Chapter 1 Introduction: Principles of American Government and Politics
Chapter Objectives
Identify the ways government can affect daily life.
Read about the land, the people, and the economy of the United States.
Explore the idea of popular sovereignty.
Examine how the Declaration of Independence implies a contract for popular sovereignty.
Understand the idea of democracy.
Learn how this book will help you understand American government and politics.
Introduction
“This land is your land, this land is my land” declares in a very personal way that the United States belongs to the people. Woody Guthrie’s famous song was written in 1940 as the country was emerging from the Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world. Like today, our grandparents and great-grandparents saw poverty amid great wealth and anger produced by unfairness. Also like today, people asked if democracy itself was in jeopardy. But in the darkest of times, Americans came together to choose new leadership and move forward.
“This Land Is Your Land” was meant to inspire collective ownership. Prior to the twentieth century, the skies, valleys, deserts, waters, and forests that Guthrie mentions in his song were considered inexhaustible and to be exploited for personal gain. The development of the national parks system at the turn of the century was an early acknowledgement that preservation demanded that some things be held in common. Today, we know that even the skies are vulnerable to degradation and that it costs everyone to keep them clean and breathable. The same could be said for less tangible endowments like justice, security, pubic welfare, and the blessings of liberty. We evoke the title to remind ourselves that the people own America, and as responsible owners, we need to work together to sustain a healthy and prosperous society.
Unfortunately, many Americans have been led to believe that the burdens of active citizenship are onerous. This perspective is understandable. Democracy places greater moral requirements on ordinary citizens than less inclusive forms of government do. Indeed, modern ideals about what it means to be a good citizen were formulated as replacements for a social order based on aristocracy and monarchy. Because authority was to be placed in the hands of ordinary citizens, it was thought that social and political harmony could be realized only if citizens were willing to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community. Centuries of political socialization have led to the idealized “civics book” citizen who actively approaches government as a fair-minded individual, regularly follows current events, and understands the workings of public policy and the consequences of his or her political decisions. Americans want to be good citizens, yet are torn by doubt that they can live up to this ideal. Still, being a good and responsible citizen is actually easier than most people assume. We believe that American politics can be made intelligible and satisfying to the average American such that the duties of citizenship can be met with relative ease. In short, our book is written for citizens looking to understand the American government and satisfy their citizen duties, but without an unreasonable expenditure of time and effort. To do this, however, requires a different understanding of government, politics, and citizenship than found in most books.
We wrote this book for students like you who find yourselves in a situation similar to that of the average citizen. Most students in our classes are obligated to take a course in American government to complete a general education requirement. Yes, many enroll out of a genuine interest and are eager to engage in politics, but most feel that government is mysterious and corrupt, that ordinary citizens cannot make much of an impact. Other texts recognize this problem but attempt to foster motivation by inflicting guilt or simply by insisting that politics is relevant. Our approach, which has been refined over decades teaching this subject, recognizes that students vary widely in their knowledge of and motivation to learn about American politics. We attempt to instill interest by asking our readers to identify with average citizens who, like our students, would probably rather be doing or learning something that can be more directly used to improve their individual life or career prospects.
Our approach centers on two well-established observations from political science research that have yet to be incorporated into the teaching of this subject, namely (1) that politics is remote from the concerns of most Americans most of the time and (2) that politics is inherently ambiguous. Both of these observations are at odds with accepted notions about the role and motivations of average citizens in a democratic society. The prevailing view is that civic participation is the very basis of republican governance and that the impetus to participate comes not from lofty notions of devotion to the common good, but from individual self-interest. Citizen participation and responsiveness are expected to happen more or less automatically because people are assumed to be inherently self-regarding. In other words, people participate to protect their interests. Voters express their self-interest by selecting representatives whom they believe best satisfy their personal needs, while elected officials respond faithfully out of their self-interest in maintaining their power to represent. This formulation puts people in charge by connecting their self-interest to the jobs of leaders who want to maintain power. However, the problem with this notion is that it assigns rather heroic characteristics to average people, namely that voters sum the positive and negative attributes of candidate characteristics and vote for those with the greatest net qualities. It also assumes that voters communicate their policy preferences after consideration of the candidates’ positions on salient issues relative to their own. Ideas about democratic accountability or responsiveness make similar assumptions about the watchful eyes of voters, who understand how well they have been helped or harmed by their representatives’ actions while in office.
