Preface

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About *American Government 3e*

*American Government 3e* aligns to the topics and objectives of many introductory American government courses. We have endeavored to make the government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject at the college level. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of the political structures that constitute American government. The book builds upon what students have already learned and emphasizes connections between topics as well as between theory and applications. The goal of each section is to enable students not just to recognize concepts, but to work with them in ways that will be useful in later courses, future careers, and as engaged citizens. The organization and pedagogical features were developed and vetted with feedback from a diverse group of American government instructors.

Changes to the third edition

Because the discipline of political science looks closely at our nation’s people, communities, and systems, introductory government texts must remain grounded in scholarship yet attuned to current events and emerging issues. Updates include improvements based on feedback from users, including expanded coverage of historical content on civil rights, and current examples of issues regarding civil rights and civil liberties. The driving principle of these changes is to help students understand that government is neither distant nor unreachable, but that it has personal influences and human impacts. The authors and reviewers sought to confront and illuminate the negative and hurtful aspects of our nation and its history, while demonstrating societal and individual progress. In doing so, the approach seeks to provide instructors with ample opportunities to open discussions, extend and update concepts, and drive deeper engagement.

Engaging features

Throughout *American Government 3e*, you will find features that engage students by taking selected topics a step further. Our features include:

Effective art program

Our art program is designed to enhance students’ understanding of concepts through clear and effective statistical graphs, tables, and photographs.

Module materials that reinforce key concepts

Answers to Questions in the Book

Students are provided the answers for the odd-numbered Review Questions. In order to allow instructors as much flexibility as possible, even-numbered answers and all Critical Thinking Question answers are provided only to instructors via the instructor resources.

Additional resources

About the authors

Students and the System

American Government and Civic Engagement

Introduction

What is Government?

DEFINING GOVERNMENT

The term government describes the means by which a society organizes itself and how it allocates authority in order to accomplish collective goals and provide benefits that the society as a whole needs. Among the goals that governments around the world seek to accomplish are economic prosperity, secure national borders, and the safety and well-being of citizens. Governments also provide benefits for their citizens. The type of benefits provided differ according to the country and their specific type of governmental system, but governments commonly provide such things as education, health care, and an infrastructure for transportation. The term politics refers to the process of gaining and exercising control within a government for the purpose of setting and achieving particular goals, especially those related to the division of resources within a nation.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF GOVERNMENT

The government of the United States can best be described as a republic, or representative democracy. A democracy is a government in which political power—influence over institutions, leaders, and policies—rests in the hands of the people. In a representative democracy, however, the citizens do not govern directly. Instead, they elect representatives to make decisions and pass laws on behalf of all the people. Thus, U.S. citizens vote for members of Congress, the president and vice president, members of state legislatures, governors, mayors, and members of town councils and school boards to act on their behalf. Most representative governments favor majority rule: the opinions of the majority of the people have more influence with government than those of the minority. If the number of elected representatives who favor a proposed law is greater than those who oppose it, the law will be enacted.

Who Governs? Elitism, Pluralism, and Tradeoffs

ELITISM VS. PLURALISM

Many Americans fear that a set of elite citizens is really in charge of government in the United States and that others have no influence. This belief is called the elite theory of government. In contrast to that perspective is the pluralist theory of government, which says that political power rests with competing interest groups who share influence in government. Pluralist theorists assume that citizens who want to get involved in the system do so because of the great number of access points to government. That is, the U.S. system, with several levels and branches, has many places where people and groups can engage the government.

THE TRADEOFFS PERSPECTIVE

Although elitists and pluralists present political influence as a tug-of-war with people at opposite ends of a rope trying to gain control of government, in reality government action and public policy are influenced by an ongoing series of tradeoffs or compromises. For instance, an action that will meet the needs of large numbers of people may not be favored by the elite members of society. Giving the elite what they want may interfere with plans to help the poor. As pluralists argue, public policy is created as a result of competition among groups. In the end, the interests of both the elite and the people likely influence government action, and compromises will often attempt to please them both.

Engagement in a Democracy

WHY GET INVOLVED?

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraAre fewer people today active in politics than in the past? Political scientist Robert Putnam has argued that civic engagement is declining; although many Americans may report belonging to groups, these groups are usually large, impersonal ones with thousands of members. People who join groups such as Amnesty International or Greenpeace may share certain values and ideals with other members of the group, but they do not actually interact with these other members. These organizations are different from the types of groups Americans used to belong to, like church groups or bowling leagues. Although people are still interested in volunteering and working for the public good, they are more interested in either working individually or joining large organizations where they have little opportunity to interact with others. Putnam considers a number of explanations for this decline in small group membership, including increased participation by women in the workforce, a decrease in the number of marriages and an increase in divorces, and the effect of technological developments, such as the internet, that separate people by allowing them to feel connected to others without having to spend time in their presence.Robert D. Putnam. 2001. *Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community*. New York: Simon & Schuster, 75.

PATHWAYS TO ENGAGEMENT

People can become civically engaged in many ways, either as individuals or as members of groups. Some forms of individual engagement require very little effort. One of the simplest ways is to stay informed about debates and events in the community, in the state, and in the nation. Awareness is the first step toward engagement. News is available from a variety of reputable sources, such as newspapers like the *New York Times*; national news shows, including those offered by the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio; and reputable internet sites.

FACTORS OF ENGAGEMENT

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraMany Americans engage in political activity on a regular basis. A survey conducted in 2018 revealed that almost 70 percent of American adults had participated in some type of political action in the past five years. These activities included largely non-personal activities that did not require a great deal of interaction with others, such as signing petitions, expressing opinions on social media, contacting elected representatives, or contributing money to campaigns. During the same period, approximately 30 percent of people attended a local government meeting or a political rally or event, while 16 percent worked or volunteered for a campaign.Pew Research Center. 26 April 2018. “Political Engagement, Knowledge, and the Midterms.” http://www.people-press.org/2018/04/26/10-political-engagement-knowledge-and-the-midterms/.

The Constitution and Its Origins

Introduction

The Pre-Revolutionary Period and the Roots of the American Political Tradition

POLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES

The beliefs and attitudes that led to the call for independence had long been an important part of colonial life. Of all the political thinkers who influenced American beliefs about government, the most important is surely John Locke ([link]). The most significant contributions of Locke, a seventeenth-century English philosopher, were his ideas regarding the relationship between government and natural rights, which were believed to be God-given rights to life, liberty, and property.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

The American Revolution began when a small and vocal group of colonists became convinced the king and Parliament were abusing them and depriving them of their rights. By 1776, they had been living under the rule of the British government for more than a century, and England had long treated the thirteen colonies with a degree of benign neglect. Each colony had established its own legislature. Taxes imposed by England were low, and property ownership was more widespread than in England. People readily proclaimed their loyalty to the king. For the most part, American colonists were proud to be British citizens and had no desire to form an independent nation.

The Articles of Confederation

PUTTING A NEW GOVERNMENT IN PLACE

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe final draft of the Articles of Confederation, which formed the basis of the new nation’s government, was accepted by Congress in November 1777 and submitted to the states for ratification. It would not become the law of the land until all thirteen states had approved it. Within two years, all except Maryland had done so. Maryland argued that all territory west of the Appalachians, to which some states had laid claim, should instead be held by the national government as public land for the benefit of all the states. When the last of these states, Virginia, relinquished its land claims in early 1781, Maryland approved the Articles.Stuart Bruchey. 1990. Enterprise: *The Dynamic Economy of a Free People*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 223. A few months later, the British surrendered.

WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THE ARTICLES?

The Articles of Confederation satisfied the desire of those in the new nation who wanted a weak central government with limited power. Ironically, however, their very success led to their undoing. It soon became apparent that, while they protected the sovereignty of the states, the Articles had created a central government too weak to function effectively.

The Development of the Constitution

POINTS OF CONTENTION

Fifty-five delegates arrived in Philadelphia in May 1787 for the meeting that became known as the Constitutional Convention. Many wanted to strengthen the role and authority of the national government but feared creating a central government that was too powerful. They wished to preserve state autonomy, although not to a degree that prevented the states from working together collectively or made them entirely independent of the will of the national government. While seeking to protect the rights of individuals from government abuse, they nevertheless wished to create a society in which concerns for law and order did not give way in the face of demands for individual liberty. They wished to give political rights to all free men but also feared mob rule, which many felt would have been the result of Shays’ Rebellion had it succeeded. Delegates from small states did not want their interests pushed aside by delegations from more populous states like Virginia. And everyone was concerned about slavery. Representatives from southern states worried that delegates from states where it had been or was being abolished might try to outlaw the institution. Those who favored a nation free of the influence of slavery feared that southerners might attempt to make it a permanent part of American society. The only decision that all could agree on was the election of George Washington, the former commander of the Continental Army and hero of the American Revolution, as the president of the convention.

COMPROMISE AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL DESIGN OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

Beginning in May 1787 and throughout the long, hot Philadelphia summer, the delegations from twelve states discussed, debated, and finally—after compromising many times—by September had worked out a new blueprint for the nation. The document they created, the U.S. Constitution, was an ingenious instrument that allayed fears of a too-powerful central government and solved the problems that had beleaguered the national government under the Articles of Confederation. For the most part, it also resolved the conflicts between small and large states, northern and southern states, and those who favored a strong federal government and those who argued for state sovereignty.

The Great Compromise

The Constitution consists of a preamble and seven articles. The first three articles divide the national government into three branches—Congress, the executive branch, and the federal judiciary—and describe the powers and responsibilities of each. In Article I, ten sections describe the structure of Congress, the basis for representation and the requirements for serving in Congress, the length of Congressional terms, and the powers of Congress. The national legislature created by the article reflects the compromises reached by the delegates regarding such issues as representation, slavery, and national power.

The Three-Fifths Compromise and the Debates over Slavery

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe Great Compromise that determined the structure of Congress soon led to another debate, however. When states took a census of their population for the purpose of allotting House representatives, should enslaved people be counted? Southern states were adamant that they should be, while delegates from northern states were vehemently opposed, arguing that representatives from southern states could not represent the interests of those enslaved. If enslaved people were not counted, however, southern states would have far fewer representatives in the House than northern states did. For example, if South Carolina were allotted representatives based solely on its free population, it would receive only half the number it would have received if enslaved people, who made up approximately 43 percent of the population, were included.U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. 1790. *Statistical Abstract of the United States*. Washington, DC: Department of Commerce.

Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances

Although debates over slavery and representation in Congress occupied many at the convention, the chief concern was the challenge of increasing the authority of the national government while ensuring that it did not become too powerful. The framers resolved this problem through a separation of powers, dividing the national government into three separate branches and assigning different responsibilities to each one, as shown in [link]. They also created a system of checks and balances by giving each of three branches of government the power to restrict the actions of the others, thus requiring them to work together.

Federal Power vs. State Power

The strongest guarantee that the power of the national government would be restricted and the states would retain a degree of sovereignty was the framers’ creation of a federal system of government. In a federal system, power is divided between the federal (or national) government and the state governments. Great or explicit powers, called enumerated powers, were granted to the federal government to declare war, impose taxes, coin and regulate currency, regulate foreign and interstate commerce, raise and maintain an army and a navy, maintain a post office, make treaties with foreign nations and with Native American tribes, and make laws regulating the naturalization of immigrants.

The Ratification of the Constitution

THE RATIFICATION PROCESS

Article VII, the final article of the Constitution, required that before the Constitution could become law and a new government could form, the document had to be ratified by nine of the thirteen states. Eleven days after the delegates at the Philadelphia convention approved it, copies of the Constitution were sent to each of the states, which were to hold ratifying conventions to either accept or reject it.

THE RATIFICATION CAMPAIGN

On the question of ratification, citizens quickly separated into two groups: Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The Federalists supported it. They tended to be among the elite members of society—wealthy and well-educated landowners, businessmen, and former military commanders who believed a strong government would be better for both national defense and economic growth. A national currency, which the federal government had the power to create, would ease business transactions. The ability of the federal government to regulate trade and place tariffs on imports would protect merchants from foreign competition. Furthermore, the power to collect taxes would allow the national government to fund internal improvements like roads, which would also help businessmen. Support for the Federalists was especially strong in New England.

Constitutional Change

THE AMENDMENT PROCESS

Since ratification in 1789, the Constitution has been amended only twenty-seven times. The first ten amendments were added in 1791. Responding to charges by Anti-Federalists that the Constitution made the national government too powerful and provided no protections for the rights of individuals, the newly elected federal government tackled the issue of guaranteeing liberties for American citizens. James Madison, a member of Congress from Virginia, took the lead in drafting nineteen potential changes to the Constitution.

KEY CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES

The Bill of Rights was intended to quiet the fears of Anti-Federalists that the Constitution did not adequately protect individual liberties and thus encourage their support of the new national government. Many of these first ten amendments were based on provisions of the English Bill of Rights and the Virginia Declaration of Rights. For example, the right to bear arms for protection (Second Amendment), the right not to have to provide shelter and provision for soldiers in peacetime (Third Amendment), the right to a trial by jury (Sixth and Seventh Amendments), and protection from excessive fines and from cruel and unusual punishment (Eighth Amendment) are taken from the English Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment, which requires among other things that people cannot be deprived of their life, liberty, or property except by a legal proceeding, was also greatly influenced by English law as well as the protections granted to Virginians in the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

American Federalism

Introduction

The Division of Powers

FEDERALISM DEFINED AND CONTRASTED

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraFederalism is an institutional arrangement that creates two relatively autonomous levels of government, each possessing the capacity to act directly on behalf of the people with the authority granted to it by the national constitution.See John Kincaid. 1975. “Federalism.” In *Civitas: A Framework for Civil Education*, eds. Charles Quigley and Charles Bahmueller. Calabasas, CA: Center for Civic Education, 391–392; William S. Riker. 1975. “Federalism.” In *Handbook of Political Science*, eds. Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 93–172. Although today’s federal systems vary in design, five structural characteristics are common to the United States and other federal systems around the world, including Germany and Mexico.

FEDERALISM AND THE CONSTITUTION

The Constitution contains several provisions that direct the functioning of U.S. federalism. Some delineate the scope of national and state power, while others restrict it. The remaining provisions shape relationships among the states and between the states and the federal government.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF FINANCES

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraFederal, state, and local governments depend on different sources of revenue to finance their annual expenditures. In 2014, total revenue (or receipts) reached \$3.2 trillion for the federal government, \$1.7 trillion for the states, and \$1.2 trillion for local governments.Data reported by http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/federal_revenue. State and local government figures are estimated. Two important developments have fundamentally changed the allocation of revenue since the early 1900s. First, the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 authorized Congress to impose income taxes without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population, a burdensome provision that Article I, Section 9, had imposed on the national government.*Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co*., 158 U.S. 601 (1895). With this change, the federal government’s ability to raise revenue significantly increased and so did its ability to spend.

The Evolution of American Federalism

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN NATIONAL POWER AND STATE POWER

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraAs George Washington’s secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795, Alexander Hamilton championed legislative efforts to create a publicly chartered bank. For Hamilton, the establishment of the Bank of the United States was fully within Congress’s authority, and he hoped the bank would foster economic development, print and circulate paper money, and provide loans to the government. Although Thomas Jefferson, Washington’s secretary of state, staunchly opposed Hamilton’s plan on the constitutional grounds that the national government had no authority to create such an instrument, Hamilton managed to convince the reluctant president to sign the legislation.The Lehrman Institute. “The Founding Trio: Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson.” http://lehrmaninstitute.org/history/FoundingTrio.asp

DUAL FEDERALISM

The late 1870s ushered in a new phase in the evolution of U.S. federalism. Under dual federalism, the states and national government exercise exclusive authority in distinctly delineated spheres of jurisdiction. Like the layers of a cake, the levels of government do not blend with one another but rather are clearly defined. Two factors contributed to the emergence of this conception of federalism. First, several Supreme Court rulings blocked attempts by both state and federal governments to step outside their jurisdictional boundaries. Second, the prevailing economic philosophy at the time loathed government interference in the process of industrial development.

COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe Great Depression of the 1930s brought economic hardships the nation had never witnessed before ([link]). Between 1929 and 1933, the national unemployment rate reached 25 percent, industrial output dropped by half, stock market assets lost more than half their value, thousands of banks went out of business, and the gross domestic product shrunk by one-quarter.Nicholas Crafts and Peter Fearon. 2010. “Lessons from the 1930s Great Depression,” *Oxford Review of Economic Policy* 26: 286–287; Gene Smiley. “The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: Great Depression.” http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GreatDepression.html Given the magnitude of the economic depression, there was pressure on the national government to coordinate a robust national response along with the states.

NEW FEDERALISM

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraDuring the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon (1969–1974) and Ronald Reagan (1981–1989), attempts were made to reverse the process of nationalization—that is, to restore states’ prominence in policy areas into which the federal government had moved in the past. New federalism is premised on the idea that the decentralization of policies enhances administrative efficiency, reduces overall public spending, and improves policy outcomes. During Nixon’s administration, general revenue sharing programs were created that distributed funds to the state and local governments with minimal restrictions on how the money was spent. The election of Ronald Reagan heralded the advent of a “devolution revolution” in U.S. federalism, in which the president pledged to return authority to the states according to the Constitution. In the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, congressional leaders together with President Reagan consolidated numerous federal grant programs related to social welfare and reformulated them in order to give state and local administrators greater discretion in using federal funds.Allen Schick. 2007. *The Federal Budget*, 3rd ed. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

Intergovernmental Relationships

GRANTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe national government has used grants to influence state actions as far back as the Articles of Confederation when it provided states with land grants. In the first half of the 1800s, land grants were the primary means by which the federal government supported the states. Millions of acres of federal land were donated to support road, railroad, bridge, and canal construction projects, all of which were instrumental in piecing together a national transportation system to facilitate migration, interstate commerce, postal mail service, and movement of military people and equipment. Numerous universities and colleges across the country, such as Oklahoma State University and President Biden's alma mater, the University of Delaware, are land-grant institutions because their campuses were built on land donated by the federal government or by using funding secured by the sale of donated federal land. In the segregated South, black land grant universities were established in 1890, including Florida A&M University and Prairie View A&M University (Texas).U.S. Department of Education: Office for Civil Rights, Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Higher Education Desegregation, March 1991, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq9511.html. At the turn of the twentieth century, cash grants replaced land grants as the main form of federal intergovernmental transfers and have become a central part of modern federalism.Dilger, “Federal Grants to State and Local Governments.”

