● 01. 6 generalizations about institutions 1. People use institutions to serve specific ends. 2. They divide labor .3. Institutions save everyone's time and energy; in technical language, they reduce transaction costs. 4. Institutions exist independently of the particular people participating in them. 5. Institutions distribute authority. More power inheres in some roles than in others. 6. Participants will attempt to adapt it to their own purposes; but they are difficult to change.
● 02.How do institutions check tyranny? - checks and balances:Social pluralism, we divide government up between three institutions with all the same amount of power, ● 03.Why are institutions difficult to change? Path dependency: reliance on experience, constrained by status quo; solutions based on familiar institutions. Some participants are content with current arrangements and not willing to change.
● 04.Framers consciously designed a set of institutions for making it possible to do politics of this kind. The point is to design a set of institutions that control the effects of factions--by setting them against one another, but dividing authority among institutions
● Problems with the Articles of confederation No ability to tax , No central currency, No way to negotiate treaties ,No executive capacity, difficult to maintain public order, nation security.
● 06.Deals addressed by the constitution Path dependency: reliance on experience, constrained by status quo; solutions based on familiar institutions. Some participants are content with current arrangements and not willing to change.
● 07.Federalist papers- A series of (85) published arguments that advocated the ratification of the Constitution. A sales pitch, these explicated the logic for the constitution and provide great insight for understanding why government was set up as it is. Specifically, laid out the problems with