Chapter Summary

Politics may appear to be a grubby, greedy pursuit, filled with scandal and backroom dealing. In fact, despite its shortcomings and sometimes shabby reputation, politics is an essential means for resolving differences and determining how power and resources are distributed in society. Politics is about who gets power and resources in society—and how they get them.

Government, a product of the political process, is the system established for exercising authority over a group of people. In the United States the government is embodied in the Constitution and the institutions set up by the Constitution. The Constitution represents the compromises and deals made by the founders on a number of fundamental issues, including how best to divide governing power.

Politics establishes the rules and institutions that shape how power is distributed in political interactions. The most fundamental rules of our political system are those that define and empower our political institutions and the way these institutions interact with each other and with individual citizens.

Government is shaped not only by politics but also by economics, which is concerned specifically with the distribution of wealth and society’s resources.The United States has a regulated capitalist economy, which means that property is owned privately and decisions about the production of goods and the distribution of wealth are left to marketplace forces with some governmental control.

Political systems dictate how power is distributed among leaders and citizens, and these systems take many forms. Authoritarian governments give ultimate power to the state. Nonauthoritarian systems, like democracy, place power largely in the hands of the people. Democracy is based on the principle of popular sovereignty, giving the people the ultimate power to govern. The meaning of citizenship is key to the definition of democracy. Citizens are believed to have rights protecting them from government as well as responsibilities to the public realm.

Democracy was not an obvious choice for the founders—their decisions were based on their own intellectual heritage and the historical experiences that informed them.

At the time of our nation’s founding, two competing views of citizenship emerged. The first view, articulated by James Madison, sees the citizen as fundamentally self-interested; this view led the founders to fear too much citizen participation in government. The second view puts faith in citizens’ ability to act for the common good, to put their obligation to the public ahead of their own self-interest. Both views are still alive and well today, and we can see evidence of both sentiments at work in political life.

At the time of our nation’s founding, two competing views of citizenship emerged. The first view, articulated by James Madison, sees the citizen as fundamentally self-interested; this view led the founders to fear too much citizen participation in government. The second view puts faith in citizens’ ability to act for the common good, to put their obligation to the public ahead of their own self-interest. Both views are still alive and well today, and we can see evidence of both sentiments at work in political life.

In this book we look at two ways of thinking critically about American politics: analyzing how our American political system works and evaluating how well it works. We rely on two underlying themes to pursue this course. The first is the assumption that all political events and situations can be examined by looking at who the actors are, what they have to win or lose, and how the rules shape the way these actors engage in their struggle. This analytic framework should provide us with a clear understanding of how power functions in our system. Examining who gets what they want and how they achieve it in political outcomes highlights the second theme of this text: how diverse citizens participate in political life to improve their own individual situations and to promote the interests of the community at large. We evaluate citizenship carefully as a means to determine how well the American system is working.