Chapter 1

1. Chapter 1 DEMOCRACY AND AMERICAN POLITICS

2. The Struggle for African-American Voting Rights • The right to vote in meaningful elections is fundamental to democracy. • Long struggles for the right to vote • Despite the Civil Rights Acts, a significant increase in voter registration among African-Americans did not occur until after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed.

3. The Struggle for Democracy • We live in an age of democratic aspiration and upsurge. • People around the globe are demanding the right to govern themselves. • American political ideas and institutions often have provided inspiration for democratic movements elsewhere. • The struggle for democracy still continues in our own society.

4. Democracy • The central idea of democracy is that ordinary people want to rule themselves and are capable of doing so. • The central meaning of democracy is rule by the people, self-government by the many. • Democracy involves faith in the capacity of ordinary people to govern themselves wisely. • Democracy has become so popular that people both in the United States and around the world have struggled to attain it.

5. Americans’ Preference for Democracy • The authors of The Struggle for Democracy suggest that Americans prefer democracy over other forms of government. • Democracy has made great advances over the course of American history, but democracy remains incomplete in the United States. • Democracy is used in so many different contexts that clarification is needed before democracy can be used as a standard of evaluation.

6. Direct Versus Representative Democracy • Direct participatory democracy— to the ancient Greeks, democracy meant rule by the people exercised directly in open assemblies. • Representative democracy — rule by the people, exercised indirectly through representatives selected by the people.

7. Fundamental Principles of Representative Democracy • Popular sovereignty • Political equality • Political liberty

8. Possible Objections to Majoritarian Representative Democracy • Democracy leads to bad decisions. • Majority tyranny threatens liberty. • The people are irrational and incompetent. • Majoritarian democracy threatens minorities.

9. Democracy As an Evaluative Standard: How Democratic Are We? • Chapter 1 of the text shows how and why the democratic ideal can be used as a measuring rod to evaluate American politics. • Each of the fundamental principles of democracy suggests a set of questions that can be used to think critically about American political life.

10. Understanding How American Politics Works • The main factors of political life are interconnected (illustrated in the text by the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act). • The main factors of political life can be organized into three categories. • Structural sector — includes fundamental and enduring factors that influence government and politics

11. Political linkage sector — includes political actors, institutions, and processes that are involved in transmitting the wants and demands of individuals and groups to government officials • Governmental sector — includes all public officials and institutions that have formal, legal responsibilities for making public policy

12. American politics should be understood holistically. • American political life must be understood as an integrated, ordered whole. • What goes on in government can only be understood by considering all three sectors of analysis. • Feedback also occurs — influences sometimes flow from the governmental level to the others.