American Government

Concepts
Dana
Melissa
POS 110
9th , 2011
May 1
 Introduction
 Politics and government matter in so many ways.
 Many people have different out looks and views on how
things in our country should be run, however we do have a
system in place that is designed to protect and help our
government run as smoothly as possible.
 Politics
 Politics is a process by which groups of people make
collective decisions.
 Term is generally applied to behavior within ones civil
governments.
 Has been observed in other group interactions, including
corporate, academic, and religious institutions.
 Democracy
 Government by the people, exercised either directly or
through elected representatives. A political or social unit
that has such a government.
 Several varieties of a democracy, some provide better
representation and more freedoms then others for their
citizens.
 Political Culture
 Is the traditional orientation of the citizens of a nation
toward politics affecting their perceptions of political
legitimacy.
 Is how we think government should be carried out and is
different from ideology because people can disagree on
ideology but still have a common political culture.
 Government

 Is the organization or agency in which a political unit

exercises its authority, controls and administers public
policy and directs and controls the actions of its members
or subjects.
 Commercial, academic, religious or other formal
organizations are also governed by internal bodies.
 These bodies may be called, board of directors, managers,
governors or administrators in the schools.
 Majority Rule
 A decision rule that selects one of two alternatives, based
on which has more than half of the votes.
 A binary decision rule used most often in influential
decision making bodies including that of legislatures.
 Minority Rights
 Minority rights embodies two separate concepts, first
normal individual rights as applied to members of racial,
ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or sexual minorities.
 Also applies simply to individual rights of anyone who is
not part of a majority decision.
 Representation

 Describes how political power is alienated from most of the

members of a group vested, for a certain time period.
 Usually refers to representative democracies, where elected
officials nominally speak for their constituents in the
legislature.
 Four theories of representation are: Authorization and
accountability, Symbolic Representation, Descriptive
representation and Substantive representation.
 Conclusion
 In looking at our government and how it is run, there is a
system of balances that is followed to help keep things in
order.
 With out the order of checks and balances that we currently
have in place to run our government, we would more than
likely have a chaotic government, and a chaotic people with
no leadership.
 References
 www.awnsers.com/democracy
 www.english.emory.edu/bahri/representation.html
 www.minorityrights.org
 www.democracyweb.org
 www.virgina.edu/sociology/publications