Реферат: Политическая система США

Реферат: Политическая система США

The political system of the USA.

The United States of America is the greatest capitalist country in the world.

The USA is the President republic. It means that the president is the head of

the country. The President is elected for four years, together with the Vice-

President, chosen for the same term. He cannot be younger than 35 years old

and he must have lived in the USA for at least 14 years, and be a civilian.

He must do his job according to the Constitution. The President cannot serve

more than two terms.

The legislative branch of the US Government, or the Congress, represents all

of the American states. The Congress was created by Article I of the

constitution, adopted in 1787. It consists of two parts: the House of

Representatives and the Senate.

The Senate made up of 100 members (2 from each state), elected for a term of

6 years. One third of the Senate is elected every 2 years. To be elected a

Senator, a person must be a least 30 years old and have been a citizen of the

USA for at least 9 years.

The House of Representatives comprises representatives from each state,

elected for a two-years term. The number of representatives from each state

depends on its population, but every state is represented. To be elected a

representative, a person must be at least 25 years of age and have been a

citizen of the country for at least 7 years.

In general, Senators are better known than Representatives because they are

fewer in number and serve for a longer time. Many American Presidents served

in Congress before they became President. Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon

Johnson, and Richard Nixon were all Representatives and then senators before

becoming President of the United States.

The presiding officer of the Senate is the Vice-President of the USA. The

presiding officer of the House of Representatives, the Speaker, is elected by

the house. The work of preparing and considering laws is done by the

committees of both Houses. There are 15 standing committees in the Senate and

19 in the House of Representatives.

The job of the Congress is to make laws. The President can veto a bill. The

Congress can pass the law anyway if it gets a two-thirds majority vote. The

Congress can also declare the war. The House of Representatives can also

impeach the President. This means that the House can charge the President

which a crime. In this case, the Senate will put the President on trail. The

Senate votes to approve the justices that the President appoints to Supreme

Court. The Congress assembles at least once a year.

The executive branch of the government puts the country’s laws into effect.

It consists of the president, the Vice-President and the Cabinet. The

President is the head of the executive branch of the government; he appoints

the members of the Cabinet. When the president receives a bill from the

Congress, he must sign it, and then the bill becomes a law. The Cabinet

advises the President on many matters and is composed of the heads of ten

executive departments: Secretary of Senate, Secretary of Treasury, Secretary

of Defence and others.

The judicial branch of the government is the system of courts in the United

States. Its job is to enforce laws. The Supreme Court is the highest court in

the country. It consists of 9 justices: one Chief Justice and 8 associate

justices. The President appoints the justices, but the Senate must approve

them. The justices are appointed for life. The Supreme Court makes sure

people obey the laws. The Supreme Court can also decide if a law is

constitutional, that is, if it is in agreement with the Constitution. The

judicial branch works together with the legislative and executive branches to

protect the Constitution and the rights of people.

There are two main bourgeois political parties in the USA. They are the

Democratic Party (was organized in the 1820s) and the Republican Party (was

organized in the 1850s). They defend monopoly capital. The only party that

defends the interests of the working people is the Communist Party. It was

formed in 1919 in Chicago. The Communist Party struggles for better way of

life for the working people and it fights for the interests of Negroes and

coloured people, against all kinds of discrimination. The Communist Party

stands for peaceful coexistence with the socialist countries.

The basis of the American republic.

The Constitution of the United States is the central instrument of American

government and the supreme law of the land. For 200 years, it has guided the

evolution of governmental institutions freedom, economic growth and social

progress.

The American Constitution is the world’s oldest written constitution in

force, one that has served as the model for a number of other constitutions

around the world. The Constitution owes its staying power to its simplicity

and flexibility. Originally designed to provide a framework for governing

four million people in 13 very different colonies along the Atlantic coast,

its basic provisions were so soundly conceived that, with only 26 amendments,

it now serves the needs of more than 240 million people in 50 even more

diverse states that stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

The path of the Constitution was neither straight nor easy. A draft document

emerged in 1787, but only after intense debate and six years of experience with

an earlier federal union. The 13 British colonies, strung out along the eastern

seaboard of what is now the United States, declared their independence from

England in 1776. A year before, war had broken out between the colonies and

Great Britain, a war for independence that lasted for six bitter years. While

still at war, the colonies — now calling themselves the United States of

America — drafted a compact, which bound them together as a nation. The

compact, designated the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union”, was

adopted by a Congress of the states in 1777, and formally signed in July 1778.

