APGP Unit One—Chapters 1 – 4
Constitutional Underpinnings (5-15%)
Outlines and Summaries
CHAPTER 1—The Study of American Government
Chapter Summary
There are two major questions about government: Who governs? To what ends? This book will focus on the first question, and will encourage students to develop their own answers to the second question.
Four answers have traditionally been given to the question of who governs.
Marxist: / Those who own the means of production, controlling the economic system, will control the government.Elitist: / A few top leaders, drawn from the major sectors of the United States polity, will make all important decisions
Bureaucratic: / Appointed civil servants control the government, without consulting the public.
Pluralist: / Competition among affected interests shapes public policy decision-making.
In order to choose among these theories or to devise new ones, one must examine the kinds of issues that do (and do not) get taken up by the political system and consider how they are resolved by the system. It is not enough to merely describe governmental institutions and processes.
Distinguishing between different types of democracies is a very important part of this study. The Framers of the Constitution intended that the United States be a representative democracy in which the power to make decisions would be determined by a free and competitive struggle for the citizens’ votes.
Chapter Outline
I. What is political power? (THEME A: POLITICAL POWER AND AUTHORITY)
A. Two great questions about politics
1. Who governs: those who govern will affect us
2. To what ends: tells how government affects our lives
3. The text focuses on who governs and, in answering this question, looks at how the government makes decisions on a variety of issues
B. Power
1. Definition: the ability of one person to cause another person to act in accordance with the first person’s intentions
2. Text’s concern: power as it is used to affect who will hold government office and how government will behave
3. Authority: the right to use power; not all who exercise political power have authority to do so
4. Legitimacy: what makes a law or constitution a source of right
5. Struggles over what makes authority legitimate constitute much of U.S. history
6. Necessary for government to be in some sense “democratic” in the United States today in order to be perceived as legitimate
II. What is democracy? Describes at least three different political systems. (THEME B: DEMOCRACY AND INDIVIDUAL CHOICE)
A. Where the “true interests” of the people are served, whether or not those people directly affect the decision making (democratic centralism)
1. China
2. Cuba
3. Certain European, Asian, Latin American dictatorships
B. Aristotelian “rule of the many” (direct or participatory democracy)
1. Fourth-century B.C.E. Greek city-state, practiced by free adult male property owners
2. New England town meeting
C. Acquisition of power by leaders via competitive elections (representative democracy or elitist theory of democracy)
1. Justifications
a) Direct democracy is impractical for reasons of time, expertise, etc.
b) The people make unwise decisions based on fleeting emotions
III. Direct v. representative democracy
A. Text uses the term “democracy” to refer to representative democracy
1. Constitution does not contain word “democracy” but “republican form of government”
2. Representative democracy requires leadership competition if system is to work—requires meaningful choice for voters, free communication, etc.
B. Framers favored representative democracy
1. Government would mediate, nor mirror, popular views
2. People were viewed as lacking knowledge and susceptible to manipulation
3. Framers’ goal: to minimize the abuse of power by a tyrannical majority or by officeholders
IV. How is power distributed in a democracy?
A. Majoritarian politics
1. Leaders constrained to follow wishes of the people very closely
2. Applies when issues are simple and clear
B. Elitism
1. Rule by identifiable group of persons who possess a disproportionate share of political power
2. Theories on political elites
a) Karl Marx: government merely a reflection of underlying economic forces, primarily the pattern of the ownership of the means of production; government is controlled by the dominant social class
b) C. Wright Mills: power elite, composed of key corporate leaders, military leaders, and political leaders, control and are served by government
c) Max Weber: expertise, specialized competence (bureaucrats) will dominate
d) Pluralist view: no single elite has monopoly on power; hence must bargain and compromise while being responsive to followers
C. Cynical view that politics is self-seeking enterprise but.…
1. Policy does not necessarily reflect authors’ motives
2. Self-interest an incomplete guide to decisions
a) AFL-CIO supported civil rights in 1960s, without personal or organizational gain
b) Civil Aeronautics Board employees in 1970s, worked for deregulation
V. Political change
A. Necessary to refer to history frequently since no single theory is adequate
1. Government today influenced by yesterday
2. Government today still evolving and responds to changing beliefs
B. Politics is about defining the public interest, not just “who gets what”
VI. Finding out who governs
A. Often we have only partial or contingent answers
B. Must understand how preferences are formed
C. Politics cannot be equated with laws on the books
D. Sweeping claims are to be avoided
CHAPTER 2—The Constitution
Chapter Summary
The Framers of the Constitution sought to create a government capable of protecting liberty and preserving order. The solution they chose—one without precedent at that time—was a government based on a written constitution which combined the principles of popular consent, separation of powers, and federalism.
