American Government III and Political Science: Opinion, Elections, Media, Parties, Groups; Method, Ideology, Regimes, the World

This is Unit Nine of Social Sciences and History, part two of two: from the pathways of influence to the political economy of the postwar world. Part one closed on the free rider and on rules shaping outcomes. This part crosses from American government into political science, and it carries the discipline's own first distinction: does a sentence say should, or does it say does. Normative questions are answered by reason; empirical ones by evidence, and the evidence yields generalizations that are probabilistic, never certain. Hold that distinction, and the ideologies, the regimes and the theories of the world sort themselves, down to the capstone, where a theory has a correlation and no mechanism and a debate has two camps and no verdict. By the end you will be able to tell an iron triangle from an issue network. To classify a question as normative or empirical. To match three theorists to their state of nature and name Weber's three legitimacies. To classify a regime on two axes. And to tell the postwar economic order as ideas then institutions.

Two entries on the pathways of influence: how groups reach lawmakers, and how lobbying is regulated.

The pathways.

SSH 0825 Iron Triangles, Issue Networks, Voting Cues

Groups support sympathetic candidates for access, and PACs distribute donors' money. Lawmakers take voting cues from groups on unfamiliar issues. An iron triangle joins a congressional committee, an agency and an interest group; an issue network is a looser coalition around one policy. Inside lobbying goes to lawmakers, outside lobbying to the public. The executive and judiciary are targets too.

Lobbying regulated.

SSH 0826 Lobbying Regulated: Registration, Disclosure, the Revolving Door

Some hold that contributing to candidates is speech the First Amendment protects; others that money is not speech and corporations are not persons, though the Court has disagreed, Citizens United in two thousand ten being the named case. Lobbyists must register, wait before lobbying after office, disclose activities, and avoid prohibited acts; violations can bring prison. Grassroots rises from below; astroturf is funded from above.

Five entries on political science's questions: politics defined, power and authority, normative against empirical, why generalizations are probabilistic, and how people act.

Politics defined.

SSH 0827 Who Gets What, When, and How

Politics resolves disagreements over scarce resources and differing preferences, and the anchor adopts Harold Lasswell's definition: who gets what, when, how, even within a family deciding where to live. A political actor is anyone engaged in it; politicians run for or hold office. Rules, reality and choices frame every outcome. Public policy is politics' main product.

Power and authority.

SSH 0828 Power, Authority, Legitimacy, Sovereignty

Power is the ability to get other actors to do what they would not otherwise choose, and it is unmeasurable. Sovereign power is ruled by no one else. Authority is the power to enforce rules, and it is legitimate when used consistently with those rules; bargaining is the attempt to resolve conflict. State, nation and country are three different key terms.

Normative against empirical.

SSH 0829 Normative Against Empirical: Classifying a Question

The exam gives a question or claim and asks whether it is normative or empirical, the outline's methods item, and the anchor's two sections define the split. Normative political science, also called political philosophy, asks about the meaning, purposes and goals of politics, what a good citizen is, what governments should serve; its answers come from reason and logic, not evidence alone, through three approaches: consequences, rules, or virtue. Empirical political science tests hypotheses on evidence, asking how the political world actually works and how politicians actually behave. It rests on facts, what can be counted, measured and verified, and yields generalizations, statements typically true though not for every case, probabilistic rather than deterministic, which describe, explain and predict. Governments ought to protect natural rights: normative, a rules approach. The purpose of the state is to make citizens virtuous: normative, virtue. Turnout rises with education: empirical, a generalization. Incumbents win about nine times in ten: empirical and probabilistic. A good policy is one that produces the most benefit: normative, consequences. Ask whether the sentence says should or does. The trap is treating empirical claims as certain; the anchor's scientists are tentative and expect revision. The second trap is dismissing normative work as opinion; the anchor calls it systematic study by reason. This is the distinction the lecture opened with, made into a test.

Generalizations.

SSH 0830 Generalizations Are Probabilistic

Political scientists use the scientific method without claiming universal laws: logic, reason and evidence, with techniques and data open to scrutiny, and conclusions held tentatively. Human behavior is partially predictable, so similar people in similar circumstances can be predicted, and predictions fail through bad data, lying to pollsters, or changed behavior. Motivated reasoning is concluding what one wants to believe.

How people act.

SSH 0831 Strategic or Expressive; Fast or Slow

People think fast, almost automatically, or slow, with effort; slow is hard, so fast prevails. Action is strategic, or instrumental, when aimed at an objective, and expressive when it reveals who one is, and either can be self-interested or public-spirited; a vote can help a candidate and show one is a voter. The ultimatum game shows context shaping choice.

Five entries on ideas and regimes: the state of nature, the ideologies, Weber's legitimacies, authoritarianism hard and soft, and classifying a regime on two axes.

The state of nature.

SSH 0832 Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau on the State of Nature

Hobbes and Locke imagined a state of nature without government. Hobbes saw a need for an unlimited ruler. Locke saw natural rights, so people would build a government to protect them, property and exchange included, and Smith extended that to free trade. Rousseau added the general will, and Greek thought had asked for virtuous rulers and mixed constitutions. The social contract's meaning differs by author.

The ideologies.

SSH 0833 Liberalism's Varieties; Nationalism, Communism, Fascism

Classical liberals defend rights, limited government, free trade and capitalism; Mill's harm principle enlarged freedom; the Depression added regulation, Hayek dissenting, and democratic liberalism became the industrialized world's form. Marx held capitalism destined for overthrow. Fascism answered communism with heightened nationalism and racial doctrine, and both extremes were totalitarian. Nationalism rose in the nineteenth century; the other anchor's socialism is the U.S. usage.

Legitimacy.

