The Challenge of Democracy or The Future of Freedom

The Challenge of Democracy: Government in America

Author: Kenneth Janda

This complete introduction to American government offers a comprehensive program that integrates the core text with supporting materials to benefit both students and instructors. The Eighth Edition maintains the highly acclaimed, non-ideological framework, exploring three themes: freedom, order, and equality as political values; the majoritarianism v. pluralism debate; and the effect of globalization on U.S. politics.

• Brief callouts in the text inform students of Talking Politics audio clips on the accompanying web site and the instructor and student CDs. Follow-up questions encourage students to think about what they hear and can be answered online and submitted to instructors via email.
• The Looking to the Future feature invites students to consider trends in American government and then consider the implications of their answers.
• Politics in a Changing World focuses on the effect of globalization on American government.
• Can You Explain Why? features ask students to use critical-thinking skills to try and explain a political paradox, such as why Americans engage in more forms of political participation than people of other nationalities, yet don't vote as much.
• Compared with What? boxes in every chapter ask students to evaluate facets of the U.S. political system as compared to those of other countries.

Table of Contents:

Contents

Note: Each chapter concludes with a Summary.

• I. Dilemmas of Democracy
• 1. Freedom, Order, or Equality?
  The Globalization of American Government
  The Purposes of Government
  A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Government
  The Concepts of Freedom, Order, and Equality
  Two Dilemmas of Government
  Ideology and the Scope of Government
  American Political Ideologies and the Purpose of Government

  2. Majoritarian or Pluralist Democracy?

  The Theory of Democratic Government

  Institutional Models of Democracy

  Democracy and Globalization

  II. Foundations of American Government

  3. The Constitution

  The Revolutionary Roots of the Constitution

  From Revolution to Confederation

  From Confederation to Constitution

  The Final Product

  Selling the Constitution

  Constitutional Change

  An Evaluation of the Constitution

  4. Federalism

  Theories and Metaphors

  Federalism's Dynamics

  Ideology, Policymaking, and American Federalism

  Federalism and Electoral Politics

  Federalism and the American Intergovernmental System

  Federalism and the International System

  Federalism and Pluralism

  III. Linking People with Government

  5. Public Opinion and Political Socialization

  Public Opinion and the Models of Democracy

  The Distribution of Public Opinion

  Political Socialization

  Social Groups and Political Values

  From Values to Ideology

  The Process of Forming Political Opinions

  6. The Media

  People, Government, and Communications

  The Development of the Mass Media in the United States

  Private Ownership of the Media

  Government Regulation of the Media

  Functions of the MassMedia for the Political System

  Evaluating the Media in Government

  7. Participation and Voting

  Democracy and Political Participation

  Unconventional Participation

  Conventional Participation

  Participating Through Voting

  Explaining Political Participation

  Participation and Freedom, Equality, and Order

  Participation and the Models of Democracy

  8. Political Parties

  Political Parties and Their Functions

  A History of U.S. Party Politics

  The American Two-Party System

  Party Ideology and Organization

  The Model of Responsible Party Government

  9. Nominations, Elections, and Campaigns

  The Evolution of Campaigning

  Nominations

  Elections

  Campaigns

  Explaining Voting Choice

  Campaigns, Elections, and Parties

  10. Interest Groups

  Interest Groups and the American Political Tradition

  How Interest Groups Form

  Interest Group Resources

  Lobbying Tactics

  Is the System Biased?

  IV. Institutions of Government

  11. Congress

  The Origin and Powers of Congress

  Electing Congress

  How Issues Get on the Congressional Agenda

  The Dance of Legislation: An Overview

  Committees: The Workhorses of Congress

  Leaders and Followers in Congress

  The Legislative Environment

  The Dilemma of Representation

  Pluralism, Majoritarianism, and Democracy

  12. The Presidency

  The Constitutional Basis of Presidential Power

  The Expansion of Presidential Power

  The Executive Branch Establishment

  Presidential Leadership

  The President as National Leader

  The President as World Leader

  13. The Bureaucracy

  Organization Matters

  The Development of the Bureaucratic State

  Bureaus and Bureaucrats

  Administrative Policymaking: The Formal Processes

  Administrative Policymaking: Informal Politics

  Problems in Implementing Policy

  Reforming the Bureaucracy: More Control or Less?

