government of the United States

United States, government of the, consisting of various democratically elected governmental bodies in a federated union, with a judiciary both elected and appointed. The U.S. government relies for its day-to-day administration upon millions of employees and civil servants in numerous bureaucracies. Civil order is maintained by police forces, and national defense is the responsibility of the military. In the United States, both the police and the military as organs of government are under the ultimate authority and control of civilians holding elective office.

The government of the United States owes its fundamental character to the political practice and experience of the 13 original colonies. The colonists, in turn, were deeply influenced by their European heritage. The 3 major traditions that influenced the colonists in their political thinking were the parliamentary tradition of self-government and the principles of common law they brought with them from England; principles of governance contained in the Protestant, especially the Puritan, tradition of Biblical study; and the history of the ancient Roman republic. Against the background of the Europe they left behind, most of the early settlers were nonconformists. Their relation to the European tradition tended to be radical and unorthodox. Added to this was the experience of the New World. Its very existence was a challenge to assumptions and knowledge that had been taken for granted for centuries. It was separated from Europe by a long and dangerous ocean voyage. The country was wild. Settling and cultivating the land required hard work and resourcefulness, which eventually developed certain habits of mind, an independence from authority, practicality, and ingenuity, a willingness to experiment, and an openness to novelty. Well before the Revolutionary War, the American colonists had become a people with a separate and distinct character and sensibility, and with considerable experience in governing themselves. Added to that experience was confidence in their judgment, enough to pit themselves against the accumulated authority and force of a major European power. All these elements are the historical foundations of government in the United States.

The Revolution established that, for Americans, power and authority did not proceed from a monarch or a privileged aristocracy. Rather, government proceeded from the people. After the Revolution, America consisted of 13 independent states loosely united in a confederation. The arrangement did not work. A constitutional convention was called and the U.S. Constitution was drawn up, leaving substantial authority in each state but also establishing a central federal government. The principles of the Constitution are simple to state but were subject to intense debate and different interpretations even as they were being given their definitive written form. Government proceeds from the will of the people. The people have the right to make and unmake their government as they see fit. Power is divided so that it cannot easily be concentrated. The government is divided among a legislature that makes law, an executive that enforces it, and an independent judiciary that interprets the law when its meaning is in dispute. These branches check one another in various ways. Congress passes laws, but a president can veto. The president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but only Congress can levy taxes and declare war. No matter how promising the arrangement looked on paper, there were those who remained fundamentally critical and wary of concentrated governmental power. At their insistence, the constitution came to include the Bill of Rights with its list of basic liberties. Also firmly established in the Constitution were the strict separation of church and state and the supremacy of civilian authority over the armed forces. Profoundly influenced by English law and political traditions, the U.S. Constitution was a radical and revolutionary departure from the English model and, for that matter, from all others. It was ratified by two-thirds of the states and George Washington became the nation's first president. In doing so he not only filled a political office, but also fundamentally defined it. The Constitutional Convention was convened in Philadelphia in 1787 and went into effect on June 21, 1788.

Government in the United States is divided among several jurisdictions. There is the federal government, each separate state government, and local governments. The federal government has the power to collect taxes and custom duties, issue currency through the mint, borrow money, and issue bonds. It determines official weights and measures, issues patents and copyrights, controls immigration, and determines and confers citizenship. The federal government alone determines foreign policy, declares war, or negotiates with foreign states. Through its bureaucracies, it performs a wide range of regulatory functions touching on many industries and many aspects of the lives of its citizens. It has authority over interstate commerce, the environment, the national parks, labor-management disputes, and social security. Above all, and in the most basic terms, it is responsible for protecting the lives, property, rights, and liberties of its citizens. These include the right to vote, the right to trial by a jury of one's peers, freedom of speech and association, and freedom from arbitrary arrest or imprisonment.

Despite the considerable power and dominance of the federal government, authority is shared with the states, each of which has its own legislature, executive, and judiciary, each with its own written constitution and body of law.

