Description
Please respond to five of the following six short response questions posted below. Your answers should be short, focused, and complete, ranging from two to three paragraphs. Please make sure to answer each specific part of every question. Successful answers will reflect your own thinking and understanding of the material.These answers will provide details and context that support your arguments and explain your position to the readers. You may also want to provide real world examples taken from the readings, lectures, group discussions, or your own independent thinking. Only the first five responses you enter will be graded (there is no benefit to answering all 6 questions).1. Why do we have parties? What roles do they play in a representative democracy? How can these roles be beneficial? How can they be harmful?2. a) Why does the US have only two major political parties? Make sure and describe Duverger’s law and strategic behavior on the part of voters, politicians, and parties. b) Explain why it would be hard for a third party to be electorally successful. c) What institutional/electoral reforms could be made to create more viable opportunities for additional parties in American politics? d) Would these reforms be helpful? Why or why not?3.a) ) How does the desire for reelection shape the behavior of members of Congress? b) How do these electoral incentives help explain what elected officials do while in office and what they want to avoid? c) How do electoral incentives make individual Congresspeople individually responsive but Congress as a whole collectively irresponsible? d) How does the leadership in Congress help overcome the problems of collective action to make Congress work?4. a) What are the benefits of the Congressional committee system? b) What are the possible downsides? c) How do the parties use this structure to their advantage?5. a) In your view, what are the most important factors that contributed to the rise of presidential power in modern American Government? (for this question, please choose two or three factors from the readings and lectures that you personally found most interesting/persuasive). b) Do you think the Presidency is too powerful today? Why or why not? What reforms (if any) would you recommend to address presidential power?6. Neustadt & Kernell both describe ways in which a President can deal with Congress & others outside of the executive branch. a) What are their central arguments? b) How does Kernell’s theory update Neustadt’s idea? c) Are they compatible?rule:Use terms from class. Many of you used great examples, but never connected things to concrete details from class. If you were getting B’s and C’s on an answer, it is likely because you left out key terms/ideas you needed to incorporate from our models or textbook.Please use the correct names for things. The Supreme Court is not called the High Court, the Confederate Regulations are not the Articles of Confederation, and so on. Some of these terms are appropriate in other nations’ contexts but use the names given by this class if you are unfamiliar with the U.S. system.If you give an example, cite where it is from. Too many students gave examples (something like a state law) where they didn’t relay where they came from. If they are from the book great, cite the book. If they are not cite your other source.Proofread for typos, to reduce redundancies, and condense. These are not full five-paragraph essays, and they aren’t meant to be three paragraphs with each paragraph being a whole page long. It’s an incredibly useful skill to be able to find the most appropriate answer and convey that as efficiently as possible without distracting information.Have a friend or family member read over it before you turn it in. Utilize your community!
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Question Set 1
Zaotong Jiang
POL SCI 21A
Professor Boushey
October 18, 2021
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How do constitutions (and political institutions and rules) help resolve common
collective action problems?
Constitutions and political institutions lay out the groundwork for reaching and
enforcing collective agreements. These may include processes like agenda control, veto
power, and supermajority rules to assist in dilemma solving and lowering the expenses
affiliated with collective operation. Politics is the procedure through which people and
organizations attain mutually beneficial contracts (Ch. 1 Introduction – American
Government 3e | OpenStax, 2021). Because there is often significant dispute over the
objectives of collective activity, political accomplishment usually entails bargaining and
compromise. Collective activities can normally profit both persons and groups.
Defense spending, civil order, individual freedoms, and public recreational areas such
as the are all illustrations of government-provided common utilities that would be challenging
to deliver via private enterprise. People must conquer several obstacles in order to achieve
collective action. These include coordination issues, in which compliance on what is expected
to be done and the conditions that must be done to achieve it. Even when people concur on
the advantages of a group effort, the prisoner’s difficulties can result in the quest for personal
benefit at the cost of the betterment. Politics is rampant with convict’s quandaries, such as the
free-rider of the commons.
What important tradeoffs must the architects of constitutions consider when they think
about how they will empower the government to solve problems of collective action?
