Political Science Articles

Article / Updated 06-15-2022

To understand the United States of America, start with the Constitution. Written over 200 years ago, when the nation was first being established out of the 13 British colonies, this document is a blueprint. Its seven sections (or articles) detail the core components of how the framers wanted the government to run the country. (See U.S. Constitution For Dummies Cheat Sheet.) Article I – The Legislative Branch. The principal mission of the legislative branch is to make laws. It is split into two different chambers – the House of Representatives and the Senate. Congress is a legislative body that holds the power to draft and pass legislation, borrow money for the nation, declare war, and raise a military. It also has the power to check and balance the other two federal branches. Article II – The Executive Branch. This branch of the government manages the day-to-day operations of government through various federal departments and agencies, such as the Department of Treasury. At the head of this branch is the nationally elected president of the United States. The president swears an oath to "faithfully execute" the responsibilities as president and to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." The executive branch powers include making treaties with other nations, appointing federal judges, department heads, and ambassadors, and determining how to best run the country and military operations. Article III – The Judicial Branch. Article III outlines the powers of the federal court system. The article states that the court of last resort is the U.S. Supreme Court and that the U.S. Congress has the power to determine the size and scope of those courts below it. All judges are appointed for life unless they resign or are charged with bad behavior. Those facing charges are to be tried and judged by a jury of their peers. Article IV – The States. This article defines the relationship between the states and the federal government. The federal government guarantees a republican form of government in each state, protects the nation and the people from foreign or domestic violence, and determines how new states can join the Union. It also suggests that all the states are equal to each other and should respect each other’s laws and the judicial decisions made by other state court systems. Article V – Amendment. Future generations can amend the Constitution if the society so requires it. Both the states and Congress have the power to initiate the amendment process. Article VI – Debts, Supremacy, Oaths. Article VI determines that the U.S. Constitution, and all laws made from it, are the "supreme Law of the Land," and all officials, whether members of the state legislatures, Congress, judiciary, or the executive branch, have to swear an oath to the Constitution. Article VII – Ratification. This article details all those people who signed the Constitution, representing the original 13 states.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-19-2022

If you’re planning a trip to Washington, D.C., follow some basic recommendations for protocol when visiting with a member of Congress or a White House staffer. Plan your trip to the Capitol Building around Congressional recesses, and be sure to have all the correct contact information for the House of Representatives and Senate to make travel easier and quicker.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-10-2022

Making sense of Brexit can feel like a full-time job. Find out what Brexit is and why it happened, how it impacts the economy, and what happens if the United Kingdom decides to rejoin the European Union in the future.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-01-2022

Urban plans help shape the future of a community by addressing everything from housing and transportation to natural resources, public utilities, and more. You don’t have to be a professional urban planner to get involved in planning your community’s future. Whether you participate in the planning process, serve as a local planning commissioner, or help carry out your community’s plan, you can play an important part.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-24-2022

From early Greek political philosophy to current international conflicts, political science is a study in how people come together, interact, become informed, and make decisions that affect everyone. Studying political science allows you to become educated on political issues, make decisions, and discover how politics is made at the local, national, and international level. Take a look at the list of important political scientists and their major works to guide you through the evolution of political science. Also, read through major political science concepts to give you a well-rounded view of political science as a vital discipline.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-09-2022

Politics — it’s everywhere. It affects everything in society, like taxes, the environment, health, education, the economy, international affairs, security and everything in between. So, knowing how political decisions are made and who the important actors are makes sense. Knowledge is power, and understanding how the Australian political system actually works gives you the power to get involved and influence politics yourself. Check out this Cheat Sheet, which provides quick summaries of Australia's political parties, campaigns, the role of the media, and tips for voting effectively.