UNFUNDED MANDATES

Unfunded mandates are federal laws and regulations that impose obligations on state and local governments without fully compensating them for the administrative costs they incur. The federal government has used mandates increasingly since the 1960s to promote national objectives in policy areas such as the environment, civil rights, education, and homeland security. One type of mandate threatens civil and criminal penalties for state and local authorities that fail to comply with them across the board in all programs, while another provides for the suspension of federal grant money if the mandate is not followed. These types of mandates are commonly referred to as *crosscutting* mandates. Failure to fully comply with crosscutting mandates can result in punishments that normally include reduction of or suspension of federal grants, prosecution of officials, fines, or some combination of these penalties. If only one requirement is not met, state or local governments may not get any money at all.

Competitive Federalism Today

CONTENDING ISSUES

Immigration and marriage equality have not been the subject of much contention between states and the federal government until recent decades. Before that, it was understood that the federal government handled immigration and states determined the legality of marriage, whether between people of different races or the same sex. This understanding of exclusive responsibilities has changed; today both levels of government play roles in these two policy areas.

STRATEGIZING ABOUT NEW ISSUES

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraMothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) was established in 1980 by a woman whose thirteen-year-old daughter had been killed by a drunk driver. The organization lobbied state legislators to raise the drinking age and impose tougher penalties, but without success. States with lower drinking ages had an economic interest in maintaining them because they lured youths from neighboring states with restricted consumption laws. So MADD decided to redirect its lobbying efforts at Congress, hoping to find sympathetic representatives willing to take action. In 1984, the federal government passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act (NMDAA), a crosscutting mandate that gradually reduced federal highway grant money to any state that failed to increase the legal age for alcohol purchase and possession to twenty-one. After losing a legal battle against the NMDAA, all states were in compliance by 1988.*South Dakota v. Dole*, 483 U.S. 203 (1987).

Advantages and Disadvantages of Federalism

THE BENEFITS OF FEDERALISM

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraAmong the merits of federalism are that it promotes policy innovation and political participation and accommodates diversity of opinion. On the subject of policy innovation, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis observed in 1932 that “a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”*New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann*, 285 U.S. 262 (1932). What Brandeis meant was that states could harness their constitutional authority to engage in policy innovations that might eventually be diffused to other states and at the national level. For example, a number of New Deal breakthroughs, such as child labor laws, were inspired by state policies. Prior to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women already had the right to vote in several states. California has led the way in establishing standards for fuel emissions and other environmental policies ([link]). Recently, the health insurance exchanges run by Connecticut, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Washington have served as models for other states seeking to improve the performance of their exchanges.Christine Vestal and Michael Ollove, “Why some state-run health exchanges worked,” *USA Today*, 10 December 2013.

THE DRAWBACKS OF FEDERALISM

Federalism also comes with drawbacks. Chief among them are economic disparities across states, race-to-the-bottom dynamics (i.e., states compete to attract business by lowering taxes and regulations), and the difficulty of taking action on issues of national importance.

Individual Agency and Action

Civil Liberties

Introduction

What Are Civil Liberties?

DEFINING CIVIL LIBERTIES

To be more precise in their language, political scientists and legal experts make a distinction between civil liberties and civil rights, even though the Constitution has been interpreted to protect both. We typically envision civil liberties as limitations on government power, intended to protect freedoms upon which governments may not legally intrude. For example, the First Amendment denies the government the power to prohibit “the free exercise” of religion. This means that neither states nor the national government can forbid people to follow a religion of their choice, even if politicians and judges think the religion is misguided, blasphemous, or otherwise inappropriate. Unlike most of the rest of world at the time, U.S. citizens could even create their own faiths recruit followers to it (subject to the U.S. Supreme Court deeming it a religion), even if both society and government disapprove of its tenets. That said, the *way* you practice your religion, like any other practice, may be regulated if it impinges on the rights of others. To return to the previous example, religious communities may believe their faith will protect them and loved ones from disease, but they may not have the right to both not vaccinate their children *and* have those children publicly educated, where they would pose a risk to others. The Eighth Amendment says the government cannot impose “cruel and unusual punishments” on individuals for their criminal acts. Although the definitions of *cruel* and *unusual* have expanded over the years, the courts have generally and consistently interpreted this provision as making it unconstitutional for government officials to torture suspects. As we will see later in this chapter, courts are currently debating the degree to which extended solitary confinement and certain forms of capital punishment might count as cruel and unusual.

CIVIL LIBERTIES AND THE CONSTITUTION

The Constitution as drafted in 1787 did not include a Bill of Rights, although the idea of including one was proposed and, after brief discussion, dismissed in the final week of the Constitutional Convention. The framers of the Constitution believed they faced much more pressing concerns than the protection of civil rights and liberties—most notably keeping the fragile union together in the light of internal unrest and external threats.

EXTENDING THE BILL OF RIGHTS TO THE STATES

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraIn the decades following the Constitution’s ratification, the Supreme Court declined to expand the Bill of Rights to curb the power of the states, most notably in the 1833 case of *Barron v. Baltimore*.*Barron v. Baltimore*, 32 U.S. 243 (1833). In this case, which dealt with property rights under the Fifth Amendment, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that the Bill of Rights applied only to actions by the federal government, not state or local governments. Explaining the court’s ruling, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that it was incorrect to argue that “the Constitution was intended to secure the people of the several states against the undue exercise of power by their respective state governments; as well as against that which might be attempted by their [Federal] government.”

Securing Basic Freedoms

THE FIRST AMENDMENT

The First Amendment is perhaps the most famous provision of the Bill of Rights. It is arguably also the most extensive, because it guarantees both religious freedoms and the right to express your views in public. Specifically, the First Amendment says:

THE SECOND AMENDMENT

There has been increased conflict over the Second Amendment in recent years due to school shootings and gun violence. As a result, gun rights have become a highly charged political issue. The text of the Second Amendment is among the shortest of those included in the Constitution:

THE THIRD AMENDMENT

The Third Amendment says in full:

THE FOURTH AMENDMENT

The Fourth Amendment sits at the boundary between general individual freedoms and the rights of those suspected of crimes. We saw earlier that perhaps it reflects James Madison’s broader concern about establishing an expectation of privacy from government intrusion at home. Another way to think of the Fourth Amendment is that it protects us from overzealous efforts by law enforcement to root out crime by ensuring that police have good reason before they intrude on people’s lives with criminal investigations.

The Rights of Suspects

THE FIFTH AMENDMENT

Many of the provisions dealing with the rights of the accused are included in the Fifth Amendment; accordingly, it is one of the longest in the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment states in full:

THE SIXTH AMENDMENT

Once someone has been charged with a crime and indicted, the next stage in a criminal case is typically the trial itself, unless a plea bargain is reached. The Sixth Amendment contains the provisions that govern criminal trials. In full, it states:

THE SEVENTH AMENDMENT

The Seventh Amendment deals with the rights of those engaged in civil disputes—disagreements between individuals or businesses in which people are typically seeking compensation for some harm caused. For example, in an automobile accident, the person responsible is compelled to compensate any others (either directly or through their insurance company). Much of the work of the legal system consists of efforts to resolve civil disputes. The Seventh Amendment, in full, reads:

THE EIGHTH AMENDMENT

The Eighth Amendment says, in full:

Interpreting the Bill of Rights

THE NINTH AMENDMENT

We saw above that James Madison and the other framers were aware they might endanger some rights if they listed a few in the Constitution and omitted others. To ensure that those interpreting the Constitution would recognize that the listing of freedoms and rights in the Bill of Rights was not exhaustive, the Ninth Amendment states:

THE TENTH AMENDMENT

The Tenth Amendment is as follows:

THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraAlthough the term *privacy* does not appear in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, scholars have interpreted several Bill of Rights provisions as an indication that James Madison and Congress sought to protect a common-law right to privacy as it would have been understood in the late eighteenth century: a right to be free of government intrusion into our personal life, particularly within the bounds of the home. For example, one could see the Second Amendment as standing for the common-law right to self-defense in the home; the Third Amendment as a statement that government soldiers should not be housed in anyone’s home; the Fourth Amendment as setting a high legal standard for allowing agents of the state to intrude on someone’s home; and the due process and takings clauses of the Fifth Amendment as applying an equally high legal standard to the government’s taking a home or property (reinforced after the Civil War by the Fourteenth Amendment). Alternatively, one could argue that the Ninth Amendment anticipated the existence of a common-law right to privacy, among other rights, when it acknowledged the existence of basic, natural rights not listed in the Bill of Rights or the body of the Constitution itself.See *Griswold v. Connecticut*, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). This discussion parallels the debate among the members of the Supreme Court in the *Griswold* case. Lawyers Samuel D. Warren and Louis Brandeis (the latter a future Supreme Court justice) famously developed the concept of privacy rights in a law review article published in 1890.Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis. 1890. “The Right to Privacy,” *Harvard Law Review* 4, No. 193.

Civil Rights

Introduction

What Are Civil Rights and How Do We Identify Them?

DEFINING CIVIL RIGHTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraEssentially, *civil rights* are guarantees by the government that it will treat people equally—particularly people belonging to groups that have historically been denied the same rights and opportunities as others. The due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution enacted the Declaration of Independence's proclamation that “all men are created equal” by providing *de jure* equal treatment under the law. According to Chief Justice Earl Warren in the Supreme Court case of *Bolling v. Sharpe* (1954), “discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process.”*Bolling v. Sharpe*, 347 U.S. 497 (1954). Additional guarantees of equality were provided in 1868 by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, in part, that “No State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Thus, between the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, neither state governments nor the federal government may treat people unequally unless unequal treatment is necessary to maintain important governmental interests such as public safety.

IDENTIFYING DISCRIMINATION

Laws that treat one group of people differently from others are not always unconstitutional. In fact, the government engages in legal discrimination quite often. In most states, you must be eighteen years old to smoke cigarettes and twenty-one to drink alcohol; these laws discriminate against the young. To get a driver’s license so you can legally drive a car on public roads, you have to be a minimum age and pass tests showing your knowledge, practical skills, and vision. Some public colleges and universities run by the government have an open admission policy, which means the school admits all who apply, but others require that students have a high school diploma or a particular score on the SAT or ACT or a GPA above a certain number. This is a kind of discrimination, because these requirements treat people who do not have a high school diploma or a high enough GPA or SAT score differently. How can the federal, state, and local governments discriminate in all these ways even though the equal protection clause seems to suggest that everyone be treated the same?

PUTTING CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE CONSTITUTION

At the time of the nation’s founding, of course, the treatment of many groups was unequal: the rights of women were decidedly fewer than those of men, and neither they, the hundreds of thousands of enslaved people of African descent, or indigenous Americans were considered fully human, let alone U.S. citizens. While the early United States was perhaps a more inclusive society than most of the world at that time, equal treatment of all remained a radical idea.

IDENTIFYING CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUES

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraLooking back, it’s relatively easy to identify civil rights issues that arose, looking into the future is much harder. For example, few people fifty years ago would have identified the rights of gay or transgender Americans as an important civil rights issue, or predicted it would become one. Similarly, in past decades the rights of those with disabilities, particularly intellectual disabilities, were often ignored by the public at large. Many people with disabilities were institutionalized and given little further thought, and until very recently, laws remained on the books in some states allowing those with intellectual or developmental disabilities to be subject to forced sterilization.Catherine K. Harbour, and Pallab K. Maulik. 2010. “History of Intellectual Disability.” In *International Encyclopedia of Rehabilitation*, eds. J. H. Stone and M. Blouin. http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/encyclopedia/en/article/143/ (April 10, 2016). Today, most of us view this treatment as barbaric.

The African American Struggle for Equality

SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraIn the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson made the radical statement that “all men are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yet, like other wealthy landowners of his time, Jefferson also owned dozens of other human beings as his personal property. He recognized this contradiction, personally considered the institution of slavery to be a “hideous blot” on the nation, and agreed to free those he held in bondage upon his death.Lucia Stanton. 2008. “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery,” https://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-slavery#footnoteref3_srni04n. However, to forge a political union that would stand the test of time, he and the other founders—and later the framers of the Constitution—chose not to address the issue in any definitive way. Political support for abolition was very much a minority stance in the United States at the time, although after the Revolution many of the northern states followed the European example of fifty years prior in abolishing slavery.“How Did Slavery Disappear in the North?” http://www.abolitionseminar.org/how-did-northern-states-gradually-abolish-slavery/ (April 10, 2016); Nicholas Boston and Jennifer Hallam, “The Slave Experience: Freedom and Emancipation,” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/freedom/history.html (April 10, 2016).

RECONSTRUCTION

At the end of the Civil War, the South entered a period called Reconstruction (1865–1877) during which state governments were reorganized before the rebellious states were allowed to be readmitted to the Union. As part of this process, the Republican Party pushed for a permanent end to slavery. A constitutional amendment to this effect was passed by the House of Representatives in January of 1865, after having already been approved by the Senate in April of 1864, and it was ratified in December of 1865 as the Thirteenth Amendment. The amendment’s first section states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” In effect, this amendment outlawed slavery in the United States.

CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE COURTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraBy the turn of the twentieth century, the position of African Americans was quite bleak. Even outside the South, racial inequality was a fact of everyday life. African American leaders and thinkers themselves disagreed on the right path forward. Some, like Booker T. Washington, argued that acceptance of inequality and segregation over the short term would allow African Americans to focus their efforts on improving their educational and social status until White people were forced to acknowledge them as equals. W. E. B. Du Bois, however, argued for a more confrontational approach and in 1909 founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as a rallying point for securing equality. White liberals dominated the organization in its early years, but Black people assumed control over its operations in the 1920s.“NAACP: 100 Years of History,” https://donate.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history (April 10, 2016).

LEGISLATING CIVIL RIGHTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraBeyond these favorable court rulings, however, progress toward equality for African Americans remained slow in the 1950s. In 1962, Congress proposed what later became the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, which banned the poll tax in elections to federal (but not state or local) office; the amendment went into effect after being ratified in early 1964. Several southern states continued to require residents to pay poll taxes in order to vote in state elections until 1966 when, in the case of *Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections*, the Supreme Court declared that requiring payment of a poll tax in order to vote in an election at any level was unconstitutional.*Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections*, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).

CONTINUING CHALLENGES FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS

The civil rights movement for African Americans did not end with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. For the last fifty years, the African American community has faced challenges related to both past and current discrimination, and progress on both fronts remains slow, uneven, and often frustrating.

The Fight for Women’s Rights

THE EARLY WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraAt the time of the American Revolution, women had few rights. Although single women were allowed to own property, married women were not. When women married, their separate legal identities were erased under the legal principle of coverture. Not only did women adopt their husbands’ names, but all personal property they owned legally became their husbands’ property. Husbands could not sell their wives’ real property—such as land or in some states enslaved people—without their permission, but they were allowed to manage it and retain the profits. If women worked outside the home, their husbands were entitled to their wages.Mary Beth Norton. 1980. *Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800*. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 46. So long as a man provided food, clothing, and shelter for his wife, she was not legally allowed to leave him. Divorce was difficult and in some places impossible to obtain.Ibid., 47. Higher education for women was not available, and women were barred from professional positions in medicine, law, and ministry.

CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Just as the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments did not result in equality for African Americans, the Nineteenth Amendment did not end discrimination against women in education, employment, or other areas of life, which continued to be legal. Although women could vote, they very rarely ran for or held public office. Women continued to be underrepresented in the professions, and relatively few sought advanced degrees. Until the mid-twentieth century, the ideal in U.S. society was typically for women to marry, have children, and become housewives. Those who sought work for pay outside the home were routinely denied jobs because of their sex and, when they did find employment, were paid less than men. Women who wished to remain childless or limit the number of children they had in order to work or attend college found it difficult to do so. In some states it was illegal to sell contraceptive devices, and abortions were largely illegal and difficult for women to obtain.

CONTINUING CHALLENGES FOR WOMEN

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThere is no doubt that women have made great progress since the Seneca Falls Convention. Today, more women than men attend college, and they are more likely than men to graduate.Mark Hugo Lopez and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera. 6 March 2014. “Women’s College Enrollment Gains Leave Men Behind,” http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-college-enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind/; Allie Bidwell, “Women More Likely to Graduate College, but Still Earn Less Than Men,” *U.S. News & World Report*, 31 October 2014. Women are represented in all the professions, and approximately half of all law and medical school students are women.“A Current Glance at Women in the Law–July 2014,” *American Bar Association*, July 2014; “Medical School Applicants, Enrollment Reach All-Time Highs,” Association of American Medical Colleges, October 24, 2013. Women have held Cabinet positions and have been elected to Congress. They have run for president and vice president, and four female justices currently serve on the Supreme Court. Women are also represented in all branches of the military and can serve in combat.

Civil Rights for Indigenous Groups: Native Americans, Alaskans, and Hawaiians

NATIVE AMERICANS LOSE THEIR LAND AND THEIR RIGHTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraFrom the very beginning of European settlement in North America, Native Americans were abused and exploited. Early British settlers attempted to enslave the members of various tribes, especially in the southern colonies and states.See Alan Gallay. 2009. *Indian Slavery in Colonial America*. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Following the American Revolution, the U.S. government assumed responsibility for conducting negotiations with Indian tribes, all of which were designated as sovereign nations, and regulating commerce with them. Because Native Americans were officially regarded as citizens of other nations, they were denied U.S. citizenship.See James Wilson. 1998. *The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America*. New York: Grove Press.

