AP Comp Gov - Intro to Comp Guided Reading

Introduction to Comparative Politics: Guided Reading

Comparing Political Systems – Chapter 2:

1. There are three concepts which your textbook will refer to throughout the chapters. Explain what is meant by a political system, a government structure, and a governments’ function.

• Political system: set of institutions and agencies concerned with formulating and implementing the collective goals of a society or of groups within it.
• Government structure: perform functions, which in turn enable the government to formulate, implement, and enforce its policies (parliaments, bureaucracies, administrative agencies, and courts)
• Government’s function: services the government provides their citizens with (establishing and operating school systems, maintaining public order, fighting wars, etc)

2. For any policy to be made and implemented “process functions” must be completed. Explain what interest articulation, interest aggregation, policymaking, and policy implementation and adjudication are and how they differ.

• Interest articulation: groups in government decide what they want
• Interest aggregation: these groups bring up the request to be discussed
• Policymaking: the government decides what action to take based on the request
• Policy implementation: the government makes a policy and votes on it
• Adjudication: a way to fix or revoke the law if it’s challenged or violated.

3. Explain the concept of “system functions” and how this process takes place.

• System functions: socialization, recruitment, and communication. Not directly involved in making and implementing public policy, but are of fundamental importance to the political system. They are referred to as system functions because they determine whether or not the system will be maintained or changed.
• Political socialization: involved families, school, communications media, churches, and all the various political structures that develop, reinforce, and transform attitudes of political significance in the society.
• Political recruitment: selection of people for political activity and government offices.
• Political communication: flow of information through the society and through the various structures that make up the political system.

Political Culture and Political Socialization – Chapter 3:

4. Define political culture. Explain the three levels of political culture (system level, process level, and policy level) and why they are significant in helping determine the nature of the state that exists within a particular country.

• Political culture: public attitudes toward politics and their role within the political system
• System level: involves the citizens’ and leaders’ views of the values and organizations that comprise the political system.
• Process level: includes expectations of how politics should function, and individuals’ relationship to the political process
• Policy level: citizens’ and leaders’ policy expectations from the government
• They all shape the country’s government and policies because power is derived from the people.

5. Define political socialization. Explain the major agents of political socialization and why each one is significant to the political process.

• Political socialization: the way in which political values are formed and the political culture is transmitted from one generation to the next.
• Family: family locates the individual in a vast social world, establishing ethnic, linguistic, class, and religious ties, affirming cultural values, and directing occupational and economic aspirations. Family has the most direct affect because they generally raise their children to believe they things they do, so that belief is entrenched in the child.
• School: provide children and adolescents with knowledge about the political world and their role in it and with more concrete info on political institutions and relationships. Also transmit the values and attitudes of the society.
• Religious institutions: carry cultural and moral values which often have political implications.
• Peer groups: social units that shape political attitudes. People often agree with their peers on political issues or may be made to agree by extended contact with them.
• Social class and gender: often significant social divisions based on class or occupation. Affects the mindset of the individual and therefore their political opinion
• Mass media: provides the public with information and opinions. Can have a significant emotional affect on large audiences, and various ways of presenting information can have a large impact on the opinions of the audience.
• Interest groups: groups, especially trade unions, have important consequences for politics. Their goal is to change public opinion and affect government, as their members believe in their cause fully.
• Political parties: generally, political parties have a set of beliefs that the majority of its members believe. Often members of a party will go with that party’s belief on a topic if they agree with others rather than figuring out their own stance on it.
• Direct contact with governmental structures: the wide scope of governmental activities brings citizens into frequent contact with various bureaucratic agencies. These personal experiences are powerful agents of socialization, strengthening or undercutting the images presented by other agents. Citizens who face a different reality than they were taught are likely to change their early learned views.

Interest Articulation – Chapter 4:

6. Explain the difference between interest groups, anomic groups, nonassociational groups, institutional groups, and associational groups. Give an example of each.

• Interest groups: social or political groups that represent the interests of their constituents. They have an enduring organizational base, professional staffs, and often participate within the political process, serving on government advisory bodies and testifying at parliamentary hearings.
• Example: The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) (Fannie Mae), expand the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgages in the form of mortgage-backed securities, allowing lenders to reinvest their assets into more lending and in effect increasing the number of lenders in the mortgage market by reducing the reliance on thrifts.
• Anomic groups: spontaneous groups that form suddenly when many individuals respond similarly to frustration, disappointment, or other strong emotions. They rise and subside quickly.
• Example: 1992 rioting in resident of minority neighborhoods of LA following the acquittal of police officers accused of excessive violence in the beating of an African American suspect.
• Nonassociational groups: based on common interests and identities of ethnicity, region, religion, occupation, or perhaps kinship. They’re rarely well organized, and their activity is episodic. Often have no sense of themselves as being members of a group, but are regarded by others as if they were a formal group.
• Examples: Consumers, Soccer Moms & NASCAR Dads, University students
• Institutional groups: formal and have other political or social functions in addition to interest articulation. Either as corporate bodies or as smaller groups within these bodies (legislative blocks, officer cliques, groups in the clergy, or ideological cliques in bureaucracies), such groups express their own interests or represent the interest of other groups in the society. The influence of institutional interest groups is usually derived from the strength of their primary organizational base (size of their membership, income, etc).
• Example: In the US, the military-industrial complex consists of the combination of personnel in the Defense Department and defense industries who join in support of military expenditures.
• Associational Groups: formed explicitly to represent the interests of a particular group. They have orderly procedures for formulating interests and demans, and they usually employ full-time professional staff. Often very active in representing the interests of their members in the policy process. These are organized for political activity although they also may engage in other activity.
• Examples: trade unions, chambers of commerce and manufacturers’ associations, ethnic associations, and religious associations.

