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INTRODUCTION

The United States is - by size of electorate - the second largest democracy on the globe (India is the
largest and Indonesia comes third) and the most powerful nation on earth, politically, economically and
militarily, but its political system is in many important respects unlike any other in the world. This essay
then was written originally to inform non-Americans as to how the American political system works.
What has been striking, however, is how many Americans - especially young Americans - have found the
essay useful and insightful. There is considerable evidence that many Americans know and understand
little about the political system of their own country - possibly more than is the case with any other
developed democratic nation.
In the U.S., the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests what American students are
learning? It has found that the two worst subjects for American students are civics and American history.
One NAEP survey found that only 7% of eighth graders (children aged 13-14) could describe the three
branches of government.
On one of my trips to the United States, I was eating cereal for breakfast and found that the whole of the
reverse side of the cereal packet was devoted to a short explanation of the executive, legislative and
judicial branches of the American government. I find it hard to imagine that many democratic nations would
feel it necessary to explain such a subject in such a format.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
To understand any country's political system, it is helpful to know something of the history of the nation and
the background to the creation of the (latest) constitution. But this is a fundamental necessity in the case of
the American political system. This is because the Constitution of the United States is so different from
those of other nations and because that Constitution is, in all material respects, the same document as it
was over two centuries ago.
There were four main factors in the minds of the 'founding fathers' who drafted the US Constitution:
1. The United States had just fought and won a bloody War of Independence from Britain and it was
determined to create a political system that was totally different from the British monarchical system
in which all power ultimately resided in a hereditary King (George III at the time) or Queen.
Therefore the new constitution deliberately spread power between the three arms of government executive, legislature and judiciary - and ensured that each arm was able to limit the exercise of
power by the other arms.
2. The United States was already a large country with problems of communications and a population
of varied background and education. Therefore, for all the intentions to be a new democracy, it was
seen as important to limit the influence of swings in public opinion. So the election of the president
was placed in the hands of an Electoral College, rather than the subject of direct election, and the
terms of office of the president and the two chambers of the legislature were all set at different
lengths.
3. The United States was the creation of 13 individual states, each of which valued its traditions and
powers, and so the overarching federal government was deliberately limited in its powers compared
to the position of the central government in other nations. Arguably the later Civil War was about
states' rights more than it was about slavery and there is still a real tension today between the
states and federal government.

4. The original 13 states of the USA were of very different size in terms of population and from the
beginning there was a determination by the smaller states that political power should not be
excessively in the hands of the larger states. Therefore the Constitution is built on a 'Great
Compromise' between the Virginia plan (representation by population) and the New Jersey plan
(equal representation for all states) which resulted in the House of Representatives being
constructed on the basis of population and the Senate being composed of an equal number of
representatives regardless of population. This is why today six states have only one member in the
House of Representatives but two members in the Senate.
Whatever the 'founding fathers' intended, the sheer longevity of the Constitution and the profound changes
in America since its drafting means that today the balance of power is not necessarily what the drafters of
the Constitution had in mind. So originally the legislature was seen as the most powerful arm of
government (it is described first in the Constitution) but, over time, both the Presidency (starting with the
time of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War) and the Supreme Court (especially on social issues like
desegregation, marriage and abortion) have assumed more power.
THE CONSTITUTION
Unlike Britain but like most nation states, the American political system is clearly defined by basic
documents. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Constitution of 1789 form the foundations of
the United States federal government. The Declaration of Independence establishes the United States as
an independent political entity, while the Constitution creates the basic structure of the federal government.
Both documents are on display in the National Archives and Records Administration Building in
Washington, D.C. which I have visited several times. Further information on the thinking expressed in the
Constitution can be found in the Federalist Papers which are a series of 85 articles and essays published
in 1787-1788 promoting the ratification of the Constitution.
The United States Constitution is the shortest written constitution in the world with just seven articles and
27 amendments. As well as its brevity, the US Constitution is notable for being a remarkably stable
document. The first 10 amendments were all carried in 1789 - the same year as the original constitution and are collectively known as the Bill of Rights. If one accepts that these first 10 amendments were in
effect part of the original constitutional settlement, there have only been 17 amendments in over 200 years
(the last substantive one - reduction of the voting age to 18 - in 1971).
One of the major reasons for this relative immutability is that - quite deliberately on the part of its drafters the Constitution is a very difficult instrument to change. First, a proposed amendment has to secure a twothirds vote of members present in both houses of Congress. Then three-quarters of the state legislatures
have to ratify the proposed change (this stage may or may not be governed by a specific time limit).
As an indication of how challenging this process is, consider the case of the Equal Rights Amendment
(ERA). This was first written in 1920, shortly after women were given the vote in the USA. The proposed
amendment was introduced in Congress unsuccessfully in every legislative year from 1923 until it was
finally passed in 1972. It was then sent to each state for ratification but, by 1982, it was still three states
short of the minimum of the 38 needed to add it to the constitution. Various attempts since 1982 to revive
the amendment have all failed.
At the heart of the US Constitution is the principle known as 'separation of powers', a term coined by the
French political, enlightenment thinker Montesquieu. This means that power is spread between three
institutions of the state - the executive (President and Cabinet), the legislature (House of Representatives
& Senate) and the judiciary (Supreme Court & federal circuits) - and no one institution has too much power
and no individual can be a member of more than one institution.

This principle is also known as 'checks and balances', since each of the three branches of the state has
some authority to act on its own, some authority to regulate the other two branches, and has some of its
own authority, in turn, regulated by the other branches.
Not only is power spread between the different branches; the members of those branches are deliberately
granted by the Constitution different terms of office which is a further brake on rapid political change. So
the President has a term of four years, while members of the Senate serve for six years and members of
the House of Representatives serve for two years. Members of the Supreme Court effectively serve for life.
The great benefit of this system is that power is spread and counter-balanced and the 'founding fathers' the 55 delegates who drafted the Constitution - clearly wished to create a political system which was in
sharp contrast to, and much more democratic than, the monarchical system then in force in Britain. The
great weakness of the system is that it makes government slow, complicated and legalistic which is a
particular disadvantage in a world - unlike that of 1776 - in which political and economic developments are
fast-moving and the USA is a - indeed the - super power.
Since the Constitution is so short, so old and so difficult to change, for it to be meaningful to contemporary
society it requires interpretation by the courts and ultimately it is the Supreme Court which determines
what the Constitution means. There are very different approaches to the interpretation of the Constitution
with the two main strands of thought being known as Originalism and the Living Constitution.
Originalism is a principle of interpretation that tries to discover the original meaning or intent of the
constitution. It is based on the principle that the judiciary is not supposed to create, amend or repeal laws
(which is the realm of the legislative branch) but only to uphold them. This approach tends to be supported
by conservatives.
Living Constitution is a concept which claims that the Constitution has a dynamic meaning and that
contemporary society should be taken into account when interpreting key constitutional phrases. Instead of
seeking to divine the views of the drafters of the document, it claims that they deliberately wrote the
Constitution in broad terms so that it would remain flexible. This approach tends to be supported by
liberals.
THE PRESIDENCY
What is the Presidency?
The President is the head of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States. He - so
far, the position has always been held by a man - is both the head of state and the head of government, as
well as the military commander-in-chief and chief diplomat. He presides over the executive branch of the
government, a vast organization numbering about four million people, including one million active-duty
military personnel.
Who is eligible to become a President?
To be President, one has to:

be a natural-born citizen of the United States

be at least 35 years old

have lived in the US for at least 14 years

How is a President chosen?

The President is elected for a fixed term of four years and may serve a maximum of two terms. Originally
there was no constitutional limit on the number of terms that a President could serve in office and the first
President George Washington set the precedent of serving simply two terms. Following the election of
Franklin D Roosevelt to a record four terms, it was decided to limit terms to two and the relevant
constitutional change - the 22nd Amendment - was enacted in 1951.
Elections are always held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November to coincide with
Congressional elections. So the next election will be held on 8 November 2016.
The President is not elected directly by the voters but by an Electoral College representing each state on
the basis of a combination of the number of members in the Senate (two for each state regardless of size)
and the number of members in the House of Representatives (roughly proportional to population). The
states with the largest number of votes are California (55), Texas (38) and New York (29). The states with
the smallest number of votes - there are six of them - have only three votes. The District of Columbia,
which has no voting representation in Congress, has three Electoral College votes. In effect, therefore, the
Presidential election is not one election but 51.
The total Electoral College vote is 538. This means that, to become President, a candidate has to win at
least 270 electoral votes. The voting system awards the Electoral College votes from each state to
delegates committed to vote for a certain candidate in a "winner take all" system, with the exception of
Maine and Nebraska (which award their Electoral College votes according to Congressional Districts rather
than for the state as a whole). In practice, most states are firmly Democrat - for instance, California and
New York - or firmly Republican - for instance, Texas and Tennessee. Therefore, candidates concentrate
their appearances and resources on the so-called "battleground states", those that might go to either party.
The three largest battleground or swing states are Florida (29 votes), Pennsylvania (20) and Ohio (18).
Others are Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (6) and Nevada (6).
This system of election means that a candidate can win the largest number of votes nationwide but fail to
win the largest number of votes in the Electoral College and therefore fail to become President. Indeed, in
practice, this has happened three times in US history: 1876, 1888, and 2000. If this seems strange (at
least to non-Americans), the explanation is that the 'founding fathers' who drafted the American
Constitution did not wish to give too much power to the people and so devised a system that gives the
ultimate power of electing the President to members of the Electoral College. The same Constitution,
however, enables each state to determine how its members in the Electoral College are chosen and since
the 1820s states have chosen their electors by a direct vote of the people. The United States is the only
example in the world of an indirectly elected executive president.
What are the powers of the President?

Within the executive branch, the President has broad constitutional powers to manage national
affairs and the workings of the federal government.

The President may issue executive orders to affect internal policies. The use of executive orders
has varied enormously between presidents and is often a controversial matter since, in effect; it is
bypassing the Congress to achieve what would otherwise require legislation. Very few such orders
were issued until the time of Abraham Lincoln (the Emancipation Declaration was such an order);
use of executive orders was considerable and peaked during the terms of the seven presidents
from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin D Roosevelt (1901-1945); but, since the Second World War,
use has been more modest with Democrats tending to issue them a bit more than Republicans.
Barack Obama has made very sparing use of this power, notably to reform immigration law and to
tighten gun controls. Executive orders can be overturned by a succeeding President.

The President has the power to recommend measures to Congress and may sign or veto legislation
passed by Congress. The Congress may override a presidential veto but only by a two-thirds
majority in each house.

The President has the authority to appoint Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices. Federal
judges, and ambassadors but only with the advice and consent' of the Senate which can be
problematic especially when the Senate is controlled by a different political party to that of the
President.

The President has the power to pardon criminals convicted of offences against the federal
government and most controversially President Gerald Ford used this power to pardon his
predecessor Richard Nixon.

The President has the power to make treaties with the 'advice and consent' of the Senate.

The President can declare war for 60 days but then has to have the approval of Congress (although
it can be difficult to withdraw troops once they have been committed).

Since 1939, there has been an Executive Office of the President (EOP) which has consistently and
considerably expanded in size and power. Today it consists of some 1,600 staff and costs some $300M a
year.
Teddy Roosevelt introduced the notion of 'the bully pulpit': the ability of the President to use his standing to
influence public opinion. Over time, the changing nature of media - newspapers, radio, television, the
Internet, social media - has presented a variety of instruments for the White House to use to 'push'
Congress or other political players.
Other interesting facts about the Presidency

Although the 'founding fathers' wanted to avoid a political system that in any way reflected the
monarchical system then prevalent in Britain and for a long time the Presidency was relatively weak,
the vast expansion of the federal bureaucracy and the military in the 20th century has in current
practice given a greater role and more power to the President than is the case for any single
individual in most political systems.

The President may be impeached which means that he is removed from the office. The House of
Representatives has the sole power of impeaching, while the Senate has the sole power to try all
such impeachments. Two U.S. Presidents have been impeached by the House of Representatives
but acquitted at the trials held by the Senate: Andrew Johnson (1868) and Bill Clinton (1999).
Richard Nixon resigned before he would certainly have been impeached (1974).

Although the President heads the executive branch of government, the day-to-day enforcement and
administration of federal laws is in the hands of the various federal executive departments, created
by Congress to deal with specific areas of national and international affairs. The heads of the 15
departments, chosen by the President and approved with the 'advice and consent' of the Senate,
form a council of advisors generally known as the President's "Cabinet". This is not a cabinet in the
British political sense: it does not meet so often and does not act so collectively.

In fact, the President has powers of patronage that extend way beyond appointment of Cabinet
members. In all, the President appoints roughly 3,000 individuals to positions in the federal
government, of which about a third require the confirmation of the Senate. As the divisions in
American politics have deepened, so the confirmation process has become more fractious and

prolonged - when first elected, Barack Obama had to wait ten months before all his nominees were
in their jobs.

The first United States President was George Washington, who served from 1789-1797, so that the
current President Barack Obama is the 43rd to hold the office. However, there have been 44
presidencies. Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th President and therefore was the only US
president to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897) and to be counted twice
in the numbering of the presidents.

So far, every US President has been male. All but one President has been Protestant (the exception
was John Kennedy who was a Catholic) and all but one President has been white (the exception is
Barack Omama).

Four sitting Presidents have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in
1881, William McKinley in 1901, and John F. Kennedy in 1963. A further eight Presidents were
subject to near misses in assassination attempts.

The President is sometimes referred to as POTUS (President of the United States) and the
Presidency is often referred to by the media as variously the White House, the West Wing, and the
Oval Office.

Such is the respect for the Presidency that, even having left office, a President is referred to by the
title for the remainder of his life.

The position of Vice-President is elected on the same ticket as that of the President and has the same
four-year term of office. The Vice-President is often described as 'a heartbeat away from the Presidency'
since, in the event of the death or incapacity of the President, the Vice-President assumes the office.
In practice, however, a Vice-Presidential candidate is chosen (by the Presidential candidate) to 'balance
the ticket' in the Presidential election (that is, represent a different geographical or gender or ethnic
constituency) and, for all practical purposes, the position only carries the power accorded to it by the
President - which is usually very little (a major exception has been Dick Cheney under George W Bush).
The official duties of the Vice-President are to sit as a member of the "Cabinet" and as a member of the
National Security Council and to act as ex-officio President of the Senate.
PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES
An important feature of the American political system is that the two major parties - the Democrats and the
Republicans - hold a system of primaries to determine who will be their candidate in the general election.
These primaries are particularly important when it comes to the four-yearly Presidential election.
The key point to understand is that formally the Democratic and Republican Parties choose their
Presidential candidate through a vote of delegates at a national convention and not directly through the
various ballots in the various primaries.
Each party allocates delegates to each state, roughly proportionate to its size in numbers of citizens. There
are two types of delegates. The normal delegates are those who are chosen by voters to back a specific
candidate. Technically these delegates are pledged to that candidate but there are circumstances in which
they can switch their support. Then there are what the Democrats call super delegates and the
Republicans call unpledged delegates who are notable figures in the party such as former presidents,
state governors and members of the two houses of Congress who are free to back whichever candidate
they wish. They can do this any time they like. They can also change their mind before the convention.

How the normal delegates are chosen is a matter for each party in each of the 50 states.
Some hold caucuses which require voters to turn up to discussions on the merits of the contending
candidates. Most hold conventional-style elections. In the case of the Democrats in Texas, there is both a
caucus and an election. Another variation is that, in some cases, one can only take part in a caucus or
election if one is registered for that political party but, in other cases, anyone in the state - including those
registered for another party or none - can vote.
How normal delegates are then allocated to the different candidates is also a matter for each party in each
of the 50 states. In most of the Republican contests (but not all), the candidate who wins the most votes in
that state's primary wins all the party's delegates for that state - a system known as 'winner takes all'. In all
the Democrat contests, delegates are allocated roughly proportional to the vote secured by the candidate
subject to a minimum performance. The allocation process varies, but typically it is based on the
performance of the candidate in particular Congressional districts.
In practice, normally the parties have clearly decided on a candidate well before the holding of the
convention which therefore becomes more a coronation than a selection.
However, it is not unknown for a party to reach the convention with no clear choice. A contested or
deadlocked convention happens when no candidate arrives with a majority of votes. On the first ballot,
pledged delegates will vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. But, in any subsequent ballots,
delegates are then free to vote for whomever they want. This could include the other candidates or even subject to the rules of the convention - people who are not candidates. Delegates keep on voting until
someone wins a majority.
The most famous deadlocked convention - it involved the Democrats - took place in 1924. It required 103
ballots to choose the Democratic candidate - who then lost to the Republican candidate in the general
election. The last deadlocked convention was experienced by the Republicans in 1976, when Gerald Ford
did not have enough delegates before the convention to claim the nomination (his opponent was Ronald
Reagan), but eventually won the nomination (Reagan withdrew) and went on to lose the general election.
The last time a contested convention produced a candidate who went on to win in the general election was
in 1932 with Franklin Roosevelt.
For the 2016 convention, the Democrats will have a total of 4,763 delegates including super delegates and
so, to win the nomination, the Democratic front runner needs a total of 2,382 delegates. For the 2016
convention, the Republicans will have a total of 2,472 delegates including unpledged delegates and so, to
win the nomination, the Republican front runner will need a total of 1,237 delegates. The Republicans will
have their convention in Cleveland, Ohio from 18-21 July, while the Democrats will hold their convention in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 25-28 July.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
What are the House of Representatives?
The House of Representatives is the lower chamber in the bicameral legislature known collectively as
Congress. The founders of the United States intended the House to be the politically dominant entity in the
federal system and, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the House served as the primary forum for
political debate. However, subsequently the Senate has been the dominant body.
Who is eligible to become a member of the House?
To be a member of the House, one has to:

be at least 25 years old

have been a US citizen for at least seven years

live in the state which one represents (but not the actual district)

How is a member of the House chosen?


