Chapter 1: Freedom, Order, or Equality? 13
CHAPTER 1
Freedom, Order, or Equality?
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, students should be able to do the following:
1. Define the key terms at the end of the chapter
2. Summarize the argument President Bush used to justify electronic surveillance without warrants, and why this was controversial
3. Understand the traditional definition of government and discuss why globalization makes that definition less compelling than it once was
4. Identify reasons why the United States opposes an international court
5. Discuss the three major purposes of government and explain their differences
6. Discuss the divergent views of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Karl Marx towards the purposes of government
7. Identify the three concepts that describe the values pursued by government
8. Explain the differences between the concepts of majoritarian and pluralist models of democratic government
9. Define “social order,” providing examples of its application and indicating why people are hesitant to accept this definition of order
10. Compare and contrast the terms “freedom of” and “freedom from,” providing an example of each
11. Distinguish between political equality and social equality, explaining the two routes to achieve social equality
12. Explain the two dilemmas of government
13. Construct a two-dimensional, fourfold classification of American political ideologies, using the values of freedom, order, and equality
14. Distinguish between liberal and conservative attitudes about the scope and purpose of government
15. Explain a communitarian’s attitudes about the scope and purpose of government
Chapter Synopsis
The president’s decision to intercept communications in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, highlights the growing tension between maintaining American civil liberties and protecting the nation from global threats. Indeed, globalization (the increasing interdependence of citizens and nations across the world has had a strong impact on many policies pursued by the U.S. government. Political decisions involving conflicting values often result in difficult dilemmas. The United States may face erosion of its national sovereignty as it makes attempts to create an international or supranational force to oppose terrorism.
To control means to govern. People want control or order and will surrender their freedom to achieve it, as some reactions to the events of September 11 demonstrated. Freedom, order, and equality are pivotal concepts for understanding American politics. All governments strive to maintain order, and most claim to respect individual freedoms in the process. Some, but not all, governments aspire to ensuring equality. Government decisions to place strong emphasis on one of the values may result in shortchanging another. It is, for example, easy to see how stricter law enforcement measures may impinge on individual freedom.
Governments have to make hard choices to determine an acceptable balance among these often-conflicting norms. The text employs two models of democratic government, majoritarian democracy and pluralist democracy, to assess the process by which the United States makes these choices.
Despite the long-standing debate over how limited or pervasive the role of government should be, most scholars would identify three basic purposes: (1) to maintain order by preserving life and protecting property; (2) to provide public goods, such as schools, highways, and national parks; and (3) to promote equality through health and welfare programs and social equality policies. The third purpose is both the most recent (arising in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s) and the most controversial due to the redistribution of income or values.
Different political usage of the words freedom and equality leads to their conveying a variety of meanings. Freedom can be used both in the sense of “freedom of” (which is equivalent to liberty) and in the sense of “freedom from” (which suggests equality). Similarly, equality can be used in several senses: the important distinctions are political equality, social equality, equality of opportunity, and equality of outcome.
The original dilemma of government arose from the need to maintain order, even at the expense of yielding individual freedom. The modern dilemma of government in the 1990s arose from the desire to promote equality—once again at the cost of individual freedom. Evidence of the tradeoffs among these three values—freedom, order, and equality—recurs throughout the book. The conflicts between freedom and order are usually obvious, but those between freedom and equality are often more subtle. Americans tend to want more freedom than equality when compared to people in other countries.
The range of political and ideological beliefs about the scope of government authority or control form a continuum from totalitarianism, which represents total government control of all aspects of society, to anarchism, which places the highest value on freedom and is in opposition to any form of government. Between these extremes lie socialism, capitalism, and libertarianism, political philosophies that advocate, in decreasing order, the responsibility of government in economic and political matters. Depending upon the view, communism is socialist because it advocates the progressive disappearance of the government or it is totalitarian because it controls social and political aspects of life. The United States, with its emphasis on free enterprise, is clearly a capitalist country. Its two broad ideological doctrines, liberalism and conservatism, each endorse capitalism, but they differ on the proper extent of government intervention in the economy.
