Chapter 4

THE STRUCTURAL FOUNDATIONS OF

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND

POLITICS

“B-1 Bob” Learns About His District• After nine consecutive terms, in 1996

Republican Congressman Bob Dornan lost to Democrat Loretta Sanchez.

• Dornan had not changed his platform: staunch support for more military spending, and attacks on immigrants, gays, feminists, and liberals.

• Why did he lose?• Changing Demographics: California’s 46th

District shifted from mostly white middle class to working class and minority in composition.

American Society: How It Has Changed and Why It Matters

• Growing Diversity• Changing Location• Changing Jobs and Occupations• The Aging of the American Population• Income• Poverty

Growing Diversity

• Immigration• Nativism

Changing Location

• From urbanization to suburbanization• Effects of population movement from

rural areas to cities and from cities to suburbs

• Steady population movement to the west and south (the “Sun Belt”) as employment opportunities shifted

Changing Jobs and Occupations

• Industrial Revolution• Rise of blue-collar employment• Rise of white-collar employment

The Aging of the American Population

• Median age was just under 16 in 1800; today it is about 33; estimated to be about 38 by 2030

• Increasing proportion of the population over age 65

• Decreasing proportion of the population between the ages of 18 and 64

Income, Wealth, and Poverty

• Stagnation in living standards• Rising inequality in income and

wealth• The angry middle class• The fall and rise of poverty• Rising inequality

The American Economy

• The American economic system is based on capitalism, sometimes called a market economy or a free enterprise system.

• A capitalist economy has two defining features:– Private ownership of the means of

production– Markets to coordinate economic activity

The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of the Corporation

• Numerous small enterprises before the Civil War, originally linked to agriculture

• Economy became increasingly industrialized after the Civil War

• The Civil War helped spur the Industrial Revolution and allowed the North to enact government policies that favored free enterprise.

• By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was the leading industrial power.

• Industrial enterprises grew to unprecedented size in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

• Industrial growth was accompanied by transformations in technology, corporate law, and industrial organization.

Post-World War II

• Steady growth in the size, health, and economic importance of corporations continued (except for the period of the Great Depression) until the early 1970s.

• The fall from grace

Globalization and the American Economy

• American economy rebounds in 1990s• New global economy

– integration of much of world into single market and production system

– U.S. corporations as dominant actors • scandals• mergers

– No decrease in inequality in America

• Will globalization slow?

The United States in the International System• 19th Century

– Concentration on filling a vast, continental-scale nation-state and on building an industrial economy

– Isolationist foreign policy

• Late 19th / Early 20th centuries– American attentions begins to turn abroad– America’s growing economic power brings influence

with the world’s most important nations.

– .

The United States as a Superpower (I)

• World War II propelled the United States into a position of leadership.

• Within a decade of World War II, the United States stood as the unchallenged economic, political, and military power among the Western nations.

• Conflicts with the Soviet Union: Cold War• Implications of America’s superpower status

The United States as a Superpower (II)• Dramatic changes in the world political,

military, and economic systems occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.

• The collapse of the Soviet Union left the United States as the world’s only military superpower.

• Presidents sometimes have difficulty translating these changes into diplomatic preeminence.

The Foundation Beliefs of American Political Culture

• Competitive individualism: people are naturally competitive, always striving to better themselves in relation to others– Americans tend to believe that an individual’s

fate is tied to his or her own efforts.– Americans endorse the idea of equality of

opportunity, but reject the idea that people should have equal rewards.

– Competitive individualism is not common in most other modern capitalist nations.

The Foundation Beliefs of American Political Culture

• Limited government: government must be limited in its power and responsibilities– Closely associated with the idea of individualism – Concern that a powerful government is likely to

threaten individual rights– Reflected in the words of the Declaration of

Independence and in the ideas of Adam Smith and John Locke

– Belief in limited government is not common in most other modern capitalist nations.

The Foundation Beliefs of American Political Culture

• Free enterprise– Americans tend to support the basic precepts of

free enterprise capitalism.– This set of ideas about individualism, limited

government, and the free market (referred to by some as classical liberalism) influences many aspects of public policy.

– Americans simultaneously show strong popular support for free enterprise and express negative feelings about corporations and corporate leaders.

Citizenship and the Nature of the Political Order

• Beliefs about what kind of political order is appropriate and what role citizens should play shape the actual daily behavior of citizens and political decision makers.

• Democracy — one of the foundations of the American belief system, despite non-democratic features of American history

• Freedom and liberty — at the top of the list of American beliefs, and more strongly honored than elsewhere

• Populism — hostility of the common person to concentrated power (both political and economic), and the powerful

• Piety — Americans are much more religious than people in other rich democracies

Structural Influences on American Politics

• Politics and government are strongly shaped by structural factors such as:– the nature of society– the economy– the nation’s place in the world– the political culture