POLS 34102 Lecture 1: CH 01 OUTLINE
29 Jun 2018
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CH 01 OUTLINE
What Americans Think about Government
1. Americans historically have been reluctant to grant government too much power and have
often been suspicious of politicians, but they have also turned to the government for assistance in
times of need and have strongly supported it in periods of war.
2. Public trust in government has declined since high points in the 1960s and in the aftermath of
the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, reaching a new low in 2015. Low levels of trust in
government have helped fuel support for "outsider" candidates, critical of government, in the
2016 presidential elections.
3. Political efficacy is the belief that citizens can affect what government does. In recent decades,
the public's trust in government has declined. As public distrust of government has increased, so
has public dissatisfaction with the government's performance.
4. Americans today are less likely to think that they can influence what the government does.
This view has led to increased apathy, declining political participation, and withdrawal from
political life.
Citizenship: Knowledge and Participation
1. Informed and active membership in a political community is the basis for citizenship. Citizens
require political knowledge to be aware of their interests in a political dispute, to identify the best
ways of acting on their interests, and to know what they cannot or should not ask of politicians
and the government. However, today many Americans have significant gaps in their political
knowledge.
2. Opportunities for political knowledge and participation have migrated online, creating a new
concept of digital citizenship.
Government
1. Government is the term used to describe the formal institutions through which a land and its
people are ruled. Governments vary in their structure, their size, and the way they operate.
2. Beginning in the seventeenth century, two important changes began to take place in the
governance of some Western nations: governments began to acknowledge formal limits on their
power and they began to give citizens a formal voice in politics through the vote.
3. As Harold Lasswell, a famous political scientist, put it, politics is the struggle over "who gets
what, when, how." The term politics refers to conflicts and struggles over the leadership,
structure, and policies of governments.
4. Politics can take many forms, including blogging, sending emails to government officials,
voting, lobbying legislators, and participating in protest marches and even violent demonstrations.
Who Are Americans?
1. As the American population has grown, it has become more diverse. In the early years of the
Republic, the majority of Americans were European settlers, mainly from northern Europe. One in
five Americans was of African origin, and the vast majority of this group had been brought to the
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Low levels of trust in government have helped fuel support for outsider candidates, critical of government, in the. 2016 presidential elections: political efficacy is the belief that citizens can affect what government does. In recent decades, the public"s trust in government has declined. As public distrust of government has increased, so has public dissatisfaction with the government"s performance: americans today are less likely to think that they can influence what the government does. This view has led to increased apathy, declining political participation, and withdrawal from political life. Informed and active membership in a political community is the basis for citizenship. Citizens require political knowledge to be aware of their interests in a political dispute, to identify the best ways of acting on their interests, and to know what they cannot or should not ask of politicians and the government.
