Unit 11 Goals
During this unit, you will:
- Study the two dominant institutions in modern industrial societies: economics and politics
- Examine how production, consumption and trade have been organized throughout human history, and how economics is changing today
- Consider some of the characteristics of a post-industrial economy
- Learn about corporations, an economic institution that is driving globalization
- Study how economic activity is realted to power and is controlled by political institutions
- Examine how leadership and authority are established, and how they are institutionalized into different forms of government
- Consider some of the issues in American politics and governance
Unit 11 Objectives
Upon completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Identify important transitions in economic organization through history, identify technologies that spurred each transition, and describe characteristics of the economic system that resulted
- Distinguish capitalism from socialism, and list three important ways in which the two systems differ
- Describe some of the issues that have arisen in the U.S. economy as we transition into a post-industrial, information-based structure
- Describe how corporations are organized, and how the organizational structure leads to issues of corporate governance
- Characterize three different forms of legitimate authority and three different models of power in society
- Distinguish four different systems of governance, and describe how authority is legitimated in each
- List five issues in U.S. politics and describe how each is changing our political system
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