Introduction to Political Science

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The Decline of Legislative Influence

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Introduction to Political Science is designed so that students will see themselves as a part of the world of politics and political science, emphasizing the role that politics and government play in students’ lives and how students can further contribute to civil society.

What Can I Do? outlines political science skills and “soft skills” connected to chapter material that are in demand in today’s job market, both within and outside the field of government and politics.

She also worked as a press aide for former San Francisco mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. (and she definitely left her heart in San Francisco).

The 400 multiple choice and true/false questions in our test bank are correlated to the six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, allowing instructors to customize tests to support a variety of course objectives.

Whether or not you care about politics, politics has an interest in you.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that humans were “political animals” in that only by engaging in politics could humans reach their highest potential.

The de jure rules are the rules as they are written, the formal rules. The de facto rules are the ones actually practiced or enforced, the informal rules.

Constitutions are perhaps the most important set of rules in a country because, after all, they are just pieces of paper.

A key difference between chess and politics is that, in politics, the players themselves can change the rules of the game while they are playing.

Power is, in part, a matter of belief: if you believe someone has power over you, they do, at least to the extent that you do what they want.

If you break your family’s rules, your family can punish you, but only your government can imprison you for breaking government laws.

As a condition for passing this course, your teacher can require you to read this book but not to do their laundry.

When violence is used to solve disputes, it represents the failure of politics, or at least the deep frustration of those whose aspirations are thwarted by politics.

Although you might see a world full of problems that obviously need to be fixed, you should always assume that there are those who benefit from the current circumstances who will work to thwart change.

Political negotiations are often a combination of high-minded principles and skullduggery.

Political scientists may not have lab coats or electron microscopes, but like other types of scientists, they use theory, logic, and evidence in an attempt to answer questions, to make predictions, or to arrive at conclusions.

If one defines science as a body o f universal laws about an unchanging universe , then politics is not and cannot be a science.

The specific knowledge ('politicians in this situation will behave in that way') may become obsolete even if a broader general principle ('politicians will act strategically to advance their goals') still appears to be true.

Is a good citizen the one who always obeys the laws or the one who challenges the laws they see as unjust?

Does a good government not, as a rule, have an obligation to do just that? But does this then create a slippery slope in which governments believe they are justified in lying as a matter of course?

Humans often use motivated reasoning, first deciding what is true—for example, “Gun control makes us safer” or “Gun control makes us less safe”—and then finding evidence that supports this belief while rejecting data that contradicts it.

The evidence is also clear that Big Tobacco, the largest cigarette companies, denied these facts for years because to admit them would have put their profits at risk.

In using generalizations, it is important to remember that they are descriptive of groups, not individuals.

If empirical research discovers that certain groups are systematically disadvantaged in the political process, the researchers may also argue that these disadvantages are harmful or wrong and make a moral argument that the disadvantages should be reduced or eliminated.

Two ideas stand out. First, humans act instrumentally, or strategically or “rationally,” as they pursue their goals. Second, much of human behavior serves expressive and emotional ends.

Collective action problems—exists when individuals have incentives not to cooperate with others even though cooperation would benefit the group as a whole.

Because governments must take action for civil rights to be realized, they are matters of intense political debate.

The courts and the judges or justices are more powerful when they are politically independent.

Today, with the rise of social media platforms that allow users to share and stream videos, images, and text, the news media is almost literally anyone with a smartphone and internet access.

Classrooms raise questions regarding power, legitimacy, and consent.

Power is the ability of one political actor to get other actors to do things they would not otherwise choose to do or not to take actions they otherwise would.

Nothing happens in politics unless individuals are engaged in political activity.

politics “who gets what, where, when, and how”—the process for resolving disputes and allocating scarce resources

Political science is usually probabilistic.

Politics involves both lofty dreams and down-and-dirty actions.

In this view, unlike gravity, which exerts its force whether or not humans recognize it, political action is necessary to create and protect human rights.

As with human rights, it is worth asking whether such a thing as social justice actually exists, or whether, in the words of the philosopher Friedrich Hayek, social justice is a 'mirage.'

A libertarian would respond that almost any action by governments or individuals that deprives us of our liberty or property is thievery.

the State is nothing more than a machine for the oppression of one class by another.

In designing it, you would be operating from behind a 'veil of ignorance.'

The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism.

Civilization is that mode of conduct that points out to man the path of duty.

For Hobbes, then, the principal purpose of government would be to remove the people from the state of nature and to promote their security.

First, the individuals involved decide to collectively give up some of the freedoms they had in the state of nature, such as the freedom to commit violence against each other.

Constitutions are not written by angels: they are written and implemented by groups of individuals who have their own self-interests and biases as well as their own view of the common good.

History is replete with evidence that the actual purposes of those serving in government align most with preserving or expanding their power, even though they may claim they are acting in the public interest.

Since antiquity, political philosophers and practitioners have worried that democracy will inevitably become mob rule, with citizens who—rather than make wise decisions in the public interest—seek to exploit minorities, rob the wealthy, and otherwise favor policies and leaders who are nasty and brutish.

It tries to answer questions like 'What makes a fascist? Are there character traits that make someone more likely to vote for the far right?'

In political science, rational does not simply mean reasonable, and irrational does not simply mean rash or lacking in good judgement.

Politicians, seeking your support, are less likely to appeal to your head than to your (metaphorical) heart.

Note that acting strategic ally do es not necessarily imply acting morally . Acting strategic ally is quite simply choosing the mos t eff ectiv e means to achieve a specific end .

Acting strategically does not necessarily mean acting ethically.

Much behavior is predicated on how people want to appear, not just (or mainly) what they want to accomplish, and this is as true in politics as it is on Instagram.

The contest is less about who gets what and more about what kind of country people want to live in.

People are pretty good at fooling themselves regarding their own motives.

More likely, BLM allies—or the supporters of any social movement, whether conservative or liberal, democratic or authoritarian—join because they support the cause that the movement represents (a strategic reason) and because they want to show that they are the kind of person that supports this movement (an expressive reason).

Whether a single flip comes up heads or tails is random. If you predict the outcome correctly, you just got lucky.

It was just luck that [Kennedy and Kruschev] finally acted before they lost control, and before East and West were involved in nuclear war that would have led to destruction of nations.

The wise military strategist will adopt the strategies believed to increase the probability—the predictability—that the soldier will remain faithful to their side.

If Player B rejects the offer, neither player keeps any money.

For these players, those who violate fairness must be punished.

Those who rule a country ultimately determine what the actual purposes of the government will be, what kinds of justice the country will embrace, and what rights will be protected for those living there.

Motivated reasoning is a form of bias that leads individuals to arrive at conclusions that they want to believe in rather than to scrutinize the evidence neutrally.

motivated reasoning the human tendency to embrace ideas that we want to believe while rejecting evidence that challenges those beliefs

The UN Human Rights Council cited Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s administration for crimes against humanity, including extrajudicial executions, police brutality, and torture.

In many parts of the world, ideological flux defines political life, with contests between and among socialism, liberalism and neoliberalism, the center left, conservative populism, religious extremism, and a range of other ideological visions.

