 Now we'll talk about representation of participation. We'll start with the legislature, okay? What does the legislature look like? Yes, please. Oh yes, there was a question. So the question is asking, the question is about, we've got at the horizontal level, we've got the president in 2017, the next year, being basically a Republican party. We've got both houses representing, with majorities representing Republican parties, same party. So we have, we do not have divided government. We have the opposite of divided government, which is unified control, okay? And we've got, in the Supreme Court, four of the justices are leaning towards, you know, liberal ideas, ideals, norms, and the other four of the justices are leaning towards more Republican conservative ideas or ideals. And the ninth judge, I mean, it becomes very difficult for the court to operate with four to four, right? So we need the ninth judge. The ninth justice will be appointed next term, so from 2017, with the Congress and the president working together. And it'll most probably be, you know, the person that the new justice will be leaning towards, you know, conservatives, conservative ideas or ideals. So we have the judiciary, we have the executive, and we've got the legislature all in a way dominated by one single party. How can we talk about checks and balances in the system, right? Isn't that a good question? That's a very good question, right? The system is so intricately detailed. Yes, there will be one political party or one political coalition dominating each organ of state or branch of government, but the system is so institutionalized that it's so regime-like that it becomes, as you've seen, very difficult to make a decision unless there is collaboration, cooperation. And in this system, one may assume that this is easy. So in theory, it looks very... I mean, the process will be a smooth functioning process. It won't be a complex, intricate, inefficient system. It may run very smoothly because all, you know, branches of government are representing the same political faction or the same political consolation of forces or coalition of forces. But it still is very difficult to pass new legislation. As I've mentioned the other day, it becomes very difficult to pass legislation, especially those legislation which really expands federal jurisdiction vis-a-vis state governments. So this, there will be, or there may be, frictions from the state level, but also popular ideas or popular concepts or popular institutions. For example, Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. Will it be easy to retrench, reverse all those acquisitions? Once those middle classes, interest groups, even interest lobbies, once they're there, is it difficult, is it easy to reverse all these policies? It's still very difficult to reverse such a policy. This we shall be talking about or we'll be thinking about as we go along. You will be watching a documentary on the legislative process and the decision-making process of the Affordable Care Act. So you'll be thinking about these as you watch the documentary. Keep this question in mind. I think it's a very good question for debate as we talk about how the system works. So I don't have a hard and fast and easy answer for that. But my hunch is that my personal opinion is that it's very difficult still. Yes, there won't be frictions or less frictions in theory, but in practice, will these translate into a smooth functioning process? I really doubt it. So when we look at the legislature of the Congress here, it's the institution which concentrates most of the powers according to the Constitution. So the Constitution sets the Congress as the key or central branch of government or governance. There's always been tension between the Congress as well as the President, especially under the general rule of divided government, but even when there is unified control, there may be frictions between or among both houses of the Congress versus the President. So even when we had unified control, the President and both houses of the Congress, we still had problems, frictions, which resulted in efficiencies in the system. So no smooth functioning, no hard and fast passage of legislation is secured. So that's important to remember. A bill for it to become law, it has to pass through both houses, both the House and the Senate. It's supposed to be or it is reviewed by committee or subcommittee and then it will be signed by the President or vetoed by the President. So unless vetoed, it would be signed by the President. Let's look at the legislature in more detail. We've got once again a bicameral legislature, House of Representatives and the Senate, membership for the House of Representatives, is based on a particular state's size of population. And there are two-year terms. So members of the House are elected for two years and there are 435 members in the House. And elections take place as was the case two weeks ago. Every two years, even numbered years in the month of November. And it's the first past the post system. So whomever will get the highest number of votes will be a member of the House of Representatives, will be a House member. The Senate, the membership for the Senate is based on equal representation for each state, 50 states, each with two representatives. That makes 100 senators. And each senator is elected for six years, as opposed to two years. And one-third of the Senate, so about 30, 33 senators are renewed every two years. So we've got a splintered system. So every two years, we've got a third of the Senate being replaced by new members. So we've got 66, 67 senators remaining every two years and each serving a six-year term. But every two years, to get the pulse of the citizens. So basically, in a way, there's some kind of a rotation involved. And again, the members of the Senate, the senators are elected on the basis of a first past the post system. So whomever wins the highest number of votes will be the senator here. So just like the presidential system, first past the post really represents