Table of Content

Table of  Content

Modern Ideologies Chapter 2

Policies of the State Chapter 4

Authority and Legitimacy Chapter 7

Democracy and its Recent Surge in the world Chapter 8

Autocratic Government Chapter 9

Elections Chapter 11

Parties Chapter 12

Interest Groups Chapter 13

Parliament and Presidential Chapter 14 -15

Bureaucracy Chapter 16

Reflection

Reflection

Reflection

    This year in the class of political science I learned how important politics is for the world. How they worked and how  complicated is to really understand. Many people are involved in politics to have power and control a place, they have to pass many things to be elected so is this people that work with politics are very healthy and intelligent.

     Politics are based on decision making.  A leader has to make a common decision for a group of people to work together and efficient. The use of power by one person or a  group of people to affect the behavior of another person. Politics exists within any of these groups whenever a decision that will apply to all the members of the group is made. There are two characteristics that define politics: politics always involves the making of common decisions for groups of people and decisions are made by some members decisions for group exercising power over other members of the group.

       Political science had help me see that is not only about power but of making the right decisions. Leadership is a hard thing to do many parts of the world the different ideologies of controlling a state had made some problems between countries but every country works different.  Know that I've learned more about politics I know is more than only getting power.

Presidential and Parliamentary government chapter 14 - 15

Presidential and Parliamentary government

by:Krisna Mendoza

    The legislative and the executive are elected independently of each other. Two distinct features of the presidential system: The first one parties are often more loosely organized than in parliamentary systems. Second, there is no guarantee that President’s party will also control the legislative.

      

     One representative is the US Congress has two houses: the House of Representatives and the Senate. Leaders of each are elected by the party that has majority in the house, the committee chairs are appointed from the members of the majority party. Seniority is the principle here. In a parliamentary system, members vote along the party lines, this does not necessarily need to happen in a presidential system.

    

      Policy Leadership, presidents take more direct personal charge of policy than the cabinet does in a parliamentary system. The majority party and the cabinet are a team in a parliamentary system. But the president is directly elected by the people. Unlike parliamentary cabinets, the presidential cabinet does not contain party notables. The president is also the head of the army. Responsibility for policy is more difficult to identify in a presidential system because it is hard to blame anyone like the President, the Congress or the Supreme Court. 
 

      It is hard to understand policies in a presidential system than in a parliamentary system because a bill can be blocked at any stage in a presidential system, the governments are relatively slow to respond. In the parliamentary system, almost all the leaders come from careers in the parliament/politics. In a presidential system the President and his cabinet may have different backgrounds. 
 

    Parliamentary system the Prime Minister and ministers regularly report to the parliament. In a presidential system the members of the executive operate relatively isolated. The executive is split into the Prime Minister and the cabinet, but these functions are united in the President in a presidential system. Some parliamentary systems have monarchs, Kings and Queens, however they have symbolic functions.

   

     Parliamentary systems are simpler, more direct, and usually more efficient to make policies. However, there are other factors like the history, the culture, and the cleavages in the country. There are hostile parties in a country, it is hard to maintain stability. Then one can argue that it is better to have a presidential system. Presidential systems are also efficient for large countries. So it depends, there are a lot of factors to consider. In the US, the Supreme Court resolves the disputes between various power holders. 9 people can annul acts of Presidents and the laws passed by the Congress.

   Greenstein views leadership is a function of six qualities. Proficiency as a public communicator. Organizational capacity. Political skill to get other people to do what he wanted. Having an overarching goal and the ability to see how specific policies would help bring about that goal. The ability to process the torrent of advice and information that president receives on every issue. The ability to manage his emotions and turn them to constructive purposes, rather than being dominated by them and allowing them to diminish his leadership.

      Parliamentary systems are simpler, more direct, and usually more efficient to make policies. The legislative and the executive are elected independently of each other. Policy Leadership, presidents take more direct personal charge of policy than the cabinet does in a parliamentary system. Stage in a presidential system, the governments are relatively slow to respond. 

Interest Groups Chapter 13

Interest Groups

By: Krisna Mendoza

    

      What is an interest group? is an organized group of citizens one of citizens one of whose goals is to ensure that the state follows certain policies.  There are a great interest groups in a modern state, so many that it is hard to form a precise idea of their numbers. Interest groups are large and diverse in big countries such as United States. Interest groups are not confines to democracies or open societies.

       Interest group are probably the main vehicle in most states for representing public opinion and bringing is to bear in an organized way on the governmental authorities. Channels used to transmit public demands. The legal access channels are: Personal connections, Interest groups, Mass media, Political parties, Legislatures, Government bureaucracies, Protest demonstrations and strikes.  The political parties and the interest groups are different.

       Political parties aim to attain or maintain power, however interest groups do not have such an aim, instead they aim to influence decision making and the politicians. Second, parties blend various demands, not just support particular ones because they have to appeal to more people, however interest groups focus upon particular issues.

       Interest groups usually accomplished this fairly well; otherwise they would not be the workhorses of political advocacy that they are. However, there are three important barriers that keep interest groups from functioning. First one, not all interest groups are equally well organized. For instance, producer interests are always easier to organize than consumer interests. Also, some groups command a disproportionate voice in the interest group system because they have special advantages. Finally, most interest groups are not organized democratically. The side benefits of joining any interest group are called selective incentives. 

