{"id":14,"date":"2025-06-20T15:49:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T15:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.routledgelearning.com\/americangovernment\/?p=14"},"modified":"2025-08-14T22:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T22:01:09","slug":"chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.routledgelearning.com\/americangovernment\/chapter-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Origins of American Political Principles<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This chapter discusses the origins of American political principles by showcasing their development from antiquity through the early modern period of Western history. The author, Cal Jillson, suggests that the appropriate way to understand this development is through the analytical lens provided by American political development research with its emphases on development and change in American political processes, institutions, and policies. Specifically, these institutions are defined as customs, practices, or organizations, usually embedded in rules and law that define and structure social as well as political activity.  Greco-Roman political philosophers during the ancient period, especially Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Polybius, developed the ideas of democracy, mixed constitutions, and republicanism (limited government through elements of monarchy [rule by the one], aristocracy [rule by the few], and democracy [rule by the many]) in order to prevent tyrannical degeneration of the polis or political community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, the Middle Ages with its emphasis on the sacred over the secular as discussed by Thomas Aquinas would serve as a model to reject religion in the formation of self-government within the American colonies. As the Renaissance and the Reformation challenged old ways of life, the development of classical liberalism in the early modern period of the seventeenth century brought forth theoretical political changes that would be made manifest in the instantiation of the American polity. Representative democracy, with its attention to limited government by social contract theory and the protections of individual political, social, as well as economic liberties, was fully infused within the nascent American colonial state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, settlement patterns within the American colonies produced a heterogeneous population with widespread social and economic opportunities that were reflected in political predilections regarding tolerance, individualism, and equality. Political thinkers during the early modern period, especially Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, contributed concepts of natural rights, social contract theory, and limited government. It would be these political premises upon which a new order would be built during and after the American Revolution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Quizzes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n