The House consists of 435 members (set in 1911), each of whom represents a congressional district and
serves for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population according to
each decennial (every 10 years) census. Typically a House constituency would represent around 700,000
people.
Members of the House are elected by first-past-the-post voting in every state except Louisiana and
Washington, which have run-offs if no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote. Elections are always
held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even numbered years. Voting in
congressional elections - especially to the House - is generally much lower than levels in other liberal
democracies. In a year when there is a Presidential election, turnout is typically around 50%; in years
when there is no Presidential election (known as mid-terms), it usually falls to around one third of the
electorate.
In the event that a member of the House of Representatives dies or resigns before the end of the two-year
term, a special election is held to fill the vacancy.
The House has four non-voting delegates from the District of Columbia (1971), Guam (1972) the Virgin
Islands (1976) and American Samoa (1981) and one resident commissioner for Puerto Rico (1976),
bringing the total formal membership to 440.
What are the powers of the House?

The House of Representatives is one of the two chambers that can initiate and pass legislation,
although to become law any legislation has to be approved by the Senate as well.

Each chamber of Congress has particular exclusive powers. The House must introduce any bills for
the purpose of raising revenue.

If the Electoral College is tied, the choice of President is made by the House of Representatives.

The House has a key role in any impeachment proceedings against the President or Vice-President.
It lays the charges which are then passed to the Senate for a trial.

The House (and the Senate) has the power to declare war - although the last time this happened
was in 1941.

Other interesting facts about the House

Much of the work of the House is done through 20 standing committees and around 100 subcommittees who perform both legislative functions (drafting Bills) and investigatory functions
(holding enquiries). Most of the committees are focused on an area of government activity such as
homeland security, foreign affairs, agriculture, energy, or transport, but others are more crosscutting such as those on the budget and ethics.

The Speaker of the House - chosen by the majority party - has considerable power. He or she
presides over the House and sets the agenda, assigns legislation to committees, and determines
whether and how a bill reaches the floor of the chamber.

Activity in the House of Representatives tends to be more partisan than in the Senate. One
illustration of this is the so-called Hastert Rule. This Rule's introduction is widely credited to former
Speaker Dennis Hastert (1999-2007); however, Newt Gingrich, who directly preceded Hastert as
Speaker (1995-1999), followed the same rule. The Hastert Rule, also known as the "majority of the
majority" rule, is an informal governing principle used by Republican Speakers of the House of
Representatives since the mid-1990s to maintain their speakerships and limit the power of the
minority party to bring bills up for a vote on the floor of the House. Under the doctrine, the Speaker
of the House will not allow a floor vote on a bill unless a majority of the majority party supports the
bill. The rule keeps the minority party from passing bills with the assistance of a small number of
majority party members.

The House and Senate are often referred to by the media as Capitol Hill or simply the Hill.

THE SENATE
What is the Senate?
The Senate is the upper chamber in the bicameral legislature known collectively as Congress. The original
intention of the authors of the US Constitution was that the Senate should be a regulatory group, less
politically dominant than the House. However, since the mid 19th century, the Senate has been the
dominant chamber and indeed today it is perhaps the most powerful upper house of any legislative body in
the world.
Who is eligible to become a member of the Senate?
To be a member of the Senate, one has to:

be at least 30 years old

have been a US citizen for at least nine years

live in the state which one represents

How is a member of the Senate chosen?


The Senate consists of 100 members, each of whom represents a state and serves for a six-year term
(one third of the Senate stands for election every two years).
Each state has two Senators, regardless of population, and, since there are 50 states, then there are 100
senators. This equality of Senate seats between states has the effect of producing huge variations in
constituency population (the two senators from Wyoming represent less than half a million electors, while
the two senators from California represent 34M people) with gross over-representation of the smaller
states and serious under-representation of racial and ethnic minorities.
For a long time, Senators were elected by the individual state legislatures. However, since the 17th
Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, members of the Senate are elected by first-past-the-post voting in
every state except Louisiana and Washington, which have run-offs. Elections are always held on the first
Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even numbered years.

Each Senator is known as the senior or junior Senator for his or her state, based on length of service.
In the event that a member of the Senate dies or resigns before the end of the six-year term, a special
election is not normally held at that time (this is the case for 46 states). Instead the Governor of the state
that the Senator represented nominates someone to serve until the next set of Congressional elections
when the special election is held to fill the vacancy.
What are the powers of the Senate?

The Senate is one of the two chambers that can initiate and pass legislation, although to become
law any legislation has to be approved by the House of Representatives as well.

Each chamber of Congress has particular exclusive powers. The Senate must give 'advice and
consent' to many important Presidential appointments including Cabinet members, Supreme Court
justices. Federal judges and ambassadors.

The Senate has the responsibility of ratifying treaties.

If the Electoral College is tied, the choice of Vice-President is made by the Senate.

The Senate has a key role in any impeachment proceedings against the President or VicePresident. Once the House of Representatives has laid the charges, the Senate then conducts a
trial on these charges. The Supreme Court Chief Justice presides over such a trial. A two-thirds
majority of the Senate is required to uphold impeachment charges.

The Senate (and the House) has the power to declare war - although the last time this happened
was in 1941.

Other interesting facts about the Senate

Much of the work of the Senate is done through 16 standing committees and around 40 subcommittees who perform both legislative functions (drafting Bills) and investigatory functions
(holding enquiries). Most of the committees are focused on an area of government activity such as
homeland security, foreign relations, health, energy, or transport, but others are more cross-cutting
such as those on the budget and rules.

The most powerful position in the Senate is the Majority Leader but he or she does not have the
same control over the upper chamber as the control that the Speaker of the House has over the
lower chamber, since the 'whipping' system is weaker in the Senate.

Activity in the Senate tends to be less partisan and more individualistic than in the House of
Representatives. Senate rules permit what is called a filibuster when a Senator, or a series of
Senators, can speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless a supermajority
of three-fifths of the Senate (60 Senators, if all 100 seats are filled) brings debate to a close by
invoking what is called cloture (taken from the French term for closure).

The Senate and House are often referred to by the media as Capitol Hill or simply the Hill.

THE SUPREME COURT


What is the Supreme Court?

The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. Originally it had five members but over time this
number has increased. Since 1869, it has consisted of nine Justices: the Chief Justice of the United States
and eight Associate Justices. They have equal weight when voting on a case and the Chief Justice has no
casting vote or power to instruct colleagues. Decisions are made by a simple majority.
Below the Supreme Court, there is a system of Courts of Appeal, and, below these courts, there are
District Courts. Together, these three levels of courts represent the federal judicial system.
Who is eligible to become a member of the Court?
The Constitution does not specify qualifications for Justices such as age, education, profession, or nativeborn citizenship. A Justice does not have to be a lawyer or a law school graduate, but all Justices have
been trained in the law. Many of the 18th and 19th century Justices studied law under a mentor because
there were few law schools in the country.
The last Justice to be appointed who did not attend any law school was James F. Byrnes (1941-1942). He
did not graduate from high school and taught himself law, passing the bar at the age of 23.
All Supreme Court judges are appointed for life.
How is a member of the Court chosen?
The Justices are nominated by the President and confirmed with the 'advice and consent' of the Senate.
As federal judges, the Justices serve during "good behavior", meaning essentially that they serve for life
and can be removed only by resignation or by impeachment and subsequent conviction.
Since the Supreme Court makes so many 'political' decisions and its members are appointed so rarely, the
appointment of Justices by the President is often a very charged and controversial matter since Justices
serve for life and therefore usually beyond the term of office of the appointing President, such appointment
are often regarded as an important part of any particular President's legacy.
What are the powers of the Court?
The Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States. The court deals with matters pertaining to the
federal government, disputes between states, and interpretation of the Constitution.
It can declare legislation or executive action made at any level of the government as unconstitutional,
nullifying the law and creating precedent for future law and decisions.
However, the Supreme Court can only rule on a lower court decision so it cannot take the initiative to
consider a matter.
There are three ways that a matter can come to the Supreme Court:
1. A federal authority makes a decision that is challenged as unconstitutional which goes straight to
the Supreme Court which is not obliged to take it
2. A state makes a decision which someone believes is unconstitutional but the matter would have to
have previously been heard by a Federal Court of Appeal (there are 11 circuits covering the 50
states)
3. There is a conflict between states that needs to be resolved (if the two or more states are in the
same circuit, the matter would first have to go to the appropriate Federal Court of Appeal)

Other interesting facts about the Court

Given how difficult it is to change the US Constitution through the formal method, one has seen
informal changes to the Constitution through various decisions of the Supreme Court which have
given specific meanings to some of the general phases in the Constitution. It is one of the many
ironies of the American political system that an unelected and unaccountable body like the Supreme
Court cans in practice exercises so much political power in a system which proclaims itself as so
democratic.

The Supreme Court in practice therefore has a much more 'political' role than the highest courts of
European democracies. In the 1960s, the court played a major role in bringing about desegregation.
The scope of abortion in the USA is effectively set by the Supreme Court whereas, in other
countries, it would be set by legislation. Indeed in 2000, it made the most political decision
imaginable by determining - by seven votes to two - the outcome of that year's presidential election.
It decided that George W Bush had beaten Al Gore, although Gore won the most votes overall.

A recent and momentous instance of this exercise of political power was the Supreme Court
decision in the case of the challenge to Barack Obama's signature piece of legislation, the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act, often dubbed Obamacare. No less than 26 states challenged
the legality of these health reforms under a clause in the constitution governing interstate
commerce. In the end, the Court ruled by five to four that, while the individual mandate provision in
the Act is not itself a tax, the penalties imposed for not buying health insurance do represent taxes
and therefore the entire requirement falls within the remit of Congress's right to impose taxes.

William Howard Taft (1857-1930) was the 27th President of the United States (1909-1913) and later
the tenth Chief Justice of the United States (1921-1930). He is the only person to have served in
both of these offices.

In the history of the United States, there have only been four women members, two black members
and one Hispanic member of the Supreme Court.

The present membership of the Supreme Court includes three women members and one black
member. Of the eight members (there is one vacancy), five are Catholic and three are Jewish.

Currently there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court as a result of the death of Antonin Scalia. Since
Scalia was an arch conservative and in recent years the Court has often split five to four on the
conservative side, the appointment of a new Justice is vitally important to future court decisions. In
normal circumstances, one would expect Barack Obama as a Democratic President with almost a
year left in office to be able to secure the nomination of a liberal-minded judge who would be
approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress. Indeed the President has nominated Merrick B.
Garland to be the nation's 113th Supreme Court justice. However, Republicans are determined to
block such a move, arguing that the decision should be left to the next President and the next
Congress.

A special feature of the American political system in respect of the judiciary is that, although federal
judges are appointed, nationwide 87% of all state court judges are elected and 39 states elect at
least some of their judges. Outside of the United States, there are only two nations that have judicial
elections and then only in limited fashion. Smaller Swiss cantons elect judges and appointed
justices on the Japanese Supreme Court must sometimes face retention elections (although those
elections are a formality).

POLITICAL PARTIES & ELECTIONS


To an extent quite extraordinary in democratic countries, the American political system is dominated by two
political parties: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party (often known as the 'Grand Old Party' or
GOP). These are very old and very stable parties - the Democrats go back to 1824 and the Republicans
were founded in 1854.
In illustrations and promotional material, the Democratic Party is often represented as a donkey, while the
Republican Party is featured as an elephant. The origin of these symbols is the political cartoonist Thomas
Nast who came up with them in 1870 and 1874 respectively.
The main reason for the dominance of these two parties is that - like most other Anglo-Saxon countries
(notably Britain) - the electoral system is 'first past the post' or simple majority which, combined with the
large voter size of the constituencies in the House and (even more) the Senate, ensures that effectively
only two parties can play. The other key factor is the huge influence of money in the American electoral
system. Since effectively a candidate can spend any amount he can raise (not allowed in many other
countries) and since one can buy broadcasting time (again not allowed in many countries), the US can
only 'afford' two parties or, to put it another way, candidates of any other party face a formidable financial
barrier to entry.
Some people tend to view the division between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in the
United States as the same as that between Labor and Conservative in Britain or between Social
Democrats and Christian Democrats in Germany. The comparison is valid in the sense that, in each
country, one political party is characterized as Centre-Left and the other as Centre-Right or, to put it
another way, one party is more economically interventionist and socially radical than the other. However,
the analogy has many weaknesses.
1. The Centre in American politics is considerably to the Right of the Centre in most European states
including Britain, Germany, France, Italy and (even more especially) the Scandinavian countries.
So, for instance, most members of the Conservative Party in the UK would support a national health
service, whereas many members of the Democratic Party in the US would not.
2. As a consequence of the enormous geographical size of the United States and the different
histories of the different states (exemplified by the Civil War), geography is a factor in ideological
positioning to a much greater extent than in other democratic countries. For instance, a Northern
Republican could be more liberal than a Southern Democrat. Conversely there is a group of
Democratic Congressmen that are fiscally very conservative - they are known as "blue dog"
Democrats or even DINO (Democrats in Name Only).
3. In the United States, divisions over social matters - such as abortion, capital punishment, same-sex
relationships and stem cell research - matter and follow party lines in a way which is not true of
most European countries. In Britain, for instance, these sorts of issues would be regarded as
matters of personal conscience and would not feature prominently in election debates between
candidates and parties.
4. In the USA, religion is a factor in politics in a way unique in western democracies. Candidates
openly proclaim their faith in a manner which would be regarded as bizarre elsewhere (even in a
Catholic country like France) and religious groupings - such as the Christian Coalition of America exert a significant political influence in a manner which would be regarded as improper in most
European countries (Poland is an exception here).
5. In the United States, the 'whipping system' - that is the instructions to members of the House and
the Senate on how to vote - is not as strict or effective as it is in most European countries. As a

consequence, members of Congress are less constrained by party affiliation and freer to act
individually.
6. In the USA, political parties are much weaker institutions than they are in other democracies.
Between the selections of candidates, they are less active than their counterparts in other countries
and, during elections; they are less influential in campaigning, with individual politicians and their
campaigns having much more influence.
7. The cost of elections is much greater in the US than in other democracies which has the effects of
limiting the range of candidates, increasing the influence of corporate interests and pressure
groups, and enhancing the position of the incumbent office holder (especially in the winning of
primaries). As long ago as 1895, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee Mark Hanna
stated: "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember
what the second one is."
8. Whereas in other countries, voters shape the policies and select the candidates of a party by joining
it, in the USA voters register as a supporter of one of the major parties and then vote in primary
elections to determine who should be the party's candidate in the 'real' election.
One other oddity of the American party system is that, whereas in most countries of the world the color red
is associated with the Left-wing party and the color blue with the Right-wing party, in the United States the
reverse is the case. So the 'blue states' are those traditionally won by the Democrats, while the 'red states'
are those normally controlled by the Republicans.
Two interesting features of American political elections are low turnout and the importance of incumbency.
Traditionally turnout in US congressional elections are much lowers than in other liberal democracies
especially those of Western Europe. When there is a presidential election, turnout is only about half; when
there is no presidential election, turnout is merely about one third. The exception was the elections of
2008: the excitement of the candidacy of Barack Obama led to an unusually high turnout of 63%, the
highest since 1960 (the election of John F Kennedy).
While Congress as an institution is held in popular contempt, voters like their member of Congress and
indeed there is a phenomenon known as 'sophomore surge' whereby incumbents tend to increase their
share of the vote when they seek re-election. More generally most incumbents win re-election for several
reasons: they allocate time and resources to waging a permanent re-election campaign; they can win
"earmarks" which are appropriations of government spending for projects in the constituency; and they find
it easier than challengers to raise money for election campaigns.
THE FEDERAL SYSTEM
Understanding the federal nature of the United States is critical to appreciating the complexities of the
American political system.
Most political systems are created top-down. A national system of government is constructed and a certain
amount of power is released to lower levels of government. The unique history of the United States means
that, in this case, the political system was created bottom-up.
First, some 240 years ago, there were 13 autonomous states that, following the War of Independence
against the British, created a system of government in which the various states somewhat reluctantly
ceded power to the federal government. Around a century later, the respective authority of the federal
government and the individual states was an issue at the heart of the Civil War when there was a bloody

conflict over who had the right to determine whether slavery was or was not permissible. With the
exception of Switzerland, no other Western democracy diffuses power to the same degree as America.
So today the powers of the federal government remain strictly limited by the Constitution - the critical Tenth
Amendment of 1791 - which leaves a great deal of authority to the individual states.
Each state has an executive, a legislature and a judiciary.
The head of the executive is the Governor who is directly elected. As with the President at federal level,
state Governors can issue Executive Orders.
The legislature consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives (the exception is the state of
Nebraska which has a unicameral system).
The judiciary consists of a state system of courts.
The 50 states are divided into counties (parishes in Louisiana and boroughs in Alaska). Each county has
its court.
Although the Constitution prescribes precisely when Presidential and Congressional elections will be held,
the dates and times of state and local elections are determined by state governments. Therefore there is a
plethora of elections in the United States and, at almost all times, an election is being held somewhere in
the country. State and local elections, like federal elections, use the 'first past the post' system of election.
The debate about federalism in the US is far from over. There are those who argue for a stronger role for
the federal government and there are advocates of locating more power at the state level. The recent rise
of the electorally-successful Tea Party movement owes a good deal to the view that the federal
government has become too dominant, too intrusive and too profligate.
Meanwhile many states - especially those west of the Rockies - have what has been called "the fourth arm
of government": this is the ballot or referendum initiative. This enables a policy question to be put to the
electorate as a result of the collection of a certain number of signatures or the decision of the state
legislation. Over the last century, some 3,000 such initiatives have been conducted - in some cases (such
as California) with profound results.
RECENT TRENDS
In all political systems, there is disconnecting between the formal arrangements, as set out in the
constitution and relevant laws, and the informal arrangements, as occurs in practice. Arguably, in the
United States this disconnects is sharper than in most other democratic systems because:

The US Constitution is an old one (late 18th century) whereas most countries have had several
constitutions with the current one typically being a 20th century creation.