THE FIGHT FOR NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraAs Native Americans were removed from their tribal lands and increasingly saw their traditional cultures being destroyed over the course of the nineteenth century, a movement to protect their rights began to grow. Sarah Winnemucca ([link]), member of the Paiute tribe, lectured throughout the east in the 1880s in order to acquaint White audiences with the injustices suffered by the western tribes.See Gae Whitney Canfield. 1988. *Sarah Winnemucca of the Northern Paiutes*. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.  Lakota physician Charles Eastman ([link]) also worked for Native American rights. In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted citizenship to all Native Americans born after its passage. Native Americans born before the act took effect, who had not already become citizens as a result of the Dawes Severalty Act or service in the army in World War I, had to wait until the Nationality Act of 1940 to become citizens. In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act, which ended the division of reservation land into allotments. It returned to Native American tribes the right to institute self-government on their reservations, write constitutions, and manage their remaining lands and resources. It also provided funds for Native Americans to start their own businesses and attain a college education.Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (P.L. 73–383); “Indian Reservations,” http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?zid=2a87fa28f20f1e66b5f663e76873fd8c&action=2&catId=&documentId=
GALE|CX3401802046&userGroupName=lnoca_hawken&jsid=f44511ddfece4faafab082109e34a539 (April 10, 2016).

ALASKA NATIVES AND NATIVE HAWAIIANS REGAIN SOME RIGHTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraAlaska Natives and Native Hawaiians endured many of the same abuses as Native Americans, including loss of land and forced assimilation. Following the discovery of oil in Alaska, however, the state, in an effort to gain undisputed title to oil rich land, settled the issue of Alaska Natives’ land claims with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971. According to the terms of the act, Alaska Natives received 44 million acres of resource-rich land and more than \$900 million in cash in exchange for relinquishing claims to ancestral lands to which the state wanted title.U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, “Racism’s Frontier: The Untold Story of Discrimination and Division in Alaska,” http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/sac/ak0402/ch1.htm (April 10, 2016).

Equal Protection for Other Groups

HISPANIC/LATINO CIVIL RIGHTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraHispanic and Latino people in the United States have faced many of the same problems as African Americans and Native Americans. Although the terms Hispanic and Latino are often used interchangeably, they are not the same. *Hispanic* usually refers to native speakers of Spanish or those descended from Spanish-speaking countries. *Latino* refers to people who come from, or whose ancestors came from, Latin America. Not all Hispanics are Latinos and vice versa. People from Spain are Hispanic but are not Latino, while people from Brazil are Latino but not Hispanic. Both Hispanics and Latinos may be of any race or ethnicity; they may be of European, African, Native American descent, or they may be of mixed racial or ethnic background. We will use the term "Latino" here, while acknowledging that many these days prefer the term Latinx as it is gender neutral.“Hispanic v. Latino,” http://www.soaw.org/resources/anti-opp-resources/108-race/830-hispanic-vs-latino (April 10, 2016).

ASIAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS

As the rash of recent violence against them has shown, Asian Americans have also often been discriminated against and denied their civil rights. Often stereotyped as the "the model minority" (because it is assumed they are generally financially successful and do well academically), the underlying reality is complex. The truth is that Asian Americans have long faced discrimination. Indeed, in the nineteenth century, Asian people were among the most despised of all immigrant groups and were often subjected to the same laws enforcing segregation and forbidding interracial marriage as were African Americans and American Indians.

THE FIGHT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraLaws against homosexuality, which was regarded as a sin and a moral failing, existed in most states throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the late nineteenth century, homosexuality had come to be regarded as a form of mental illness as well as a sin, and gay men were often erroneously believed to be pedophiles.See Jonathan Ned Katz. 1995. *Gay and American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the United States*. New York: Thomas Crowell. As a result, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people, currently known as the LGBTQ community, had to keep their sexual orientation hidden or “closeted.” Secrecy became even more important in the 1950s, when fear of gay men increased and the federal government believed they could be led into disloyal acts through blackmail by Soviet agents. As a result, many men lost or were denied government jobs.Judith Adkins. "These People Are Frightened to Death: Congressional Investigations and the Lavender Scare." Prologue Magazine. 2016. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html Fears of lesbians also increased after World War II as U.S. society stressed conformity to traditional gender roles and the importance of marriage and childrearing.See David K. Johnson. 2004. *The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraPeople with disabilities make up one of the last groups whose civil rights have been recognized. For a long time, they were denied employment and access to public education. Many were institutionalized. A *eugenics* movement in the United States in the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries sought to encourage childbearing among White people without disabilities and discourage it among those with physical or intellectual disabilities. Many states passed laws prohibiting marriage among people who had what were believed to be hereditary “defects.” Among those affected were people who were blind or deaf, those with epilepsy, people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and those with mental illnesses. In some states, programs existed to sterilize people considered “feeble minded” by the standards of the time, without their will or consent.
See Edward J. Larson. 1995. *Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in The Deep South*. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press; Rebecca M. Kluchin. 2009. *Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America* *1950–1980*. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. When this practice was challenged by a woman in a state institution in Virginia, the Supreme Court, in the 1927 case of *Buck v. Bell*, upheld the right of state governments to sterilize those people believed likely to have children who would become dependent upon public welfare.*Buck v. Bell*, 274 U.S. 200 (1927). Some of these programs persisted into the 1970s, as [link] shows.Kim Severson, “Thousands Sterilized, A State Weighs Restitution,” *New York Times*, 9 December 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/us/redress-weighed-for-forced-sterilizations-in-north-carolina.html?_r=1&hp.

THE RIGHTS OF RELIGIOUS MINORITIES

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe right to worship as a person chooses was one of the reasons for the initial settlement of the United States. Thus, it is ironic that many people throughout U.S. history have been denied their civil rights because of their status as members of a religious minority. Beginning in the early nineteenth century with the immigration of large numbers of Irish Catholics to the United States, anti-Catholicism became a common feature of American life and remained so until the mid-twentieth century. Catholic immigrants were denied jobs, and in the 1830s and 1840s anti-Catholic literature accused Catholic priests and nuns of committing horrific acts. Anti-Mormon sentiment was also quite common, and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were accused of kidnapping women and building armies for the purpose of dominating their neighbors. At times, these fears led to acts of violence against these religious groups. For example, a convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, was burned to the ground in 1834.See Nancy Lusignan Schultz. 2000. *Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent*. New York: Free Press. In 1844, Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, and his brother were murdered by a mob in Illinois.See Richard L. Bushman. 2005. Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

The Politics of Public Opinion

Introduction

The Nature of Public Opinion

WHAT IS PUBLIC OPINION?

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraPublic opinion is a collection of popular views about something, perhaps a person, a local or national event, or a new idea. For example, each day, a number of polling companies call Americans at random to ask whether they approve or disapprove of the way the president is guiding the economy.Gallup. 2015. “Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval.” *Gallup*. June 6, 2015. http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx (February 17, 2016); Rasmussen Reports. 2015. “Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.” *Rasmussen Reports* June 6, 2015. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll (February 17, 2016); Roper Center. 2015. “Obama Presidential Approval.” *Roper Center*. June 6, 2015. http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/polls/presidential-approval/ (February 17, 2016). When situations arise internationally, polling companies survey whether citizens support U.S. intervention in places like Syria or Ukraine. These individual opinions are collected together to be analyzed and interpreted for politicians and the media. The analysis examines how the public feels or thinks, so politicians can use the information to make decisions about their future legislative votes, campaign messages, or propaganda.

POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION

At the same time that our beliefs and attitudes are forming during childhood, we are also being *socialized*; that is, we are learning from many information sources about the society and community in which we live and how we are to behave in it. Political socialization is the process by which we are trained to understand and join a country’s political world, and, like most forms of socialization, it starts when we are very young. We may first become aware of politics by watching a parent or guardian vote, for instance, or by hearing presidents and candidates speak on television or the Internet, or seeing adults honor the American flag at an event ([link]). As socialization continues, we are introduced to basic political information in school. We recite the Pledge of Allegiance and learn about the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, the two major political parties, the three branches of government, and the economic system.

SOCIALIZATION AGENTS

An agent of political socialization is a source of political information intended to help citizens understand how to act in their political system and how to make decisions on political matters. The information may help a citizen decide how to vote, where to donate money, or how to protest decisions made by the government.

SOCIALIZATION AND IDEOLOGY

The socialization process leaves citizens with attitudes and beliefs that create a personal ideology. Ideologies depend on attitudes and beliefs, and on the way we prioritize each belief over the others. Most citizens hold a great number of beliefs and attitudes about government action. Many think government should provide for the common defense, in the form of a national military. They also argue that government should provide services to its citizens in the form of free education, unemployment benefits, and assistance for the poor.

IDEOLOGIES AND THE IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM

One useful way to look at ideologies is to place them on a spectrum that visually compares them based on what they prioritize. Liberal ideologies are traditionally put on the left and conservative ideologies on the right. (This placement dates from the French Revolution and is why liberals are called left-wing and conservatives are called right-wing.) The ideologies at the ends of the spectrum are the most extreme; those in the middle are moderate. Thus, people who identify with left- and right-wing ideologies identify with beliefs to the left and right ends of the spectrum, while moderates balance the beliefs at the extremes of the spectrum.

How Is Public Opinion Measured?

TAKING A POLL

Most public opinion polls aim to be accurate, but this is not an easy task. Political polling is a science. From design to implementation, polls are complex and require careful planning and care. Mitt Romney’s campaign polls are only a recent example of problems stemming from polling methods. Our history is littered with examples of polling companies producing results that incorrectly predicted public opinion due to poor survey design or bad polling methods.

TECHNOLOGY AND POLLING

The days of randomly walking neighborhoods and phone book cold-calling to interview random citizens are gone. Scientific polling has made interviewing more deliberate. Historically, many polls were conducted in person, yet this was expensive and yielded problematic results.

PROBLEMS IN POLLING

For a number of reasons, polls may not produce accurate results. Two important factors a polling company faces are timing and human nature. Unless you conduct an exit poll during an election and interviewers stand at the polling places on Election Day to ask voters how they voted, there is always the possibility the poll results will be wrong. The simplest reason is that if there is time between the poll and Election Day, a citizen might change their mind, lie, or choose not to vote at all. Timing is very important during elections, because surprise events can shift enough opinions to change an election result. Of course, there are many other reasons why polls, even those not time-bound by elections or events, may be inaccurate.

PUSH POLLS

One of the newer byproducts of polling is the creation of push poll**s**, which consist of political campaign information presented as polls. Respondents is called and asked a series of questions about their position or candidate selections. If a respondent’s answers are for the wrong candidate, the next questions will give negative information about the candidate in an effort to change the voter’s mind.

What Does the Public Think?

EXPERIENCES THAT AFFECT PUBLIC OPINION

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraIdeological shifts are more likely to occur if a voter’s ideology is only weakly supported by their beliefs. Citizens can also hold beliefs or opinions that are contrary or conflicting, especially if their knowledge of an issue or candidate is limited. And having limited information makes it easier for them to abandon an opinion. Finally, citizens’ opinions will change as they grow older and separate from family.Michael S. Lewis-Beck, William G. Jacoby, Helmut Norpoth, and Herbert F. Weisberg. 2008. *American Vote Revisited*. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

OPINIONS ABOUT POLITICS AND POLICIES

What *do* Americans think about their political system, policies, and institutions? Public opinion has not been consistent over the years. It fluctuates based on the times and events, and on the people holding major office ([link]). Sometimes a majority of the public express similar ideas, but many times not. Where, then, does the public agree and disagree? Let’s look at the two-party system, and then at opinions about public policy, economic policy, and social policy.

PUBLIC OPINION AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

Public opinion about American institutions is measured in public approval ratings rather than in questions of choice between positions or candidates. The congressional and executive branches of government are the subject of much scrutiny and discussed daily in the media. Polling companies take daily approval polls of these two branches. The Supreme Court makes the news less frequently, and approval polls are more likely after the court has released major opinions. All three branches, however, are susceptible to swings in public approval in response to their actions and to national events. Approval ratings are generally not stable for any of the three. We next look at each in turn.

The Effects of Public Opinion

PUBLIC OPINION AND ELECTIONS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraElections are the events on which opinion polls have the greatest measured effect. Public opinion polls do more than show how we feel on issues or project who might win an election. The media use public opinion polls to decide which candidates are ahead of the others and therefore of interest to voters and worthy of interview. From the moment President Obama was inaugurated for his second term, speculation began about who would run in the 2016 presidential election. Within a year, potential candidates were being ranked and compared by a number of newspapers.Paul Hitlin. 2013. “The 2016 Presidential Media Primary Is Off to a Fast Start.” *Pew Research Center*. October 3, 2013. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/03/the-2016-presidential-media-primary-is-off-to-a-fast-start/ (February 18, 2016). The speculation included favorability poll**s** on Hillary Clinton, which measured how positively voters felt about her as a candidate. The media deemed these polls important because they showed Clinton as the frontrunner for the Democrats in the next election.Pew Research Center, 2015. “Hillary Clinton’s Favorability Ratings over Her Career.” *Pew Research Center*. June 6, 2015. http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/themes/pewresearch/static/hillary-clintons-favorability-ratings-over-her-career/ (February 18, 2016).

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

The relationship between public opinion polls and government action is murkier than that between polls and elections. Like the news media and campaign staffers, members of the three branches of government are aware of public opinion. But do politicians use public opinion polls to guide their decisions and actions?

Voting and Elections

Introduction

Voter Registration

VOTER REGISTRATION ACROSS THE UNITED STATES

Elections are state-by-state contests. They include general elections for president and statewide offices (e.g., governor and U.S. senator), and they are often organized and paid for by the states. Because political cultures vary from state to state, the process of voter registration similarly varies. For example, suppose an 85-year-old retiree with an expired driver’s license wants to register to vote. He or she might be able to register quickly in California or Florida, but a current government ID might be required prior to registration in Texas or Indiana.

HOW DOES SOMEONE REGISTER TO VOTE?

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe National Commission on Voting Rights completed a study in September 2015 that found state registration laws can either raise or reduce voter turnout rates, especially among citizens who are young or whose income falls below the poverty line. States with simple voter registration had more registered citizens.Tova Wang and Maria Peralta. 22 September 2015. “New Report Released by National Commission on Voting Rights: More Work Needed to Improve Registration and Voting in the U.S.” http://votingrightstoday.org/ncvr/resources/electionadmin.

WHO IS ALLOWED TO REGISTER?

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraIn order to be eligible to vote in the United States, a person must be a citizen, resident, and eighteen years old. But states often place additional requirements on the right to vote. The most common requirement is that voters must be deemed competent and not currently serving time in jail. Some states enforce more stringent or unusual requirements on citizens who have committed crimes. Kentucky permanently bars felons and ex-felons from voting unless they obtain a pardon from the governor, while Florida, Mississippi, and Nevada allow former felons to apply to have their voting rights restored.“Felon Voting Rights,” 15 July 2014. http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx. Florida previously had a strict policy against felony voting, like Kentucky. However, through a 2018 initiative petition, Florida voters approved a reinstatement of voting rights for felons after their sentences are completed and any financial debt to society paid.Jenni Goldstein, "Florida convicted felons allowed to vote for 1st time in presidential election after completing sentences," ABC News, 25 October 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/convicted-florida-felons-allowed-vote-1st-time-presidential/story?id=73822173. On the other end of the spectrum, Vermont does not limit voting based on incarceration unless the crime was election fraud.Wilson Ring, “Vermont, Maine Only States to Let Inmates Vote,” *Associated Press,* 22 October 2008. Maine citizens serving in Maine prisons also may vote in elections.

Voter Turnout

COUNTING VOTERS

Low voter turnout has long caused the media and others to express concern and frustration. A healthy democratic society is expected to be filled with citizens who vote regularly and participate in the electoral process. People like Stacey Abrams, who founded Fair Fight Action in 2018, and organizations such as the League of Women Voters and Project Vote Smart ([link]) work hard to increase voter turnout in all age groups across the United States. But just how low is voter turnout? The answer depends on who is calculating it and how. There are several methods, each of which highlights a different problem with the electoral system in the United States.

WHAT FACTORS DRIVE VOTER TURNOUT?

Political parties and campaign managers approach every population of voters differently, based on what they know about factors that influence turnout. Everyone targets likely voters, which are the category of registered voters who vote regularly. Most campaigns also target registered voters in general, because they are more likely to vote than unregistered citizens. For this reason, many polling agencies ask respondents whether they are already registered and whether they voted in the last election. Those who are registered and did vote in the last election are likely to have a strong interest in politics and elections and will vote again, provided they are not angry with the political system or politicians.

WHAT FACTORS DECREASE VOTER TURNOUT?

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraJust as political scientists and campaign managers worry about who does vote, they also look at why people choose to stay home on Election Day. Over the years, studies have explored why a citizen might not vote. The reasons range from the obvious excuse of being too busy (19 percent) to more complex answers, such as transportation problems (3.3 percent) and restrictive registration laws (5.5 percent).“Table 10. Reported Voting and Registration, by Sex and Single Years of Age: November 2012,” https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications/p20/2012/tables.html (November 2, 2015). With only 62 percent of our voting-age population (VAP) voting in the presidential election of 2020, however, we should examine why the rest do not participate.

Elections

DECIDING TO RUN

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraRunning for office can be as easy as collecting one hundred signatures on a city election form or paying a registration fee of several thousand dollars to run for governor of a state. However, a potential candidate still needs to meet state-specific requirements covering length of residency, voting status, and age. Potential candidates must also consider competitors, family obligations, and the likelihood of drawing financial backing. His or her spouse, children, work history, health, financial history, and business dealings also become part of the media’s focus, along with many other personal details about the past. Candidates for office are slightly more diverse than the representatives serving in legislative and executive bodies, but the realities of elections drive many eligible and desirable candidates away from running.Jennifer L. Lawless. 2012. *Becoming a Candidate: Political Ambition and the Decision to Run for Office*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraIn the 2020 presidential election cycle, candidates for all parties raised a total of 5.7 billion dollars for campaigns. Congressional candidates raised \$8.7 billion.Karl Evers-Hillstrom, "Most Expensive Ever: 2020 Election Cost \$14.4 Billion," OpenSecrets.org, 11 February 11, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/02/2020-cycle-cost-14p4-billion-doubling-16/. The amount raised by political action committees (PACs), which are organizations created to raise and spend money to influence politics and contribute to candidates’ campaigns, was approximately \$2.7 billion.Katharina Buchholz, "Outside Spending Takes a Leap up in 2020 Election Cycle," Statista, 3 December 2020, https://www.statista.com/chart/17036/outside-spending-super-pac-spending-in-us-elections/. How does the government monitor the vast amounts of money that are now a part of the election process?

