POLSCI 111 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1-2: Constitutionalism, Limited Government, United Government Of New Zealand
Document Summary
Chapter 1 outline: theory of modern government: basic functions of the government, preamble to the constitution: Ignorance of facts can cause incomplete opinions at best. Democracy, which liberates the individual, is best with responsible citizenship. Knowledge gap due to the amount of attention paid to the news. Unreliable sources of information in media today: politicians tend to spin their messages to support themselves, bloggers post personal values that may be viewed as fact , political science: Those who prevail in political conflicts are said to have power: the ability to influence political developments. Authoritarian governments repress political opponents to stay in power. Democratic systems: the people govern, through elected representatives, majoritarianism: the majority effectively determines what the government does, minorities often ignored, single, immediate interest groups in the issue, such as farmers, pluralism: multi-interest. It is argued that democracies are more often than not pluralistic than majoritarian: declaration of independence: set the tones for democratic/constitutional system, constitutional system.
