Lj P CHAPTER

rf(setting out the principles, structures, andprocesses of a government.The ultimate responsibility for the exercise ofthese powers may be held by a single person or bya small group, as in a dictatorship. In this form ofgovernment, those who rule cannot be heldresponsible to the will of the people. When theresponsibility for the exercise of these powersrests with a majority of the people, that form ofgovernment is known as a democracy. In a democracy, supreme authority rests with the people.Government is among the oldest of allhuman inventions. Its origins are lost in themists of time. But, clearly, government firstappeared when human beings realized that theycould not survive without some way to regulateboth their own and their neighbors' behavior.The earliest known evidences of governmentdate from ancient Egypt. More than 2,300 yearsago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle observedthat "man is by nature a political animal. " 1 Ashe wrote those words, Aristotle was only recording a fact that, even then, had been obvious forthousands of years.What did Aristotle mean by "political"?That is to say, what is "politics"? Althoughpeople often equate the two, politics and government are very different things. Politics is aprocess, while government is an institution.More specifically, politics is the process bywhich a society decides how power and resourceswill be distributed within that society. Politics enables a society to decide who will reap the benefits,· and who will pay the costs, of its public policies.The word politics is sometimes used in a waythat suggests that it is somehow immoral orsomething to be avoided. But, again, politics isa process, the means by which government isconducted. It is neither "good" nor "bad," butit is necessary. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of government without politics.The StaterOver the course of human history, the state hasemerged as the dominant political unit in theworld. The state can be defined as a body ofpeople, living in a defined territory, organizedpolitically (that is, with a government), andwith the power to make and enforce law without the consent of any higher authority.A Patriotism in a Time of Crisis Americans showed their pride in theircountry and support for their government in the wake of the terroristattacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. H-SS 12.2.4There are more than 190 states in the worldtoday. They vary greatly in size, military power,natural resources, and economic importance.Still, each of them possesses all four characteristics of a state: population, territory, sovereignty,and government.Note that the state is a legal entity. In popular usage, a state is often calle a "nation" or a"country." In a strict sense, however, the wordnation is an ethnic term, referring to racesor other large groups of people. The wordcountry is a geographic term, referring to aparticular place, region, or area of land.PopulationClearly, a state must have people-a population. The size of that population, however,has nothing directly to do with the existenceof a state. One of the world's smallest states,in population terms, is San Marino. Boundedon all sides by Italy, it has only some 27,00011n most of the world's written political record, the words manand men have been widely used to refer to all of humankind. Thistext follows that form when presenting excerpts from historicalwritings or documents and in references to them.Principles of Government5

The Four Characteristics of the State.:, -,. :. .f··.Government {.:: .-. Cot'" "', \."""" "''J{Interpreting Charts To be considered a state, a group of people must have a defined bodyof land and an independent, sovereign government. Does your school qualify as a state?If not, which requirements does it lack?people. The People's Republic of China is theworld's most populous state with more than1.3 billion people-just about one fifth of theworld's population. The nearly 300 millionwho live in the United States make it theworld's third most populous, after China andIndia.The people who make up a state may or maynot be homogeneous. The adjective homogeneous describes members of a group who sharecustoms, a common language, and ethnic background. Today, the population of the UnitedStates includes people from a wide variety ofbackgrounds. Still, most Americans think ofthemselves as exactly that: Americans.TerritoryJust as a state cannot exist without people, soit must have land-territory, with known andrecognized boundaries. The states in today'sworld vary as widely in terms of territory asthey do in population. Here, too, San Marinoranks among the world's smallest states.It covers less than 24 square miles-smallerthan thousands of cities and towns in theUnited States. 2Russia, the world's largest state, stretchesacross some 6.6 million square miles. Thetotal area of the United States is 3, 787,425square miles.6Chapter 1 Section 1SovereigntyEvery state is sovereign-it has supreme andabsolute power within its own territory andcan decide it own foreign and domestic policies.It is neither subordinate nor responsible toany other authority.Thus, as a sovereign state, the United States candetermine its form of government. Like any otherstate in the world, it can frame its economic systemand shape its own foreign policies. Sovereigntyis the one characteristic that distinguishes thestate from all other, lesser political units.The States within the United States are notsovereign and so are not states in the international, legal sense. Each State is subordinateto the Constitution of the United States. 3GovernmentEvery state is politically organized. That is, everystate has a government. Recall, a government isthe institution through which society makes and2The United States also recognizes the State of Vatican City, witha permanent population of some 900 persons and a roughly triangular a,rea of only 109 acres. The Vatican is wholly surrounded by theCity of Rome. American recognition of the Vatican, which had beenwithdrawn in 1867, was renewed in 1984.31n this book, state printed with a small "s" denotes a state in thefamily of nations, such as the United States, Great Britain, andMe-xico. State printed with a capital "S" refers to a State in theAmerican union.

