| INTRODUCTION
Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider
human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the
easiness with which the many are governed by the
few.
how to write critical essay
---- David Hume, First Principles of Government
A political environment has been defined by Dahl
(1976) as a "persistent pattern of human
relationship that involves, to a significant extent,
control, influence, power, or authority."
Political environments may range from a democratic
system to communism with other variations between
these ideological extremes. A Political Environment
is an environment involving conflicting interactions,
between three or more parties, often resulting
in the formation of alliances or coalitions and
used to resolve the conflict and achieve the goals
of the allies or their influential members. Political
environments are characterized by the biases alliances
and individuals with status interject into the
distribution of benefits and the organization
of interactions.
Typically these biases work to advance the interests
(perceived advantage) of the allies and any others
they may favor and to maintain or enhance a balance
of power favorable to them.
At the national level, policies are government
instruments used to drive change, enforce or encourage
certain actions, and prevent or discourage other
actions. Policy guides decision-makers in setting
priorities and allocating resources. Lack of policy
can cause confusion over rights and responsibilities,
and result in undesirable actions and disputes.
A variety of political ideologies may exist in
the same society. It may, therefore, be a good
idea to identify the key features of some prevalent
political ideologies.
A political system may formally be open, but customarily
closed in the control exercised by the elite.
For example, the powers granted the republics
and representatives by the Soviet federal constitution
are considerable, but in practice the coercive
power of the central state apparatus over the
republics has been absolute.
Criminal justice, because of the criminal component,
must be differentiated from civil justice. Civil
justice deals with the private rights of persons.
When a person’s private rights are violated,
the wrong is called a tort. When a person commits
an act that violates the rights of all of society
as recognized by the law, it is called a crime.
The same action can be both a tort and a crime.
Since crimes are thought to be against everyone,
society, as a whole, prosecutes criminals. In
practice, this means that criminal prosecutions
are conducted in the name of the state, the commonwealth,
the people, and so forth, depending on the traditions
of each state (Terrill and Richard, 1999).
Putting all these ideas together, we can define
criminal justice as a system designed to protect
society from crime by preventing crime and punishing
criminals. There is no single criminal justice system
in the United States. We have many similar systems
that are individually unique. Criminal cases may
be handled differently in different jurisdictions,
but court decisions based on the due process guarantees
of the U.S. Constitution require that specific steps
be taken in the administration of criminal justice
so that the individual will be protected from undue
intervention from the State.
Criminal justice is a process, involving a set
of steps beginning with a criminal investigation
and, if the offender does not leave the system
somewhere along the way, ending with the release
of the convicted offender from correctional supervision
(Jiao and Allan, 2001). This information is presented
in the order that cases most often proceed through
the three components of the criminal justice system:
(1) police, (2) the courts, and (3) corrections.
Procedural rules and discretionary decision-making
are at the center of this process.
FORMAL POLITICAL SYSTEM
The political systems of a state consist of the
formal and informal structures which manifest
the state's sovereignty over a territory and people.
It is the civil aspect of statehood. But a state
through its lifetime may have many different political
systems, as have China, Russia, and France. As
the political elite exercise more or less coercive
power, we can call a state more or less powerful.
As ideologies grant a political system more or
less power, we can call these ideologies more
or less statist. Formal political system means
these activities are subject to the direct regulations
of the state; on the other hand, it empowers all
the parties of the formal sectors so that they
can, at least in principle to negotiate with the
state to promote their interest. Therefore in
one way or another, the state has to respond to
the demands arising from the formal sector through
its administrative and legal machinery (Rummel,
1976).
What the idea of “formal” politics
than refers to are simply the political institutions
and rules introduced by this conquest state and
its indigenization. Formal rules include political
(and judicial) rules, economic rules, and contracts.
Political rules broadly define the hierarchy of
the polity, its basic decision structure, and
the explicit characteristics of agenda control.
Economic rules define property rights. Contracts
contain the provisions specific to a particular
agreement in exchange. Given the initial bargaining
strength of the decision making parties, the function
of rules is to facilitate exchange, political
or economic. Formal rules include political (and
judicial) rules, economic rules, and contracts.
Political rules broadly define the hierarchy of
the polity, its basic decision structure, and
the explicit characteristics of agenda control
(Laakso, 1999).
Formal political representation has changed little
since the days when a only a minority voted, when
rural representatives were days or weeks away
from their electors and when government constituted
a minor component of a nation’s business,
Indeed, the concept of ‘sovereign nation’
was still being formulated to general satisfaction
when the democratic template was cut. Formal political
representation has changed little since the days
when a only a minority voted, when rural representatives
were days or weeks away from their electors and
when government constituted a minor component
of a nation’s business, Indeed, the concept
of ‘sovereign nation’ was still being
formulated to general satisfaction when the democratic
template was cut. Democracies remain the ‘least
worst’ way of running a complex society.
