American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. PikaЧитать онлайн книгу.
of the tension between majority rule and minority aspirations.
majority rule The principle that 50 percent plus one of the people should be able to elect a majority of elected officials and thereby determine the direction of policy.
minority rights Basic human rights that are considered important to guarantee for minorities in a democracy.
When studying a democracy such as the United States, we need to examine how the country deals with these two basic problems: How (and to what degree) is majority rule ensured? And how are minority rights protected under majority rule? These two questions will figure prominently in the succeeding chapters of this book.
Republics
A concept that is often contrasted with democracy—and sometimes confused with it—is the republic. In the study of politics in general, a republic is simply a country not ruled by a monarch. But in the study specifically of American politics, we add another layer of meaning to the term. As you will see in Chapter 2, as the original founders of the United States considered how to design the new democracy and write its constitution, they used the term to denote government by the people’s elected representatives, who—though they are ultimately responsible to the people—rule primarily on the basis of their own intelligence and experience. So, for them, a republic was distinguished from direct democracy as well as from monarchy. We will use the term republic to mean an indirect democracy that particularly emphasizes insulation of its representatives and officials from direct popular pressure. In political rhetoric today, the term republic is often used by people who favor democracy but do not favor intense and direct popular involvement in democratic government.
Functions of Government
As we have seen, in the division of labor required by indirect democracy, some people serve as the elected representatives of the citizens and rule on their behalf. These people are the government, and they make decisions that are binding for all people in the country. Since most people, all other things being equal, would prefer not to be bound by rules, our views of government and its functions are generally characterized by some ambivalence: On the one hand, we do not enjoy being ruled; on the other hand, the alternative would result in chaos.
What sorts of functions do governments perform? What sorts of decisions do we want to have the government make for us? As a first answer to these questions, consider the Preamble to the United States Constitution, in which the authors laid out their reasons for establishing a central government:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This Preamble alludes to two basic kinds of services that cannot easily be accomplished without government, and their provision accounts for two functions of every government of the world. The first function, captured by the phrase “[to] insure domestic Tranquility,” is to provide basic security for people to live together and to deal with each other in financial transactions. The second function, exemplified by the phrase “[to] provide for the common defence,” is to provide certain services called public goods—among them national defense—that can only be provided effectively by a government.8 In addition to providing these two basic kinds of services, governments can and do perform a range of additional functions, as expressed by the phrase “[to] promote the general Welfare.”
In other words, governments have to exist in order to provide a secure social and financial environment and public goods, but they can do other things as well. Governments often end up doing a variety of other things since, once a government exists, citizens often want it to perform additional services. Thus, government can shape the context of our lives in all sorts of ways. Let’s look more closely at these functions of government.
republic An indirect democracy that particularly emphasizes insulation of its representatives and officials from direct popular pressure.
Maintaining Order and Safety
Since the government is the sole entity with the right to use force and coercion to implement its choices, it is able to enact and enforce rules against crimes such as murder, burglary, and assault, thus ensuring our security. It can also provide a common currency for—and regulate—financial transactions and guarantee that contracts will be enforced, ensuring the security of our property. To ensure enforcement of the relevant laws, the government maintains agencies such as the police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Treasury Department. In effect, the government provides the basic social and financial network within which people can carry on their lives securely, functioning in the society and in the economy. This is true of every government in the world.
Providing Public Goods
A public good may sound general but is in fact a very specific term. Public goods are more than “goods for the public”; they are, precisely, benefits that cannot possibly be given to some people while being withheld from others.9 Public goods include national defense, space exploration, basic medical research, and public health programs to control the spread of disease. It is physically impossible to prevent any member of the community from using these goods. For instance, the U.S. government cannot defend its entire country’s borders without also defending Phil Shively in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Public goods, such as clean air and water, benefit everyone, not only the specific people who paid for them.
DEA / ALBERT CEOLAN / De Agostini / Getty Images
Most importantly, the use of public goods cannot be restricted to only those who have helped to pay for them. Thus, public goods are dogged by the problem of free riders, who reason that since they will obtain the good in any case, they can get away without paying for its cost: “If I don’t pay my share, the army will still be there, and I’ll get all the benefits of it. Why should I pay?” Everyone could reason like this, so if a public good such as defense were left to private corporations or to organizations accepting voluntary donations, it would end up inadequately financed and everyone would lose out.10 That is where government comes in. Since a government has the right to use force to implement its choices, it can require people to pay taxes and then use that tax money to pay for the public good. Mandating shared payment of a public good eliminates free riders.
public good Something that benefits all members of the community and that no one can possibly be prevented from using.
free riders Those people who take advantage of the fact that a public good cannot possibly be denied to anyone by refusing to pay their share of the cost of providing the public good.
Let’s consider the case of public television, a public good that is largely funded by donations from viewers, not provided by the government in the United States and therefore suffers a serious free rider problem. Television signals that are broadcast on the air waves are a public good because no one in the community can physically be prevented from picking them up with a receiver, whether or not they have paid, so public television stations are faced with the problem of free riders. For this reason, every few months, the station’s staff finds itself forced to interrupt their programming in the hopes of encouraging viewers to help defray the costs of running the station. They appeal to guilt: “Only one in ten of you who watch this station is a member; the rest of you are free riders.” They appeal to acquisitiveness: “For the basic $35 membership, we offer this lovely ceramic mug, embossed with the station’s logo.” Perhaps the most effective pitch occurred a few years ago in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when the station staff promised