The US Constitution is relatively immutable so it is very difficult to change the provisions to reflect
the reforms that have come about over time from the pressure of events.

Since the US adopted its Constitution, the US has become the pre-eminent world economic and
political power which has brought about major changes in how the Presidency operates, most
especially in the international sphere.

What this means is that, in the last century and most especially since the end of the Second World War,
the reality of how the American political system operates has changed quite fundamentally in terms which

are not always evident from the terms of the Constitution (and indeed some might argue are in some
respects in contravention of the Constitution). The main changes are as follows:

The balance of power between the Congress and the President has shifted significantly in favor of
the President. This is evident in the domestic sphere through practices like 'impoundment' (when
money is taken from the purpose intended by Congress and allocated to another purpose favored
by the President) and in the international sphere through refusal to invoke the War Powers
Resolution in spite of major military invasions. Different terms for this accretion of power by the
Presidency are "the unitary executive" and "the imperial presidency".

The impact of private funding of political campaigns and of lobbyists and special interest groups in
political decision making have increased considerably. Candidates raise their own money for
campaigns, there is effectively no limit on the money that can be spent in such campaigns (thanks
to what is called super Political Action Committees), and the levels of expenditure - especially in the
presidential primaries and election proper - have risen astronomically. In the presidential race of
2012, both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent over one billion dollars. Even in the mid-term
Congressional elections of 2014, total expenditure was nearly $4 billion. All this has led to some
observers describing the American political system as a plutocracy, since it is effectively controlled
by private finance from big businesses, which expect certain policies and practices to follow from
the candidates they are funding, and big donors, who often expect preferment such as an
ambassadorship from a candidate elected as President.

There has been a growth of what is called "pork barrel" politics through the use of "earmarks". The
term "pork barrel" refers to the appropriation of government spending for projects that are intended
primarily to benefit particular constituents, such as those in marginal seats, or campaign
contributors. Such appropriations are achieved through "earmarks" which can be found both in
legislation (also called "hard earmarks" or "hard marks") and in the text of Congressional committee
reports (also called "soft earmarks" or "soft marks").

The nature of political debate in the United States has become markedly more partisan and bitter.
The personal lifestyle as well as the political record of a candidate might well be challenged and
even the patriotism or religiosity of the candidate may be called into question. Whereas the politics
of most European countries has become more consensual, US domestic politics has become
polarized and tribal. As a result, the political culture is often more concerned with satisfying the
demands of the political 'base' rather than attempting to achieve a national consensus.

One final trend worth noting is the frequency of the same family to provide members of Congress. Low
polling in elections, the high cost of running for election, and the focus on the individual more than the
party all mean that a well-known name can work successfully for a candidate. Everyone is familiar with the
Kennedys, Clintons and Bushs in American politics but, in 2014, there are no less than 37 members of
Congress who have a relative who has served in the legislature.
A DIVIDED DEMOCRACY
Of course, all nation states are divided, especially in terms of power and wealth, but also - to different
extents - by gender, race, ethnicity, religion and other factors. Indeed the constitution and institutions of a
democratic society are deliberately intended to provide for the expression and resolution of such divisions.
However, it is often observed that the USA is an especially divided democracy in at least four respects:
1. It is divided horizontally through the 'separation of powers', so that the executive, the legislature and
the judiciary are quite distinct in terms of both powers and personalities. Each arm of government
exercises a check on the other.

2. It is divided vertically through the federal system of government with the division of powers between
the federal government and the state governments a very important issue that arguably was once
the subject of a civil war. In such a large country geographically, the federal government can seem
very distant to many citizens.
3. It is divided politically through the sharp (and often bitter) differences of view on many economic
issues like tackling the recession and reforming health care and social issues ranging from gun
control to gay rights. Since 2009, such differences have been highlighted by the presence of the first
black President in the White House and the rapid emergence of a Tea Party movement that is both
virulently anti-Obama and anti-mainstream Republicanism.
4. It is divided racially through the growth of the non-white electorate. When Ronald Reagan was first
elected President in 1980, almost 90% of the US electorate was white; today some 30% of voters
are non-white; and that proportion is growing (especially Spanish-speaking communities). The
Democratic Party tends to do better among non-white voters than the Republicans and therefore
the demographic trends are viewed as favorable to Democrats.
One of the most visible and dramatic illustrations of how the divisions in American politics frustrate
decision-making is the regular failure to agree a federal budget before the start of the new financial period.
This results in what is known as federal 'shutdown' when most federal employees are sent home because
they cannot be paid and many federal institutions therefore close down. This is not an isolated occurrence:
it has happened 18 times since 1976 (the last one was in 2013).
A major role of the Congress is to pass legislation but the divided nature of American politics has made this
increasingly difficult and the Congress frequently exhibits legislative grid-lock. Hillary Clinton - former First
Lady, former Senator, and former Secretary of State - in her memoir "Hard Choices" (2014) talks of "all the
horse trading, arm-twisting, vote counting, alternating appeals to principle and self-interest, and hard-ball
politics that go into passing major legislation".
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Reading this short essay, it will be evident to many (especially non-American) readers that the United
States is different from other democracies. This observation has given rise to the notion of "American
exceptionalism". This is an ill-defined term which has been used differently at different times.
One important version of "American exceptionalism" revolves around the lack of a clear ideological or
class-based division between the two major political parties. The USA has never had a credible socialist or
anti-capitalist party; both the main parties are pro-capital and pro-business and speak to the 'middle class'.
Other versions of the concept revolve around the alleged 'superiority' of the United States because of its
history, size, wealth and global dominance plus the 'sophistication' of its constitution and power of its
values such as individualism, innovation and entrepreneurship.
In perhaps its most extreme form, the concept has a religious dimension with the belief that God has
especially chosen or blessed the country.
Of course, it is easy to view the American political system as exceptional in negative terms such as the
unusual influence of race, religion and money as compared to other liberal democracies.
In truth, for all its special features, the American political system needs to be seen as one among many
models of democracy with its own strengths and weaknesses that need to be assessed in comparison to
those of other democracies.

CONCLUSION
Americans are losing faith in the American political system as people around the world are questioning the
continued pre-eminence of the United States as the dominant global power
Since 2004, a clear majority of Americans have told Gallup that they are dissatisfied with the way they are
governed. The numbers of those has several times climbed above 80% which is higher than at the time of
the Watergate scandal. This disillusionment is reflected in the falling number of Americans who even
bother to vote. In "The World In 2015", John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of "The Economist", wrote: "In
America, there is nothing particularly democratic about the ascent of money politics, the arcane blocking
procedures of Congress or the gerrymandering of district boundaries. Indeed they are all reminiscent of
the rotton boroughs of 18th century England that infuriated the Founding Fathers."
The debate about the effectiveness of the US political system is a part of the wider debate about whether
or not the United States is in relative decline on the world stage. In his book "Time To Start Thinking:
America And The Spectre Of Decline" Edward Luce writes: "Sometimes it seems Americans are engaged
in some kind of collusion in which voters pretend to elect their lawmakers and lawmakers pretend to
govern. This, in some ways, is America's core problem: the more America postpones any coherent
response to the onset of relative decline, the more difficult the politics are likely to get."

INTRODUCTION
On my web site, I have produced short guides to 13 political systems. Since there are 193 members of the
United Nations, there are obviously many more political systems although, for the purposes of this essay, I
am only interested in political systems that are at least partially democratic.
Comparing and contrasting political systems is a useful exercise that brings out strengths, weaknesses
and nuances. On this web site, I have compared the political systems of two Anglo-Saxon nations with a
special relationship: the United States and the United Kingdom.
But, more generally, how should one critique a particular political system? And how does one assess how
democratic a particular political system is?
There is no such thing as the 'best' political system. Each political system represents a different and often
complicated and sometimes hidden 'trade off' of various elements. Furthermore no political system
operates in a vacuum: it reflects the history of the country, its geography and populace, and its culture and
values.
THE THEORY OF GOVERNMENT
Ultimately all political systems are about power and assessing these systems requires answers to some
fundamental questions about the exercise of power:

How power is is distributed?

What are the checks and balances on the exercise of that power?

How accountable are politicians for the misuse or abuse of such power?

Classically political systems are seen as having three arms of government:

The executive - this is the group of ministers that runs the country from day to day.

The legislature - this is the body of members of the parliament that passes legislation.

The judiciary - these are the judges who ensure that the constitution is upheld and the laws are
enforced.

Although in classical theory the three arms of government are given three distinctive functions, in practice,
there is an overlap:

Often most of the legislative proposals will come from the executive rather than the legislature itself
- for example, this is the case in the British political system

Usually the legislature does more than pass bills; it monitors the work of the executive and holds it
to account - for example, in the USA Congressional committees have powerful investigatory
functions.

Senior judges may be consulted on the drafting of new laws and not simply expected to enforce
current laws and a powerful constitutional court may make interpretations of laws that many see as
political.

There is a political theory, called 'the separation of the powers', which holds that each arm of government
should have distinctive powers and each should exercise some checks and balances in relation to the
other two arms. In its purest form, no individual should be a member of more than one arm of government
- the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary - at the same time.
Although this model was developed in Ancient Greece and Rome, the modern formulation of the theory is
ascribed to the French political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu. He based his views in part on a study
of the British political system of the time and his views had a profound influence on the 'Founding Fathers'
who drafted the American constitution.
In fact, the current British political model is - in personal terms - no respecter of the 'separation of the
powers':

Every member of the executive has to be a member of the legislature as well (House of Commons
or House of Lords)

Some senior judges are members of the legislature (House of Lords)

On the other hand, the American political system is a pure form of the 'separation of the powers':

The President cannot be a member of the Senate or the House of Representatives.

No judge can sit in the Senate or the House of Representatives.

So, that is the theory. What about the practice? I would suggest that there are two stages in critiquing a
political system. First, one needs to understand the political system - especially in terms of how it
distributes power and operates in practice. Second, one needs to assess that system by using a number of
relevant tests.
HOW TO UNDERSTAND A POLITICAL SYSTEM
One cannot fully understand the political system of a country without knowing something about its history,
geography and population. So, for example:

Britain does not have a written constitution because its political system largely evolved before the
advent of written constitutions.

The American political system gives so much power to the 50 states because the country was
created by an original 13 states.

The German political system gives so much power to the Lnder because the framers of the
constitution were anxious to disperse power as a reaction to the experience of Nazism.

The Russian political system has an upper chamber, the Federation Council, with a complicated
geographical make-up because of the different territorial units that make up this huge nation.

The Lebanese political system is a special one called 'confessionals' that attempts to represent
fairly the demographic distribution of the different religious groups in the legislature and the
government because there are so many such groups that vie for power.

Then, to understand a political system, one needs to know where power lies and to what extent such
power is circumscribed and accountable.
The starting point is to know whether the political system is a presidential one - like the United States,
France and Russia - or a parliamentary one - like the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. That is, is the
main source of power located in an elected president or an elected parliament? In the USA, the President
is the head of state, the head of government, and the commander-in-chief, he has the power to make
executive orders, and he nominates judges to the Supreme Court. In Russia, the President has power over
more than 75 appointments. The British Prime Minister does not have as much power.
The next stage is to appreciate the balance of power between the two houses of the legislature where
there is a bicameral system (about half of the nations in the world including most of the more populous
ones). In some systems - like the American - the two houses have broadly equal power in terms of
enacting legislation; in most countries, however, one chamber is pre-eminent, such as the House of
Commons in Britain or the Bundestag in Germany but the delaying or blocking power of the second
chamber varies from country to country. In the USA, the House of Representative has the power to
impeach the President but it is the Senate which conducts the trial of impeachment.
A vital further stage is to comprehend how each arm of government is checked and balanced by the other.
So, for instance, in the American political system, the President may veto bills passed by Congress, but
the veto may be overridden by a two-thirds majority of both houses, while the Supreme Court determines
how laws should be interpreted to ensure uniform policies in a top-down fashion.
HOW TO ASSESS A POLITICAL SYSTEM
To assess the democratic nature of a political system, one needs a set of tests that are 'real world' as
opposed to theoretical.
Such a set of tests would revolve around the following key questions about the political system itself:

How easy is it to obtain the right to vote?

In some cases, residency alone is sufficient to obtain the right to vote. In other cases, citizenship is
required before one can have the right to vote. So, for instance, in the USA, illegal migrants cannot vote. In
the Gulf States, no migrant worker can vote. In all countries, the right to vote is limited by age and, in many
other cases, there are limitations of one kind or another.

How easy is it actually to vote?

Someone with the right to vote needs to register in order to be able to exercise that right. Some countries
make such registration easier than others. In the USA, registration rules are a matter for the states and
some states require proof of identity at the polling station. Keeping the voting register up-to-date is often a
challenge.

What proportion of the electorate does actually vote?

In many democratic countries, voter turnout has been falling. In the USA, for the last 40 years typical
turnouts even for Presidential elections have been little more than 50%. In 22 countries, voting is
compulsory, although only 10 of this countries enforce this (Australia and Brazil are examples). Is there a
major difference in which components of the electorate actually vote? In many cases, voter participation is
low among young people and ethnic minorities.

How representative is the system?

Does it represent fairly all geographical areas or units? All ethnic or religious groups? This could be
achieved how by electoral constituencies are drawn up and by the choice of the voting system used.
Generally speaking, large constituencies and the 'first past the post' voting system favor large parties and
do not produce results in which the proportion of seats won by a party is close to the proportion of votes
won by that party. On the other hand, some forms of proportional representation system of election can
make it harder to form and maintain a government capable of putting through a programme.

How accountable is the system?

If a government loses the support of the people, how can it be changed? If a member of the legislature
loses the support of his or her constituents, how can he or she be recalled or voted out? In theory, the
shorter the term of office, the more accountable is the person elected: in the USA, members of the Senate
serve six years, the President serves four, and member of the House of Representatives serve two. But, if
the term office is too short, it is difficult for the person elected to gain experience and to take a mediumterm view of interests.

How effective is the system?

Does the system enable governments to be created that last a reasonable period of time? In Italy, since
1945 only one government has served a full five-year term of office and the average lifetime of a
government has been merely one year. Does the system enable legislation to be passed? In the USA,
even a President can find it difficult or even impossible to get enacted legislation which he has proposed.
Countless Bills proposed by Congressional Committees are never approved. In Israel, the national list
system of election ensures that all governments are multi-party coalitions and small, religious parties can
exert excessive influence, so that decision-making is more difficult than in other countries.

How flexible is the system?

Constitutional change should not be easy but it should not be impossible. Some countries have had
several complete changes of constitution in a matter of decades which may not have enhanced stability. In
the USA, significant constitutional change is practically impossible. In the UK, constitutional change can be
achieved by a majority vote in the legislature because the country has no written constitution.
A further set of questions needs to be asked to evaluate the context in which the political system operates,
especially:

What is the level of corruption?

All countries and all political systems have a degree of corruption but, in some cases, the corruption is
widespread and even institutional and mechanisms for identifying corruption and holding the corrupt to
account are weak.

How important is money?

