 Okay, good morning once again to Political Science 303, ladies and gentlemen. This morning we shall be starting our new case, the US case. We have so far covered a discussion on scope, method and comparative politics. Then we talked about the modern state, then democracy. We've completed our discussion on Britain and France. And next week you shall be writing a midterm exam on Britain and France compared. And this morning we're starting off with the US case. And with the US case we're going to do exactly the same what we've done so far. That is, we'll start with some history, critical junctures, state tradition. Okay, how did the US state come about? Historical legacy of the past for contemporary politics. And then we'll talk about political economy of economic and social policies. Thirdly, we'll talk about governance and policy making. Fourth, interest representation and participation. And finally, we'll talk about current challenges. So that's going to be the plan for this case, for at least four to five lectures. Okay, so let me start off with the map, as usual. We have a large country. It takes about half of the North American continent. The US territory wise, geographical spanning wise. It is almost as large as Europe, as a continent. Europe, if you divide Europe from the Ural mountains and the rest. Okay, so I don't mean Europe, just European states. But this includes a big chunk of Russia, contemporary Russia, and plus the European states. So it's a large country. We've got the Russian Federation, China, then US, then Canada, in terms of the geographical span of 48 plus two states, 50 states, therefore, or hence, the United States of America. And the population is, excuse me, any ideas about the US population? Three, more than 300 million, no, it hovers around 315 million people. Two neighbors, both of which are part of a trade deal, which is called the North American Free Trade Area Agreement, Canada and the US. What do you mean? Well, Trump says we'll build a wall. Mr. President-elect Trump says we'll build a wall. A beautiful wall. And the wall will be built and paid by Mexican government. So yes, there will be a wall. This is one of the electoral pledges. But will there be a wall? We'll see. So both neighbors, up north, Canada, down south, Mexico, friendly relations with them. The northern border is, I think if I remember correctly, it's the longest border frontier, national border, which is not protected. So the Americans, nor the Canadians, neither of them expect an attack from one another. They have sealed their fate about 200 years ago in 1812. And the outcome of which, if you ask Canadians, they want. If you ask the Americans, they want. So it's a little bit iffy in that respect. So no border disputes between Canada and the US. Mexico will see whether how things turn out. But I don't personally expect, personally, out of personal experience, a tough reaction to whatever is happening. Rich natural resources, coal, oil, and all kinds of metals. Large arable land, navigable waters, as you can see. And protected ports, natural ports. So abundance of land, abundance of resources. Therefore, when you look at the political economy of the United States, it's a country known as a resource rich country. It's massive. It has a lot of resources. Let's talk about some critical junctures that make up or that have a lasting influence on contemporary US politics. Let's start with the Revolutionary Era, 1777 until 1779. 13 American colonies off the East Coast. They're called the American colonies under British rule. But they say that we want to secede from British rule. So we are tired of paying taxes for the British Empire. And it did take a war, which is sometimes referred to as the American War, or sometimes referred to as the War of Independence, or sometimes referred to as the Revolutionary War, for the American colonies to fight against King George III of England. So there was a war waged between the 13 colonies versus the British colonial imperial power. But at this time, there was a civil war in the sense that parts or some parts of the population wanted to remain loyal to the British Empire. They were called the Loyalists. And the 13 colonies, there were the elements within the 13 colonies who wanted to become independent. These forces were known as the Patriots. So Patriots versus the Loyalists. And the Patriots won by the end of the day. And they declared their independence on July the 4th, 1776. And with the Declaration of Independence, they declared a constitution, which was called back then as the Articles of Confederation, which dates back to 1788, which was ratified by the Congress in 1789. So this is basically the first governing document. Think of it like the Constitution of the United States, which gave powers to the states. In fact, the powers of the states expanded. And this meant that national government was dependent on voluntary contributions of the states. So the national government was dependent on the voluntary contributions of the states. And without the state's approval, the national government would not be implementing foreign policy, taxes, and regulating trade. So yes, this document gave all kinds of powers in the areas of commerce, foreign policy, and military policy to the national government. But also it said, look, I'm not going to do or act independent of you. So you see a compromise between the states and the federal authority, with all kinds of expansion of rights at the federal level, but also expansion of rights at the state level. Then a few years later, we see the introduction of what's called the Bill of Rights. These are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution that was just or that had been just passed by the Congress. The Bill of Rights is all about protection of citizens, civil rights, and liberties from the government. So it's basically a list of limits and powers of the federal or central government. It lists all kinds of rights. It's short. It's concise. It says, OK, these are the rights that we grant to our citizens. The idea behind the civil rights or Bill of Rights was to