   There are possible solutions for the problem of free riding. The first one are Smaller groups  that are better organization and easier monitoring. Second, selective incentives for participants only. Third, coercion and punishment. Finally, education and inculcation. There are three types of interest groups: sectoral, institutional and promotional. Sectoral  represent a sector of the economy, they have huge financial power, and they dominate most interest group systems in most countries. Ex. Ford Motor Company. Institutional: they are established for purposes other than political activity. They are politically active only to defend their own interests. They would exist even if they do not have to do anything with politics. Ex: a public university, Red Cross. Promotional, they organize around an idea or a point of view.

        Promotional interest groups appear to be especially important in the politics of the United States, compared with most other states of the world. Ex: the Christian Coalition. Promotional interest groups appear to be important in the US than they are in the other countries, because:  The political parties in the US are weaker and less unified on policy. The US has two party system which does not have a room for small specialized parties, so promotional interest groups are more active. 

    There are three types of Tactics of interest groups: Control of information and expertise. Ex. Oil corporations know about oil business than anybody else.  Electoral activity: Especially for groups with large number of members to vote or raise money for certain candidates.  Use of economic power: M. Luther King managed to organize a boycott of the city bus system of Montgomery, Alabama. Public information campaigns: using media to enlighten the masses about an issue.  Violence and disruption: Ex. separatist groups. Litigation: Ex. to file court cases.  

     There are two types interest group systems:  Degree of organization: Ex: in some countries institutional interest groups are stronger and larger than the others, like Southern countries, in those countries armies and churches are stronger. Degree of direct involvement: it is the degree of direct involvement of the interest groups in government and administration.

     Pluralism: in pluralism no one interest group is able to dominate. The government is open to pressures from all types of groups, politics is a competition of different groups. Neocorporatism: all interests are organized and structured, the state deals with the interest groups directly. Ex: Scandinavian and Latin American countries.

Parties Chapter 12

Parties: A linking and leading mechanism in politics.

By: Krisna Mendoza

     For Americans, the two major parties are very alike. Elections often turn to the personalities of the candidates rather than the party affiliation. The political party crops up in all aspects of politics. United States was the first country to develop different political parties.

     A political party is a group of officials or would-be officials who are linked with a sizeable group of citizens into an organization. The aim is either to attain power, or to maintain in power. Interest groups and parties are different. Interest groups try to influence decision making process without actually taking power or joining the elections. Interest groups are a group of people with a common interest who band together to try by way of lobbying, campaign contribution, and other tactics to make sure that the government’s policies will be in tune with their wishes. Some examples are: American Medical Association and Friends of the Earth. A party has a formally organized structure. The US parties are known by their looseness of organization.

     Origins of the modern party have turned out to be useful for a variety of tasks that require control or communication. Before democracy, people attained offices by being born into them, by buying the office, by buying the office, by bribery or by appointment.  After democracy, many of these positions were filled by elections. The would-be official had to seek the votes of the people.

      The politicians in the new democracies realized that some sort of organization that would link them with large numbers of people would be extremely useful. Then, with expanded suffrage, many political parties emerged. The first modern electoral democracy was the United State of America, and it was here that the first parties develop. By the 1820s, there were well-organized parties, and the Democratic Party, which can trace its roots back to that time, is the oldest political party in the world.

     There are 6 functions of the parties: mobilization of the masses, political socialization, political parties as a source of political identity, aggregation of interests, integration into the political system and political parties as a channel of control. The mobilization of the masses it's getting people to vote. They use various tools such as pa Party rallies, advertising, campaigning and electoral propaganda. The stronger and more organized the parties the higher voters they would get. Weak parties lead to lower voter turnouts.

     Political socialization teach their members how to play the political game. Happens both for the leaders in the parties and for the people. Some examples for political parties are democrat, republican, and communist. Aggregation of interest is when parties aggregate separate interests into a larger organization. The smaller the groups seek representation the smaller the parties seek votes.

      Parties usually pull some groups that had been left out before into the political system. There is also a give and take relationship: votes versus representation.
political parties are a channel for controlling other political leaders. There is a party hierarchy. There are different party finances such as: Individual contributors/membership fees, interest groups, public finance, profits from business enterprise, subsidies from other countries and bribes and kickbacks. 

     There are four different political party systems.  One party system they are non-democratic, one party rules. Some examples are former communist states.  Dominant party system is a single party holds the power for a long time, but the system is democratic an example would be Mexican Party of the Institutionalized Revolution. Two-party systems: two parties receive over 90 percent of the votes. An example would be US and UK. 

     Multi-party system and it consists of more than two major parties. Coalitions and minority governments may be seen from time to time. Most democratic systems are multi-party systems. One major reason to determine the party system is the electoral system.

Elections Chapter 11

ELECTIONS

BY: KRISNA MENDOZA

      There are many purposes of election. Elections originated with democratic governments, which means that they came along at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. The mayor purposes of election are: Participation to choose rulers, Mobilizing people to remain part of the political system and building support for the system.