NOMINATION STAGE

Although the Constitution explains how candidates for national office are elected, it is silent on how those candidates are nominated. Political parties have taken on the role of promoting nominees for offices, such as the presidency and seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Because there are no national guidelines, there is much variation in the nomination process. States pass election laws and regulations, choose the selection method for party nominees, and schedule the election, but the process also greatly depends on the candidates and the political parties.

CONVENTION SEASON

Once it is clear who the parties’ nominees will be, presidential and gubernatorial campaigns enter a quiet period. Candidates run fewer ads and concentrate on raising funds for the fall. This is a crucial time because lack of money can harm their chances. The media spends much of the summer keeping track of the fundraising totals while the political parties plan their conventions. State parties host state-level conventions during gubernatorial elections, while national parties host national conventions during presidential election years.

GENERAL ELECTIONS AND ELECTION DAY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe general election campaign period occurs between mid-August and early November. These elections are simpler than primaries and conventions, because there are only two major party candidates and a few minor party candidates. About 50 percent of voters will make their decisions based on party membership, so the candidates will focus on winning over independent voters and visiting states where the election is close.“Party Affiliation and Election Polls,” *Pew Research Center*, August 3, 2012. In 2016, both candidates sensed shifts in the electorate that led them to visit states that were not recently battleground states. Clinton visited Republican stronghold Arizona as Latino voter interest surged. Defying conventional campaign movements, Trump spent many hours over the last days of the campaign in the Democratic Rust Belt states, namely Michigan and Wisconsin. President Trump ended up winning both states and industrial Pennsylvania by narrow margins, allowing him to achieve a comfortable majority in the Electoral College. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the two major-party nominees adopted very different approaches. In seeking re-election, President Trump eschewed CDC recommendations for social distancing and held large in-person rallies, while Joe Biden made fewer public appearances, which were largely carried to audiences virtually.Christina Wilkie, "Trump Targets Adversaries in His Final Pitch, While Biden Focuses on Covid-19," CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/02/election-2020-trump-and-biden-make-their-final-pitches.html.

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Once the voters have cast ballots in November and all the election season madness comes to a close, races for governors and local representatives may be over, but the constitutional process of electing a president has only begun. The electors of the Electoral College travel to their respective state capitols and cast their votes in mid-December, often by signing a certificate recording their vote. In most states, electors cast their ballots for the candidate who won the plurality of votes in their state, a winner-take-all system. Nebraska and Maine employ a district system, which allows them to allocate two votes to the plurality winner and one additional vote to candidates who win pluralities in individual state districts. Regardless of the method, once the electoral votes are allocated the states then forward the certificates to the U.S. Senate.

MIDTERM ELECTIONS

Presidential elections garner the most attention from the media and political elites. Yet they are not the only important elections. The even-numbered years between presidential years, like 2014 and 2018, are reserved for congressional elections—sometimes referred to as midterm elections because they are in the middle of the president’s term. Midterm elections are held because all members of the House of Representatives and one-third of the senators come up for reelection every two years.

Campaigns and Voting

FUNDRAISING

Even with a carefully planned and orchestrated presidential run, early fundraising is vital for candidates. Money helps them win, and the ability to raise money identifies those who are viable. In fact, the more money a candidate raises, the more they will continue to raise. EMILY’s List, a political action group, was founded on this principle; its name is an acronym for “Early Money Is Like Yeast” (it makes the dough rise). This group helps progressive women candidates gain early campaign contributions, which in turn helps them get further donations ([link]).

COMPARING PRIMARY AND GENERAL CAMPAIGNS

Although candidates have the same goal for primary and general elections, which is to win, these elections are very different from each other and require a very different set of strategies. Primary elections are more difficult for the voter. There are more candidates vying to become their party’s nominee, and party identification is not a useful cue because each party has many candidates rather than just one. In the 2016 presidential election, Republican voters in the early primaries were presented with a number of options, including Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, and more. (Huckabee, Christie, and Fiorina dropped out relatively early.) In 2020, Democrats had to decide between Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttegieg, Michael Bloomberg, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren. Voters must find more information about each candidate to decide which is closest to their preferred issue positions. Due to time limitations, voters may not research all the candidates. Nor will all the candidates get enough media or debate time to reach the voters. These issues make campaigning in a primary election difficult, so campaign managers tailor their strategy.

TECHNOLOGY

Campaigns have always been expensive. Also, they have sometimes been negative and nasty. The 1828 “Coffin Handbill” that John Quincy Adams ran, for instance, listed the names and circumstances of the executions his opponent Andrew Jackson had ordered ([link]). This was in addition to gossip and verbal attacks against Jackson’s wife, who had accidentally committed bigamy when she married him without a proper divorce. Campaigns and candidates have not become more amicable in the years since then.

VOTER DECISION MAKING

When citizens do vote, how do they make their decisions? The election environment is complex and most voters don’t have time to research everything about the candidates and issues. Yet they will need to make a fully rational assessment of the choices for an elected office. To meet this goal, they tend to take shortcuts.

Direct Democracy

DIRECT DEMOCRACY DEFINED

Direct democracy occurs when policy questions go directly to the voters for a decision. These decisions include funding, budgets, candidate removal, candidate approval, policy changes, and constitutional amendments. Not all states allow direct democracy, nor does the United States government.

POLICYMAKING THROUGH DIRECT DEMOCRACY

Politicians are often unwilling to wade into highly political waters if they fear it will harm their chances for reelection. When a legislature refuses to act or change current policy, initiatives allow citizens to take part in the policy process and end the impasse. In Colorado, Amendment 64 allowed the recreational use of marijuana by adults, despite concerns that state law would then conflict with national law. Colorado and Washington’s legalization of recreational marijuana use started a trend, leading to more states adopting similar laws.

Toward Collective Action: Mediating Institutions

The Media

Introduction

What Is the Media?

MEDIA BASICS

The term *media* defines a number of different communication formats from television media, which share information through broadcast airwaves, to print media, which rely on printed documents. The collection of all forms of media that communicate information to the general public is called mass media, including television, print, radio, and Internet. One of the primary reasons citizens turn to the media is for news. We expect the media to cover important political and social events and information in a concise and neutral manner.

MEDIA TYPES

Each form of media has its own complexities and is used by different demographics. Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) and Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) are more likely to get news and information from social media, such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, while Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are most likely to get their news from television, either national broadcasts or local news ([link]).

FUNCTIONS OF THE MEDIA

The media exist to fill a number of functions. Whether the medium is a newspaper, a radio, or a television newscast, a corporation behind the scenes must bring in revenue and pay for the cost of the product. Revenue comes from advertising and sponsors, like McDonald’s, Ford Motor Company, and other large corporations. But corporations will not pay for advertising if there are no viewers or readers. So all programs and publications need to entertain, inform, or interest the public and maintain a steady stream of consumers. In the end, what attracts viewers and advertisers is what survives.

The Evolution of the Media

PRINT MEDIA

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraEarly news was presented to local populations through the print press. While several colonies had printers and occasional newspapers, high literacy rates combined with the desire for self-government made Boston a perfect location for the creation of a newspaper, and the first continuous press was started there in 1704.Fellow. *American Media History*. Newspapers spread information about local events and activities. The Stamp Tax of 1765 raised costs for publishers, however, leading several newspapers to fold under the increased cost of paper. The repeal of the Stamp Tax in 1766 quieted concerns for a short while, but editors and writers soon began questioning the right of the British to rule over the colonies. Newspapers took part in the effort to inform citizens of British misdeeds and incite attempts to revolt. Readership across the colonies increased to nearly forty thousand homes (among a total population of two million), and daily papers sprang up in large cities.“Population in the Colonial and Continental Periods,” http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/00165897ch01.pdf (November 18, 2015); Fellow. *American Media History*.

RADIO

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraRadio news made its appearance in the 1920s. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) began running sponsored news programs and radio dramas. Comedy programs, such as *Amos ’n’ Andy*, *The Adventures of Gracie*, and *Easy Aces*, also became popular during the 1930s, as listeners were trying to find humor during the Depression ([link]). Talk shows, religious shows, and educational programs followed, and by the late 1930s, game shows and quiz shows were added to the airwaves. Almost 83 percent of households had a radio by 1940, and most tuned in regularly.“1940 Census,” http://www.census.gov/1940census (September 6, 2015).

TELEVISION

Television combined the best attributes of radio and pictures and changed media forever. The first official broadcast in the United States was President Franklin Roosevelt’s speech at the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The public did not immediately begin buying televisions, but coverage of World War II changed their minds. CBS reported on war events and included pictures and maps that enhanced the news for viewers. By the 1950s, the price of television sets had dropped, more televisions stations were being created, and advertisers were buying up spots.

NEW MEDIA TRENDS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe invention of cable in the 1980s and the expansion of the Internet in the 2000s opened up more options for media consumers than ever before. Viewers can watch nearly anything at the click of a button, bypass commercials, and record programs of interest. The resulting saturation, or inundation of information, may lead viewers to abandon the news entirely or become more suspicious and fatigued about politics.Alison Dagnes. 2010. *Politics on Demand: The Effects of 24-hour News on American Politics*. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. This effect, in turn, also changes the president’s ability to reach out to citizens. For example, viewership of the president’s annual State of the Union address has decreased over the years, from sixty-seven million viewers in 1993 to thirty-two million in 2015.“Number of Viewers of the State of the Union Addresses from 1993 to 2015 (in millions),” http://www.statista.com/statistics/252425/state-of-the-union-address-viewer-numbers (August 28, 2015). Citizens who want to watch reality television and movies can easily avoid the news, leaving presidents with no sure way to communicate with the public.Baum and Kernell, “Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television?” Other voices, such as those of talk show hosts and political pundits, now fill the gap.

Regulating the Media

MEDIA AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe U.S. Constitution was written in secrecy. Journalists were neither invited to watch the drafting, nor did the framers talk to the press about their disagreements and decisions. Once it was finished, however, the Constitution was released to the public and almost all newspapers printed it. Newspaper editors also published commentary and opinion about the new document and the form of government it proposed. Early support for the Constitution was strong, and Anti-Federalists (who opposed it) argued that their concerns were not properly covered by the press. The eventual printing of *The Federalist Papers*, and the lesser-known Anti-Federalist Papers, fueled the argument that the press was vital to American democracy. It was also clear the press had the ability to affect public opinion and therefore public policy.Fellow. *American Media History*.

MEDIA AND FCC REGULATIONS

The liberties enjoyed by newspapers are overseen by the U.S. court system, while television and radio broadcasters are monitored by both the courts and a government regulatory commission.

MEDIA AND TRANSPARENCY

The press has had some assistance in performing its muckraking duty. Laws that mandate federal and many state government proceedings and meeting documents be made available to the public are called sunshine laws. Proponents believe that open disagreements allow democracy to flourish and darkness allows corruption to occur. Opponents argue that some documents and policies are sensitive, and that the sunshine laws can inhibit policymaking.

The Impact of the Media

MEDIA EFFECTS AND BIAS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraConcerns about the effects of media on consumers and the existence and extent of media bias go back to the 1920s. Reporter and commentator Walter Lippmann noted that citizens have limited personal experience with government and the world and posited that the media, through their stories, place ideas in citizens’ minds. These ideas become part of the citizens’ frame of reference and affect their decisions. Lippmann’s statements led to the hypodermic theory, which argues that information is “shot” into the receiver’s mind and readily accepted.Walter Lippmann. 1922. *Public Opinion.* http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/Lippman/contents.html (August 29, 2015).

COVERAGE EFFECTS ON GOVERNANCE AND CAMPAIGNS

When it is spotty, the media’s coverage of campaigns and government can sometimes affect the way government operates and the success of candidates. In 1972, for instance, the McGovern-Fraser reforms created a voter-controlled primary system, so party leaders no longer pick the presidential candidates. Now the media are seen as kingmakers and play a strong role in influencing who will become the Democratic and Republican nominees in presidential elections. They can discuss the candidates’ messages, vet their credentials, carry sound bites of their speeches, and conduct interviews. The candidates with the most media coverage build momentum and do well in the first few primaries and caucuses. This, in turn, leads to more media coverage, more momentum, and eventually a winning candidate. Thus, candidates need the media.

COVERAGE EFFECTS ON SOCIETY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe media choose what they want to discuss. This agenda setting creates a reality for voters and politicians that affects the way people think, act, and vote. Even if the crime rate is going down, for instance, citizens accustomed to reading stories about assault and other offenses still perceive crime to be an issue.Ally Fogg, “Crime Is Falling. Now Let’s Reduce Fear of Crime,” *Guardian*, 24 April 24 2013. Studies have also found that the media’s portrayal of race is flawed, especially in coverage of crime and poverty. One study revealed that local news shows were more likely to show pictures of criminals when they were African American, so they overrepresented Black people as perpetrators and White people as victims.Travis L. Dixon. 2008. “Crime News and Racialized Beliefs: Understanding the Relationship between Local News Viewing and Perceptions of African Americans and Crime,” *Journal of Communication* 58, No. 1: 106–125. A second study found a similar pattern in which Latino people were underrepresented as victims of crime and as police officers, while White people were overrepresented as both.Travis Dixon. 2015. “Good Guys Are Still Always in White? Positive Change and Continued Misrepresentation of Race and Crime on Local Television News,” *Communication Research*, doi:10.1177/0093650215579223. Voters were thus more likely to assume that most criminals are African American and most victims and police officers are White, even though the numbers do not support those assumptions.

Political Parties

Introduction

What Are Parties and How Did They Form?

POLITICAL PARTIES AS UNIQUE ORGANIZATIONS

In *Federalist* No. 10, written in the late eighteenth century, James Madison noted that the formation of self-interested groups, which he called factions, was inevitable in any society, as individuals started to work together to protect themselves from the government. Interest groups and political parties are two of the most easily identified forms of factions in the United States. These groups are similar in that they are both mediating institutions responsible for communicating public preferences to the government. They are not themselves government institutions in a formal sense. Neither is directly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution nor do they have any real, legal authority to influence policy. But whereas interest groups often work indirectly to influence our leaders, political parties are organizations that try to directly influence public policy through its members who seek to win and hold public office. Parties accomplish this by identifying and aligning sets of issues that are important to voters in the hopes of gaining support during elections; their positions on these critical issues are often presented in documents known as a party platform ([link]), which is adopted at each party’s presidential nominating convention every four years. If successful, a party can create a large enough electoral coalition to gain control of the government. Once in power, the party is then able to deliver, to its voters and elites, the policy preferences they choose by electing its partisans to the government. In this respect, parties provide choices to the electorate, something they are doing that is in such sharp contrast to their opposition.

HOW POLITICAL PARTIES FORMED

National political parties as we understand them today did not really exist in the United States during the early years of the republic. Most politics during the time of the nation’s founding were local in nature and based on elite politics, limited suffrage (or the ability to vote in elections), and property ownership. Residents of the various colonies, and later of the various states, were far more interested in events in their state legislatures than in those occurring at the national level or later in the nation’s capital. To the extent that national issues did exist, they were largely limited to collective security efforts to deal with external rivals, such as the British or the French, and with perceived internal threats, such as conflicts with Native Americans.

The Two-Party System

ELECTION RULES AND THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraA number of reasons have been suggested to explain why the structure of U.S. elections has resulted in a two-party system. Most of the blame has been placed on the process used to select its representatives. First, most elections at the state and national levels are winner-take-all: The candidate who receives the greatest overall number of votes wins. Winner-take-all elections with one representative elected for one geographic district allow voters to develop a personal relationship with “their” representative to the government. They know exactly whom to blame, or thank, for the actions of that government. But these elections also tend to limit the number of people who run for office. Otherwise-qualified candidates might not stand for election if they feel the incumbent or another candidate has an early advantage in the race. And since voters do not like to waste votes, third parties must convince voters they have a real chance of winning races before voters will take them seriously. This is a tall order given the vast resources and mobilization tools available to the existing parties, especially if an incumbent is one of the competitors. In turn, the likelihood that third-party challengers will lose an election bid makes it more difficult to raise funds to support later attempts.Robert Richie and Steven Hill, “The Case for Proportional Representation,” *Boston Review*, February–March 1998, https://bostonreview.net/archives/BR23.1/richie.html (March 15, 2016).

CRITICAL ELECTIONS AND REALIGNMENT

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraPolitical parties exist for the purpose of winning elections in order to influence public policy. This requires them to build coalitions across a wide range of voters who share similar preferences. Since most U.S. voters identify as moderates,Morris P. Fiorina, “America’s Missing Moderates: Hiding in Plain Sight,” 2 February 2013, http://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/02/12/americas-missing-moderates-hiding-in-plain-sight/ (March 1, 2016). the historical tendency has been for the two parties to compete for “the middle” while also trying to mobilize their more loyal bases. If voters’ preferences remained stable for long periods of time, and if both parties did a good job of competing for their votes, we could expect Republicans and Democrats to be reasonably competitive in any given election. Election outcomes would probably be based on the way voters compared the parties on the most important events of the day rather than on electoral strategy.

The Shape of Modern Political Parties

THE PARTY-IN-THE-ELECTORATE

A key fact about the U.S. political party system is that it’s all about the votes. If voters do not show up to vote for a party’s candidates on Election Day, the party has no chance of gaining office and implementing its preferred policies. As we have seen, for much of their history, the two parties have been adapting to changes in the size, composition, and preferences of the U.S. electorate. It only makes sense, then, that parties have found it in their interest to build a permanent and stable presence among the voters. By fostering a sense of loyalty, a party can insulate itself from changes in the system and improve its odds of winning elections. The party-in-the-electorate are those members of the voting public who consider themselves to be part of a political party and/or who consistently prefer the candidates of one party over the other.

THE PARTY ORGANIZATION

A significant subset of American voters views their party identification as something far beyond simply a shortcut to voting. These individuals get more energized by the political process and have chosen to become more active in the life of political parties. They are part of what is known as the party organization. The party organization is the formal structure of the political party, and its active members are responsible for coordinating party behavior and supporting party candidates. It is a vital component of any successful party because it bears most of the responsibility for building and maintaining the party “brand.” It also plays a key role in helping select, and elect, candidates for public office.

