Week 1 Lecture Outline

American Politics: Themes and Introduction

What’s American?

• Personal and National Identity
• Conservatism
• Pragmatism
• Wealth
• Diversity
• Economic and Racial divisons
• World Leadership

What’s Politics

• Politics as government
• Politics as a competitive market
• Politics as the study of representation and distribution
• Who gets what, when, where and why?
• Who as a say in who gets what, when, where and why?