essay on responsibility of government

Roles and Responsibilities of the Government to Citizens

Responsibilities of the government to the citizens: Aside from making rules, the primary purpose of a government, according to its history, was to protect people from conflict and to provide law and order.People learned that staying together in groups and agreeing that one (or several) in the group should have greater power than others made it simpler to protect themselves.

A government must not only defend its population from one another, but also organize to prevent attack from the outside. Government responsibilities have expanded in recent years to include the economy and public service. The responsibility of the government to the citizens is deeply seated in the purpose of the foundation of government. The government’s responsibilities to citizens include the citizens’ responsibilities to the government.

Recommended: Types of Constitution: 6 Different Types of Constitution

Responsibilities Every Government has Towards its Citizens

Here are some of the responsibilities of the government to its citizens:

1. Maintenance of law and order: It is the government’s primary responsibility to preserve law and order and keep society peaceful. The executive arm of the government maintains law and order through its agencies, which include the police, military, and paramilitary.

What is the role and responsibility of government with respect to its citizens

We live in a society where law and order must be maintained. To keep the peace, the police must enforce the laws. While the courts ensure that violators receive legal punishment,

2. Provision of security : It is the government’s responsibility to protect the lives and property of individuals and the state. The state’s existence is predicated on the protection of life and property. The protection of life and property entails that citizens are free to go around without fear of being attacked or intimidated. For the defence of the state, the government is responsible for establishing agencies such as the police, army, and state security service.

Responsibility of the government to the citizens

The government is responsible for providing the supplies and equipment required for environmental protection. State creation necessitates the supply of equipment and personnel to ensure the security of state property and lives. This protection is not limited to individuals who live within the country, but also encompasses citizens who live outside of it.

Also see: Three Arms of Government and Their Functions

3. Provision of social welfare services : The government’s social obligation includes promoting people’s social and cultural lives. The government must create an environment that encourages cross-cultural interaction and marriage. Governments are virtually always required to provide fundamental services to their residents, such as road construction and firefighting, but they occasionally go above and beyond.

Many governments offer food, shelter, and medical treatment to individuals in need in order to ensure their citizens’ basic well-being. The government’s social responsibilities include the provision of parks, gardens, theatres, stadiums, and cultural areas. Citizens’ training and education in social areas of life is equally critical to their well-being. In socialism or social democratic regimes, this is a core government service, although it can be contentious in more capitalist countries.

4. Protection of Human Rights: The government’s primary responsibility is to preserve basic human rights such as the right to life, liberty, and property. As previously said, when society founded a government, the notion was that some people should be given more power in order to safeguard others. Natural rights are based on the belief that everyone deserves to have these rights. People are presumed to be born with these rights, which should not be taken away from them without their consent.

Responsibilities of the government to the citizens

When these rights are infringed upon, the government owes it to the citizens to protect them. And the government can only accomplish this if the judiciary is independent and the law is supreme.

Also see: Positive and Negative Effects of Colonialism in Africa

5. Protection from external attack: It is the government’s job to establish positive external ties with other countries in order to promote peaceful cohabitation. However, in recent times, when wars and international squabbles have occurred, governments have also had to safeguard their citizens from external threats.

Most countries’ laws and constitutions state that the government is responsible for maintaining peace inside its boundaries. External aggressors should be kept at bay as well.

6. Economic stability: The government has a responsibility to ensure that the economy is efficient, dynamic, and self-sufficient. It must utilize national resources to the country’s advantage and maintain national economic control to ensure maximum welfare for citizens and reduce wealth concentration in a few hands.

They are to minimize unemployment, control inflation, encourage economic growth, and construct monetary systems that will aid in the growth and development of the economy. These services assist citizens in developing trust in the government while also encouraging foreign investment in the country.

A civilized government has a responsibility to combat poverty and enhance the lives of its residents. To do so, the government must establish an atmosphere that encourages materially better living standards and economic progress.

Also see: Differences Between Nazism and Fascism

7. Income redistribution : To spread the benefits of prosperity, governments should ensure that the economic pie becomes larger. The government accomplishes this by taxing the wealthy and distributing the proceeds to various groups of individuals who require these services.

They are also responsible for giving financial or in-kind assistance to people or families that lack the ability or opportunity to work.

As a result, one of the functions of government is to transfer resources from the wealthy to poorer people. They also redistribute resources from the young to the disabled, the socially marginalized, and the elderly. Furthermore, wealthier governments subsidize the poor with food, housing, pensions, and healthcare.

Most of the highlighted responsibilities of the government to its citizens are usually contained in the social contract chapter of the constitution. Depending on the jurisdiction, it may be enforceable if not fulfilled.

Edeh Samuel Chukwuemeka, ACMC, is a lawyer and a certified mediator/conciliator in Nigeria. He is also a developer with knowledge in various programming languages. Samuel is determined to leverage his skills in technology, SEO, and legal practice to revolutionize the legal profession worldwide by creating web and mobile applications that simplify legal research. Sam is also passionate about educating and providing valuable information to people.

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Essay on The Purpose of Government

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3 responsibilities every government has towards its citizens

Back to basics ... every government should protect, provide for and invest in its people Image: Claire Anderson

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The oldest and simplest justification for government is as protector: protecting citizens from violence.

Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan describes a world of unrelenting insecurity without a government to provide the safety of law and order, protecting citizens from each other and from foreign foes. The horrors of little or no government to provide that function are on global display in the world’s many fragile states and essentially ungoverned regions. And indeed, when the chaos of war and disorder mounts too high, citizens will choose even despotic and fanatic governments, such as the Taliban and ISIS, over the depredations of warring bands.

The idea of government as protector requires taxes to fund, train and equip an army and a police force; to build courts and jails; and to elect or appoint the officials to pass and implement the laws citizens must not break. Regarding foreign threats, government as protector requires the ability to meet and treat with other governments as well as to fight them. This minimalist view of government is clearly on display in the early days of the American Republic, comprised of the President, Congress, Supreme Court and departments of Treasury, War, State and Justice.

Protect and provide

The concept of government as provider comes next: government as provider of goods and services that individuals cannot provide individually for themselves. Government in this conception is the solution to collective action problems, the medium through which citizens create public goods that benefit everyone, but that are also subject to free-rider problems without some collective compulsion.

The basic economic infrastructure of human connectivity falls into this category: the means of physical travel, such as roads, bridges and ports of all kinds, and increasingly the means of virtual travel, such as broadband. All of this infrastructure can be, and typically initially is, provided by private entrepreneurs who see an opportunity to build a road, say, and charge users a toll, but the capital necessary is so great and the public benefit so obvious that ultimately the government takes over.

A more expansive concept of government as provider is the social welfare state: government can cushion the inability of citizens to provide for themselves, particularly in the vulnerable conditions of youth, old age, sickness, disability and unemployment due to economic forces beyond their control. As the welfare state has evolved, its critics have come to see it more as a protector from the harsh results of capitalism, or perhaps as a means of protecting the wealthy from the political rage of the dispossessed. At its best, however, it is providing an infrastructure of care to enable citizens to flourish socially and economically in the same way that an infrastructure of competition does. It provides a social security that enables citizens to create their own economic security.

The future of government builds on these foundations of protecting and providing. Government will continue to protect citizens from violence and from the worst vicissitudes of life. Government will continue to provide public goods, at a level necessary to ensure a globally competitive economy and a well-functioning society. But wherever possible, government should invest in citizen capabilities to enable them to provide for themselves in rapidly and continually changing circumstances.

Not surprisingly, this vision of government as investor comes from a deeply entrepreneurial culture. Technology reporter Gregory Ferenstein has polled leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and concluded that they “want the government to be an investor in citizens, rather than as a protector from capitalism. They want the government to heavily fund education, encourage more active citizenship, pursue binding international trade alliances and open borders to all immigrants.” In the words of Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt: “ The combination of innovation, empowerment and creativity will be our solution .”

This celebration of human capacity is a welcome antidote to widespread pessimism about the capacity of government to meet current national and global economic, security, demographic and environmental challenges. Put into practice, however, government as investor will mean more than simply funding schools and opening borders. If government is to assume that in the main citizens can solve themselves more efficiently and effectively than government can provide for them, it will have to invest not only in the cultivation of citizen capabilities, but also in the provision of the resources and infrastructure to allow citizens to succeed at scale.

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Answering the call for responsive, responsible leadership, christine lagarde: how growth policy can reduce inequality, what is government’s role in sparking innovation.

Invest in talent

The most important priority of government as investor is indeed education, but education cradle-to-grave. The first five years are particularly essential, as the brain development in those years determines how well children will be able to learn and process what they learn for the rest of their lives. The government will thus have to invest in an entire infrastructure of child development from pregnancy through the beginning of formal schooling, including child nutrition and health, parenting classes, home visits and developmentally appropriate early education programmes. The teenage years are another period of brain development where special programmes, coaching and family support are likely to be needed. Investment in education will fall on barren ground if brains are not capable of receiving and absorbing it. Moreover, meaningful opportunities for continuing education must be available to citizens over the course of their lives, as jobs change rapidly and the acquisition of knowledge accelerates.

Even well-educated citizens, however, cannot live up to their full potential as creative thinkers and makers unless they have resources to work with. Futurists and business consultants John Hagel III, John Seeley Brown and Lang Davison argue in The Power of Pull that successful enterprises no longer design a product according to abstract specifications and push it out to customers, but rather provide a platform where individuals can find what they need and connect to whom they need to be successful. If government really wishes to invest in citizen talent, it will have to provide the same kind of “product” – platforms where citizens can shop intelligently and efficiently for everything from health insurance to educational opportunities to business licenses and potential business partners. Those platforms cannot simply be massive data dumps; they must be curated, designed and continually updated for a successful customer/citizens experience.

Finally, government as investor will have to find a way to be anti-scale. The normal venture capitalist approach to investment is to expect nine ventures to fail and one to take off and scale up. For government, however, more small initiatives that engage more citizens productively and happily are better than a few large ones. Multiple family restaurants in multiple towns are better than a few large national chains. Woven all together, citizen-enterprise in every conceivable area can create a web of national economic enterprise and at least a good part of a social safety net. But government is likely to have to do the weaving.

A government that believes in the talent and potential of its citizens and devote a large portion of its tax revenues to investing in its citizens to help them reach that potential is an attractive vision. It avoids the slowness and bureaucracy of direct government provision of services, although efficient government units can certainly compete. It recognizes that citizens are quicker and more creative at responding to change and coming up with new solutions.

But government investment will have to recognize and address the changing needs of citizens over their entire lifetimes, provide platforms to help them get the resources and make the connections they need, and see a whole set of public goods created by the sum of their deliberately many parts.

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License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Public Health is the Responsibility of the Government Essay

Public health is the responsibility of the government ielts essay.

Some people think that public health within a country can be improved by government making laws regarding nutritious food. Others, however, think that health is a matter of personal choice and responsibility. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. You should write at least 250 words.