THE PARTY-IN-GOVERNMENT

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraOne of the first challenges facing the party-in-government, or the party identifiers who have been elected or appointed to hold public office, is to achieve their policy goals. The means to do this is chosen in meetings of the two major parties; Republican meetings are called party conferences and Democrat meetings are called party caucuses. Members of each party meet in these closed sessions and discuss what items to place on the legislative agenda and make decisions about which party members should serve on the committees that draft proposed laws. Party members also elect the leaders of their respective parties in the House and the Senate, and their party whips. Leaders serve as party managers and are the highest-ranking members of the party in each chamber of Congress. The party whip ensures that members are present when a piece of legislation is to be voted on and directs them how to vote. The whip is the second-highest ranking member of the party in each chamber. Thus, both the Republicans and the Democrats have a leader and a whip in the House, and a leader and a whip in the Senate. The leader and whip of the party that holds the majority of seats in each house are known as the majority leader and the majority whip. The leader and whip of the party with fewer seats are called the minority leader and the minority whip. The party that controls the majority of seats in the House of Representatives also elects someone to serve as Speaker of the House. People elected to Congress as independents (that is, not members of either the Republican or Democratic parties) must choose a party to conference or caucus with. For example, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who originally ran for Senate as an independent candidate, caucuses with the Democrats and ran for the presidency as a Democrat. He returned to the Senate in 2017 as an independent.Peter Nicholas. 26 July 2016. “Bernie Sanders to Return to Senate as an Independent,” http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/07/26/bernie-sanders-to-return-to-senate-as-an-independent/ (November 9, 2016).

Divided Government and Partisan Polarization

THE PROBLEM OF DIVIDED GOVERNMENT

The problem of majority versus minority politics is particularly acute under conditions of divided government. Divided government occurs when one or more houses of the legislature are controlled by the party in opposition to the executive. Unified government occurs when the same party controls the executive and the legislature entirely. Divided government can pose considerable difficulties for both the operations of the party and the government as a whole. It makes fulfilling campaign promises extremely difficult, for instance, since the cooperation (or at least the agreement) of both Congress and the president is typically needed to pass legislation. Furthermore, one party can hardly claim credit for success when the other side has been a credible partner, or when nothing can be accomplished. Party loyalty may be challenged too, because individual politicians might be forced to oppose their own party agenda if it will help their personal reelection bids.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF POLARIZATION

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe past thirty years have brought a dramatic change in the relationship between the two parties as fewer conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans have been elected to office. As political moderate**s**, or individuals with ideologies in the middle of the ideological spectrum, leave the political parties at all levels, the parties have grown farther apart ideologically, a result called party polarization. In other words, at least organizationally and in government, Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly dissimilar from one another ([link]). In the party-in-government, this means fewer members of Congress have mixed voting records; instead they vote far more consistently on issues and are far more likely to side with their party leadership.Drew Desilver, “The Polarized Congress of Today Has Its Roots in the 1970s,” 12 June 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/polarized-politics-in-congress-began-in-the-1970s-and-has-been-getting-worse-ever-since/ (March 16, 2016). It also means a growing number of moderate voters aren’t participating in party politics. Either they are becoming independents, or they are participating only in the general election and are therefore not helping select party candidates in primaries.

THE CAUSES OF POLARIZATION

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraScholars agree that some degree of polarization is occurring in the United States, even if some contend it is only at the elite level. But they are less certain about exactly why, or how, polarization has become such a mainstay of American politics. Several conflicting theories have been offered. The first and perhaps best argument is that polarization is a party-in-government phenomenon driven by a decades-long sorting of the voting public, or a change in party allegiance in response to shifts in party position.Morris Fiorina, “Americans Have Not Become More Politically Polarized,” *The Washington Post*, 23 June 2014. According to the sorting thesis, before the 1950s, voters were mostly concerned with state-level party positions rather than national party concerns. Since parties are bottom-up institutions, this meant local issues dominated elections; it also meant national-level politicians typically paid more attention to local problems than to national party politics.

Interest Groups and Lobbying

Introduction

Interest Groups Defined

WHAT ARE INTEREST GROUPS AND WHAT DO THEY WANT?

Definitions abound when it comes to interest group**s**, which are sometimes referred to as special interests, interest organizations, pressure groups, or just interests. Most definitions specify that *interest group* indicates any formal association of individuals or organizations that attempt to influence government decision-making and/or the making of public policy. Often, this influence is exercised by a lobbyist or a lobbying firm.

INTEREST GROUP FUNCTIONS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraWhile influencing policy is the primary goal, interest groups also monitor government activity, serve as a means of political participation for members, and provide information to the public and to lawmakers. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, thirty-six states have laws requiring that voters provide identification at the polls.http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id.aspx (June 1, 2021). A civil rights group like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) will keep track of proposed voter-identification bills in state legislatures that might have an effect on voting rights. This organization will contact lawmakers to voice approval or disapproval of proposed legislation (inside lobbying) and encourage group members to take action by either donating money to it or contacting lawmakers about the proposed bill (outside lobbying). Thus, a member of the organization or a citizen concerned about voting rights need not be an expert on the legislative process or the technical or legal details of a proposed bill to be informed about potential threats to voting rights. Other interest groups function in similar ways. For example, the NRA monitors attempts by state legislatures to tighten gun control laws.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE INTEREST GROUPS

Interest groups and organizations represent both private and public interests in the United States. *Private interests* usually seek particularized benefit**s** from government that favor either a single interest or a narrow set of interests. For example, corporations and political institutions may lobby government for tax exemptions, fewer regulations, or favorable laws that benefit individual companies or an industry more generally. Their goal is to promote private goods. Private goods are items individuals can own, including corporate profits. An automobile is a private good; when you purchase it, you receive ownership. Wealthy individuals are more likely to accumulate private goods, and they can sometimes obtain private goods from governments, such as tax benefits, government subsidies, or government contracts.

Collective Action and Interest Group Formation

COLLECTIVE ACTION AND FREE RIDING

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraCollective action problems exist when people have a disincentive to take action.Mancur Olson, Jr. 1965. *The Logic of Collective Action*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Frank R. Baumgartner and Beth L. Leech. *Basic Interests: The Importance of Groups in Political Science*. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. In his classic work, *The Logic of Collective Action*, economist Mancur Olson discussed the conditions under which collective action**s** problems would exist, and he noted that they were prevalent among organized interests. People tend not to act when the perceived benefit is insufficient to justify the costs associated with engaging in the action. Many citizens may have concerns about the appropriate level of taxation, gun control, or environmental protection, but these concerns are not necessarily strong enough for them to become politically active. In fact, most people take no action on most issues, either because they do not feel strongly enough or because their action will likely have little bearing on whether a given policy is adopted. Thus, there is a disincentive to call your member of Congress, because rarely will a single phone call sway a politician on an issue.

DISTURBANCE THEORY AND COLLECTIVE ACTION

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraIn addition to the factors discussed above that can help overcome collective action problems, external events can sometimes help mobilize groups and potential members. Some scholars argue that disturbance theory can explain why groups mobilize due to an event in the political, economic, or social environment.David Truman. 1951. *The Governmental Process*. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. For example, in 1962, Rachel Carson published *Silent Spring*, a book exposing the dangers posed by pesticides such as DDT.Rachel Caron. 1962. *A Silent Spring*. New York: Mariner Books. The book served as a catalyst for individuals worried about the environment and the potential dangers of pesticides. The result was an increase in both the number of environmental interest groups, such as Greenpeace and American Rivers, and the number of members within them.

Interest Groups as Political Participation

GROUP PARTICIPATION AS CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

Joining interest groups can help facilitate civic engagement, which allows people to feel more connected to the political and social community. Some interest groups develop as grassroots movement**s**, which often begin from the bottom up among a small number of people at the local level. Interest groups can amplify the voices of such individuals through proper organization and allow them to participate in ways that would be less effective or even impossible alone or in small numbers. The Tea Party is an example of a so-called astroturf movement, because it is not, strictly speaking, a grassroots movement. Many trace the party’s origins to groups that champion the interests of the wealthy such as Americans for Prosperity and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Although many ordinary citizens support the Tea Party because of its opposition to tax increases, it attracts a great deal of support from elite and wealthy sponsors, some of whom are active in lobbying. The FreedomWorks political action committee (PAC), for example, is a conservative advocacy group that has supported the Tea Party movement. FreedomWorks is an offshoot of the interest group Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded by billionaire industrialists David H. and Charles G. Koch in 1984.

TRENDS IN PUBLIC INTEREST GROUP FORMATION AND ACTIVITY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraA number of changes in interest groups have taken place over the last three or four decades in the United States. The most significant change is the tremendous increase in both the number and type of groups.Clive S. Thomas and Ronald J. Hrebenar. 1990. “Interest Groups in the States.” In *Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis*, 5th ed., eds. Virginia Gray, Herbert Jacob, and Robert B. Albritton. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 123–158; Clive S. Thomas and Ronald J. Hrebenar. 1991. “Nationalization of Interest Groups and Lobbying in the States.” In *Interest Group Politics*, 3d ed., eds. Allan J. Cigler and Burdett A. Loomis. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 63–80; Clive S. Thomas and Ronald J. Hrebenar. 1996. “Interest Groups in the States.” In *Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis*, 6th ed., eds. Virginia Gray, and Herbert Jacob. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 122–158; Clive S. Thomas and Ronald J. Hrebenar. 1999. “Interest Groups in the States.” In *Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis*, 7th ed., eds. Virginia Gray, Russell L. Hanson, and Herbert Jacob. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 113–143; Clive S. Thomas and Ronald J. Hrebenar. 2004. “Interest Groups in the States.” In *Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis*, 8th ed., eds. Virginia Gray and Russell L. Hanson. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 100–128. Political scientists often examine the diversity of registered groups, in part to determine how well they reflect the variety of interests in society. Some areas may be dominated by certain industries, while others may reflect a multitude of interests. Some interests appear to have increased at greater rates than others. For example, the number of institutions and corporate interests has increased both in Washington and in the states. Telecommunication companies like Verizon and AT&T will lobby Congress for laws beneficial to their businesses, but they also target the states because state legislatures make laws that can benefit or harm their activities. There has also been an increase in the number of public interest groups that represent the public as opposed to economic interests. U.S. PIRG is a public interest group that represents the public on issues including public health, the environment, and consumer protection.http://www.uspirg.org/ (November 1, 2015).

HOW REPRESENTATIVE IS THE INTEREST GROUP SYSTEM?

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraParticipation in the United States has never been equal; wealth and education, components of socioeconomic status, are strong predictors of political engagement.Sidney Verba, Kay Lehmnn Schlozman, and Henry Brady. 1995. *Voice and Equality*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. We already discussed how wealth can help overcome collective action problems, but lack of wealth also serves as a barrier to participation more generally. These types of barriers pose challenges, making it less likely for some groups than others to participate.Steven J. Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen. 2003. *Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America*. New York: Longman. Some institutions, including large corporations, are more likely to participate in the political process than others, simply because they have tremendous resources. And with these resources, they can write a check to a political campaign or hire a lobbyist to represent their organization. Writing a check and hiring a lobbyist are unlikely options for a disadvantaged group ([link]).

Pathways of Interest Group Influence

INFLUENCE IN ELECTIONS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraInterest groups support candidates who are sympathetic to their views in hopes of gaining access to them once they are in office.John R. Wright. 1996. *Interest Groups and Congress: Lobbying, Contributions, and Influence*. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon; Mark J. Rozell, Clyde Wilcox, and Michael M. Franz. 2012. *Interest Groups in American Campaigns: The New Face of Electioneering*. New York: Oxford University Press. For example, an organization like the NRA will back candidates who support Second Amendment rights. Both the NRA and the Brady: United Against Gun Violence (an interest group that favors background checks for firearm purchases) have grading systems that evaluate candidates and states based on their records of supporting these organizations.https://www.nrapvf.org/grades/; http://www.bradycampaign.org/2013-state-scorecard (March 1, 2016). To garner the support of the NRA, candidates must receive an A+ rating for the group. In much the same way, Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal interest group, and the American Conservative Union, a conservative interest group, both rate politicians based on their voting records on issues these organizations view as important.http://www.adaction.org/pages/publications/voting-records.php; http://acuratings.conservative.org/ (March 1, 2016).

INFLUENCING GOVERNMENTAL POLICY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraInterest groups support candidates in order to have access to lawmakers once they are in office. Lawmakers, for their part, lack the time and resources to pursue every issue; they are policy generalists. Therefore, they (and their staff members) rely on interest groups and lobbyists to provide them with information about the technical details of policy proposals, as well as about fellow lawmakers’ stands and constituents’ perceptions. These voting cues give lawmakers an indication of how to vote on issues, particularly those with which they are unfamiliar. But lawmakers also rely on lobbyists for information about ideas they can champion and that will benefit them when they run for reelection.Wright, *Interest Groups and Congress: Lobbying, Contributions, and Influence*. While voting cues on legislation remain an important pathway of influence, interest groups and their lobbyists can be especially effective in legislative agenda-setting, namely in drafting legislation for lawmakers. While the practice of bill outlines being provided to legislators by interest group lobbyists is a longstanding practice, a 2019 investigation by *USA Today, The Arizona Republic*, and the Center for Public Integrity showed a trend of entire sections of bills written word-for-word based on lobbyist materials.Rob O'Dell and Nick Penzenstadler, "You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead," *USA Today*, https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/03/abortion-gun-laws-stand-your-ground-model-bills-conservatives-liberal-corporate-influence-lobbyists/3162173002/ (June 1, 2021).

Free Speech and the Regulation of Interest Groups

INTEREST GROUPS AND FREE SPEECH

Most people would agree that interest groups have a right under the Constitution to promote a particular point of view. What people do not necessarily agree upon, however, is the extent to which certain interest group and lobbying activities are protected under the First Amendment.

REGULATING LOBBYING AND INTEREST GROUP ACTIVITY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraWhile the Supreme Court has paved the way for increased spending in politics, lobbying is still regulated in many ways.Adam J. Newmark, “Measuring State Legislative Lobbying Regulation, 1990–2003.” *State Politics and Policy Quarterly* 5 (2005): 182–191; Nownes and Newmark, “Interest Groups in the States.” The 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act defined who can and cannot lobby, and requires lobbyists and interest groups to register with the federal government.Nownes, *Interest Groups in American Politics*. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 further increased restrictions on lobbying. For example, the act prohibited contact between members of Congress and lobbyists who were the spouses of other Congress members. The laws broadened the definition of lobbyist and require detailed disclosure of spending on lobbying activity, including who is lobbied and what bills are of interest. In addition, President Biden's Executive Order 13989 broadened regulations on federal employees by prohibiting appointees in the executive branch from accepting gifts from lobbyists, by requiring them to sign an ethics pledge, and lessens the revolving door by disallowing lobbying for two years after the leave the administration."2021 Joe Biden Executive Orders," National Archives: Federal Register, https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/executive-orders/joe-biden/2021, (June 10, 2021). The states also have their own registration requirements, with some defining lobbying broadly and others more narrowly.

Delivering Collective Action: Formal Institutions

Congress

Introduction

The Institutional Design of Congress

THE GREAT COMPROMISE AND THE BASICS OF BICAMERALISM

Only a few years after the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, the republican experiment seemed on the verge of failure. States deep in debt were printing increasingly worthless paper currency, many were mired in interstate trade battles with each other, and in western Massachusetts, a small group of Revolutionary War veterans angry over the prospect of losing their farms broke into armed open revolt against the state, in what came to be known as Shays’ Rebellion. The conclusion many reached was that the Articles of Confederation were simply not strong enough to keep the young republic together. In the spring of 1787, a convention was called, and delegates from all the states (except Rhode Island, which boycotted the convention) were sent to Philadelphia to hammer out a solution to this central problem.

SENATE REPRESENTATION AND HOUSE APPORTIONMENT

The Constitution specifies that every state will have two senators who each serve a six-year term. Therefore, with fifty states in the Union, there are currently one hundred seats in the U.S. Senate. Senators were originally appointed by state legislatures, but in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was approved, which allowed for senators to be elected by popular vote in each state. Seats in the House of Representatives are distributed among the states based on each state’s population and each member of the House is elected by voters in a specific congressional district. Each state is guaranteed at least one seat in the House ([link]).

CONGRESSIONAL POWERS

The authority to introduce and pass legislation is a very strong power. But it is only one of the many that Congress possesses. In general, congressional powers can be divided into three types: enumerated, implied, and inherent. An enumerated power is a power explicitly stated in the Constitution. An implied power is one not specifically detailed in the Constitution but inferred as necessary to achieve the objectives of the national government. And an inherent power, while not enumerated or implied, must be assumed to exist as a direct result of the country’s existence. In this section, we will learn about each type of power and the foundations of legitimacy they claim. We will also learn about the way the different branches of government have historically appropriated powers not previously granted to them and the way congressional power has recently suffered in this process.

Congressional Elections

UNDERSTANDING THE HOUSE AND SENATE

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe U.S. Constitution is very clear about who can be elected as a member of the House or Senate. A House member must be a U.S. citizen of at least seven years’ standing and at least twenty-five years old. Senators are required to have nine years’ standing as citizens and be at least thirty years old when sworn in. Representatives serve two-year terms, whereas senators serve six-year terms. Per the Supreme Court decision in *U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton* (1995), there are currently no term limits for either senators or representatives, despite efforts by many states to impose them in the mid-1990s.*U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton*, 514 U.S. 779 (1995). House members are elected by the voters in their specific congressional districts. There are currently 435 congressional districts in the United States and thus 435 House members, and each state has a number of House districts roughly proportional to its share of the total U.S. population, with states guaranteed at least one House member. Two senators are elected by each state.

CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN FUNDING

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraModern political campaigns in the United States are expensive, and they have been growing more so. For example, in 1986, the costs of running a successful House and Senate campaign were \$849,111 and \$7,243,782, respectively, in 2020 dollars. By 2020, those values had shot to \$2.4 million and \$27.2 million ([link])."Election Trends," OpenSecrets, https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/election-trends (June 2021). Raising this amount of money takes quite a bit of time and effort. Indeed, a presentation for incoming Democratic representatives suggested a daily Washington schedule of five hours reaching out to donors, while only three or four were to be used for actual congressional work. As this advice reveals, raising money for reelection constitutes a large proportion of the work a congressperson does. This has caused many to wonder whether the amount of money in politics has truly become a corrupting influence. However, overall, the lion’s share of direct campaign contributions in congressional elections comes from individual donors, who are less influential than the political action committees (PACs) that contribute the remainder.http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/wherefrom.php (May 15, 2016).

