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Federalism
Federalism and the American Founding: balance of power between the central government and the state was at the heart of the Constitutional structure between the federalists and the anti-federalist. |
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| Federalism: the system of government where the power is divided, by a constitution, between a central government and regional government. |
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Governments can organize the balance of power between the central and regional goverments in a variety of ways. Divides into:
Conferderations
Federal Systems
Unitary Systems |
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Unitary Systems: tip the balance of power in favor of and stronger central government; unitary systems, lower levels of government have little power independent of the central government.
"Run by central government" |
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Confederations: like the Articles of Confederation, they reserve a great deal of power to lower levels of government.
"More power to states" |
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Federal Systems: Under the Constitution, the U.S has a federal system of government in which national government shares power with lower levels of government.
"Both" |
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Federalism in the Constitution
Consistent with the farmers' desire to divide the powers of government, the Constitutions federal division of power can be understood as an attempt to limit the power of the national government.
-With expressed powers, the Constitution grants specific powers to the national government and reserves the rest for the States. |
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Public Opinion
Democratic governments should reflect the will of the people.
-How do we know what that is?
-Average citizens don't always have informed opinions about every issue, and thus are open to influence. |
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Understanding Public Opinion
Public Opinion: the values and attitudes that people have about issues, events and personalities. |
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Understanding Public Opinion
Values (or beliefs): are values and ideology. A persons basic orientations to politics. |
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Understanding Public Opinion
Political Ideology: A cohesive set of beliefs that form a general philosohpy about government. |
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Understanding Public Opinion
Attitude (or opinion): specific veiw about a particular issue, personality or event. |
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Political Views
Most Americans share a belief in a common set of principles |
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How Political Views are Formed
Our underlying beliefs tend to shape how we approach new information.
Those underlying beliefs are shaped by our life's expiriences, especially those involving family unbringing, social groups, education, and the general political climate |
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Political Socialization: process of how we come to form beliefs about certain things. |
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Political Socialization
Family: stories we hear that can be influential if they are coherent and consistent. |
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Political Socialization
Social Groups: people that have some of the same background have similar life expiriences can then try to shape the same understanding of politics. |
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Political Socialization
Gender Gap: experiences in life, men and women often see issues differently. |
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Political Socialization
Religion: it is powerful if it repeats stories, ceremonies and rituals that tell members how to see the world. |
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Political Socialization
Group membership: it can lead to conformity throught social pressure. |
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