the electoral system here. Political parties, we have a two-party system, a clear, clean two-party system. Unlike any other systems in the party systems in the advanced industrialized countries, we do not have any third party, a large party arising or emerging into the system. So since the 19th century, we have these two parties which represents a two-party system political culture. So there is no faction coming out of either of these two large constellations or coalitions, large parties, independently running for any of the positions for which there are elections. So the parties themselves, in a way, are coalitions of different political forces. And the electoral system, which is a single-member plurality district or first past the post system, really concentrates power in the hands of the two traditional large parties. And a large geography also means that it becomes very difficult for a third party to emerge and organize at different areas in this very large country. It says large, geographically as large as Europe. But Europe, you know, consider it from Ural Mountains to the West. So it's a large-scale mass. So no one can afford a third party, will not be able to afford all those expenses, costs related to organization, mobilization, campaigning and all that as a separate third party. Republicans and Democrats, when you look at the basis of political support, traditional basis of political support, which still represents this day, we've got upper income, you know, echelons or ranks in the income distribution. We've got, I mean, those individuals are voting for Republicans. Social conservatives are voting for Republicans in general. Small business owners, small and medium-sized enterprises, those owners generally vote for Republicans. Rural, you know, when you look at the red states and the blue states, I'll show you a map. When you're within the U.S., I mean, coastal areas in the East and coastal areas in the West, except for those, we've got most inland states voting for Republicans and evangelical Christians. So they're also, you know, representing a faction within the Republican Party. Democrats, these are mostly urban. So when you look at large urban, at the county level, when you look at the map, urban areas, metropolitan areas, they vote mostly Democrats. For example, New York State is something, but New York City is something. In fact, Manhattan is something versus Queens may be something else. So there is variation with respect to urban areas versus less urban or rural areas. The elderly generally vote Democrats and this has been increasingly the case. The younger generation are more inclined to vote except perhaps for Obama, Republican. Racial and ethnic minorities have traditionally been voting Democrats, but there has been, you know, exit polls show that in the most recent elections the Latino vote, and well, the blacks seem to be voting for Mrs. Clinton, but the Latinos have been, turnout-wise have been much lower than everybody expected. Export-oriented businessmen or those who are in the export-oriented sectors are generally voting Democrats. Unionized labor traditionally have been voting Democrats and working women, which everybody expected to be higher in terms of turnout and voting for Mrs. Clinton. It hasn't been so. Much less number of women had been voting for Mrs. Clinton. But in general, if you're a woman and participating in the labor force, you're more likely to be voting for Democrat Party. In terms of how divided national government, we've talked about this. I just wanted to come back to the same thing. Divided national government at the federal level has been the rule since 1960s. The presidency and the Congress have been divided between two parties. We've talked about this. I remember this, but I thought I wanted to remind you this once again. Unified government has been exceptions or rare moments of exceptions, rare years of exception. There were exceptional years. The presidency and the Congress are dominated by one party. Only six times in 2017 during the past 50 years. When Democrats dominated those three or four years, 77 until 1980, 1993, 1994, 2009, 2010, briefly, Republicans, 2001, 2003, 2007, and now 2017. But will it last until the next elections that will take place in 2020, 2018, for the Senate, one-third of the Senate, as well as the House. And we will have 2020 as the year, the quadrinal year in which we'll have presidential elections once again. So will this, how long will this last? Will it last for a year? Or will it last for, let's say, two terms or two House terms? Or so until the next president comes to power. So will this last? That's one $6 million question as we shall be talking about. Yes, later on. I don't find it likely personally. Impeachment is, impeachment is something, it's an extreme form of intervention into the system, which we haven't seen really. I personally find it, find the likelihood to be, it is possible. The Congress, well, it depends. Don't forget, these are coalitions of political parties. I mean, these parties, there are many coalitions, there are many factions within each party. We haven't seen one faction, one large faction, separating, seceding from any of the two parties yet. I don't think that's possible in the near future. I don't see it in the foreseeable future. But we shouldn't assume that all senators or all members of the House will be voting in a party discipline to support whatever the President says. I'm not expecting that. This is what I meant when there was a question about, how about checks and balances now? There is de facto checks and balances in the sense that these political parties are coalitions themselves. So, which may mean that the House and the Senate may vote for impeachment. But personally, I'm not expecting that. I may be wrong. Please. Not to leave the presidency. I don't know. I haven't seen that. I don't think that's possible in the sense that one of your classmates also told me, asked me about this, whether that's possible. I don't see it in the Constitution. I don't see it possible. I