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Public Health is the Responsibility of the Government IELTS Essay – Model Answer 1

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A healthy nation is a wealthy nation. This essay will discuss whether health care is the duty of the government or the individual himself. According to me, the government can be held responsible for the public health care centers while at a personal level, individuals must take care of their health.

The government can improve the health care facilities of a nation. The state can take adequate measures to ensure decent health care infrastructure. Officials can also promote healthy communities, like for instance, promotion of free eye care or dental checkup organized by the state. Awareness about communicable diseases and their prevention is also the duty of the government. Keeping our environment clean is not the sole duty of the individuals but of the government as well. The distribution of national resources on health care centers scarcely can be problematic for society as a whole. IELTSXpress

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Under other conditions, health is the ultimate responsibility of the individual. Factors like hereditary conditions and inactive lifestyle of humans do contribute largely. Even if the illness is self- inflicted or not, one must take care of their health without depending upon the government. There are some measures that individuals can implement in order to improve their health. For instance, activities like smoking and intoxication can be avoided by the people themselves in order to enjoy an active lifestyle.

In the final analysis, to contribute for the nation and be responsible citizens, we need to have a certain level of health and well-being. For me personally, well-being is an individual’s responsibility and they must not fail to assume this responsibility. Though the Government needs to provide adequate healthcare facilities, as a basic human right, people must not take advantage of the welfare facilities provided by the nation. IELTSXPRESS

Public Health IELTS Essay – Model Answer 2

Due to the increasing pollution and higher population density, healthy living and the government’s role in it is a great concern for many. Some opine that the government needs to pass laws regarding food intake to improve public health, while others oppose this idea as they believe that it is a matter of individual choice. The following paragraphs will shed some light on this debate before drawing a logical conclusion. To begin with, a healthy lifestyle is a choice and habit of an individual. No matter how many laws are passed and how strictly the government monitors the food quality, if a person does not follow a healthy lifestyle and eating habit, he will surely suffer from health-related issues. Thus the choices of individuals greatly affect the overall health condition of a nation. To lead a healthy life, citizens not always need expensive food, gym facilities, expert dieticians and so on. For instance, the rich population of a country suffers from obesity, diabetics and many other diseases that are less prevalent among middle-class people. ieltsxpress

On the other hand, the use of chemicals, preservatives and adhesives in food items should be banned, and only the government can ensure that. Even after having a proper diet and regular exercise, if people are forced to eat foods that have chemicals and harmful ingredients, they would suffer from dangerous diseases. Using unauthorised chemicals, selling expired and low-quality foods should be halted by the authority. Infrequent market monitoring and the lack of quality control for food items are two reasons our market is full of unhygienic food items. The government’s initiative can reduce this depravity and crime to a great extent. To conclude, the citizens of a country have to follow a healthy lifestyle, while the government must ensure hygiene in food production and food sales. Their combined initiatives and efforts can greatly promote public health.

IELTS Essay on Public Health and Government – Model Answer 3

There are people who think that public health is the responsibility of the government and vice versa. In my opinion, people’s health are both the responsibility of the government and supported by their own attention to their lives.

The government supposed to be t he side who thinks and creates the rules, public facilities related to health care and its tools, increases the awareness about the important of health, and also provides the health personnel such as doctor, nurse, dentist, etc. It has one function in organization called as Ministry of Health that in charge to focus on health programs in the nation. Either for prevention and mitigation actions, this organization hold a role to centralized all directions related to health in national or regional stages. ieltxpress.com

On the other hand, without the society’s concern, the government acts would be useless because it works in two-way. How much the government do their works, it does not make any difference without people’s involvement on supporting the health program. For example on nutrition balance, while the government shares information about it without people care with their own food consumption, the impact of high cholesterol or affected with diabetic is highly possible. If people eat more food with high sugar, instant food, and junk food without control they possibly have high cholesterol, uric acid or high blood sugar that near to diabetes.

People’s attention is also important despite the government still should be the first institution which has one step ahead before public as its responsibility to protect the citizens. It likes domino effect that the two sides supposed to work together on achieving the goals about health.

Public health is the responsibility of the government IELTS – Model Answer 4

As a result of escalating pollution and enormous population, healthy meals is a great concern for many. While the health budget for the government is increasing annually, the general public health state, on the contrary, is threatening. Some opine that the government needs to pass legislation concerning food intake to improve public health. In contrast, others oppose this notion as they consider that it is a matter of individual option.

To begin with, a healthful lifestyle is a choice and habit of an individual. No matter how many laws are passed and how strictly the government tracks the food-grade, if somebody does not follow the healthy lifestyle and eating addiction, he will surely suffer from health-related issues. Thus the choices of people greatly impact the overall health state of a country. To lead a wholesome life, citizens don’t require expensive meals, gym facilities, expert dieticians and so on. As an example, the wealthy population of a state suffers from obesity, diabetics and lots of other diseases that are not as common one of the middle-class individuals. This demonstrates that purchasing ability and budget aren’t the most important aspect of a healthy life. ieltsx press

On the other side, the use of chemicals, additives and additives in food items should be completely banned, and the government can ensure that. Even following appropriate diet and exercise, even if people are made to consume foods that have sudden chemicals, they’d suffer from harmful diseases. Utilizing unauthorized substances, selling expired, and low-fat meals should be forbidden. Infrequent market monitoring and the absence of quality control for food things are two reasons our marketplace is full of unhygienic food items. The government’s initiative could greatly lessen this abrupt corruption and crime in the food business and market.

In conclusion, the citizens of a nation need to practise a healthy lifestyle while the authorities should ensure hygiene in food manufacturing and food markets. Both of their joint efforts and initiatives can greatly boost public health.

Government on Nutritious Food IELTS Essay – Model Answer 5

Personal and public health are tightly related to food choices. While some people believe that the government should regulate nutrition to improve public wellness, others argue that it should be people’s decision whether to pursue a healthy diet or not. This essay will discuss both points of view and explain why the authorities should not control the types of food people can buy.

Legislators could impose laws concerning nutritious food in an effort to have a healthier population, therefore, decreasing public health costs. Even if this could be considered a good idea, it would be very quite difficult to implement. To achieve this target, the rulers could impose a levy on unhealthy food options, or reduce their availability on the grocery stores shelves. In Italy, for example, products such as carbonated sugary drinks and chips are heavily taxed. As a result, the sales of these items have decreased. However, if the authorities start to take control of what their citizens can or cannot eat, it may be seen as limitation of freedom. ieltsxpress

Since personal freedom is an extremely important human right, many people think that they should be responsible for their choices regarding the food and drinks they decide to consume. I agree with this opinion because limiting nutritional options, even if it is done with the best outcome in mind, could consequently create dissatisfaction among the population, which would possibly lead to other public issues such as protests and demonstrations. A better approach could be educating the public about a healthy diet, which would help people make better-informed decisions about the food they consume. Many developed countries around the world employed this strategy and saw public health gains.

In conclusion, even though the government is able to control the dietary habits of its population through taxation and restrictions, healthier citizens and reduced public health expenses isn’t the only possible outcome. Limiting personal freedom could result in social unrest and for that reason diet decisions are better to be left up to well-informed individuals.

Public Health IELTS Writing Task 2

A fair amount of people believe that health and hygiene can only be improved through government oversight, such as imposing some food supply policies; however, others believe that personal decision and responsibility have played a vital role in this matter. In my opinion, both government legislation and personal care are needed. ieltsxpress

To commence with, one of the important causes of health problems is the food people consume. If governments pass various laws related to this issue, the level of problems that people face during their lives will increase and life expectancy will be extended. In addition, by improving agricultural techniques, the mortality rate comes down, as better nutrition will be shared among the people. For instance, if urban centers begin to supply clean water and clean up waste, there will be a drastic reduction in water and nutrition, and general personal hygiene will increase. In this way, governments can be critical in helping to reduce mortality and improve health.

However, people were given advice on what are the causes of illness and how they can prevent infectious diseases while taking care of their personal health, so they need to pay attention to such simple topics as watching their hand, not using others brush, and visiting a doctor in every specific period for medical check up. Moreover, sports were one of the necessary areas to reduce the risk of disease, so provided that there is a regular daily exercise, especially as they get older they will not face difficulty. Thus, public health will not develop without personal hygiene.

In conclusion, it is clear that conditions are vital aspects for promoting health-related products as well as self-awareness. In my notion, both self-care and government concern for aspects that affect health are equally important, and these improvements in hygiene can be more effective if both groups work together.

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Responsibility of Government Essay Example

Thomas Jefferson once said, "The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors." The Government carries a certain responsibility for the way lives in the United States flow but to a certain extent. Some responsibilities are to be left for the citizens to tend.

I believe it is the responsibility of the Government to enable the safety of the citizens in the United States. According to Anne-Marrie Slaughter at the "World Economic Forum," "The oldest and simplest justification for government is as protector: protecting citizens from violence." The way taxes are collected from citizens and the ways the Government uses this money, justifies the responsibility the Government has on ensuring safety. Some may argue that "the person responsible for your safety is YOU," and not the Government, but not everyone is a firefighter, a police officer, nor a paramedic.

Thomas Jefferson was and still is correct when he addressed that the Government is for the governed. It would be too costly to have voting centers everywhere in the nation and local issues must be addressed first. Robert Glover, in "Why Do We Need Representatives?" address how if voting centers were to be spread, the estimated cost would be $140 billion dollars for "every home nationwide." Being able to prioritize local issues helps "educate and engage" to create an "understanding on important issues" that may not be so easy to fix.

The government is not responsible for the citizen's happiness. Some argue that "environmental factors such as air pollution can lower well-being" and a solution to this would be parks and green spaces. The Government established a law which banned plastic bags in California in November 2016, which should contribute to bettering air pollution, but most of the citizen's still continue to use those plastic bags and are willing to pay the extra 10 cents for that bag. Citizens must take "personal responsibility" and not blame "others for" their "unhappiness."

The Government carries a certain responsibility for the way lives in the United States flow but to a certain extent. Some responsibilities are to be left for the citizens to tend. The Government should prioritize the safety and representing citizens because this is something that we often cannot do for ourselves. Not everyone owns a gun nor is everyone a paramedic, peace officer, or a firefighter.

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The Purpose of Government

Securing fundamental individual rights, as well as the rights of the people as a whole to govern themselves through consent is the principal object of the republic envisioned by the Founders like James Madison, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, and George Mason. We find in Federalist No. 10 (1787), however, another characterization of what Madison calls the “first object” of government that is worthy of more consideration than it generally receives.

Capturing his vision of a defensible democratic republic perhaps better than a mere reference to securing fundamental rights, Madison invited the American people in the late 1780s to embrace a governmental arrangement that would protect them in the exercise of their “diverse faculties.” Madison provided more detail on this concept in his 1792 essay “On Property”:

“This term [property] in its particular application means ‘that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.’ In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage ” (James Madison, “On Property,” 1792).

Property correctly understood includes not only “…a man’s land, or merchandize, or money…” but also includes, according to Madison,

“His opinions and the free communication of them…his religious opinions…and the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights” (James Madison, “On Property,” 1792).