SSH 0834 Weber's Three Legitimacies

A government is the set of organizations with the widest scope of power over an area, claiming the final say on force. Most seek legitimacy, rightfulness, and Weber's three routes are tradition, charismatic magnetism, and rational law; propaganda and manufactured consent are substitutes. Broad legitimacy is a population's view, while judgments are individuals'. Illegitimacy invites civil disobedience or revolution.

Authoritarianism.

SSH 0835 Hard and Soft Authoritarianism

In authoritarian regimes power is held by a group not accountable through elections. Hard authoritarianism acts without consulting the majority; soft authoritarianism rules without approval yet often seeks the people's input. The anchor's examples are North Korea hard, Morocco soft, Iran a blend, alongside failed, fragile and weak states, theocracy, and the police state. The countries are the anchor's examples, unassessed.

Classifying a regime.

SSH 0836 Parliamentary or Presidential, Federal or Unitary: Classifying a Regime

The exam describes a representative government and asks its type, and the anchor sorts on two axes. Territory: a federal system divides power between national and regional governments; a unitary system holds power almost wholly at the national level. Executive: in a parliamentary system the legislature selects the executive, and a coalition government forms when no party holds a majority; in a congressional or presidential system powers are separated and the executive is independently elected, with legislators usually chosen from set districts. Elections cut across both: some parliaments, the anchor's example Israel's Knesset, seat parties by their share of the vote, proportional representation, and Mexico blends district seats with proportional ones. A recent trend is illiberal representative government, elected majorities rejecting rights standards, for which the anchor names Hungary and India. A prime minister losing a confidence vote and the cabinet falling is parliamentary. A president and a legislature elected separately and belonging to different parties is presidential. Provinces keeping their own police and schools by constitutional right is federal. Every major official answering to the whole national electorate is unitary. Seats allotted by each party's percentage is proportional. The trap is assuming parliamentary means unitary; the axes are independent. The second trap is naming the parties; the course names the country and the type as the anchor's example and no more.

Four entries to close: sovereignty and anarchy, four theories of the world, the United Nations, and the postwar economic order from Bretton Woods to the WTO.

Sovereignty and anarchy.

SSH 0837 Sovereignty, Anarchy, and Levels of Analysis

States use military, economic and political power, hard or soft, and success measures it. Sovereignty is a state's ability to chart its own course; with no overarching authority the system is anarchic, each state pursuing its goals, and states, IGOs and NGOs are the actors. Conflict is analyzed at the individual, state and global levels. Anarchy here means no hierarchy, not chaos.

The theories.

SSH 0838 Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism, Critical

Realism puts states at the center, pursuing security, and order requires a balance of power, with the security dilemma reading defense as aggression. Liberalism sees states cooperating through institutions for collective security. Constructivism reads the system as made by states' self-perception and norms. Critical theories, feminist and Marxist, bring in the underrepresented. Unipolar, bipolar and multipolar count the great powers.

The United Nations.

SSH 0839 The UN's Organs and the Regional IGOs

International law, from treaties and custom, creates obligation. The United Nations coordinates security and development: a General Assembly of one vote each, a Security Council of five permanent and ten rotating members, a Secretariat, and the International Court of Justice for interstate disputes, with the ICC, separate, trying individuals. Regional IGOs, the EU, NATO, the African Union, bend to their strongest.

The postwar economic order.

SSH 0840 Bretton Woods to the WTO: The Political Economy of the Postwar Order

The exam's international political economy item asks for the institutions and the ideas behind them, and the anchor's last chapter tells both as one story. The ideas first. In the absolutist era wealth was thought finite, a fixed stock of precious metal, and mercantilist monarchs protected their hoards with tariffs and monopolies. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution brought the possibility of wealth creation, and Adam Smith defined it: markets, the division of labor, and a limited role for government. The institutions second. At the end of the Second World War the United States, Britain and others met at Bretton Woods and created the International Monetary Fund for stability and the World Bank for development loans; a third body, the International Trade Organization, was never founded, so participants signed instead the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in nineteen forty-seven, which through rounds of negotiation became the World Trade Organization in nineteen ninety-five. Alongside them the Marshall Plan, in the anchor's figure, moved twenty-six billion dollars of recovery aid to Europe and Japan between nineteen forty-six and forty-nine; the figure is the anchor's and is not converted. The Cold War kept East and West apart, so Western financial powers set the agenda; its end gave the spotlight to modernization theory, an empirically supported hypothesis that economic development correlates with democratization, though the mechanism, the anchor says, is not yet uncovered. Since the nineties three issues have led: globalization and trade, finance and crises, and exchange-rate regimes. And the argument that closes the chapter is left as the anchor leaves it: many authors hold that capitalism's wealth-making mechanism also produces poverty, inequality and environmental crisis, and they divide between degrowth and sustainable development. Units fourteen and fifteen carry the economists' versions of these terms; here they are political science's. A theory with a correlation and no mechanism, and a debate with two camps and no verdict: that is the lecture's distinction, should against does, at the end of the unit.

Look at what you can now do. You can tell an iron triangle, committee, agency and group, from an issue network, and say lobbyists must register, wait and disclose. You can classify a question as normative or empirical by asking whether it says should or does, and you know generalizations are probabilistic. You can match Hobbes to the unlimited ruler, Locke to natural rights, Rousseau to the general will, and name tradition, charisma and law as Weber's routes. You can classify a regime on two independent axes, and you name the anchor's example countries and no more. And you can tell the postwar order as ideas then institutions, mercantilism, Smith, Bretton Woods, GATT to WTO, with the sums and the debate attributed, which is the discipline's own distinction carried to the end. Unit ten turns to geography, opening on the physical earth.