Government

Differentiate among forms of government

Government is the term generally used to describe the formal institutions through which a territory and its people are ruled. A government may be as simple as a town meeting in which community members make policy and determine budgets together or as complex as the vast establishments found in many large countries today, with extensive procedures, laws, and bureaucracies. In the history of civilization, thousands of governments have been established. The hard part is establishing one that lasts.

Even more difficult is developing a stable government that is true to the core American political values of liberty, equality, and justice. Though in principle these three values are endorsed by most Americans, in practice each of them means different things to different people, and they often seem to conflict with one another. This is where politics comes in. Politics refers to conflicts and struggles over the leadership, structure, and policies of governments. As we will see throughout this book, much political conflict concerns policies and practices that seem to affirm one of the key American political values but that may contradict another.

Is Government Needed?

Thomas Jefferson famously observed that the best government was one that “governed least,” and since the nation’s founding, Americans have always viewed government with some suspicion and a desire that it play only a limited role in their lives. Generally speaking, a government is needed to provide services, sometimes called “public goods,” that citizens all need but probably cannot provide adequately for themselves—such as defense against foreign aggression, maintenance of public order, a stable currency, enforcement of contractual obligations and property rights, and some measure of economic security. Government, with its powers to tax and regulate, is typically viewed as the best way to provide public goods. However, there is often disagreement about which public goods are essential and how they should be provided.

Much of what citizens take for granted every day is in fact affected by government. Throughout the day, for example, a typical college student relies on a host of services and activities organized by national, state, and local government agencies (see Table 1.1).

Forms of Government

Governments vary in their structure, their size, and the way they operate. Two questions are of special importance in determining how they differ: Who governs? And how much government control is permitted?

Some nations are governed by a single individual—a king or dictator, for example. This system is called autocracy. Where a small group—perhaps landowners, military officers, or the wealthy—controls most of the governing decisions, that government is an oligarchy. If citizens or the general adult population have popular sovereignty—the power to rule themselves—that government is a democracy.

TABLE 1.1The Presence of Government in the Daily Life of a Student at “State University”
TIME	SCHEDULE
7:00 A.M.	Wake up. Standard time set by the national government.
7:10 A.M.	Shower. Water courtesy of local government, and supplied by either a public entity or a regulated private company. Brush your teeth with toothpaste whose cavity-fighting claims have been verified by a federal agency. Dry your hair with an electric dryer manufactured according to federal government agency guidelines.
7:30 A.M.	Have a bowl of cereal with milk for breakfast. “Nutrition Facts” on food labels are a federal requirement, pasteurization of milk required by state law, freshness dating on milk based on state and federal standards, recycling the empty cereal box and milk carton enabled by state or local laws.
8:30 A.M.	Drive or take public transportation to campus. Airbags and seat belts required by federal and state laws. Roads and bridges paid for by state and local governments, speed and traffic laws set by state and local governments, public transportation subsidized by all levels of government.
8:45 A.M.	Arrive on campus of large public university. Buildings are 70 percent financed by state taxpayers.
9:00 A.M.	First class: Chemistry 101. Tuition partially paid by a federal loan (more than half the cost of university instruction is paid for by taxpayers), chemistry lab paid for with grants from the National Science Foundation (a federal agency) and smaller grants from corporations made possible by federal income tax deductions for charitable contributions.
Noon	Eat lunch. College cafeteria financed by state dormitory authority on land grant from federal Department of Agriculture.
12:47 P.M.	Felt an earthquake! Check the U.S. Geological Survey at www.usgs.gov to see that it was a 3.9 on the Richter scale.
2:00 P.M.	Second class: American Government 101 (your favorite class!). You may be taking this class because it is required by the state legislature or because it fulfills a university requirement.
4:00 P.M.	Third class: Computer Science 101. Free computers, software, and internet access courtesy of state subsidies plus grants and discounts from Apple and Microsoft, the costs of which are deducted from their corporate income taxes; internet built in part by federal government. Duplication of software prohibited by federal copyright laws.
6:00 P.M.	Eat dinner: hamburger and french fries. Meat inspected for bacteria by federal agencies.
7:00 P.M.	Work at part-time job at the campus library. Minimum wage set by federal, state, or local government; books and journals in library paid for by state taxpayers.
8:15 P.M.	Go online to check the status of your application for a federal student loan (FAFSA) on the Department of Education’s website at studentaid.gov.
10:00 P.M.	Go home. Street lighting paid for by county and city governments, police patrols by city government.
10:15 P.M.	Watch TV. Networks regulated by federal government, cable public-access channels required by city law. Weather forecast provided to broadcasters by a federal agency.
10:45 P.M.	To complete your economics homework, visit the Bureau of Labor Statistics at www.bls.gov to look up unemployment levels since 1972.
Midnight	Put out the trash before going to bed. Trash collected by city sanitation department, financed by user charges.

A portrait of John Locke. — America’s Founders were influenced by the English thinker John Locke (1632–1704). Locke argued that governments need the consent of the people.