don't think the system will work that way. The system works in a very organized manner. It ticks. It really ticks. Yes, this is one of the most inefficient systems in the world when it comes to policymaking, decision-making, but with respect to the constitutional system, it's quite clear. And the doctrine is there. Traditions are there. And you see the system to be based on collaboration, cooperation. Yes, there has been increasing polarization. But despite that, I think everybody will behave in the way that their predecessors did. Is that enough? Yeah. I mean, it seems that, I mean, the system is so institutionalized, so regime-like, that everybody will abide by what the Constitution says. And I don't think any one actor will go beyond, above and beyond what the Constitution even means. So it's a... In this sense, I call it regime-like system. It is an institutionalized system, please. Will he have immunity? That's a good question. I don't know the answer. But for impeachment, you have to be guilty of treason. Or you should be able to lie to the Congress. And then there is a vote. Okay, so for the president to be impeached, you need to jump through all those hoops. So I would find that least likely for impeachment, if we're talking about impeachment, the probability or possibility of impeachment. Will he be immune from that? I mean, would the president, according to the Constitution, be immune from... I mean, will he have the immunities to basically postpone the execution of the decision? I think there is some kind of an immunity in that respect. I mean, I don't think... See, we should look it up in the Constitution, what the Constitution says. But whatever there is, there's so much... There's so much talk about what if this happens, what if that happens. Yes, there are marches, there are protests nationwide. I don't know. I don't know what will happen, but it seems that things may calm down as the transition of power takes place early next year. So next year, let's wait and see. I don't want to say anything. I don't want to signal anything like, OK, things will go out of Pandora's box or I don't expect that. It's a stable system with all kinds of regime-like qualities. It's a highly stable system, institutionalized system within which actors will operate in a path-dependent way. Because of the dominance of Republicans in both houses of the Congress. Mr. Trump is a very interesting character in the sense that it has been... I mean, he has been the target of many Republicans, influential Republicans too, right? So it's hard to tell, hard to say what's going to happen because I don't think we've had any candidates in the history of the United States in this way. We had Mr. Trump, who was the celebrity, and Mrs. Clinton, who was also a celebrity. So we had increasing levels of polarization. So two celebrities, increasingly polarized, Mrs. Clinton getting the popular vote, but Mr. Trump is being elected. So all of this, it sounds too much, but I personally expect... I mean, having been working on the U.S., especially welfare state social policy, a little bit, having read expansion, retrenchment, cycles of social expenditures, social policy reform, I don't expect... I don't expect... So our roller coaster changes to happen in the next term. But this is my personal opinion. 2017, as we've discussed, we've got House of Representatives being dominated by the Republicans. Senate also dominated by the Republicans. Presidency, a Republican candidate. Supreme Court, the ninth appointee. The justice will be appointed by a constellation as such. And all of this really boosts interest group activity if there had been divided government. But will this mean that there's going to be more interest group activity? We'll see. But once again, these are rare moments in recent U.S. history. For the past 50, 60 years, we haven't had... For 50 years, we haven't had this constellation as a general rule. Unified control and public policy, divided government. When we had divided government, we always had, you know, two groups working across the aisle together collaborating, long-rolling, quid pro quo, tit for tat, so a lot of negotiation taking place. So this is common, but there have been moments where we had administrative or legal legislative stalemates happening. But we don't generally have a paralysis of the system. So this is what I meant. Institutionalized systems of governance, such as this, such as the U.S., will see no prolonged periods of paralysis. There may be stalemates, there may be some, you know, conflict situations, but, you know, the government being inept government halting activity will not be for a long time. Unified control, landmark research shows, Baumgartner and his colleagues have shown that landmark policy changes occur more often in unified control than in government control, divided government periods. But policy reversals are possible. You know, once again, you know, the question of Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, will they be able to reverse that policy cycle? It looks quite improbable to me. There may be some cutbacks, but, you know, an overhauling of the system, you know, reversing the entire system or reversing the entire policy looks quite improbable to me because of many reasons which include bureaucratic inertia, but also interest groups, social movements, all of which provide a check and a balance on unified control, which brings us to discussions on social movements, interest groups, and elections. Elections, there has been a long-standing commitment to democracy. Elections are proof of their evidence of this long-standing commitment. Interestingly, we see the importance of federalism here, which, you know, in which, I mean, in this system, we've got the states setting the rules for conducting elections. It is the state level, state governments that make rulings on suffrage of, you know, who is eligible to vote and vote counting, okay? So when to stop a recount? It is the, not the federal government, but the state government will say the last word on that. On the Bush recount, for example, in Florida, it was the state level which said, okay, we're not recounting this anymore, as you may remember from there. So there may be some confusion, some burnout, which gets reflected in, I mean, declining, dwindling turnout rates. I don't remember the turnout rate for the most recent election. It's above 50%, but it's below 55%, if I remember correctly. But I don't remember the exact turnout level for the time being. So all of this is really showing up in declining turnouts. 