DEMOCRACY AND AMERICAN POLITICS

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Chapter 1

• DEMOCRACY AND AMERICAN POLITICS

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The Struggle for African-American Voting Rights

• The right to vote in meaningful elections is
  fundamental to democracy.
• Long struggles for the right to vote
• Despite Constitutional protections, voter
  registration among African-Americans in the South
  was miniscule until the Civil Rights Movement
  pressed the passage of the Voting Rights Act of
  1965.

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The Struggle for Democracy

• We live in an age of democratic aspiration and
  upsurge.
• American political ideas and institutions often
  have provided inspiration for democratic
  movements elsewhere.
• Yet, the struggle for democracy still continues
  in our own society.

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Democracy

• Demos the people Kratein to
  rule
• Rule by the people the idea that ordinary
  people want to rule themselves and are capable of
  doing so.

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Direct Versus Representative Democracy

• Direct participatory democracy to the ancient
  Greeks, democracy meant rule by the people
  exercised directly in open assemblies.
• Representative democracy rule by the people,
  exercised indirectly through representatives
  selected by the people.

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Fundamental Principles of Representative Democracy

• Popular sovereignty
• Government policies reflect what the people want
• People participate in the political process
• High-quality information and debate are available
• The majority rules
• Political equality
• Political liberty

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Possible Objections to Majoritarian
Representative Democracy

• Democracy leads to bad decisions
• Majority tyranny threatens liberty
• The people are irrational and incompetent
• Majoritarian democracy threatens minorities

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Democracy As an Evaluative Standard How
Democratic Are We?

• Each of the fundamental principles of democracy
  suggests a set of questions that can be used to
  think critically about American political life.
• These questions help us to evaluate how well the
  American political system lives up to the
  democratic ideal.

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Understanding How American Politics Works

• The main factors of political life are
  interconnected (illustrated in the text by the
  passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act).

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The main factors of political life can be
organized into three categories.

• Structural sector includes fundamental and
  enduring factors that influence government and
  politics
• Political linkage sector includes political
  actors, institutions, and processes that are
  involved in transmitting the wants and demands of
  individuals and groups to government officials
• Governmental sector includes all public
  officials and institutions that have formal,
  legal responsibilities for making public policy

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American politics should be understood
holistically

• American political life must be understood as an
  integrated, ordered whole.
• What goes on in government can only be understood
  by considering all three sectors of analysis.
• Feedback also occurs influences sometimes flow
  from the governmental level to the others.