POLS 14: Introduction to American Politics

Professor Bob Johnstone
Fall Semester 1996
(4 credit hours)

The purpose of this course is to launch the formal college study of American national politics. Some of you will have had the experience of a course in American government in high school. Others will have had no formal training in the subject at all. I trust, however, that each of you will find this course helpful and informative. I also hope that you will come away from this experience with an enhanced understanding and, perhaps even, an appreciation for American politics. With this course I have an agenda of aims---none of which we will achieve entirely but towards each of which we will make a beginning:

• to develop an understanding of the structures and functions of government;
• to stimulate an interest in its processes, problems, and personalities;
• to encourage informed opinions about its reach, its purposes, and its achievements;
• to evaluate its performance, as measured against the criteria of legitimacy, power, justice, representativeness, competence, and responsiveness.

The course will, in addition, provide you with important research skills that will be useful and relevant to further study in the social sciences, skills in finding and using information and, in particular, skills in the effective use of government documents and key reference sources in American politics. The term project that develops these skills will be an original research paper in the legislative process. I will explain the nature of this assignment in a separate handout. On Reserve in Lilly Library you will find a copy of a model student research paper from a couple of years ago; you may wish to consult this at the proper time as you prepare your own paper. Your final paper is due on Friday, December 6.

I ask that you obtain and read the following works for the course:

Anthony Lewis, Gideon's Trumpet
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (ed. Richard Heffner)
Steven Waldman, The Bill: How Legislation Really Becomes Law
James Q. Wilson, American Government, (brief version), 3rd edition

There will be a few additional readings given you in the form of handouts as the term progresses.