Comparative Politics: Framework & Modern States

• These notes cover comparative politics, modern states, citizens and regimes, and states and identity.

A Framework for Understanding Comparative Politics

• Comparative politics is a major subfield of political science involving the systematic study of politics.
• Politics is the process by which human communities make collective decisions.
• There are three categories of power.
  • First Dimension: Ability to make someone do something they wouldn't normally do, focusing on behavior and active decisions.
  • Second Dimension: Ability to prevent people from doing something, controlling the agenda and institutions.
  • Third Dimension: Ability to shape or determine individual or group political demands, influencing their interests.
• Comparative politics focuses on power and decision-making within national boundaries.
• It involves systematically examining political phenomena in multiple places and time periods to develop generalized understandings and explanations of political activity.
• Studying comparative politics helps understand political events and developments in various countries.
• Theory is an abstract argument with a systematic explanation of a phenomenon.
  • Empirical theory explains what actually occurs, describing patterns and explaining their causes.
  • Normative theory explains what ought to occur, supporting a normative structure for government and the economy.
• Comparativists use the scientific method to gain systematic evidence.
• Research methods are systematic processes to ensure objective and unbiased study of phenomena.
  • One common method is the single-case study, examining a political phenomenon in one country or community.
  • A comparative method to examine the same phenomenon in several cases.
• Quantitative statistical techniques systematically compare a huge number of cases when evidence can be reduced to sets of numbers.
• Comparativists are aware of biases but use methods to generate systematic evidence for logical conclusions.
• The field of political science aims to explain political behavior, with any person or group engaged in political behavior considered a political actor.
• Rational choice theory assumes individuals are rational.
  • Individuals bring self-defined preferences into the political arena.
  • It models group behavior from assumptions about the preferences of individual members.
• Psychological theories focus on individual interests but question the assumption of rational action and how political preferences are formed.
• Political culture: a set of widely held attitudes, values, beliefs, and symbols about politics.
  • Political cultures tend to endure because of political socialization.
    • Political socialization: the process through which people learn about politics and inherit a society's common political values and beliefs.
    • Two broad schools of thought: Modernist and postmodernist
      • Modernists believe that clear attitudes, values, and beliefs can be identified within any particular political culture.
      • Subcultures are distinct political cultures of particular groups.
      • Modernist approaches may be ethnocentric.
      • Critics suggest that political culture is more malleable than assumed.
• Postmaterialist shift: a change in political culture led to a sea change in the issues that politicians came to care about and the outcomes of elections.
  • Postmodernists focus primarily on political discourse.
• Political ideology is a systematic set of beliefs about how a political system ought to be structured.
• Structuralism argues for broader structures that influence and limit, and perhaps even determine, political behavior.
• Marxism contends that the production process creates discrete social classes.
  • Key classes: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
  • Bourgeoisie owns and controls capital, while the proletariat owns no capital and must sell its labor to survive.
• Institutionalism argues political institutions are crucial to explaining political behavior.
  • Political institution defined as a set of rules, norms, or standard operating procedures that structures and constrains political actions.
  • Rational choice institutionalists argue institutions are products of rational actors' interactions and bargaining, but constitute rules of the game.
  • Historical institutionalists argue institutions play an even bigger role in explaining political behavior by shaping individual political preferences.
• Pluralist theories contend that society is divided into various political groups with dispersed power so no group has complete or permanent power.
• Elite theories argue that all societies are ruled by elites with effective control over virtually all power.
• Elite power can derive from wealth and a "material power".
• Elite theories of rule are based on patriarchy, where social mores and political discourse are the chief sources of patriarchy.
• Comparative politics studies political behavior and power to develop a common understanding of political phenomena.

The Modern State

• The modern state is an ongoing administrative apparatus that develops and administers laws, generates revenue, and implements public policies.
• Territory: an area with clearly defined borders to which modern states lay claim.
• Sovereignty: when a state is legally recognized by the family of states as the sole legitimate governing authority within its territory and as the legal equal of other states.
• External sovereignty: Sovereignty relative to outside powers, where a state must be able to defend its territory.
• Internal sovereignty: To be the sole authority within a territory capable of making and enforcing laws and policies.
• States claim a "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force."
• Legitimacy: the recognized right to rule
• Weber identified three types of legitimate authority: Traditional, charismatic, rational-legal.
  • Traditional legitimacy is based on society's long-standing patterns and practices.
  • Charismatic legitimacy is based on personal virtue, heroism, sanctity, or other extraordinary characteristics.
  • Rational-legal legitimacy is the right to rule of leaders selected by an accepted set of laws.
• Most legitimate authority is a combination of the three types.
• States usually attempt to gain legitimacy based on representation or service to their citizens.
• Bureaucracy: a large set of appointed officials whose function is to implement laws, which strengthens sovereignty.
• Modern states arose first in Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries, with the concept spreading via conquest, colonialism, and decolonization.
• Before 1500, Europe consisted of feudal states distinct from modern states.
• Absolutism: Rule by a single monarch claiming complete, exclusive sovereignty.
• Absolutism introduced elements of the modern state and the state retained its claim to absolute sovereignty.
• Liberalism provided the justification for limiting the power of officials to ensure individual rights, and people transformed to citizens.
• Virtually all premodern empires included multiple or overlapping layers of sovereignty and did not include a modern sense of citizenship.
• Europe exported the modern state through colonial conquest, creating distinct challenges. European states went through several centuries of developing a sense of national identity; this was not the case for newer states.
• Colonial powers established borders with little regard for precolonial political boundaries or institutions, dividing political loyalty.
• Ideal type: a model of what the purest version of something might be.
• State capacity: Ability to raise resources for state activities, coordinate activities across the bureaucracy and with key economic actors, and gain citizen compliance.
• Strong states have high levels of state capacity and are generally capable of providing political goods to its citizens.
• Weak states have far less levels of state capacity and are only partially capable of providing political goods to its citizens.
• Failed state: so weak that it loses sovereignty over part or all of its territory.
• Effects of colonialism can cause states to be weak as elites do not see themselves as benefiting from new institutions.
• Resource curse: Countries with tremendous mineral wealth, such as oil or diamonds.
• Quasi-states: States that have legal sovereignty and international recognition but lack most domestic attributes of a modern state.
• Wealthy countries and international organizations implement programs to rebuild states after conflicts.
• The strongest states were established in the 18th/19th centuries, industrialized early, are among the world's wealthiest, where firms control territory, strong militaries, and high legitimacy.
• Moderately strong states often manifest weakness in particular areas, including much higher levels of corruption, weaker rule of law, face no serious threats.
• The weakest states are often porous with limited services and high levels of illegal activity.