American elections depend on vast sums to purchase broadcasting time. Parties and candidates in British
elections cannot buy broadcasting time. As a consequence of the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens
United case, effectively there are no limitations on expenditure in American political elections. There are
statutory limitations on expenditure for all elections in the UK.

How politically neutral is the military?

In a country like Pakistan, the army has played a very political role and regularly overthrown governments.
In Turkey, the army is seen as the guarantor of secular values. Sometimes the role of the military is more
subtle or hidden.

How independent is the media?

In many countries, most of the media - newspapers, radio, and television - is privately owned so that there
tends to be a Right-wing bias as media groups are owned and controlled by financial interests or moguls
such as Rupert Murdoch. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi controls the majority of television stations but still
managed to lead a major political party and even become prime minister. In Russia, virtually all the
mainstream media is pro-Putin.

How strong is civil society?

In a genuine democracy, there have to be ways of citizens expressing views and lobbying for their interests
such as trade unions, pressure groups, think tanks, charities, interest groups, and non-governmental
organizations. On the other hand, if lobbying of legislators is not transparent and regulated, strong financial
interests can exert undue influence.
-

U.S. politics are shaped by two major political parties: Democrats and Republicans.
Citizens have competing interests that differ based on their different backgroundsthe types of jobs
they have, their race or age, whether they have children, etc.
Politics are also shaped by special interest groups, lobbyists, and the media.

The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct brancheslegislative, executive, and
judicialwhose powers are vested by the U.S. Constitution in the Congress, the President, and the
federal courts, including the Supreme Court, respectively.
The United States is a representative democracy. Citizens elect representatives to national, state, and
local government; those representatives create the laws that govern U.S. society. Although nothing in U.S.
law requires it, in practice, the political system is dominated by political parties. With rare exceptions,
elections are decided between the two major parties: Democrats and Republicans. Although citizens vote
for individual candidates, most candidates are affiliated with one part or another. Therefore, much of U.S.
politics boils down to party politics.
The United States is also a diverse society, and citizens' competing interests are reflected in politics.
Citizens may have different voting preferences depending on their family backgrounds, the types of jobs
they have, their race or age, whether they have children, and so on. To understand the electoral process,
we must understand how different interests come into play.
Individual citizens are not the only players in U.S. politics. Although individual citizens are the only
ones who can cast votes, special interest groups and lobbyists may influence elections and law-making
with money and other resources. At times, this influence has grown so noticeable that some have called
into question whether the U.S. is truly a democracy of the people or something more like an oligarchy of
special interest groups. The media also play an important role in politics by influencing public sentiment
and acting as an information filter.

A federal government is a system that divides up power between a strong national government and
smaller local governments. We'll take a look at how power plays out between the national and local
government, and the benefits of a federal government.
Definition of a Federal Government
Are you a fan of Hollywood cop films? If you are, you may know that a common plot line in these movies is
jurisdiction friction, or when some kind of tension between local police (usually the hero) and federal
investigators (usually the antagonist) takes place over who has control of an investigation. Take, for
example, the film Rush Hour. In this movie, an LAPD police officer (Chris Tucker) tries to help a fellow
Chinese cop (Jackie Chan) find the abducted daughter of the Chinese Ambassador to America. While they
face many road blocks, one of the biggest obstacles in their investigation is the FBI, which orders Tucker
and Chan to stop their investigation because it is outside of local jurisdiction and a matter of federal
jurisdiction.
What this common Hollywood plot line reveals is the nature of a federal government. A federal
government is a system of dividing up power between a central national government and local state
governments that are connected to one another by the national government. Some areas of public life are
under the control of the national government, and some areas are under control of the local governments.
For this reason, cop films like to create drama by making the federal government and local government
bump heads over who should be investigating the crime at hand. Federal government systems usually
have a constitution that specifies what areas of public life the national government will take control over
and what areas of public life the state governments will take control over.
Benefits of a Federal Government
Why does the United States have a federal government but not Great Britain? The answer has to do with
size. Federal governments are best used in large countries where there exists a diverse group of people
with diverse needs but a common culture that unites them together.
For example, think of the difference between Wyoming (the least densely populated state) and New Jersey
(the most densely populated state). Clearly, the needs at the local level of each state will be different, so
they should have different local governments to address those needs. Nonetheless, both states share a
common culture and interest, and therefore, are united by the national government.
Federal governments help address the wide variety of needs of a geographically large country. It is no
wonder, then, that federal governments exist in large countries, like the United States, Mexico, Germany,
Canada, Australia, Brazil, and others.
Federal Government in the United States: Division of Power
In the United States, the Constitution created the federal system by limiting the activities of the national
government to a few areas, such as collecting taxes, providing for defense, borrowing money on credit,
regulating commerce, creating a currency, establishing post offices and post roads, granting patents,
creating lower courts, and declaring war. The 10th amendment of the Constitution, on the other hand, gave
all other powers to the states. As a result, any specific power not given to the Federal government is a
power of the state government. The chart explains which powers are given to the federal government and
which are given to state governments.

In theory, the United States federal system has a clear division between what states oversee and what the
federal government oversees. But the reality is that the federal government can and does influence state
governments through block grants and categorical grants. These grants are large chunks of money that
the national government gives to state governments in exchange for complying with federal requirements.
Therefore, the national government can influence areas normally set aside for local governments by
bribing the local governments to comply.
How the U.S. Government Is Organized
The Constitution of the United States divides the federal government into three branches to ensure a
central government in which no individual or group gains too much control:
1. Legislative Makes laws (Congress)
2. Executive Carries out laws (President, Vice President, Cabinet)
3. Judicial Evaluates laws (Supreme Court and Other Courts)
Each branch of government can change acts of the other branches as follows:

The president can veto laws passed by Congress.

Congress confirms or rejects the president's appointments and can remove the president from office
in exceptional circumstances.

The justices of the Supreme Court, who can overturn unconstitutional laws, are appointed by the
president and confirmed by the Senate.

The U.S. federal government seeks to act in the best interests of its citizens through this system of checks
and balances.
Legislative Branch
The legislative branch enacts legislation, confirms or rejects presidential appointments, and has the
authority to declare war.
This branch includes Congress (the Senate and House of Representatives) and several agencies that
provide support services to Congress. American citizens have the right to vote for senators and
representatives through free, confidential ballots.

Senate - There are two elected senators per state, totaling 100 senators. A senate term is six years
and there's no limit to the number of terms an individual can serve.

House of Representatives - There are 435 elected representatives, which are divided among the 50
states in proportion to their total population. There are additional non-voting delegates who
represent the District of Columbia and the territories. A representative serves a two-year term, and
there's no limit to the number of terms an individual can serve.

Executive Branch
The executive branch carries out and enforces laws. It includes the president, vice president, the Cabinet,
executive departments, independent agencies, and other boards, commissions, and committees.
American citizens have the right to vote for the president and vice president through free, confidential
ballots.
Key roles of the executive branch include:

President - The president leads the country. He/she is the head of state, leader of the federal
government, and commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president serves a
four-year term and can be elected no more than two times.

Vice President - The vice president supports the president. If the president is unable to serve, the
vice president becomes president. He/she can serve an unlimited number of four-year terms.

The Cabinet - Cabinet members serve as advisors to the president. They include the vice president
and the heads of executive departments. Cabinet members are nominated by the president and
must be approved by the Senate (with at least 51 votes).

Judicial Branch
The judicial branch interprets the meaning of laws, applies laws to individual cases, and decides if laws
violate the Constitution.
The judicial branch is comprised of the Supreme Court and other federal courts.

Supreme Court - The Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States. The justices of the
Supreme Court are nominated by the president and must be approved by the Senate (with at least
51 votes). Congress decides the number of justices. Currently, there are nine. There is no fixed term
for justices. They serve until their death, retirement, or removal in exceptional circumstances.

Other Federal Courts - The Constitution grants Congress the authority to establish other federal
courts.
The Decay of American Political Institutions

Many political institutions in the United States are decaying. This is not the same thing as the broader
phenomenon of societal or civilization decline, which has become a highly politicized topic in the discourse
about America. Political decay in this instance simply means that a specific political processsometimes

an individual government agencyhas become dysfunctional. This is the result of intellectual rigidity and
the growing power of entrenched political actors that prevent reform and rebalancing. This doesnt mean
that America is set on a permanent course of decline, or that its power relative to other countries will
necessarily diminish. Institutional reform is, however, an extremely difficult thing to bring about and there is
no guarantee that it can be accomplished without a major disruption of the political order. So while decay is
not the same as decline, neither is the two discussions unrelated.
There are many diagnoses of Americas current woes. In my view, there is no single silver bullet cause of
institutional decay, or of the more expansive notion of decline. In general, however, the historical context of
American political development is all too often given short shrift in much analysis. If we look more closely
at American history as compared to that of other liberal democracies, we notice three key structural
characteristics of American political culture that, however they developed and however effective they have
been in the past, have become problematic in the present.
The first is that, relative to other liberal democracies, the judiciary and the legislature (including the roles
played by the two major political parties) continue to play outsized roles in American government at the
expense of Executive Branch bureaucracies. Americans traditional distrust of government thus leads to
judicial solutions for administrative problems. Over time this has become a very expensive and inefficient
way to manage administrative requirements.
The second is that the accretion of interest group and lobbying influences has distorted democratic
processes and eroded the ability of the government to operate effectively. What biologists label kin
selection and reciprocal altruism (the favoring of family and friends with whom one has exchanged favors)
are the two natural modes of human sociability. It is to these types of relationships that people revert when
modern, impersonal government breaks down.
The third is that under conditions of ideological polarization in a federal governance structure, the
American system of checks and balances, originally designed to prevent the emergence of too strong an
executive authority, has become a veto racy. The decision system has become too poroustoo
democraticfor its own good, giving too many actors the means to stifle adjustments in public policy. We
need stronger mechanisms to force collective decisions but, because of the judicialization of government
and the outsized role of interest groups, we are unlikely to acquire such mechanisms short of a systemic
crisis. In that sense these three structural characteristics have become intertwined.
The three core categories of political institutionsstate, rule of law and accountabilityare embodied in
the three branches of government of a modern liberal democracy: the executive, the judiciary and the
legislature. The United States, with its longstanding tradition of distrust of government power, has always

emphasized the means of constraintthe judiciary and legislatureover the state in its institutional
priorities. It has done so to the point that American politics during the 19 th century has been characterized
as a state of courts and parties where government functions that in Europe would be performed by an
executive branch bureaucracy were performed in the United States by judges and elected representatives
instead.1
The creation of a modern, centralized, merit-based bureaucracy capable of exercising jurisdiction over the
whole territory of the country only began after the 1883 passage of the Pendleton Act. The United States
began to look more like a modern European state by the end of World War II, but in terms of both the size
and scope of government the United States remained, and still remains, an outlier. Both government
expenditures as a percentage of GDP and total tax revenues as a percentage of GDP are smaller in the
United States than in most other OECD countries.
While the American state is smaller than the state in most European countries, the absolute growth of the
scope of the American state over the past half-century has nevertheless been rapid. But the apparently
irreversible increase in the scope of American government in the 20 th century has masked the decay in its
quality. The deterioration in the quality of government has in turn made it much more difficult, for example,
to get large fiscal deficits under control. The quantity, or scope, problem will not be addressable unless the
quality, or strength, problem is addressed at the same time.
The decay in the quality of American government has to do directly with the American penchant for a state
of courts and parties, which has returned to center stage in the past fifty years. The courts and legislature
have increasingly usurped many of the proper functions of the executive, making the operation of the
government as a whole both incoherent and inefficient. The steadily increasing judicialization of functions
that in other developed democracies are handled by administrative bureaucracies has led to an explosion
of costly litigation, slow decision-making and highly inconsistent enforcement of laws. The courts, instead
of being constraints on government, have become alternative instruments for the expansion of
government. Ironically, out of a fear of empowering big government, the United States has ended up with
a government that is very large, but that is actually less accountable because it is largely in the hands of
unelected courts.
Meanwhile, interest groups, having lost their pre-Pendleton Act ability to directly corrupt legislatures
through bribery and the feeding of clientelistic machines, have found new, perfectly legal means of
capturing and controlling legislators. These interest groups distort both taxes and spending, and raise
overall deficit levels through their ability to manipulate the budget in their favor. They use the courts
sometimes to achieve this and other rentier advantages, but they also undermine the quality of public

administration through the multiple and often contradictory mandates they induce Congress to support
and a relatively weak Executive Branch is usually in a poor position to stop them.
All of this has led to a crisis of representation. Ordinary people feel that their supposedly democratic
government no longer reflects their interests but instead caters to those of a variety of shadowy
elites.
Ordinary people feel that their supposedly democratic government no longer reflects their interests but
instead caters to those of a variety of shadowy elites. What is peculiar about this phenomenon is that this
crisis in representativeness has occurred in large part because of reforms designed to make the system
more democratic. Indeed, both phenomenathe judicialization of administration and the spread of
interest-group influencetend to undermine trust in government, which tends to perpetuate and feed on
itself. Distrust of executive agencies leads demands for more legal checks on administration, which further
reduces the quality and effectiveness of government by reducing bureaucratic autonomy. It may seem
paradoxical, but reduced bureaucratic autonomy is what in turn leads to rigid, rule-bound, un-innovative
and incoherent government. Ordinary people may blame bureaucrats for these problems (as if bureaucrats
enjoy working under a host of detailed rules, court orders, earmarks and complex, underfunded mandates
coming from courts and legislators over which they have no control). But they are mistaken to do so; the
problem with American government is less an unaccountable bureaucracy than an overall system that
allocates what should properly be administrative powers to courts and political parties.
In short, the problems of American government flow from a structural imbalance between the strength and
competence of the state, on the one hand, and the institutions that were originally designed to constrain
the state, on the other. There is too much law and too much democracy, in the form of legislative
intervention, relative to American state capacity. Some history can make this assertion clearer.
One of the great turning points in 20th-century American history was the Supreme Courts 1954 Brown v.
Board of Education decision, which overturned on constitutional grounds the 19 th-century Plessy v.
Ferguson case that had upheld legal segregation. This decision was the starting point for the civil rights
movement, which, over the following decade, succeeded in dismantling the formal barriers to racial
equality and guaranteed the rights of African Americans and other minorities. The courts had cut their teeth
earlier over union organizing rights; new social rules based on those rights provided a model for
subsequent social movements in the late 20th century, from environmental protection to womens rights to
consumer safety to gay marriage.
So familiar is this heroic narrative to Americans that they seldom realize how peculiar it is. The primary
mover in the Brown case was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),

a private voluntary association. The initiative had to come from private groups, of course, because state
governments in the South were controlled by pro-segregation forces. The NAACP pressed the case on
appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. What was arguably one of the most important changes in
American public policy thus came about not because Congress, as the representative of the American
people, voted for it but because private individuals litigated through the court system to change the rules.
Later developments, like the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, were the result of congressional action,
but even in these cases enforcement was carried out by courts at the behest of private parties.
No other liberal democracy proceeds in this fashion. All European countries have gone through similar
changes to the legal status of racial and ethnic minorities, and women and gays in the second half of the
20th century. But in Britain, France or Germany, the same results have been achieved through a national
justice ministry acting on behalf of a parliamentary majority. The legislative rule changes might well have
been driven by public pressure, but they would have been carried out by the government itself, not by
private parties acting in conjunction with the judiciary.
The origins of the American approach lie in the historical sequence by which its three sets of institutions
evolved. In France, Denmark and Germany, law came first, followed by a modern state, and only later by
democracy. The pattern of development in the United States, by contrast, was one in which the tradition of
English Common Law was embedded early on in the Thirteen Colonies, followed by democracy after
independence, and only later by development of a modern state. Indeed, some have argued that the
American state is Tudor in its basic structure, that arrangement having been frozen into its institutions at
the time of the original American settlement. Whatever the reasons, the American state has always been
weaker and less capable than its European or Asian counterparts. And note that distrust of government is
not a conservative monopoly; many on the Left worry about the capture of national institutions by powerful
corporate interests and prefer to achieve their desired policy outcomes by means of grassroots activism
via the courts.
The result in post-civil rights movement America is what the legal scholar Robert A. Kagan labels a system
of adversarial legalism. While lawyers have always played an outsized role in American public life, their
role expanded dramatically during the turbulent years of social change in the 1960s and 1970s. Congress
passed more than two dozen major pieces of civil rights and environmental legislation in this period,
covering issues from product safety to toxic waste cleanup to private pension funds to occupational safety
and health. This constituted a huge expansion of the regulatory state founded in the Progressive Era and
New Deal, which American businesses and conservatives love to complain about today.
What makes this system so unwieldy is not the level of regulation as such, but the highly legalistic way in
which it is pursued. Congress mandated the creation of an alphabet soup of new Federal agenciesthe