In other words, a legitimate and defensible free government is one that protects people to exercise their faculties to the end of becoming the people that they want to be. Considering the way of life that he was advancing for the American people, it is not surprising that Madison subscribed to a broad definition of the right to conscience, embracing freedom of religion and more, as well as the right to property. It also is not surprising in modern times, though it was to many of Madison’s contemporaries, that he believed that the best way to protect people’s exercise of their faculties to the fullest, was to craft a self-governing republic. The Framers envisioned a governing structure that would advance the people’s prospects for securing happiness and safety, by developing what they called an “energetic” government with proper restraints on its power. Madison and other Founders believed that a robust private sphere subject to limited governmental regulation and populated by persons who are incentivized to use their talents and ambitions to the fullest should be beneficial for the individuals themselves and for the entire nation.

As intent as the Framers were on protecting individual liberties, they also appreciated the need for effective and competent government. Madison knew the dangers that can spring from the unbridled pursuit of narrow interests and, thus, recognized that government must be capable, when necessary, of restraining such harmful pursuits. Even a free people needs to be “controlled.” Indeed, Madison bluntly acknowledged in Federalist No. 51 (1788) that the first task of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was to insure that the government would have adequate power “to control the governed.” Adequate power is not the same as unlimited power. The trick is to come up with an arrangement that combines the requisites of effective government with proper and necessary safeguards for the liberties of the people.

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions”(James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788).

There are many working parts – the “auxiliary precautions” in the system that Madison and the other leading Founders proposed to achieve the twin goals of effective and safe governance. Governmental powers should be limited and their use must be subject to both internal and external checks. Governmental powers, however, also need to be adequate to the challenges that societies face, both domestic and foreign. In this connection, the Founders drew on what Hamilton in Federalist No. 9 called the “new science of politics” for guidance. This “new science” included a study of previous republics, to discover how to make government both free and effective. Most recent in the Founders’ experience was the government established by the Articles of Confederation – a “firm league of friendship” that had been too weak to provide an effective form of government. This was to be a republic that worked – not one that failed as all previous attempts had. They were well acquainted with the claim that liberty and safety are best secured by a government of separated and divided powers, accompanied by proper checks and balances. The Framers’ republic went one step further by dividing power between two “distinct governments” to cite Federalist No. 51 – the federal level and the state level, and then subdividing power among separate departments or branches within these governments.

Since the new government would be given national powers equal to the national needs of the country, the Framers proposed a bicameral legislature with substantial power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, for example, but with contrasting chambers. The House of Representatives would be larger, providing proportional representation based on each state’s population, and elected by the people directly, for a two-year term of office. The Senate, whose two members from each state would be selected by that state’s legislature, would be a smaller, more deliberative body, with each Senator elected for a six-year term, and more oriented to representing the interests of the state. The Framers intended that, with their different constituencies and characteristics, the two chambers would check and balance each other and thus diminish the threat of legislative tyranny. The independent executive department headed by a single individual was designed to be a source of energy, but accountable energy; while the independent judiciary was expected to advance the end of having a ‘quality’ democratic republic that promotes justice in practice and not merely in rhetoric. Madison’s defense of the constitutional system of checks and balances in Federalist No. 51 makes it clear that he aspired to create something more than a mere democratic government, a ‘quality’ democratic republic was what he was offering the American people. Witness, for example, his defense of an appointed rather than elected national judiciary, a defense that rested largely on the benefits of a competent judicial department populated by officials who understand the complexities of the law.

If the powers of the national government had to be properly structured or arranged to achieve the objectives of the leading Founders, so the division of powers between the national government and the states had to be properly arranged as well. The division under the Articles of Confederation favored the states to a degree that worked against the promotion of the “safety and happiness” of the American people. Madison explained in Federalist No. 39 (1788), that the nature of the new American republic was to be “compound,” or partly national and partly federal.

An ingenious system, it would provide, as Madison further noted in Federalist No. 51 , a “double security” for the rights of the people: “[t]he different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself” (James Madison, Federalist No. 51 ).

Enhanced security for rights, however, is not the only advantage of America’s federal or divided allocation of governmental powers. The decision to divide power among (federalism) in addition to within (separation of powers) several governments made it possible to enjoy the benefits of a large republic (e.g., strong defense against foreign encroachments, national system of commerce, multiplicity of interests that favored coalition or moderate politics, etc.) while permitting the American people to enjoy significant control over their day-to-day affairs within the states. The states, and not the national government, were entrusted with the all important “police powers,” that is, the authority to protect the health, morals, safety, and welfare of the people.

In short, the state governments that are closest to the people, and thus most subject to popular pressure, are left with control over the civic and cultural matters that are most likely to touch the people as they go about their daily lives.

The sovereignty that the states enjoy, however, is a ‘residual’ sovereignty and not the ‘complete’ legal sovereignty that they enjoyed under the Articles of Confederation. As itemized in Article 1, Section 9, the U.S. Constitution restrains the states even as it restrains the national government. Review of state action by the national judiciary follows naturally from the provisions of the Constitution. Madison and some other Framers believed that infringements of rights were more likely to arise from state action than national action, in large part due to the broad powers of the states over the day-to-day affairs of the people. In short, Madison recognized that preserving the states as important political entities within the larger constitutional system would bring risks as well as benefits. It is instructive that Madison lobbied unsuccessfully during the congressional debates on the Bill of Rights for a constitutional provision or “amendment” that would specifically restrain the authority of the states to interfere with freedom of the press and freedom of conscience. He had been equally unsuccessful in convincing a sufficient number of delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to agree to empower Congress with the power “to negative all laws passed by the several States, contravening in the opinion of the National Legislature the articles of Union…” (James Madison, Records of the Federal Convention , 1787).

The American compound republic combined national and state governments equipped with powers equal to their diverse roles, with the lessons of the Enlightenment’s “science of politics.” The structural or institutional features of the American constitutional order only make sense in the context of what the Founders hoped to achieve – securing the right of the American people to live decent, worthwhile lives according to their own goals and faculties. The thoughtful preservation of those institutions, occasionally through necessary corrective measures, depends on a proper understanding of what it is that they are designed to promote as well as an appreciation of how to manage those institutions to serve the best interests of the American people. All of this requires a citizenry with the skills and dispositions necessary for republican self-government, that is, a citizen body whose members understand and act to promote justice. Each successive generation must equip itself to assure a competent and decent rights-oriented republic (e.g., commitment to due process of law, the protection of fundamental personal liberties, tolerance of the exercise of necessary governmental powers, etc.) and to invest itself in the work of protecting and preserving such a republic.

The Role of Government

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution knew that the new government they crafted must be more powerful and effective than the government under the Articles of Confederation. They studied history and human nature to create a government strong enough to promote the public good, but not so strong that it would become a threat to individual liberties.

Separation of Powers with Checks and Balances

The Founders understood the principle expressed by the British historian, Lord Acton, “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Through the complex system of checks and balances developed in the U.S. Constitution, they sought to assure that no person or branch of government could exercise unrestrained power. As James Madison advocated in Federalist No. 51, ambition should counteract ambition in a fashion that advances the public good.

Republican Government

While many people today use the terms “republic” and “democracy” interchangeably, America’s Founders saw important differences between the two forms of government. Distrustful of democracies, they were skeptical about the protection of individual rights in a system that functioned simply by majority rule. The Framers of the United States Constitution instead crafted a constitutional republic based on majority rule but included structures to curb its excesses and protect essential liberty interests.

Due Process of Law

The principle of due process of law means that the government must follow duly-enacted laws when it seeks to restrict or deny fundamental rights, including a person’s rights to life, liberty, or property. In essence, it means that the government must treat its citizens fairly, following laws and established procedures in everything it does. It is the commitment to this principle that makes the United States, as John Adams once noted, “a government of laws, and not of men.”

The Structure of the National Government

The Framers thought the best way to protect the rights of citizens would be through a government powerful enough to fulfill its constitutional obligations yet limited enough to prevent it from encroaching on the rights of individuals. A large national republic that divided power horizontally (within governments) and vertically (among different levels of government—local, state, and national) seemed the best way to achieve their goals.

National Government, Crisis, and Civil Liberties

In this lesson students attempt to balance civil liberties with security during a time of crisis. Students read and discuss President Lincoln’s proclamation suspending habeas corpus. Working in cooperative groups students hold a simulated trial in the case of Ex parte Milligan (1866). Following the simulation students debrief the case and compare their verdict with the actual verdict. Students reflect on President Lincoln’s attempt to balance the strength of the government with protection of individual civil liberties.

State and Local Government

From the Founding generation to the present day, controversy continues regarding the proper division of power between state and national government. What the Founders did not find debatable was the wisdom of dividing power both among and within governments. In short, they considered the federal system to be a critical part of the American constitutional order.

Communities

Though not always in the media spotlight, the communities with which a person interacts on a daily basis are important political units. It is citizens’ interaction with their communities that largely determines their happiness and safety.

Responsibilities of Citizenship

This lesson provides activities that help students analyze characteristics of good citizenship.

The Role of the Government Essay

Introduction, liberal vs. conservative, works cited.

The paper is a critical analysis of the opposing views of the role of the government held by the liberals and the conservatives. It is evident that these two groups ideally hold varying views with regards to the role of the government as well as other important factors in governance.

Conservative is also known as the right or right-wing in the context of the United States. As suggested by Schneider 98 individuals in this category strongly believe that the government should work with the people and not over them, stand by their sides and not riding over people.

The government should have limited influence when deciding things. The key to prosperity is personal responsibility. This can be seen in the eyes of government trying to craft laws that would encourage Foreign Direct Investment between her and other friendly countries (Schneider 89).

This has seen to it that the citizens of involved countries seize the opportunities and set up businesses in other foreign countries. Another example can be seen when upon taking office President Bush called the Congress to pass laws and policies that would relief Americans from heavy taxation.

Ideally conservatives believe that the government should actively indulge and other relevant stakeholders before arriving at any conclusion particularly with regards to laws that directly or indirectly affect individuals.

It is the role of the government to ensure that right policies are in place so that the citizens feel secure. Similarly conservatives are of the view that once people exercise personal responsibility and the government has ensured desired freedom, the pie will be much bigger for everyone.

The government does not solve the societal problems; this is the role of citizen since the government has provided the desired degree of freedom. It is the role of the government to ensure that things remain the way they are or even returned to the previous state (Ballou 129).

On the other hand, liberals are sometimes referred to as the left or left wing. Liberals are of the view that “it is the duty and responsibility of the government to achieve equal as well as equality for all” (Scott 74).

On the same note liberals hold that it is the duty of the government to direct resources and efforts towards eliminating the various social ills such as theft, murder and prostitution so that individuals are protected and human rights standards upheld.

It is worth noting that liberals see the government to be responsible in ensuring that no one is in need. The policies to be developed fully emphasizes that it is the role of the government to solve societal problems be they economic, social, environmental or political (Scott 42).