Governments also vary considerably in terms of how they govern. In the United States and some other nations, such as the United Kingdom and France, constitutions and other laws limit what governments can do and how they go about it. Governments limited in this way are called liberal or constitutional governments.

In other nations, including some in Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa, the law imposes few real limits. Government is nevertheless kept in check by other political and social institutions that it cannot control—such as self-governing territories, organized religions, business organizations, or labor unions. Such governments are generally called authoritarian.

In a third group of nations, including the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Nazi Germany, and North Korea today, governments not only lack legal limits but also try to eliminate institutions that might challenge their authority. Because these governments typically attempt to control all of a nation’s political, economic, and social life, they are called totalitarian (see Table 1.2).

TABLE 1.2Forms of Government
WHO GOVERNS	TYPE OF GOVERNMENT
One person	Autocracy
Small group (e.g., landowners, military officers, or wealthy merchants)	Oligarchy
Many people	Democracy
LIMITS ON GOVERNMENT	TYPE OF GOVERNMENT
Codified, legal substantive and procedural limits on what government can or cannot do	Constitutional
Few legal limits; some limits imposed by social groups	Authoritarian
No limits	Totalitarian

Today, by one measure, 68 percent of the global population lives in electoral and closed autocracies, and only 14 percent enjoy true liberal democracy with free and fair elections, the rule of law, and constraints on the executive (president or prime minister); 19 percent live in more limited democracies.² These percentages have fluctuated over the years as countries with large populations have shifted. For example, according to two recent reports, India, the world’s second most populous country, with 1.4 billion people, was downgraded from being classified as a democracy to a “flawed democracy” by one report in 2020 and an “electoral autocracy” by another in 2021. Moreover, constitutional, liberal democracies were unheard of before the modern era. Before 1800, governments seldom sought—and rarely received—the support of their subjects.³

AMERICA | SIDE BY SIDE

Forms of Government

The question of whether a country is democratic or authoritarian is complex. Every year, the Economist rates countries on a scale from “Full Democracies” to “Authoritarian” systems based on expert evaluations of five factors: electoral processes, political culture, respect for civil liberties, political participation, and functioning of government. In 2016, for the first time, the United States was classified as a “Flawed Democracy” in response to declines in public confidence in governance and a rise in polarization.

Is there a geographic pattern between the countries labeled “Full” or “Flawed” democracies and those that are labeled “Hybrid” or “Authoritarian” systems? What factors, historical, economic, geographic, or otherwise, might help to explain this pattern?
What do you think separates a “Full Democracy” from a “Flawed Democracy”? The United States’ categorization as a “Flawed Democracy” happened during the Obama administration and persisted during the Trump and Biden administrations. What changes have you seen in the past few years that might explain this shift? How concerned should Americans be by this categorization?

SOURCE: “Democracy Index 2021,” The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Beginning in the seventeenth century, in a handful of European nations, two important changes in the character and conduct of government began: governments started to acknowledge formal limits on their power, and a few governments started to provide ordinary citizens with a formal voice in public affairs—through the vote. These ideas influenced the political climate in the American colonies. In fact, support for limits on government and for popular influence on it lay at the heart of the American Revolution, in which “No taxation without representation” was fiercely asserted (see Chapter 2).

Limiting Government

On both sides of the Atlantic, a commercial class emerged in the eighteenth century that was interested in changing governmental institutions to allow its political participation and to protect its economic interests—not just the aristocracy’s. In defending its own interests from government, the founding generation of the young United States established many of the principles that would come to define individual liberty for all citizens—freedom of speech, of assembly, and of conscience, as well as freedom from arbitrary search and seizure.

A portrait of John Stuart Mill. — John Stuart Mill (1806–73) presented a ringing defense of individual freedom in his famous treatise *On Liberty*. Mill’s work influenced Americans’ evolving ideas about the relationship between government and the individual.

Notably, the Founders generally did not favor democracy as we know it today. Despite calls for liberty and freedom, many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention owned enslaved Black people and sought to protect the brutal system of slavery.⁴ In addition, along with political institutions based on elected representatives, they supported property requirements and other restrictions for voting and for holding office so as to limit political participation to the White male middle and upper classes. Yet once these institutions and the right to engage in politics were established, it was difficult to limit them to the economic elite. Through mass movements that also found political allies in Congress and the courts, voting rights have significantly expanded since the Founding era (see Chapters 2, 3, and 5). Today, the United States has laws that protect the voting rights of Black people, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. The expansion of participation has meant that more and more people have a legal right to take part in politics.

Democracy in the United States

What type of government exists in the United States? Most people respond with one word: democracy. Yet this is not the complete answer.

A system that permits citizens to vote directly on laws and policies is a direct democracy. However, Founders like James Madison were concerned that in a direct democracy, the majority could trample over the rights of the minority. In Federalist 51, he wrote: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” That is, given that not all people are virtuous, government must be durable enough to withstand abuses of power. So the Founders focused on creating a democracy based on the principle of majority rule with minority rights.