According to political scientist Robert Salisbury, group leaders will offer incentives to
encourage individuals to participate. Some provide material incentives or tangible rewards
for joining a group. For instance, AARP members receive discounted rates on travel and
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accommodation and insurance premiums, and dues are very low, so they can end up saving
by uniting. Group leaders may also provide solidary incentive schemes, that provide the
benefit of collaborating with others who share similar fears or are comparable in other
aspects. According to some researchers, people are naturally drawn to others who share their
concerns. The NAACP is a civil rights organization dedicated to promoting equality and
eradicating racism
.Dimensions are not only required for understanding democracy, but they also
condition and support one another. In democratic theory, freedom without a certain level of
equality is as unthinkable as equality without freedom. Control is required for securing and
realizing them: control that, in turn, delineates the boundaries of democratic rule in relation to
legally established norms of freedom and equality. The basic concept of the democracy
matrix is expressed by the reciprocal reinforcing effect between the dimensions: all
dimensions, and thus all 15 matrix fields, must be sufficiently functional in order to classify a
country as democratic.
Barron v. Baltimore (1833)
Since they protect citizens’ liberty from inappropriate government action, the
privileges in the Bill of Righ; ts are effectively comprehended as “civil liberties.” The Bill of
Rights assured personal privacy of individual freedom unrestricted of restrictions imposed,
however not only the First Reform seeks to constrain the federal government explicitly. The
Supreme Court introduced the principle of “dual citizenship” in Barron v. Baltimore (1833),
holding that people were people of both the national and state government agencies and that
the Charter of Rights and freedoms thus did not extend to the state’s administration in relation
to the nations.
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The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, mentioned that “no State has the right
or impose any law abridge[ing] the advantages or protections of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State denude any individual of the existence, personal freedom, or assets,
without the due procedure of law.” Amidst this language, the Supreme Court proceeded to
embrace the theory of “dual citizenship” in the Slaughter-House cases, establishing a
procedure of incorporation doctrine in which the Court would preferentially “incorporate”
rights from the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment on a case-by-case grounds. By
the 1960s, the Supreme Court had nationalized numerous privileges, including privacy rights,
thereby broadening their scope.
4. Jim Crow was a symbol of racial segregation.
Jim Crow segregation (Opens in a new window) was a lifestyle that merged a scheme
of anti-black laws with race-biased cultural practices. The term “Jim Crow” is frequently used
to describe racial segregation, especially in the American South. From the 1870s to the
1960s, the Jim Crow South was a period in which local and state laws imposed legal
segregation of white and black citizens. It was illegal for black Americans to start riding in
front of public buses, eat at “whites only” restaurants, or attend a “white” public school in the
Jim Crow South.
There was also a more subtle social aspect to Jim Crow, which demanded that African
Americans always show servitude and inferiority to whites. A black man who succeeds in
business may have his shop burned down by envious whites. A black woman who fails to
step off the sidewalk to create room for a white man may be shot the next day by her
employer. A black man who had an affair with a white woman could be strung up in the
middle of town. Most Southern whites saw African Americans’ claims to pride or equality as
an affront.
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Jim Crow was derived from the name of a black personality in early and midnineteenth-century American cinema. Crows are blackbirds, and Crow was the last name of a
stock completely fictitious black character, most often did play upon the stage by a white man
in blackface. Because of the popularity of this character, the term “Jim Crow” became a
disparaging term for Africans.
.
The core theme of American politics is the enduring struggle of minority groups to
secure the equal protection of civil rights and civil liberties under the law.
During the Jim Crow era, felony disenfranchisement was one of the most effective
tools for denying Black citizens the right to vote. Amidst the VRA’s many accomplishments,
this exclusionary strategy has been permitted to persevere and spread across the nation for
years. Particularly, the drug war aimed at people of color for parole and probation,
exacerbating the impacts of discriminatory practices across the country. Citizens, such as
those who have earned their own share of mistakes in the past, compensated their liabilities to
society, and are now leading active lifestyles, must be permitted to cast a vote and fully
participate in the election system for the democratic system to operate. However, most
Americans, the majority of whom are racial minorities, were incapable to cast a vote in the
year 2016 because of a felony conviction
An effective democracy necessitates the active involvement of all citizens. Nonetheless,
notwithstanding the legal and policy advances that have expanded the ability to vote,
the United States politics persists to resurrect to be unfair not mentioning the
controversial issues such as black lives matters and the COVID 19 issues 1.1 What is
Government? – American Government 3e | OpenStax. (2021). Openstax.org.
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. employing new voter suppression tactics that target people of color. It is not an
option to remain vigilant against these efforts and to reject any and all remnants of the racist
past. To summarize To t, federal lawmakers should repeal the Existing law of the Voting
Rights Act completely. They should also impose new laws to ban foreign governments from
attacking the electorate of color for disinformation initiatives and overall to offer a fair
environment to the people of color.
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References
Ch. 1 Introduction – American Government 3e | OpenStax. (2021). Openstax.org.
1.1 What is Government? – American Government 3e | OpenStax. (2021). Openstax.org.
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