Introduction

Welcome to POL166, the American Political System. My name is Barry Murdaco. This course is designed as a broad survey of American national government and politics. Starting from the historical foundations of the American government, we trace its development from colonial times to the present. Focusing on conflicts between values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, with the realities of political life.

This course will examine the structure, as well as, the functions and purposes of the American political system. We will emphasize historical struggles to gain the right to participate in American "democracy". The challenges are to explain the mechanics of the American political system, and understand the changing nature of the purposes it has served throughout history. The nature of the American political system cannot be understood without accounting for the inclusion of groups, like women, African Americans, the working class, and immigrants, that were, or are, excluded from participation. As these groups gain the ability to participate, does the purpose of government change as well? We will also focus on aspects of the system remaining constant over the years.

Recent events have also shown that even once gaining the power to participate in American politics this power can be rolled back or taken away. So, we will also examine efforts over the last decades to make American politics more undemocratic.

Students are responsible for completing the readings, lectures, and assignments every class. There are also features on the blog that allow the students to access news sources as well as links to various educational resources.

Please read the syllabus completely for a breakdown of the readings and the assignments as well as the objectives of the class and all other relevant information.

Please read the syllabus in its entirety. The readings have been posted on Blackboard. Please use your Lehman e-mail account since the link for the lectures will be sent through Blackboard.

For the reflection papers, simply pick a quote from one of the readings for each class, write out a quote, explain what the quote means, and why you chose it. There should be one completed for every class, so eleven in total.

Since it is likely many are new to a political science course it is helpful to define a few key terms to understand the political system.

We will look at American politics in a dialectical way. Dialectics is a way of looking at things in connection with other things. So when we examine American politics, we will look at the various parts that make up American politics. When doing so, we realize that there are various contradictions in American life. First of all, it is asserted that America is a democracy, the "home of the free and the land of the brave," however there are a multitude of aspects of American life that contradict this. The goal here is to understand how all these aspects of life are connected to each other, so that the democratic aspects of American life are connected to the undemocratic aspects. That the democracy enjoyed by some is only possible because of the undemocratic aspects of life that are imposed on others. However, you can also argue that the potential for a more democratic politics for all is also possible, though currently unrealized. Being aware of and working to undo these contradictions of American politics is an important step in that process. Doing so will also give us a more complete picture of life in America. Dialectical thinking can be a tricky term to understand, but I like to think of it as the corrective or the remedy to one-dimensional or overly simplistic ways of looking at the world. It forces you to understand the connections between things and not just look at things in isolation or select just one aspect of life and pretend that is how things are for everyone. The idea of wealth and prosperity in America is another important area where this relates as well.

What is politics? Politics can be defined as the struggle for control over the distribution of power in a given society or organization. "Politics," "political," or "polity" derive from the Greek word polis, which means "city-state" but its original meaning meant something more like "stronghold."

City comes from the Latin word civitas, as do the related words, "civil" and "civic" and the concept of citizen or citizenship which originally referred to a member of a city-state. The root word civis originally meant to "lie down or sleep", so in a literal sense citizenship means belonging to a place where you can rest peacefully, or "home". The symbolic value of "home" and what it means to people is hard to exaggerate, for many people it is linked to their sense of belonging and connectedness to other people, in other words, to not have a home, or a place where you can rest peacefully, is the very definition of what it means to be "alienated". The idea of alienation in modern society also being a widespread theme in modern culture. Many argue the political life of the city, is the only "organic" political life, but even this organic sense is undermined by the conditions of modern society.

The ancient Greek city-states like Athens and Sparta developed over time a unique identity. The word "ethnic" or "ethnicity" comes from the Greek word ethnos and refers to "people" but originally meant "self" or ego, as in self-identity.

Today the concept of "city-states" are archaic (with few exceptions), a product of ancient times, like the ancient Greek city-states, or later the Romans, who were never referred to as "Italians" but always for the city-state or polis where they originated from–Rome. 

The modern concept, replaces "city" with "nation" so you have the nation-state. "Nation" is similar to ethnic and refers to a people with a unique cultural identity. Nation is similar to "native" and comes from the Latin word nativus or natus and means "birth" as in place of birth, and is actually similar to the word "natal" as in "pre-natal care." It is important to remember that a nation is more abstract, less concrete, than a city, but the cultural force of "nationalism" can have a very strong influence over people. Nationalism can also be a force for equality, as it confers equal status upon people. 

Nationalism is also linked in many ways to different linguistic groups, in other words speaking a specific language is an important criteria for membership of a "nation," e.g. speaking French, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Korean, etc. Some languages are spoken in more than one nation (or derived from a common root language like Latin), others are very specific to nations. Furthermore, you can even argue that when languages are shared across national boundaries, nations are less prone to conflict with each other, take for example South America and Europe. Conflicts between different South American states are relatively few in comparison to the history of Europe, even up until modern times like the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s (also motivated by religion but gave birth to the horrendous term "ethnic cleansing"), or the possible breakup of the European Union and the rise of right-wing nationalist parties in Europe (including Germany). The link below shows a map of different ethnic groups in Africa, and the different languages spoken. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_of_Africa
Of course, conflicts between nations are rooted in more than just linguistic differences, the importance of economic forces is of paramount importance, nor can the use of nationalism by ruling elites to conceal conflicts between economic classes in society be overlooked.

Concepts like ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship are all similar but there are crucial differences. Ethnic and nation refer to properties and traits that you are born with and cannot change, similar to the Latin word patria, meaning "fatherland" and similar to words like pater, padre, or patriarch, it is also the root of the word "patriotism" or "patriot."

