Fundamentals of Government Organization
Let's start our lesson with a review of the fundamentals of government organization. The focus is on the national government of the United States, but we'll point out a few comparisons between the U.S. system and other approaches as we go along. What is most essential to know about the U.S. political system? For many of you, especially those who have studied political science, this discussion will be very basic and obvious. However, for others who haven't studied our system or who aren't that familiar with American practice, it should be helpful.
All discussion of the political environment of PA in the United States has to start with the Constitution. Formed in the decade after the end of the Revolutionary War in the 1780s, it established a system of government that's still fundamentally the same as it was in the early years of the republic. Changes through amendment have been relatively few. The major elements of the Constitution are as follows:
There is a division of powers into three branches of government at the national level: the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch. All have specific powers assigned to them, but there are also significant overlaps to provide a system of checks and balances. The prevailing philosophy of the time was that power corrupts and must be held in check by countervailing powers within the system.
There is a division of powers between the national and state governments. The name of the new nation, the United States, illustrates this constitutional principle: We are a single nation, united around shared processes and values, but also a federal system that assigns significant aspects of governance to the states (and through state powers, to units of local government). As we'll see in the next lesson when we review the U.S. federal system, we are in reality a system with three levels of government, but the U.S. Constitution is essentially silent on the organization and powers of local governments and reserves that role to the states.
There is a means of peaceful change in the Constitution through the amendment process, but it requires the approval of states as well as Congress and supermajorities to ensure that such changes will be thoughtful and of a higher order than regular lawmaking by the legislature.
