representative democracy, citizens elect other citizens to make decisions for everyone; however, political power is not always evenly distributed. As Aristotle noted over 2,000 years ago, the elite few often seek to monopolize political power either for their own advantage or, in some cases, to the collective benefit. This is known as elitism. While this view of political power may seem to contrast democratic government, the argument can be made that most U.S. founders were the educated, wealthy, and landowning elite of their time. Consider the number of U.S. presidents who are wealthy, successful, and well-educated. Your textbook notes that one-third of all U.S. presidents and all five of the presidents between and 1989 and 2020 have attended Ivy League universities (Krutz, 2019). A recent Congressional Research Service report indicates that 96% of members of the 116th Congress hold bachelor degrees, 40% hold law degrees, and 11% have doctorate degrees (Manning, 2019). Additionally, 95% of House and Senate members were men
John Locke (Kneller, 1697)
Fashionable attendees at a French literary salon listen to a reading from Voltaire, an Enlightenment writer and philosopher. During the Enlightenment, these salons or drawing room gatherings were popular among the upper classes of Europe, who assembled to listen to literary readings and music. (Lemonnier, 1812)
POL 2301, United States Government 4
as of 2020. The vast majority of U.S. presidents have had a peak net worth of over $1 million in today’s currency with Donald Trump’s peak net worth topping the list with $3.1 billion (Suneson, 2019).
How Much Are They Worth?
Unlike the elitist model of political power, which focuses on the elite few competing for and holding power, pluralism’s view centers on groups organizing and influencing government. According to pluralist theory, citizens who want to engage in politics do so most successfully through groups, such as interest groups and political parties. When dealing with the distribution of goods, pluralism attempts to balance the demands of
competing groups. This is the perspective of American life observed by Alexisis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America (de Tocqueville, 2009). In order to access the following podcast, click the link below.
Listen to the podcast 60-Second Civics: Episode 3702, which is sponsored by the Center for Civic Education and speaks on the point of view of Alexis de Tocqueville. The transcript for the podcast 60-Second Civics: Episode 3702 is also available for your
viewing. Pluralists like elitists can seek to acrue benefits for their own group members to the exclusion of the collective good. James Madison (2008), one of the Founding Fathers and the author of The Federalist Paper #10, suggested that this could pose a threat to
America’s representative democracy (Madison, 2008). However, the forward-looking Madison saw that groups, or factions, as he called them, could not be eliminated, as people naturally join together. To control the tyrannizing effects of groups, Madison contended that in a large, diverse country like the United States (even back then), if groups were allowed to flourish, there would be a sufficient number of factions to allow for a balance in competition between them. In a republican form of government, Madison reasoned that freely operating groups would naturally create a check on each other. Competing for political power, these diverse factions would lobby government, bargain with each other, and, in the end, create sound public policies based on compromise and consensus.
James Madison (Harding, 1829)
Alexis de Tocqueville (Chasseriau, 1850)
POL 2301, United States Government 5
In order to access the following podcast, click the link below.
Learn more about Madison’s political views by listening to the podcast 60-Second Civics: Episode 382, which is sponsored by the Center for Civic Education. The transcript for the podcast 60- Second Civics: Episode 382 is also available for your viewing.
The Political Spectrum
For most people in the United States, some form of democracy immediately comes to mind when they think about government. However, as Aristotle reminds us, there are various forms of government with different numbers of leaders and varying goals for those who hold political power. You can think of the variations in government as a spectrum. Throughout the spectrum are ideologies, which are the beliefs and ideals that help to shape political opinion and public policy. As you move out from the center in either direction, power becomes more focused in the hands of an increasingly few individuals, such as in Hitler’s Germany, or specific groups, such as the Communist Party of the old Soviet Union. In totalitarian systems, the state and its leadership have unlimited power, and they exercise control over all aspects of political, social, and economic life. A modern example of totalitarianism is North Korea. For more information on North Korea, see the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) webpage “The World Factbook” on North Korea. In authoritarian states, such as the People’s Republic of China and Cuba, power is expansive, but there are some areas of individual freedom. In both systems, civic engagement is nonexistent or highly limited. While in an authoritarian state, there may be some areas in which citizens can engage in politics or economics. These areas are not freely chosen by citizens but, rather, are selected by political leaders. They are often areas that benefit political leadership, such as economic development of markets or limited political freedoms, which help mitigate widespread political protests. For more information on China, see the CIA’s webpage “The World Factbook” on China. For more information on Cuba, see the CIA’s webpage “The World Factbook” on Cuba.
On the political spectrum, note that representative democracy is in the center. Characteristics of representative democracy include popular consent; popular sovereignty; limited government; majority rule; protection of minority rights; protection of free and regular elections; protection of basic freedoms, such as speech and press; provision of public goods; and at least moderate levels of civic engagement. As you move away from the center in either direction, you become less of a centrist. Movement toward the left is a liberal ideology associated with the Democrat Party, and movement toward the right is a conservative ideology associated with the Republican Party.
In order to access the following activity, click the link below. Interactive Activity 1.2: Political Spectrum Click here to access the PDF version of Interactive Activity 1.2: Political Spectrum.
The United States boasts a wide variety of ideologies and political parties, but most Americans remain faithful to one of the two major parties and ideologies. A Gallup poll shows that in 2019 just over half of Americans consider themselves either Republican (29%) or Democrat (27%); 38% of Americans call themselves
Kim Jong Un (Scavina, 2018)
Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, 1919, 1919)
Che Guevara and Fidel Castro (Korda, 1961)
(Chernetskaya, n.d.)
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