Decisions are usually made by the government without thorough consultations with other relevant stakeholders. A typical example of how liberals believe the government should work is by passing laws and policies that will help deter some social ills such as corruption, prostitution, murder among others.

It is no doubt that liberals believe that the government need to force individuals as well as organizations to comply with existing laws and policies (Scott 201).

It is evident that liberals and conservatives hold varying views with regards to the role of the government.

Whereas liberal strongly believe that it is the role of the government to solve problems in the society, conservatives strongly believe that government should play a minimal role of only ensuring that the desired freedom is in place to ensure that individuals can realize their goals. Individual should exercise personal responsibility and solve problems.

Ballou, Olivier. The Graphic Guide to Conservatism: A visual primer on the conservative worldview . London: Sage, 2011. Print.

Schneider, Gregory. Conservatism in America since 1930: A reader . New York: Wiley & Sons, 2003. Print.

Scott, Arnold. Imposing values: An essay on liberalism and regulation . New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

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Essay on Government

Students are often asked to write an essay on Government in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Government

What is government.

Government is a group of people who make decisions and laws for a country. They are responsible for providing services like education, healthcare, and security to the public.

Types of Government

There are different types of governments, such as democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, and communism. In a democracy, people choose their leaders through voting.

Roles of Government

Governments have many roles. They protect citizens, make laws, and manage the economy. They also provide public services like schools and hospitals.

Importance of Government

Government is important because it maintains order, protects citizens, and provides necessary services. Without it, society would be chaotic.

Also check:

10 Lines on Government

250 Words Essay on Government

Introduction.

The term ‘Government’ fundamentally signifies the governing body of a nation or state that exercises authority, controls, and administers public policy. It is the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states.

The Role of Government

The government plays a crucial role in society by ensuring the smooth functioning of the nation. It is responsible for maintaining law and order, protecting citizens’ rights, and providing public services. The government also shapes the economy by implementing policies that either stimulate or slow down economic growth.

Governments can be categorized into several types based on their structure and the extent of power they exercise. These include democracy, where power is vested in the people; monarchy, where power is held by a single ruler; and autocracy, where a single person holds unlimited power.

Government and Democracy

In democratic governments, citizens have the right to elect their representatives who make decisions on their behalf. This system promotes accountability, transparency, and the protection of individual rights. However, democracy’s success hinges on an informed and active citizenry that can hold the government accountable.

In conclusion, the government is a fundamental institution in any society. It plays a pivotal role in maintaining societal order, ensuring the welfare of its citizens, and driving the nation’s growth and development. The efficiency of a government is largely determined by its structure, the extent of its powers, and the level of citizen participation.

500 Words Essay on Government

Introduction to government.

Government, a fundamental construct of societal organization, is an institution that enforces rules and regulations, maintains order, and facilitates the smooth functioning of a country. It’s a complex mechanism that encompasses myriad aspects from legislation to implementation, and from diplomacy to defense.

The government’s primary role is to safeguard the rights and freedoms of its citizens. This involves ensuring the security of the people, maintaining law and order, and providing public goods and services. A government has the responsibility to protect its citizens from internal and external threats, which is why it maintains law enforcement agencies and a military.

The government also plays a crucial role in economic regulation and stabilization. By controlling monetary and fiscal policies, it can influence the country’s economic trajectory, ensuring growth, stability, and equity. Furthermore, the government is responsible for the provision of public goods and services such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, and social welfare programs.

Forms of Government

Governments come in various forms, each with its unique characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages. Democracies are governments in which power is vested in the people, who exercise it directly or through elected representatives. Autocracies, on the other hand, are characterized by a single entity possessing all power, with little to no constraint on the exercise of that power.

In between these extremes, there are numerous variations, such as constitutional monarchies, where a monarch shares power with a constitutionally organized government, or oligarchies, where power rests with a small number of people.

The Importance of Good Governance

Good governance is integral to the effective functioning of a government. It is characterized by transparency, accountability, efficiency, and adherence to the rule of law. Good governance ensures that the government’s actions benefit the majority of the population and that public resources are used efficiently and ethically.

Transparency in government actions encourages public participation and holds the government accountable for its decisions. Accountability ensures that those in power can be held responsible for their actions. Efficiency in governance means that resources are used optimally to deliver maximum value to citizens.

Conclusion: The Evolving Role of Government

In today’s rapidly changing world, the role of government is evolving. With the advent of technology and globalization, governments are not just confined to traditional roles but are increasingly involved in areas such as digital infrastructure, climate change, and global health crises.

As we move forward, the challenge for governments worldwide will be to adapt to these changes and continue to serve their citizens effectively. Understanding the nature, role, and complexities of government is crucial for us as we navigate the political landscape of the 21st century.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

Trustworthy government: the obligations of government & the responsibilities of the governed.

Margaret Levi , a Fellow of the American Academy since 2001, is Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Faculty Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She is also Jere L. Bacharach Professor Emerita of International Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. She is the author of six books, including Of Rule and Revenue (1988); Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (1997); and In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism (with John Ahlquist, 2013).

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Margaret Levi; Trustworthy Government: The Obligations of Government & the Responsibilities of the Governed. Daedalus 2022; 151 (4): 215–233. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01952

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Establishing trustworthy government is a major problem for contemporary democracies. Without public confidence, government faces considerable noncompliance with its policies, as has been the case with the reaction of some subpopulations to COVID safety requirements. The pressures on government today are numerous. The challenges are complex and the polity diverse. Creating confidence and thus willing compliance requires a demonstrated government competence. It also requires political leadership committed to the collective good and to forging a common identity among multiple subgroups while recognizing their distinctive differences and needs. Citizens are also crucial actors. It is incumbent upon a democratic citizenry that it recognizes its responsibilities to and interdependence with others in the polity as members of an expanded community of fate.

In well-functioning democracies, a virtuous circle arises. 1 The government is trustworthy, and the citizens recognize it as such and respond with compliance and willing cooperation with its policies and practices. 2 Being a trustworthy government depends on the credibility of the government’s commitment to the flourishing of its people. Establishing credibility requires that government uphold its side of its implicit contract with citizens and subjects, that is: the provision of goods and services, fair processes in policy-determination and implementation (given the norms of place and time), and a demonstrable administrative capacity, including the ability to identify and punish free-riders, those who defraud or abuse a government program. Service delivery, procedural fairness, and administrative capabilities are attributes of government performance, but the motivations and ideologies of elected politicians can also affect perceptions, positively or negatively. When citizens perceive government as serving their interests, they consider government trustworthy. As seen in Figure 1 , a trustworthy government provokes greater willingness to comply with its demands and a more engaged public, which enables government to provide more of what citizens need, which further enhances both its performance and its trustworthiness.

Virtuous Circle of Government

As the following examples illustrate, the legitimacy of government further enhances (or undermines) willing compliance. But legitimacy rests on more than effective governance; it demands popularly acceptable justifications for who holds the reins of power, who the leadership is, and the policies they promote. 3 Moreover, as is patently obvious these days, different subgroups of the population can have widely different assessments of the legitimacy of government itself and its actions.

But there is another piece of trustworthy government that requires reemphasis: being trustworthy requires that officials craft policies that reflect the values and interests of their diverse and pluralistic populations. Democratic governments can and should enhance social solidarity among groups within the polity, even those distrustful of each other. Indeed, democracies may further enhance the perception of their trustworthiness by assisting citizens to become aware of their common project with each other and with the government to ensure the flourishing of its peoples and, better yet, of all peoples and the planet. The obligations between citizens and government are reciprocal, indeed, multilateral.

Some clarifications and addendums are necessary before proceeding. A minor point is the use of the term government. Some, including myself at times, use the term state to connote the complex of institutions and processes noted here, and reserve government for the politicians currently in charge. I follow this common practice in U.S. and comparative political science and the common usage by much of the media and public.

More important, the trustworthiness of government is seldom, if ever, complete. Some agents and agencies of government might meet the standards (or be perceived as meeting the standards) more than others. The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, for example, reveals how the legal and judicial institutions of states vary, even among those with similar income and regime characteristics. The Scandinavian countries, for example, rank high on almost every dimension, while the United States ranks high on some indicators, but ranks low, relative to its peers, for criminal justice. 4 Moreover, this continuum can be discontinuous. Governments, including democratic governments, can fall into a vicious cycle in which they are both untrustworthy and mistrusted. This cycle can but does not necessarily lead to reconstitution of the government.

Finally, even when a democratic government is relatively trustworthy, there can and should be healthy skepticism about its practices, processes, and policies. 5 The sine qua non of a thriving democracy is public questioning, media scrutiny, and protest that hold government accountable or push it to extend what are understood to be its obligations to the people. One responsibility of citizenship in a democracy is to try to make government more responsive to the needs of the populace and better able to meet them.

Let me make this point even crisper. The first task of a trustworthy government is enacting, devising, and implementing policies. The second and equally important task is engagement, creating processes for acquiring informed input from the citizenry and enabling them to participate in solving societal problems. 6 The goal is the flourishing of the people and the planet in terms of well-being but also opportunity and dignity.

In what follows, I expand on my approach to conceptualizing and assessing trustworthy government, then address where democracies seem to be now, and conclude with some thoughts about how to make governments both more democratic and more trustworthy, and in the process, how they might generate an empathetic citizenry that can work together to solve societal problems.

I have long had a problem with research that assesses citizen perceptions of how trustworthy a government is by considering only surveys. Though one of the issues in the early surveys has been mostly corrected over time, it still persists: generic questions about trust in government may be about the politicians in office rather than about the government in general. Equally as important, “trust” in government, indeed trust in general, is an attitude or belief that can produce inadequate assessment of the other party in the trust relationship and may lead to being conned or worse. 7 Although trust can be an important component of social and even economic interactions, we do not want to rely on trust when dealing with government. Rather, we should be relying on institutional arrangements that ensure government agents act in the interests of the polity and the claimants they are serving.

This concern about the survey data and individual attitudes of trust-and distrust-have led me to focus on behavior: compliance, noncompliance, protests, and so on. Those who believe government is trustworthy will be more likely to engage in behavioral trust, complying with policies without undo coercion or persuasion. Those who do not find the institutions or their agents trustworthy are more likely to protest, refuse to comply, and withdraw support from the elected political actors they hold accountable. However, as the body of my work attests, the assessment of behavioral trust is contextual, requiring deep understanding of the communities engaging in the relevant behavior. Sometimes, for example, protest of a particular practice or policy depends on an assessment that the government is trustworthy in general, but less so regarding a specific policy or practice or in the treatment of a subgroup of the population.