The Articles became binding when they were ratified by the 13th

state, Maryland, in March 1781.

It was under these inauspicious circumstances that the Constitution of the

United States was drawn up. In February 1787, the Continental Congress, the

legislative body of the republic, issued a call for the states to send

delegates to Philadelphia to revise the Articles. The Constitutional, or

Federal, Convention convened on May 25, 1787, in Independence Hall, where the

Declaration of Independence had been adopted 11 years earlier on July 4,

1776. Although the delegates had been authorized only to amend the Articles

of Confederation, they pushed the Articles aside and proceeded to construct a

charter for a wholly new, more centralized form of government. The new

document, the Constitution, was completed September 17, 1787, and was

officially adopted March 4, 1789.

The 55 delegates who drafted the Constitution included most of the

outstanding leaders, of Founding Fathers, of the new nation. They represented

a wide range of interests, backgrounds and stations in life. All agreed,

however, on the central objectives expressed in the preamble to the

Constitution:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,

States of America.

The Bill of Rights.

The Constitution has been amended 26 times since 1789, and it is likely to be

further revised in the future. The most sweeping changes were made within two

years of its adoption. In that period, the first 10 amendments, known

collectively as the Bill of Rights, were added. They were approved as a block

by the Congress in September 1789, and ratified by 11 states by the end of

1791.

Much of the initial resistance to the Constitution came not from those

opposed to strengthening the federal union, but from statesmen who felt that

the rights of individuals must be specifically spelled out. One of these was

George Mason, author of the Declaration of Rights of Virginia, which was a

forerunner of the Bill of Rights. As a delegate to the Constitutional

Convention, Mason refused to sign the document because he felt individual

rights were not sufficiently protected. Indeed, Mason’s opposition nearly

blocked ratification of Virginia. As noted earlier, Massachusetts, because

of similar feelings, conditioned its ratification on the addition of specific

guarantees of individual rights. By the time the First Congress convened,

sentiment for adoption of such amendments was nearly unanimous, and the

Congress lost little time in drafting them.

These amendments remain intact today, as they were written two centuries ago.

The first guaranties freedom of worship, speech and press, the right of

peaceful assembly, and the right of petition the government to corrects

wrongs. The second guarantees the right of citizens to bear arms. The third

provides that troops may not be quartered in private home without the owner’s

consent. The fourth guards against unreasonable searches, arrests and

seizures of property.

The next four amendments deal with the system of justice: The fifth forbids

trial for a major crime expect after indictment by a grand jury. It prohibits

repeated trails for the same offence; forbids punishment without due process

of law and provides that an accused person may not be compelled to testify

against himself. The sixth guarantees a speedy public testify for criminal

offences. It requires trial by an unbiased jury, guarantees the rights to

legal counsel for the accused, and provides that witnesses shall be completed

to attend the trial and testify in the presence of the accused. The seventh

assures trial by jury in civil cases involving anything valued at more than

20 U.S. dollars. The eighth forbids excessive bail or fines, and cruel or

unusual punishment.

The last two of the 10 amendments contain very broad statements of

constitutional authority: The ninth declares that the listing if individual

rights is not meant to be comprehensive; that the people have other rights not

specifically mentioned in the Constitution. The 10th provides that

powers not delegated by the Constitution to the federal government nor

prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states or the people.

State and local government.

Each of the fifty states of the USA has a constitution patterned after the

national Constitution, with its three divisions of power: legislative,

executive and judicial. The head of each state is the governor, elected for

four or two years. The office of the governor is one of considerable prestige

and political power and has been steadily growing in influence. The governor

is assisted by Secretaries. The state legislatures consist of two houses

(except Nebraska, which has a single-chamber legislature,) and they collect

taxes, elect their officers, approve state government officials, and pass

state laws. No state, however, may pass a law contrary to the Constitution or

the United States’ laws and treaties.

Each state creates of local government. The chief unit of local government is

the county, of which there are more than 3000. The counties maintain public

order through the sheriff and his deputies; in many states the counties

maintain the smaller local highways. The sheriff is the chief law enforcement

officer of the county. He is also officer of the court, serves papers,

enforces orders, maintains the jail, and collects taxes, with particular

functions varying from state to state. The sheriff’s deputy is appointed by

the sheriff. He assists the sheriff in law enforcement, and in some states

may act in place of a sheriff. He is usually paid in fees. Most large cities

have an elected mayor as head of the local government and an elected council

to help him. Some smaller cities have a commission form of the government.

