chapter 1

State police power (policy powers, fundamental law, policing)
The power to make laws for the general welfare of communities
• Health
• Safety (cops, criminal justice)
• Welfare (what laws serves the community, public schools)
• Morals

• Public order/safety
Criminal justice apparatus, law and order, jails, prisons, police
• Social
Public schools, Medicaid, food stamps, insurance trust, regulation of state insurers
• Economic
Transportation, infrastructure, land use, property sales, licensing regulation, civil law, contracts

the study of populations and their characteristics, some demographic trends in the U.S. population are

Religiosity is religiousness, measured through looking at a range of religious beliefs, activities, and practices in which people participate.

- Highly value social order and economic efficiency
- Govt should regulate social choices

- Highly value social freedom and economic equality
- Govt power should not restrict social choices
- Values markets and property to the point that they promote social good

- Value social freedom and economic efficiency
- Stress importance of individual autonomy and minimalist govt role
- Govt protects people and property
- Left libertarians emphasize social freedom
- Right libertarians

Values govt intervention in economy to benefit average citizens against the wealthy and powerful (poor vs. elites)
- The intervention must conform to traditional moral and social values
- Distrust of elites, but not anti-capitalist
- Can be left or right leaning

- Set of assumptions about how the social world works
- Set of beliefs and general philosophy about politics and the govt.
- Ideology does not equal party affiliation

• Shared framework of identifiable values, beliefs, and habits related to govt. and politics
• Styles and traditions can be traced back to early settlers and immigrants, a resilient/sticky culture that doesn’t go away

• Emphasis on individual initiative and the market
• Govt protects individual rights and makes way for individual initiative
• Wealth and power seen as qualifiers for governing
• Material self interest motivates people to enter public life
• Ambition and self advancement motivate office seekers
• Corruption is tolerated
• Partisan orientation; focuses on gaining office and not actual issues
Unfavorable view of civil-service bureaucracy (b/c of no patronage)

Gov’t advances the public interest & serves as positive force in citizens’ lives
•Issue-based politics with emphasis on the “commonwealth”
•Citizens have a duty to serve (& participate) in politics
•Politicians seek office to advance issues
•Corruption not tolerated––– Gov’t service is public service
•Civil-service bureaucracy viewed favorably
•Puritans in New England & Scandinavian settlers
 Great Lakes region  Midwest & Northwest

• Govt serves the elites who created it to serve them
• Useful for maintaining social order and economic hierarchy
• Ambivalent toward the market and common good
Politicians are from society’s elite
• Elite have family obligation to govern ; few expectations for the rest
• Politics focused on rival elite factions— not class based
• Civil service bureaucracy seen as interfering with personal relationships (Texas and souther states have a more traditionalist culture)