INCUMBENCY EFFECTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraNot surprisingly, the jungle of campaign financing regulations and loopholes is more easily navigated by incumbents in Congress than by newcomers. Incumbents are elected officials who currently hold an office. The amount of money they raise against their challengers demonstrates their advantage. In 2020, for example, the average Senate incumbent raised \$28,649,593, whereas the average challenger raised only \$5,264,022.“Incumbent Advantage,” http://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/incumbent-advantage?cycle=2020&type=A (June 1, 2021). This is one of the many reasons incumbents win a large majority of congressional races each electoral cycle. Incumbents attract more money because people want to give to a winner. In the House, the percentage of incumbents winning reelection has hovered between 85 and 100 percent for the last half century. In the Senate, there is only slightly more variation, given the statewide nature of the race, but it is still a very high majority of incumbents who win reelection ([link]). As these rates show, even in the worst political environments, incumbents are very difficult to defeat.

LOCAL AND NATIONAL ELECTIONS

The importance of airing positive constituent casework during campaigns is a testament to the accuracy of saying, “All politics is local.” This phrase, attributed to former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill (D-MA), essentially means that the most important motivations directing voters are rooted in local concerns. In general, this is true. People naturally feel more driven by the things that affect them on a daily basis. These are concerns like the quality of the roads, the availability of good jobs, and the cost and quality of public education. Good senators and representatives understand this and will seek to use their influence and power in office to affect these issues for the better. This is an age-old strategy for success in office and elections.

Congressional Representation

TYPES OF REPRESENTATION: LOOKING OUT FOR CONSTITUENTS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraBy definition and title, senators and House members are representatives. This means they are intended to be drawn from local populations around the country so they can speak for and make decisions for those local populations, their constituents, while serving in their respective legislative houses. That is, representation refers to an elected leader’s looking out for constituents while carrying out the duties of the office.Steven S. Smith. 1999. *The American Congress*. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

DESCRIPTIVE REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS

In some cases, representation can seem to have very little to do with the substantive issues representatives in Congress tend to debate. Instead, proper representation for some is rooted in the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, and sexual identity of the representatives themselves. This form of representation is called descriptive representation.

REPRESENTING CONSTITUENTS

Ethnic, racial, gender, or ideological identity aside, it is a representative’s actions in Congress that ultimately reflect their understanding of representation. Congress members’ most important function as lawmakers is writing, supporting, and passing bills. And as representatives of their constituents, they are charged with addressing those constituents’ interests. Historically, this job has included what some have affectionately called “bringing home the bacon” but what many (usually those outside the district in question) call pork-barrel politics. As a term and a practice, pork-barrel politics—federal spending on projects designed to benefit a particular district or set of constituents—has been around since the nineteenth century, when barrels of salt pork were both a sign of wealth and a system of reward. While pork-barrel politics are often deplored during election campaigns, and earmarks—funds appropriated for specific projects—are no longer permitted in Congress (see feature box below), legislative control of local appropriations nevertheless still exists. In more formal language, *allocation*, or the influencing of the national budget in ways that help the district or state, can mean securing funds for a specific district’s project like an airport, or getting tax breaks for certain types of agriculture or manufacturing.

COLLECTIVE REPRESENTATION AND CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL

The concept of collective representation describes the relationship between Congress and the United States as a whole. That is, it considers whether the institution itself represents the American people, not just whether a particular member of Congress represents their district. Predictably, it is far more difficult for Congress to maintain a level of collective representation than it is for individual members of Congress to represent their own constituents. Not only is Congress a mixture of different ideologies, interests, and party affiliations, but the collective constituency of the United States has an even-greater level of diversity. Nor is it a solution to attempt to match the diversity of opinions and interests in the United States with those in Congress. Indeed, such an attempt would likely make it more difficult for Congress to maintain collective representation. Its rules and procedures require Congress to use flexibility, bargaining, and concessions. Yet, it is this flexibility and these concessions, which many now interpret as corruption, that tend to engender the high public disapproval ratings experienced by Congress.

House and Senate Organizations

PARTY LEADERSHIP

The party leadership in Congress controls the actions of Congress. Leaders are elected by the two-party conferences in each chamber. In the House of Representatives, these are the House Democratic Conference and the House Republican Conference. These conferences meet regularly and separately not only to elect their leaders but also to discuss important issues and strategies for moving policy forward. Based on the number of members in each conference, one conference becomes the majority conference and the other becomes the minority conference. Independents like Senator Bernie Sanders will typically join one or the other major party conference, as a matter of practicality and often based on ideological affinity. Without the membership to elect their own leadership, independents would have a very difficult time getting things done in Congress unless they had a relationship with the leaders.

THE COMMITTEE SYSTEM

With 535 members in Congress and a seemingly infinite number of domestic, international, economic, agricultural, regulatory, criminal, and military issues to deal with at any given moment, the two chambers must divide their work based on specialization. Congress does this through the committee system. Specialized committees (or subcommittees) in both the House and the Senate are where bills originate and most of the work that sets the congressional agenda takes place. Committees are roughly approximate to a bureaucratic department in the executive branch. There are well over two hundred committees, subcommittees, select committees, and joint committees in the Congress. The core committees are called standing committee**s**. There are twenty standing committees in the House and sixteen in the Senate ([link]).

The Legislative Process

THE CLASSIC LEGISLATIVE PROCESS

The traditional process by which a bill becomes a law is called the *classic legislative process*. First, legislation must be drafted. Theoretically, anyone can do this. Much successful legislation has been initially drafted by someone who is not a member of Congress, such as a think tank or advocacy group, or the president. However, Congress is under no obligation to read or introduce this legislation, and only a bill introduced by a member of Congress can hope to become law. Even the president must rely on legislators to introduce that president's legislative agenda.

MODERN LEGISLATION IS DIFFERENT

For much of the nation’s history, the process described above was the standard method by which a bill became a law. Over the course of the last three and a half decades, however, changes in rules and procedure have created a number of alternate routes. Collectively, these different routes constitute what some political scientists have described as a new but unorthodox legislative process. According to political scientist Barbara Sinclair, the primary trigger for the shift away from the classic legislative route was the budget reforms of the 1970s. The 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act gave Congress a mechanism for making large, all-encompassing, budget decisions. In the years that followed, the budget process gradually became the vehicle for creating comprehensive policy changes. One large step in this transformation occurred in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan’s administration suggested using the budget to push through his economic reforms.

The Presidency

Introduction

The Design and Evolution of the Presidency

INVENTING THE PRESIDENCY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe Articles of Confederation made no provision for an executive branch, although they did use the term “president” to designate the presiding officer of the Confederation Congress, who also handled other administrative duties.Articles of Confederation, Article XI, 1781. The presidency was proposed early in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia by Virginia’s Edmund Randolph, as part of James Madison’s proposal for a federal government, which became known as the Virginia Plan. Madison offered a rather sketchy outline of the executive branch, leaving open whether what he termed the “national executive” would be an individual or a set of people. He proposed that Congress select the executive, whose powers and authority, and even length of term of service, were left largely undefined. He also proposed a “council of revision” consisting of the national executive and members of the national judiciary, which would review laws passed by the legislature and have the power of veto.Jack Rakove and Susan Zlomke. 1987. “James Madison and the Independent Executive,” *Presidential Studies Quarterly* 17, No. 2: 293–300.

THE EVOLVING EXECUTIVE BRANCH

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraNo sooner had the presidency been established than the occupants of the office, starting with George Washington, began acting in ways that expanded both its formal and informal powers. For example, Washington established a cabinet or group of advisors to help him administer his duties, consisting of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch. Today, the heads of the fifteen executive departments serve as the president’s advisers.https://www.justice.gov/about (May 1, 2016). And, in 1793, when it became important for the United States to take a stand in the evolving European conflicts between France and other European powers, especially Great Britain, Washington issued a neutrality proclamation that extended his rights as diplomat-in-chief far more broadly than had at first been conceived.

The Presidential Election Process

SELECTING THE CANDIDATE: THE PARTY PROCESS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe framers of the Constitution made no provision in the document for the establishment of political parties. Indeed, parties were not necessary to select the first president, since George Washington ran unopposed. Following the first election of Washington, the political party system gained steam and power in the electoral process, creating separate nomination and general election stages. Early on, the power to nominate presidents for office bubbled up from the party operatives in the various state legislatures and toward what was known as the king caucus or congressional caucus. The *caucus* or large-scale gathering was made up of legislators in the Congress who met informally to decide on nominees from their respective parties. In somewhat of a countervailing trend in the general election stage of the process, by the presidential election of 1824, many states were using popular elections to choose their electors. This became important in that election when Andrew Jackson won the popular vote and the largest number of electors, but the presidency was given to John Quincy Adams instead. Out of the frustration of Jackson’s supporters emerged a powerful two-party system that took control of the selection process.Daniel Myron Greene. 1908. “The Evolution of the National Political Convention,” *The Sewanee Review* 16, No. 2: 228–32.

ELECTING THE PRESIDENT: THE GENERAL ELECTION

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraEarly presidential elections, conducted along the lines of the original process outlined in the Constitution, proved unsatisfactory. So long as George Washington was a candidate, his election was a foregone conclusion. But it took some manipulation of the votes of electors to ensure that the second-place winner (and thus the vice president) did not receive the same number of votes. When Washington declined to run again after two terms, matters worsened. In 1796, political rivals John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were elected president and vice president, respectively. Yet the two men failed to work well together during Adams’s administration, much of which Jefferson spent at his Virginia residence at Monticello. As noted earlier in this chapter, the shortcomings of the system became painfully evident in 1800, when Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr finished tied, thus leaving it to the House of Representatives to elect Jefferson.James Roger Sharp. 2010. *The Deadlocked Election of 1800: Jefferson, Burr, and the Union in the Balance*. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

Organizing to Govern

TRANSITION AND APPOINTMENTS

In the immediate aftermath of the election, the incoming and outgoing administrations work together to help facilitate the transfer of power. While the General Services Administration oversees the logistics of the process, such as office assignments, information technology, and the assignment of keys, prudent candidates typically prepare for a possible victory by appointing members of a transition team during the lead-up to the general election. The success of the team’s actions becomes apparent on inauguration day, when the transition of power takes place in what is often a seamless fashion, with people evacuating their offices (and the White House) for their successors.

FORGING AN AGENDA

Having secured election, the incoming president must soon decide how to deliver upon what was promised during the campaign. The chief executive must set priorities, chose what to emphasize, and formulate strategies to get the job done. He or she labors under the shadow of a measure of presidential effectiveness known as the first hundred days in office, a concept popularized during Franklin Roosevelt’s first term in the 1930s. While one hundred days is possibly too short a time for any president to boast of any real accomplishments, most presidents do recognize that they must address their major initiatives during their first two years in office. This is the time when the president is most powerful and is given the benefit of the doubt by the public and the media (aptly called the honeymoon period), especially if entering the White House with a politically aligned Congress, as Barack Obama did. However, recent history suggests that even one-party control of Congress and the presidency does not ensure efficient policymaking. This difficulty is due as much to divisions within the governing party as to obstructionist tactics skillfully practiced by the minority party in Congress. Democratic president Jimmy Carter’s battles with a Congress controlled by Democratic majorities provide a good case in point.

The Public Presidency

THE SHAPING OF THE MODERN PRESIDENCY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraFrom the days of the early republic through the end of the nineteenth century, presidents were limited in the ways they could reach the public to convey their perspective and shape policy. Inaugural addresses and messages to Congress, while circulated in newspapers, proved clumsy devices to attract support, even when a president used plain, blunt language. Some presidents undertook tours of the nation, notably George Washington and Rutherford B. Hayes. Others promoted good relationships with newspaper editors and reporters, sometimes going so far as to sanction a pro-administration newspaper. One president, Ulysses S. Grant, cultivated political cartoonist Thomas Nast to present the president’s perspective in the pages of the magazine *Harper’s Weekly*.Wendy Wick Reaves. 1987. “Thomas Nast and the President,” *American Art Journal* 19, No. 1: 61–71. Abraham Lincoln experimented with public meetings recorded by newspaper reporters and public letters that would appear in the press, sometimes after being read at public gatherings ([link]). Most presidents gave speeches, although few proved to have much immediate impact, including Lincoln’s memorable Gettysburg Address.

GOING PUBLIC: PROMISE AND PITFALLS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe concept of going public involves the president delivering a major television address in the hope that Americans watching the address will be compelled to contact their House and Senate member and that such public pressure will result in the legislators supporting the president on a major piece of legislation. Technological advances have made it more efficient for presidents to take their messages directly to the people than was the case before mass media ([link]). Presidential visits can build support for policy initiatives or serve political purposes, helping the president reward supporters, campaign for candidates, and seek reelection. It remains an open question, however, whether choosing to go public actually enhances a president’s political position in battles with Congress. Political scientist George C. Edwards goes so far as to argue that taking a president’s position public serves to polarize political debate, increase public opposition to the president, and complicate the chances to get something done. It replaces deliberation and compromise with confrontation and campaigning. Edwards believes the best way for presidents to achieve change is to keep issues private and negotiate resolutions that preclude partisan combat. Going public may be more effective in rallying supporters than in gaining additional support or changing minds.George C. Edwards. 2016. *Predicting the Presidency: The Potential of Persuasive Leadership*. Princeton: Princeton University Press; George C. Edwards and Stephen J. Wayne. 2003. *Presidential Leadership: Politics and Policy Making*. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

THE FIRST LADY: A SECRET WEAPON?

The president is not the only member of the First Family who often attempts to advance an agenda by going public. First ladies increasingly exploited the opportunity to gain public support for an issue of deep interest to them. Before 1933, most first ladies served as private political advisers to their husbands. In the 1910s, Edith Bolling Wilson took a more active but still private role assisting her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, afflicted by a stroke, in the last years of his presidency. However, as the niece of one president and the wife of another, it was Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s who opened the door for first ladies to do something more.

Presidential Governance: Direct Presidential Action

DOMESTIC POLICY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraPresidents may not be able to appoint key members of their administration without Senate confirmation, but they can demand the resignation or removal of cabinet officers, high-ranking appointees (such as ambassadors), and members of the presidential staff. During Reconstruction, Congress tried to curtail the president’s removal power with the Tenure of Office Act (1867), which required Senate concurrence to remove presidential nominees who took office upon Senate confirmation. Andrew Johnson’s violation of that legislation provided the grounds for his impeachment in 1868. Subsequent presidents secured modifications of the legislation before the Supreme Court ruled in 1926 that the Senate had no right to impair the president’s removal power.*Myers v. United States*, 272 U.S. 52 (1925). In the case of Senate failure to approve presidential nominations, the president is empowered to issue recess appointments (made while the Senate is in recess) that continue in force until the end of the next session of the Senate (unless the Senate confirms the nominee).

NATIONAL SECURITY, FOREIGN POLICY, AND WAR

Presidents are more likely to justify the use of executive orders in cases of national security or as part of their war powers. In addition to mandating emancipation and the internment of Japanese Americans, presidents have issued orders to protect the homeland from internal threats. Most notably, Lincoln ordered the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in 1861 and 1862 before seeking congressional legislation to undertake such an act. Presidents hire and fire military commanders; they also use their power as commander-in-chief to aggressively deploy U.S. military force. Congress rarely has taken the lead over the course of history, with the War of 1812 being the lone exception. Pearl Harbor was a salient case where Congress did make a clear and formal declaration when asked by FDR. However, since World War II, it has been the president and not Congress who has taken the lead in engaging the United States in military action outside the nation’s boundaries, most notably in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf ([link]).

THE POWER OF PERSUASION

The framers of the Constitution, concerned about the excesses of British monarchial power, made sure to design the presidency within a network of checks and balances controlled by the other branches of the federal government. Such checks and balances encourage consultation, cooperation, and compromise in policymaking. This is most evident at home, where the Constitution makes it difficult for either Congress or the chief executive to prevail unilaterally, at least when it comes to constructing policy. Although much is made of political stalemate and obstructionism in national political deliberations today, the framers did not want to make it too easy to get things done without a great deal of support for such initiatives.

OPPORTUNITY AND LEGACY

What often shapes a president’s performance, reputation, and ultimately legacy depends on circumstances that are largely out of their control. Did the president prevail in a landslide or was it a closely contested election? Did they come to office as the result of death, assassination, or resignation? How much support does the president’s party enjoy, and is that support reflected in the composition of both houses of Congress, just one, or neither? Will the president face a Congress ready to embrace proposals or poised to oppose them? Whatever a president’s ambitions, it will be hard to realize them in the face of a hostile or divided Congress, and the options to exercise independent leadership are greater in times of crisis and war than when looking at domestic concerns alone.

The Courts

Introduction

Guardians of the Constitution and Individual Rights

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraStarting in New York in 1790, the early Supreme Court focused on establishing its rules and procedures and perhaps trying to carve its place as the new government’s third branch. However, given the difficulty of getting all the justices even to show up, and with no permanent home or building of its own for decades, finding its footing in the early days proved to be a monumental task. Even when the federal government moved to the nation’s capital in 1800, the Court had to share space with Congress in the Capitol building. This ultimately meant that “the high bench crept into an undignified committee room in the Capitol beneath the House Chamber.”Bernard Schwartz. 1993. *A History of the Supreme Court*. New York: Oxford University Press, 16.

THE COURTS AND PUBLIC POLICY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraEven with judicial review in place, the courts do not always stand ready just to throw out actions of the other branches of government. More broadly, as Marshall put it, “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”*Marbury v. Madison*, 5 U.S. 137 (1803). The United States has a common law system in which law is largely developed through binding judicial decisions. With roots in medieval England, the system was inherited by the American colonies along with many other British traditions.“The Common Law and Civil Law Traditions.” *The Robbins Collection*. School of Law (Boalt Hall). University of California at Berkeley. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/robbins/CommonLawCivilLawTraditions.html (March 1, 2016). It stands in contrast to code law systems, which provide very detailed and comprehensive laws that do not leave room for much interpretation and judicial decision-making. With code law in place, as it is in many nations of the world, it is the job of judges to simply apply the law. But under common law, as in the United States, they interpret it. Often referred to as a system of judge-made law, common law provides the opportunity for the judicial branch to have stronger involvement in the process of law-making itself, largely through its ruling and interpretation on a case-by-case basis.

