Hello and welcome to our first substantive lecture for this Political Science 15 course. This lecture's opening slide features a painting of Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the committee tasked to draft the Declaration of Independence, presenting the original draft of that document to the presiding officer of the Second Continental Congress before that body edited and ultimately adopted it on July 4, 1776. For this lecture, we will cover a basic introduction to political science, the concepts of government and politics in general, and the concepts of the and a general overview of the course as a whole. The readings covered for this video will be the Barnes et al. American Government textbook, chapter 1. Political science, as its own separate and distinct field of study, as something a university student could major in, is relatively new in higher education, starting in the late 19th century, at least in the U.S.
Google here provides a simple, single-sentence definition, the branch of knowledge that deals with systems of government, the analysis of political activity and behavior. Now, while this is a great single-sentence definition, we should be asking ourselves, what exactly do we mean by government? What do we mean by the word political? As well as the words activity and behavior. Whose activity and behavior are we concerned with?
But most simply, political science is the study of politics, as vague and all-encompassing a definition as that might be. The study of politics in general started in the West, with works by Plato and Aristotle in the 5th and 4th century BC Athens, and is developed into a long tradition that has historically been couched under the wide umbrella of humanities. I have here some examples of some of these works.
As it is today, political science as a major has a handful of subfields as listed here. American politics is of course the study of American politics and can cover American institutions such as the US Congress, President, or state governments just to name a few. This course will be primarily couched within the subfield of American politics.
Political theory as a subfield concerns itself with more theoretical questions, such as what is justice, what is the best way to rule, or how can we explain and theorize a certain political phenomenon, such as democratic rule. Comparative politics concerns itself with comparing the institutions or politics of different countries. This could look like comparing democracies to other democracies or various civil wars within different countries. International relations concerns itself with issues of how countries interact with one another at the international level.
For example, IR studies can look at questions of international war and peace or international government organizations such as the United Nations or the European Union. Political economy is sometimes distinguished as its own subfield but is usually seen as a part of international relations. It looks at the global economy as it pertains to international politics.
Finally, behavioral politics looks at questions of political behavior as various political actors. such as voters or politicians, and may do so through the lens of race, gender, religion, or other demographic characteristics. These subfields often overlap and can incorporate methods that are historical, philosophical, psychological, statistical, and use both qualitative and quantitative data. And recently, many studies have begun to mix these forms of data and methods. To hopefully clear up some of the ambiguities of the definitions of the previous slides, We have some nice definitions of these terms from our textbook.
First and foremost, we have politics, which our textbook defines as the struggle over power influence within organizations or informal groups that can grant or withhold benefits or privileges. In other words, it is who gets what, when, and why. Institutions, on the other hand, are an ongoing organization that performs certain functions for society.
Institution serves as the mechanism by which politics and other social functions can meet. and operate within. Institutions can be churches, schools, or for our purposes here, a governmental body such as Congress or the Federal Reserve.
And finally, we have government. Government is the institution that has the ultimate authority for making decisions that resolve conflicts and allocate benefits and privileges within a society. Government is the general institution in which the process and operation of politics plays itself out. It is the authoritative institution in a society that decides many questions and resolves conflicts within that society.
Throughout history we have seen a wide variety of governments which mostly differ by who it is that is controlling that government. They range from most or all people within that society to a single ruler. This particular chart ranges from the single more drastic extreme ruler to that that is ruled by the people.
The first we have here is a totalitarian regime which is a form of government that controls all aspects of the political social and economic life of a nation. think hitler's germany or stalin's ussr second we have an authoritarian regime a type of regime in which only the government itself is fully controlled by the ruler social and economic institutions exist that are not under the government's control this actor can be either a political ruler like a president or prime minister or can be a military actor such as a general who would seize power an example of this would be pinochet's chile or communist china Next we have a monarchy which derives its name from the Greek monos and kratia which means power of a single person. This is ruled by one. Single often hereditary ruler controls all or most aspects of political and social life. We can think ancient Israel or the United Kingdom.
A theocracy coming from the Greek prefix of theos or divine or god is a rule by god. This is ruled by self-appointed religious leaders. Think Iran or this can also be found ideally, hypothetically, in St. Augustine's city of God.
Next we have an oligarchy, which comes from the Greek prefix oligoi, which means few. This is ruled by the few, ruled by a council or party or group. An example of this would be modern Russia and China.
And finally, we have a democracy, which comes from the Greek prefix demos, which means people or the many. This is ruled by the people or the many. An example of this would include the U.S., Nigeria, and Canada. The previous slide presented a range of governments, and while they certainly all differ, all of them presuppose that government is necessary. But why is this the case?
Well, many political thinkers argue that without government as an authority that regulates our behaviors, we would live in a form of chaos or anarchy, which would be plagued by violence and destruction. In U.S. history, the Declaration of Independence provides an answer to this question on behalf of Americans, and it is mainly inspired by the writings of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, who felt without government. we would live in a state of nature that Hobbes argued would leave people with lives that were poor, nasty, brutish, and short. We will explore Jefferson's answer to this question in the Declaration of Independence further in our next lecture video. Our text provides this quote that gets at the heart of this question.
What happens when multiple groups compete violently with one another for power within a society? The short answer is that it would result in mass violence and, as has been the case historically, even genocide. Beyond simply instilling authority over society, government is also tasked with striking a balance between security or order on the one hand and freedom or liberty on the other.