Popular consent was most evident in the procedure for choosing members of the House of Representatives. However, popular consent was limited by the requirements that senators be elected by their state legislatures and presidents by the Electoral College. Powers were separated among branches that then had to cooperate to effect change. Thus, separation of powers was joined with a system of checks and balances. This, it was hoped, would prevent tyranny, even by a popular majority.
Federalism came to mean a system in which both the national and state governments had independent authority. Allocating powers between these two levels of government and devising means to ensure that neither large nor small states would dominate the national government required the most delicate compromises at the Philadelphia convention. The Framers’ decision to protect the institution of slavery was another compromise, which presumably helped to ensure the Constitution’s ratification by states engaged in the slave trade.
In the drafting of the Constitution and the struggle for its ratification, the positions people took were determined by a variety of factors. In addition to their economic interests, these included profound differences of opinion over whether the state governments or the national government would be the best protector of personal liberty.
Chapter Outline
I. The problem of liberty (THEME A: THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE FOUNDERS)
A. The colonial mind
1. Believed that British politicians were corrupt and thus the English constitution was inadequate to protect citizens’ liberty
2. Believed in a higher law embodying natural rights
a) Life
b) Liberty
c) Property (Jefferson changed this to “pursuit of happiness”)
3. A war of ideology, not economics
4. Specific complaints against George III for violating inalienable rights
B. The real revolution
1. The “real” revolution was the radical change in belief about what made authority legitimate and liberties secure
2. Government by consent, not by prerogative
3. Political power exercise by direct grant of power in a written constitution
4. Human liberty prior to government and government must respect liberty
5. Legislative branch was superior to executive branch because the legislature directly represented the people
C. Weaknesses of the confederation (Articles of Confederation)
1. Could not levy taxes or regulate commerce
2. Sovereignty, independence retained by states
3. One vote in Congress for each state
4. Nine of thirteen votes in Congress required for any measure
5. Delegates to Congress picked, paid for by state legislatures
6. Little money coined by Congress
7. Army small and dependent on independent state militias
8. Territorial disputes between states led to open hostilities
9. No national judicial system
10. All thirteen states’ consent necessary for any amendments
II. The Constitutional Convention (THEME B: THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION)
A. The lessons of experience
1. State constitutions
a) Pennsylvania: most democratic, but trampled minority rights—government was too strong
b) Massachusetts: less democratic, but Shays’s Rebellion—government was too weak
2. Shays’s Rebellion brought fear that states about to collapse from internal dissention
B. The Framers
1. Attending: men of practical affairs, including Continental army veterans and members of the Congress of the Articles of Confederation
2. Absent: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry
3. An entirely new constitution was written, although the gathering was authorized only to revise Articles
4. Lockean influence
5. Doubts that popular consent alone could guarantee liberty
6. Results: “a delicate problem”; need strong government to preserve order but not threaten liberty
III. The challenge
A. The Virginia Plan
1. Strong national government organized into three branches
2. Bicameral legislature
3. Executive and members of the national judiciary were chosen by legislature
4. Council of revision (executive and some judiciary branch members) with veto power; legislature could override the veto
5. Two key features of the plan
6. National legislature with supreme powers
7. One legislative house elected directly by the people
B. The New Jersey Plan—generated from a fear that legislative representation would be based on population, allowing the more populated states to always out-vote the less populated states
1. Sought to amend rather than replace the Articles of Confederation
2. Proposed one vote per state, so Congress would be the creature of the state governments
3. Protected small states’ interests while enhancing power of national government
C. The Great Compromise (or Connecticut Compromise)
1. House of Representatives based on population and directly elected by people
2. Senate composed of two members per state and elected by state legislatures
3. Reconciled interests of large and small states—the former dominated in the House of Representatives, the latter in the Senate