To make this concrete, consider the variation in the willingness of young men in democracies in their response to calls for volunteers during the two world wars and the Vietnam War. 8 The decision was individual but informed by social networks and communities, producing significant differences in both public support and how potential recruits responded. In the United States, even those who had confidence that government was serving them relatively well in general and who supported many of its programs protested the war in Vietnam. Of course, some did this out of self-interest. They did not want to disrupt, let alone risk, their lives, but there were many who were willing to pay a very high price for their convictions. In the twenty-first-century U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we see a very divided public and a decline in support over time. 9

In Canada, many Francophones questioned the legitimacy of the world wars and of the Canadian government’s insistence they serve in them. From their perspective, the federal government was violating the constitutional justification that conscription could be considered only if Canada was invaded. Anglophone Canadians volunteered in high numbers for the world wars, Francophone Canadians almost not at all. Francophones generally believed the federal Canadian government was untrustworthy, failing to keep its promises of bilingual education and general respect for their language. They also worried-and reasonably so-that they would receive military orders in English, which not all of them comprehended.

Francophone Canadians during both world wars, working-class Australians in World War i , and dissidents throughout history have used avoidance of and outright refusal to serve in the military to proclaim their opposition to specific wars and governments. As political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott has shown, noncompliance is an important “weapon of the weak.” He documents agricultural laborers shirking their work and destroying property in response to landlords’ reductions in the protections of their welfare during the Green Revolution. 10 Disobedience to the law, tax evasion, inoculation resistance, and even refusing to vote can represent active noncompliance. Of course, how to read the meaning of these actions depends on the motivations of the actors. Sometimes noncompliance is simply a reflection of venality, laziness, or ignorance. However, by studying the context in which actions occur and understanding the meanings of the acts to those engaged in them (as conveyed in sermons, novels, proclamations, and social media), qualitative information makes it possible to infer likely motivations and thus analyze hypothesized variations of reasons for noncompliance.

I have elaborated and built on this argument for years. Aware that there are also vicious circles of distrust, it seems important to clarify how building a government that more effectively contributes to the flourishing of its citizens can create a virtuous circle of trustworthy government for those who never experienced one. It still is. However, the current and extreme polarization in the United States, combined with the disparate reactions to vaccinations and masks in the COVID-19 pandemic, raises the question of why the virtuous circle appears to have been broken for so many Americans.

The first answer is that there have been concerted efforts to undermine citizen confidence in and reliance on government. Democratic theory emphasizes the importance of citizen skepticism for a healthy democracy. Keeping government trustworthy requires citizen-and media-scrutiny. There has also been an ongoing debate about the appropriate role of government in the economy and society: Adam Smith was neither the first nor the last to raise this question. 11 However, in the decades before the ascendency of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and American President Ronald Reagan, the discussion of less government came to rely on a belief of the ineffectiveness as well as the inappropriateness of government in many spheres of society. Ascendent populist parties around the world and Trumpism in the United States have self-consciously “weaponized distrust” of government and indeed of many authorities, including scientific experts and technocrats. 12 Resistance to masks and vaccines is but one of many indicators. When a citizen distrusts government and holds an ideology emphasizing freedom from government restrictions and an electoral steal, the result is more than distrust: it is a delegitimation of government authority.

One consequence of the campaign to reduce the size of government is that it then provides less and less of what many in the population expect of it, thus increasing their reasons to mistrust it. This, of course, is the intended effect: the perpetuation of a non-virtuous circle in which government proves itself untrustworthy by failing to deliver. In the United States, the deterioration of physical infrastructure and public health and safety protections are but two of the many instances in which a reduction in its coffers inhibit government from delivering on its promises.

Politicizing government agencies and expertise is another weapon in the arsenal of those trying to undermine trustworthy government. The Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other agencies once considered above the fray are now mired in it. There are yet other grounds for distrust of government institutions. When government is believed to ignore due process, discriminate, or otherwise violate norms of fairness, this stimulates behavioral distrust. 13 It is thus hardly surprising that we see the emergence of Black Lives Matter and other movements that protest police when they violate rights and threaten lives.

Another reason for popular antagonism toward government is the belief that one is disadvantaged by policy changes (or, sometimes, simply not advantaged). Some even feel government has betrayed them, particularly when they observe others getting ahead while they are falling behind. This perception has led to a politics of resentment throughout the world. 14 It has a distinctive racialized form in the United States, where some White Americans resent what they perceive as special treatment given to people of color, and feel they must protect their privilege in the face of demographic changes that are likely to make them the minority population. 15

The basis of such resentment lies in the norms that have become prevalent in capitalist democracies: the conviction that individual effort is the motor of mobility, a view of society-and government benefits-as zero-sum, and a belief that those who are doing well earned what they have by patiently waiting in line and following the rules. 16 Each of these perspectives is contestable for the given status quo, and they certainly do not capture what could be. Social interactions, networks, and the public goods provided by government more often are a greater generator of mobility than individual effort. It is possible to grow the pie so that more get pieces. What is on offer as benefits need not be finite.

A distorted view of history further contributes to the politics of resentment. Many Americans wear rose-colored glasses when they recount the post-World War ii era of prosperity, homeownership, good jobs, and the absence of social conflict. According to the surveys, trust in government was high then, and it has descended, with ups and downs, ever since. Graphs like Figure 2 are common in the literature-and in the essays in this volume. 17

Public Trust in Government, 1958–2022

But there is an alternative story, too often neglected in the public conversation. The graphs do not start until after World War ii . If they started in the 1930s, the 1950s might look like a blip. Equally important, the reigning narrative of the 1950s golden age neglects how much those who prospered depended on trustworthy and large-scale government programs to build the highway system and other major infrastructure and subsidize house construction, homeownership, and college educations, among a whole array of other goods and services. The narrative also neglects the fact that there was always an “other America” left out of these programs and benefits. 18 Trust in government, even as measured by surveys, was hardly uniform among the U.S. population. There were racial, class, and generational differences. It is also obvious in the surveys that who is president affects public perceptions. There have always been partisan divides. Although, arguably, they are significantly deeper now than in the 1950s. There has also always been a gap between the respective assessments of local, state, and federal government. People generally feel more confident in the governments closest to them. Recent surveys confirm the persistence of that gap generally in the United States. 19

Yet, as argued above, there are other ways to approach the relationship between citizens and government than a focus on surveys that ask what people think of government in general. These questions evoke answers that can reflect how much the respondents like particular politicians, or how irritated they are by the federal tax authority or their state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. The focus of survey questions should instead be on specific agencies and actors within government. 20 Even better is to consider not just answers to survey questions but actual behaviors in terms of compliance and resistance. Then the investigation can turn to how and why people vary in their perceptions of relatively objective attributes of a trustworthy government, its agents, and agencies.

The COVID pandemic, while a nightmare for all of us, is also a dream opportunity for social scientists trying to tease out such questions as: How does a trustworthy government affect both the course of the disease and the response of the citizens? What are the best mechanisms for informing the public about science and having them believe it? And how can we determine the variation in responses among populations within a given polity, as well as responses of subgroups to different levels of government and different agencies? Experiences with COVID since February 2020 provide a wealth of data within countries and across them, and some first-rate analyses are beginning to emerge from the flood of papers taking advantage of the data.

In any kind of regime, it is important to evoke as much willing compliance as possible, even when compliance is legally required. 21 In a democracy, behavioral consent is foundational to the system and thus even more critical to achieve. And it appears, as I expected, that rates of voluntary compliance with government recommendations for social distancing, mask wearing, business and school closures, and vaccinations reflect the perceived trustworthiness of government and its agencies. 22 The more a subset of the population has confidence in a government agent or agency, the higher the behavioral consent will be, and the lower the level of resistance to mandates, ceteris paribus.

There are, of course, always complicating factors. Conformism can sometimes do much of the work, but, as we know from simple perception as well as from historical cases, different groups develop different social norms. In the United States today, party identifications determine, and are determined by, different sets of norms. There is a partisan difference in confidence in the information provided and in the federal government, and there is also a partisan divide in behavioral responses. Republican voters are less trusting but also often less informed, and Republican governors are less likely to impose stringent rules on their constituents. 23 Other subgroups, particularly those who are less educated and less welloff, are also less likely to comply, but trust is only part of the reason. As a British study reveals, those less able to afford compliance are, not surprisingly, less likely to comply, and as the U.S. data show, some people hesitate to get vaccinated out of fear of losing work time and, thus, pay. 24

The source and content of the message also matter: They can resonate with the social norms of the group, or not; and alleviate the group’s reasons for distrusting government, or not. Some of the most compelling work on this question comes from studies of the mobilization of religious practices in the control of smallpox and Ebola. For example, in her study of the variation to the uptake of the smallpox vaccine in China and India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, political scientist Prerna Singh uncovered profound distrust of anything that came from the colonizers. However, China employed messengers-and messages-that resonated with its culture, thus essentially ending smallpox. India did not effectively eradicate the disease until the 1970s, when local religious leaders joined the effort. 25 In these studies of earlier vaccines, as well as in the present case, it is becoming very clear that community engagement in how to handle public health mandates and recommendations is an important component of securing willing compliance. 26

COVID vaccination uptake in the United States is the story of an objectively trustworthy federal government facing disbelief and distrust in its messaging by at least some of the population. A recent study reveals that vaccine-hesitant Republicans are likely to take positive cues from Republican elites, but to harden their opposition to cues from Democratic elites. 27 One cross-country analysis suggests that when the government leader’s policies are put in terms of the harms noncompliance would cause, trust in the leader decreases. Framing the policies in terms of benefits enhances trust in the leader. 28 Moreover, compliance increases when the message comes from more trusted local sources, be they municipal governments, religious leaders, pharmacists, or one’s own doctors. 29

Some of the most interesting observations appear in the COVID States Projects series, one of which examines decisions about vaccination and masking among the U.S. population. Using online surveys that include both open-ended and close-ended questions, the authors found that 67 percent of the respondents were vaccinated, 15 percent were unvaccinated but “willing,” and 18 percent were both unvaccinated and “resistant.” 30 Focusing on the unvaccinated, they found that the major reasons had largely to do with perceptions of risk, often reflecting lack of good communication more than misinformation. Also significant, though not nearly to the same degree, was distrust of various institutions, agencies, and actors who were critical to the creation and delivery of the vaccine. These results get further confirmation in a later study in the series, in which the authors analyze groups who choose not to wear masks. 31 This report also confirms the argument that the messenger matters. Indeed, the data shown in Figure 3 suggest that there may not be a widespread distrust in science per se, but a lack of confidence, particularly (but not only) among the unvaccinated, in agencies and agents of governments interpreting and applying science. 32

Trust in Handling the Coronavirus Pandemic by Vaccination Status and Mask Use

When democratic governments move toward mandating vaccinations and lockdowns, the question becomes whether the public reacts positively or negatively to legal requirements. Mandating vaccinations could crowd out voluntary compliance among many who would otherwise be willing to get vaccinated. 33 However, the most recent evidence suggests that, at least in the United States, a mandate can enhance vaccine uptake by those who were hesitant rather than resistant. 34

Cross-national and cross-regional data reveal that the objective effectiveness and capacity of government positively correlate with compliance with COVID requirements. 35 However, effectiveness is but should not be the only basis for trustworthiness. There is also procedural fairness and, as I will argue and as the evidence on COVID reveals, engagement of various communities. So, there is a lot left to learn from the pandemic experience.

