| A. | What is a political system? | |
| Includes elected and non-elected officials/Includes a multitude of public servants and contractors/Includes a multitude of public policies which are all around us/The political system touches everyone, sometimes in very personal ways/The "authoritative allocation of values and resources"/Like all systems, the political system can be broken down into subsystems which are systems in their own right. | ||
| B. | What is public policy and how is it made in the US? | |
| Public policy defined/Constraints upon public policymaking/Steps in making public policy/Theoretical models of public policymaking. | ||
| C. | Elections and Hot-Button Politics | |
| What happened to truth, integrity and nobility of public service?/Problems with two-party systems/Pushing the voters' buttons/Government is supposed to freeze up in gridlock when there is no agreement/There will always be hot buttons/Low voter turn out leads to polarized parties/What about a multiple party system?/Choosing between grouping the buttons together or giving each button its own party/Should representatives be determined via hot buttons?/Why have elections anyway? | ||
| D. | Representation Revisited | |
| Choosing between a direct democracy and a republic/Founders of US not fond of direct democracy/A problem of "distance" - one is too close, the other too far removed/Flaws of implementing representational government/(1) The body which is supposed to represent the people, does not look anything like the people/(2) The individual is powerless to affect public policy/(3) The individual is lost in the crowd/(4) The Individual is overshadowed by the Group/Time for a new synthesis |
3/22/97