Plato believed that philosophers best fit this bill and should hold unrestricted political power.

To reach one’s full potential as a human, one must participate in the exercise of political power that is structured around debate and deliberation concerning the common good of society.

In the absence of any political authority—what Hobbes called the state of nature—following the laws of nature would make a person vulnerable to attacks from those who did not follow them.

Locke argued that individuals in the state of nature would be entitled to own land only if they mixed it with what they inherently owned—their bodies and their bodies’ labor.

Some would become jealous of those with more wealth, and the ability of each person to punish violations of the natural law would eventually lead to chaos.

Rousseau argued that “man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

Charismatic leaders must cultivate among the people a common religious sentiment—what Rousseau calls a civil religion—that defines citizens as brothers and sisters and teaches respect for religious differences.

Locke would say that classical liberalism endorses liberty, but it does not endorse moral license, or the freedom to act in ways that are destructive of the rights of others, the self, or the foundations of social peace and prosperity.

Liberty, he argues, should be broadened not only in matters of speech and the press but also so that the law does not restrict the freedom of adults—even if individual adults exercise their freedom in ways that cause them personal harm.

The net result, according to Hayek, would be a new form of serfdom—a condition of limited freedom, entrenched hierarchies, and generalized poverty.

In communist society, where . . . each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

They manufacture a set of cultural norms through their control of the media, churches, and schools, asserting what Gramsci called hegemony, or domination by means of the prevailing culture.

A small group of dedicated activists, on the other hand, could seize power by the force of their revolutionary zeal and then act on the workers’ behalf to break the neck of the capitalist state.

Nazism opposed much in modern life—especially the freedoms that Germans enjoyed under the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), which Hitler found decadent.

Defenders justified the principle of authoritarian rule on the basis that the democratic selection of rulers was just too dangerous.

Mao contended that the peasants’ poverty made them miserable, their ignorance made them malleable, and their supposed natural combativeness made them open to embracing change through revolutionary struggle.

For communist states, at least in theory, the ultimate goal is liberation; repression is not an intrinsic value, only the necessary means to the desired end point of genuine human liberty.

Democratic liberalism looks to the courts to exercise some measure of counter-majoritarian power, shielding minorities from abuse by numerical majorities.

Loyalty to any particular state is relatively unimportant in contemporary libertarianism.

Although they value personal freedom, they seek to ensure, in Locke’s terms, that liberty is not replaced with a license to engage in immoral behavior.

The center right’s fusion of moderate economic libertarianism and moderate social conservatism emerged as the dominant ideology within the Republican Party in the United States in the decades after World War II.

Supreme Court justice William Brennan (1906–1997) was well known for advocating the view that the Constitution is a 'living' document, which requires judges to interpret the constitutional text in a way that renders it capable of resolving issues in light of contemporary understandings of equality.

Still, some multiculturalists believe so strongly in the benefit of allowing groups to retain their cultural identity that they contend that even cultures that may reject prevalent Western norms—for example, allowing women to work—should not be.

Animal rights activists see the center left, by contrast, as narrowly speciesist, or unjustly concerned primarily with human well-being.

The publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963 marked the popular emergence of second-wave feminism.

The oppressed, on the other hand, have to cultivate both an understanding of their own condition and an understanding of their oppressors’ perspective in order to develop strategies of resistance.

These past racist actions, critical race theorists maintain, have become a part of the fabric of the environment that shapes how people act.

Socialists argue that “no man is an island” and, therefore, that the material success of any individual or group is the result of innumerable societal supports.

Democratic socialists are willing to require companies to offer not merely a minimum wage but what advocates call a “living wage,” guaranteeing to each employee a higher pay rate by imposing broad mandates on private employers.

Chávez and Maduro see neoliberalism as outside pressures that amount to foreign rule.

The United Nations ideology liberates its supporters from any narrow viewpoint tied to a particular country, region, or religious belief.

The New Right has enjoyed political success not only in the United States but also in Brazil and Hungary.

Marcuse argued that the working classes have become immersed in consumerist culture and, needing jobs to fulfill their consumerist appetites, have lost their ability to think in a revolutionary way about their oppression.

Many among the New Right see calls for equity, understood as calls to extend greater legal and political emphasis to historically marginalized groups, as an attack directed primarily against the social influence of Christianity.

Those on the New Right see these “woke capitalists” as violating the close connection between economic freedom, free markets, social conservatism that defined the center-right coalition for decades.

Nevertheless, while the center right has historically sought to minimize government regulations, the New Right sees an expansive role for government.

Marx held that the ruling class would concoct views about the world to perpetuate their rule.

For religious extremists, everything outside of revelation is empty human “ideology.”

Marx and Engels argued that nationalism divided workers who should cooperate across national boundaries to respond to and eventually overthrow capitalism.

Religious extremists reject the idea that humans can reason to the best form of political regime, asserting that a blueprint for society is readily at hand in the form of literal and inflexible readings of divine revelation.

nationalism pride in and c elebra tion o f a national identity based on share d blood, his tory, and soil , usually to the exclusion or detriment o f other identities

structural racism a form o f racism thought to b e manifest when actions are taken within a leg al, politic al, and cultural c onte xt that has been shaped by the past racist decisions o f others , reg ardles s of the individual actors’ p endorsement beliefs or intent

Those on the New Right see “woke capitalists” as betraying the long-standing social values of their countries of origin.

In Myanmar, a military dictatorship, the government violently shuts down anti-government protests.

The Constitution does prohibit denial of the right to vote on the basis of race or sex, and it states that certain people are elected to office, but nowhere does it guarantee a right to vote or say who gets to do the voting.

Most of the founders, on the contrary, held that individuals have natural rights that entail civil liberties, which the government must not imperil.

As part of their sovereignty, governments are free to ignore or follow human rights declarations at will.

As this example illustrates, human rights declarations are primarily idealistic, but they can be used to put economic or social pressure on governments to urge them to change policies.

The constitution need not be in writing, in one document, or even labeled a constitution.

After the Nazis used the existing German constitution to restrict people’s freedoms in Germany and in the countries they conquered, people in the affected countries wanted assurances that the government recognized its obligation to the people and not just the people’s obligation to the government.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

For example, a person in the United States can say anything against any political candidate; they can even lie about the candidate.

However, comparing these two clauses with actual practices in the People's Republic of China shows that the government’s emphasis is not on protecting individual freedom and autonomy but on protecting the government’s view of a cohesive society.

The individual is within society, the community, so the community constructs part of the individual identity.

Maintaining a balance between government authority and individual freedom is a challenge.

To have liberty is to have personal autonomy, and to have personal autonomy, one must have the right to make personal decisions.

The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.

the right to be let alone [is] the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men.

As society’s interpretation of what is personal and individual and what is necessary for the good of the community changes, the interpretation of the right to privacy changes.

Thus, even in countries that declare that they will protect privacy and individualism, society’s interpretation of what is necessary to create a community can lead to restrictions intended to contribute to the common good.

China uses mass surveillance to “ eradicate ideological viruses ,” which the y identify as the religious and cultural beliefs o f certain ethnic groups .

This is a developing area of tension between individual privacy and government protection or regulation of the community.