States, Citizens, and Regimes

• Regime: a set of formal and informal political institutions that defines a type of government.
• Citizen: a member of a political community or state.
• T. H. Marshall categorized the rights of citizenship into three areas: civil, political, and social.
  • Civil rights guarantee individual freedom and equal, just, and fair treatment by the state.
  • Political rights are those associated with political participation.
  • Social rights are those related to basic well-being and socioeconomic equality.
• Civil society: the sphere of organized, nongovernmental, nonviolent activity by groups larger than individual families or firms.
• Liberalism arose amid the religious wars in England and created social contract theory.
• Legitimate governments are formed when free and autonomous individuals join in a contract to permit representatives to govern over them in their common interests.
• Key Characteristics of Liberal Democracy
  • Classical liberal doctrine justifies limited government to enhance individual freedoms.
  • Representative democracy became the universal form of liberal governance.
• Political scientist Robert Dahl outlined key guarantees of democracy.
• Advocates of social democracy argue citizens should control elements of the economic sphere.
• Proponents of participatory democracy argue democracy must include far more than the minimal list of institutional guarantees.
• British democracy based on parliament.
• Karl Marx grounded his philosophy on historical materialism, asserting that economic forces are the prime movers of history and politics.
• Liberal democracy is the political and ideological shell that allows capitalism to work and that serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, capitalism's ruling class.
• Vanguard party: Lenin argued that if capitalism has not developed sufficiently to produce an economic crisis and socialist revolution, a committed band of revolutionaries could still lead a revolution.
• Politburo: Party's chief decision making organ.
• Fascism is self-consciously both antiliberal and anticommunist.
• Fascist ideology conceives of society as being akin to a living organism rather than a set of disparate groups and individuals.
• Corporatism: idea that just one organization, controlled by the state, should represent the interests of each component of society.
• Parties that espouse virulent nationalism are frequently termed neofascist.
• Modernizing Authoritarianism
  • Their common claim to legitimacy was that they would modernize or “develop” their countries, and doing so required restricting or eliminating individual rights and elections.
  • Technocratic legitimacy is a claim to rule based on knowledge.
  • development also required national unity.
• One-party regime: Many countries had a single party which gained power after independence, eliminating opposition.
• the electoral authoritarian regime allows little real competition for power but leaves enough political space for debate.
• Theocracy is rule by religious authorities.
• Islamism is a belief that Islamic law can and should provide the basis for government.
• Jihad means struggle.

State and Identity

• Political loyalty to group is created, not innate.
• Primordialism underlies understandings of group origins and differences; primordialist views see identity groups as "natural" or God given.
• Constructivism emphasizes the shifting interpretation of symbols and stories and describes societies that collectively "construct" identities.
• Social construction: crucial to defining identities or “imagined communities."
• Gender identity plays a distinct role from most other identities in this process.
• It revolves around what Charles Taylor called the "politics of recognition."
• Ethnic or religious groups seek autonomy to control their affairs.
• Liberal democracy is based on individual rights and equal treatment of all citizens.
• Centripetalism: best resolve conflict by incentivizing leaders to moderate and broaden their appeal. arguments against a state accepting just individual rights:
• Individual rights can never allow full inclusion of culturally distinct or socially marginalized groups.
• Cultural theories support policies that recognize, support cultures, grant governing autonomy, reform representative institutions.
• Critics have asked whether respecting cultural differences might undermine individual rights.
• Consociationalism accepts religiously divided groups, granting each power in the central government.
• "Ethnicity" refers to a person's national origin or someone's language or culture.
• A group that claims common descent is a form of "ethnicity."
• Nation: a group that proclaims itself as such and has or seeks control of a state.
• Nationalism: desire to be a nation and thus to control a national state is nationalism.
• cultural nationalism, based on a common cultural heritage.
• legal definition of citizenship: jus sanguinis. (descent).
• Most see civic nationalism as more supportive of democracy.
• legal citizenship : jus soli.
• Ethnic groups see themselves as united by cultural attributes but do not have or seek their own states; like school instruction.
• A group of human beings socially defined on the basis of physical characteristics is a race.
• Religion is both the oldest and newest basis for questions of inclusion; state's respond through secularism.
• Positive accommodation see the state as neutral.
• Social class: difficultly defined; A group of people who share or perceive themselves to share a social status based on some combination of a common level of wealth, income, type of work, or education
• Gender and Sexual Orientation and Representation
• women/ LGBTQ rights movements from 1960+
• Modern movement was in New York where there was violence.