Governance and Representation

Course Grade Components

• Reading Quizzes - $10\%$ of the total grade

  • What? Short multiple-choice and fill-in questions based primarily on readings.

  • When? After each unit.

• Participation & Discussion Board Posts - $10\%$ of the total grade

  • What? In-class participation and responses to discussion prompts.

  • When? Throughout the term, usually $5-7$ days per prompt.

• Current Events Postings - $5\%$ of the total grade

  • What? Posting news articles of interest for the class with a short blurb.

  • When? Throughout the term.

• Midterm Exam I - $20\%$ of the total grade

  • What? Primarily an in-class written essay exam.

  • When? (Time to be determined).

• Midterm Exam II - $20\%$ of the total grade

  • What? Form is to be determined.

  • When? (Time to be determined).

• Final Exam - $35\%$ of the total grade

  • What? (Form to be determined).

  • When? (Time to be determined).

Unit 1 Road Map

• What's Government? -- Definitions?

• Why Government?

• The Collective Action Problem

• Transaction Costs & Conformity Costs

• The $3$ Tensions of American Government

• "A Republic or a Democracy?"

Learning Objectives

• Identify the main purposes of government and the major types of government, including constitutional democracy.

• Define politics and explain how representation enables citizens to influence political decisions.

• Describe why achieving effective governance and meaningful representation can be difficult, even when people agree on these principles.

Introductory Terms & Definitions

• Governance: The process of governing, which involves making official decisions about a nation's affairs and having the authority to put them into effect.

• Government: Refers to the institutions through which a land and its people are ruled.

  • Max Weber's definition ($1918$ German Sociologist): "A human community that successfully claims a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a defined territory."

• Citizen Representation: An arrangement in which citizens select individuals to express their views when decisions are made.

Examining Weber's Statement

Analyzing "A human community that successfully claims a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a defined territory."

• Community: Refers to the people themselves, sharing a common space or identity.

• Monopoly: Implies exclusive control; the government is the sole entity allowed to use physical force.

• Legitimacy: The widespread acceptance by the populace that the government's use of force is rightful and just.

Why Is Government Necessary?

Government makes it possible for people to live together by accomplishing three key goals:

1. Maintaining order: Ensuring safety and stability within the community.

2. Protecting property: Safeguarding individual and collective assets.

3. Providing public goods: Offering services or goods that benefit everyone and are not typically supplied by the private sector.

Public Goods

• A public good (also called a collective good) is defined by two characteristics:

  1. It may be enjoyed by anyone if it is provided.

  2. It may not be denied to anyone once it has been provided.

• Public goods are typically not provided by private companies due to their non-excludable and non-rivalrous nature.

Forms of Government (Based on Limits of Power)

• Constitutional: Specific limits are placed on the powers of government.

• Authoritarian: No legal limits are placed on government, although power may be checked by other social institutions.

• Totalitarian: No legal limits are placed on government's power, and the government actively seeks to eliminate other social institutions that might challenge it.

  • Simply, "totalitarianism is an extreme form of authoritarianism that involves an effort to practice total domination."

Who Rules? (Based on Number of Rulers)

• Autocracy: A form of government in which a single individual rules.

• Oligarchy: A form of government in which a small group of people (e.g., landowners, military officers, wealthy merchants) controls most of the governing decisions.

• Anocracy: A form of government that blends democratic and authoritarian features.

• Democracy: A system of rule that permits citizens to play a significant part in government, usually through the selection of key public officials.

The State of Democracy

• The Global Democracy Index (2022) rates countries based on electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture.

  • Full democracies: scores $9.00-10.00$ and $8.00-8.99$

  • Flawed democracies: scores $7.00-7.99$ and $6.00-6.99$

  • Hybrid regimes: scores $5.00-5.99$ and $4.00-4.99$

  • Authoritarian regimes: scores $3.00-3.99$ and $2.00-2.99$ and $0-1.99$

• Data suggests a decline in liberal democracies, with an increase in electoral autocracies and closed autocracies globally from $1921$ to $2021$.

A Brief History of Democratic Government

• The U.S. government is a representative democracy bound by a constitution that places limits on what the government can do and how it can do it.

• Prior to the $17^{th}$ century, governments paid little attention to the opinions of ordinary people.

• The shift toward representative government, primarily driven by the middle class in some Western European countries, involved:

  • Increasing the independence of parliaments relative to monarchs.

  • Guaranteeing individual freedoms.

More Definitions: Constitution, Power, & Authority

• Constitution: A nation's written set of rules and procedures its institutions must follow to reach and enforce collective agreements.

• Authority: The acknowledged right to make a decision.

• Power: Refers to an office holder's actual influence over other government actors and over government actions.

Even More Definitions: Politics & Institutions

• Politics: The process through which people and groups reach agreement on collective action, even when disagreeing on the goals of that action. Success in politics often requires bargaining and compromise.

• Institutions: Formal rules, informal norms, and understandings that constrain the behavior of political actors. They set rules and procedures for how competing preferences are reconciled, generally aiming for stability and resistance to change.

Politics: The Bridge between Government and Representation

• Politics is defined as conflict and cooperation over the leadership, structure, and policies of government—or, more simply, conflict over who governs and who has power.

• Politics manifests in many forms: voting, running for office, joining groups and parties, lobbying, and even everyday discussions.

The Collective Action Problem

• Collective action: Occurs when a number of people work together to achieve some common objective.

• Collective action problem: Though individuals in a group may share common interests, they often fail to cooperate to achieve a group goal or common good because each individual also has conflicting, self-interested motivations.

• Examples: Global warming, overfishing, waste disposal, group projects/study groups.