Linking the ideas of civil liberties with the larger concept of social responsibility allows one to appreciate how the rights of individuals and the larger community are intertwined.

The paradox of tolerance is a frequent issue when it comes to religious expression.

This controversy is ongoing in the United States and around the world.

Women in Iran who appear in public without wearing an Islamic hijab can be imprisoned or fined.

This right allows travel inside the country and access to private property to experience nature as long as an individual does not cause damage to the property.

Travel abroad, like travel within the country, may be . . . as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads.

There is an ongoing debate about changing the world to one of open borders, where people are free to move about the world as they want.

In countries where this right is not recognized, a person can be held indefinitely incommunicado without any right to seek their freedom or to demand that the government prove the charges against them.

In such conditions, climate change can act as a threat multiplier, exacerbating existing tensions and adding to the potential for conflicts.

This intolerant stance on views that a government deems intolerant is referred to as the paradox of tolerance.

As climate change becomes an increasingly urgent issue, the implications for human rights will be a growing area of political and legal debate.

responsive communitarianism a system that seeks to blend the common good with individual a utonom y while not allowing either to take prec edenc e over the other

A hypothetical government protects the free expression of ideas but restricts the expression of ideas deemed harmful to the community.

The outcry over the trial led to the establishment of the Black Lives Matter movement, a decentralized political and social movement “whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state.”

While student elections may seem relatively trivial, they are an important way for students to learn how to make politically informed decisions, understand democratic values and systems, and feel like worthy participants in the democratic process.

The American institutions are democratic, not only in their principle but in all their consequences.

In self-governing states, the people elect public officials to government positions so those officials can represent the people’s beliefs and craft policies to express their will.

The 26th Amendment was introduced to allow US citizens aged 18 and older the right to vote based on the principle that it was grossly unfair for the country to ask men to fight in a war when they could not vote on the representatives who were sending them into battle.

In other words, people do not vote if they don’t feel like their vote will have any effect.

The older voters are, the more likely they are to show up to the polls.

Economic hardship can result in voter apathy and lead people to withdraw from politics and focus on meeting their basic needs.

The polls leading up to the 2020 US election illustrated a “gender canyon,” with a projected 15 percent gender gap between men, the majority of whom supported the Republican candidate, and women, who supported the Democratic candidate.

Multiple scholars also support the theory that voter fatigue—the idea that voters face too many elections and too many electoral decisions—depresses participation.

Of the 80 million Americans who did not vote in the 2020 election, almost 30 percent cited being unregistered as the top reason they did not go to the polls.

The presumed right of the people to instruct their elected representatives extends back to colonial times.

Volunteers help candidates and parties by knocking on voters’ doors and explaining policies one-on-one, phone banking, stuffing envelopes with campaign literature, and sometimes even transporting voters to the polls.

Political donations, which the Supreme Court has protected as a type of political speech, allow people to feel like they are participating in politics without leaving their homes or picking up a phone.

While keeping informed about politics may not seem like political participation the way that voting or volunteering does, educating oneself is perhaps the most important precursor to becoming more fully involved.

An MIT study found that “falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth, and reach their first 1,500 people six times faster.”

As former House Speaker Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics are local,” and you can volunteer for state and local party organizations, many of which are not as well funded as national campaigns and rely on volunteer help.

It’s a slog: long nights, early mornings, fast food, and more phone calls than the human ear was built to withstand.

Even in authoritarian countries where freedom of expression is not protected, protests function as an important form of political participation.

Having become a symbol of the resistance, umbrellas are now considered “weapons” by the Chinese government and are increasingly difficult to purchase online.

This single act set off a wave of protests across North Africa and the Middle East, resulting in regime changes and modest political, social, and economic gains in several countries, but also still-ongoing protests and violence.

Social capital is the idea that individuals form connections that benefit their own interests and that these social networks in turn produce communities that create norms of reciprocity.

Social capital produces an important political consequence by encouraging wider participation in democratic processes.

People have jobs, families, and other pressing concerns, and while it is always important to be involved somehow—whether by voting, writing officials, or reading about politics—we elect public officials to represent our interests and to serve as experts in ways we cannot.

The theory of issue publics states that the American electorate is made up of multiple small groups that care about single issues, rather than a public that cares equally about all issues.

In other words, and to paraphrase Vincent Price, it is not so much where we stand on the issues but with whom we stand.

Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves, addressing or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment.

Before w e had a good way to measure public opinion , constituent letters w ere one o f the few ways officials could gauge ho w the public felt.

Sampling in countries facing violence or instability can be a serious—and dangerous—problem for pollsters.

The smaller the sample, the larger the error.

The theory behind the Bradley effect is that White voters are unlikely to admit to bias against minority candidates, and as such, polls may overestimate support for a minority candidate.

In a way, we can understand public opinion and its influence on policy as a chicken-and-egg relationship: the public alerts elected officials of their preferences, and these officials then try to sell their solutions to the public as the best course of action.

If polling doesn’t work, then we are flying blind.

Acquiring a knowledge of these people is an important way in which humans manage to survive, get along, and come together to accomplish common goals.

All of these activities contribute to social capital, which is the idea that individuals form connections that benefit their own interests and that these social networks in turn produce communities that create norms of reciprocity and promote more civil engagement overall.

Elected officials also rely on swaying public opinion in order to sell a legislative agenda to the public as the best course of action.

voter fatigue feelings o f apathy that the electorate can e xperienc e under certain circums tanc es—for example , when the y are re quire d to vote to o often or are exposed to to o much politic al inf orma tion or negative new s

Social desirability bias is when: People respond to surveys in a certain way so that they don’t seem biased.

To the extent that Thunberg’s individual actions will influence political choices, it will be because these actions have helped create a movement, inspire interest groups and parties, and lead governments to change their policies.

Unless individuals come together with others, their ability to effect or resist change is miniscule.

Political socialization is neither premeditated nor preordained, although there is a growing body of evidence that indicates that there are genetic links to political predispositions.

Greta Thunberg’s activism led her parents to reconsider their own environmental attitudes, and research suggests that children often affect their parents’ views on the environment.

Under this policy, a cultural preference for male children led to sex-selective abortions and female infanticide.

Now, given internet access, young people can find their peer groups virtually anywhere.

One’s ethnic identity is likely to be more salient if that identity signifies one as an outsider.

Socialization into “traditional” gender roles may discourage women from developing interest or participating in politics, while in countries with women in leadership positions, young women may be socialized to become more politically aware and active.

The United States tends to be highly individualistic, prioritizing personal freedom and individual responsibility over more community-centered values.

North Korean elite culture is his culture, and he expects to be worshipped.

Cultural anthropologists study how people who share a common cultural system organize and shape the physical and social world around them, and are in turn shaped by those ideas, behaviors, and physical environments.

As media options proliferate, mass culture diminishes and minority cultures flourish.

Prior to the 1970s in the United States, the gay community (culture) was largely apolitical.

The American public is pretty disgusted with the United States Congress.

In this case, group members have a common interest or goal, but members of the group have incentives to make decisions that are actually harmful to the group and, ultimately, to themselves.

Think of it this way: constitutions are the foundations of the house, while laws are the paint in the rooms.