EEOC, EPA, OSHA and so forthbut it was not willing to cleanly delegate to these bodies the kind of rulemaking authority and enforcement power that European or Japanese state institutions enjoy. What it did
instead was to turn over to the courts responsibility for monitoring and enforcing the law. Congress
deliberately encouraged litigation by expanding standing (that is, who has a right to sue) to ever wider
circles of parties, many of whom were only distantly affected by a particular rule.
For example, Federal courts rewrote Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, turning a weak law focusing
primarily on intentional discrimination into a bold mandate to compensate for past discrimination. Instead
of providing a Federal bureaucracy with adequate enforcement power, the key move of Republicans in the
Senate . . . was to substantially privatize the prosecutorial function. They made private lawsuits the
dominant mode of Title VII enforcement, creating an engine that would, in the years to come, produce
levels of private enforcement litigation beyond their imagining. 3 Across the board, private enforcement
cases grew from fewer than a hundred per year in the late 1960s to more than 22,000 by the late 1990s.
Expenditures on lawyers increased six-fold during the same period. Not only did the direct costs of
litigation soar; other, more indirect costs mounted due to the increasing slowness of the process and
uncertainties as to outcomes.
Thus, conflicts that in Sweden or Japan would be solved through quiet consultations between interested
parties through the bureaucracy are fought out through formal litigation in the American court system. This
has several unfortunate consequences for public administration, among them uncertainty, procedural
complexity, redundancy, lack of finality, [and] high transaction costs. By estranging enforcement from the
bureaucracy, the system also becomes far less accountable. In a European parliamentary system, a new
rule or regulation promulgated by a bureaucracy is subject to scrutiny and debate, and can be changed
through political action at the next election. In the United States, by contrast, policy is made piecemeal in a
highly specialized and therefore non-transparent process by judges who are unelected and usually serve
with lifetime tenure. In addition, if one party loses a legislative battle, it can continue the fight into the
implementation stage through the courts. This is what happened in the case of the Affordable Care Act, or
Obamacare.
The explosion of opportunities for litigation gave access and therefore powers too many formerly excluded
groups, beginning with African Americans. It is for this reason that litigation and the right to sue has been
jealously guarded on the progressive Left. (It is also part of the reason why trial lawyers form an interest
group closely wedded to the Democratic Party.) But these entail huge costs in terms of the quality of public
policy. Kagan illustrates this with the case of the dredging of Oakland Harbor.
During the 1970s the Port of Oakland initiated plans to dredge the harbor in anticipation of the new, larger
classes of container ships then coming into service. The plan, however, had to be approved by a host of

governmental agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National
Marine Fisheries Service, the EPA, and their counterparts in the State of California. A succession of
alternative plans for disposing of toxic materials dredged from the harbor was challenged in the courts, and
each successive plan entailed prolonged delays and higher costs. The reaction of the EPA to these
lawsuits was to retreat into a defensive crouch and go passive. The final plan to proceed with the dredging
was not forthcoming until 1994; at an ultimate cost many times the original estimates.
Other examples can be found across the entire range of activities undertaken by the U.S. government. The
result is that the courts have interacted with Congress to bring about huge expansions in the scope of
government, but without an increase in the effectiveness of government. For one example among many
hundred, special education programs for handicapped and disabled children have mushroomed in size
and cost since the mid-1970s as a result of an expansive mandate legislated by Congress in 1974. This
mandate was in turn built on earlier findings by Federal district courts that special needs children had
rights, which are much harder than mere interests to trade off against other goods, or to subject to costbenefit criteria. Congress, moreover, threw the interpretation of the mandate and its enforcement back to
the courts, which are singularly poor institutions for operating within budget constraints or making complex
political tradeoffs.
The solution to this problem is not necessarily the one advocated by many conservatives and libertarians,
which is to simply eliminate regulation and close down bureaucracies. The ends government is serving,
such as ensuring civil rights and environmental protection, are often important ones that private markets
will not satisfy if left to their own devices. Conservatives often fail to see that it is the very distrust of
government that leads the American system into a courts-based approach to regulation that is far less
efficient than that found in democracies with stronger executive branches. But American progressives and
liberals have been complicit in creating this system as well. They distrusted the bureaucracies that had
produced segregated school systems in the South, or had been captured by big business interests, so
they were happy to inject unelected judges into social policymaking when legislators proved insufficiently
supportive. Everyone had his reasons, and those reasons have added up to massive dysfunction.
This decentralized, legalistic approach to administration dovetails with the other notable feature of the
American political system: its openness to the influence of interest groups. Interest groups can get their
way by suing the government directly, as with the recent suit retailers brought against the Federal Reserve
over debit card transaction fees. But they have another, even more powerful channel that controls
significantly more power and resources: the U.S. Congress.
American politics throughout most of the 19th century was thoroughly clientelistic. Politicians mobilized
voters by promising individual benefits, sometimes in the form of small favors or outright cash payments

but most often though offers of jobs in government bureaucracies like the Post Office or Customs House.
This easy ability to distribute patronage had big spillover effects in terms of official corruption, in which
political bosses and members of Congress would skim off benefits for themselves out of the resources
they controlled.
These historical forms of clienteles and corruption were largely ended as a result of the civil service reform
movement beginning in the 1880s. Today, old-fashioned walking around money-type corruption is rare at
the Federal level. Though high-profile ambassadorships are still distributed to large campaign donors,
American political parties no longer give out government offices en masse to loyal political supporters and
campaign fundraisers. But the trading of political influence for money has returned in a big way in
American politics, this time in a form that is legal and much harder to eradicate.
Criminalized bribery is narrowly defined in American law as a transaction in which a politician and a private
party explicitly agree upon a specific quid pro quoex change. But gift exchanges, as an anthropologist
might call them, are something else again. Unlike an impersonal market transaction, if one gives someone
a gift and immediately demands a gift in return, the recipient likely feels offended and refuses what is
offered. But the recipient incurs a moral obligation to the other party and is then inclined to return the favor
at another time or place. The law bans only the market transaction, not the exchange of favors. The latter
is what the American lobbying industry is built around.
I have noted that kin selection and reciprocal altruism are the two natural modes of human sociability. They
are not learned behaviors, but are genetically encoded into our mental and emotional makeup. A human
being in any culture who receives a gift from another member of the community will feel a moral obligation
to reciprocate. Early states were what Max Weber labeled patrimonial because they were regarded as
the personal property of the ruler, who used his family and friends to staff his administration. Such states
were built around these natural modes of sociability.
Modern states create strict rules and incentives to overcome the tendency to favor family and friends.
These include practices like civil service examinations, merit qualifications, conflict-of-interest rules, and
anti-bribery and corruption laws. But the force of natural sociability is so strong that it keeps coming back;
guarding against it requires perpetual vigilance.
We have dropped our guard. The American state has been thoroughly re-patrimonialized.In this respect,
the United States is no different from the Chinese state in the later Han Dynasty, or the Mamluk regime in
the century prior to its defeat by the Ottomans, or the French state under the ancient rgime. The rules
blocking overt nepotism are still strong enough to prevent patrimonial behavior from becoming ubiquitous,
but reciprocal altruism runs rampant in Washington. It is the primary channel through which interest groups

have succeeded in corrupting government. Interest groups can influence members of Congress in
perfectly legal ways simply by making donations and waiting for unspecified return favors. In other cases,
the member of Congress initiates the gift exchange, favoring an interest group in the expectation of a
reward down the line, whether campaign contributions or other chips to be cashed in at a later date. In
many cases the exchange does not involve money. A Congressman attending a conference on derivatives
regulation at a fancy resort will hear presentations on how the banking industry does or does not need to
be regulated, without hearing credible alternative arguments from outside the industry. The politician is
captured in this case not by money (though there is plenty of that to go around), but intellectually, since he
or she will have only positive associations with the interest groups point of view.
The explosion of interest groups and lobbying in Washington has been astonishing, with 175 registered
lobbying firms in 1971 rising to 2,500 ten years later. By 2009, there were 13,700 registered lobbyists
spending more than $3.5 billion annually. The distortive effects of this activity on American public policy
can be seen in a host of areas, beginning with the tax code. While all taxes potentially reduce the ability of
markets to allocate resources efficiently, the least inefficient types of taxation are those that are simple,
uniform and predictable, so that businesses can plan and invest around them. The U.S. tax code is exactly
the opposite. While nominal corporate tax rates in the United States are higher than in most other
developed countries, few American corporations actually pay taxes at that rate because they have
negotiated special exemptions and benefits for themselves. Often these benefits take the form of
loopholes permitting the off-shoring of profits or other forms of tax arbitrage.
Some political scientists have argued that all of this money and lobbying activity have not resulted in
measurable changes in policy along the lines desired by the lobbyists, just as many contend that huge
amounts of money spent on campaign ads make no discernable difference in electoral outcomes. Not only
are such arguments implausible on their face given the sums supposedly being wasted in the process;
they ignore the fact that interest groups and lobbyists often seek not to stimulate new policies and rules but
to contort existing legislation through regulatory capture at the bureaucratic/administrative level, well out of
the political line of sight.
The legislative process in the United States has always been much more fragmented than that of countries
with parliamentary systems and disciplined parties. The welter of congressional committees with
overlapping jurisdictions often produces multiple and conflicting mandates. There are, for example, three
separate proposals in the 1990 National Affordable Housing Act that embody distinctly different theories
about the underlying problem the law is supposed to solve. There is a multiplicity of mandated ways of
enforcing the Clean Air Act. Congress wants the Federal government to procure goods and services
cheaply and efficiently, and yet mandates a cumbersome set of rules known as the Federal Acquisition

Regulations (FAR) on all government procurement agencies. In contrast to private-sector procurement,


government purchasing is minutely procedural and subject to a nearly endless right of appeal. In many
cases, individual Congressmen intervene directly to make sure procurement is done in ways that benefit
their own constituents. This is particularly true for the big-ticket items procured by the Pentagon, which
become virtual jobs programs to be distributed by lucky members of Congress.
When Congress issues complex and often self-contradictory mandates, agencies are highly constrained in
their ability to exercise independent judgment or make common-sense decisions. This undermining of
bureaucratic autonomy starts a downward spiral. In the face of bureaucratic ineffectiveness, Congress and
the public decry waste, fraud, and abuse in government and try to fix the problem by mandating even
more detailed and constraining rules, whose final effect is to further drive up costs and reduce quality.
Examples of such spiraling, self-defeating congressional interventions could be presented almost without
end. Some are particularly salient, however. Thus the Affordable Care Act, pushed through Congress by
the Obama Administration in 2010, turned into a monstrosity during the legislative process as a result of all
of the concessions and side payments that were made to interest groups, from doctors to insurance
companies to the pharmaceutical industry. In other cases, the impact of interest groups has been to block
legislation harmful to their interests. The simplest and most effective response to the financial crisis of
200809 and the unpopular taxpayer bailouts of large banks would have been a law that put a hard cap on
the size of financial institutions or else dramatically raised reserve requirements, which would have had
much the same effect. If a cap on size existed, banks taking foolish risks could go bankrupt without
triggering a systemic crisis and government bailout. Like the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, such a
law could have been written on a few of sheets of paper.
But this possibility was never considered during the congressional deliberations on financial regulation.
What emerged instead was the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or Dodd-Frank, which,
while better than no regulation at all, extended to hundreds of pages of legislation and mandated reams of
further detailed rules (many still unwritten years after the fact) that will impose huge costs on banks and
consumers down the road. Rather than simply capping bank size, it has created a Federal Stability
Oversight Council tasked with the enormous (and probably impossible) job of assessing and managing
institutions that pose systemic risks, which in the end will still not solve the problem of banks being too big
to fail. Though a smoking gun linking bank campaign contributions to the votes of specific Congressmen
may elude us, it defies belief that the banking industrys legions of lobbyists did not have a major impact on
how Dodd-Frank turned out, and on how its terms are still being translated into regulations.
Ordinary Americans express widespread disdain for the impact of interest groups and money on Congress.
The perception that the democratic process has been corrupted or hijacked is not an exclusive concern of

either end of the political spectrum. Both Tea Party Republicans on the Right and liberal Democrats on the
Left believe that interest groups whose views they happen not to like exercise undue political influence and
feather their own nests. As it turns out, both are correct. As a result, trust in Congress has fallen to
historically low levels, now barely above single digits.
There is plenty of good historical and social science analysis to sustain such beliefs. The late Mancur
Olson emphasized the malign effects of interest group politics on economic growth and, ultimately,
democracy in his 1982 book The Rise and Decline of Nations. Looking particularly at the long-term
economic decline of Britain throughout the 20 th century, he argued that democracies in times of peace and
stability tend to accumulate ever-increasing numbers of interest groups that, instead of pursuing wealthcreating economic activities, make use of the political system to extract benefits, or rents, for themselves.
These rents are collectively unproductive and costly to the public as a whole, but a collective action
problem prevents those adversely affected from organizing themselves to offset groups like, say, the
banking industry or corn producers, who can more readily organize to advance their interests. The result is
the steady diversion of energy into rent-seeking activities over time, a process that can only be halted by a
large shock like war or revolution.
On the other hand, such analysis, plausible as it seems, runs smack into a far more positive understanding
of the benefits of civil society, or voluntary associations, to the health of democracy. Tocqueville famously
noted that Americans had a strong propensity to organize private associations, which he argued were
schools for democracy because they taught private individuals the skills involved in coming together for
public purposes. Individuals by themselves were weak; only by coming together for common purposes
could they, among other things, resist tyrannical government. This tradition has been carried forward in the
late 20th century by scholars like Robert Putnam, who has argued that this very propensity to organize
(social capital) was good for democracyand was endangered in the second half of the 20 th century.
James Madison, too, had a relatively benign view of interest groups. He was certainly mindful of the
deleterious potential of what he called factions, but he was not overly worried about them because their
diversity across a large country would be sufficient to prevent domination by any one group. As Theodore
Lowi noted, pluralist political theorists in the mid-20 th century concurred with Madison in opposition to
critics like C. Wright Mills: The cacophony of interest groups would collectively interact to produce a public
interest, just as competition in a free market would provide public benefit through individuals following their
narrow self-interest. Further, there was no justification for government to regulate this process, since there
was no higher ground that could define a public interest standing above the narrow concerns of interest
groups. The Supreme Court, in its Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United decisions, was in effect affirming
the benign interpretation of what Lowi labeled interest group liberalism.

Alas, interest groups and private associations are two ways of describing the same basic phenomenon.
So how do we reconcile these diametrically opposed narratives, the first claiming that interest groups
corrupt democracy and harm economic growth, and the second asserting that they are necessary for
healthy democracy?
The most obvious way is to try to distinguish a good civil society organization from a bad interest group.
The former, to use the late Albert Hirschmans terminology, is driven by the passions, the latter by the
interests. The former might be a non-profit organization seeking to build houses for the poor, or a lobbying
organization promoting the public interest by protecting coastal habitats. An interest group might be a
lobbyist for sugar producers or large banks, whose only objective is to maximize the profits of the
companies supporting them. Additionally, Putnam tried to make a distinction between small associations
that invited active participation by their members, and membership organizations that simply involved
paying a membership fee.
Unfortunately, neither distinction stands up to scrutiny. Just because a group proclaims that it is acting in
the public interest doesnt mean that it is. For example, a medical advocacy group that wants more dollars
allocated to combat a particular diseaseAIDS, saymight actually distort public priorities by diverting
funds from equally lethal but more widespread diseases, simply because it is better at public relations. On
the other hand, just because an interest group is self-interested doesnt mean that its claims are
illegitimate, that by definition it cannot promote the public welfare, or that it does not have a right to be
represented within the political system. If a poorly thought-out regulation will seriously damage the
interests of an industry and its workers, that industry has a right to petition Congress. Like it or not,
lobbyists are often important sources of information about the consequences of government action. In the
long-running battles between environmental groups and corporations, environmentalists purporting to
represent the public interest are not always right with respect to the trade-offs between sustainability,
profits and jobs, as the Oakland harbor dredging case illustrates.
The primary argument against interest-group pluralism has to do with distorted representation. E.E.
Schattschneider, in his seminal 1960 book The Semisovereign People, argued that the actual practice of
democracy in America has nothing to do with its popular image as government of the people, by the
people, for the people. Political outcomes seldom correspond with popular preferences given the very low
level of participation and political awareness; real decisions are made by much smaller groups of
organized interests. A similar argument is buried in Olsons framework, since he notes that not all groups
are equally capable of organizing for collective action. The interest groups that contend for the attention of
Congress are therefore not collectively representative of the whole American people. They are rather
representative of the best organized and (what often amounts to the same thing) most richly endowed