There is also a lot we have learned: most importantly, perhaps, how different subpopulations need distinctive messages from authorities they find credible and who listen to requests and concerns expressed by the subgroup members.

Democracies fail to be perceived as trustworthy by some of their crucial publics when there is inadequate institutional attention to the many groups that constitute those democracies. Yes, most democracies guarantee minority rights and recognize the varied demands of multiple races, ethnicities, and creeds. But how we recognize those demands comes up against the standard of universalism, a defining quality of rule of law and of liberal democracies. Democratic polities still hold high the value of treating all citizens the same, ceteris paribus. The vote count, the law, and many bureaucratic regulations are based on universalistic principles, even if not always implemented universalistically. Yet, in considering something like social distancing, perhaps rules need to be better tailored to varying contexts. Rural populations are not the same as urban, and poor people have different problems than the rich. Many public policies do indeed tailor policies and implementation to the needs and norms of particular constituencies, but with COVID - as in many other cases-the starting point lacked nuance. Universalism is not the same as uniform treatment.

The introduction of the principle of impartial government was a corrective to the corruption and favoritism that long pervaded American democracy. 36 In the nineteenth and even much of the twentieth centuries, nearly all high-income capitalist democracies suffered from significant corruption and discriminatory practices that infused their courts, legislatures, executives, and bureaucracies, among other institutions. 37 Although the low-scale and petty corruption of political machines has been virtually obliterated (versus bribes by big companies or campaign contributors, let alone the “big lie”), discriminatory practices still persist. However, the corrective introduced new problems that themselves now require correction: impartial bureaucratic and technocratic decision-making and implementation became an excuse for indifference and a way to ignore difference.

Indeed, many bureaucratic agencies appear to interpret universalistic principles as one-size-fits-all. As a member of the Societal Expert Advisory Network of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, I was struck in some of our earlier meetings by how many of the public health experts believed a single top-down communication by experts would work generally. 38 As policy-makers and experts soon realized-and as this essay documents-different publics need distinctly different messages and messengers. 39

But the recognition that universalism does not always require uniform policy also increases already existing tensions in the creation and maintenance of trustworthy government. Whether in the form of affirmative action or school choice or lockdown exceptions, distinctions may introduce new bases for mistrust by those who feel the programs create inequities. And a process that permits engagement by affected communities may lead to reductions in effectiveness in some domains in order to respect community norms. For example, the outsourcing of certain welfare and education functions to nonprofits and religious institutions in the United States made some groups happier and perhaps even better off, but it increased disparities and lowered standards of service overall. 40

The research as well as our recent experience with COVID produce yet another finding or, perhaps, a reminder. When a policy depends on the most up-to-date science, military intelligence, or other expertise, too much trust of experts can lead to tragic mistakes-à la the war in Iraq or the deadline for the withdrawal from Afghanistan-and too little trust can lead to populations resisting what might save their lives-à la vaccines for COVID. As with so much of life, we need to find the balance.

William H. Smyth, a California engineer, invented the word technocracy in 1919 to describe “the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their servants, the scientists and engineers.” 41 Inspired by Edward Bellamy, Thorstein Veblen, and others who were eager to design a better world and government, as well as by the ideas of the scientific management school of Fredrick Taylor, there developed a belief that reliance on experts would lead to socially optimal out-comes. 42 But that logic followed from three fundamental and mistaken assumptions that persist today. The first is that individuals, albeit rational in many ways, always make decisions based on the best evidence and strategy for their personal self-interest. The second is that experts can adequately forecast problems, despite the complexity of both the world and the problems. The third is that understanding of issues in one domain is necessarily transferable to another.

The disarray and polarization in so many democratic polities serve as a wake-up call that a democratic government has a responsibility not only to enact policies but to enhance social solidarity among the citizens, even those distrustful of each other. The experience of COVID in the United States is an example of how not to do this. One would have hoped that COVID would bring the polity together, the way wars and natural disasters often do. It had the reverse effect, amplifying preexisting divisions and perhaps creating new ones. This effect was, in part, because sharp partisan divides fueled mistrust of the political leadership, whether President Trump or President Biden. But there is no question that the Trump administration fumbled the initial response and undermined the credibility of its own agencies that had been designed to be apolitical. Trump illustrates the case of elected politicians not only mistrusting the government apparatus but ensuring their constituents did as well.

If properly designed and managed according to norms of fairness, the best governments meet their obligations while assisting citizens to define and meet theirs. Governments can do this through a set of participatory democratic institutional arrangements that enable people to gain, elicit, and challenge information, and thus develop realistic beliefs about the world and their own ability to act in it. Such a government elicits an expanded and inclusive community of fate whose members are willing to make sacrifices on behalf of those with whom they believe their destinies, and their descendants’ destinies, are entwined, even distant strangers who can never directly reciprocate. 43 Certainly, there will be disagreements and conflicts, but these can be civil and lead to compromises that make everyone better off.

To build an expanded and inclusive community of fate requires adequate recognition and incorporation of diversity in its myriad forms. 44 In practice, that means developing empathy for those who seem different. Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild’s application of the metaphor of standing in line patiently waiting might be appropriate to a world of limited resources and relative stability. But as COVID and climate change both make clear, the better analogy may be that we are all confronting natural disasters that could hit us at any moment, but each of our communities faces different threats (floods, droughts, disease, hurricanes, earthquakes) with variable impacts. While we all know for sure that something will affect us sooner or later, we have no certainty about exactly where and when and to what degree. Each of these disasters requires remedial resources beyond either individual or local capacities; we are interdependent. All of us must be ready both to protect ourselves and to help those who are directly in harm’s way with our own contributions.

But as COVID and natural disasters reveal, such efforts will not be enough. Our responsibility as citizens of a democracy requires us to engage in establishing a government capable of effective and fair intervention, a competent and trustworthy government that has built the infrastructure, physical and social, that allows us to respond rapidly and to good effect. Democratic citizenship carries the additional responsibility of holding the government accountable, ensuring it will be there to do its part for the common weal. We must reestablish the virtuous cycle of government and our belief in its trustworthiness.

If there is one takeaway from the overview of efforts to evoke citizen compliance in a democracy, it is that one size does not fit all. There are multiple reasons for the lack of behavioral consent with recommendations and mandates. We are only relearning the lesson that in highly pluralistic and democratic societies, trustworthy institutions must be built upon the variety of contexts and understandings that constitute the populace. There is not one public, but many. Respecting differences while building the capacities of people to engage productively with each other and with government can transform mistrust of each other and our institutions into trust-or at least tolerance.

My appreciation to the members of the democracy discussion group at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Ed Araral, Jenna Bednar, Aisha Beliso-De Jesus, Paolo de Renzio, Anna Gryzmala-Busse, Stefan Houpt, Amalia Kessler, Helen Milner, Laikwan Pang, Woody Powell, Jennifer Richeson, Dan Treisman, and Ed Walker), whose feedback helped make this a far better essay. I also thank Jason Gonzales for his bibliographic help.

Earlier versions of the virtuous circle appeared in Margaret Levi, Audrey Sacks, and Tom R. Tyler, “Conceptualizing Legitimacy, Measuring Legitimating Beliefs,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (3) (2009): 354–375, https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764209338797 ; and Margaret Levi and Audrey Sacks, “Legitimating Beliefs: Concepts and Measures,” Regulation & Governance 3 (4) (2009): 311–333, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-5991.2009.01066.x .

Autocracies may also try to evoke willing compliance, of course. It lowers transaction costs of enforcement by reducing the need for coercion. However, democracies are built on concepts of citizen consent. Although what consent means in theory and in practice is subject to continuing debate, it is nonetheless a fundamental basis of democracy.

Margaret Levi, “Trustworthy Government, Legitimating Beliefs,” in NOMOS 61 (2019): 362–384, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26786321 .

World Justice Project, “World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2021,” https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/research-and-data/wjp-rule-law-index-2021 (accessed September 15, 2022). For details on the ranking of the criminal justice system in the United States, see Factor 8 of the “World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2021,” https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/2021/United%20States/Criminal%20Justice .

For example, Pippa Norris, In Praise of Skepticism: Trust but Verify (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).

I thank Roy Bahat for helping me to formulate the issues in this way.

Karen Cook, Russell Hardin, and Margaret Levi, Cooperation Without Trust? (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005).

This example is drawn from Margaret Levi, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

On Iraq, see “Public Attitudes Toward the War in Iraq: 2003–2008,” Pew Research Center, March 19, 2008, https://www.pewresearch.org/2008/03/19/public-attitudes-toward-the-war-in-iraq-20032008 . On Afghanistan, see Anna Shortridge, “The U.S. War in Afghanistan Twenty Years On: Public Opinion Then and Now,” The Water’s Edge (blog), Council on Foreign Relations, October 7, 2021, https://www.cfr.org/blog/us-war-afghanistan-twenty-years-public-opinion-then-and-now .

James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985).

For a discussion of this debate, see Federica Carugati and Margaret Levi, A Moral Political Economy: Present, Past, and Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

There are numerous accounts, popular and scholarly, revealing how some members of the Republican Party and various antigovernment groups have deliberately worked to undermine confidence in government by “weaponizing distrust.” See, for example, Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris, At War with Government: How Conservatives Weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021). Others document delegitimation, which involves instilling the belief that government is not worthy of support. See, for example, Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2019). On growing distrust in scientific authorities, see Andrew Jewett, “How Americans Came to Distrust Science,” Boston Review , December 8, 2020, https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/andrew-jewett-how-americans-came-distrust-science .

Tom R. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990); Tom R. Tyler and Yuen J. Huo, Trust in the Law: Encouraging Public Cooperation with the Police and Courts (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002); Ernst Fehr and Klaus M. Schmidt, “A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (3) (1999): 817–868, https://doi.org/10.1162/003355399556151 ; Ernst Fehr and Klaus M. Schmidt, “The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism - Experimental Evidence and New Theories,” in Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism, and Reciprocity , Volume 1, ed. Serge-Christophe Kolm and Jean Mercier Ythier (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006); and Samuel Bowles, The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2016).

See, for example, Katherine J. Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016); and Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018).

Heather C. McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (New York: One World, 2021); Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Barreto, Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013); and Kojii Takahashi and Hakeem Jefferson, “When the Powerful Feel Voiceless: White Identity and Feelings of Racial Voicelessness,” PsyArXiv Preprints, February 4, 2021, https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ry97q .

The zero-sum viewpoint is well argued and documented by McGhee, The Sum of Us. The metaphor about following rules was popularized by Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: The New Press, 2016).

For an analysis and comprehensive reading of the surveys on trust in government, especially in the United States, see Jack Citrin and Laura Stoker, “Political Trust in a Cynical Age,” Annual Review of Political Science 21 (1) (2018): 49–70, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050316-092550 .

See Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962); Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006); and Chloe N. Thurston, At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

John O’Leary, Sushumna Agarwal, and Angela Welle, “Improving Trust in State and Local Government: Insights from Data,” Deloitte Insights , September 21, 2021, https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/public-sector/trust-in-state-local-government.html .

