1. DEMOCRACY AND AMERICAN POLITICS
Chapter 1
DEMOCRACY AND AMERICAN POLITICS

2. The Struggle for African-American Voting Rights
The right to vote in meaningful elections is fundamental to democracy.
Long struggles for the right to vote
Despite the Civil Rights Acts, a significant increase in voter registration among African-Americans did not occur until after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed.

3. The Struggle for Democracy
We live in an age of democratic aspiration and upsurge.
People around the globe are demanding the right to govern themselves.
American political ideas and institutions often have provided inspiration for democratic movements elsewhere.
The struggle for democracy still continues in our own society.

4. Democracy
The central idea of democracy is that ordinary people want to rule themselves and are capable of doing so.
The central meaning of democracy is rule by the people, self-government by the many.
Democracy involves faith in the capacity of ordinary people to govern themselves wisely.
Democracy has become so popular that people both in the United States and around the world have struggled to attain it.

5. Americans’ Preference for Democracy
The authors of The Struggle for Democracy suggest that Americans prefer democracy over other forms of government.
Democracy has made great advances over the course of American history, but democracy remains incomplete in the United States.
Democracy is used in so many different contexts that clarification is needed before democracy can be used as a standard of evaluation.

6. Direct Versus Representative Democracy
Direct participatory democracy — to the ancient Greeks, democracy meant rule by the people exercised directly in open assemblies.
Representative democracy — rule by the people, exercised indirectly through representatives selected by the people.

7. Fundamental Principles of Representative Democracy
Popular sovereignty
Political equality
Political liberty

8. Possible Objections to Majoritarian Representative Democracy
Democracy leads to bad decisions.
Majority tyranny threatens liberty.
The people are irrational and incompetent.
Majoritarian democracy threatens minorities.

9. Democracy As an Evaluative Standard: How Democratic Are We?
Chapter 1 of the text shows how and why the democratic ideal can be used as a measuring rod to evaluate American politics.
Each of the fundamental principles of democracy suggests a set of questions that can be used to think critically about American political life.

10. Understanding How American Politics Works
The main factors of political life are interconnected (illustrated in the text by the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act).
The main factors of political life can be organized into three categories.
Structural sector — includes fundamental and enduring factors that influence government and politics

11. Political linkage sector — includes political actors, institutions, and processes that are involved in transmitting the wants and demands of individuals and groups to government officials
Governmental sector — includes all public officials and institutions that have formal, legal responsibilities for making public policy

12. American politics should be understood holistically.
American political life must be understood as an integrated, ordered whole.
What goes on in government can only be understood by considering all three sectors of analysis.
Feedback also occurs — influences sometimes flow from the governmental level to the others.