PS 1100 Lecture 1: Lecture 1 notes

• School: App State
• Department: Political Science
• Course: PS 1100
• Professor: William Hicks

Document Summary

Citizens grant gov authority in order to: maintain order, protect property, provide public goods. A good that may be enjoyed by everyone if provide and may not be denied to anyone once its provided. National defense, public order, stable currency, clean air. Vary according to who controls it and to what extent authority is limited: who governs. Democracy: citizens control decision-making directly or indirectly. Limitations on government: constitutional: strong limitations on governmental action, authoritarian: competing power may exist in society some place but few legal limitations, totalitarian: governments eliminate competitors and monopolize political, social and economic authority. The cost of collective action: 2 key concepts: transaction costs time, effort and resources to make collective decisions; costs of negotiating and implementing agreements, autocracy has minimal transaction costs. !1: democracy has high transaction costs, representative government with divided branches, higher costs still, evolution of gov is marked by the development of institutions that reduce.