WTP14 CH01 CHAPTER OUTLINE

Americans and Their Political Values

Learning Objectives
1. Differentiate between forms of government
2. Describe the rights and responsibilities that citizens have in
a democracy
3. Describe the social composition of the American
population and how it has changed over time
4. Describe how cultural values of liberty, equality, and
democracy influence the U.S. system of government
5. Summarize Americans’ attitudes toward government

Government
1. Government is the term used to describe the formal institutions
through which a land and its people are ruled. Governments vary
in their structure, their size, and the way they operate.
2. Beginning in the seventeenth century, two important changes
began to take place in the governance of some Western nations:
governments began to acknowledge formal limits on their
power, and they began to give citizens a formal voice in politics
through the vote.
3. As Harold Lasswell, a famous political scientist, put it, politics
is the struggle over “who gets what, when, how.” The
term politics refers to conflicts and struggles over the
leadership, structure, and policies of governments.
4. Governments take many forms. An autocracy is ruled by a
single individual. An oligarchy is ruled be a small group of