Constitutional authors thus try to lock in their preferences in ways that will make it difficult for those with other preferences to change the document.

Defenders of the status quo do not necessarily need to defend it. They just need to raise the transaction costs high enough so that no changes can be enacted.

The minority’s strategy? Flee the state capitol, depriving the majority of the quorum, the minimum number of the group that must be present for a vote to be held.

The lowest transaction cost occurs when a single decision-maker can rule by decree—for example, 'We will watch this movie.'

If a country is under surprise attack, for example, that may not be the best time for long, deliberative conferences.

Collective action logic comes to the opposite conclusion, one in which individuals acting in their own self-interest can have incentives that lead them to act in ways that harm not only the broader public but also themselves.

In the paradox of the tragedy of the commons, those who seek to hoard resources ultimately have less even for themselves.

Paradoxically, the group as a whole has incentives to work together to obtain their goal, but the individual members of the group do not.

The predicted outcome is the worst outcome, with 10 total years of prison time.

If you free ride by not pitching in to keep your living space clean, those living with you are going to notice and probably try to find ways to compel you to do your fair share.

If you try to free ride in a group of four, the other group members will definitely notice. If you free ride in a group of 40 million, no one is likely to perceive your absence or lack of effort.

ICCAT had the same basic goals and tools as the United States, but regrettably the organization had “no powers to enforce, no sanctions with which to punish,” and so it was ineffective in protecting the commons.

And while emperors have reason to preserve the resource, believing their family will rule indefinitely, elected politicians are focused squarely on the short term—the next election—rather than on preserving the resource for their grandchildren’s generation.

Still, those costs are immediate, and the benefits are in the future.

In the countries with the highest tax compliance, citizens generally pay their taxes because they believe the tax system is fair and that it is a civic duty to pay your taxes.

It is easier to lose trust than to gain it.

The process is not deterministic; you cannot look at all the influences on your development and predict precisely who you will become.

Individuals acting on these incentives can harm the group and, paradoxically, themselves.

prisoner’s dilemma a scenario in which two individuals would benefit from cooperating, but each has strong incentives to defect, leaving both individuals worse off than if they had cooperated

In a prisoner’s dilemma, logic indicates that both participants will defect.

Often, civil rights change is rooted in local issues that become global, and social media provides new and accelerated pathways to equitable legislation and policy.

Public officials cannot consider voices they do not hear.

What these examples tell us is that, like many other civil rights issues, suffrage is not a rigid institution, but one that can change due to internal and external forces.

Negative rights often correspond with civil liberties—what the government cannot restrict—and positive rights correspond with civil rights—what the government must protect.

The project’s sample ranges from the constitutions of Brunei and Thailand, which include only two individual and political rights, to those of Portugal, Serbia, and Ecuador, which include 87, 88, and 89 rights, respectively.

The reality is that those in the political majority use their power to secure the best outcomes for themselves.

Political culture plays an important role in determining which civil rights the country protects and how well it protects them, and those with the most power are most able to influence the culture.

That each state and region of the country has a different political culture and different people in power became all too clear in the 2000s and 2010s, when most states passed their own laws on same-sex marriage.

Those who have the power to shape society can use that power to help recognize and protect minority rights; however, those who have power tend to use the tools at their disposal to keep it, and keeping it may mean suppressing minorities.

World politics and history have shown how easily majoritarian politics can create hardship, discrimination, and a loss of civil rights for groups that lack the political, numerical, cultural, or religious influence of majority groups.

One of the ways those in power can seek to remain in power is by controlling whose voices can be heard and counted in elections.

The Brennan Center investigated all reports of voter fraud in the United States and found comprehensively 'that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, and many instances of alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or administrators.'

The kingdom of Bhutan conducts a 300-question happiness survey every five years, and since 1972, the kingdom has emphasized Gross National Happiness as a priority for the country’s people. But Bhutan is not a happy place for minorities like the Lhotshampa.

Where as the c ountr y is often obsessed with s tories a bout true crime and missing White w omen , there has historic ally been les s attention p aid to missing and kidnapped women o f color .

Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can.

The challenge of fighting slavery is compounded by the fact that slavery is still not illegal, as per constitutions or laws, in many countries, including Canada and Sweden.

This codified how the White American majority saw Black bodies—as objects that counted toward population, but not as people with their own rights.

What would have happened if these individuals had not drawn attention to what they saw as the unethical, immoral, or unequal treatment of certain groups?

Plessy, who was one-eighth Black and “passed” as a White man, sat in the train car reserved for White passengers and announced to the conductor that he was Black.

In 1969, seventy years after Homer Plessy’s protest, Czech university student Jan Palach signed a suicide note with the fictional name “Torch Number 1” and set himself on fire to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The movement has primarily used social media to organize marches, protests, and boycotts and to communicate with elected officials.

Once confined to academic and activist circles on the left of the spectrum, [the term structural racism] has become the phrase du jour.

Youths are approaching power in new ways, wielding it collectively through social media and new vectors of influence . . . a self-organizing flash mob responding to a perceived problem or issue.

Institutional racism refers to the racist laws and practices that are deeply embedded in a country’s institutions and that, because they are so embedded, have established norms that may make their racist nature harder for those in the majority to recognize.

Long and Ponce call this inability “the justice gap.”

Chief Justice Taney stated that whether an enslaved person was born free or into servitude, they were not entitled to any of what we would now call civil rights.

Only persons who had “no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian” were classified as White.

Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—has no place in law under the Constitution.

This is an interesting case study because by all accounts Brnabić does not have the executive power to actually change the political culture of Serbia—a concept discussed at the beginning of the chapter—even if her intentions were to advance LGBTQ+ rights.

However, the May 2020 discovery of 751 Indigenous children’s graves at a former residential school in Saskatchewan has reignited calls for more national recognition of cultural genocide.

The majority can have a major influence on whether the government fulfills its obligation to affirm and protect civil rights.

In the United States, the three branches of government may serve as checks on the other branches, as when the Supreme Court strikes down an executive order, or they may work together—either for the benefit of minorities or to enforce discriminatory and abusive practices.

institutional racism the idea that, because government institutions are built and run by those in power, whose worldviews and goals aim to perpetuate the status quo from which they benefit, government institutions therefore reinforce norms and values that enshrine racist attitudes, policies, and practices to the detriment of marginalized groups

Three-Fifths Compromise a component of the original United States Constitution that allowed enslaved people to count toward political representation according to the formula that one slave was equal to three-fifths of a free White person

The name, which stands for Early Money Is Like Yeast (it makes the dough rise), was a nod to the understanding that in order to be effective in elections and in politics, people need to pool their interests, activities, and resources.

The history of group mobilization around HIV/AIDS illustrates how interest groups can harness the cooperation and collaboration of individuals in pursuit of a common goal, but also how multiple groups can work in concert to pressure the government to act.

The Japan Medical Association, with 170,000 members, is considered the largest and most politically powerful medical lobby in Japan.

In other words, political actors are not influenced by groups that have mobilized to enact change so much as they are responding to the interests of narrowly focused elites.

It doesn’t take a calculator or a genius to see how unstable this wage is.

