American Exceptionalism; The Politics of Fragmentation Review
Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers illustrated, in American Exceptionalism: The Politics of Fragmentation, that although collective action is the most effective means of being heard, our country has become structured to prevent this from happening. The nation has been fragmented in several different ways on many different levels over the coarse of its history. The design of the constitution, the first fragmentation, guarantees a split government. It mandates a separation of powers to allow each of the three branches checks and balances over the each other. It also prohibits the leader of one branch to simultaneously be the leader of another. The constitution also grants states their own rights to govern, instead of only having one centralized nation government. "... [T]he clear effect of constitutional fragmentation has... been to limit the potential for political cooperation among people of ordinary means..." This shows how the "founding federalist" believed the common person should not be part of political actions. On one hand you have the constitution fragmenting the government. On the other hand you have the constitution separating people from the government. The goal of the authors of the constitution was to create a sys
The last form of fragmentation is where the state acts to repress the people from uniting to protect the people. Also, by repressing, the government protects itself from the people collecting and become politically active. "By raising the costs of political action to individuals - in money, physical pain, imprisonment, or the destruction of their personal lives - repression makes it less likely that individuals will be willing to engage in collective political activity at all." This is especially important in understanding repression. Although repression protects the nation from unruly masses, it also threatens the people to keep them quiet. A silent public makes a happy government. Without repression there may be a riot for every political action that takes place. On the other hand, repression silences the voice of the people, which goes against the entire point of democracy. As the U.S. industrialized, there was a shortage of laborers, and immigrants were welcomed to fill these shortages. The immigrants created regions of ethnicity as they settled in the same areas other immigrants of their homeland. Religious groups of immigrants settled and helped to create more religious fragmentation. "Coming to a vast land, with a decentralized political structure, successive waves of immigrants took up residence in communities that were often isolated from one another, and deve
Some common words found in the essay are:
Civil War, Politics Fragmentation, Mormons Utah, United American, Joel Rogers, political action, hand constitution, political influence, civil war,
Approximate Word count = 936
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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