provide these rights to the citizens so that they would be protected from any arbitrary power or arbitrary use of power by the government. So basically, this is the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, which came as one single unified coherent document known as the Bill of Rights. Financing of the federal government, independent of the states, was one of the issues in the Constitution. The president would be independent of the legislature. The president as an institution, as a post, is now independent of the legislature. And there is limited citizens voice, indirect election of the president, indirect election of the senators. And here, women would be not given voting rights. But all these rights were expanded by the Bill of Rights in about a few years. Then another critical juncture, another milestone 100 years later almost, is the Civil War and what's called the Reconstruction or the Reconstruction Era. The Civil War grew out of a struggle of power between the national government as opposed to the state governments. So there was much debate with respect to the issue of slavery, which had all kinds of ramifications about the agriculture sector, trade, and all that. But the struggle for power stemmed from expanding the rights of slavery, I'm sorry, expanding the slavery mode of production to the Western territories. So slavery was a huge question. Then there emerged a civil war on this very issue. For about four to five years, 1861 to 1865, the Union North fought against the secessionist south, which is called the Confederacy, or Confederate of American States, Confederation of American States. So the North was saying, hey, we want to abolish slavery. And the South says, we don't want to abolish slavery. In fact, we want to expand slavery to the Western territories. And the Civil War ends with the North defeating the South. With the victory of the North, the unions, the unionists, slavery was abolished in the entire country. So this was a landmark decision for a young state, which was not even 100 years old. Then the entire country was under reconstruction between 1863, right in the middle of the Civil War, until about 1876, 1877, in which we see the restoration of national unity. And in addition, we see the strengthening of the national government. So reconstruction, excuse me, relaunching of the state, indivisibility of the nation. And with these, immediately after, we see the emergence of another amendment, what's called the 14th Amendment, which basically said, we're expanding the rights of all citizens to include all freed slaves. So 1868, late 19th century. Therefore, we see the Bill of Rights now being applicable to or covering or addressing states, all states, as well as or in addition to the federal actions. And all who were born in the US were declared as citizens of the US. So this includes, once again, the freed slaves for the first time. So there was a decision, a landmark decision, with the 14th Amendment, 1868, granting of citizenship rights to all who were born, all citizens who were born in the US. Another landmark or milestone was the New Deal era. Now we're jumping, first we jumped for about 80, 90 years. Now we're jumping from 1860s to 1930s, another 70 years or so. World War I ends. The US does not participate in World War I, but the Great Depression hits. 1928, stock market crash, New York and elsewhere. It becomes contagious. It spills over to worldwide dimensions. And we have unemployment skyrocketing to 40%, industrial activity plummeting. So we have the United States of America industrializing massively with great speed. But there is a huge decline in worldwide demand for US manufacturers. This meant unemployment rising. It's an export-oriented economy too, even back then. And then President Roosevelt coming to power says, OK, I'm going to respond in a novel way. And he installs what he calls and his followers called the New Deal. So we build a New Deal in response to the world economic crisis and also Great Depression at home. With the Great Depression, after the Great Depression, with the New Deal, I'm sorry, we see an expansion of the federal government in many areas. So the federal government now regulates or has the powers to regulate interstate commerce, expands social security for the first time to include, in a way, a universalist ideal of social security with the ideas of all kinds of social security programs ranging from some kind of health care, some kind of pensions, labor's rights, and new legislation directed toward that. And subsidization of agriculture. That was also a policy that was implemented to resist or to tame the agricultural cycle. The agricultural cycle is exposed to fluctuations. So we want to tame that cycle by providing subsidies to our farmers. So the federal government, in a way, asserts its dominance, especially in the area of social security, over state governments. So expansion of the federal government at the expense of state government. So this was an era in which we see strengthening of the federal government, the national government, at the expense of state government. And the idea was, during the New Deal era, with the social security expanding as a program, as a major field of state activity, as a major field of state intervention, the idea of national citizenship was expanded. 