The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent.

Giving money doesn’t mean that a member of Congress will do what you want, but it does often provide an opportunity to share your perspective on important issues.

Members of Extinction Rebellion go to extreme measures such as gluing themselves to planes in order to call attention to the climate crisis.

For example, when you bite into a hard taco or a gordita from Taco Bell, did you know that you could be contributing to a political candidate?

Critics of this ruling complain that it has led to the rampant rise of super PACs, which empower the wealthiest donors and receive dark money.

Political parties are a means by which people agree to behave cooperatively over the long term so as to secure benefits that they would not have been able to gain as individuals.

However, the gains the party made during the run-up to the election were lost after the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021, with the New York Times reporting that 140,000 members left the Republican Party in the 25 states that have readily available data.

A party that cannot nominate candidates is toothless in its power.

These types of “entrepreneurial” candidates further weaken party influence in that they do not need to depend on the party for resources in order to launch a campaign or reach voters.

Party alliance has flipped: those with higher education and income levels tend to be more liberal and support candidates on the left while working-class and less educated voters support conservative policies.

Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured.

In this way, voting is an act of faith and one that may bring you, the voter, risk or disappointment down the road.

Illiberal ruling parties know that these diaspora groups could hurt them electorally and avoid encouraging, or have taken steps actively to discourage, their political participation.

The frequency of elections leads to what some call voter fatigue, whereby the demands of multiple elections leave voters feeling apathetic or disengaged.

Global media carried pictures of jubilant Afghans, their thumbs stained with purple ink that signified they had voted, and these pictures reminded all of us how important elections are in a democracy.

However, as we have seen in recent elections, the winner of the popular vote is not always the winner of the Electoral College.

Notably, America does not employ proportional representation at any level of elections, and according to Duverger’s Law, this is the reason why the United States also still has only two main parties.

Direct democracy is often lauded as fully representing the will of the people, but ballot initiatives, referendums, and recalls are also criticized for their costs and lack of deliberation.

Poll workers are sometimes called “the gatekeepers of American democracy” because they are often the first people to greet a voter who has arrived on Election Day to exercise their right to vote.

In Britain, the prime minister can call an election at will.

In candidate-centered campaigns, candidates are increasingly less reliant on parties to run for office.

the idea that the declining influence of political parties and their decreased ability to mobilize voters’ opinions and actions has set voters politically adrift

moral hazard the risk a voter takes that a chosen c andida te ma y not , once elected, act in the w ay the voter hop es

transaction theory a political theory, espoused by Robert H. Salisbury, that argues that political actors are not influenced by groups that have mobilized to enact change so much as they are responding to the interests of narrowly focused elites.

What do adverse selection, moral hazard, and voter suppression have in common when it comes to elections?

When the term legislature comes up, people often think of national legislatures, such as the US Congress or the National Congress of Argentina.

The ability to explain complex situations, to solve problems, and to make sense of situations that seemingly defy rational explanations provides the foundation on which you can build many diverse career paths.

It is quite common for a member of a legislature to develop a passion for and expertise in a particular policy area.

Common procedural components include the right of the minority to speak in a debate, every member having the right to a vote, and only one piece of business being addressed at a time.

Because any member can invoke a filibuster for any reason, there is essentially a de facto supermajority requirement for legislation to pass in the United States Senate.

Every legislator has their own goals, things they want to take credit for, and blame they are trying to avoid—and everyone thinks they are right.

Following the 2020 elections in Ireland, no single party had enough seats in the Dáil Éireann, the lower chamber of the Irish legislature, to form a majority government.

This tends to make governors in states with nonprofessional legislatures very powerful.

This type of system c an allow a legislator to become familiar with the particular is sues that affect their district and to potentially b e more resp onsiv e to their constituents; however, it c an also heighten geographic diff erenc es and potential tensions between regions .

In Israel, voters indicate their preferred party, and regardless of whether they are voting in Eilat in the south or Haifa in the north, they are voting for and will be represented by the same politicians.

Some scholars argue that geographically based single-member districts can better represent racial and ethnic minorities because members of a community who are clustered together can elect a representative from that community.

A woman whose parents came to the United States as refugees will have a different perspective on the world from that of a man whose family has been in the United States for generations.

In the trustee model, though the legislator should still learn about the voters’ preferences, once in government they must use their own judgment and knowledge of policy to decide what is in constituents’ best interests, even if it is contrary to those constituents’ views.

This gap between constituents’ knowledge and their opinions means that legislators must decide when, on which policies, and to what degree to weigh their constituents’ preferences against their own.

In these democracies, legislative oversight of the bureaucracy provides an important check on the power of the executive branch.

This 'power of the purse' is both a carrot and a stick that legislatures can use to gain compliance with their policy-making priorities.

The answers to these questions matter because the method of selection can indicate whose interests a legislator will represent, as the person or people who put someone in power can have a decided impact on whose values and preferences shape law.

The principle behind this system is that all preferences should be reflected in government, not just those views that have majority support.

Additionally, legislators can take office in these systems even if the majority of their constituents voted for someone else.

He practiced his idea that the proper role for a legislator was to be a trustee for his constituents and was voted out of office because people felt he did not sufficiently represent them.

This electoral design likely means that members of the National People’s Congress are more closely aligned with other elected officials and the political party than they are with ordinary voters.

However, because of the king’s role in selecting and reappointing members, members of the Consultative Council may feel an obligation to support or oppose a piece of legislation based on the king’s preference, rather than their own.

The weakness of the parliamentary system is that the stability of the government relies on a party or coalition maintaining its control.

In a presidential system, each branch has powers separate from those of the other branches, but each also has powers that overlap with the other branches’, allowing one branch to step in to stop the excesses of the other.

The lack of a natural “veto point” is particularly apparent in unicameral parliamentary systems, where a prime minister with a strong governing majority faces almost no constraints from either a separate chamber or an effective minority opposition.

A system that, by design, allows for more voices can become a system where nothing can happen, as disagreement in the legislature can cause everything to come to a screeching halt.

In many places around the world, despite all the powers that legislatures have and the vital role they play in our political structures, legislatures face significant challenges to their ability to play their prescribed role.

Regardless of the method of expansion, the act of executive dominance is gradually normalized, forming a new basis for understanding that executive’s powers.

Legislative approval that comes when the legislature has no option other than to approve the measure reflects the weakness of the legislature and poses a clear threat to legislative independence.

However, it is dangerous for legislatures when the gap between the parties grows so large that effective legislating grinds to a halt.

When the people empower a branch of the political system to make the rules governing their relationship with their government, the political system is equipped to resist the ways that power can corrupt.

executive dominance a phenomenon in which leaders expand their powers beyond their prior limits and are able to justify those expanded powers so that they are seen by many as legitimate and acceptable

trustee a mo del o f representation in which a legislator relies on their own judgment when it differs from that of their constituents

A phenomenon in which leaders expand their powers beyond prior limits is called: Executive dominance.

When things go bad you get entirely too much blame. And I have to admit that when things go good, you get entirely too much credit.

While the position of head of state is largely ceremonial, images and symbols are extremely important, and the head of state provides a national symbol for a country’s citizens that works to unify a country.