COURTS AS A LAST RESORT

While the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts exert power over many when reviewing laws or declaring acts of other branches unconstitutional, they become particularly important when an individual or group comes before them believing there has been a wrong. A citizen or group that feels mistreated can approach a variety of institutional venues in the U.S. system for assistance in changing policy or seeking support. Organizing protests, garnering special interest group support, and changing laws through the legislative and executive branches are all possible, but an individual is most likely to find the courts especially well-suited to analyzing the particulars of a case.

The Dual Court System

COURTS AND FEDERALISM

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraCourts hear two different types of disputes: criminal and civil. Under criminal law, governments establish rules and punishments; laws define conduct that is prohibited because it can harm others and impose punishment for committing such an act. Crimes are usually labeled felonies or misdemeanors based on their nature and seriousness; felonies are the more serious crimes. When someone commits a criminal act, the government (state or national, depending on which law has been broken) charges that person with a crime, and the case brought to court contains the name of the charging government, as in *Miranda v. Arizona* discussed below.*Miranda v. Arizona*, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). On the other hand, civil law cases involve two or more private (non-government) parties, at least one of whom alleges harm or injury committed by the other. In both criminal and civil matters, the courts decide the remedy and resolution of the case, and in all cases, the U.S. Supreme Court is the final court of appeal.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF A DUAL COURT SYSTEM

From an individual’s perspective, the dual court system has both benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, each person has more than just one court system ready to protect that individual's rights. The dual court system provides alternate venues in which to appeal for assistance, as Ernesto Miranda’s case illustrates. The U.S. Supreme Court found for Miranda an extension of his Fifth Amendment protections—a constitutional right to remain silent when faced with police questioning. It was a right he could not get solely from the state courts in Arizona, but one those courts had to honor nonetheless.

The Federal Court System

THE THREE TIERS OF FEDERAL COURTS

There are ninety-four U.S. district courts in the fifty states and U.S. territories, of which eighty-nine are in the states (at least one in each state). The others are in Washington, DC; Puerto Rico; Guam; the U.S. Virgin Islands; and the Northern Mariana Islands. These are the trial courts of the national system, in which federal cases are tried, witness testimony is heard, and evidence is presented. No district court crosses state lines, and a single judge oversees each one. Some cases are heard by a jury, and some are not.

THE SELECTION OF JUDGES

Judges fulfill a vital role in the U.S. judicial system and are carefully selected. At the federal level, the president nominates a candidate to a judgeship or justice position, and the nominee must be confirmed by a majority vote in the U.S. Senate, a function of the Senate’s “advice and consent” role. All judges and justices in the national courts serve lifetime terms of office.

The Supreme Court

THE STRUCTURE OF THE SUPREME COURT

The original court in 1789 had six justices, but Congress set the number at nine in 1869, and it has remained there ever since. There is one chief justice, who is the lead or highest-ranking judge on the Court, and eight associate justice**s**. All nine serve lifetime terms, after successful nomination by the president and confirmation by the Senate. There was discussion of expanding the court during Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency and also during the 2020 presidential election. Nothing has come of court expansion, however.

HOW THE SUPREME COURT SELECTS CASES

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe Supreme Court begins its annual session on the first Monday in October and ends late the following June. Every year, there are literally thousands of people who would like to have their case heard before the Supreme Court, but the justices will select only a handful to be placed on the docket, which is the list of cases scheduled on the Court’s calendar. The Court typically accepts fewer than 2 percent of the as many as ten thousand cases it is asked to review every year.“Supreme Court Procedures.” *United States Courts*. http://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/supreme-1 (March 1, 2016).

SUPREME COURT PROCEDURES

Once a case has been placed on the docket, briefs, or short arguments explaining each party’s view of the case, must be submitted—first by the petitioner putting forth the case, then by the respondent. After initial briefs have been filed, both parties may file subsequent briefs in response to the first. Likewise, people and groups that are not party to the case but are interested in its outcome may file an *amicus curiae* (“friend of the court”) brief giving their opinion, analysis, and recommendations about how the Court should rule. Interest groups in particular can become heavily involved in trying to influence the judiciary by filing *amicus* briefs—both before and after a case has been granted *cert*. And, as noted earlier, if the United States is not party to a case, the solicitor general may file an *amicus* brief on the government’s behalf.

Judicial Decision-Making and Implementation by the Supreme Court

JUDICIAL OPINIONS

Every Court opinion sets precedent for the future. The Supreme Court’s decisions are not always unanimous, however; the published majority opinion, or explanation of the justices’ decision, is the one with which a majority of the nine justices agree. It can represent a vote as narrow as five in favor to four against. A tied vote is rare but can occur at a time of vacancy, absence, or abstention from a case, perhaps where there is a conflict of interest. In the event of a tied vote, the decision of the lower court stands.

INFLUENCES ON THE COURT

Many of the same players who influence whether the Court will grant *cert*. in a case, discussed earlier in this chapter, also play a role in its decision-making, including law clerks, the solicitor general, interest groups, and the mass media. But additional legal, personal, ideological, and political influences weigh on the Supreme Court and its decision-making process. On the legal side, courts, including the Supreme Court, cannot make a ruling unless they have a case before them, and even with a case, courts must rule on its facts. Although the courts’ role is interpretive, judges and justices are still constrained by the facts of the case, the Constitution, the relevant laws, and the courts’ own precedent.

THE COURTS AND THE OTHER BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT

Both the executive and legislative branches check and balance the judiciary in many different ways. The president can leave a lasting imprint on the bench through nominations, even long after leaving office. The president may also influence the Court through the solicitor general’s involvement or through the submission of *amicus* briefs in cases in which the United States is not a party.

State and Local Government

Introduction

State Power and Delegation

STATE POWER AT THE FOUNDING

Before the ratification of the Constitution, the state governments’ power far exceeded that held by the national government. This distribution of authority was the result of a conscious decision and was reflected in the structure and framework of the Articles of Confederation. The national government was limited, lacking both a president to oversee domestic and foreign policy and a system of federal courts to settle disputes between the states.

THE EVOLUTION OF STATE POWER

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThroughout U.S. history, the national and state governments have battled for dominance over the implementation of public policy and the funding of important political programs. Upon taking office in 1933 during the Great Depression (1929–1939), President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a series of legislative proposals to boost the economy and put people back to work. The enacted programs allowed the federal government to play a broader role in revitalizing the economy while greatly expanding its power. However, this result was not without its critics. Initially, the Supreme Court overturned several key legislative proposals passed under Roosevelt, reasoning that they represented an overreach of presidential authority and were unconstitutional, such as *Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States*.*A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States*, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). Eventually, however, the Supreme Court shifted direction to reflect public opinion, which was decisively behind the president and the need for government intervention in a time of economic turmoil.William E. Leuchtenburg, “When Franklin Roosevelt Clashed with the Supreme Court—and Lost,” *Smithsonian Magazine*, May 2005. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-franklin-roosevelt-clashed-with-the-supreme-court-and-lost-78497994/.

POWER AT THE SUBSTATE LEVEL

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe U.S. Constitution is silent on the dispersion of power between states and localities within each state. The fact that states are mentioned specifically and local jurisdictions are not has traditionally meant that power independent of the federal government resides first with the state. Through their own constitutions and statutes, states decide what to require of local jurisdictions and what to delegate. This structure represents the legal principle of Dillon’s Rule, named for Iowa Supreme Court justice John F. Dillon. Dillon argued that state actions trump those of the local government and have supremacy.“Why Existing Law Won’t Stop Corporations from Harming Your Community,” August 31, 2015. http://celdf.org/2015/08/why-existing-law-wont-stop-corporations-from-harming-your-community/ (March 14, 2016). In this view, cities and towns exist at the pleasure of the state, which means the state can step in and dissolve them or even take them over. Indeed, most states have supremacy clauses over local governments in their constitutions.

State Political Culture

MORALISTIC POLITICAL CULTURE

In Elazar’s framework, states with a moralistic political culture see the government as a means to better society and promote the general welfare. They expect political officials to be honest in their dealings with others, put the interests of the people they serve above their own, and commit to improving the area they represent. The political process is seen in a positive light and not as a vehicle tainted by corruption. In fact, citizens in moralistic cultures have little patience for corruption and believe that politicians should be motivated by a desire to benefit the community rather than by a need to profit financially from service.

INDIVIDUALISTIC POLITICAL CULTURE

States that align with Elazar’s individualistic political culture see the government as a mechanism for addressing issues that matter to individual citizens and for pursuing individual goals. People in this culture interact with the government in the same manner they would interact with a marketplace. They expect the government to provide goods and services they see as essential, and the public officials and bureaucrats who provide them expect to be compensated for their efforts. The focus is on meeting individual needs and private goals rather than on serving the best interests of everyone in the community. New policies will be enacted if politicians can use them to garner support from voters or other interested stakeholders, or if there is great demand for these services on the part of individuals.

TRADITIONALISTIC POLITICAL CULTURE

Given the prominence of slavery in its formation, a traditionalistic political culture, in Elazar’s argument, sees the government as necessary to maintaining the existing social order, the status quo. Only elites belong in the political enterprise, and as a result, new public policies will be advanced only if they reinforce the beliefs and interests of those in power.

CRITIQUES OF ELAZAR’S THEORY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraSeveral critiques have come to light since Elazar first introduced his theory of state political culture fifty years ago. The original theory rested on the assumption that new cultures could arise with the influx of settlers from different parts of the world; however, since immigration patterns have changed over time, it could be argued that the three cultures no longer match the country’s current reality. Today’s immigrants are less likely to come from European countries and are more likely to originate in Latin American and Asian countries.Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova. 26 February 2015. “Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States,” http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states. In addition, advances in technology and transportation have made it easier for citizens to travel across state lines and to relocate. Therefore, the pattern of diffusion on which the original theory rests may no longer be accurate, because people are moving around in more, and often unpredictable, directions.

Governors and State Legislatures

GOVERNORS IN CHARGE

Anyone elected to the office of governor assumes tremendous responsibility overnight. He or she becomes the spokesperson for the entire state and their political party, accepts blame or praise for handling decision-making in times of crisis, oversees the implementation of public policy, and helps shepherd legislation through the lawmaking process. These tasks require a great deal of skill and demand that governors exhibit different strengths and personality traits. Governors must learn to work well with other lawmakers, bureaucrats, cabinet officials, and with the citizens who elected them to office in the first place. The ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan, provides a good case in point. The COVID-19 pandemic put every governor in the hot seat as they considered decisions on masks, social distancing, and how to allocate federal funds ([link]).

THE FUNCTIONS OF STATE LEGISLATURES

State legislatures serve three primary functions. They perform a lawmaking function by researching, writing, and passing legislation. Members represent their districts and work to meet requests for help from citizens within it. Finally, legislatures perform an oversight function for the executive branch.

THE COMPOSITION OF STATE LEGISLATURES

In most states, the legislative function is divided between two bodies: a state house and a state senate. The only exception is Nebraska, which has a unicameral state senate of forty-nine members. State legislatures vary a great deal in terms of the number of legislators in the house and senate, the range of diversity across the membership, the partisan composition of the chamber relative to the governor’s affiliation, and the degree of legislative professionalism. This variation can lead to differences in the type of policies passed and the amount of power legislatures wield relative to that of the governor.

State Legislative Term Limits

THE BASICS OF TERM LIMITS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraUnder consecutive term limits, a member can serve for only a specified period of time in either the state house or the state senate, most commonly eight years. To try to regain a seat in the legislature once the limit has been met, the member will have to wait to run for office again. If the member succeeds, the clock will reset and the legislator may once again serve up to the limit set by the state. In states with a lifetime ban, such as Oklahoma, members can serve only one time for the number of years allotted, and they are not permitted to run for office again ([link]).See note 65.

ADVANTAGES OF TERM LIMITS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraIn many cases, the movement to institute term limits was initiated by voters and passed through citizen initiatives, which allow citizens to place a proposed law or constitutional amendment on the ballot for a popular vote.National Conference of State Legislatures. 20 September 2012. “Initiative, Referendum and Recall,” http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/initiative-referendum-and-recall-overview.aspx. Proponents of term limits felt new blood was needed in state legislatures to bring fresh ideas and perspectives to lawmaking. In addition, they hoped term limits would compel turnover among members by shortening the time anyone could serve and by reducing the tendency for elected officials to make legislative service their career. In conjunction with this thinking, some supporters hoped term limits would increase the motivation to make good public policy. If members were less focused on reelection and knew they could not serve more than a certain number of years, perhaps they would get right down to the business of making laws and produce innovative policy within a narrow window of time.John Carey, Richard Niemi, and Lynda Powell. 2000. *Term Limits in State Legislatures*. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

DISADVANTAGES OF TERM LIMITS

Although proponents have many reasons for supporting term limits, opponents also have compelling reasons for not supporting their implementation in the state legislature. In addition, research by political scientists has uncovered a number of negative consequences since term limits took effect.

County and City Government

COUNTY GOVERNMENT

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraCounty governments serve a larger geographical area than cities and towns, but a smaller area than states. They are created by the state government and typically operate under provisions set out in the state constitution. As such, they are essentially administrative units of the state. Census estimates from 2012 indicate that there are just over three thousand counties in the United States.Brian Lavin. 30 August 2012. “Census Bureau Reports There are 89,004 Local Governments in the United States (CB12-161),” https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/governments/cb12-161.html. County systems usually take one of three basic forms: the commission system, the council-administrator system, and the council-elected executive system.

CITY GOVERNMENT

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraMunicipal governments oversee the operation and functions of cities and towns. Census estimates for 2012 show just over 19,500 municipal governments and nearly 16,500 township governments in the United States.Lavin, “Census Bureau Reports There are 89,004 Local Governments in the United States (CB12-161).” The vast majority of municipal governments operate on one of two governing models: a mayor-council system or a council-manager system.

The Outputs of Government

The Bureaucracy

Introduction

Bureaucracy and the Evolution of Public Administration

WHAT DOES A BUREAUCRACY DO?

Modern society relies on the effective functioning of government to provide public goods, enhance quality of life, and stimulate economic growth. The activities by which government achieves these functions include—but are not limited to—taxation, homeland security, immigration, foreign affairs, and education. The more society grows and the need for government services expands, the more challenging bureaucratic management and public administration becomes. Public administration is both the implementation of public policy in government bureaucracies and the academic study that prepares civil servants for work in those organizations.

THE ORIGINS OF THE U.S. BUREAUCRACY

In the early U.S. republic, the bureaucracy was quite small. This is understandable since the American Revolution was largely a revolt against executive power and the British imperial administrative order. Nevertheless, while neither the word “bureaucracy” nor its synonyms appear in the text of the Constitution, the document does establish a few broad channels through which the emerging government could develop the necessary bureaucratic administration.

THE FALL OF POLITICAL PATRONAGE

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraPatronage had the advantage of putting political loyalty to work by making the government quite responsive to the electorate and keeping election turnout robust because so much was at stake. However, the spoils system also had a number of obvious disadvantages. It was a reciprocal system. Clients who wanted positions in the civil service pledged their political loyalty to a particular patron who then provided them with their desired positions. These arrangements directed the power and resources of government toward perpetuating the reward system. They replaced the system that early presidents like Thomas Jefferson had fostered, in which the country’s intellectual and economic elite rose to the highest levels of the federal bureaucracy based on their relative merit.Jack Ladinsky. 1966. “Review of Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service: Standards of Selection in the Administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson,” *American Sociological Review* 31 No. 6: 863–64. Criticism of the spoils system grew, especially in the mid-1870s, after numerous scandals rocked the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant ([link]).

THE BUREAUCRACY COMES OF AGE

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were a time of great bureaucratic growth in the United States: The Interstate Commerce Commission was established in 1887, the Federal Reserve Board in 1913, the Federal Trade Commission in 1914, and the Federal Power Commission in 1920.

Toward a Merit-Based Civil Service

THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe Pendleton Act of 1883 was not merely an important piece of reform legislation; it also established the foundations for the merit-based system that emerged in the decades that followed. It accomplished this through a number of important changes, although three elements stand out as especially significant. First, the law attempted to reduce the impact of politics on the civil service sector by making it illegal to fire or otherwise punish government workers for strictly political reasons. Second, the law raised the qualifications for employment in civil service positions by requiring applicants to pass exams designed to test their competence in a number of important skill and knowledge areas. Third, it allowed for the creation of the United States Civil Service Commission (CSC), which was charged with enforcing the elements of the law.United States Civil Service Commission. 1974. *Biography of an Ideal: a history of the federal civil service*. Washington, D.C.: Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Civil Service Commission. 40–44.

MERIT-BASED SELECTION

The general trend from the 1880s to today has been toward a civil service system that is increasingly based on merit ([link]). In this system, the large majority of jobs in individual bureaucracies are tied to the needs of the organization rather than to the political needs of the party bosses or political leaders. This purpose is reflected in the way civil service positions are advertised. A general civil service position announcement will describe the government agency or office seeking an employee, an explanation of what the agency or office does, an explanation of what the position requires, and a list of the knowledge, skills, and abilities, commonly referred to as KSAs, deemed especially important for fulfilling the role. A budget analyst position, for example, would include KSAs such as experience with automated financial systems, knowledge of budgetary regulations and policies, the ability to communicate orally, and demonstrated skills in budget administration, planning, and formulation. The merit system requires that a person be evaluated based on ability to demonstrate KSAs that match those described or better. The individual who is hired should have better KSAs than the other applicants.

Understanding Bureaucracies and their Types

MODELS OF BUREAUCRACY

Bureaucracies are complex institutions designed to accomplish specific tasks. This complexity, and the fact that they are organizations composed of human beings, can make it challenging for us to understand how bureaucracies work. Sociologists, however, have developed a number of models for understanding the process. Each model highlights specific traits that help explain the organizational behavior of governing bodies and associated functions.