1930s, 1933, 1940s. So all throughout the 1930s, we see the expansion of the social security and also the idea of national citizenship, which ends up with World War II. During this period, we see the powers of the president expanding, but still the Constitution says it's the Congress, which is the central institution here. The president never has any legislative power, as we shall be talking about. But his powers to push through his agenda had been expanding since then. This was a period, in a way, an early consensus period. Remember, we talked about the collectivist consensus in Britain and the transglorieuse in France? There was an early consensus back in the 1930s in the US, a democratic consensus, that there was some kind of a class compromise. So class-based politics was kept to a minimum. So that was interesting to observe in this country. After the New Deal, we jump to another institutionalized regime-like milestone. Up until the 1960s, we had Democrats coming to power in consecutive terms. But from 1960s onwards, we see the emergence of an institution called divided government. When we talk about divided government, we should refer to the separation of powers. So here, we've got the executive organs of state, the legislature, and the judiciary. The legislature is a bicameral legislature. We've got the Congress here. And it is composed of the House of Representatives. We'll talk about these in more detail later on. But I just want to show you what happened in history. And we've got the Senate here. The executive is the president. And the judiciary is Supreme Court and the lower system of courts, or the system of lower courts. When we talk about divided government, this means that, and we know that there are two major coalitions or political parties in the country, if we have a Republican president, a Republican House of Representatives, or Republican-dominated House of Representatives, and Democrats, you know, Democrat-controlled Senate, then this is a case of divided government. We can do all kinds of permutations, of course, Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Democrat, Republican, and all that. So this means that the executive versus the legislature, so it may be divided, there may be a division with respect to who controls which organ of state, which branch of government, or that there would be, because of the bicameral nature of the system, we see divided government or divided Congress with respect to the House or who controls the House and who controls the Senate. So since 1969, we had only five instances of the opposite of divided government. The opposite of divided government is called unified control. So the presidency and the Congress had been dominated by one single party only five times until this year, until the end of this year. So Democrats controlled till, I mean, or since 1968, Democrats controlled all three institutions, i.e. the president, and both houses in the Congress, both chambers, from 1977 till 1980 for about four years, from 1993 till 1994 under Clinton, I'm sorry, yes, under Clinton, then 2009, 2010 under Obama. So one to three instances, and if you add up the numbers, do the math, it's just a few number of years. The Republicans controlled all three positions or one position and the institutions, the two chambers at the same time. In 2001, 2003, 2007, with Mr. Trump's election, with the Senate as well as the House being controlled by the Republican Party, will be witnessing the sixth time with a Republican president, a Republican House of Representatives, or Republican-dominated House of Representatives, and the Republican-dominated Senate. And this would be called what's the opposite of divided government. It's called unified control. We refer to divided government in the US. What would be its counterpart in France? So what would we be calling, in the case of France, we have one party dominating the legislature and the other party dominating, I'm sorry, one party, yeah, of course, one party dominating the legislature and hence the lower arm of the executive, the cabinet, that part of the executive, and the other executive, i.e. the president. So when we have a prime minister and the president not coming from the same party, not representing the same party, then we'd call that collaboration, which may be a good question in the exam. So the sixth time will be next year, where we will have a House of Representatives dominated by, with a majority of Republicans, the Senate with a slight majority, 51 to 49 or 52 to 48, we'll see, and the president all representing the same political party, the same political faction. So it'll be the fourth time under Republicans, and therefore what's important to remember is that unified government has been an exception since 1968. And I think from 1928, yeah, we had this also, but we had quite a number of years being, I mean, the Republicans dominating all these three organs, or two organs at the same time. And we'll see that the judiciary, the Supreme Court, may also be dominated by the Republicans in the sense that we now have four justices who are liberal, who are more pro-democrat, another four who are more conservative, who would be thinking along the lines of Republicans. We have one missing justice, or who will be appointed by, who was thought to be appointed by President Obama, but now we'll have President Trump appointing that judge. So we will also have a conservative, dominated Supreme Court soon too. So at the end of all these elections that have been taking place a few days ago. So 2017, things will be like with respect to the House of Representatives, 239 seats, Republican, 193 seats, Democrat, Senate, 51 to 52, Republican versus 48 to 49 Democrat. And the presidency will be controlled by the Republicans. And the Supreme Court, we have once again four conservative justices, four liberal-leaning justices, and will have most probably the fifth one as either a moderate or a conservative too. All of the idea of divided government means that the government is exposed to all kinds of lobbying. So it becomes easier to lobby when you have especially divided government. So it really boosts interest group activity. Then comes September 11, 2001, 2001, and its aftermath. There have been some concerns about expansion of the federal government at the expense of state governments and infringement of or on rights and liberties by individuals. So there has been some concern about what's called in the American jargon big governments, expansion of especially the federal government. But we never had a national consensus of which way to go, whether we should expand the privileges of the federal government or the state government, or we should keep it as such or expand the privileges, the rights of the powers of the state level. So there was no consensus. But the idea of big government was welcomed after the September 11 attacks. So the government, the