parts of American society. This bias is not random and almost invariably works against the interests of the
unorganized or unorganizable, who are often poor, poorly educated or otherwise marginalized.
Elatedly, Morris Fiorina has shown that the American political class is far more polarized than the
American people themselves. Morris Fiorina has shown that the American political class is far more
polarized than the American people themselves. Most Americans support moderate or compromise
positions on many contentious issues, from abortion to deficits to school prayer to gay marriage, while
party activists are invariably more ideological and take more extreme positions, whether on the Left or
Right. But the majorities supporting middle-of-the-road positions do not feel very passionate about them;
they have what amounts to a collective action problem, and so remain largely unorganized.
Now, its true that unrepresentative interest groups are not simply creatures of corporate America and the
Right. Some of the most powerful organizations in democratic countries have been trade unions,
environmental groups, and womens organizations, advocates of gay rights, the aged, the disabled,
indigenous peoples, and virtually every other sector of society. One of the reasons that the American public
sector has been so hard to reform is the resistance of public sector unions. Pluralist theory holds that the
aggregation of all these groups contending with one another constitutes a democratic public interest. But
due to the intrinsic over-representation of narrow interests, they are instead more likely to undermine the
possibility that representative democracy will express a true public interest.
There is a further problem with interest groups and the pluralist view that sees public interest as nothing
more than the aggregation of individual private interests: It undermines the possibility of deliberation and
ignores the ways in which individual preferences are shaped by dialogue and communication. In both
classical Athenian democracy and the New England town hall meetings celebrated by Tocqueville, citizens
spoke directly to one another. It is easy to idealize small-scale democracy or minimize the real differences
that exist in large societies. But as any organizer of focus groups can tell you, peoples views on highly
emotional subjects will change just thirty minutes into a face-to-face discussion with people of differing
views, provided that they are given common information and ground rules to enforce civility. Few singleissue advocates will maintain that his or her cause will trump all other good things if forced to directly
confront those alternative needs. One of the problems of pluralist theory, then, is the assumption that
interests are fixed, and that the goal of legislators is simply to act as a transmission belt for them, rather
than having their own views that can be shaped by deliberation with other politicians and with the public.
This isnt just a rhetorical point. It is commonly and accurately observed that no one in the U.S. Congress
really deliberates anymore. Congressional debate amounts to a series of talking points aimed not at
colleagues but at activist audiences, who are perfectly happy to punish a legislator who deviates from their

agenda as a result of deliberation or the acquisition of greater knowledge. This leads then to bureaucratic
mandates written by interest groups that restrict bureaucratic autonomy.
In well-functioning governance systems, moreover, a great deal of deliberation occurs not just in
legislatures but within bureaucracies. This is not a matter of bureaucrats simply talking to one another, but
rather a complex series of consultations between government officials and businesses, outside
implementers and service providers, civil society groups, the media and other sources of information about
societal interests and opinions. The Congress wisely mandated consultation in the landmark 1946
Administrative Procedures Act, which requires regulatory agencies to publicly post proposed rule changes
and to solicit comment about them. But these consultative procedures have become highly reutilized and
pro forma, with actual decisions being the outcome not of genuine deliberation, but of political
confrontations between well organized interest groups.
Both the judicialization of administration and the influence of interest groups over Congress represent
instances of political decay in American politics. They have both deep roots in American political culture as
well as more recent, contingent causes like the extreme polarization of the two parties. One source of
decay has to do with intellectual rigidity. The idea that lawyers and litigation should be such an integral part
of public administration is not a view widely shared in other democracies, and yet it has become such an
entrenched way of doing business in the United States that no one sees any alternative. This is not strictly
speaking an ideological matter but a political tradition shared by both Left and Right. Similarly, despite a
widespread outcry against the disproportionate influence of interest groups in Congress, many elites
(beginning with the Supreme Court) fail to see that a problem even exists.
The underlying sources of political decayintellectual rigidity and the influence of elite groupsare
generic to democracies as a whole. Indeed, they are problems faced by all governments, whether
democratic or not. Problems of excessive judicialization and interest groups also exist in other developed
democracies. But the impact of interest groups depends heavily on the specific nature of the institutions.
There is wide variation in the way that democracies structure the incentives facing political actors that
makes them more or less susceptible to these forces. The United States, as the worlds first and most
advanced liberal democracy, suffers today from the problem of political decay in a more acute form than
other democratic political systems. The longstanding distrust of the state that has always characterized
American politics had led to an unbalanced form of government that undermines the prospects of
necessary collective action. It has led to veto racy.
I mean by veto racy the process whereby the American system of checks and balances makes collective
decision-making based on electoral majorities extremely difficult. To some extent, any system that
duplicates authority at multiple levels, giving Federal, state and local authorities jurisdiction over whole

domains of public policy, risks creating a situation in which different parts of the government are easily able
to block one another. But under conditions of ideological polarization, with the major parties about evenly
popular (or unpopular) with voters, the constraints become acute. That is where we now are. The
government shutdown and crisis over the debt ceiling that emerged in October 2013 is an example of how
a minority position (that of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party) could threaten the ability of the
government as a whole to operate. This is why the American political system early in the 21 st century has
failed to deal with its yawning budgetary problems, among many others.
Polarization happens. It has happened in American politics before. Once it caused a civil war. A good
political system mitigates underlying polarizations and encourages the emergence of outcomes that
represent the interests of as large a part of the population as possible. But when polarization confronts
Americas Madison and checks-and-balances political system, the result is particularly devastating. The
reason is that too many actors can veto a decision to do something to solve a problem.
Americas large number of veto players becomes evident when one considers another longstanding
democracy, Great Britain. The so-called Westminster system, which evolved in the years following the
Glorious Revolution, is one of the most decisive in the democratic world because, in its pure form, it
creates a much smaller number of veto players. Britain is a democracy because citizens have one large,
formal check on government: their ability to periodically elect Parliament. (There is another important
check, the tradition of free media in Britain, which is not part of the formal political system.) In all other
respects, however, the system concentrates rather than diffuses power. This system produces
governments with much greater formal powers than in the United States.
This greater degree of decisiveness can be seen clearly with respect to the budget process. In Britain,
national budgets are not drawn up in Parliament but in Whitehall, the seat of the bureaucracy, where
professional civil servants in the Treasury Department act under instructions from the Cabinet and Prime
Minister. The budget is then presented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (equivalent of the U.S. Treasury
Secretary) to the House of Commons, which decides whether to approve it in a single up-or-down vote.
This usually takes place within a week or two of its promulgation by the government.
The process in the United States is totally different. The Constitution grants Congress primary authority
over the budget. While Presidents propose budgets, these are largely inspirational documents that have
little relation to what eventually emerges. The Office of Management and Budget has no formal power over
the budget but becomes in effect another lobbying organization supporting the Presidents preferences.
The budget works its way through a complex set of committees over a period of months, and what finally
emerges for ratification by the two houses (complicated further by the distinction between appropriations
and authorizations) is the product of innumerable deals struck with individual members to secure their

support. Since there is little party discipline in the United States, there is no way for the congressional
leadership to compel individual members to support its preferences, even when they are members of the
same party. Clearly, the making of an American budget is a highly decentralized and non-strategic process
in comparison to what happens in Britain.
The openness and open-ended character of the American budget process in turn gives lobbyists and
interest groups multiple points at which to exercise influence. In most European parliamentary systems, it
makes no sense for an interest group to lobby an individual MP since the rules of party discipline allow little
or no influence over the party leaderships position. In the U.S. system, by contrast, an influential
committee chairmanship confers enormous powers to modify legislation, and therefore becomes the target
of enormous lobbying activity.
Budgeting is not the only aspect of American government that differs systematically from its democratic
counterparts in terms of proliferating veto players. In parliamentary systems, a great deal of legislation is
formulated by the executive with heavy technocratic input from the permanent civil service. Ministries are
accountable to Parliament and hence ultimately to voters through the minister who heads them, but this
type of hierarchical system can take a longer-term strategic view and produce much more coherent
legislation.
Such a system is utterly foreign to American political culture, where Congress jealously guards its right to
legislate and special interest groups assiduously cultivate their skill at suborning it. The lack of legislative
coherence is what in turn produces a large, sprawling and often unaccountable government. Financial
sector regulation, for example, is split among the Federal Reserve Board, the Treasury Department, the
Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit
Union Administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the
Federal Housing Finance Agency, the New York Federal Reserve Bank, as well as a host of state
Attorneys General who have broadened their mandates to take on the banking sector. The Federal
agencies are overseen by different congressional committees whose members are loath to give up their
turf to a more coherent and unified regulator. It was easy to game this system to bring about deregulation
of the financial sector in the late 1990s; re-regulating it after the crisis has proved much more difficult.
The American political system has decayed over time because its traditional system of checks and
balances has deepened and become increasingly rigid. At a time of sharp political polarization, this
decentralized system is less and less able to represent majority interests, but gives excessive
representation to the views of interest groups and activist organizations that collectively do not add up to a
sovereign American people.

The United States is trapped in a bad equilibrium. Because Americans historically distrust the government,
they arent typically willing to delegate authority to it. Instead, as we have seen, Congress mandates
complex rules that reduce government autonomy and render decisions slow and expensive. The
government then performs poorly, which perversely confirms the original distrust of government. Under
these circumstances, most Americans are reluctant to pay higher taxes, which they fear the government
will simply waste. But while resources are not the only, or even the main, source of government
inefficiency, without them the government cannot hope to function properly. Hence distrust of government
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Can we reverse these tendencies toward decay? Perhaps, but two
separate obstacles stand in the way, both related to the phenomenon of decay itself.
The first is a simple matter of politics. Many American political actors recognize that the political system
isnt working well, but nonetheless have very deep interests in keeping things as they are. Neither major
party has an incentive to cut itself off from access to interest group money, nor do the interest groups fear
a system where money cant buy influence. As in the 1880s, a reform coalition has to emerge that unites
groups without a stake in the current system. But achieving collective action among these out-groups is
difficult; it requires skillful and patient leadership with a clear agenda, neither of which is automatically
forthcoming. It may also require a major shock, or shocks, to the system. Such shocks were critical, after
all, in crystallizing the Progressive movementevents like the Garfield assassination, the requirements of
Americas rise as a global power, entry into the World War, and the crisis of the Great Depression.
The second problem is a cognitive one, having to do with ideas. A system of checks and balances that
gives undue weight to interest groups and fails to aggregate majority interests cannot be fixed with a few
simple reforms. For example, the temptation in presidential systems to fix problems of legislative gridlock
by piling on new executive powers is one that often creates as many problems as it solves. Getting rid of
earmarks and increasing party discipline may actually make it harder under conditions of ideological
polarization to achieve broad legislative compromises. Using the courts to implement administrative
decisions may be highly inefficient, but in the absence of a stronger and more unified bureaucracy, there
may be no alternative. Many of these problems could be solved if the United States moved to a more
unified parliamentary system of government, but so radical a change in the countrys institutional structure
is barely conceivable. Americans regard their Constitution as a quasi-religious document. Persuading them
to rethink its most basic tenets short of an outright system collapse is highly unlikely. So we have a
problem.

The United States of America is the world's third largest country in size and nearly the third largest in terms of
population. Located in North America, the country is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and to the east by
the Atlantic Ocean. Along the northern border is Canada and the southern border is Mexico.

Industry of USA
USA is a country with strong economy as compare to most of the other countries in the region. Industry of
USA is very popular due to its quality and reliable products all over the world. But in these days it is a trend that
most of the project or manufacturing is done through outsourcing. The order taker works as a middle man and
assigns the project to someone else. The business men of USA are doing the same that they outsource the
project to the companies in China or South Asia.
Industry of USA means textile, auto, chemical, mechanical and electronics because they are highly demanded
products in the country. There is no compromise on the quality of the product so people love to buy it. USA is
popular in heavy machinery, autos, aero plane, textile and weapons so these things are manufactured here in
the country. It has been a good market for the product of other countries of the world. The automobiles
produced in Japan have got worldly fame in 1980 but China brought revolutionary changes in 2008.
In start there were large number of companies which manufactured auto cars but by the end of 1920 the main
three companies remained in the market. The names of these companies are Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.
The steam engine of the train and cars has brought revolutionary changes in the development of the vehicles.
The industry of America is full with professional skills, knowledge and experience so the companies here in
America got great fame. Industry of USA consists of AT&T, iPhone, Microsoft and many other car
manufacturers play the role of the backbone for the country.
The Industry in USA plays a vital role in the economy of the country for a long time. The industry of the country
started to emerge in last two or three decades. USA consists of heavy industry and light industry at the same
time. The industry of USA has opened its sub offices in different parts of the world but all work with same
quality.
In some countries the manufacturing units have also been installed to meet the needs of that particular country.
USA is a country of trade, business or industry because a large number of people are working.

The current population of the United States of America is 324,027,082 as of Friday, June 17, 2016,
based on the latest United Nations estimates.

The United States population is equivalent to 4.38% of the total world population.

The U.S.A. ranks number 3 in the list of countries by population.

The population density in the United States is 35 per Km 2 (92 people per mi2).

The total land area is 9,155,898 Km2 (3,535,111 sq. miles)

82.5 % of the population is urban (268,012,791 people in 2016)

The median age in the United States is 38.1 years.

The 50 stars on the flag represent the 50 states of the United States of America, and the 13 stripes represent the
thirteen British colonies that declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and became the first states
in the US.

How does the American political system work?


The United States of America is a federated nation of Sovereign states in a Republic, managed by the U.S.
Federal Government. The U.S. Federal Government has three branches:
Congress (they write U.S. Federal Law for the USA)
Executive Branch (the President of the United States is head of this)
Judicial Branch (the U.S. Supreme Court is the highest court)
All of this is spelled out in the U.S. Constitution which describes the basic principles of how these three entities
are to operate, and also spells out Civil Rights for individuals in The Bill of Rights which is the first ten
amendments to the Constitution, adopted at the same time as the rest of the Constitution over 200 years ago.
It's an easy read: just a few pages. People who take the time to read it tend to be shocked at how short and
apparently simple it is.
One important point about the Constitution: it contains a procedure for amendment - we can change our
federal government structure or operation as much or as little as we want at any time; we just have to agree
sufficiently to do so.
The Congress is bicameral (two parts): the U.S. Senate, and the House of Representatives. Everyone in both
houses of Congress is directly elected by the citizens of the USA, though at one time, U.S. Senators were
appointed by the legislatures of the States of the USA that they represented. The Congress writes the laws of the
USA, which is to say, the rules we all live under.
The Executive Branch is the operational part of the Federal government: the bureaucracy, and the U.S. Armed
Forces. If the Federal Government is doing something actively, it's this branch of it that is doing the doing. The
basic job of everyone who works for this part of the government is to implement the law, as written by the
Congress. The President has a say in the legislative process - he must sign all laws (though if he refuses, the
Congress can, with sufficient agreement, override his objection).
The Judiciary adjudicates disputes arising out of conflict between the law as written by Congress, and the
actions in practice of the executive branch. It also adjudicates disputes between individuals that have
implications in federal law (that is, the dispute is not confined to a single state).
The next level down is the 50 sovereign states, each of which has its own independent government with an
elected legislature, though all are subject to the Constitution and U.S. Federal Law. Each of them has a
government that mostly mirrors the same structure as I just described at the federal level, though their chief
executives are called "Governors" and there are variations of legislatures (Nebraska's legislature is unicameral)
and, in some cases, legal systems (Louisiana, for example, does not use English Common Law - their system is
based in the French Napoleonic Code). State governments only have jurisdiction within their borders. Disputes
between the states are handled by the federal government.
The next level down is subdivisions of the states, most often called "counties" but other names are used,
depending on the state. There are many, many counties in the USA, with variations in their governance
prescribed by the laws of the state they're within.
At the last level, one sees towns and cities. Some areas which you might call a "town" (or village) don't have
their own independent government; these are most often administered by the county that they're within, and
they're referred to as being "unincorporated."

Most city and county governments are unicameral arrangements with a small board of elected representatives
who write law for that geographical area, and oversee an executive ("county manager", "mayor", etc) that
operates government services: police, fire protection, garbage collection, etc. The particular services which each
local government offers varies widely; many services which other countries would see as being strictly operated
by government employees are contracted out to private companies.
The system is designed with subsidiary in mind, though that word (and its concept) is not broadly spoken in
political circles these days.
The overall political system of the USA appears very fractious and contentious, but it mostly works by debate &
negotiation between interested parties, and with compromise. We tend not to do anything unless enough of us
agree, and getting sufficient agreement tends to be a loud affair. After operating this system for a couple of
centuries, we now seem to be able to make it work without shooting at each other.
You seem to be referring to the national system, which makes sense. Its complex, but, in basics:
There are three branches of government: The Executive Branch consists of the President and everyone who works for him. The Legislative
Branch consists of Congress. The Judicial Branch consists of the Supreme Court.
Congress consists of two branches: The House of Representatives and the Senate. The House has Representatives from each state based on the
State population (California gets 53 Representatives, Wyoming gets 1). Each state gets 2 Senators, though, regardless of population. (This odd
arrangement is a result of compromises early in our history).
The key thing to realize here is that only Congress has the power to make laws. No laws can be initiated anywhere else (and that includes an
annual budget for the running of the country). Any Representative can introduce a bill, but there are complicated procedural rules for how it
gets introduced for a vote. In order for a bill to become a law, it has to be passed by a majority of the House AND a majority of the Senate AND
be signed by the President. Since the same bill has to be passed by the House and the Senate, this entails a lot of compromise and negotiation
between the two bodies of Congress.
You'll notice in the above paragraph that the President has to sign the bills into law. That's really the primary power the President has over the
laws of the country. He can refuse to sign a law, which is called a 'veto', which means the law doesn't pass, It's a fascinating thing, the President
is seen as the leader of the nation, but his only official power in passing laws is the power to say "no" when all is said and done. In reality,
though, the President is much more involved. He tends to work closely with Congress to figure out bills that he'd be willing to sign and get
them passed, but he has no official power until the bill has been introduced, negotiated and passed by Congress.
Now, the structure of the House and Senate are complex. With 435 Representatives, each with their own politics, ideas and agendas, it can
become hard to get things done. There are two primary political parties in the US: the Democrats and the Republicans. Each party selects their
own leadership to set agendas and build consensus. So, in both the House and the Senate, each party will elect a Leader and a Whip. The job of
the Whip is to deal with all the members of the party, work out what they're going to try to accomplish in a given year, and deal with all the
people, personalities and agendas to get things done (as well as getting their members re-elected).
You talk about what happens when the President and House leadership are from different parties. This is, in fact, a very common situation.
Currently, the House has a Republican majority and the Senate has a Democratic majority, while the President is a Democrat. In theory, this
creates a situation that requires compromise. The only way any law can get passed is if the chambers of Congress can agree on laws which the
President is willing to sign. This should drive them to seek a middle ground, and pass laws they can all live with.
In reality, it often creates a situation where political battles bring things to a halt. The Republican Congress has spent the last couple of years
passing a variety of laws that they knew very well that the Senate wouldn't pass and the President wouldn't sign. Such is a pointless waste of
time, but it looks good to their constituents. At the same time, the President has an agenda that he wants to advance, but Republicans in
congress generally won't even negotiate with him, fearing that if he accomplishes something good, it will make him and his party look good. As
a result, political infighting has largely ground the work of government to a halt. It's frankly appalling, but that's where we are now.