7. Define the term “civil society”.

• A society in which people are involved in social and political interactions free of state control or regulation.

8. Interest groups are controlled in various ways throughout the world. Explain the three different types of interest group systems (pluralist, democratic corporatist, and controlled). Give an example of how each type works and the benefits and disadvantages of each system.

• Pluralist: characterized by several features that involve both how interests are organized and how they participate in the political process: multiple groups may represent a single societal interest, group membership is voluntary and limited, groups often have a loose or decentralized organizational structure, there is a clear separation between interest groups and the government.
• Example: the US, Canada, New Zealand.
• Benefits: Competition encourages self-improvement
• Disadvantages: Not as much collective power
• Democratic corporatist: much more organization representation of interests—a single peak association normally represents each societal interest, membership in the peak association is often compulsory and nearly universal, peak associations are centrally organized and direct the actions of their members, groups are often systematically involved in making and implementing policy.
• Example: Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden
• Benefits: More organized, helps with inflation
• Disadvantages: Less freedom—members must join unions
• Controlled: there is a single group for each social sector, membership is often compulsory, each group is normally hierarchically organized, groups are controlled by the government or its agents in order to mobilize support for government policy.
• Example: traditional Communist systems in which the dominating party organizations penetrate all levels of society and exercise close control over all the associational groups that are permitted to exist. Unions and youth associations.
• Benefits: Very organized…?
• Disadvantages: Controlled strictly by the government, little freedom

9. Explain the difference between legitimate access channels and coercive access channels. Give several example of how each works and why people may choose to use one type over the other.

• Legitimate Access Channels: used by the legitimate structures of the government, which designate the resources to be used in policymaking. In a democratic political system, an appropriate resource may be votes in the national assembly. Also, the mass media and other legal forms of channels for representing opinions in a nonviolent way.
• Examples: contacting local representatives, referendums, etc
• Why choose: It’s legal and above-board. Classy.
• Coercive Access Channels: Various groups may attempt to control legislative votes by influencing the parties that win elections, or the voters who choose them, or through bargaining, persuasion, or promises of support to incumbents. Rely more on collective violence of people, usually means skipping the steps used in traditional government.
• Examples riots, like the 1992 Riots in LA
• Why choose: sometimes easier

Interest Aggregation and Political Parties – Chapter 5:

10. Explain the difference between a single-member district plurality rule and proportional representation. Which method do you prefer? Why?

• Single Member District Plurality Rule: the legislative election rules divide the country into many election district, and the candidate who has more votes than any other win the election in the district.
• Proportional Representation: The country is divided into a few, large district, and competing parties offer lists of candidates. The number of legislative representatives a party wins depends on the overall proportion of the votes it receives. The seats are split up into percentage vote (if a group wins 4% of a vote they get 4% of the seats).
• I wouldn’t say I have enough experience to determine which is better, but because we use single member district plurality election rule, I’ll say I like that one better because it seems less complicated and easier to get things done with.

11. Explain the different types of competitive party systems. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of each type. Give an example of each.

• Majoritarian Two Party System: dominated by two parties (like in the US), or they have two substantial parties and election laws that usually create legislative majorities for one of them (like in Britain).
• Advantages: power doesn’t switch around a ton, and everyone generally knows what each party wants.
• Disadvantages: minorities that don’t fall into either category are not represented
• Majority Coalition System: parties establish open pre-electoral coalitions so voters know which parties will attempt to work together to form a government. Purely multiparty systems have combinations of parties, voter support, and election laws that virtually ensure that no single party wins a legislative majority. (Germany and France)
• Advantages: nearly all people have at least some say
• Disadvantages: if the majority is uneducated or extremist it may harm the country
• Consensual party system: parties commanding most of the legislative seats are not too far apart on policies and have a reasonable amount of trust in each other and in the political system. (Britain)
• Advantages: don’t differ too much and generally agree on how the country should be run
• Disadvantages: any other group removed wouldn’t have much power
• Conflictual party system: the legislature is dominated by parties that are far apart on issues or are highly antagonistic toward each other and the political system (Russian party system)
• Advantages: constant debate may provide for the best system (if compromises are made)
• Disadvantages: disagreement can lead to bad decisions or violence

12. Explain the different types of authoritarian party systems (exclusive governing parties and inclusive governing parties). Give an example of each. Explain how authoritarian party systems deal with the issue of interest aggregation.

• Exclusive Governing Parties: Insists on control over political resources by party leadership. It recognizes no legitimate interest aggregation by groups within the party nor does it permit any free activity by social groups, citizens, or other government agencies.
• Example: Communist Party (USSR)
• Inclusive Governing Parties: recognizes and attempts to coordinate various social groups in the society. It accepts and aggregates certain autonomous interests, while repressing other and forbidding any serious challenges to its own control.
• Example: PRI in Mexico before its recent transition.
• Authoritarian party systems deal with interest aggregation by deliberately attempting to develop policy proposals and mobilize support for them within the ranks of the party or interactions with business groups, landowners, and institutional groups in the bureaucracy or military. The citizens have no real opportunity shape aggregation by choosing between party alternatives.