POLI 2051 Chapter : CH 1 POLI 2051
Document Summary
Government - a formally established way of making and carrying out political decisions. If men were angels, government wouldn"t be necessary james madison. Politics - the competition to shape government"s impact on society"s problems and goals. Politics is really the struggle to control the government. Why do we allow ourselves into this arrangement: gov can achieve things that we cannot achieve as individuals. Without government, we would have to exist in what some have called the. State of nature: life would be brutal, short, and nasty. Social contract theory can guide us here, to some extent. It"s a normative, rather than empirical theory: declaration of independence is written according to these terms. Normative - the way things ought to be. 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.