Article / Updated 12-28-2021

There may actually be no such thing as a smart city. Wait — what? That’s certainly an odd comment coming from an article about smart cities. Okay, let’s explain. There’s no such thing as a completed smart city. It would be difficult to find an example where all the work has been finished and the designers and implementers have, after completing their tasks, washed their hands and said, “We’re done. Voilà! Here’s your smart city.” Nope. Doesn’t exist. After all, is a city ever completed? With a few rare exceptions, cities are in a constant state of change. Whether they’re being updated and improved or expanding upward, downward, and outward (or all of these); our cities are living, evolving entities. Cities are a work in progress. They are shaped by (among many factors) community needs, by societal trends, by crisis, and by better ideas. They shrink and expand, they decline and are reborn, and they are destroyed and rebuilt. They are never finished. And so it’s a logical return to the idea that there’s no such thing as a smart city. Instead, there are compelling and urgent needs, and a necessary response to demands, for cities that function with greater “smartness” to be smarter in all areas and in every way. A smart city isn’t a city that has merely achieved some level of satisfactory smartness. A smart city is one that identifies with the need to be smarter and then bakes that knowledge into its functioning, action-oriented DNA. It doesn’t continue to use obsolete 20th century solutions. A smart city implements 21st century solutions for 21st century problems. If there’s one aspect of smart cities that can be chastised for continuing to cause confusion and excessive debate, it’s the absence of agreement on the definition of the term smart city. Here you get a brief breakdown of what constitutes a smart city and what does not. What a smart city is As Sicinius, the bearded protector of the Roman people’s interests, states in Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus, “What is the city but the people?” Indeed, what is the city but the people? This is the right place to start when discussing the future of cities. After all, cities are defined by the human experience. They exist in support of people, are the invention of people, and deeply reflect a people's culture. In Bangkok and Tokyo, the city landscapes are replete with temples, like Budapest is with hot baths, Amsterdam is with coffee shops, and Vegas is with casinos. The feel, the look, the behavior, the heartbeat of the city — these are all a reflection of people. Cities communicate the history and life of those who live there. (Some like to say that architecture is the language of the city, which is a fitting way to look at things.) Across the planet, cities have emerged for different reasons, and their design has been shaped by various influences. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to cities. Though they share some common needs, such as energy, transportation, communications, and sanitation, they have as many differences as similarities. Sure, a city can be defined and categorized by such characteristics as its geography, governance, population, and infrastructure, but its purpose, needs, and culture cannot be so easily abstracted and normalized such that you can generalize about their nature. The uniqueness of each city must be viewed through this lens. Many cities suffer the same challenges. Finding a parking space, for example, is a universal pain. But the way problems are solved is often specific to each community. For every challenge that is similar, others are often unique. It’s this backdrop that is essential for an understanding of how to think about smart cities. To be able to confidently say that Barcelona and Dublin are smart cities (or are becoming smarter) means that there would need to be a globally agreed-on definition and an agreed-on set of extensive standards and measurements. These don’t exist, and they may never exist. Okay, to be fair, there are a small number of proposed and voluntary standards for smart cities. Two strong examples are: International Organization for Standardization (ISO), sustainable cities and communities; indicators for smart cities British Standards Institute, smart city standards The term smart city is much less important than the purpose of the work and the outcomes. In fact, to clear up confusion, many other terms are used that are all simply synonyms. They include connected city, hyperconnected city, intelligent city, digital city, smart community, and others. Smart city (or smart cities) is the term that has stuck. A smart city is defined by its people, not by some outside arbiter. If Helsinki believes that it’s creating a better quality of life for its people in its innovative use of technology, it has the right to call itself a smart city. John Harlow, a smart city research specialist at the Emerson College Engagement Lab, states that “smartness in cities comes from people understanding what's important to them and what problems they are experiencing.” The most basic definition of a smart city is one that responds to its citizens' needs in new and improved ways. You’ll learn more regarding this definition shortly, but first, some additional contextual basics. The future of humanity is firmly rooted in cities. For better or worse, as rural communities rapidly decline, immigration to cities is booming. By the end of the 21st century, all things being equal, most humans will live in urban settings. This remarkable shift will define the future more than just about anything else humans do (other than perhaps populating other planets). Despite our many misgivings, on balance, cities are largely a success story. More than anything else, they have lifted billions of people out of poverty, providing jobs, shelter, accessible healthcare, and other support systems and regulations to assist in life’s needs. Edward Glaeser, the American economist and author of Triumph of the City, makes a compelling case that cities are humanity’s greatest invention. But it’s been a tough, ugly journey. The world’s early cities weren’t pleasant places for most people, and suffering was common. Fortunately, cities are now in much better shape, and an urban migrant should find options and opportunities to at least have the choice of a better life. However, though conditions in general are better than they’ve ever been, the challenges presented by cities today are more complex in many ways and are vastly more difficult and expensive to solve. Here’s a list of just a few of the smart city challenges awaiting solutions: Overburdened and inefficient social support systems Transportation congestion and poor public-transport options Inequality Poverty Crime Homelessness Environmental damage Poor air quality Aging and broken infrastructure Lack of jobs Weak civic engagement Food insecurity Inclusiveness This list is only a small reflection of the massive number of unique challenges that cities on every continent have to address. But it should be suggestive to you of the type of work that lies ahead. An obvious question right now is this: Why haven’t humans solved