  14. The Courts

  National Judicial Supremacy

  The Organization of Courts

  The Supreme Court

  Judicial Recruitment

  The Consequences of Judicial Decisions

  The Courts and Models of Democracy

  V. Civil Liberties and Civil Rights

  15. Order and Civil Liberties

  The Bill of Rights

  Freedom of Religion

  Freedom of Expression

  The Right to Bear Arms

  Applying the Bill of Rights to the States

  The Ninth Amendment and Personal Autonomy

  16. Equality and Civil Rights

  Two Conceptions of Equality

  The Civil War Amendments

  The Dismantling of School Segregation

  The Civil Rights Movement

  Civil Rights for Other Minorities

  Gender and Equal Rights: The Women's Movement

  Affirmative Action: Equal Opportunity or Equal Outcome?

  VI. Making Public Policy

  17. Policymaking

  Government Purposes and Public Policies

  The Policymaking Process

  Fragmentation and Coordination

  The Nonprofit Sector

  18. Economic Policy

  Theories of Economic Policy

  Public Policy and the Budget

  Tax Policies

  Spending Policies

  Taxing, Spending, and Economic Equality

  19. Domestic Policy

  The Development of the American Welfare State

  Social Security

  Public Assistance

  Health Care

  Elementary and Secondary Education

  Benefits and Fairness

  20. Global Policy

  Making Foreign Policy: The Constitutional Context

  Making Foreign Policy: Organization and Cast

  A Review of U.S. Foreign Policy

  Global Policy Issue Areas

  The Public and Global Policy

  Appendix

  The Declaration of Independence

  Articles of Confederation

  The Constitution of the United States of America

  Federalist No. 10 (1787)

  Federalist No. 51 (1788)

  Presidents of the United States

  Justices of the Supreme Court Since 1900

  Party Control of the Presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives 1901–2005

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The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

Author: Fareed Zakaria

Liberty and Democracy. The two go hand in hand in popular thinking, fused by more than two hundred years of U.S. history. More democracy means more freedom. Or does it? At a time when democracy is transcendent, the one political system whose legitimacy is unquestioned, this deeply important book points out the tensions between democracy and freedom. It ranges widely through the past and present to remind us that we can have too much of a good thing. Take American democracy, in many peoples' minds the model for the rest of the world. Fareed Zakaria points out that the American form of democracy is one of the least democratic in use today. Members of the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve -- institutions that fundamentally shape our lives -- are appointed, not elected. The Bill of Rights enumerates a set of privileges to which citizens are entitled no matter what the majority says. By restricting our democracy, we enhance our freedom. Nonetheless, we fall into the mistake of thinking, both at home and abroad, that the answer to our problems is always more democracy. But look at the post-Watergate reforms, which opened up politics. They brought into the halls of Congress not the voice of the people but the cries of special interests, well-organized minorities, and money. American government today is more democratic than ever before -- and also more dysfunctional. Abroad, the problem is that the spread of democracy has not produced a corresponding growth of liberty. We are seeing in many parts of the world, from Russia to Venezuela to the Palestinian Authority, a strange creature -- the elected autocrat. In the Arab world in particular we see societies trapped between repressive dictatorships and fanatical masses. Is there a way out? There is. Zakaria calls for a restoration of the balance between liberty and democracy and shows how liberal democracy has to be made effective and relevant for our times. Woodrow Wilson said the challenge of the twentieth century w

The New York Times

The Future of Freedom, however, is no polemic against elections. Rather, it is a calm antidote to the fervency of those who want to force elections down the throat of every society, no matter what its particular circumstances and historical experience. As any foreign correspondent knows, there are all kinds and gradations of dictators. Saddam Hussein cannot be compared to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, whose coup in Pakistan in 1999 led to an attempt at "radical political, social, educational and economic reform" that no elected politician would have dared. Nor can Lee Kuan Yew, who wrought an economic miracle in Singapore, be compared to another dictator, Robert Mugabe, whose thuggery and incompetency have brought Zimbabwe to the brink of famine and bankruptcy. Mr. Zakaria, far from extolling dictatorship, usefully reminds us of a complicated world that cannot be depicted as a Manichean divide between democratic and authoritarian. — Robert D. Kaplan

The Washington Post

The Future of Freedom s a work of tremendous originality and insight. — Timothy Noah

The New York Times Sunday Book Review

In his brave and ambitious book, Fareed Zakaria has updated Tocqueville. The Future of Freedom is brave because its central conclusion — that liberty is threatened by an excess of democracy — is deeply unfashionable and easily misrepresented. — Niall Ferguson