IV. The Constitution and democracy
A. Founders did not intend to create direct democracy
1. Physical impossibility in a vast country
2. Founders also mistrusted popular passions and were concerned to secure minority rights
3. Intended instead to create a republic, a government by representation
B. Popular rule only one element of new government
1. State legislators to elect senators
2. Electors to choose president
3. Two kinds of majorities: voters (for example, the House of Representatives) and states (for example, the Senate)
4. Judicial review another limitation, though one not necessarily intended by Founders
5. Amendment process
C. Key principles of representative government in the U.S.
1. Separation of powers
2. Federalism
3. See the How Things Work box, Checks and Balances
D. Government and human nature
1. Aristotelian view: government should improve human nature by cultivating virtue
2. Madisonian view: cultivation of virtue would require a government too strong, too dangerous; self-interest should be freely pursued within limits
3. Separation of powers enables each branch to check the others
4. Federalism enables one level of government to act as a check on another
V. The Constitution and liberty
A. Whether constitutional government was to respect personal liberties is a difficult question
1. Required ratification by conventions in at least nine states—a democratic feature of the Constitution
2. But technically illegal—the Articles, which still governed, could be amended only with unanimous agreement of the thirteen states
3. Framers knew that unanimity was not possible—the North Carolina and Rhode Island conventions did initially reject the Constitution
B. The Antifederalist view
1. Liberty could be secure only in small republics
a) Otherwise national government would be distant from people, becoming tyrannical
b) Strong national government would use powers to annihilate state functions
2. Nation needed, at best, a loose confederation of states with most of the power wielded by the state legislatures
3. If there was a strong national government, there should be many more restrictions on it
4. Madison’s response: personal liberty safest in large (extended) republics
a) Coalitions were then more likely to be moderate because there would be a greater diversity of interests to be accommodated
b) Government should be somewhat distant from the people to be insulated from their passions
5. Reasons for the absence of a bill of rights
a) Several guarantees in Constitution already
(1) Habeas corpus
(2) No bill of attainder
(3) No ex post facto law
(4) Trial by jury in criminal cases
(5) Citizens of each state guaranteed the privileges and immunities of citizens of every other state
(6) No religious tests for federal office
(7) No state could pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts
b) Most states had bills of rights
c) Intent in writing the Constitution was to limit federal government to specific powers
C. Need for a bill of rights
1. Ratification impossible without one
2. Promise by key leaders to obtain one
3. Bitter ratification, narrowly successful
D. The Constitution and slavery
1. Slavery was addressed in three provisions of the Constitution
a) House of Representatives apportionment—the “three-fifths compromise”
b) Congress could not prohibit slave trade before 1808
c) Fugitive slave clause
2. Necessity of compromise: the Constitution would not be ratified and slavery would continue under the Articles of Confederation
3. Legacy: civil war, social and political catastrophe
VI. The motives of the framers
A. Acted out of mixture of motives: economic interests played modest role
B. Economic interests at the convention
1. Economic interests of framers varied widely
2. Charles Beard: those who supported the Constitution expected to benefit economically from it
3. But no clear division along class lines found by later historians
4. Recent research: state economic considerations outweighed personal considerations
a) Exception: slaveholders voted to minimize national government influence over slaveholding
C. Economic interests and ratification
1. Economic factors played larger role in state-ratifying conventions