Why should you care about power, politics, and government?
In 1620, a group of English colonists arrived off the shore of Plymouth, Massachusetts. They hoped to settle there as a community. However, before their ship landed, some colonists threatened to split off from the others. To quell this revolt, the group s leaders demanded that all adult males sign a document promising to obey the rules and laws enacted by the group. This agreement, the Mayflower Compact, organized the signers into a “civil body politic,” or a government.
Like the signers of the Mayflower Compact, groups of all shapes and sizes throughout history have felt the need for some sort of government. Government serves many purposes. Among the most important are maintaining public order, protecting life and property, and providing public goods.
Living in violent times, both Hobbes and Locke emphasized the need for government to preserve order and protect people s lives and property. Without such protection, wrote Hobbes, people would be condemned to live in &rlquo;continual fear and danger of violent death. ”
Today, governments are equally concerned with providing a wide range of public goods to their citizens. You benefit directly from public goods. Your community s schools, the roads you travel on to get to school, and the fire and police protection you enjoy are all public goods that you receive from your government. You also benefit from public goods when you visit a national park or feel safer knowing that our nation is protected by the armed forces.
Public goods have two key characteristics. First, more than one person can consume them without reducing the amount available to others. Consider streetlamps. If you walk under a streetlamp, you do not reduce the ability of others to use its light. Second, once a public good is made available, all people have the right to use it. After being installed, a streetlamp shines its light on everyone.
Neither of these characteristics is true of private goods. Consider an apple that you buy at a grocery store. Once you take a bite of the apple, you have reduced the amount available to others. And since you own the apple, nobody else has a right to consume it. Your apple is a private good.
Governments throughout history have had two key powers that are essential for providing protection and public goods. These two building blocks of government are (1) a means of coercion and (2) a means of collecting revenue.
Coercion refers to the various ways in which government can use its power to force citizens to behave in certain ways. The most obvious means of coercion include the police, the courts, and the prison system. Governments use the threat of arrest and punishment to maintain public order and keep people secure in their homes and in public spaces.
Other means of coercion relate to involuntary services required of citizens. One example is conscription, or a military draft, in which government compels young men and women to serve in the armed forces. Another involuntary service is jury duty, in which a panel of citizens decides an accused person s guilt or innocence.
The second building block of government is a means of collecting revenue. All governments need money to provide security and pay for public goods. They generally get that money from the people they govern or control.
The ways that governments collect revenue have varied historically. Ancient empires extracted tribute, or payments, from the smaller states they controlled. Such “gifts ” of goods or money were a sign of submission from the smaller states. For much of its history, China received tribute from peoples on its borders. China also levied taxes on its citizens. Through taxation, the Qin dynasty acquired the resources it needed to build one of history s early public goods: the Great Wall.
Governments take many forms. In the past, most governments, like that of China, were headed by a single, powerful ruler. In contrast, the ancient Greeks experimented with forms of government ranging from rule by the rich and powerful to rule by all male citizens.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who is revered as the father of political science, thought deeply about who should have the power to rule. Aristotle was motivated by an interest in ethics, or proper conduct. This led him to an examination of many possible forms of government.
Aristotle categorized governments along two lines. One was how many people are involved in governing-one powerful ruler, a few upper-class aristocrats, or the mass of common people. The second was their motivation in making decisions. Ideal rulers, he said, cared about the common good. Corrupt rulers, in contrast, cared only about advancing their own selfish interests.
As a philosopher, Aristotle liked to consider ideal forms. The ideal form of government, he reasoned, was a monarchy led by a single, virtuous ruler. But Aristotle also prided himself on being a realist. Rule by a single person, he knew from experience, could easily lead to the abuse of power. He admitted that
In the real world, Aristotle wrote, rule by the well-intentioned many would suit most societies. He called this kind of government a polity. In a polity, he argued, the best-qualified citizens, whether rich or poor, would dominate government.
Two thousand years after Aristotle wrote about government, the founders of the United States faced some of the same questions he had explored. Although they ended up creating a different kind of government than imagined by Aristotle, his writings strongly influenced their thinking.
When political scientists study government today, they are usually concerned with the larger and complicated governments of nation-states. All nation-states share these four characteristics:
Territorial integrity. A nation-state occupies a specific geographic territory, with internationally recognized boundaries.
Stable population. A nation-state has people living permanently within its boundaries.
Code of laws. The people of a nation-state agree to live under a common legal system.
National sovereignty. A nation-state is independent and self-governing.
The nation-state is a fairly modern political phenomenon. It merges two concepts: the nation and the state. A nation is a group of people who share a common ethnic origin, culture, and language. A state is a geographical area controlled by a single government.
The governments of modern nation-states are quite varied. In some, power is concentrated in the hands of one or a very few powerful leaders. In others, like the United States, power comes from the people and is broadly distributed throughout the government.