I didn’t vote for him. But at that point, my personal feelings about him as a politician [were] gone. I watched him, and he was my representative.

This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.

In ancient Athens, thinkers of the age recognized that their novel system of democratic self-governance lived in constant danger—because by its very nature, in allowing the masses to freely choose their own leaders, it contained the seeds of its own destruction.

The point is that democracy itself, and not simply a particular expression of democracy, is open to its own exploitation.

Once in office, demagogues have the ability to attempt to change the system by which they were elected.

Mr. President, the American people have a funny way of deciding on their own what is and what is not their business.

The personality of the chief executive is of less importance than it is in a presidential regime, though its significance is not eliminated.

In a parliamentary regime, any failure of policy could trigger either a confidence vote or new elections, which could result in the removal of the prime minister.

It’s been said that, in the policy-making process, presidents are strong early in the legislative process but weak late in the process.

What one person might view as instability, someone else might see as needed policy change.

In a parliamentary regime, it is conceivable that Theodore Roosevelt would have been able to build a coalition with the Republican Party and form a government.

When gridlock does happen, it tends to be highly visible, with each side publicly posturing and blaming the other side for the impasse.

In a presidential regime, however, large numbers of voters face the unenviable task of voting for a candidate who is less than their first choice, and voters often frame that choice as voting for the 'lesser of two evils.'

That means the president could be of one party and the prime minister of a different party. They referred to it as “cohabitation.”

Finally, an intriguing picture emerges as one moves from parliamentary regimes to semi-presidential ones.

Cabinet meetings take place more for optics than as meetings to formulate policy.

For example, President Donald Trump chose former Texas governor Rick Perry to be his Secretary of the Department of Energy even though, during a 2011 Republican primary debate, Perry indicated he would abolish the department.

In a presidential regime, and especially in the United States, while cabinets have substantive areas of oversight, they are not included in presidential decision-making.

In essence, each cabinet is unique.

The term bureaucracy literally means 'rule by desks.' It is an institution that is hierarchical in nature and exists to formulate, enact, and enforce public policy in an efficient and equitable manner.

There are even individuals known as despachantes, or “expediters,” who help individuals navigate the maze of Brazilian bureaucracy.

In dealing with clients, bureaucrats follow the norm of impersonality by treating all individuals fairly, equally, and impartially.

In 1881, a disgruntled individual who did not receive the government position he believed he was promised assassinated President James Garfield.

As Truman noted: 'I thought I was president, but when it comes to these bureaucrats, I can’t do a damn thing.'

Iron triangles have been justly criticized for being fairly closed to outsiders and new information, for working in relative obscurity, and for being undemocratic.

It is the police officer, as a street-level bureaucrat, who determines the policy each day.

In this case, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that the engineer who discovered the crack saved lives.

If the prime minister loses the confidence vote, new elections take place.

Historically, these informal groups of advisors have been called “kitchen cabinets.”

iron triangle the relationship among bure aucra tic agencies , interest groups , and C ongres s that works to fashion public policy

According to political scientist Richard Neustadt, which of the following is possibly the president’s greatest power? ... The power to persuade.

In France, what term describes the situation in which the president and prime minister are from different parties?

Under civil service or the merit system, what is the primary concept at work? ... The concept of neutral competence.

Lady Justice is traditionally shown wearing a blindfold to indicate impartiality, holding scales to weigh the evidence of guilt against the presumption of innocence, and wielding a sword as a symbol of power.

Throughout history, many individuals and small groups have become dictators with the sole power to create laws and punish people as they wished, thus employing rule by law.

This creates a symbiotic relationship between the government and the people, rather than a system based on fear and oppression.

Under these conditions, the serious backsliding of the respect for democratic standards, the rule of law, and fundamental freedoms continued.

The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatsoever.

Courts, however, cannot take action on their own in the ways the executive and legislative branches can, and people cannot express their opinion in court unless they meet particular criteria.

You shoot an arrow into a far distant future when you appoint a [US federal] justice, and not the man himself can tell you what he will think about some of the problems that he will face.

To the rest of the world, American adherence to judicial elections is as incomprehensible as our rejection of the metric system.

Texas has been the object of scrutiny for allegations of favoritism to campaign donors and political party influence on judges.

You cannot go to court to challenge a law just because you disagree with it.

A court can issue a judgment, or legal order, but it does not have the power to compel government personnel to carry out or enforce its orders.

Nullification damages the rule of law; if states and individuals decide independently that they do not have to obey a law, without following the processes designed to ensure that no one is above the law, then the rule of law itself is weakened.

It can bring attention to an issue that may have been at the margins of the majority’s conscience.

Common law courts are adversarial; that is, there is a winner-takes-all attitude in the court.

The system is more inquisitorial than adversarial.

As a result, customary laws are typically unwritten and revealed only to group members.

An act is not a crime unless a written law establishes it as one.

Many countries have moved to a focus on rehabilitation as a means of stopping future crime.

In rule-by-law systems, authoritarian governments often use ex post facto laws and the lack of habeas corpus to jail opponents and keep them in jail indefinitely.

It does not apply to forensic investigative work, and it does not preclude police officers from speaking in front of the person who is under arrest or trying to trick them into saying something.

In rule-by-law countries, this right is not recognized; a person can be held indefinitely, incommunicado, without any right to seek their freedom or to demand that the government prove the charges against them.

Further, a defendant has no right to appear or defend themselves at the grand jury hearing, so it is a one-sided presentation of the evidence.

In a few states, if someone is killed during the commission of a felony, anyone involved in committing that felony can be sentenced to the death penalty, even if they are not the one who committed the killing.

The US Supreme Court has held that the meaning of 'cruel and unusual' rests on society’s 'evolving standard of decency,' and thus there is no set standard.

Civil law differs from criminal law in that individuals or groups file cases rather than the state.

The clauses provide that “no person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” and “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” respectively.

As the image of Lady Justice that opens this chapter shows, the scales of justice need to be in balance, and justice must be blind so that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.

Matters that are not mentioned in the ple adings cannot b e brought up during the case.

The opposing attorney can then cross-examine the witness in an attempt to elicit information supporting their perspective or to discredit the witness’s testimony so that the jury may question whether it is reliable.

An appeal is not a do-over of the original trial.

Thousands of cases from around the country are filed with the court each year, of which they hear and decide less than 100.

As of 2014, out of the millions of actions Congress and the president have taken in the history of the United States, SCOTUS had only ever held 176 acts of Congress to be unconstitutional.

Any check on the British Parliament rests in the public perception of and support for the government.

As a result, customary laws are typically unwritten and revealed only to group members.

In rule-of-law countries, a person held in jail has a right to demand to be brought into court and told why they are being jailed.

authoritarian-populist judiciary a system that has transitioned from a rule-of-law system to a rule-by-law authoritarian subsystem through changes instituted by one ruling person or political party

rule by law describes political systems in which the judicial branch and the judiciary help impose the government’s approved viewpoint on the citizens; the judiciary has little independence and acts as a source of government control over individual citizens

Due process means that the government must respect the rights of the accused and procedural processes must be fair.