    Elections as a means of selecting leaders and policies, elections are meant to do more than bolster support for the regime. Elections must involved a choice between candidates or a choice whether a particular policy is to be followed. Some democracies provide for the referendum, a device by which the voters choose directly through their ballots whether a particular proposal will become law. Controlled referendums are also sometimes used in autocracies to stimulate support in the elections.

     Electoral systems is when political leaders, must be some rule for translating people's votes into a particular selection of leaders. There are two types of electoral system  SMDP and PR. SMDP system, the state is divided into sets of districts, usually having roughly equal population. A plurality is the largest number of votes cast for any candidate. A single member is elected from each district by a plurality of votes. There are districts roughly equal populations, There is one representative from each district and plurality is the principle. SMDP tends to drive out small parties and to produce two large parties. The basic principle of PR is that political parties. Representation is proportional to the votes. PR is invented because SMDP does not give proportional results and SMDP favors large parties. PR favors all parties. 

    Some state use SMDP because the benefits outweigh the unfairness electoral participation is likely to be higher under PR than it is under SMDP. To limit the policy options into two major alternatives. The bias of SMDP in favor of large parties is a function of two conditions the first one  is If a small party has most of its strength concentrated in a few districts, it may not be hurt by the SMDP system. An example is Canada. Second, the smaller the number of district, the more likely it is that small parties will be hurt by SMDP. 

     Referendum is refer as an electoral choice. In democracies, citizens elect the leaders, and then leaders decide. In some

democracies people can also choose among different policies. This is referendum. There is no national referendum in the US, but many local ones. On the electoral participations not everybody votes. This is a problem. Electoral participation is higher in European democracies compared to the US. Some people are more likely to vote than the others, for instance, educated people, suburban residents, well-off people, farmers, and old people. National elections always get a higher turnout than the local ones. Also elections under the PR electoral system have higher participation.

     One example of a paradox of participation the chance that one man's vote will decide the issue in a national election is less than the chance that he will be killed on his way to the polls. It is called paradoxical because, if things are considered from this perspective, no one who is sensible should vote. Paradoxes have solutions, and we can try two possible solutions for this one. The paradox holds only for voters taken one at a time.

    When people vote, a single vote would not change anything. Consider the fact that voting is a collective thing. Secondly, looking at voting only in terms of costs and benefits, people could be mistaken. There are other factors such as dutifulness, love of country, social pressures, personal pride, selfish reasons and so on. Voting is always the best way to choose a leader.

Autocratic Government

Autocratic Government

By: Krisna Mendoza

    Autocratic government has its own fragilities. On this chapter we look at two aspects. Look at some mayor forms of autocratic government and explore the sources of their fragility and success. What is autocracy? the autocratic alternatives to democracy are by no means of one piece.

     The union of soviet socialist republic decisions were made collectively within the party, with strong leadership by the party head and great deal of influence from such groups or army. Pakistan has a history of sporadic, brief democratic rule punctuated by military takeovers has not been good for the country. Saudi Arabia was an absolute monarchy for most of the twentieth century , with power lodge in the Saud family. Democratic republic of Congo became independent from Belgium. These are examples of autocratic systems. First they are varied politically and second many autocracies are not organized stably.

Military government the military in any state control more armed power than anyone else. If they choose, as group, to oust the exiting government there is no one who can stop them. Civilian governments must depend for their reluctance to take over the government. All three would from time to time fail and that the military would break out in a coup.

A military government takes power through no regular process but simply seized it, so how can it claimed that no other group should be similar. A democratic government is legitimized by the rules of succession on which is based; a communist government is legitimized by Lenin's theory. Another problem of most military governments is that while their leaders may be skilled politically, there is little in the profession for which they have been trained that makes this likely. As the result of the problem, purely military governments are actually rather fragile.

    One party states, most autocracies are not straight military government but one party state. The one party state is distinguished by the fact that the government is based on and supports a political party that is the only party allowed in the state. One party arrangement have often had their origins in military coups. What distinguished these states from other autocratic system, especially from straight forward military governments, is the existence of a reasonably large national political party that bolters the government,  is the existence of a reasonably large national political party. A national party is likely to embrace at least a reasonable range of the social groups in a state.

     Court politics a characteristic of many autocratic especially of monarchies and of personal dictatorship like that which the Duvalier family exercised in Haiti from 1957 to 1986, but also of many military governments and one party states. Some examples would be the power held by Hitler in Nazi Germany, Stroessner in Paraguay, Duvalier in Haiti and Khomeini in Iran. Court politics is usually marked by: less emphasized on the rule of the law and more arbitrary whim of the ruler, politic is based on competing force and heavy competition by other figures for access to the leader.

      The One party governments often see themselves as pursuing communal objectives and develop organizational mechanisms for bringing a wide spectrum of opinion to bear on the governments decisions. The autocratic alternative is quite a diverse thing and not necessarily stable.  A number of autocratic states have set up institutions of politics, especially through a single party governments. Court politics a characteristic of many autocratic especially of monarchies and of personal dictatorship. Most autocracies are not straight military government but one party state.