Five men are elected to take care of the city’s services and its money

problems.

The mayor-council system is the most popular kind of local government and the

city manager type is the second most popular. In this kind if government an

elected council hires a professional city manager to administer and watch

over the city’s business. The elected council keeps the legislative power.

Congressional elections.

The Congress of the United States is composed of two houses, the Senate and

the House of Representatives. The Senate represents the states and the House

represents the population according to its distribution among the states.

Each state is guaranteed at least one representative in the House. The

remainder are apportioned among the states according the population. There is

now, roughly, one representative for every 380000 people, but no two

congressional districts have exactly the same population.

The Senate of the United States is composed of one hundred members, two being

elected from each state. Senators are chosen for six years, one-third

retiring or seeking re-election every two years. Two senators from the same

state never finish their terms at the same time, one of them called “Senior

Senator” and the other — “Junior Senator”. Theoretically all citizens of both

sexes over 21 years of age have the right to vote, but in fact this is not

so.

An estimate of the number of American legally barred from voting by the

residence laws based on 1960 Census figures on population mobility, indicates

that 5.4 million, or five per cent of adult Americans were unable to vote in

1960 because the residence requirements in some states the payment of taxes

(called “poll-taxes”) is necessary for getting the right to vote. In some

southern states voters are required to give a reasonable explanation of what

they read. In some states the ability to read (usually an extract from the

Constitution) is required. In Alabama the voter must take an “anti-Communist

oath” and fill in a questionnaire to the satisfaction of the registers. As a

result of this millions of people are deprived the right to vote. At the same

time it is well known that Americans are less disposed to exercise their

right to vote than just about any other nation. The percentage of voters in

the potential electorate (the adult citizenry) is about sixty-five per cent.

One of reasons for nonvoting, is the two-party system. In the United States

there are two major bourgeois political parties, the Democratic and the

Republican (also called G.O.P. — “the Grand Old Party”). Both of them

represent the interests of monopoly capitalists and there is no clear-curt

difference between the two parties, between their policies and their party

machines, but there is a difference between their bosses and their rank and

file members, common people who lacking a third choice have to vote either

Democratic or Republican. For many years, the mainstay of the Republican

Party was a block of industrialists and financiers of the Northeast and

midwestern farmers. The membership of the Democratic Party was no less

curious, for two of its most important components were southern landowners

and northern industrial workers — two factions apparently irreconcilable

because of differing economic and social objectives.

The area in which one lives is still considered an important factor in

determining one’s vote, though sectionalism appears to be of decreasing

importance. Until recent years, the South was “solid” for the Democrats,

while New England was “rock-ribbed” for the Republicans.

The great cities of the United States show a strong tendency to vote

Democratic while suburban areas have become Republican bastions in many parts

of the nation.

Blue-collar workers and racial minority groups are concentrated in cities.

Since this groups tend to vote Democratic, the party they support has great

strength in cities. On other hand, those who belong to the high-income groups

and usually vote Republican are concentrated in suburban areas.

The party machines of both Republican and Democratic parties are run by party

bosses closely associated with different monopoly groups and these two main

political parties in the USA are parties of the monopoly capitalists. The

Republican and Democratic parties have monopolized political life in the USA.

Their monopoly of political power creates difficulties in the struggle for

democracy. While the reactionary groups operate easily within each of this

two main parties of capitalism, promoting their interests, the working class

and the mass movements are denied such an opportunity. This is especially

felt in the elections. The American big business and progressive forces in

the country and isolate the Communist Party.

The Communist Party of the USA was denied its rights as a political party by

legal and extralegal means. Anti-Communist “loyalty oaths” by candidates

required by some state laws were used as an additional against the Communist

Party and other progressive organizations. Because of the bipartisan system

of the elections the majority of the nation, its working class, poor farmers

and seasonal workers have no other choice but to vote either for the

Democrats or the Republicans. Though major sections of the working class, the

Black people and other popular forces, still remain in the political grip of

the Democratic Party, there is little doubt that many voters see nothing to

choose between the Tweedledeeism of the Democrats and the Tweedledeeism of

the Republicans. Lacking a third choice, they fail to choose at all. The

central objective towards which all forces of the Left are striving is an

independent electoral policy, and the Communist Party of the USA calls for

united effort of labour membership, civil rights movement, advocates of

peace, so that they could present meaningful alternatives to labour and

minority of their needs and interests.