Did Senator Kennedy’s good looks and confidence “win” the televised debate over a pale, overtired Nixon?

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter’s Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.

The press was potentially Mr. Nixon’s enemy—far more than the courts or Congress, because only the press could dig out and tell the story in a way that would arouse the people to demand an accounting.

If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.

The 2021 index ranked the United States 44th, after South Africa (32nd), Botswana (38th), and South Korea (42nd).

The news does not limit itself to reality judgments; it also contains values, or preference statements.

Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position.

Artists know that the frame placed around a painting can affect how viewers interpret and react to the painting itself.

The pope’s actions show that, as English writer and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote, “the pen is mightier than the sword.”

The new will hammer the old, deform it, reform it, reconceive, reconfigure, but the old won’t disappear.

The United Nations continues to celebrate the radio on World Radio Day, hailing the humble technology as a “vector of freedom” because radio supplies low-cost information and remains a widely used technology around the globe.

During this era, most homes had one television, and television was a means of 'bring[ing] the outside world into the home.'

In fact, five companies own and produce 90 percent of what Americans watch today.

Concentration of ownership may foster entertainment variety, but it undermines diversity of information and journalistic enterprise.

Countries that have strong public broadcasters such as the BBC have been shown to 'have higher levels of social trust, and the people who live in them are less likely to hold extremist political views.'

That scream and that moment, now referred to as Dean’s “I Have a Scream” speech, were played 633 times by national networks in the ensuing days.

Harvard professor Thomas Patterson writes that the press is “obsessed with the horse race” of elections, and this, coupled with the unique and prolonged length of the US primaries and general election, makes the coverage seem even more endless in nature.

This incessant stream of criticism has a corrosive effect. It needlessly erodes trust in political leaders and institutions and undermines confidence in government and policy.

Watching election night coverage was like watching the Super Bowl or the World Series.

In a study of 97 candidates in 43 elections around the world, scholars found that candidates who employed nastier rhetoric that included personal attacks and appealed to people’s fears received wider media attention.

Because television appeals to our emotions and magnifies and intensifies what it communicates, the impact of the negative message is much more powerful and damaging on television than if the same message were being communicated through print.

Why would politicians want to be on the same platform as dogs dressed up in tutus and one-pot cooking recipes?

The fact that twice as many kids want to be YouTube stars as want to be astronauts is a sure sign of the power of the Internet and social networking platforms.

This meant that more than 105 million people watched the finale at the same time—something unimaginable to younger viewers today, who can stream almost anything, from sports to comedies to YouTube videos, on demand.

They learn the power of collective action. They become parts of networks that extend outside their country’s borders.

Political polarization results in lower levels of trust in institutions, higher levels of suspicion of “the other side,” and the inability to work toward compromise.

Studies of Twitter have shown that falsehoods travel further and faster than the truth, thanks in part to the emotional responses they elicit and in part to the novelty of the falsehoods themselves.

Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism.

The relationship between trust in the media and political polarization is more analogous to the well-worn question about which came first, the chicken or the egg.

The erosion of trust in public institutions damages the credibility of those institutions, further undermining their effectiveness and perpetuating a vicious circle.

Another common way of defining the media’s role is to say that it acts as the fourth estate, or the unofficial fourth branch of government that checks the others.

The majority of the media in the United States and much of Europe is owned by six major firms, and this type of oligopoly can have effects on people’s political lives.

Polarization leads to lower levels of trust, which lead to worse polarization.

polarization feedback lo op the theory that rising p olariza tion among politic al elites and the media amplifies the worst of both sides

During the global COVID-19 pandemic, for example, some countries swiftly enacted lockdowns, mask mandates, and other policies aimed at reigning in the spread of the virus, while other countries took more of a wait-and-see approach that prioritized individual freedoms.

Governments often assert what Weber called a monopoly on the right to use violence, reserving for themselves either the right to use violence or the right to approve its use by others.

Individuals engaging in those behaviors are subject to coercive enforcement by the state’s police force, which adheres to defined lines of authority and the rules police departments must follow.

When lines of authority in the government are clear, especially in the context of the state’s criminal law, the people living in a regime are less fearful of the state.

In the United States, at least, the federal government has encouraged homeownership due to a belief that homeownership helps people build closer ties with and involvement in local communities and thus increases civic participation.

In the United States, presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt became famous for skillfully using the “bully pulpit,” that is, the power of the president to shape the opinions of the population.

In either sense, legitimacy is measured in perceptions of the rightfulness of government actions—the sense that those actions are morally appropriate and consistent with basic justice and social welfare.

Though you cannot always say for certain that a government truly has broad legitimacy, broad illegitimacy is often easy to detect.

Those making such claims may not wish to be seen as protesting authorized governmental activity since to do so could make them appear lawless or even revolutionary.

This regulation has been renewed every year since 1948; today it applies mostly to the West Bank.

Marcos has thus been called a 'constitutional dictator,' one who came to rule with unrestrained power through a popular constitution and as a leader who himself enjoyed wide popularity.

A regime that assumes long-lasting, sweeping, and only vaguely defined authority as the Philippines did under Marcos can become a police state (sometimes called a security state)—that is, a state that uses its police or military force to exercise unrestrained power.

Is there a standard of justice that transcends the constitutional law of a particular regime, a standard that can guide a people as they seek to free themselves from one constitution and replace it with another?

Seen by many Iranians as a stern man of God, he was widely thought to be unaffected by the wealth, power, and corruption that so many Iranians saw as typifying the regime of the shah.

As such, although some regimes may well enjoy broad legitimacy by the free choice of their citizenry, the possibility also exists that regimes gain legitimacy through what economist Edward Herman and philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky call (in a different context) 'manufactured consent'—that is, the shaping of the people’s response to the regime by state programs and activities designed to instill support for the regime.

You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning.

Whether Afghanistan’s restored Taliban regime will endure remains an open question.

In soft authoritarianism, on the other hand, regimes affirm their right to rule apart from consultation with or approval from the public, but nevertheless frequently seek the input of the people and frequently attempt to advance what the people desire.

The king of Morocco, therefore, still retains very substantial powers that enable him to override the will of the people as reflected in legislative elections.

Kim Jong-un, who took power by the decree of his father, who had taken power by the decree of his father, the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-Sung.

This subordination is not presented as degrading but as an act of familial love, since the Supreme Leader—the popular name for Kim Jung-un—is presented as a loving father and all North Koreans as his daughters and sons.

As such, the regime can be thought of as a sort of fusion of hard and soft authoritarianism.

They looked to this structure of government in the hopes of ensuring that the new regime would not develop a concentration of power in the national government that could ever again emerge as a threat to international peace.

Defenders of federalism see in this disagreement a productive tension that can lead to compromise and that often results in prudent policy outcomes.

A majority in parliament, therefore, can enact sweeping changes.

In this way, parties can come to exercise influence out of proportion with the strength of their support in the population as a whole.

The United States was founded on the belief that these tasks require a government that can act with speed when necessary but not so hastily as to permit the government to violate personal liberties.

The Mexican legislature blends a proportional system of representation with a system based on representatives elected in distinct districts.

