AP Comp Gov - Introduction to Comparative Politics

Introduction to Comparative Government

Politics:

• Politics: Having to do with human decisions
• Political Science: the study of human decisions
• Always public
• Always authoritative
• Politics refers to the use of compulsory and coercive means
• Who gets to employ them and for what purposes

Different Forms of Government:

• Night Watchman State
• Police State
• Welfare State
• Regulatory State
• State of Nature –theoretical existence of the world if there was no government
• Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke

Political Systems:

• Collection of related, interacting institutions and agencies
• Mold and are molded by domestic and international forces
• Comparative Politics is the study of political systems

What is Comparative Politics?

Politics: struggle in any group for power that will give one or more persons the ability to make decisions for the larger group

• Public decisions
• Within a community (political system)
• Authoritative
• Power: ability to get people or groups to do what they otherwise would not do
• Coercive means
• Force and monetary resources

Major Thinkers in Comparative Politics:

• Aristotle
• Separated the study of politics from philosophy, emphasized empirical study
• Machiavelli
• First modern political scientist
• The Prince
• Hobbes
• “social contract” theory
• advocated for a powerful state in Leviathan
• Locke
• Private property is essential to individual freedom and prosperity
• Two Treatises of Government
• Montesquieu
• Separation of powers within government
• Rousseau
• Citizens’ rights are inalienable and cannot be taken away by the state
• The Social Contract

Political system:

• System: interdependent parts and boundaries
• Political system: set of institutions and agencies (government, political organizations) that formulate and implement collective goals of a society or of groups within it

Political Systems: Environment and Interdependence:

• Governments are the policymaking parts of political systems
• A political system exists in both an international and a domestic environment
• A system receives inputs from these environments
• International: interdependence has increased enormously in the last decades; globalization
• Domestic: economic, social, and geographic systems, political culture of its citizens

Political Systems: Structures and Functions

• Structures – examples: parliaments, bureaucracies, administrative agencies, courts
• Structures perform functions, which in turn enable the government to formulate, implement, and enforce its policies.
• Policies reflect the goals; the agencies provide the means
• 6 types of political structures:
• Political parties
• Interest groups
• Legislatures
• Executives
• Bureaucracies
• Courts

Major Government Functions

• Community-building
• Nation
• Large-scale communities
• Common perceived identity
• Political culture
• Public attitudes toward politics and their role within the political system
• Political socialization
• Providing security, law, and order
• External security
• National defense forces
• Internal security
• Police forces
• Government monopoly
• Protecting economic, social, and political rights
• Promoting economic efficiency and growth
• Market failures in capitalist economies
• Property rights, competition, and information
• Undersupply of public goods
• Parks, roads, national defense, environment
• Negative externalities
• Environmental degradatior
• Natural monopolies
• Social Justice
• Redistribute resources
• Equal

Wealth Creation

Fostering Economic Development:

• Two major forces transforming political systems and nations
• Process of economic development
• Political democratization
• A political system cannot satisfy its citizens if it does not foster social and economic development
• Living standards
• Globalization, democratization, and marketization
• HDI- Human Development index
• Structure of the labor force

Process v. System Functions

• Process Functions
• Process of making policy
• Interest articulation
• Interest aggregation
• Policy making
• Policy implementation and abjudication
• System Functions
• Will the system be maintained or changed
• Socialization
• Recruitment
• Communication

Political Culture

• The attitudes, beliefs, and values which underpin the operation of a particular political system
• Nationalism, legitimacy, role of citizens, perceptions of political rights, role of government, policy priorities

Political Socialization

• How individuals form their political attitudes
• Family, school, religious institutions, peers, social class, gender, media, interest groups, political parties, government institutions

Interest Articulation

• How citizens express their views and participate in politics
• Process of expressing needs and demands to the government
• Protests
• Interest groups
• Contacting city council member

Citizen action: A dimension of interest articulation

• Voting in an election (most common)
• Working with others in their community/typically very policy focused
• Direct contact with government
• Protests or other forms of contentious action
• Political consumerism

Interest Groups Make Demands

• Interest articulation
• Can occur through the action of social or political groups that represent groups of people
• Anomic groups – spontaneous group
• Nonassociational groups – working class as a collective
• Large groups not formally organized
• Collective action problem
• Small villages
• Institutional groups – the labor department within government
• Associational groups – a labor union

Civil Society

• Intermediary institutions that give voice to various sectors of society free from state control and enrich public participation in democracies
• Professional associations, religious groups, labor unions, citizen advocacy organizations

Interest Group Systems

• Pluralist:
• Multiple groups may represent a single society 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
• Democratic corporatist:
• A single association normally represents each societal interest
• Membership in the association is often compulsory and nearly universal
• Associations are centrally organized and direct the actions of their members
• Groups are often systematically involved in making and implementing policy.