Citrin and Stoker, “Political Trust in a Cynical Age;” Bo Rothstein, The Quality of Government: Corruption, Social Trust, and Inequality in International Perspective (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011); and Margaret Levi and Laura Stoker, “Political Trust and Trustworthiness,” Annual Review of Political Science 3 (1) (2000): 457–507, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.3.1.475 .

Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

See, for example, Pauline Jones, Anil Menon, Allen Hicken, and Laura S. Rozek, “Global Adoption of Personal and Social Mitigation Behaviors during COVID-19: The Role of Trust and Confidence,” PLOS ONE 16 (9) (2021): 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256159 .

See, for example, Guy Grossman, Soojong Kim, Jonah M. Rexer, and Harsha Thirumurthy, “Political Partisanship Influences Behavioral Responses to Governors’ Recommendations for COVID-19 Prevention in the United States,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (39) (2020): 24144–24153, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007835117 ; and Christopher Adolph, Kenya Amano, Bree Bang-Jensen, et al., “Pandemic Politics: Timing State-Level Social Distancing Responses to COVID-19,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 46 (2) (2021): 211–233, https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-8802162 .

In the United Kingdom: Christina Atchison, Leigh Robert Bowman, Charlotte Vrinten, et al., “Early Perceptions and Behavioural Responses during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Survey of UK Adults,” BMJ Open 11 (1) (2021): 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-043577 . And in the United States: Ata Uslu, David Lazer, Roy Perils, et al., “The COVID States Project #63: The Decision to Not Get Vaccinated, from the Perspective of the Unvaccinated,” The COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences across States, September 16, 2021, https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/fazup .

Prerna Singh, “State, Society, and Vaccines,” filmed July 2021 at The Long Now Foundation for “Seminars about Long-Term Thinking,” San Francisco, video, https://longnow.org/seminars/02021/jul/27/state-society-and-vaccines . At the end of this webcast, Singh talks with Dr. Larry Brilliant, who worked with religious communities in India to help finally eradicate smallpox in India in the twentieth century. Larry Brilliant, Sometimes Brilliant: The Impossible Adventure of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History (New York: Harper One, 2016). In the same vein, one of the most important ways in reducing the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was finding an anthropological approach, rather than a disease-centered one, so people could bury their dead and not get sick. Sharon Abramowitz, “Epidemics (Especially Ebola),” Annual Review of Anthropology 46 (1) (2017): 421–445, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041616 .

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Strategies for Building Confidence in the COVID-19 Vaccines (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2021), https://doi.org/10.17226/26068 . See also John H. Tibbets, “How to Convince People to Accept a COVID-19 Vaccine,” Knowable Magazine , March 31, 2021, https://knowablemagazine.org/article/health-disease/2021/how-to-convince-people-to-accept-covid19-vaccine .

Sophia L. Pink, James Chu, James N. Druckman, et al., “Elite Party Cues Increase Vaccination Intentions among Republicans,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (32) (2021): 1–3, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2106559118 .

Jim A. C. Everett, Clara Colombatto, Edmond Awad, et al., “Moral Dilemmas and Trust in Leaders during a Global Health Crisis,” Nature Human Behaviour 5 (8) (2021): 1074–1088, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01156-y .

This compliance holds in the United States. See, for example, James Chu, Sophia L. Pink, and Robb Willer, “Religious Identity Cues Increase Vaccination Intentions and Trust in Medical Experts among American Christians,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (49) (2021): 1–3, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2106481118 . It also seems to be the case in Japan. Yasue Fukuda, Shuji Ando, and Koji Fukuda, “Knowledge and Preventive Actions toward COVID-19, Vaccination Intent, and Health Literacy among Educators in Japan: An Online Survey,” PLOS ONE 16 (9) (2021): 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257552 .

Uslu et al., “The COVID States Project #63.”

Anjuli Shere, Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Alexi Quintana, et al., “The COVID States Project #67: Who Are the Masked Unvaccinated and the Unmasked Vaccinated?” The COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences across States, October 15, 2021, https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/4cr7a .

Some research shows that confidence in science and scientists was a major driving force behind compliance with nonpharmaceutical interventions in 2020. Yann Algan, Daniel Cohen, Eva Davoine, et al., “Trust in Scientists in Times of Pandemic: Panel Evidence from 12 Countries,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (40) (2021): 1–8, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108576118 . Others find that trust in science and scientists tends to be the dominant attitude, but can vary considerably given understanding of the scientific process. Jon Agley and Yunyu Xiao, “Misinformation about COVID-19: Evidence for Differential Latent Profiles and a Strong Association with Trust in Science,” BMC Public Health 21 (1) (2021): 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-10103-x .

Katrin Schmelz and Samuel Bowles, “Overcoming COVID-19 Vaccination Resistance When Alternative Policies Affect the Dynamics of Conformism, Social Norms, and Crowding Out,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (25) (2021): 1–7, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2104912118 ; and Katrin Schmelz, “Enforcement May Crowd Out Voluntary Support for COVID-19 Policies, Especially Where Trust in Government Is Weak and in a Liberal Society,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (1) (2021): 1–8, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016385118 . My own research on military service suggests a mandate in the form of conscription can increase both compliance and resistance in various forms. Levi, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism.

Zeynep Tufekci, “The Unvaccinated May Not Be Who You Think,” The New York Times , October 15, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/15/opinion/covid-vaccines-unvaccinated.html .

Thomas Hale, Noam Angrist, Andrew J. Hale, et al., “Government Responses and COVID-19 Deaths: Global Evidence across Multiple Pandemic Waves,” PLOS ONE 16 (7) (2021): 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253116 .

Max Weber put forward the standard of dispassionate bureaucrats; they are to act sine ira et studio. See his chapter “Bureaucracy,” in Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology , ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminister, 1968). For an account of the rise and importance of impartial government, see Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Should documentation be needed, the literature is rich and cross-national. See, for example, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Margaret Levi, and Barry Weingast, “Twentieth-Century America as a Developing Country: Conflict, Institutions, and the Evolution of Public Law,” Harvard Journal on Legislation 57 (1) (2020): 25–65, https://harvardjol.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2020/05/M.F-Cuellar-M.-Levi-B.-Weingast_America-as-a-Developing-Country.pdf ; Ben Ansell and David Samuels, Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Eric Schickler, Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 19321965 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016); Bo Rothstein, Just Institutions Matter: The Moral and Political Logic of the Universal Welfare State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Rothstein, The Quality of Government.

“About: Societal Experts Action Network,” National Academies of Sciences, Engi neering, and Medicine, https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/societal-experts-action-network (accessed September 16, 2022).

Emily K. Brunson, Alison Buttenheim, Saad Omer, and Sandra Crouse Quinn, Strategies for Building Confidence in the COVID-19 Vaccines (Washington, D.C.: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2021), https://doi.org/10.17226/26068 .

Steven Rathgeb Smith and Michael Lipsky, Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of Contracting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

Barry Jones, Sleepers, Wake! Technology and the Future of Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 214.

E. Glen Weyl, “Why I Am Not a Technocrat,” RxC Media (blog), RadicalxChange, August 19, 2019, https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/2019-08-19-bv61r6 .

See Margaret Levi, “An Expanded Community of Fate,” Noema , July 7, 2020, https://www.noemamag.com/an-expanded-community-of-fate ; and John S. Ahlquist and Margaret Levi, In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013).

See, for example, Danielle S. Allen and Rohini Somanathan, ed., Difference without Domination: Pursuing Justice in Diverse Democracies (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020); Maureen A. Craig, J. M. Rucker, and Jennifer A. Richeson, “The Pitfalls and Promise of Increasing Racial Diversity: Threat, Contact, and Race Relations in the 21st Century,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 27 (3) (2018): 188–193; Jennifer A. Richeson, “The Paradox of Diversity,” Mamie Phipps Clark & Kenneth B. Clark Distinguished Lecture, Columbia University, New York, April 17, 2019; and Scott E. Page, Diversity and Complexity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011). There is considerable work in this area, and these sources represent but the tip of a large iceberg.

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The Roles of State and Federal Governments

A discussion of the roles of the state and federal governments, and their concurrent and exclusive powers.

Social Studies, Civics

President James Madison

“[T]he powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State,” Madison.

Painting by Gilbert Stuart from the U.S. Library of Congress

The United States is a constitution -based federal system, meaning power is distributed between a national ( federal ) government and local (state) governments. Although the Supremacy Clause states that the Constitution , federal laws, and treaties are the “supreme law of the land,” according to the Supreme Court, it is clear that the Constitution created a federal government of limited powers. The Supreme Court has noted that “every law enacted by Congress must be based on one or more of its powers enumerated in the Constitution .” These limited powers are set forth as what are termed “enumerated powers” in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution . These enumerated powers include, among other things, the power to levy taxes , regulate commerce, establish a uniform law of naturalization , establish federal courts (subordinate to the Supreme Court), establish and maintain a military, and declare war. In addition, the Necessary and Proper Clause has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to define “implied powers,” those which are necessary to carry out those powers enumerated in the Constitution . In McCulloch v. Maryland , Justice John Marshall set forth the doctrine of implied powers, stating, that a government entrusted with great powers must also be entrusted with the power to execute them. While the Constitution thus grants broad powers to the federal government, they are limited by the 10th Amendment, which states that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution , nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” As James Madison explained, “[t]he powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” These reserved powers have generally been referred to as “police powers,” such as those required for public safety, health, and welfare. Finally, certain powers are called concurrent powers, which the states and the federal government both may exercise. These can include, for example, setting up courts, levying taxes , and spending and borrowing money. Typically, these are powers necessary for maintenance of public facilities. As can be appreciated, one of the difficulties in the federal system is determining which entity, if any, has the power to legislate in a particular realm. In general, the problem of conflicting laws between the states and the federal government has given rise to what is called the doctrine of preemption. Under this doctrine, based on the Supremacy Clause, if a state or local law conflicts with a federal law, the state or local law must give way (unless the federal law is itself unconstitutional , in other words, it exceeds the power of the federal government). As Justice Marshall put it in McCulloch v. Maryland , “[s]tates have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control the operations of the Constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers vested in the Federal Government.” Under this doctrine, the Supreme Court has indicated that the Supremacy Clause may entail preemption of state law either by express provision, by implication, or by a conflict between federal and state law. If there is an express provision in the legislation , or if there is an explicit conflict between the state law at issue and the federal law, the state law provision is immediately invalid. Field preemption occurs when Congress legislates in a way that is comprehensive to an entire field of an issue. Impossibility preemption occurs when it would be impossible for someone to comply with both state and federal laws. Purposes and objectives preemption occurs when the purposes and objectives of the federal law would be thwarted by the state law.

