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Politics and Government

What Does Politics Mean?
What exactly is politics?  David Easton called politics "the authoritative allocation of values."  In other words, someone or something has power to hand out things that are considered good.  The government (authoritative) will distribute (allocation) money for welfare spending (values).  Harold Laswell's definition tends to look at politics as a matter of who actually benefits (qui bono).  He defined politics as a matter of "who gets what, when and how."  The elderly (who) are eligible for Social Security benefits (what) when they retire (when), because they vote, they visit members of Congress, they send countless letters to Congress and the President, and they protest (how).  In order to get what they want, people must successfully jump into the political process.

What Is the Point of Government?
Hand in hand with politics is this concept of "government."  The Dye textbook describes government as an "organization extending to the whole society that can legitimately use force to carry out its decisions."  Something you should notice right away is the importance of legitimacy.  A government makes decisions that are legitimate; people agree this organization is lawful.  Terrorist groups might use force but they do not have a sense of legitimacy as does a government.  In other words, to be considered legitimate there must be some "widespread acceptance that something is necessary rightful and/or legally binding."

Yet what exactly is the purpose of government anyhow?  While one could likely come up with a long list of reasons for having a government, such as funding higher education or regulating product safety, government has four general purposes.  The first centers around issues of law and order: maintaining order, establishing justice and ensuring domestic tranquility.  The government thus exists to establish the rule of law to preserve both life and property.  In his book, The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes argues that life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, brutish, and short."  Imagine yourself without a car, fashionable clothes, movie theatres, and even a stable home.  Your day becomes a matter of finding food and shelter every single day!  You could very well die without these; and in a land of scarcity that is a gruesome reality.  What if you knew of a way to remove such daily fears, so you could find safety from these terrors?  According to Hobbes, people need a ruler with "unquestioned authority" to guarantee safety for the weak; government becomes a means for survival.  Along with John Locke, Hobbes argued that people have certain rights (such as the right to live) deriving from the state of nature (by a Divine power).  People will thus make a social contract: by obeying the laws of the government (away from vigilante justice) people will have their rights protected.

The second purpose, providing for the common defense, speaks of the need to protect the nation's borders.  After all, even the most freedom-loving government is useless and short-lived without the ability to protect its citizens.  To this end, government creates some method of national defense such as a national military.

The third purpose, promoting the general welfare, affirms the demands of citizens for public goods: benefits and services that are available to everyone.  Simply think about the national parks system, and even public education.  In addition, one need only consider the Interstate Highway system begun by President Eisenhower in the 1950s.

The last purpose, securing the blessings of liberty, means that government protects freedom and further makes certain people are treated equally in the eyes of the law.  Article III of the Constitution dictates that "the judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity."  As part of a common law tradition, equity simply means that people are treated fairly: if the laws are unfair, judges may consider the overall fairness of a situation at hand.  People are thus expected to respect the Constitution and its laws.  More importantly, in order to secure the blessings of liberty, governments (democracies in particular) provide various freedoms.  In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution provides protections to the freedoms of speech, religion, and even the right to petition and assemble the government.