Similarly, the definition of liberal and conservative varies, depending on their usage. Liberals and conservatives have traditionally been linked to opposite poles on a single dimension: breadth of government activity. The familiar distinction holds that liberals favor a larger role for government and conservatives endorse a smaller role. This distinction, however, fails to take into account conservatives’ greater emphasis on government’s role in maintaining social order. By introducing the purpose of government action—whether to maintain order or to promote equality—into a two-dimensional classification of ideological types, we can produce a more satisfactory typology. Liberals favor government action to promote equality, whereas conservatives favor government action to promote order. Libertarians favor freedom and oppose government action to promote either equality or order. They stand in contrast to communitarians, who favor government action for either purpose.
Parallel Lecture 1.1
This lecture is the first in the series of parallel lectures: each closely parallels the text, allowing instructors to decide which topics in the chapter they wish to reinforce and which topics they wish to develop further with their own ideas and information. Later in this chapter we offer the options of a focus lecture and/or an interactive media lecture. The focus lecture either expands on a portion of the text or introduces new (but related) topics for more detailed treatment. The media lecture connects the text with how the same topic is treated in the contemporary media.
I. Modern governments are confronted by fundamental dilemmas—difficult choices between unsatisfactory alternatives.
A. Is it better to live under a government that fiercely protects individual freedom or one that infringes on freedom to protect against threats to public security?
B. Is it better to let all citizens keep the same share of their income or to tax wealthier people at a higher rate to fund programs for poorer people?
C. These alternatives pose dilemmas of choice, because they are tied to opposing philosophies that place different values on freedom, order, and equality.
1. Politics has been defined as “the authoritative allocation of values for a society” (Easton).
2. The Challenge of Democracy argues that good government often involves tough choices, and encourages students to analyze government policies to determine which values (norms) are harmed and which are helped by the policy choices made by government.
II. The globalization of American government
A. Government has traditionally been defined in territorial terms.
1. Government: the legitimate use of force—including firearms, imprisonment, and execution—within specified geographical boundaries to control human behavior.
2. National sovereignty: a political entity’s externally recognized right to exercise final authority over its affairs.
a) National sovereignty gives each nation the right to make the choices it wishes to make without interference from other nations.
b) Even the League of Nations and the United Nations explicitly respect national sovereignty as the guiding principle of international relations.
c) Concerns about human rights have brought national sovereignty into question.
(1) Kofi Annan: protection of human rights must “take precedence over concerns of state sovereignty.”
(2) A concern for all nations, not just rogue nations: United States opposes International Criminal Court, and has been condemned by others for its use of the death penalty.
B. The globalization of nations
1. Globalization: the increasing interdependence of citizens and nations across the world.
2. Extent of a nation’s globalization can be measured by combining various indicators
a) Economic integration: combined data on trade and foreign direct investment inflows and outflows.
b) Personal contact: international travel and tourism; international telephone traffic; cross-border remittances and personal transfers.
c) Technological connectivity: number of Internet users, hosts, and secure servers through which encrypted transactions are carried out.
d) Political engagement: each country’s memberships in international organizations, contributions to U.N. peacekeeping missions, ratification of multilateral treaties, and amounts of governmental transfer payments.
C. The United States is hardly the most “globalized” nation.
a) Singapore is the most globalized; the United States even ranks behind Ireland.
b) America’s large population contributes to its domestic self-sufficiency.
c) Increasing globalization seems inevitable.
III. The purposes of government
A. Government requires citizens to surrender some freedom to obtain benefits.
1. The primary purpose of government is never the maximization of personal freedom,
2. Government exists to control.
B. Primary purposes of government
1. Maintaining order: establishing the rule of law to preserve life and protect private property.
a) The oldest objective of government
b) Grew from “state of nature” theory
(1) Hobbes’s Leviathan
(a) Life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
(b) A single ruler government protects the weak and creates security.