Incidentally, you asked about governors. That spawns a whole additional level of discussion. What you have to understand about America is
that we have national laws, but each of the 50 states has their own government, and a significant degree of self-rule. Federal laws are intended
only to deal with large, national issues. It's left up to the states to pass and enforce their own laws beyond that. The government of each state is
designed like a miniature version of the national government. Each state has its own House and Senate, but instead of the President, each state
has a Governor. The Governor has no power on the national level, but a significant degree of power within the state. This becomes important

because there are a lot of important issues where state laws have the real control: issues like education, marriage laws, capital punishment,
and, increasingly, drug laws. These are largely out of the hands of the US government, and are controlled by each of the states individually.

There are many fine answers here that lay out the different branches of government. One important aspect that
I don't think has been explained is that the Founding Fathers included in the Constitution a system of "checks
and balances," so that, in theory, no one branch of government could run roughshod over the others. In the
words of James Madison "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
Now, in practice, each branch has at various times asserted its authority over the others. But most would agree
that the Executive Branch has been far and away the most successful at expanding its powers beyond what was
originally envisioned by the founders (mind you, I'm not saying whether this is a good or bad thing).
I think when you look at the historical circumstances of the drafting of the Constitution; it is easy to understand
why these checks and balances were adopted. Following the successful rebellion against the British crown, the
last thing most (though not all) Americans wanted was a concentration of too much power in a single, strong
executive. They'd already rid themselves of a king--why replace him with another? Another factor (which
persisted well into the 19th Century) was that most Americans identified themselves with their State first rather
than the country as a whole; if you asked them where they were from, "I'm an American" would have been a
much less likely answer than, say, "I'm a Virginian."
After the perceived failure of the first governing document of the United States, the Articles of Confederation,
which created a weak Federal government with limited powers and no Chief Executive, it was replaced with the
Constitution in 1789.

Again, in practice, the Executive Branch has pushed the most against Constitutional limits in various ways,
often successfully. Although only Congress is supposed to have the power to declare war on another nation, in

practice many presidents have sent American troops into battle without such a declaration. In the post-Vietnam
War era, Congress attempted to limit such Presidential actions with the War Powers Resolution, with mixed
results.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, frustrated by the Supreme Court having declared some of his New Deal
programs unconstitutional (one of their biggest "checks"), attempted to "pack" the Court by expanding its size
and filling the new slots with his own nominees (the current members were there for life, yet another Judicial
"check") via the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, but this bill was defeated in Congress.
Despite these mostly successful efforts to expand Executive power, it is still unlikely that a president with truly
dictatorial powers will be able to run wild in the United States. Even when the majority of both houses of
Congress are members of the President's party, history shows that they rarely submit meekly to the President's
wishes (whether due to influence from their political donors, lobbyists, constituents, etc., or just because no
Congress willingly surrenders power). And even if they did, the Supreme Court could rule the President's
actions unconstitutional (again, even if a majority of them were appointed by the President or predecessors of
the same party).
Beyond Constitutional checks and balances, there's also the fact that a great many civil servants that make up
the Executive Branch agencies and departments are not political appointees, and often serve for decades
regardless of which party is in the White House. They act (or fail to act) at their own pace, and have their own
agendas. President Truman noted this after the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who only a decade earlier
had been Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Second World War, to the Presidency in 1952. Hell sit
here, and hell say, Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ikeit wont be a bit like the Army. Hell
find it very frustrating.
(By the way, I don't think anyone has answered the question about Student Government. This is not an official
branch of government at any federal or state level. It is merely an advisory council set up by many high schools
and colleges with almost no real power. Here's an article about that:

The United States operates as defined by the US Constitution and its Amendments. It has a Federal
Government and each State in the United States has their own State Government. The Federal government is
made up of three main arms, The US Supreme Court which is responsible for ruling on the legality of Federal
laws and actions. The US Senate and House of Representatives are responsible for passing needed laws and for
establishing a budget for government. The President is the leader and he appoints staff to help him guide the
country including a bureaucracy to manage many Federal programs and acts as the head of the Army.
Each state has similar entities, although the leader of the state is usually called the Governor. Legal decisions by
the states can be appealed at the Federal level for compliance with the US Constitution and Amendments and
the body of law.
Cities and other legal bodies (like the Port of Seattle) have their own administration and power to tax. Most
cities are led by Mayors.
Most officials are elected.

I would like to add to some of what Mr. O'Connor wrote... Each and every one of the elected representatives are
subject to pressure by their constituents, special interest groups, their own and opposition parties, other

members of Congress, and the stresses of fundraising for campaigning. This is of course not all-inclusive. Most
of this pressure is necessarily deflected to their staffs. They do most of the legwork in helping constituents with
problems ranging from how to get their great-great-grandmother's documents from Ellis Island to getting their
loved one safely out of a foreign and belligerent country. Special interest groups range from the NRA (guns) to
the Audobon Society to labor unions to the various Chambers of Commerce. There are literally thousands of
special interest groups claiming to represent American and foreign interests. Corporations lobby government.
In a sense, the federal government works much like a very large computer in that it obeys GIGO...garbage in,
garbage out.
A bill is a proposal for a law to be made. Bills are typically not written by Senators, or Congressmen, or their
aides, but are proposed by a special interest group. Some of these are closely aligned with the political
aspirations of a party and its dominant funders, and this trend was affirmed by the Supreme Court in a recent
controversial decision. Some are more clearly single-issue. Lobbyists are professionals and amateurs who are
attempting to get these bills heard and sponsored by the membership, and they may try somewhat questionable
tactics to get their bit of verbiage passed into law. Hence, there are rules, and an ethics committee, to put
somewhat of a respectable face on what can and cannot be done (no outright bribery, for example). Once a bill
has a sponsor, it can be scheduled for committee hearings before the appropriate ones, say, judiciary and
agriculture. If, after hearings, it is a go, it is reported out, gets debated on, and possibly passed. But this is only
part of the process.
The bill has a similar gauntlet to run in the other chamber, from sponsor to vote.
Then, if there are any wording differences, or number differences, they are hammered out (or not). If a bill
finally has passed both house and the wording and numbers are agreed upon, it is sent to the President for
signature, non-signature (pocket veto), or Veto. Meaning the President disapproves. In which case the bill can
go back to the House and Senate and they can vote to override the veto with 2/3 vote.
Assuming the bill got passed, it has to be Constitutional. This can get challenged if a person with standing is
affected by the bill in a way that seemingly violates one of the many provisions of the US Constitution. They
then sue in one of the federal courts, and, if the case is seen by a US Supreme Court Justice to have meritorious
issues, it may reach that august body and a decision on whether or not it is constitutional will be arrived at.
Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, supposedly so they become apolitical in their viewpoints and act
as an additional check on a certain political belief system gaining total control of the government. In practice,
Justices are appointed by Presidents who look at previous rulings and attempt to predict future behavior from
that. It doesn't always follow.
Most of what the Federal government does is administrative, through the various departments (State passports, negotiating, etc.; Agriculture - farm program, research. food stamps, education). It is also
responsible for our national past, literature, parks, and monuments. And it pays the bills, each month millions
of payments are made to the retired, disabled, veterans, military personnel, park rangers, and so forth. A certain
part of the federal government deals with enforcement, including the FBI, ATF, Secret Service, and so on.
The military answers directly to the President, through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This does not require the
President to take their advice or issue all orders through them, however. The Defense department, or DOD, is a
huge operation with global reach.
Some of this is very scant in detail, the topic is very complex.

The modern political party system in the United States is a


two-party system dominated by the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party. These two parties have won every United
States presidential election since 1852 and have controlled the
United States Congress since 1856.

FEDERALISM

Advantages and Disadvantages of Federalism

The pros and cons of federalism have been the subject of debate since the creation of the
republic.
Federalisms Advantages
Proponents argue that federalism does the following:

Fosters state loyalties: Many Americans feel close ties to their home state, and federalism
maintains that connection by giving power to the states.

Practices pragmatism: Running a country the size of the United States, with such a
diverse population, is much easier to do if power is given to local officials. Likewise, state and
local officials are closer to the problems of their areas, so it makes sense for them to choose
policies to solve those problems.

Creates laboratories of democracy: State governments can experiment with policies, and
other states (and the federal government) can learn from their successes and failures.

Example: California has frequently led the nation in environmental regulations: Many measures
adopted by California are subsequently adopted by other states. And during the 1990s, Wisconsin
governor Tommy Thompson experimented with welfare policy, and those experiments influenced
federal welfare reform.

Leads to political stability: By removing the national government from some contentious
issue areas, federalism allowed the early U.S. government to achieve and maintain stability.

Encourages pluralism: Federal systems expand government on national, state, and local
levels, giving people more access to leaders and opportunities to get involved in their
government.

Ensures the separation of powers and prevents tyranny: Even if one person or group
took control of all three branches of the federal government, federalism ensures that state
governments would still function independently. Federalism, therefore, fulfills the framers
vision of a governmental structure that ensures liberty.

Federalisms Disadvantages
Critics argue that federalism falls short in two ways:

Prevents the creation of a national policy: The United States does not have a single
policy on issues; instead, it has fifty-one policies, which often leads to confusion.

Leads to a lack of accountability: The overlap of the boundaries among national and state
governments makes it tricky to assign blame for failed policies.

Citizen Ignorance
Critics argue that federalism cannot function well due to ignorance. Most Americans know little
about their state and local governments, and turnout in state and local elections are often less
than 25 percent. Citizens consequently often ignore state and local governments, even though
these governments have a lot of power to affect peoples lives.

The Philippines had been a colony of Spain for more than 300 hundred years, but this ended when Spain ceded her to the
United States at the end of the Spanish-American War, after the First Philippine Republic was established in 1898, under Gen.
Emilio Aguinaldo. However, as a result of the Treaty of Paris (an agreement transferring control of the Philippines to the United
States), the country declared war against America which resulted in very heavy casualties among Filipinos, including the capture
of Gen. Aguinaldo in 1901. The US declared the war over by 1902; however, fighting went on until 1913. Amidst continued
hostilities with the Americans, colonization began with the US taking major control of governance of the islands, giving very
minimal leeway for Filipinos officials to run affairs of state. By 1935, the Philippines gained commonwealth status (or partial
autonomy) from the US in preparation for full independence on July 4, 1946. However, when Japan entered World War II, after
US forces were losing ground in the Pacific and immediately after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, it invaded the Philippines
on December 8, 1941, thus beginning of one of the cruelest and harshest take-overs in wartime history. In 1944, after Gen.
Douglas Macarthur's famous landing in Leyte with over 700 American vessels and over 170,000 troops, the liberation of the
Philippines began and paved the way for the establishment of The Second Philippine Republic.

Therefore, the Philippines was in no way, or will ever be annexed as a state of the US, like Hawaii, or as an enclave like Guam,
because it is an established Republic whose system of government is as sovereign and free as a democracy should be.

Philippine Political System


The Philippines political system takes place in an organized structure of a presidential, representative, and democratic
republic wherein the president is both the head of government and the head of state within a multi-party system. This
system has three co-dependent branches: the executive branch (the law-enforcing body), the legislative branch (the lawmaking body), and the judicial branch (the law-interpreting body). Below are the full details on the three branches with
their corresponding Philippine government officials.

1. Executive
Executive power is implemented by the government under the leadership of the president which is President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo wherein her party affiliation is under Kampi or Lakas-CMD. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was
appointed as president last January 20, 2001 and has been reelected last May 2004 elections. Her term will then end this
coming May 2010 elections. The President functions as both the head of state, the head of government tand the
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The president is elected by popular vote to a term of 6 years.
The president, then, appoints and may fire her cabinet members whom she officiates over. The executive seat of
government is managed officially from Malacaang Palace which is also the official residence of the president which is in
the capital City of Manila. The President may no longer run for re-election, unless he or she becomes president through
constitutional succession and has served for no more than 4 years as president.
The second highest official, Vice-President Noli de Castro wherein his party affiliation is Lakas-CMD or Independent,
which is also elected by popular vote last June 30, 2004. The vice-president is second in line to succession should the
president resign, been impeached or die in office. The vice-president is usually a member of the president's cabinet but
not always. If there is a vacancy in the position of Vice President, the President will appoint any member of Congress
which is usually a party member as new Vice President. The appointment will be validated by a three-fourths vote of
Congress voting separately.

2. Legislative
The bicameral Philippine legislature wherein members of both are elected by popular vote, the two chamber Congress,
consists of the following:
a. Senate
Senate or Senado or upper chamber consists of 24 seats wherein one-half are elected every three years and members
elected at large by popular vote to serve six-year terms. They can be reelected but they are no longer eligible to run for a
third consecutive term. The Senate is elected at large. Elections for Senate was last held on 14 May 2007 and next to be
held in May 2010.
b. House of Representative
House of Representatives or Kapulungan ng mga Kinatawan or lower chamber consists of 212 members representing
districts plus 24 sectoral party-list members and members elected by popular vote to serve three-year terms. The
Constitution prohibits the House of Representatives from having more than 250 members. 206 are elected from the
single-member districts. The remainder of the House seats is elected for sectoral representatives elected at large through
a complex "party list" system, hinging on the party receiving at least 2% to 6% of the national vote total. The upper house
is located in Pasay City, while the lower house is located in Quezon City. The district and sectoral representatives are
elected with a term of three years. They can be re - elected but they are no longer qualified to run for a fourth consecutive
term. The House of Representatives may decide on to pass a resolution for a vacancy of a legislative seat that will pave

way for a special election. The winner of the special election will serve the unfinished term of the previous district
representative and will be considered as one elective term. The same rule applies in the Senate however it will only apply
if the seat is vacated before the regular legislative election. Elections for House of Representatives was last held on 14
May 2007 next to be held in May 2010.

