Class notes
Introduction to American National Government: Lecture Notes
- Course
- POL201 (PSY201)
- Institution
- University Of Miami
Introduction to American National Government: Lecture Notes
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POL 201 Lecture NotesLecture #1 January 20, 2022: (Five Principles)
● Making sense of government in politics (3 fundamental questions)
○ What do we observe?
○ Why? (build a theory around principles)
○ A third type of question is normative (what values)
● Government and Politics
○ Government: institutions and peoples through which the land and its people are
ruled
○ Institution: rules and procedures that provide incentives for political behavior,
thereby shaping politics
● Core government traits
○ A monopoly on legitimate coercion
○ Collecting revenue (taxes, regressive, income, generally sales taxes are
regressive SS tax = regressive)
● Forms of Government
○ Who rules?
■ One person: autocracy
■ A few: oligarchy (wealthy people: plutocracy)
■ All citizens (directly: democracy( people govern themselves w/o a leader);
choosing leaders: representative democracy)
■ Republic: all power derives from the governed
○ Limits on Power?
■ Constitutional: formal constraints on which issues are open to political
decisions and how decisions are made (federal government cannot
declare war, coin money, anything against bill of rights, constraints written
in constitution)
■ Authoritarian: government is constrained by other social/political
organizations aka not written down(ex. In Russia, its hard to say what
Putin can’t do, but he has some constraints: can’t kill a billionaire
oligarch-russia is a plutocracy)
■ Totalitarian: no practical limits on government leaders (ex. Nazi Germany,
Soviet Union)
○ These terms can be combined…, so US is a constitutional democracy
● A tool kit for understanding politics
○ All political behavior has purpose
○ Institutions structure politics
○ All politics is collective action
○ outcomes=preferences * rules * collective action
○ History matters
● 1) rationality principle
○ All political behavior has a purpose
, ○ Political behavior is instrumental (not random, done with forethought, very
calculated)
○ Political actors pursue policy preferences, reelection, and power, and maximize
their agency budgets
○ The rationality principle is focused on the intentionality of political behavior
● 2) institution principle
○ “Institution” = rules and procedures that provide incentives for political behavior
○ Jurisdiction- the domain over which an institution or a political actor has
authority
○ Agenda and veto power- control over what a group will consider for discussion
and the ability to defeat something
○ Decisiveness: rules for decision making
■ When the procedures are changed, the policies were too
○ Delegation- transmission of authority to some other official or body
○ Principal-agent relationship:
■ The relationship between someone with authority (the principal) and
someone to whom the power is delegated (agent)
■ This relationship may be affected by the fact that each party is motivated
by self-interest, yet their interests may not be well-aligned
○ Monitoring and Transaction Costs
■ Because of conflicting interests, the principal needs to have a way to
monitor what the agent is doing and punish or reward the agent
■ Leads to transaction costs-cost of clarifying the relationship and
monitoring to make sure arrangements are complied with
● 3) Collective Action Principle
○ Political action is collective
○ Collective action is difficult, and the difficulty mounts as the number of people and
interests involved grows
○ Sometimes there are collective action dilemmas- situations in which individually
rational incentives do not align with shared collective interests
○ Collective action is the pooling of resources and the coordination of effort and
activity to achieve common goals; Collective action occurs when a number of
people work together to achieve some common objective
○ Public goods are those benefits enjoyed by anyone that may not be denied to
anyone once they have been provided
○ Collective action is difficult
■ Collective action and provision of public goods becomes even more
difficult as the number of parties involved increases as the ability to
bargain face to face is hampered
■ A collective action problem or social dilemma is a situation in which all
individuals would be better off cooperating but fail to do so because of
conflicting interests between individuals that discourage joint action
■ Ex. free riding, tragedy of the commons, prisoner’s dilemma
■ Institutions can be solutions to these problems
, ● Coordination: common goal, no costs, butplayers lose conformity
costs if their preferred option is not selected (ex. Biden over
sanders, weights and measures, driving on right side of road)
● Free Riding: actors enjoy a public good (a shared resource that is
nonexcludable, nonrivalrous, and costly to provide), actors may
prefer that others pay for the public god, while they enjoy the
benefits (aka free riding/shirking, ex. National defense, house
cleaning)
● Tragedy of the commons: common rivalrous resource that people
use for their own purpose, w/o community regulation, actors will
overuse the resource, ex. Natural resources
● Prisoners dilemma: actors have common but competing interests,
best for both:cooperation, best for individual: cheat while the other
cooperates
● 4) Policy Principle
○ outcomes= individual preferences-institutional rules
○ political outcomes are the products of individual preferences and institutional
procedures
○ suggests that politics is the result of preferences, institutions, and collective
action
○ Ex. Why is the Biden Admin pursuing climate change policies through executive
action?
● 5) History Matters
○ Today's political choices are conditioned by prior choices
■ Rules may be difficult to change or may promote their own persistence
■ Policy choices may influence subsequent political developments (ex.
Party coalitions (political alliance) or interest group formation)
○ Ex. the electoral college
Lecture 2: January 25, 2022 (Origins of the constitution)
● Revolutionary era
○ Revolt required collective action among different groups of americans
○ 5 groups:
■ New england merchants
■ Southern planters
■ Royalists
■ Shopkeepers, artisans, and laborers
■ Small farmers
● American Revolution 2
○ British taxes sparked colonial opposition leading to an escalating cycle->
shooting in 1775
○ 1776: Declaration of Independence
■ “All men are created equal”
■ Governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the goiverned
, ● Articles of Confederation
○ Written in 1776, formally ratified in 1781
○ Structure:
■ National legislature-no independent judiciary, president, or administration
■ State legislature appoint 2-7 delegates with right of recall
■ Each state delegation casts one vote
■ 9/13 states must consent to major decisions- foreign policy and budget
decisions
● A.C. Powers
○ A.C. congress had authority to
■ Levy troops and money from states
■ Conduct foreign policy
■ Regulate currency, weights, and postal service
○ But
■ The A.C congress lacked power to implement decisions or compel state
compliance
■ Amendments to the A.C. had to be proposed by congress and ratified by
all 13 state legislatures
● Problem #1: Repaying War debt
○ National government contracted debts to pay for war
■ Soldiers’ salaries
■ Private suppliers
■ Forign governments and bankers
○ A.C. COngress was unable to repay debts
■ Requests for funds were ignored
■ States vetoed direct taxation and proposals
○ Failure to pay debts led to crisis
■ Inability to borrow in the future
■ Domestic economy weakened by uncertainty
■ States tried to pay with worthless currency
● Problem #2: Unstable state currencies
○ Value of money is regulated by government, thus the opportunity for manipulation
○ In pre-1787 states, debtors often lobbied state legislatures to print more money
○ A.C. congress had authority to regulate currency but no power to enforce
decrees
■ Foreign trade and domestic commerce suffered
● Problem #3 Trade between states
○ States charged tariffs on imported goods going to other states
○ Result: trade suffered
● Problem #4 Foreign Policy
○ A.C congress had power to negotiate trade and security treaties
■ States were forbidden to violate terms of these treaties, but they did
○ Foreign governments distrusted the national government and began negotiating
directly with states
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