2012 electoral college map. Once again, I just wanted to show you what the electoral college system or how the electoral college system works. California citizen residents or residents and citizens in California are voting for the electors here. There are 55 electoral college votes. And whomever gets, and for example in New York, 29 electoral college votes. For Texas, 38 electoral college votes. For Vermont, just 3 electoral college votes. So based on population plus number of senators from which we have from each state. So in the large states, Florida 29, those, Pennsylvania 20, so whomever gets 270 of these will be declared president. So for Obama, it was 330 something versus for Romney, it was about 200. And in Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton's case, the numbers were in reverse. You know Obama, I'm sorry, Mr. Trump guaranteed more than 270 and Mrs. Clinton remained around 200. So as you can see, the electoral college map based on the weighted average of state polls. But this is how the system works for presidential elections. This is what happened at the county level. I got this from New York Times. The red ones, the red arrows represent Republican, you know, don't forget, this is a first pass the post system. Okay, so and those reds are representing Republican votes and the blues are representing Democrat votes at the county level. As you can see in large cities, California out, I mean like coastal areas of California versus inland areas of California. So here the rust belt generally had been voting Democrat. So this has been changing from Obama to Trump, as you can see. This is sometimes referred to as the Democratic crack down which really works for Democrats. Older workers, workers that have been overwhelmingly voting for Democrats, but this has been changing over the past, well, in the past election. So the electoral map has been changing but popular vote was won by Mrs. Clinton. Electoral college votes, it was the electoral college map that determines who becomes the president. Social movements, Americans are traditionally known to be involved in collective action. There has been, however, a declining civic engagement in time. So in this, I mean, so a very influential observer of US politics, Robert Putnam, defined it as, now we're bowling alone. The Americans are now playing the bowling game alone. So as opposed to how they were playing the game of social movements, civic engagement, in collectivities in the past. So increasingly we've seen social movements more driven by elites on an issue basis, not by revolutionary zealots or groups or youth or women. This has been changing, which also has ramifications for accountability and legitimacy. Interest groups, interest groups are organized on single issue or group of issues. They rely on money and professional staff, and they've been increasing with respect to and expanding competences, especially at the federal level. So distributory policies or distributionary policies or redistributed policies had been expanding. So did interest group activity in time. So interest group activity, lobbying had been expanding, had been increasing, as the federal government had been expanding. And interest group activity has been criticized for turning a blind eye to those who are ignored by the polity anyway. So again, all of these have ramifications for accountability and legitimacy of the overall system. So yes, there has been some interest group activity, but it's not revolutionaries, but it's more elites lobbying the government, as was the case in the example of iron triangles. So it's become more professionalized. It's become more narrow. It used to be more atomistic actors. It used to be more competitive. But now there are increasingly privileged actors who have privileged access into the system. So this has been really changing the US governance in that respect. Citizenship and national identity. Core values had been liberty, equality, democracy. Sounds like the French ideals. Distinct regional cultures have been very important. Traditionally very important. And there has been ongoing immigration. US is a country of settlement. Has traditionally been a country of settlement. In terms of percentage of the population. So look at the percentages. This is 19th century. As you can see, around potato famine in Ireland, 1940s, 1950s. Percentage of population. Basically previous decades immigration as a percentage of national population. So these are percentages. The figures here. So as you can see percentages increase. Then dwindle a little. Then late 19th century. Then early 19th century. World War I. Around World War I. Then great depression. And towards World War II. So percentage of the population. Incoming population had been decreasing. Then steady increase. To around less than 4%. So yes, percentage wise had been increasing. But immigration level in terms of millions. It used to be less than a couple of hundred thousand thousands. Then jumped up to 2 million. 1850s. Jumped up to 1880s, 1890s to more than 5 million. Then right before World War I. Jumping up to 8, 9 million. Early 1900s. Then dwindling. But then around 10 million. The most recent figures. So the makeup of the United States. The melting pot idea has been changing dramatically over time. I mean, what is U.S. citizenship? How to define U.S. citizenship has been changing over time. Okay. I think I should stop here before discussing current challenges. So we'll convene next time to discuss this final bit on the U.S. case. I'll see you next time.