Citizenship however does not directly refer to place of birth or relationship ( i.e. father-child) to the land, but refers to a place where you can rest peacefully or feel at "home". In some cases the place where you are born may be the place where you rest or feel at home, but not necessarily. The idea of security and protection also relates to the concept of the polis as a "stronghold," in other words a place that provides protection.

"City" or "nation" then refer to cultural entities. The other half of  "nation-state" needs to be explained, what is the state?  The organization which has power, or "a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a given territory" is referred to as the state. "State" comes from the Latin word status or stare meaning "to stand" or could mean "presence," when the state exerts power it makes its presence felt. The state reserves the authority to use violence, or the right to delegate the use of violence to others, but states come to regulate more than just war and play a role in social life. Politics is a struggle for control over the state. The state is then defined primarily in a legal sense: the legal right to use force over individuals and groups. 

When you heard commentators speaking of extending "governance" in Afghanistan or Iraq for example, they are referring to extending the monopoly of the use of violence over a territory (Governance comes from the Greek word kubernáo and means "to steer"). In a very literal sense, the problem of the US in Afghanistan was the inability to steer or control the territory, or to monopolize the use of force even with the US backed government in Kabul. This monopoly was disputed by the Taliban, who besides providing armed fighters maintain a legal system and court structure in competition with the Afghan government and even basic services like sanitation–all aspects of governance. In other words, the Afghan war was never a winnable war, there was never any point when this conflict would have ever turned out differently. US commentators also overlook the fact that the US supported the Taliban and other fundamentalists in their war against the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Power can be defined simply as the ability to influence others to act in accordance with your will, and ability to overcome resistance to goals. Analytically speaking, power is measured by results and outcomes not by the use of coercion or persuasion, either of which can be considered power. Power is closely related to "reason" as it is defined in Western culture, since reason can help calculate the most strategic way of using power.

Most of the most powerful nation-states have a democratic political structure and rule by law. In other words, the struggle for power in the state, proceeds along a set of rules based upon electoral contests. Democracy comes from the Greek words demos meaning people, and kratos meaning strength or rule, so literally rule by people. The authority to use violence is conditioned by acceptance to rules specifying permissible and impermissible conduct. Law means "what has been laid down" and refers to binding rules of conduct that everyone must follow. In a democratic nation-state, laws are designed to maximize liberty or equality, or to impose order upon people without violating these principles as much as possible.

In reality, law often infringes liberty and equality, and often results from ethnic conflict. To speak of American nationality sounds less awkward then referring to American ethnicity, although in many cases nation and ethnicity are identical like France and the French, Germany and Germans, Italy and Italians. 

The American nation is not identical with a single ethnic group although many would argue that the Anglo-Saxon ethnic group has identified itself with the American nation. The evolution of the American political system can only be explained sufficiently by understanding the cultural conflict between different ethnic, racial, and gender groups to gain access to the polis and to citizenship, as well as the economic conflicts of different classes. Cultural conflicts, of course, are inseparable from economic conflict between different classes which historically speaking in the U.S. have tended to fall across the same ethnic, racial, and gender lines. Gaining access to citizenship has then always been associated with economic and social advancement as well.

The concept of "nation-building" although it can be applied to the U.S. as well is usually used to describe nations that have one or more ethnic groups in conflict with each other. The small European state Belgium is surrounded on all sides by nations with extremely strong national identities: France, Germany, and the Netherlands or Holland (Dutch). Although the state tries to create a sense of Belgian national identity, in reality Belgium is composed of distinct ethnic groups that have a history of fighting with each other: mainly Dutch with a large French minority, and a smaller German minority. Given Europe's horrible record of ethnic conflict and its strong desire to escape this past, it is no surprise then that the headquarters of the European Union is located in Belgium's capital, Brussels (the EU itself is an innovation that tries to create a sense of European identity and citizenship, over national identity).

The nation of Afghanistan is almost 100 years older than the nation of Belgium, and leading U.S. officials referred to the war in Afghanistan not as nation-building, but nation-(re)building. Afghanistan is also composed of multiple ethnic groups: Pashtun and Tajik, and several others. While a Afghan national identity may have once existed, that sense of identity has eroded. 

Finally, to understand the relationship between the American citizen and the state, the concept of "civil religion" is useful. Since the late 1960s, the idea that American citizenship is similar to a sense of religious devotion has become popular. The early origins of words like polis and civis show at its core the concern of politics is with safety and self-preservation and is egoistic to that extent, however, many throughout American history have argued that this cannot properly explain the American's reverence for the Declaration of Independence,  the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers. In this regard words like patria, which express a kinship relationship perhaps comes close to sense of devotion one feels towards their homeland.  One could also argue that it shows that religious devotion is itself rooted in egoistic feelings of preservation, put simply, people tend to make sacred over time what contributes to their preservation.

The sociologist Robert Bellah is credited with coining the term civil religion in the late 1960s, but many others use this idea as well. The idea of civil religion is explains the sense of devotion citizens feel towards the state, but also shows the structure of religious belief and the political system. Certain common traits shared by both are: a concept of a divine or divinely inspired leader, prophets, martyrs, devils, sacred rituals, holidays, and Scriptures. The President as the leader of the civil religion has played many different roles, from the "Moses-like" George Washington, to the "prophetic" and "martyred" Abraham Lincoln, and even "devils" like Richard Nixon or George W. Bush. Cornel West has written extensively on the "black prophetic tradition" in the country. We will examine all these categories more as we go through the class, especially the relationship of the idea of civil religion with the even more celebrated idea of "the separation of church and state." Religious and linguistic differences are itself related to different ethnic groups and form a great part of what makes up the differences between ethnicities.