Interest Aggregation

• The activity in which the political demands (articulated interests) or individuals and groups are combined into policy programs
• How interests are aggregated is a key feautyre of the political process
• In a democratic system, two or more parties compete to gain support for their alternative policy programs
• In an authoritarian system, a single party or institution may try to mobilize citizens’ support for its policies
• Covert and controlled
• Process is top-down rather than bottom-up

Interest Aggregation – Competitive Party Systems

• Political Parties
• Primary structures of interest aggregation
• The distinctive and defining goal of a political party – its mobilization of support for policies and candidates
• Competitive Party System v. Authoritarian Party System

Electoral Systems: Rules of the Game

• Rules by which elections are conducted
• Determine who can vote, how people vote, and how the votes get counted
• Single-member district plurality (SMP) election rule
• First past the post
• A variation on this is the majority runoff system (or double ballot)
• Proportional representation
• Nominations
• Primary elections
• In most countries with SMD elections, the party draws up a list of candidates
• Closed-list PR systems
• Open-list system

Competitive Parties and Elections

• Majoritarian two party systems
• Dominated by just two parties (US)
• Two dominant parties and election laws that usually create legislative majorities for one of them (UK)
• May 2010 election is the exception
• Majority-coalition systems
• Parties establish preelectoral coalitions so that voters know which parties will attempt to work together to form a government (Israel)
• Multiparty systems
• Election laws and party systems virtually ensure that no party wins a legislative majority (Germany, France)

Interest Aggregation

• Patron-Client Network
• Officeholder provides benefits to supporters in exchange for their loyalty

Trends in Interest Aggregation

• Trend toward democracy?
• Eastern Europe (began in 1989)
• Declining acceptance of authoritarian regimes
• Important authoritarian party systems with exclusive governing parties are still around: China and Cuba
• Venezuela has become authoritarian over part five years
• Could populist authoritarian party systems be a trend?
• Most of the unfree states are in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa

Democracy and Democratization

Democratization:

• Democratic regime – a set of institutions that allow the citizens to choose the makers of public policy in free, competitive elections
• Don’t have to be rich
• Industrialized Democracy – the richest countries with advanced economies and liberal states

4 Different Elections:

• US 2004: Electoral college, significance of Ohio (swing state)
• Great Britain 2001: no scheduled elections, Prime Minister calls for elections within 5 years
• France 2002: Directly elects its President, first ballot had 17 candidates, but only the top 2 participate in a runoff
• Germany 2002: 4 major parties that form coalitions to pass legislation (lots of compromises)

Common and Not So Common Themes

• Elections determine who governs
• Elections are not about basic principles
• Stable democratic regimes
• Dissimilarities
• Electoral systems:
• Direct v. indirect
• US and France elect their chief executives
• GB and Germany do not
• Proportional v. plurality (single member districts)
• German Bundestag gives half its seats proportionally
• US and GB use “first past the post” (whoever got the most votes)
• Separation of powers (US) v. fusion of powers (UK)

Thinking About Democracy

• What is democracy
• Basic rights
• Competitive elections
• Rule of law
• Civil society and civic culture
• Capitalism and affluence

Procedural v. Substantive Democracy

• Procedural democracy
• Presence of “free, fair, competitive” elections
• Hurdles are present for real democratic procedures
• Opposition parties silences
• Votes not counted
• “Guarded Democracy” or “Illiberal Democracy”
• Substantive Democracy
• Procedural standards met
• Protect more political rights and civil liberties

Democratization:

• The transformation process from a nondemocratic regime to a procedural democracy to a substantive democracy
• Samuel Huntington’s “Three Waves of Democratization”
• Late 19^th century (increased education and urbanization)
• Post WWII era (45-60) (decolonization)
• Late 1970s (collapse of soviet union)

The Origins of the Democratic State

• Origins of democratic thought
• The early democracies: individualism, capitalism, Protestantism, scientific revolution, and exploration
• Hobbes
• Laissez-faire
• Locke
• Suffrage
• Building Democracies
• In Europe and North America, the way democracy developed was largely a result of the way countries and their rulers handled four great transformations over the last five hundred years:
• The creation of the nation and state itself
• The role of religion in society and government
• The development of pressures for democracy
• The industrial revolution
• Cleavages (social divisions)
• Authoritarian leaders, fascism, and WWII
• The cold war

Political Culture and Participation

• The Civic Culture
• Legitimacy: government v. regime
• Political Parties and Elections
• Catch-all parties
• New Divisions
• Gender
• Post-materialist
• 3^rd generation affluence – reasonable assumption of productive careers
• vote on “higher-order” values
• Interest Groups
• Political Protest

The Democratic State

• Presidential and parliamentary systems
• Presidential: compromise the norm and rapid decision making difficult to prevent abuse of power (Only in the US)
• Parliamentary: secure majority party or coalition, the prime minister rarely has to compromise, which allows their government to act more quickly and decisively
• Fused, not separated
• Cabinet responsibility – principle that requires a prime minister and government to retain the support of a parliamentary majority
• Votes of confidence – a vote in which the members express their support for (or opposition to) the government’s policies. If it loses, the government must resign.

The Rest of the State

• High-level civil servants in the bureaucracy
• Leading interest group representatives
• Iron Triangle – A variety of close relationships between business leaders, politicians, and civil servants.
• Those states with the most integrated elite, like France, Germany, and Japan, have been among the most successful economically
• The US is wary of close operation amongst these groups

Public Policy

• The interventionist state – governments in industrialized democracies that pursue an active economic policy
• Basic health care and education
• Subsidized and/or free education at all levels including universities
• Unemployment compensation
• Pensions and other programs for seniors
• Foreign policy

Conclusion

• In uneven and imperfect ways, democratic regimes achieve a series of balances better than any other type of government:
• Between the governors and the governed
• Between the political world and rest of society
• Between unbridled capitalism and the interest of those who do not benefit (much) from it
• Between personal freedoms and the need to maintain order and forge coherent public policy