Borders: Canada, Mexico
Constitution: The Constitution of the United States was adopted on 4 March 1789. It has been amended many times but unchanged in essentials. Head of state: The President, elected for a four-year term by an electoral college, which is elected by the people. Head of government: The President appoints members of the Cabinet but their appointments must be confirmed by the Senate. The President can dismiss members of the Cabinet at will. Both the President and members of the Cabinet can be removed from office by the Congress by a process of impeachment. Legislature: The Congress of the United States is a bicameral legislature. It consists of the House of Representatives, which has 435 members, elected for two-year terms from single-member districts of approximately equal population, and the Senate, which has 100 members elected for six-year terms. Two Senators are elected from each state, regardless of population. Electoral authority: All American elections are conducted by the states, and there is no national election authority. The Federal Election Commission supervises elections and campaign fundraising law but does not conduct elections. Freedom House rating: Political Rights 1, Civil Liberties 1 (I disagree with the awarding of the highest Political Rights rating to the United States, partly because of the undemocratic nature of the Electoral College system of electing the President, and partly because of the lack of national standards for the conduct of elections by the states. I also disagree with the awarding of the highest Civil Liberties rating to the United States, principally because of the continued use of the death penalty.) Political historyThe United States, originally a group of British colonies, declared their
independence in 1776. The 1789 constitution established a presidential democracy which
has been maintained essentially unchanged since. The President is chosen by
an Electoral College, in which each state is represented according to its
population. Until 1824 the Electoral College was elected by the state
legislatures. Since then it has been directly elected. Members of the Senate
were also elected by the state legislatures until 1913, when the Seventeenth
Amendment to the Constitution provided for direct election. |
 Drafting the United States Constitution, 1787 |
The American colonies had elected assemblies before independence, though usually with restrictive property franchises. During the early 19th century these were removed, and by the time of the Civil War all adult white males had the vote. In the northern states free African-American males also had the vote. |
After the Civil War slavery was abolished and the Fifteenth Amendment
to the Constitution guaranteed the franchise to all regardless of race. But
African-Americans were denied the right to vote in the southern
states by means such as the poll tax and literacy tests, and
also by violence and intimidation. Agitation for women's suffrage began in the 1860s. The first state to allow
women to vote was Wyoming, in 1890. The first woman was elected to
Congress in 1916. Women did not gain the right
to vote in all states until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
Until the 1960s most African-Americans in the south could not vote. After
World War II a civil rights movement began to campaign against this situation.
This led to
the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960 and 1964, which forced the southern states
to stop restricting voting rights. By the late 1960s all adult Americans could
vote. The voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971. Voting in the United States has
always been voluntary.
The United States has one of the most stable two-party systems in the world. Since the
Civil War the Democratic Party and the Republican Party
have alternated peacefully in
office. The Democratic Party is descended from a party founded by Thomas Jefferson in
the 1790s. It is a broadly liberal party, though it has both conservative
and radical wings. The Republican Party, founded as an anti-slavery party in the 1850s,
is firmly and increasingly conservative, although
some liberal Republicans survive.
No other party has succeeded in establishing itself.
Independent candidates for President have sometimes polled well, and independents are
occasionally elected as state Governors, but no minor party holds seats in the Congress
or in any state legislature. This is partly because of the unique American system of
primary elections, which allows voters to chose their party's candidates for all offices.
 George W Bush and Al Gore |
The November 2000 Presidential elections were the most contentious in American history. The Democratic candidate, Vice-President Al Gore, polled a plurity (though not a majority) of the vote, but was unable to win a majority in the Electoral College, which contains a bias towards the smaller, Republican, states. The outcome in the closely-contested state of Florida was disputed for weeks, until the Supreme Court, in what many considered a partisan decision, declared that Republican candidate, Governor George W Bush of Texas, had carried the state. At this point Gore conceded the election. Bush was narrowly but legitimately re-elected in November 2004. His term expires in January 2009. |