3. Judicial
The judiciary branch of the government is headed by the Supreme Court, which has a Chief Justice which is Reynato
Puno as its head and 14 Associate Justices, all selected by the president on the recommendation of the Judicial and Bar
Council and they shall serve until 70 years of age. Court of Appeals which is Sandigan-bayan is a special court for hearing
corruption cases of government officials

THE POLICY PROCESS Institutional Framework According to Paul A Sabatier (1999, p. 3), the public
policymaking process includes the manner in which problems get conceptualized and brought to
the government for solution; governmental institutions formulate alternatives and select policy
solutions; and those solutions get implemented, evaluated and revised. From this perspective,
several institutional built-in systems for policymaking have been identified. These are functioning
within the government structure to cover specific policy agendas, examples of which are: the National
Economic Development Authority (NEDA) for socio-economic policies; the National Security Council
(NSC) for national security and defense concerns; the Legislative Executive Development Advisory
Council (LEDAC) for general legislative agendas; and even local level agencies like Metro Manila
Development Authority (MMDA) for concerns affecting basic services within Metro Manila. While the
last three agencies mentioned do perform certain stages of the policy process, none of them have a
more defined and extensive mandate and a more permanent structure than the NEDA. Hence, the
NEDA will be used as the unit of analysis to illustrate the executive branch policy process in the
country. The NEDA The NEDA is the highest policymaking body responsible for all aspects of the
development program. The NEDA Board is headed by the President with selected Cabinet secretaries
and other executive staff officers as members. On the other hand, the NEDA Secretariat is the
research arm of the NEDA Board. It provides technical support in matters involving policy
development, policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. The NEDA Director-General heads
the Secretariat, and is also the Socio-Economic Planning Secretary (per EO Nr 230). The Policy Stream
The agenda is normally set after evaluating certain indicators and statistics fed by other government
agencies such as the National Statistics Office (NSO), National Statistics and Coordination Board
(NSCB), Population Commission (POPCOM), Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) and all
the other departments. This agenda would take into consideration (a) the actual performance during
the preceding year, (b) new developments and emerging issues in the local and international
economies and (c) shifts in the policy emphasis of the administration (NEDA 1995, p. 13-15). To
ensure agreement in policy formulation, the Board is assisted by six inter-agency committees, each
responsible for specific areas within the development program. One of these is the Development
Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC). The DBCC serves as the link between planning and
budgeting to guarantee conformity of the national budget with the development plan. In formulating
the policy, NEDA utilizes several methodologies classified in the following categories: (a) Econometric
Models; (b) Input-Output analysis; (c) Accounting Frameworks; and Project Evaluation and
prioritization techniques. These tools have significantly increased the policy analysis and forecasting
capabilities of the NEDA (NEDA 1995, p. 18). In short, as designed, policy research and analysis are
the foundations in the policy formulation processes. The policy issues covered by the NEDA are: social
development (includes education and manpower development, social welfare and community
development, health and nutrition, and housing); investment (including evaluation and approval of

public sector projects); infrastructure development; trade and tariff matters; and the generation and
use of official external assistance. After the tedious process of policy formulation comes the
legitimation stage. This comes in the form of the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP),
which is usually promulgated with the first State of the Nation Address (SONA) of the president. The
MTPDP encapsulates the bulk of the new policy directions of the Administration. It practically covers
the whole range of national policy issues, namely: macroeconomic policies, poverty alleviation,
Information and Communications Technology (ICT), tourism, infrastructure development, agriculture,
agrarian reform, environment, education, health care, housing, peace and order, and foreign policies.
Benchmarks and standards are stated in both the MTPDP and SONA as tangible targets to be achieved
and as measures of the administrations success or failure. The rationale behind the Cabinet-level
interagency structure of the NEDA is to forge a consensus at the pre-implementation phase (NEDA
1995, p. 13), since it is the different departments who are actually tasked to implement the various
programs stipulated in the MTPDP and other policy declarations. This set-up ensures cohesion and
coordination in the implementation phase of the program. Finally, The NEDA has set up periodic
feedback and monitoring mechanisms through its attached agencies for the careful evaluation of the
program implementation and economic performance, which would become essential inputs to cover
policy gaps and the improvements of the policy for the next policy cycle. Problems and Politics
Streams Given such impressive backdrop of a coherent system for policymaking, one wonders, why is
our country still stuck in the proverbial hole? In answering this perplexing question, we will need to lay
down certain elements of the policy environment. There are three streams, which contribute or
influence agenda setting and alternative specification. These are: policy, problems and politics
(Kingdon 1995, p. 16-18). What was described above centers only on the normal policy stream where
the alternatives were selected through certain processes of gradually accumulated knowledge and
perspective of specialists. The actors here include academics, researchers, consultants, career
bureaucrats, analysts, etc. (Kingdon 1995, p. 17, 200). Problems, meanwhile, are the unexpected
crises that arise, which are not usually covered by a particular policy, or crises borne out of a failed
policy. Finally, the politics stream refers to the influences that work outside of the institutional
policymaking framework. The freak nature of how the GMA administration assumed power has boxed
it in a monumental dilemma of trying to meet high expectations of the people, who were promised
good governance, new politics and moral regeneration, and accommodate the interests of other
EDSA Dos stakeholders. At the same time, it is being preoccupied by the continuous emergence of all
sorts of crises. This precarious situation has been exacerbated by the emergence of the new influence
players the Catholic Church, with two EDSAs to their credit; the mass media, whose traditional role
as observer of events has been transformed into a compelling instrument to manipulate and/or direct
public opinion; and now the civil society, who took it upon themselves to rise up and partake of the
largesse of power. To resolve this dilemma, the GMA Administration coupled the problems and politics
streams. Specifically, the crisis management teams, oversight committees and task forces it created
to facilitate the policy processes to address problems and crises would incorporate and consider
political concessions with her EDSA Dos supporters while, in the same breadth, mask the policies
created with a populist face to appease and deceive the public to protect its own interests. To
illustrate this new policy standpoint, three issues would be fleshed out, namely: (1) the rising
criminality, (2) the Purchased Power Adjustment (PPA) issue and (3) the population explosion problem.
1. Rising criminality. After EDSA Dos, a marked rise in criminality was experienced (e.g. kidnap-forransom and robbery cases) all over the country. Policy process instrument: Crisis management
team Implementing Agency: Philippine National Police (PNP) Policy considerations: (1) Public
outcry (particularly the Filipino-Chinese community); (2) Growing public perception that GMA is not in
control; and (3) Protect/defend the incompetence/ineffectiveness of Department of the Interior and
Local Government (DILG) Secretary Jose Lina and PNP Chief Larry Mendoza, who are her EDSA Dos
allies Actors: The President, DILG, PNP, concerned agency heads, anti-crime NGOs, media and
behind the scenes, the political propagandists, publicists, and media handlers Result of Policy

process: GMAs public pronouncements of strongly worded anti-crime policies while having photo ops
with crime suspects (However, no new anti-crime drives were given to operating units on the ground.)
Effect of policy: The crime rate continued to rise but the effective propaganda strategy employed by
the Administration allayed the fears of the Filipino-Chinese community and projected GMA as a nononsense leader. At the same time, it distracted the public from the failures of the DILG and PNP
leadership. *The non-political solution in this situation should have been the immediate and
unceremonious relief of both Secretary Lina and PNP Chief Larry Mendoza for
incompetence/ineffectiveness. This act delivers a strong message to the people and the bureaucracy
that such incompetence cannot be tolerated, and there would be no sacred cows. This will project
GMA as a strong leader with political will, and who is serious in curbing criminality. More importantly,
it will send a chilling message to the next appointed DILG Secretary and PNP Chief and compel them
to accomplish their mission of keeping our streets safe from criminals. 2. The Purchased Power
Adjustment (PPA) issue. There was a growing public outrage regarding the collection of the PPA, which
has significantly increased the electric bills of consumers. Policy process instrument: Crisis
management team Policy considerations: (1) Pressures from the business sector who supported her
at EDSA Dos to lower electric rates of industrial users and legitimize the collection of the PPA; and (2)
the possible outrage of the affected residential consumers Actors: The Secretaries of Finance and
Energy, technocrats from National Power Corporation, Energy Regulatory Commission, the business
sectors {e.g. Manila Electric Railroad and Light Company (MERALCO)}, media, and usual retinue of
propagandists, publicists and media handlers Result of Policy process: GMA rushes Congress to pass
the Electric Power Industry Reform Bill. Meanwhile, a propaganda blitz on the so-called 10- point
program supposedly for the reduction of power charges was conducted through the media. GMA even
promised the people that electric rates would be reduced immediately after its ratification. Effect of
Policy: GMAs supporters from the business sector got their reduction of power charges and
legitimized the collection of the PPA. The power charges tripled but the potential public outrage was
stunted by the effective propaganda employed by the Administration. *The non-political solution
should have been to: (1) remove the unjust PPA from the power charges; (2) review IPP contracts and
rescind onerous ones; and (3) prosecute those responsible for approving the grossly disadvantageous
IPP contracts. However, the EDSA Dos factor came into play and, according to GMAs new politics,
the big business groups that supported EDSA Dos must be paid back accordingly. 3. The Population
explosion problem. The population problem had been acknowledged by experts (and even GMA
herself in one of her speeches) as one of the primary causes of poverty. There were also mounting
pressures from multinational organizations/financial institutions for our country to have a population
control policy as a requisite for the approval of grants/loans. Policy process instrument: NEDA Policy
process (as discussed above) Implementing Agency: Department of Health Policy consideration:
Pressures from the Catholic Church and civil society groups, which could lead to loss of political
support or another civil unrest Actors: NEDA Board, Secretary of Health, Civil Society groups, the
Catholic Church, and media Result of Policy process: A population control policy that promotes only
natural methods of birth control Effect of Policy: The population rate is now one of the highest in the
world at 2.3% per year. *The non-political solution should have been to implement a comprehensive
population management policy that will promote reproductive health care and basic family planning
education to adults as well as making artificial birth control methods (except abortion) accessible to
the poor without prejudice to their religious beliefs. Just from these examples, we can see that
patronage politics has become the centerpiece of the present public policy process and not
surprisingly, with disastrous results. CONCLUSION On paper, the present Philippine public policy
process is institutional in character, with the NEDA as the primary policymaking body with regard to
the development scene. But the workings of the EDSA phenomenon have changed the landscape of
policymaking. The role of the civil society groups in influencing agenda-setting has never been more
evident than now. Likewise, the Catholic Church and the mass media, realizing their power to make
and unmake governments are intruding in the process to the detriment of the majority of the people,

who are being deprived of right, sound and viable policies because of political indebtedness,
concessions, and the sheer lack of political will. With the incessant fight for power and scarce
resources, the highly functional institutional model had been effectively relegated to the background.
Now, the elite and interest group molds have come to the fore thus, transforming the policy process
itself into nothing but a crisis management cycle focused on the GMA Administrations political
survival.

Interest groups and political parties


1. 1. A federal system is a system in which: a) Authority and sovereignty are retained at the top of the political ladder
(one level of government) b) There are two levels of government, yet sovereignty remains in the hands of the
states or provinces (loose association of provinces or states) c) There are two levels of government of rather equal
jurisdiction
2. 2. In parliamentary systems, the symbolic and managerial functions of the executives are in the hands of: one
person? Two individuals? More than two?
3. 3. -Lecture VI- INTEREST GROUPS AND POLITICAL PARTIES
4. 4. Pluralism: Multiple, competing elites determining public policy through bargaining and compromise Individual
choice and rationality: rational individuals will act upon their self-interests Accordingly, people join interest-groups
because they know that it is in their interest to do so Individuals know that they will be better represented and have
more political influence if they join a group
5. 5. Interest groups and Political Parties The formal government is not enough to represent all public opinions
Interest groups and political parties are two instruments to supplement the formal structures Process of political
demands/communicating public beliefs, attitudes, and values Share significant characteristics, yet are relatively
different
6. 6. Politics as who does what and who gets what in a society Political process and outcome are not simply the
result of a majority rule, but instead of group competition and conflict Ex Uno, Plures
7. 7. INTEREST GROUPS: Collections of individuals who share common beliefs, attitudes, values, or concerns
Shared concerns: nuclear weapons, gun control, air/water pollution, wages, gender equality, to more trivial
concerns Individuals in the group believe they can win something out of it
8. 8. Interest groups are able to communicate their opinion more effectively than individuals themselves (national
Riffle Association; American Medical Association) Formal representatives cannot represent their constituents on
all the issues that interest them Ex.: the NRA will provide an alternative representation structure for these people
to voice their concern and act
9. 11. Anti-smoking laws?
10. 12. >Interest Group Pressure Group Used interchangeably? Pressure group: subset of interest-group organized
for the aim of political lobbying Pressure groups support any candidate who will pledge to support their cause
11. 13. Why the French Love their Farmers Gordon, de Boisgrollier
12. 14. Importance of the French farming lobby in France: impact in international and European economic decisions
(tariffs and PAC) 3.6% of the French population/20% 20 years earlier Unions and protests through the FNSEA and
the Confederation Paysanne (role of Bov) Support of most parties and of president Chirac Wide support of the
population (gastronomic traditions, attachment to non-genetically modified and fresh products, and suspicion
towards globalization) Attachment to rural traditions and need to preserve farms and farmers
13. 15. Interest groups Political Parties
14. 16. POLITICAL PARTIES Permanence/level of organization INTEREST POLITICAL Breadth of issues GROUP
PARTY Goals
15. 17. Where do parties come from? Factions/groups of legislative supporters (T. Jefferson and the Democrats/
Hamilton and the Federalists) Labor movements: party seeking to influence labor policy (interest-group) and take

16.
17.

18.

19.
20.

21.

22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.

28.

29.
30.

31.

political control Ex.: the British Labor Party was originally an interest group National Liberation movements Ex.:
Indias Congress party
19. Variance and Number of Political Parties Ideology Political culture Electoral laws Party-systems (from unique to
multiple parties) Mass/cadre parties
20. System of Voting Representation? Single-member district? Leads to stability and encourages the development
of two-party systems, hides minorities and often generates situations where minorities do not have any
representation Proportional representation? Facilitates multipartism, ensures that everyone has representation, yet
can lead to instability
21. Internal Party Organization: Highly unified / divided (coalition of factions) >Democratic organizations allowing
for intra-party competition / undemocratically structured and centered around the personality of the party leader
(ex.: Front national around the personality of Le Pen)
22. Role of Parties Individual party organization Political system Number of party Degree of party discipline
Ideology Constituency ROLE OF PARTY
23. Functions of Political Parties: Generate political leaders Help organize political groups Shape and transmit
political demands to the government Reference and guiding point to the part of the electorate unaware of the
complex political world (labeling) Political development and recruitment (regeneration of the political arena)
Framework to mobilize the electorate (get out the vote and participation) Contribute to the national unification of
the country
24. What do elections do? Influence parties by sending them a message (feedback) Educative function Provide
legitimacy For the government (representation) Influence policies by selecting individuals that will exercise power
Create governments Offer the public choice among parties, candidates, governments, policy preferences
Choosing Representatives PURPOSE OF ELECTIONS
25. ELECTORAL SYSTEMS Degree of choice between parties and candidates (Who and what parties can be
elected?) Who can vote?
26. What Parties? Open/Highly No choice Competitive >System Italy Singapore Kenya Austria Tanzania (one
party)
27. What Candidates? Choice No Choice Israel USSR
28. Types of Election 1) Competitive 2) Dominant-party 3) Candidate-choice 4) Acclamatory
29. 1) Competitive Choice between different parties (from 2 to over 12) Yet, voter can have choice of candidate
(Japan) or not (UK)
30. 2) Dominant-party elections: Have the choice on paper between several parties, yet not in reality (no free
election). Reasons: Intimidation process when vote is not anonymous (Haiti) Fraud or corruption keeping the
dominant party on power (Philippines under Marcos; 1988 Mexican elections?) Ability of the dominant party to
present itself as the best voting alternative, for instance through nationalist propaganda (the Congress Party of
India)
31. 3) Candidate Choice: One permissible political party Choice between several candidates among the same
political party Ex.: In Kenya, choice is possible only among the several candidates of the Kenyan African National
Union Party (KANU)
33. 4) Acclamatory Elections: No choice between parties and political candidates Ex.: 1,500 members of the
Supreme Soviet ran uncontested, selected by the Communist Party
35. Legal Constraints Affecting Electoral Behavior: Some regimes outlaw opposition parties Regulations about
who can be a candidate: Ex.: age criterion for candidacy (25 for the House and 30 in the Senate); residency
requirement; gender, race, or ethnicity requirements Regulations about how campaigns are to be run: Ex.: fundraising and campaign advertising rules Which parties can compete: Ex.: minimum number of individuals needing
to sign a petition; monetary deposits needed from parties before elections; deadline to respect for participating
(rules aiming at discouraging non-realistic parties)
36. Legal Constraints Regarding Who Can Vote: Age requirement Registration requirement Residency
requirement Literacy requirement (minimum or rigorous) Ex.: was in use in the Southern states to prevent Afro-

American voters to vote Gender, group, ethnic, or religious factors in use still in several countries to deter certain
parts of the population to vote
32. 37. Political Parties: Empty Vessels? Are political parties in decline? Moving towards the ideological center (no
clear ideological differences any more) Media tend to play some of their role in terms of informing the population
Rise of interest-groups connected to the growing importance of single-issues Diminution of party-members

Interest groups represent members of the public who share similar beliefs or
attributes before the government. Interest groups can lobby members of
Congress and the president, electioneer for candidates, and engage in
litigation to support a claim of importance to their members.
How do interest groups play a role in American government?
An interest group is an organization whose members share common concerns, and try to influence
government policies that impact those concerns.

An interest group is an organization whose members share common concerns, and try to influence
government policies that impact those concerns.
Elected officials frequently complain about the influence of "special interests" on American politics. The fact
is, however, that interest groups work closely with members of Congress and the administration to draft
legislation and policy initiatives, provide information both to government and the public on a broad range of
topical issues, and contribute significantly to political campaigns. The number of interest groups has grown
dramatically in recent years, and it is difficult to think of a segment of American society that is not
represented by one.
Interest groups can be classified as to the groups that they represent. Examples of economic interest
groups include the following:

Big business (National Association of Manufacturers)


Big unions (AFL-CIO)
Trade associations concerned with a particular industry or segment of the economy (American Petroleum
Institute)
Organizations of professionals (American Medical Association)

The goal of these groups is to protect the economic well-being of their clients or members. The AMA, for
instance, long opposed Medicare and the development of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) as
"socialized medicine" in favor of traditional fee-for-service.

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