rIlenforces its public policies. A government is theagency through which the state exerts its willand works to accomplish its goals. Governmentincludes the machinery and the personnel bywhich the state is ruled.Government is necessary to avoid whatthe English philosopher Thomas Hobbes(1588-1679) called "the war of every managainst every man." Without government, saidHobbes, there would be "continual fear anddanger of violent death and life [would be] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Theworld has seen a number of examples overrecent years of what happens when a government disappears: In Lebanon, Bosnia, Somalia,and many other places, life became "nasty,brutish, and short."Major Political IdeasFor centuries, historians, philosophers, andothers have pondered the question of the originof the state. What set of circumstances firstbrought it into being?Over time, many different answers havebeen offered, but history provides no conclusiveevidence to support any of them. However,four theories have emerged as the most widelyaccepted explanations for the origin of the state.The Force Theory Many scholars have longbelieved that the state was born of force. Theyhold that one person or a small group claimedcontrol over an area and forced all within it tosubmit to that person's or group's rule. Whenthat rule was established, all the basic elementsof the state-population, territory, sovereignty,and government-were present.The Evolutionary Theory Others claim thatthe state developed naturally out of the earlyfamily. They hold that the primitive family, ofwhich one person was the head and thus the"government," was the first stage in politicaldevelopment. Over countless years the originalfamily became a network of related families, aclan. In time the clan became a tribe. When thetribe first turned to agriculture and gave up itsnomadic ways, tying itself to the land, the statewas born.The Divine Right Theory The theory ofdivine right was widely accepted in much ofthe Western world from the fifteenth throughthe eighteenth centuries. It held that God created the state and that God had given those ofroyal birth a "divine right" to rule. The people were bound to obey their ruler as theywould God; opposition to "the divine right ofkings" was both treason and mortal sin.During the seventeenth century, philosophers began to question this theory. Much ofthe thought upon which present-day democracies rest began as a challenge to the theory ofdivine right.,. Different explanations have been offeredfor the origin of the state. Pharoah Akhenatenof Egypt (middle) believed that power flowedfrom Aten, the god of the sun disk. CriticalThinking Can more than one of these theories accurately explain the origin of thestate? Explain why or why not. H-SS 12.1.1Principles of Government7 ,.

The notion of divine right was not uniqueto European history. The rulers of manyancient civilizations, including the Chinese,Egyptian, Aztec, and Mayan civilizations,were held to be gods or to have been chosenby the gods. The Japanese emperor, the mikado governed by divine right until 1945.The Social Contract Theory In terms of theAmerican political system, the most significant of the theories of the origin of the state isthat of the "social contract." Philosopherssuch as Thomas Hobbes, James Harrington(1611-1677), and John Locke (1632-1704) inEngland and Jean Jacques Rousseau (17121778) in France developed this theory in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Hobbes wrote that in earliest historyhumans lived in unbridled freedom, in a "stateof nature," in which no government existedand no person was subject to any superiorpower. That which people could take by forcebelonged to them. However, all people weresimilarly free in this state of nature. Noauthority existed to protect one person fromthe aggressive actions of another. Thus, individuals were only as safe as their own physicalstrength and intelligence could make them.Human beings overcame their unpleasant condition, says the social contract theory, by agreeingwith one another to create

Power is the ability to command or prevent action, the ability to achieve a desired end. Every government has and exercises three basic kinds of power: (1) legislative power-the power to make law and to frame public policies; (2) executive power-the power to execute, enforce, and administer law; and (3) judicial power