The notion that citizen participation is motivated by self-interest also ignores long-established findings that voters face collective action problems when selecting representatives in elections. In technical terms, the product produced by an election is simply representation. Like any public good, the outcome (the public official who is elected) is non-excludable and non-rival, meaning that one’s enjoyment of the good does not take away from another person’s enjoyment of that same good. Once the election is over, non-voters cannot be denied representation, nor can their access to representation be diminished by those who did vote. Why vote, then, if the benefits of voting are also available to non-voters? This logic (along with the more obvious observation that a single vote has little chance of determining the outcome of an election) has long tempted some citizens to “free ride” on the efforts of others by not voting.
However, contrary to expectations regarding strict rational self-interest, most Americans do vote–and they do so in large numbers. In the 2020 presidential election, some 155 million Americans (or about 66 percent of eligible voters) showed up at the polls. Moreover, the most accepted social scientific explanation of voter turnout is not rational self-interest but citizen duty. For most voters, the personal satisfaction derived from expressing themselves politically outweighed the typically low cost of participating in the election. This explains why seemingly modest social pressures play a large part in stimulating voter turnout—from coworkers who note who is performing their duty, to the deliberate efforts of political activists and institutions of all kinds to get people to vote. If participation is caused by self-interested behavior, why are these external motivations effective or even necessary?
A person can satisfy his or her civic duty at low cost (or with a little prodding), but the real problem is that most citizens vote with scant information. In truth, they have little reason to bear the information costs associated with discerning the candidates’ true characteristics, where they stand on the issues, or how competent the incumbents may have been as political leaders. What follows from this observation is the idea that citizens are in the paradoxical position of being “in charge” of government, but for reasons related to the real consequences of individual self-interest (rather than the optimistic assumptions made by the framers of the Constitution), they are hardly motivated to make choices based on policy or candidate research. On the other hand, public officials, corporations, interest groups, and others who seek private goods from government—power, perquisites of office, or selective policy benefits—find it cost-effective to bear the costs of rational decision-making. This also explains why these groups (which often represent small numbers of people) can satisfy their interests, often at the expense of the majority of citizens.
In this text, we start from the realistic position that most people take up their responsibilities as citizens somewhat reluctantly (or at least superficially). What makes this approach especially innovative is that it explains how government and politics really work and looks for answers in more appropriate places. Americans are very much casual citizens, not only because most are here by chance, but because they are typically engaged for symbolic reasons rather than from an innate love of politics or robust self-interest.
We are not claiming the average citizens can do little to influence government. To the contrary, we contend that the American public is more aware of and engaged in political affairs than strict rational self-interest would predict. Ample evidence suggests that involvement by ordinary citizens makes a great deal of difference. On the other hand, those in leadership positions, whether they are engaged in electoral politics or interest groups, political parties, or the media, understand the incentive structure of popular politics and use these insights to their advantage. Our point is that self-interest on the part of citizens cannot be taken for granted. In particular, the link between citizens and their representatives is fragile, not robust; tentative, not secure. This understanding should be incorporated into the teaching of American politics and citizenship. The implication is that political engagement, like much else in life, must be cost-effective for the ordinary citizen to be sustainable and satisfying.
Our approach also suggests that, just like one does not need to be a computer scientist to use the internet or an automotive engineer to drive a car, one does not need to be a political scientist to be a competent citizen or to have a meaningful effect on government. Strangely, despite hard evidence that average citizens show scant knowledge about governmental institutions and policies, political scientists are actually less cynical than the general public about the state of American politics. We believe that this is because we are trained to see things empirically—that is, we are taught to view politics as it is rather than how we imagine it should be. This perspective not only leads to a realistic understanding of the limited incentives and capacities of voters, but to an appreciation for how political institutions like campaigns, parties, and public interest groups, among other things, aid citizen engagement by providing free and accessible information and cues to make participation cost effective. Many of these practices are similar to ones that consumers use to compare goods and services—from cell phones to doctors—before they purchase.
Thus, this book is very much a guide to American citizenship. It describes how the system of American government and politics works empirically. This book will help you to be critical, to understand how the political system can be made more democratic, and to evaluate how you can use your limited time and resources to participate most efficiently. Our goal is to encourage you to engage in politics and learn that politics can be interesting, useful, and rewarding. It need not be burdensome if viewed from a realistic perspective.