Publishers Weekly

Democracy is not inherently good, Zakaria (From Wealth to Power) tells us in his thought-provoking and timely second book. It works in some situations and not others, and needs strong limits to function properly. The editor of Newsweek International and former managing editor of Foreign Affairs takes us on a tour of democracy's deficiencies, beginning with the reminder that in 1933 Germans elected the Nazis. While most Western governments are both democratic and liberal-i.e., characterized by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic rights-the two don't necessarily go hand in hand. Zakaria praises countries like Singapore, Chile and Mexico for liberalizing their economies first and then their political systems, and compares them to other Third World countries "that proclaimed themselves democracies immediately after their independence, while they were poor and unstable, [but] became dictatorships within a decade." But Zakaria contends that something has also gone wrong with democracy in America, which has descended into "a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness." The solution, Zakaria says, is more appointed bodies, like the World Trade Organization and the U.S. Supreme Court, which are effective precisely because they are insulated from political pressures. Zakaria provides a much-needed intellectual framework for many current foreign policy dilemmas, arguing that the United States should support a liberalizing dictator like Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, be wary of an elected "thug" like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and take care to remake Afghanistan and Iraq into societies that are not merely democratic but free. (Apr.) Forecast: Zakaria has a weekly platform as a Newsweek columnist and high visibility as an analyst for ABC News. Reviews are guaranteed, and the controversial nature of Zakaria's thesis should encourage debate in the media. Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

The U.S. State Department has a Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor whose purpose is to "promote democracy as a means to achieve security, stability, and prosperity for the entire world" and "identify and denounce regimes that deny their citizens the right to choose their leaders in elections that are free, fair, and transparent." The Bush administration has already promised to bring democracy to Iraq after Saddam Hussein is ousted. And Americans regularly condemn China for being undemocratic and praise Russia for its democratic advances. Democracy is the way Americans distinguish the good guys from the bad, those regimes worth supporting from those not, and it is the first remedy prescribed for any country whose practices are disliked. But Fareed Zakaria, editor and columnist at Newsweek International, argues in The Future of Freedom that many developing societies initially fare best under what he calls "liberal authoritarian regimes," and that "what we need in [American] politics today is not more democracy but less."

Zakaria's provocative and wide-ranging book is eminently worth reading. If not entirely persuasive when dealing with contemporary American politics, he is correct that Americans' obsession with electoral democracy has clouded their understanding of countries such as Russia, China, and South Korea and led at times to disastrous policy choices. This case has been made before, but never as simply and clearly. His book displays a kind of argumentation, grounded in history and political philosophy, of which there is precious little these days, particularly among opinion columnists.

Library Journal

Newsweek International's editor exposes the down side of democracy, i.e., the assumption that what's popular is right. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The problem with democracy is that it lets just about everyone have a say. Or so would go an inelegant rendition of Newsweek International editor Zakaria's more sophisticated argument, which is akin to those of, say, Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama in the Big Idea school of political criticism. Briefly, Zakaria holds that some of the features we take for granted in democracy, such as universal adult suffrage, are recent innovations that overlie, and now threaten to obscure, far more important aspects of "constitutional liberalism--the rule of law, private property rights, and . . . separated powers and free speech and assembly." These ideals, "best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge," are the true hallmarks of democracy, but they are not the ones that Americans, at least, think of when that golden term is uttered, and not the ones that are called to mind when the talk turns to spreading one-man, one-vote democracy around the world, which is a peculiarly American project. ("Think of it this way," Zakaria intones, "if France had been the world's leading power for the last century, would 18-year-olds wearing jeans in restaurants come up to you and say, 'Hi, I'm John and I'll be your waiter today'?") The rest of the world, and particularly the Arab and Asian quarters, is not much interested in this power-sharing ideal--which in any event, by Zakaria's account, so often tends to lead to the tyranny of the majority and "the erosion of liberty, the manipulation of freedom, and the decay of a common life." Zakaria's arguments are, of course, arguable, but they are interesting and provocative at the same time. His passing notes are more intriguing, culled fromstatistical tables and academic journal articles, on the material and political conditions required if a democracy of any kind is to endure: per-capita income and GDP above $6,000, an independent judiciary, an incorrupt central bank. A fruitful argument against the politics of "simple-minded populism," eminently worthy of consideration and debate.