At the same time, the processes which are entailed
are weakly fitted to their ultimate purpose. Levels
of anomie are high. Only 50.9% of those entitled
to do so voted in the US November 2000 elections,
similar to the 49% turnout in 1996. Only 17% of
the young people entitled to vote did so (Kalecki,
1943).
INFORMAL POLITICAL SYSTEM
Informal political system cannot be as precisely
defined as formal rules. They are extensions,
elaborations and qualifications of rules that
'solve' innumerable exchange problems not completely
covered by formal rules and that in consequence
have tenacious survival ability. They allow people
to go about the everyday process of making exchanges
without the necessity of thinking out exactly
at each point and in each instance the terms of
exchange. Routines, customs, traditions, and culture
are words we use to denote the persistence of
informal system. They include conventions that
evolve as solutions to coordination problems and
that all parties are interested in having maintained
(such as rules of the road for example), norms
of behavior that are recognized standards of conduct
(such as codes of conduct that define interpersonal
relationships in the family, business, school,
etc.), and self imposed codes of conduct (such
as standards of honesty or integrity). Conventions
are self enforcing. Norms of behavior are enforced
by the second party (retaliation) or by a third
party (societal sanctions or coercive authority),
and their effectiveness will depend on the effectiveness
of enforcement (Douglass, 2000).
In Taiwan, Political representation is found to
have been, to a great extent, based on informal
systems which undermine democracy (Lauth, Hans.
2000). The relationship between formal and informal
system has been largely complementary, substitutive
or conflicting meaning that formal and informal
system have reinforced each other (Christian,
2001). The changes to the presidential power Mexico
are as a result of culmination of factors. The
informal powers of the president may be challenged
by both the changing composition of the national
and state legislatures, and the changing power
structure within the party. Both of these may
produce political rivals to the president (Zaller,
1992).
POLITICAL SYSTEM IN AMERICA
America may be a young nation, but it is generally
seen as the oldest and most developed liberal
democracy. The American constitution is the oldest
written constitution in existence. It can claim,
indeed, to be the first constitution in the modern
world, and that it has survived so long is a tribute
to the sagacity, moderation, and sense of the
possible shown by its makers (Brogan, 1948). Although
there is a tendency in modern American political
science to treat the political system as an abstract
one of inputs and outputs, or of functions and
institutions (Easton, 1965), we should not forget
that a political system constitutes a balance
among competing interests, capabilities, and wills,
a specific status quo. And this is a balance among
individuals. A specific political system is a
particular definition of authoritative roles and
law norms and an allocation of rights and duties
historically determined through conflict, a balancing
of powers. Those who fill these roles, who have
the right to command others, are the political
elite.
One characteristic is the openness of the authoritative
roles to change in incumbency and the law norms
to change in substance. That is, does the status
quo itself grant members of the state the right
to compete for elite status and to change the
fundamental laws governing the state? Are there
freedom of political opposition and competition
for power? For an open system such freedom is
statewide. A closed system, however, legally or
customarily (Adams, Stuart, 1953) insulates authoritative
roles and law norms from change by the nonelite.
With this in mind, let us focus on the types of
political systems. Those who fill these roles,
who have the right to command others, are the
political elite. Clearly, many different balances
can be struck, as manifested by such varied polities
as the United States, Japan, France, China, India,
Spain, and Jordan. But these balances of power
governing the state share some communalities and
vary on certain significant characteristics (Acton,
1967).
Most political systems are a mixture of these
types (Adelman and Cynthia, 1967). The United
States comprises more a libertarian system, but
increasingly is oriented in the totalitarian direction
as the modern welfare state and the political
elites, with their mixed present and future goals,
intervene in the activities of all groups. England,
in which loss of group autonomy and the reconstruction
of society in some futurist's image has gone much
further, reflects even more of a libertarian-totalitarian
mixture. Then there is totalitarian-authoritarian
Syria or Egypt, and libertarian-authoritarian
Brazil or Lebanon. Recognizing that all contemporary
empirical political systems reflect such mixtures,
some nonetheless closely approximate the pure
types. Thus, we can exemplify the libertarian
type by Switzerland and West Germany, the traditional
by Saudi Arabia and Emperor Selassie's Ethiopia,
and the totalitarian by Communist China and the
Soviet Union.
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