(c) Government guards against situations similar to those in Liberia and the Darfur region of Sudan.
(2) Locke’s Two Treatises on Government
(a) Argued that protection of life, liberty, and property was basic objective of government
(b) Became linked with the doctrine of liberalism: the belief that states should leave individuals free to follow their individual pursuits.
c) All systems of government do not hold protection of private property as a valid objective.
(1) Karl Marx argued for communism: a political system in which, in theory, ownership of all land and productive facilities is in the hands of the people, and all goods are equally shared.
(2) Since the fall of communism, there is still ideological debate about the extent to which government should protect private property.
2. Providing public goods: instituting projects that benefit all individuals but are not likely to be produced by the voluntary acts of individuals.
a) Includes benefits and services such as parks, sanitation, roads, and water
b) Scope of government functions has expanded over time, and can be controversial
3. Promoting equality: redistributing income to promote economic equality or regulate behavior to promote social equality.
a) The newest objective of government, coming to prominence in the twentieth century
(1) Catalyzed by the paradox of “poverty amid plenty”
(2) Sweden, Britain, and other European nations adopted programs to reduce social inequalities.
b) The most controversial purpose of government
c) Key issue is government’s role in redistributing income (e.g., raising the minimum wage)
d) Policies that advance equality in other ways can also be controversial (e.g., civil union laws).
IV. A conceptual framework for analyzing government
A. Citizens differ on how vigorously they want government to maintain order, provide public goods, and promote equality.
1. Providing public goods is usually least controversial.
2. The cost of maintaining order and promoting equality is greater than money; it usually involves value tradeoffs.
B. Five concepts are crucial to understanding what government tries to do and how it decides to do so.
1. Concept: a generalized idea that groups various events, objects, or qualities under a common classification or label.
2. Three concepts identify what government tries to do—the values pursued by government.
a) Order
b) Freedom
c) Equality
3. Two concepts identify how government makes choices about what to do—the models of democratic government.
a) Majoritarian democracy
b) Pluralist democracy
V. The concepts of freedom, order, and equality
A. These concepts have many connotations in American politics.
1. Freedom and equality are positive symbols, promoted in different ways.
2. Order has negative connotations, and is openly called for only in times of civil strife.
B. Freedom has been used in two major senses.
1. Freedom of is the absence of constraints on behavior; it is freedom to do something.
a) Synonymous with liberty
b) Example: we speak of freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
2. Freedom from implies immunity from some type of deprivation.
a) Often symbolizes the fight against exploitation and oppression
b) In this sense, freedom comes close to the concept of equality.
c) Example: freedom from want, freedom from fear
C. Order can be viewed in either a narrow or a broad sense
1. Narrowly: the protection of life and property
a) Less controversial meaning
b) Most citizens concede the necessity of maintaining order in this sense.
2. Broadly: encompasses social order
a) Social order: established patterns of authority in society and traditional modes of behavior
b) Controversy concerns extent to which the government should use its police power to enforce social order
D. Equality can be used in several senses.
1. Political equality: one person, one vote; equal access to political office
2. Social equality: equality in wealth, education, and status
3. Equality of opportunity: the idea that each person is guaranteed the same chance to succeed in life
4. Equality of outcome: the idea that society must ensure that people are equal, and governments must design policies to redistribute wealth and status so that economic and social equality is actually achieved.
a) Has led to certain affirmative action programs and federal equal pay laws
b) Often tied to rights: the benefits of government to which every citizen is entitled.
(1) Equality of outcome is legitimized if every citizen is entitled to certain government benefits
(2) Requires a much greater degree of government activity
c) Equality of outcome clashes more directly with the idea of freedom than does equality of opportunity.
VI. Two dilemmas of government
A. The controversies in contemporary politics center on two major dilemmas of government:
1. The original dilemma: How much freedom should be sacrificed for order?
2. The modern dilemma: How much freedom should be sacrificed for equality?