The Mexican Constitution pledges itself to defend and promote a wide array of rights—far wider than the list of rights found in the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

In part to the people’s concern over the power of drug cartels to corrupt governmental officials and to run shadow governments and in part to the rise of violent crime associated with the cultivation and distribution of drugs.

The government has created a National Media and Communications Authority that can impose heavy fines for coverage that it considers “unbalanced or offensive to human dignity or common morals.”

According to these conversion laws, to change their religion, individuals must first have their conversion investigated by state officials who must be convinced that the conversion is free and fully informed.

Not all representative systems will tend to advance what Western political regimes increasingly see as the cornerstone of their own political legitimacy—the preservation of a broad range of personal rights and freedoms.

Representative regimes, therefore, do not always embrace the conceptions of individual rights and human equality that are increasingly central in many representative governments.

manufactured consent support for a regime that results from state programs and activities designed to indoctrinate the people and instill that support

Theocracy: a system of government in which religious leaders have authorized governmental power and possess either direct control over the government or enough authorized governmental power to be able to control the government’s policies.

Representative democratic governments can embody values that human rights organizations criticize.

Power can best be defined as the ability to establish and enforce the rules to which all other actors in a system must adhere.

He does this even at the expense of much-needed domestic spending on things like food and social services.

Comparative advantage allows a country to strategically invest in the factors of production—land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship—within its borders in order to develop goods or services that make it a preferred resource for consumers versus other countries.

A state can use both overt and subversive means to influence another state or a non-state actor in order to gain more power for itself.

The United States must tread carefully, supporting a state that is trying to move toward democracy without angering a key economic and diplomatic ally.

Allowing for state visits is one way that a state might use the guise of entertainment as a means of persuading a state to take steps that meet its preferences.

Recognition as an equal partner among states

The international community, for its part, can use the promise of recognition to extract concessions from the Taliban.

In short, intergovernmental institutions are a great way for powerful states to become even more powerful.

States have used the cover of sovereignty to prevent nongovernmental organizations from providing aid.

The willingness of states to make sure that their sovereignty is protected for as long as possible ensures that the system will remain anarchic.

The tension created in the fight between order and anarchy that exists in all states, no matter how powerful they are, is what underscores and motivates international relations.

For 13 days in October 1962, the world watched with bated breath as a shipment of Soviet warheads on their way to Cuba pushed the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

In an autocracy, the selectors are the people who support the leader while at the same time controlling the parts of the country that a leader needs to legitimize their position, such as the military or the lucrative natural resources that the state may control.

The countries of the world see North Korea’s actions as a blatant challenge to the international system’s fine line between anarchy and order.

Military leaders within ExComm strove to balance their own preferences for how the United States should project strength, favoring large shows of force and more aggressive response measures, with their understanding of who the president was and how he perceived the world around him.

International law and norms limit what actions countries are willing to allow states to take, and this is especially true when the potential of nuclear conflict threatens the safety of not only the nations involved in a standoff, but also of the entire world.

This air of distrust underlies the thinking of a realist state.

In a zero-sum game, a state seeks to take something, whether it be power or a physical resource, away from another state; in essence, if I win, then you lose, and there can only be one winner.

The intense competition between these two major world powers for global supremacy spilled into all parts of society, from the propaganda and policies of the United States focused on weeding out suspected communists in all aspects of society and government to the race to see who could make the greatest advancements in space exploration.

This is the burden of the hegemon; when you are the victor in a conflict you may be seen as the only stable, strong power, and with that status comes a sense of obligation to help less powerful, less stable states.

States, they say, are intrinsically motivated to seek out power and will do so only by establishing a sense of supremacy over other states, particularly those with characteristics similar to their own.

In joining NATO, these smaller countries agree to allow more formidable powers, such as the United States or the United Kingdom, to install military personnel and weapons in their countries and to use them as a base of military operations in exchange for the promise that the more formidable military power will provide the smaller country with protection should the need arise.

Those linkages keep the two countries locked in a long-standing, deeply complicated relationship.

For constructivists, these shared conceptions and resultant norms are the glue that holds the international system together.

The Russians for the longest time were condescending in their view of China as an uninteresting rural society. Now China looks at Russia and says, ‘What are you good for?’

In the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix, Neo has the ability to change the rules upon which his world is based.

To entrench this advantage, core states have an inc entiv e to keep p eripher y countries in positions o f politic al and social unrest so that the c ore countries ma y extract the needed resources with minimal costs.

The feminist tradition views the state as an inherently masculine institution in that it is and has been dominated by men and the male point of view since its inception.

This intrinsic push and pull for power and supremacy is at the heart of a system in which states push back on any organization or institution that seems to undermine its sovereignty.

Just as the most powerful states tend to dominate the international system, the perspectives of those in power have tended to dominate the study of international relations.

security dilemma a situation in which chang es in a s tate’s policies related to its own safety and security , because the y app ear a ggres sive to other states, ma y lead those other states to take preemptive action that ratchets up tensions between two or more states

In the international system, anarchy exists because... there is no overarching governing authority.

According to feminist theory, international relations has traditionally focused on “hard policy” issues, such as conflict and security, and has relegated to second-class status issues related to development and access to social programs.

No individual or state “owns” the oceans and the wildlife in them. They are a shared, finite resource.

The tragedy of the commons occurs when there is a rivalry for limited resources to which it is inherently difficult to restrict access and individual states prioritize their own short-term economic survival over broader long-term community interests.

The anarchic nature of the international system complicates efforts to persuade states to recognize their contribution to a common problem and to take responsibility for their actions.

Signatory countries that fail to take those steps may be acting within their sovereign rights, but if they signed the treaty, those domestic actions (or that domestic inaction) are now regulated by international law.

The philosophy behind R2P is that 'state sovereignty carrie[s] with it the obligation of the State to protect its own people, and that if the State [is] unwilling or unable to do so, the responsibility shift[s] to the international community to use diplomatic, humanitarian and other means to protect them.'

Because there is no executive branch in the global governance system, international laws are difficult to enforce.

The United States has established a network of bilateral treaties with countries around the world promising not to prosecute any US citizen through the ICC.

IGOs help the international community focus on issues and coordinate actions even when individual states’ interests may push them to act in ways that are incompatible with common goals.

While some might view the outbreak of World War II less than 20 years after the conclusion of the First World War as a failure of the idea behind the League, the leaders of the WWII Allied states saw the outbreak as evidence of the need for an even stronger global organization.

In service of the goal to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” the UN has been involved in peacekeeping activities in areas of interstate conflict since the late 1940s.

Even if the other 14 states on the Council agree with a given action, the veto of any one of the P5 will block the action.

More than 3,000 UN peacekeepers from 120 countries have died in this service.

To end extreme poverty (decrease the percentage of people living on less than $1.90 a day to no more than 3% by 2030) and to promote shared prosperity.

In most circumstances, states place their own desires and interests above those of the broader international community.

The idea that cooperation on small, discrete policy areas such as coordinating postal services or air traffic control can create mutual trust and evolve into cooperation on larger, more complex issues is called functionalism.

Article 5 of the NATO Treaty promised collective defense, assuring members that “an attack on one or more of them . . . shall be considered an attack against them all.”