POLI 2051 Lecture : Lecture Ch1
Document Summary
Introduction - chapter 1: what is government and why do we have it, if men were angles, government would not be necessary - madison. Government - a formally established way of making and carrying out political decisions. Politics - the competition to shape government"s impact on society"s problems and goals. Why do we allow ourselves into this arrangement: because government can do things for us. Without government, we would have to exist in what some have called state of nature . Social contract theory can guide us here, to some extent. It"s a normative, rather than empirical theory: normative - the way things ought to be, empirical - the way things actually are. It is not a written contract, but rather, a general agreement between the people and their government. The contract derives from the assumption that government is based on the consent of the governed.
