1. Contrast democracy and dictatorship.
    
2. Explain how global politics affect war and terrorism, geopolitics, and the nation-state.
    
3. Describe the U.S. economy’s transition from industrialization to deindustrialization.
    
4. Discuss your relationship to employment, unemployment and underemployment, consumption, and leisure.
    
5. Describe the effects of globalization on the world economy.

Summary

Politics is one way to advance a given position or policy through the use of, or by putting pressure on, the state. Democracy is a political system in which people within a given state vote to choose their leaders and, in some cases, to approve legislation. This is in contrast to dictatorships, which are usually totalitarian governments operating without the consent of the governed. The question of who rules the United States is a source of continuing debate. In analyzing politics, structural-functionalists emphasize pluralism, while conflict theorists focus on power elite theory. One way of dealing with political disagreements is through war. Terrorism involves nongovernmental actors engaging in violence targeting noncombatants, property, or military personnel. Sociologists define the economy as the social system that ensures the production and distribution of goods and services. In the last 200 years, the capitalist U.S. economy has transitioned from the Industrial Revolution to industrialization to deindustrialization. Communism is an economic system oriented to the collective, and socialism, which followed it historically, is characterized by a society’s efforts to plan and organize production consciously and rationally. The United States has some social welfare programs but still lags far behind more developed welfare states in what it provides. In addition to general shifts in the U.S. economy, there have been dramatic changes in the nation’s labor force. The number of unemployed, discouraged, and underemployed workers rose during the recent recession. Deindustrialization and the decline of labor unions, as well as the growth of service jobs and an increasing focus on consumption, set the stage for a post-industrial society, in which the focus on the manufacture of goods has been replaced by an increase in service work. Consumption is generally considered to be the hallmark of postmodern society. Consumerism is an obsession with consumption. Cathedrals of consumption show that consumption has in many ways become today’s religion. The postmodern world is also associated with hyperconsumption and hyperdebt. One of the dominant trends of the last several decades is the increasing amount of leisure time devoted to consumption. Capitalism has become increasingly global in that transnational, not national, economic practices predominate. The eurozone has faced, and may again confront, a euro crisis that threatens to destabilize Europe and possibly the world.