Government has expanded and changed in the United States as rapidly as the country itself. Westward expansion in the 19th century required greater centralization of authority. The secession of the southern states provoked a constitutional crisis that ended in civil war. The South was defeated and the federal government emerged with more power and authority. Before the Civil War, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and James K. Polk enhanced the power of the presidency. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln became the most powerful president the republic had seen. For the balance of the 19th century, power shifted to Congress, but continued to accrue to Washington, D.C. The Spanish-American War in 1898, World War I, and World War II, under the successively more powerful presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, saw the ascent of the United States as an international power and then a superpower. With the wars came a corresponding expansion in governmental power and responsibility. The U.S. government is now supported by vast bureaucracies, its budgets detail annual expenditures in the billions, it maintains huge standing military forces at home and around the world, but it continues to operate on much the same principles and organizational lines laid down in the Constitution.

The Congress makes laws; the executive branch, under the leadership of the president, enforces the laws and formulates national policies; the judiciary settles disputes at law. The relations within and among the branches of government are complex and change with new administrations and personalities, but the basic mechanics and principles remain much the same. Law is shaped by the needs or demands of organized citizens. Today there are many special interest groups (i.e., major industries, environmental groups), with money to employ lobbyists; these groups are outside of the main political parties and have some special policy goal or agenda. They influence lawmaking through newspapers, books, magazines, and television, demonstrations, and the use of lobbyists—paid professionals who actually seek out individual lawmakers and seek to persuade them to introduce certain legislation or to vote one way or another on pending legislation.

It is the elected congressional representatives and senators who draft bills and submit them to Congress for consideration. Bills are then assigned to various committees for study. Once out of a committee, a bill is returned for consideration and debate in the House or Senate before being voted upon. A simple majority is required to pass it. Then it must be signed by the president, who can veto the bill. The Congress may override the president's veto with a two-thirds majority. The process is lengthy, and from the time it is introduced to the time it becomes law, a bill goes through many changes, or amendments, in response to all of the competing and often conflicting interests that may be affected by the new law. The process has often been described as cumbersome and inefficient, but it was devised to ensure that laws would be made thoughtfully and with maximum input from those most affected. A more telling criticism of the current system is that in a society as large and complex as that of 20th-century United States, the only voices heard are those with the money needed to participate in government. More and more, it requires substantial sums of money to be elected to public office or to influence legislation.

In addition to elected officials, the government consists of vast bureaucracies without which the country could not function and elected officials could not effectively govern. In the executive branch, the major bureaucratic bodies include the departments of State, the Treasury, Defense, Justice, the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, and Veterans' Affairs. The heads of these departments constitute what is known as the president's cabinet. In addition, there are a large number of independent agencies with various regulatory responsibilities, such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Communications Commission, the Selective Service System, and the National Labor Relations Board. The Congress also has a network of supporting bureaucracies that include 8 major administrative agencies. They are the Congressional Budget Office, the General Accounting Office, the Government Printing Office, the Library of Congress, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Copyright Royalty Tribunal, the Architect of the Capitol, and the U.S. Botanic Garden. The House of Representatives has 435 members and the U.S. Senate has 100 members. Representatives sit for 2 years, senators for 6. Presidents are elected for 4 years with a maximum of 2 terms. The number of representatives a state has depends upon its population. Population is determined by a census and reapportionment takes place every 10 years. Tax bills can only be initiated in the House of Representatives. The Senate has the authority to approve treaties and presidential appointments to major federal posts, including the Supreme Court. The federal judicial system is organized into 95 district courts, 13 federal appeals or circuit courts, and the Supreme Court. Federal judges are appointed for life by the president, but must be approved by the Senate. Nine justices sit on the Supreme Court. The United States has been traditionally a 2-party political system. Unlike other representative democracies, the U.S. system confers elective office upon the winner of a majority of the voters in a contested election. In proportional systems of representation, minority parties hold seats based upon the percentage of the electorate that supports them. In the United States the influence of third or minor parties tends to be temporary and usually takes the form of bringing forward to public attention and debate new grievances or political programs that are then taken up by one or another of the major parties.