1414 Chapter 1 | Understanding American Politicsstudent wakes up until the end of the day, his or her actions are influenced by federal
programs, spending, and regulations. Moreover, this chart omits actions by state
and local governments, which are very active in areas such as education policy and
law enforcement. As you will see in later chapters, it’s not surprising that the federal
government touches your everyday life in many ways. The federal government is
extraordinarily large regardless of whether you measure it in terms of spending (more
than $4 trillion a year), number of employees (over 2 million, not including contract
workers and Postal Service employees), or regulations (over 180,000 pages in the Code
of Federal Regulations).^16
Moreover, the idea that politics is everywhere has a deeper meaning: people’s
political behavior is similar to their behavior in the rest of their lives. For example,
collective action problems occur when you live with roommates and need to keep
common areas neat and clean. Everyone has an interest in a clean area, but each
person is inclined to let someone else do the work. The same principles help us
understand campus protests over tuition hikes, alcohol bans, or changes in graduation
requirements in terms of which kinds of issues and circumstances foster cooperation.
In each case, individual free riders acting in their own self-interest may undermine the
outcome that most people prefer.
Similarly, convincing like-minded individuals to contribute to a political group’s
lobbying efforts is no easy task. Each would-be contributor of time or money also
has the opportunity to be a free rider who refuses to participate yet reaps the benefits
of others’ participation. Because of these difficulties, some groups of people with
common goals remain unorganized. College students are a good example: many want
more student aid and lower interest rates on government-subsidized student loans, but
they fail to organize politically toward those ends.
This similarity between behavior in political situations and in the rest of life is no
surprise; everything that happens in politics is the result of individuals’ choices. And
the connections between politics and everyday life mean you already know more about
politics than you realize.Just because you do not take an
interest in politics does not mean
that politics will not take an
interest in you.—Pericles (attributed)The idea that “politics is everywhere”
means that government actions touch
virtually all aspects of our lives, from
regulating the business of Internet
service providers to maintain net
neutrality to mandating equal funding
for men’s and women’s sports in
high schools and colleges. Moreover,
everyday life often helps us make
sense of politics and politicians; for
example, 2016 Republican presidential
candidate and U.S. senator Ted Cruz’s
claim that Sta r Tr e k’s Captain Picard
was a Democrat while Captain Kirk
was a Republican gives nuance to
who we understand Democrats and
Republicans to be.“Why
Should
I Care?”
When you are trying to make sense of a political situation, think first of the three
key ideas that we have just discussed. Focusing on conflict helps you understand
what is at stake. Focusing on rules helps explain the strategies that participants use
to achieve their goals. And the idea that politics is everywhere is there to remind
you that conflicts over government policy are not things that happen only to other
people—for better or worse, the outcome of political conflicts can touch virtually all
aspects of our lives.Full_02_APT_64431_ch01_002-029.indd 14 16/11/18 1:35 PM