Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 23

As we have seen, in the division of labor required by indirect democracy, some people serve as the elected representatives of the citizens and rule on their behalf. These people are the government, and they make decisions that are binding for all people in the country. Since most people, all other things being equal, would prefer not to be bound by rules, our views of government and its functions are generally characterized by some ambivalence: On the one hand, we do not enjoy being ruled; on the other hand, the alternative would result in chaos.

What sorts of functions do governments perform? What sorts of decisions do we want to have the government make for us? As a first answer to these questions, consider the Preamble to the United States Constitution, in which the authors laid out their reasons for establishing a central government:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This Preamble alludes to two basic kinds of services that cannot easily be accomplished without government, and their provision accounts for two functions of every government of the world. The first function, captured by the phrase “[to] insure domestic Tranquility,” is to provide basic security for people to live together and to deal with each other in financial transactions. The second function, exemplified by the phrase “[to] provide for the common defence,” is to provide certain services called public goods—among them national defense—that can only be provided effectively by a government.⁸ In addition to providing these two basic kinds of services, governments can and do perform a range of additional functions, as expressed by the phrase “[to] promote the general Welfare.”

In other words, governments have to exist in order to provide a secure social and financial environment and public goods, but they can do other things as well. Governments often end up doing a variety of other things since, once a government exists, citizens often want it to perform additional services. Thus, government can shape the context of our lives in all sorts of ways. Let’s look more closely at these functions of government.

republic An indirect democracy that particularly emphasizes insulation of its representatives and officials from direct popular pressure.