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Essay on Government

Example Of Government And Citizens: Roles And Responsibilities Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Government , Law , Politics , Relationships , Responsibility , Belief , Thinking , Time

Words: 1400

Published: 03/25/2020

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It is not an untold secret that both government and people are bind together in an interdependent relationship. It means that that there is a reciprocal relationship between the government and the citizens that demands a give and take approach (Callahan 174). Just as citizens are liable to follow the laws and rules and regulations set up by the government; the government is also answerable to the citizens for all its actions. As far as citizens are concerned, I think that this collaborative association with the government tests them to find the time and to remain involved for the betterment of all. It is exceedingly necessary for the citizens to get awareness regarding the governmental functions in order to be acquainted with both prospects and restraints. As citizens, it is their duty to leave expedient personal impetus behind and come to the table for the interest of the public. The development and sustenance of the mentioned collaborative relationships are dependent on the participation of citizens. There are a number of roles that citizens must play in order to preserve their relationship with the government. These contributions include “participating in neighborhood associations, serving on school boards and advisory committees, attending public meetings and hearings, and encouraging their neighbors and friends to do the same” (Callahan 208). Such contributions may help the citizens to become dynamic and concerned members of their communities. The development of trustworthy associations, relationships and networks is dependent on this kind of active and involved participation. This kind of involvement also helps citizens to have a greater understanding of the system and governance style. The power that is consequently attained also let people to hold the government officials answerable for their activities (Callahan 208). In my opinion, my relationship with the government can become better once I understand my duties, responsibilities and rights. I believe that there are numerous rights and responsibilities that I should practice and respect being a citizen of my country. I believe that it is my responsibility to act as an involved contributor and possessor of the government. As a citizen, I shall try to develop a productive, meaningful and evocative relationship with the government. It is my responsibility as a citizen to identify and realize that I have certain duties to discharge. An active role on my part can help the government to improve its services and make decisions for the people. By assuming an active role, I can even challenge the authorities for their undertakings. I also believe that as a citizen, it is my utmost duty to look beyond my self-interests for the betterment of the community. This will become easier if I start taking interest in public affairs and to feel the troubles and tribulations of others. I believe that I can gain this understanding of mutuality if I start thinking about the consequences of my actions (as a citizen) on the society. To cut a long story short, my behavior as a citizen has a great impact on the improvement of societal conditions. I believe that as a law-abiding citizen, I must discharge my duties lawfully. The first and foremost responsibility that I have as a citizen is to hold up and protect the Constitution of the State. Secondly, I shall always be informed regarding the different issues that have a direct/indirect effect on the community. Thirdly, it is also my chief responsibility to be an efficient participant in the maintenance of the democratic system. Fourthly, it is also important for me to have respect and obedience for the laws made up by the local, state and federal governments. As a citizen, it is my responsibility to value other peoples’ opinions, respect their rights and revere their beliefs (religious, political etc.). My participation in the affairs of the local community is also my major responsibility as a dynamic civilian. One of the most important responsibilities that I have as a citizen is to make sure that all my taxes are paid without any delay. Last but not the least; I believe that I shall serve my country in the time of need. I have already mentioned that there is a reciprocal relationship between the government and the citizens. Therefore, there are certain things that I expect from government as a citizen. I believe that it is the responsibility of the government to grant me the freedom for expressing myself and my opinions openly. I also expect the government to let me worship according to my wish. The government should not interfere in people’s religious beliefs. It is also expected of the government to give its citizens the tight to a timely and just trial by the judicial system. I also think that it is very essential for the government to allow its citizens to vote in elections for the people they assume as fair and honest. It is also the duty of a government to make sure that the physiological and safety needs of its citizens are met properly and appropriately. Moreover, it is the fiscal responsibility of the government to ensure that its activities are assessed and monitored in a careful manner for the long-term sustainability. Recently, I was driving home with my family when a police officer asked us to stop to check for drugs and alcohol. It was a bad thing from his end as there was no apparent reason to stop us for checking. This was a time when I felt that it was an unfair thing to do. He insisted on looking inside our car which I think was rude. Although we knew that we could refuse to let him search the car, we remained silent. I think that it is the responsibility of the officials to have proper information before asking people to stop and get their vehicles searched. I believe that is the violation of my rights as a citizen as I was with my family and it was really offensive to be stopped and searched like that. I think that it was unfair to check us on the basis of suspicion and without any reasonable evidence. Individualized suspicion is necessary in such cases. Thus, it is one of the laws that I would like to make an amendment to. It is important to mention here that Thomas Jefferson believed in the rewriting of the Constitution from scratch. He asserted that every American generation must rewrite the laws according to its time and circumstances. However, the conditions are opposite as the Constitution of the United States of America cannot be touched for any amendment (Phillips). Being the citizen of a democratic country, I believe that I have both rights and responsibilities. I believe that I must invest time and hard work in order to be productive towards my community and country. In my opinion, the success and failure of the government is dependent on my participation. I don’t think that it is enough to just go out and vote and to let the elected officials do whatever they want. However, the government officials are also required to discharge their duties in an honest and vigilant manner. The reciprocal relationship can turn out as beneficial only then. Thus, making a country peaceful and fit for human habitation is only possible when both people and government realize their roles and responsibilities and agree to work hand in hand for the development and progression of the nation. To conclude, it is the need of the time to get aware of one’s roles and responsibilities as the citizen of a state that has given so much to us.

Works Cited

Callahan, Kathe. Elements of Effective Governance: Measurement, Accountability and Participation. Boca Raton: CRC/Taylor & Francis, 2007. Print. Hutchins, Amber Lee. Roles, Responsibilities, and Responses: The Intersection of Journalism and Public Relations in the Armstrong Williams, Mcmanus and Gallagher, and El Nuevo Hearald Ethics Controversies. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest, 2008. Print. Phillips, Christopher. Constitution Cafe: Jefferson's Brew for a True Revolution. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2011. Print.

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Three Branches of Government

By: History.com Editors

Updated: September 4, 2019 | Original: November 17, 2017

Visitors leave the United States Capitol, the seat of the United States Congress and the legislative branch of the U.S. government, in Washington, D.C.

The three branches of the U.S. government are the legislative, executive and judicial branches. According to the doctrine of separation of powers, the U.S. Constitution distributed the power of the federal government among these three branches, and built a system of checks and balances to ensure that no one branch could become too powerful.

Separation of Powers

The Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu coined the phrase “trias politica,” or separation of powers, in his influential 18th-century work “Spirit of the Laws.” His concept of a government divided into legislative, executive and judicial branches acting independently of each other inspired the framers of the U.S. Constitution , who vehemently opposed concentrating too much power in any one body of government.

In the Federalist Papers , James Madison wrote of the necessity of the separation of powers to the new nation’s democratic government: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elected, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Legislative Branch

According to Article I of the Constitution, the legislative branch (the U.S. Congress) has the primary power to make the country’s laws. This legislative power is divided further into the two chambers, or houses, of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate .

Members of Congress are elected by the people of the United States. While each state gets the same number of senators (two) to represent it, the number of representatives for each state is based on the state’s population.

Therefore, while there are 100 senators, there are 435 elected members of the House, plus an additional six non-voting delegates who represent the District of Columbia as well as Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories.

In order to pass an act of legislation, both houses must pass the same version of a bill by majority vote. Once that happens, the bill goes to the president, who can either sign it into law or reject it using the veto power assigned in the Constitution.

In the case of a regular veto, Congress can override the veto by a two-thirds vote of both houses. Both the veto power and Congress’ ability to override a veto are examples of the system of checks and balances intended by the Constitution to prevent any one branch from gaining too much power.

Executive Branch

Article II of the Constitution states that the executive branch , with the president as its head, has the power to enforce or carry out the laws of the nation.

In addition to the president, who is the commander in chief of the armed forces and head of state, the executive branch includes the vice president and the Cabinet; the State Department, Defense Department and 13 other executive departments; and various other federal agencies, commissions and committees.

Unlike members of Congress, the president and vice president are not elected directly by the people every four years, but through the electoral college system. People vote to select a slate of electors, and each elector pledges to cast his or her vote for the candidate who gets the most votes from the people they represent.

In addition to signing (or vetoing) legislation, the president can influence the country’s laws through various executive actions, including executive orders, presidential memoranda and proclamations. The executive branch is also responsible for carrying out the nation’s foreign policy and conducting diplomacy with other countries, though the Senate must ratify any treaties with foreign nations.

Judicial Branch

Article III decreed that the nation’s judicial power, to apply and interpret the laws, should be vested in “one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

The Constitution didn’t specify the powers of the Supreme Court or explain how the judicial branch should be organized, and for a time the judiciary took a back seat to the other branches of government.

But that all changed with Marbury v. Madison , an 1803 milestone case that established the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, by which it determines the constitutionality of executive and legislative acts. Judicial review is another key example of the checks and balances system in action.

Members of the federal judiciary—which includes the Supreme Court, 13 U.S. Courts of Appeals and 94 federal judicial district courts—are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Federal judges hold their seats until they resign, die or are removed from office through impeachment by Congress.

Implied Powers of the Three Branches of Government

In addition to the specific powers of each branch that are enumerated in the Constitution, each branch has claimed certain implied powers, many of which can overlap at times. For example, presidents have claimed exclusive right to make foreign policy, without consultation with Congress.

In turn, Congress has enacted legislation that specifically defines how the law should be administered by the executive branch, while federal courts have interpreted laws in ways that Congress did not intend, drawing accusations of “legislating from the bench.”

The powers granted to Congress by the Constitution expanded greatly after the Supreme Court ruled in the 1819 case McCulloch v. Maryland that the Constitution fails to spell out every power granted to Congress.

Since then, the legislative branch has often assumed additional implied powers under the “necessary and proper clause” or “elastic clause” included in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Checks and Balances

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself,” James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers . To ensure that all three branches of government remain in balance, each branch has powers that can be checked by the other two branches. Here are ways that the executive, judiciary, and legislative branches keep one another in line:

· The president (head of the executive branch) serves as commander in chief of the military forces, but Congress (legislative branch) appropriates funds for the military and votes to declare war. In addition, the Senate must ratify any peace treaties.

· Congress has the power of the purse, as it controls the money used to fund any executive actions.

· The president nominates federal officials, but the Senate confirms those nominations.

· Within the legislative branch, each house of Congress serves as a check on possible abuses of power by the other. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have to pass a bill in the same form for it to become law.

· Once Congress has passed a bill, the president has the power to veto that bill. In turn, Congress can override a regular presidential veto by a two-thirds vote of both houses.

· The Supreme Court and other federal courts (judicial branch) can declare laws or presidential actions unconstitutional, in a process known as judicial review.

· In turn, the president checks the judiciary through the power of appointment, which can be used to change the direction of the federal courts

· By passing amendments to the Constitution, Congress can effectively check the decisions of the Supreme Court.

· Congress can impeach both members of the executive and judicial branches.

Separation of Powers, The Oxford Guide to the United States Government . Branches of Government, USA.gov . Separation of Powers: An Overview, National Conference of State Legislatures .

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3 responsibilities every government has towards its citizens

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The Roles of State and Federal Governments

President James Madison

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Three Branches of Government

Separation of Powers

Legislative Branch

Executive Branch

Judicial Branch

Implied Powers of the Three Branches of Government

Checks and Balances