TYPES OF BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraA bureaucracy is a particular government unit established to accomplish a specific set of goals and objectives as authorized by a legislative body. In the United States, the federal bureaucracy enjoys a great degree of autonomy compared to those of other countries. This is in part due to the sheer size of the federal budget, approximately \$4.48 trillion as of 2019.Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/historical-tables/ (June 1, 2021). And because many of its agencies do not have clearly defined lines of authority—roles and responsibilities established by means of a chain of command—they also are able to operate with a high degree of autonomy. However, many agency actions are subject to judicial review. In *Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States* (1935), the Supreme Court found that agency authority seemed limitless.*A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States*, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). Yet, not all bureaucracies are alike. In the U.S. government, there are four general types: cabinet departments, independent executive agencies, regulatory agencies, and government corporations.

THE FACE OF DEMOCRACY

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThose who work for the public bureaucracy are nearly always citizens, much like those they serve. As such they typically seek similar long-term goals from their employment, namely to be able to pay their bills and save for retirement. However, unlike those who seek employment in the private sector, public bureaucrats tend to have an additional motivator, the desire to accomplish something worthwhile on behalf of their country. In general, individuals attracted to public service display higher levels of public service motivation (PSM). This is a desire most people possess in varying degrees that drives us to seek fulfillment through doing good and contributing in an altruistic manner.James L. Perry. 1996. “Measuring Public Service Motivation: An Assessment of Construct Reliability and Validity.” *Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory* 6, No. 1: 5–22.

Controlling the Bureaucracy

BUREAUCRATIC RULEMAKING

Once the particulars of implementation have been spelled out in the legislation authorizing a new program, bureaucracies move to enact it. When they encounter grey areas, many follow the federal negotiated rulemaking process to propose a solution, that is, detailing how particular new federal polices, regulations, and/or programs will be implemented in the agencies. Congress cannot possibly legislate on that level of detail, so the experts in the bureaucracy do so.

GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATIC OVERSIGHT

The ability for bureaucracies to develop their own rules and in many ways control their own budgets has often been a matter of great concern for elected leaders. As a result, elected leaders have employed a number of strategies and devices to control public administrators in the bureaucracy.

CITIZEN BUREAUCRATIC OVERSIGHT

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraA number of laws passed in the decades between the end of the Second World War and the late 1970s have created a framework through which citizens can exercise their own bureaucratic oversight. The two most important laws are the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the Government in Sunshine Act of 1976.https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/552; https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-90/pdf/STATUTE-90-Pg1241.pdf (June 6, 2016). Like many of the modern bureaucratic reforms in the United States, both emerged during a period of heightened skepticism about government activities.

GOVERNMENT PRIVATIZATION

A more extreme, and in many instances, more controversial solution to the perceived and real inefficiencies in the bureaucracy is privatization. In the United States, largely because it was born during the Enlightenment and has a long history of championing free-market principles, the urge to privatize government services has never been as strong as it is in many other countries. There are simply far fewer government-run services. Nevertheless, the federal government has used forms of privatization and contracting throughout its history. But following the growth of bureaucracy and government services during President Johnson’s Great Society in the mid-1960s, a particularly vocal movement began calling for a rollback of government services.

Domestic Policy

Introduction

What Is Public Policy?

PUBLIC POLICY DEFINED

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraOne approach to thinking about public policy is to see it as the broad strategy government uses to do its job. More formally, it is the relatively stable set of purposive governmental actions that address matters of concern to some part of society.James E. Anderson. 2000. *Public Policymaking: An Introduction*, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. This description is useful in that it helps to explain both what public policy is and what it isn’t. First, public policy is a guide to legislative action that is more or less fixed for long periods of time, not just short-term fixes or single legislative acts. Policy also doesn’t happen by accident, and it is rarely formed simply as the result of the campaign promises of a single elected official, even the president. While elected officials are often important in shaping policy, most policy outcomes are the result of considerable debate, compromise, and refinement that happen over years and are finalized only after input from multiple institutions within government as well as from interest groups and the public.

PUBLIC POLICY AS OUTCOMES

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraGovernments rarely want to keep their policies a secret. Elected officials want to be able to take credit for the things they have done to help their constituents, and their opponents are all too willing to cast blame when policy initiatives fail. We can therefore think of policy as the formal expression of what elected or appointed officials are trying to accomplish. In passing the HCERA (2010), Congress declared its policy through an act that directed how it would appropriate money. The president can also implement or change policy through an executive order, which offers instructions about how to implement law under the president's discretion ([link]). Finally, policy changes can come as a result of court actions or opinions, such as *Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka* (1954), which formally ended school segregation in the United States.*Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka*, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

Categorizing Public Policy

DIFFERENT TYPES OF GOODS

Think for a minute about what it takes to make people happy and satisfied. As we live our daily lives, we experience a range of physical, psychological, and social needs that must be met in order for us to be happy and productive. At the very least, we require food, water, and shelter. In very basic subsistence societies, people acquire these through farming crops, digging wells, and creating shelter from local materials (see [link]). People also need social interaction with others and the ability to secure goods they acquire, lest someone else try to take them. As their tastes become more complex, they may find it advantageous to exchange their items for others; this requires not only a mechanism for barter but also a system of transportation. The more complex these systems are, the greater the range of items people can access to keep them alive and make them happy. However, this increase in possessions also creates a stronger need to secure what they have acquired.

CLASSIC TYPES OF POLICY

Public policy, then, ultimately boils down to determining the distribution, allocation, and enjoyment of public, common, and toll goods within a society. While the specifics of policy often depend on the circumstances, two broad questions all policymakers must consider are a) who pays the costs of creating and maintaining the goods, and b) who receives the benefits of the goods? When private goods are bought and sold in a market place, the costs and benefits go to the participants in the transaction. Your landlord benefits from receipt of the rent you pay, and you benefit by having a place to live. But non-private goods like roads, waterways, and national parks are controlled and regulated by someone other than the owners, allowing policymakers to make decisions about who pays and who benefits.

Policy Arenas

SOCIAL WELFARE POLICY

The U.S. government began developing a social welfare policy during the Great Depression of the 1930s. By the 1960s, social welfare had become a major function of the federal government—one to which most public policy funds are devoted—and had developed to serve several overlapping functions. First, social welfare policy is designed to ensure some level of equity in a democratic political system based on competitive, free-market economics. During the Great Depression, many politicians came to fear that the high unemployment and low-income levels plaguing society could threaten the stability of democracy, as was happening in European countries like Germany and Italy. The assumption in this thinking is that democratic systems work best when poverty is minimized. In societies operating in survival mode, in contrast, people tend to focus more on short-term problem-solving than on long-term planning. Second, social welfare policy creates an automatic stimulus for a society by building a safety net that can catch members of society who are suffering economic hardship through no fault of their own. For an individual family, this safety net makes the difference between eating and starving; for an entire economy, it could prevent an economic recession from sliding into a broader and more damaging depression.

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND EDUCATION

After World War II ended, the United States quickly realized that it had to address two problems to secure its fiscal and national security future. The first was that more than ten million servicemen and women needed to be reintegrated into the workforce, and many lacked appreciable work skills. The second problem was that the United States’ success in its new conflict with the Soviet Union depended on the rapid development of a new, highly technical military-industrial complex. To confront these challenges, the U.S. government passed several important pieces of legislation to provide education assistance to workers and research dollars to industry. As the needs of American workers and industry have changed, many of these programs have evolved from their original purposes, but they still remain important pieces of the public policy debate.

BUSINESS STIMULUS AND REGULATION

A final key aspect of domestic policy is the growth and regulation of business. The size and strength of the economy is very important to politicians whose jobs depend on citizens’ believing in their own future prosperity. At the same time, people in the United States want to live in a world where they feel safe from unfair or environmentally damaging business practices. These desires have forced the government to perform a delicate balancing act between programs that help grow the economy by providing benefits to the business sector and those that protect consumers, often by curtailing or regulating the business sector.

Policymakers

POLICY ADVOCATES

Take a minute to think of a policy change you believe would improve some condition in the United States. Now ask yourself this: “Why do I want to change this policy?” Are you motivated by a desire for justice? Do you feel the policy change would improve your life or that of members of your community? Is your sense of morality motivating you to change the status quo? Would your profession be helped? Do you feel that changing the policy might raise your status?

POLICY ANALYSTS

A second approach to creating public policy is a bit more objective. Rather than starting with what ought to happen and seeking ways to make it so, policy analysts try to identify all the possible choices available to a decision maker and then gauge their impacts if implemented. The goal of the analyst isn’t really to encourage the implementation of any of the options; rather, it is to make sure decision makers are fully informed about the implications of the decisions they do make.

THE POLICY PROCESS

The policy process contains four sequential stages: (1) agenda setting, (2) policy enactment, (3) policy implementation, and (4) evaluation. Given the sheer number of issues already processed by the government, called the continuing agenda, and the large number of new proposals being pushed at any one time, it is typically quite difficult to move a new policy all the way through the process.

Budgeting and Tax Policy

APPROACHES TO THE ECONOMY

Until the 1930s, most policy advocates argued that the best way for the government to interact with the economy was through a hands-off approach formally known as *laissez-faire* economics. These policymakers believed the key to economic growth and development was the government’s allowing private markets to operate efficiently. Proponents of this school of thought believed private investors were better equipped than governments to figure out which sectors of the economy were most likely to grow and which new products were most likely to be successful. They also tended to oppose government efforts to establish quality controls or health and safety standards, believing consumers themselves would punish bad behavior by not trading with poor corporate citizens. Finally, laissez-faire proponents felt that keeping government out of the business of business would create an automatic cycle of economic growth and contraction. Contraction phases in which there is no economic growth for two consecutive quarters, called recession**s**, would bring business failures and higher unemployment. But this condition, they believed, would correct itself on its own if the government simply allowed the system to operate.

MANDATORY SPENDING VS. DISCRETIONARY SPENDING

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraThe desire of Keynesians to create a minimal level of aggregate demand, coupled with a Depression-era preference to promote social welfare policy, led the president and Congress to develop a federal budget with spending divided into two broad categories: mandatory and discretionary (see [link]). Of these, mandatory spending is the larger, consisting of about \$4.9 trillion of the 2020 budget, or roughly 71 percent of all federal expenditures.“Mandatory Spending in 2015: An Infographic,” 6 January 2016. www.cbo.gov/publication/51111 (March 1, 2016).

TAX POLICY

The other option available for balancing the budget is to increase revenue. All governments must raise revenue in order to operate. The most common way is by applying some sort of tax on residents (or on their behaviors) in exchange for the benefits the government provides ([link]). As necessary as taxes are, however, they are not without potential downfalls. First, the more money the government collects to cover its costs, the less residents are left with to spend and invest. Second, attempts to raise revenues through taxation may alter the behavior of residents in ways that are counterproductive to the state and the broader economy. Excessively taxing necessary and desirable behaviors like consumption (with a sales tax) or investment (with a capital gains tax) will discourage citizens from engaging in them, potentially slowing economic growth. The goal of tax policy, then, is to determine the most effective way of meeting the nation’s revenue obligations without harming other public policy goals.

THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD AND INTEREST RATES

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraFinancial panics arise when too many people, worried about the solvency of their investments, try to withdraw their money at the same time. Such panics plagued U.S. banks until 1913 ([link]), when Congress enacted the Federal Reserve Act. The act established the Federal Reserve System, also known as the Fed, as the central bank of the United States. The Fed’s three original goals to promote were maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.“U.S. Code § 225a - Maintenance of long run growth of monetary and credit aggregates,” https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/12/225a (March 1, 2016). All of these goals bring stability. The Fed’s role is now broader and includes influencing monetary policy (the means by which the nation controls the size and growth of the money supply), supervising and regulating banks, and providing them with financial services like loans.

Foreign Policy

Introduction

Defining Foreign Policy

FOREIGN POLICY BASICS

NOT_CONVERTED_YET: paraWhat is foreign policy? We can think of it on several levels, as “the goals that a state’s officials seek to attain abroad, the values that give rise to those objectives, and the means or instruments used to pursue them.”Eugene R. Wittkopf, Christopher M. Jones, and Charles W. Kegley, Jr. 2007. *American Foreign Policy: Pattern and Process*, 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. This definition highlights some of the key topics in U.S. foreign policy, such as national goals abroad and the manner in which the United States tries to achieve them. Note too that we distinguish foreign policy, which is externally focused, from domestic policy, which sets strategies internal to the United States, though the two types of policies can become quite intertwined. So, for example, one might talk about Latino politics as a domestic issue when considering educational policies designed to increase the number of Hispanic Americans who attend and graduate from a U.S. college or university.Michelle Camacho Liu. 2011. *Investing in Higher Education for Latinos: Trends in Latino College Access and Success.* Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures. http://www.ncsl.org/documents/educ/trendsinlatinosuccess.pdf (May 12, 2016). However, as demonstrated in the primary debates leading up to the 2016 election, Latino politics can quickly become a foreign policy matter when considering topics such as immigration from and foreign trade with countries in Central America and South America ([link]).Charlene Barshefsky and James T. Hill. 2008. *U.S.–Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality*. Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations. i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/LatinAmerica_TF.pdf (May 12, 2016).

UNIQUE CHALLENGES IN FOREIGN POLICY

U.S. foreign policy is a massive and complex enterprise. What are its unique challenges for the country?

Foreign Policy Instruments

BROADLY FOCUSED FOREIGN POLICY OUTPUTS

Broadly focused foreign policy outputs not only span multiple topics and organizations, but they also typically require large-scale spending and take longer to implement than sharply focused outputs. In the realm of broadly focused outputs, we will consider public laws, the periodic reauthorization of the foreign policy agencies, the foreign policy budget, international agreements, and the appointment process for new executive officials and ambassadors.

SHARPLY FOCUSED FOREIGN POLICY OUTPUTS

In addition to the broad-based foreign policy outputs above, which are president-led with some involvement from Congress, many other decisions need to be made. These sharply focused foreign policy outputs tend to be exclusively the province of the president, including the deployment of troops and/or intelligence agents in a crisis, executive summits between the president and other heads of state on targeted matters of foreign policy, presidential use of military force, and emergency funding measures to deal with foreign policy crises. These measures of foreign policy are more quickly enacted and demonstrate the “energy and dispatch” that Alexander Hamilton, writing in the *Federalist Papers*, saw as inherent in the institution of the presidency. Emergency spending does involve Congress through its power of the purse, but Congress tends to give presidents what they need to deal with emergencies. That said, the framers were consistent in wanting checks and balances sprinkled throughout the Constitution, including in the area of foreign policy and war powers. Hence, Congress has several roles, as discussed at points throughout this chapter.

Institutional Relations in Foreign Policy

FOREIGN POLICY AND SHARED POWER

While presidents are more empowered by the Constitution in foreign than in domestic policy, they nonetheless must seek approval from Congress on a variety of matters; chief among these is the basic budgetary authority needed to run foreign policy programs. Indeed, most if not all of the foreign policy instruments described earlier in this chapter require interbranch approval to go into effect. Such approval may sometimes be a formality, but it is still important. Even a sole executive agreement often requires subsequent funding from Congress in order to be carried out, and funding calls for majority support from the House and Senate. Presidents lead, to be sure, but they must consult with and engage the Congress on many matters of foreign policy. Presidents must also delegate a great deal in foreign policy to the bureaucratic experts in the foreign policy agencies. Not every operation can be run from the West Wing of the White House.

THE TWO PRESIDENCIES THESIS

When the media cover a domestic controversy, such as social unrest or police brutality, reporters consult officials at different levels and in branches of government, as well as think tanks and advocacy groups. In contrast, when an international event occurs, such as a terrorist bombing in Paris or Brussels, the media flock predominately to one actor—the president of the United States—to get the official U.S. position.

THE PERSPECTIVE OF HOUSE AND SENATE MEMBERS

Congress is a bicameral legislative institution with 100 senators serving in the Senate and 435 representatives serving in the House. How interested in foreign policy are typical House and Senate members?

THE MANY ACTORS IN FOREIGN POLICY

A variety of actors carry out the various and complex activities of U.S. foreign policy: White House staff, executive branch staff, and congressional leaders.

Approaches to Foreign Policy

CLASSIC APPROACHES

A variety of traditional concepts of foreign policy remain helpful today as we consider the proper role of the United States in, and its approach to, foreign affairs. These include isolationism, the idealism versus realism debate, liberal internationalism, hard versus soft power, and the grand strategy of U.S. foreign policy.

MORE RECENT SCHOOLS OF THOUGHTS

Two particular events in foreign policy caused many to change their views about the proper approach to U.S. involvement in world affairs. First, the debacle of U.S. involvement in the civil war in Vietnam in the years leading up to 1973 caused many to rethink the country’s traditional containment approach to the Cold War. Containment was the U.S. foreign policy goal of limiting the spread of communism. In Vietnam the United States supported one governing faction within the country (democratic South Vietnam), whereas the Soviet Union supported the opposing governing faction (communist North Vietnam). The U.S. military approach of battlefield engagement did not translate well to the jungles of Vietnam, where “guerilla warfare” predominated.

U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN THE COLD WAR AND WITH CHINA

The foreign policy environment from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War in 1990 was dominated by a duel of superpowers between the United States and its Western allies on the one hand and the Soviet Union and the communist bloc of countries in the East on the other. Both superpowers developed thousands of weapons of mass destruction and readied for a potential world war to be fought with nuclear weapons. That period was certainly challenging and ominous at times, but it was simpler than the present era. Nations knew what team they were on, and there was generally an incentive to not go to war because it would lead to the unthinkable—the end of the Earth as we know it, or mutually assured destruction. The result of this logic, essentially a standoff between the two powers, is sometime referred to as nuclear deterrence.

Declaration of Independence

The Constitution of the United States

Constitutional Amendments

The U.S. Bill of Rights (Amendments 1–10)

Federalist Papers #10 and #51

Federalist Paper #10: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection

From the New York Packet.

Federalist Paper #51: The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments

From the New York Packet.

Electoral College Map

Selected Supreme Court Cases

Selected Supreme Court Cases (by date)