these types of problems? Some of the answer lies in leadership priorities and insufficient budgets as well as in the scale and complexity of the problems involved. Clearly, if these problems were cheaply and easily solved, they’d have been addressed by now. They are neither. However, the history of innovation is a reminder that humans have the capacity to solve big, intractable issues. Improved sanitation changed the trajectory of healthcare, for example, and fertilizer made food abundant. Might innovation also help with the current challenges of the world’s cities? Many would argue yes, and technology powered innovation might offer some of the best opportunities. This kind of thinking may draw you closer to a definition of what a smart city is. The Smart Cities Council, a network of companies advised by universities, laboratories, and standards bodies, maintains that smart cities embody three core values: livability, workability, and sustainability. Specifically, the council states that using technology to achieve improvements in these three areas is the definition of what a smart city needs to be. So, considering everything you’ve learned so far, including researching the literature on the topic, what might a definition look like? Here’s a proposal: A smart city is an approach to urbanization that uses innovative technologies to enhance community services and economic opportunities, improves city infrastructure, reduces costs and resource consumption, and increases civic engagement. Fair? Many smart city definitions include references to specific technologies — often this is a mistake. The definition should be about outcomes, and it should outlive technologies that come and go. There will always be better tools in the future. Limiting a definition to tools that exist now will make any definition quickly outdated. Finally, don’t lose sight of these two important qualities that are essential for smart cities: Technology use: There are many ways to address city issues, but when technologies are used as the primary tools, this helps to make the city smarter. A smart city is a system of systems that optimizes for humans. People first: Don’t become too enamored by the use of technology. When deployed correctly, technology is largely invisible, or at least non-intrusive. What matters are the outcomes for people. A smart city is ultimately a human-centric endeavor. After all, what is the city but the people? What a smart city is not Establishing the definition of a smart city is vital because it helps you comprehend the scope of the topic. But recognizing what a smart city is not also has value. Here are five things that a smart city is not: An upgrade from a dumb city: There are many smart cities events each year, and inevitably a speaker or panelist makes a joke about cities being dumb before they were smart. The joke usually draws a chuckle. Fair enough — the notion of “smart” isn’t precise enough for what it is, but it’s the title that has stuck. All cities are complex, amazing feats of human creativity. They aren’t dumb and have never been — quite the opposite. Becoming a smart city is more about becoming smarter in the use of technology to make what the city does better and to provide solutions to problems that traditionally have been difficult to solve. One last, related point on this topic. One point of view is that a smart city can exist only with smart people. This perspective is far from fair or inclusive. Communities are made up of all types of people, and everyone, if they choose, has something to contribute. When building smart cities, ensure that all your efforts and experiences embrace the majesty of all people. You should, in fact, add this as a goal in your strategy. A surveillance city: Implementing a smart city should not mean the end of privacy for its residents, businesses, and visitors. It’s true that smart cities deploy sensors in support of their efforts — possibly for monitoring air and water quality, improved traffic management, noise detection, energy management, and much more. It’s important to acknowledge privacy concerns where they arise, and city leaders need to listen carefully and respond with assurances. However, you should recognize that these efforts are made to improve services, not to impinge on privacy or create a surveillance city where everyone is being monitored. In developing and executing on a smart city strategy, stakeholders must ensure that privacy is upheld, data is anonymized, and the community is engaged in the process to provide transparency and build confidence. Deploying smart city technology that includes sensors should be specifically and carefully regulated by rules — even legislation — in order to protect the community. Make that a priority. A strategy about gadgets and apps: Yes, technology is definitely at the center of developing a smart city, but if you look at many of the vendors in this emerging space, you can easily believe that the subject is really all about cool new toys and apps. Sure, plenty of those are available. However, transforming a city, solving complex challenges, and creating a higher quality of life for the greatest number of people are goals that require comprehensive changes in processes, rules, technologies, and the talent and skills to plan and implement it. Don’t be distracted by novel, piecemeal solutions. Sure, consider those factors in the mix, but recognize that creating a smart city is an undertaking that requires a significant focus on technology strategy, extensive solutions architecture, and systems integration. Remind yourself (and others) often that smart cities are about people, not technology. A temporary technology trend: You might believe that the smart city movement is a recent development, perhaps just two or three years old. In reality, applying technology to make cities operate better has been under way for several decades. It isn’t possible to determine the first-ever use of the term smart city, but it certainly has references at least to the early 1990s. Even with a reasonably long history already, the real action of smart cities is happening now, and the most significant results will be seen in the years ahead. More than some sort of temporary trend, for cities to function well and bring a high quality of life to as many people as necessary, the smart city movement will last for multiple decades. Though the smart city concept may change over time, the goal doesn’t really have an expiration date. For many skeptical city leaders, it’s time to shrug off the belief that it’s a passing fad and get on board to embrace the benefits of urban innovation. A concept that matters only to big cities: If you review the literature on smart cities, it certainly would appear that only big cities can be smart cities. The same names pop up all the time: London, Paris, Moscow, Melbourne, Dublin, Vienna, Barcelona, San Francisco, and others. Sure, these incredible cities have impressive smart city initiatives, but any city can pursue the goal of becoming smarter. After all, most cities in the world today are small. The big ones are the outliers. Interested in learning more? Check out our Smart Cities Cheat Sheet.