Costs of Cooperation: Free-Riding & The Tragedy of the Commons

• The Tragedy of the Commons: A situation where individuals, acting independently and rationally according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting some common resource.

  • Examples: Climate change (GHG emissions from China: $11.58 ext{ bn tonnes}$ , US: $5.83 ext{ bn tonnes}$ , India: $3.24 ext{ bn tonnes}$ , etc.), overfishing, waste and garbage disposal, the study group or group project.

• Free-riding: Enjoying a public good without contributing to its cost.

  • This occurs because each individual's contribution to the collective activity is often so small it seems negligible, and the costs are spread out to all instead of to one.

Coordination Problems & The Prisoner's Dilemma

• Coordination problems: Occur when people want to cooperate but cannot always coordinate their efforts effectively.

• Sometimes cooperation is the best collective outcome, but individuals, being rational and self-interested, may choose not to cooperate if they perceive a greater individual benefit from defecting.

• The Prisoner's Dilemma: A classic example illustrating why two rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so.

The Costs of Collective Action & Limits to Political Agreement

Achieving collective action involves balancing benefits with costs.

• Transaction Costs: The time, effort, and resources required to make a collective decision.

  • The larger the group, the higher the cost due to more views to consider.

  • Sometimes high transaction costs are intentional, such as those embedded in the process for a constitutional amendment.

• Conformity Costs (compromise): The costs associated with trade-offs; the costs of doing something people don't want to do.

  • Costs are lower if more people have a say.

  • Example: Socialized medicine, which might involve higher taxes, imposes conformity costs on those who do not wish to pay more.

Easing the Coordination Problem

• Representative Government (Delegation): Limits citizens' decisions to voting for leaders or agents, rather than direct democracy on all laws.

  • This lowers transaction costs by reducing the number of direct decision-makers.

• Institutions: A set of formal rules and procedures, often administered by a bureaucracy, that shapes politics and governance.

• Institutional Design: The deliberate crafting of institutions to achieve specific goals.

  • Can limit participation (e.g., to lower transaction costs).

  • Can enhance participation (e.g., to lower conformity costs).

The Three Tensions of American Government

1. Principal-Agent Problems (Delegation): Challenges arise when one party (the agent) is authorized to act on behalf of another (the principal), but their interests may not align.

2. Representation vs. Governance (Special Interests): Tensions between providing better representation for diverse voices and achieving effective, timely governance.

3. Majority Rule vs. Minority Rights: The inherent conflict between decisions made by the majority and the protection of the fundamental rights of minority groups.

Delegating Authority in a Representative Democracy

• In a principal-agent relationship, an agent (e.g., an elected official) is expected to act on behalf of a principal (e.g., a constituent).

• However, principals may not always get what they want because each party (principal and agent) is motivated by self-interest, and their interests may not be well aligned.

• The Federal bureaucracy in the United States, composed of both appointed and career officials, can experience significant delegation issues due to these misalignments.

The Tension between Representation and Governance

• Tensions exist between better representation and effective governance because:

  • Many voices and special interests can slow down the decision-making process (transaction costs).

  • Some powerful groups may be sheltered from governance due to their disproportionate influence (conformity costs).

• This tension can be viewed as a variant of the trade-off between conformity costs and transaction costs.

The Enigma of Majority Rule

While fundamental to democracy, majority rule presents challenges:

• Harm to Minority Rights: It can potentially override or infringe upon the rights of minority groups.

• Difficulty in Consensus: Reaching a clear majority consensus can be challenging.

• Condorcet's Paradox: Sometimes, no course of action is consistent with majority rule, meaning a collective preference can be cyclical (A over B, B over C, but then C over A), even when individual preferences are rational. For example:

  • Voter $1$: Defense > Health Care > Environment

  • Voter $2$: Health care > Environment > Defense

  • Voter $3$: Environment > Defense > Health care

  • In a pairwise vote, Defense (Voter $1$, $3$) > Health Care (Voter $2$),

  • Health Care (Voter $1$, $2$) > Environment (Voter $3$),

  • Environment (Voter $2$, $3$) > Defense (Voter $1$)

  • This creates a cycle where no single option wins a majority against all others.

Protecting Minority Rights

Various mechanisms protect minority rights:

• Who constitutes minorities? Can include groups defined by race and ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, age, physical condition, military status, and even political leanings.

• Constitutional Protections: Civil rights and civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

• Political Minorities via Institutional Design in Congress:

  • Senate Cloture and the Filibuster: Rules in the Senate that require a supermajority ($60$ votes) to end debate, protecting minority parties from being steamrolled by the majority.

• The Electoral College: Historically, it was argued that the Electoral College helps protect smaller states and rural areas (minorities in terms of population) from being ignored in presidential elections.

Theories of Governance

Addresses the question: Who governs?

• Elite Theory of Governance (Top-Down View):

  • Suggests that a small, identifiable group of elites (e.g., business, military, political elites) holds most of the power.

  • These elites often share common traits such as race, gender, education (e.g., Ivy League like Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden), and wealth.

  • Policies influenced by this theory would likely favor the interests of these elites.

• Pluralist Theory of Governance (Bottom-Up View):

  • Proposes that power is distributed among a variety of competing interests and groups (e.g., unions, businesses, single-issue groups).

  • No single group dominates, and different groups influence different policy areas.

  • Reality: Political trade-offs are a constant reality, evident during the Framing of the Constitution, in Congress, and among various interest groups.

Spotlight: "Is the US a Democracy or a Republic?"

George Thomas's argument:

• The Framers explicitly distinguished between direct democracy and a republic.

• They designed a republic to shelter democracy from the potential volatility of demagogues and