Majority rule means that the wishes of the majority determine what government does. The House of Representatives—a large body elected directly by the people—was designed in particular to ensure majority rule. But the Founders feared that popular majorities might turn government into a “tyranny of the majority”; thus, concern for individual rights and liberties has been a part of American democracy from the beginning.

Today, the U.S. government is a representative democracy, or a republic, in which citizens have the opportunity to elect top officials. At the national level, citizens select government officials but do not vote directly on legislation. Some states and cities, however, do provide for direct legislation through initiatives and referenda. These procedures enable citizens to collect petitions, or legislators to pass bills, requiring a direct popular vote on an issue. In 2021 more than 2 million Californians signed a petition in an effort to recall the governor, Gavin Newsom. Many Californians were unhappy with his leadership, especially his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The petition triggered a special statewide recall election, but ultimately voters in California chose not to recall the governor. In 2022, 137 statewide ballot measures were certified for the ballot, many addressing hot-button issues such as the legalization of medical or recreational marijuana (measures in 5 states), taxes (12 states), abortion access and funding (6 states), election policies such as redistricting, voting requirements, and criminal trials (5 states).⁵

Influencing the Government through Participation: Politics

As Harold Lasswell, a famous political scientist, once put it, politics is the struggle over “who gets what, when, how.”⁶ Although it exists in every organization, in this book politics will refer only to conflicts over who the government’s leadership is, how the government is organized, or what the government’s policies are. Having a say in these issues is called having political power or influence.

An individual’s participation in politics can take many forms, including voting, donating money, signing petitions, attending political meetings, tweeting and commenting online, sending emails to officials, lobbying legislators, working on a campaign, and participating in protest marches and even violent demonstrations. Groups and organized interests also participate in politics. Their political activities include providing funds for candidates, lobbying, and trying to influence public opinion. The pattern of struggles among interests is called group politics, or pluralism. Americans have always had mixed feelings about pluralist politics. On the one hand, the right of groups to support their views and compete for influence in government is the essence of liberty. On the other hand, groups may sometimes exert too much influence, advancing their own interests at the expense of larger public interests (see Chapter 11).

Sometimes, politics does not take place through formal channels but instead involves direct action. In addition to actions such as marches, demonstrations, and boycotts, direct action politics can include violent activities or civil disobedience, both of which attempt to shock or force political elites into changing their behavior. In recent years in the United States, groups ranging from animal rights activists to labor union advocates to antivaccine protesters to those focused on climate change have used direct action to underline their demands.

government: institutions and procedures through which a territory and its people are ruled
politics: conflict over the leadership, structure, and policies of governments
autocracy: a form of government in which a single individual—a king, queen, or dictator—rules
oligarchy: a form of government in which a small group—landowners, military officers, or wealthy merchants—controls most of the governing decisions
popular sovereignty: a principle of democracy in which political authority rests ultimately in the hands of the people
democracy: a system of rule that permits citizens to play a significant part in the governmental process, usually through the election of key public officials
constitutional government: a system of rule in which formal and effective limits are placed on the powers of the government
direct democracy: a system of rule that permits citizens to vote directly on laws and policies
representative democracy (republic): a system of government in which the populace selects representatives, who play a significant role in governmental decision-making
representative democracy (republic): a system of government in which the populace selects representatives, who play a significant role in governmental decision-making
political power: influence over a government’s leadership, organization, or policies
pluralism: the theory that most interests are and should be free to compete for influence in the government; the outcome of this competition is compromise and moderation
authoritarian government: a system of rule in which the government recognizes no formal limits but may nevertheless be restrained by the power of other social institutions
totalitarian government: a system of rule in which the government recognizes no formal limits on its power and seeks to absorb or eliminate other social institutions that might challenge it
majority rule, minority rights: the democratic principle that a government follows the preferences of the majority of voters but protects the interests of the minority
majority rule, minority rights: the democratic principle that a government follows the preferences of the majority of voters but protects the interests of the minority

V-Dem Institute, “Autocratization Turns Viral: Annual Democracy Report 2021,” March 2021, www.v-dem.net/static/website/files/dr/dr_2021.pdf (accessed 1/26/22).Return to reference 2
Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976), chap. 5; Soutik Biswas, “‘Electoral Autocracy’: The Downgrading of India’s Democracy,” BBC News, March 16, 2021, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56393944 (accessed 6/29/22).Return to reference 3
Steven Mintz, “Historical Context: The Constitution and Slavery,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-resource/historical-context-constitution-and-slavery (accessed 10/2/2021).Return to reference 4
“2022 Ballot Measures,” Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/2022_ballot_measures (accessed 9/21/22).Return to reference 5
Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: Meridian Books, 1958).Return to reference 6

Government

Is Government Needed?

Forms of Government

AMERICA | SIDE BY SIDE

Forms of Government

Limiting Government

Democracy in the United States

Influencing the Government through Participation: Politics

Glossary

Endnotes