Article / Updated 07-13-2021

On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill making June 19 an annual federal holiday in the United States. The day has come to be known as "Juneteenth," a mashup of "June" and "nineteenth," and has been celebrated as the end of legal enslavement in the United States. The holiday recognizes the day in 1865 when Union army soldiers, led by Gen. Gordon Granger, told enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, that the Civil War was over and they'd been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Lincoln in 1863. The unconfirmed story is that enslaved people held in that coastal city were the last to learn of the end of the war — and the end of legal enslavement. “Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments,” President Biden said during the signing ceremony at the White House. “They don’t ignore those moments of the past. They embrace them. Great nations don’t walk away. We come to terms with the mistakes we made. And in remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger.” Key events that made the holiday possible Juneteenth celebrations have occurred for more than 150 years before the day became a federal holiday. But the day drew widespread public attention in 2020. Civil rights protests following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020, raised awareness of Juneteenth. Then, public outcry over a campaign event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, scheduled for June 19, 2020, by then-US President Donald Trump, captured national media attention. Trump’s opponents argued that holding the event on that date in that city, where a massacre of Black citizens happened in 1921, sent a cynical message. Though Trump canceled the event, the significance of Juneteenth became known to many Americans for the first time. Major US companies including Nike, Twitter, Target, and John Wiley & Sons (home of For Dummies) offered the day as a holiday for employees that year. With signature of the bill marking Juneteenth as a holiday, June 19 became the 12th federal holiday — a holiday in which all nonessential federal employees are given a paid holiday (lucky them) and financial markets are closed. Juneteenth joins New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day, and Christmas as fixed-date holidays, or holidays that are celebrated on either the same calendar date or the closest weekday if the date falls on Saturday or Sunday. The United States celebrated the first federal Juneteenth holiday on Friday, June 18, 2021, because June 19 fell on a Saturday that year. As of the 2021 signing of the bill declaring Juneteenth a federal holiday, 49 states formally observe or celebrate the day in some way; eight states include it as a paid holiday for nonessential state employees. The holiday's new official name is Juneteenth National Independence Day. And it is the second annual celebration of independence in the United States, the first being Independence Day on July 4. That observance marks the day the 13 English colonies in North America ratified the Declaration of Independence, announcing their separation from English rule. Juneteenth National Independence Day commemorates when independence extended to everyone in the United States and freed nearly 4 million people from enslavement. The long wait for freedom and citizenship Although the Juneteenth holiday has traditionally celebrated the end of enslavement of Black people in the United States, slavery did not formally come to an end nationwide until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution on December 18, 1865. Before that amendment abolished slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation had freed only enslaved people in the states that seceded from the United States at the beginning of the Civil War. The legal status of people enslaved in states that didn’t secede but allowed enslavement — Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware — was unclear until the Thirteenth Amendment passed. Enslavement was not fully banned in the United States until 1866 when treaties with Native American tribes formally ended enslavement in territories controlled by those tribes. Finally, formerly enslaved people did not legally become US citizens with full protection under the law until ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment on July 28, 1868. There's still debate over the date when legal enslavement of Black people in the United States actually ended. But, whatever the actual date, Juneteenth now marks the end of that painful period of US history. June 19 is the 12th federal holiday; all nonessential federal employees get a paid holiday (lucky them) and financial markets are closed. Juneteenth joins New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day, and Christmas as fixed-date holidays, or holidays that are celebrated on either the same calendar date or the closest weekday if the date falls on Saturday or Sunday. The United States celebrated the first federal Juneteenth holiday on Friday, June 18, 2021, because June 19 fell on a Saturday that year. A 2017 survey revealed fewer than half of employees of private businesses received paid time off for minor federal holidays such as Presidents Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day. Check your employer’s time-off policy before you schedule time to visit your public library to read up on Black American history next Juneteenth. (And may we suggest Black American History For Dummies as an excellent starting place for your studies.)

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-14-2021

Human destiny is tied to cities. If we humans are going to have a happy and prosperous future, we need new ideas, skilled talent, and informed leaders to build the cities of tomorrow. Everyone deserves a good quality of life. Smart cities can help make that happen. Find out how.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-12-2021

If the thought of politics makes you cringe, don’t worry, you can get involved as little or as much as you like in politics. If you want to voice your concerns, use these handy resources to contact your representative, and when you do call, be prepared to offer some information to them. Use a checklist of things to look for (and not look for) when searching for a candidate worthy of your vote.