Bush administration in that respect, had a strengthened hand with respect to all the policies. The invasion of Iraq was a watershed that it really started to polarize the country. Up until then, from 2001 till 2003, the US was one. The idea or the ideal of a pluribus unum out of many one, united in diversity, was very much there. But after the invasion of Iraq, things got upset a little bit. I have a question here. In the first quarter, the chief of attorney in the Supreme Court of Iraq was? Chief of attorney. Die. OK. Oh, had died. Had passed away. Yes. Justice Scalia. Yes. Headlines we saw the moment was going to nominate his own candidates for the violation. And I guess the Republicans are writing the question here is that why they are so concerned for this nomination? Why are the Republicans so concerned? That's a good question. Of course, yeah. As far as I know, I don't think. We'll talk about this in more detail later on. But the Supreme Court has a huge weight in the system. The Supreme Court rulings will or have to be obeyed by everyone. So what the House as well as the Senate did was to in a way play a game, take the risk of wait and see until who comes or who becomes president next. So they thought or they bet their money on the Republican candidate. And they won in the sense that they wished to say, hey, President Obama, if you want to push through your candidate, your nominee, we may overturn that. So unless we will discuss this in more detail, but the most important aspect of US politics is that you have to negotiate. And you have to coordinate. You have to collaborate. Unless you negotiate, unless you collaborate, that is, if you push through your agenda unilaterally, you can't do that. You don't do that. You don't become successful because of all kinds of institutional features of the system. We'll talk about this in more detail when we talk about the setup of the government. But these are all co-equal branches of government. And there are checks and balances. So the separation of powers also mean that you have to collaborate no matter what. We'll discuss all of these with examples. Yes, please. Efficiently, I don't know. Effectively, yes. Efficiently, this is known as the most inefficient government type. Efficiency means that you can, in public policymaking, it means you can pass legislation quickly. And then once there is everybody OK, it becomes law. Yeah. But effectively, yes, it's an effective system in which we see checks and balances. But I just wanted to give you highlights of some history. We'll talk about the details later on. I know you're all excited about talking about this. And we think about this all the time in this country, too. But just be a little bit more patient when we discuss the organization of the state, co-equal branches of government, checks and balances, horizontal checks and balances, as well as the vertical checks and balances. We'll discuss all the details. But give me a moment to complete this historical critical junctures so that we are all on the same page with respect to these other themes that really bear their mark on contemporary politics. Invasion of Iraq then comes the USA Patriot Act, united in strengthening America by providing appropriate tools to intercept and obstruct terrorism act. So again, this was, first, there was not much domestic response to it. But later, it became an issue of contention. The act brought a dramatic expansion of the federal government with respect to surveillance, with respect to law enforcement, and limits on civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, or in the name of the fight against terrorism. So this was another critical juncture in the sense that the act allowed the government to expand its powers, to push through its agenda, vis-a-vis its citizens. Then Invasion of Afghanistan, first international support. Then it had been waning throughout. And the difficulty of the Bush administration after Hurricane Katrina, 2005, August. And there were problems with Bush's re-election, which we may talk about later. And opposition from allies, not only, I mean, in France, what's called, you know, what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld back then called Old Europe, but also Heartland Europe. So everybody was against, at some point, what many saw as the overextension of the United States. That there were foreign policy in the eyes of many. There were foreign policy mistakes, as they saw. And many still see the US as overstepping into the Middle East and elsewhere in its neighborhoods so that whatever we're having today has something to do with whatever the Bush administration did back then. That was one of the reasons why the Obama administration wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan, but also from Iraq and elsewhere. So these were basically the landmarks or the critical junctures in which we had the expansion. As you can see, you see the expansion of the state, state power, national government vis-a-vis, at some points, at some critical junctures or at the expense of state-level jurisdictions. So basically these are the critical junctures in US history which have ramifications for our discussions when we talk about the organization of the state and also we'll talk about social policy. So we'll come back to the New Deal era. We'll talk about interest representation and participation. We'll talk about divided government, lobbying, iron triangles, and all that. So basically think of this as a preview of coming attractions, as you see in the movies, but as you see what's important here is that there has been a continuity with respect to the expansion of the federal government, the role of the state, the penetrative ability of the state, the centralized state or central state, federal state in the lives of its citizens. I think that concludes my discussion here. Next class, we'll start with, well, first we'll write the midterm exam. And next Friday we'll start with political economy of economic and social policies. I'm sorry, no, of course not. We'll start with the organization of the state. OK, I'll see you next class.