Chapter 9 focuses on American politics and government. While in some ways the United States is just one case study, it is a very important case. This is because of America’s great economic and military might and the fact that the United States was one of the first modern democracies.

As we have seen throughout this book, politics occurs within constitutional and cultural frameworks that establish the rules of the political game. However, we also need to investigate the specific ways in which legislators, executives, bureaucrats, and judges act.

The legislature—in the U.S., the Congress, which is made up of the House and Senate—has four main but interrelated functions: representative, deliberative, legislative, and supervisory. By being representative, legislatures give voice to the political, economic, social, and geographic interests of the political community. Of course, legislators feel pressure from their party leadership and from the people they represent, and they must consider their own beliefs and conscience in deciding how to act politically. Legislatures also have a deliberative function, which means that they provide a forum for debate and formal decision making. Thus, they facilitate the examination of the views of contending parties. Furthermore, legislatures have a legislative function—the formal responsibility for making law. Finally, they serve a valuable role in supervising the work of the executive and the bureaucracy. Congressional committees, in the United States for instance, have extensive investigatory power that they often use to evaluate and, thus, control the functioning of the other branches of government.

Modern presidents frequently dominate the political process. They typically plan, initiate, and implement overall governmental policy. They are indispensable in the process of articulating vital national needs and fundamental interests. Without executive leadership, we would lack both a national vision and the ability to pull the country together on behalf of national priorities. The resourcefulness and vigor of executives enable modern governments to do their jobs. Presidents also act to control the very bureaucracy they head. In performing their tasks, they must obtain widespread cooperation from legislators, key interests, and citizens in general.

Despite frequent and often disturbing complaints about how bureaucrats interfere with security, liberty, justice, and welfare, it would be a mistake to ignore their important role in enabling legislatures and, even more so, executives to carry out governmental responsibilities. Clearly, government would come to a standstill without a responsible and capable bureaucracy. Rational, efficient, and impartial treatment of citizens based on sensible procedures, good record keeping and follow-up, and evenhanded behavior contributes to successful accommodation in the political community. Yet government bureaucrats can also be impersonal, inflexible, tangled in red tape, overbearing, inconsiderate, and unhelpful. This type of behavior gives bureaucracy a bad name. But we must not let this image cloud our understanding of the very vital role bureaucracies play in contemporary society.

The courts in the United States are powerful. This is because the United States has a written constitution, which the independent courts have the final say in interpreting. One of the most important powers that U.S. federal courts have is the power of judicial review—the ability to declare acts of Congress, executive actions, or the work of state governments unconstitutional. Most fundamentally, courts uphold valid law when it is challenged and provide a peaceful forum in which citizens can settle their innumerable disputes.

Along with these institutions of government, American politics is strongly influenced by the role of interest groups, political parties, and the mass media. Interest groups are organizations that develop to try to influence and shape public policy. In many cases, such as the NRA (National Rifle Association) or the AARP (the American Association of Retired People), interest groups can be very influential. In a broader sense, the ability of Americans to organize into groups facilitates the working of democracy. A political party is an organized group that seeks to elect candidates to government office, and American politics is dominated by the two major parties: the Democrats and Republicans. Finally, most American get knowledge of politics on a day-to-day basis via the mass media. The media are agencies of communication such as newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and, more recently, the Internet.

All of these nonconstitutional institutions are key ways in which the average citizen can learn about and participate in politics. In so doing, they make modern representative democracy possible.