The balance between these two concepts is at the heart of many political and policy questions in American politics. It is perhaps useful to think of this question of balance in terms of trade-offs. Usually, the more of one means the less of the other.
In terms of government's relationship to these concepts, The more order in a society usually means a bigger government that can instill that order. On the other hand, the more freedom in a society usually means a smaller government to ensure that that freedom is not infringed upon. If we think of practical examples, a bigger, more authoritarian government, such as North Korea, though it is done through oppression, is relatively successful at instilling an extreme degree of order over its people. However, this means that its people have very little freedom.
For example, they cannot travel abroad without government permission. This concept of trade-offs is an extremely useful way of looking at this concept as well as others in which we will look at throughout the course. Two terms that we have touched upon but have yet to define properly are authority and legitimacy. Authority is the right and power of a government or other entity to enforce its decisions, while legitimacy is the popular acceptance of the right and power of a government or other entity to exercise its authority. This popular acceptance will come from the people and foreign nations.
An effective government will have both of these concepts. In the US, this was done with the Constitution and the subsequent acts of the federal government following its adoption. The federal government's authority came from the Constitution laying out its ability to carry out its duties.
Its legitimacy was granted in the ratification process and subsequent adoption of the various states. But this isn't all. It also takes time practice, and a developing sense of compliance from the people and the local state governments to earn its legitimacy.
Examples from the three branches of the federal government include when the Congress passed the Bill of Rights, when the President, George Washington at the time, was able to muster a national army to put down the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, and when the judicial branch in the Supreme Court ruled in Marbury v. Madison and established the principle of judicial review. Of the types of governments we've discussed previously, we will focus here on the types of democracies, as the U.S. functions as, in itself, a type of democracy. A direct democracy is a system of government in which political decisions are made by the people directly, rather than by their elected representatives. An example of this historically is ancient Athens. A republic, on the other hand, is a form of government in which sovereign power rests with the people, rather than with a king or a monarch.
A republic does function as a democracy, but in this case, we elect representatives that make political decisions on our behalf. An example of this would be the ancient Roman Republic before the time of the Caesars. And finally, a representative democracy is a form of government in which leaders elected by the people make and enforce laws and policies, but in which the monarchy may be retained in a ceremonial role.
This would include the U.S. or the United Kingdom. Often, republics and representative democracies are used interchangeably, though the key difference is that a republic will not have a monarch. As a model, direct democracy was a contending system of government at the time of the U.S. founding and Constitutional Convention.
As a model, direct democracy maintains that every citizen can participate through debating and voting directly on all laws often put forward by a ruling council. This requires, of course, a high level of participation from citizens. In a direct democracy, all major decisions of government are decided by majority vote. As our textbook tells us, the ancient Athenians believed that although a high level of participation might lead to instability in government, Citizens, if informed about the issues, could be trusted to make wise decisions.
The instability would come from having so many citizens together arguing and debating with one another and possibly not being able to come to a consensus on any particular piece of legislation. This also presupposes that citizens will be informed about the issues and that they can be trusted to make wise decisions based on deliberative reason and argument and not prejudice and passion. This points us to some of the weaknesses of direct democracy as a model of government, as the US founders saw.
So what's the problem with direct democracy? Well, it is worth noting that all surviving ancient Athenian political texts from men like Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Thucydides were all highly critical of direct democracy, under which they themselves lived in. They argue that the people can be too uneducated or uninformed about the issues in which they were debating.
They were too prone to the influence of demagogues who were political leaders who manipulated popular prejudices, or they could be too likely to subordinate minority rights to the tyranny of the majority. In other words, if the minority was constantly being unvoted, they could not only have their political needs neglected, but even worse, they could be oppressed. In response to these weaknesses of direct democracy, the US founders had decided that while they still wanted a democracy, they were not going to opt for a free democracy. for a direct one, so they instead chose a republic, which is based on popular sovereignty, or the concept that the ultimate political authority is based on the will of the people.
The U.S. Constitution creates a form of republic called a democratic constitutional republic. It is a republic that will have democratic elements that will ultimately be subservient to the rule of law, which in our case is the Constitution. The system that attempted to achieve perfect balance between liberty and order keeping the dangers of pure or direct democracy in mind.
It is noteworthy, though, that in California in our state constitution we do have elements of direct democracy that we will talk about in subsequent lectures. In opting for a representative democracy, the founders ideally at least tried to adhere to three basic principles. These would include universal suffrage, the right of all adults to vote for their government representatives, majority rule, which asserts that the greatest number of citizens in any political unit should a select officials and determine policies and a limited government as opposed to an authoritarian or totalitarian government with limited powers either through a written document such as a constitution or widely shared beliefs as we conclude this lecture video it is important to note that the previous slides served as a basic introduction to political science government and politics as well as those pertaining to u.s politics in general and as we go through this course i encourage you to think about these elements that influence u.s politics and what we can learn about them and how U.S. politics operates. These would include the Constitution, the formal and informal institutions such as the U.S.
Congress and President that influence U.S. politics, as well as the people themselves, how we are socialized, and how we participate in politics to influence it. Elements and concepts we will talk about further in subsequent lectures. Now of course this introductory course also looks at California politics, and as we look at California politics later on in the course Keep these questions in mind.
What makes California politics unique as opposed to other American states as well as the American nation as a whole? And what are the similarities and differences of California and U.S. politics? And that will conclude this lecture video.