Intro to Comparative Politics

Introduction to Comparative Politics

• Comparative politics involves competing assumptions and explanations on political debates and policy decisions
• Comparative politics compares domestic politics across countries
• Analytical concepts provide assumptions and theories
• Methods provide ways to research
• Ideals include values, beliefs about preferred outcomes
• Institutions are organizations or activities that are self-perpetuating and valued for their own sake
• Institutions define rules, norms, and structures that political life operates by
• Comparative politics compares the struggle for power across countries
• Comparative politics seeks to answer why some countries are more democratic, and why power is dispersed in some, and concentrated within others

Defining Politics

• It is the struggle in any group for power
• It provides one or more persons the ability to make decisions for the larger group
• Politics exists anywhere the organization and power is present
• Political scientists focus on the struggle for leadership and power for the larger community
• It is the struggle for the authority to make decisions that will affect the public as a whole
• Power is the ability to influence or impose one’s will on others

Power vs Politics

• Politics concerns competition for public power
• Power concerns the ability to extend one’s will

Comparative Method

• Puzzles (questions about politics without a clear answer) assist in guiding research
• It compares across across cases and draws conclusions
• Comparing countries or subsets allows scholars to draw conclusions and make generalizations
• Hypothesis & assumption testing is key
• Considerations needed in making comparisons between cases
• Answering the question of why democracy has failed to develop in certain countries
• North Korea is used as an example

Inductive vs Deductive Reasoning

• Inductive approaches generate hypothesis
• Deductive approaches test the hypothesis against a number of cases
• Inductive reasons starts with evidence as a way to uncover a hypothesis
• Deductive reasoning starts with the hypothesis and then seeks out the evidence
• Both methods are difficult

Limitations

• Controlling variables in cases of study proves difficult
• Countries are diverse making true comparisons that much harder
• Comparative politics is hampered by the limited cases available
• Getting access to the cases is challenging as "Work in the Field" is required
• Researchers are further hindered by barriers that inhibit countries
• International travel demands both time and money
• Interviewees may be unwilling to speak on sensitive issues or can distort information
• Libraries and archives can be incomplete or restricted
• There can be issues of bias in selecting cases
• Even with deductive reasoning instead bias can manifest

Endogeneity

• Causes and effects transform each other over time
• It can be difficult to ascertain the true effect

Can We Make Comparative Politics a Science?

• Comparative politics resembled political journalism due to its descriptive and theoretical nature
• It was largely concentrated in Europe
• The two world wars and rise of the Cold War lead to a turning point
• A move was made toward more rigorous methods when studying human behaviour
• Serious questions were raised about the ability of scholars understand world affairs
• Understanding comparative politics became a matter of survival
• A technological innovation surge was seen

History of Comparative Politics

• Behavioralism hoped to generate theories and generalizations to explain and predict political activity
• The goal was have a grand theory of political behaviour and modernization that would be valid across countries
• Modernization theory involves hypothesis of country development while behavioralism tests those theories with methods
• Modernization theory holds developed societies will become capitalist democracies, converging around a shared set of values
• Behavioural revolution saw that political institutions shifted towards individual political behaviour

Conflict in Comparative Politics

• Methodological debates persist on how gather and analyze data
• "Area studies" scholars emphasize the importance of long investigation of particular countries/regions

Political Institutions

• Important to studying politics because they set the stage for political procedure
• Institutions of politics is critical and can influence politics conducted
• They're essential approach to comparison

Freedom and Equality

• The concept of institutions organizes our study by investigating the ways a that struggles can be shaped
• As a guiding ideal is where ideals come in, with the debate on freedom and equality
• Freedom concerns the ability of an individual to act independently. This is without a restriction or punishment
• Equality is a shared material standard of individuals within the same area/community/societies. Power, state and debates over justice all factor in
• Collective equality and individual freedom leads to questions on centralizing power, and any potential dangers.

State definition

• It's the primary authority over its territory and the people who live there that is necessary to set forth laws and rights
• Should resolve disputes between people and organizations
• Should generate domestic security
• If these factors unmet, outside actors can interfere, inflicting damage
• Facing powerful opponents can undermine the state's rules and policies
• A state must be armed, with armies and police forces

Weberian Definition of the State

• Organization that maintains a monopoly of violence over a territory

Sovereignty Definition

• Ability to carry out actions or policies within a territory independently from external or internal rivals

The State Functions

• A set of institutions that seeks to wield the majority of force within a territory, establishing order and deterring challengers
• State is seen as a kind of protection racket

What the State is Made Of

• Large number of institutions that are engaged in the process of turning political ideas into policy

Regime Definition

• Fundamental rules and norms of politics
• Embodies long-term goals regarding individual freedom and collective equality

Democratic Regime

• Rules and norms of politics emphasize a large role for the public in governance, as well as certain individual rights or liberties

Non-Democratic Regime

• Limit public participation in favour for those in pwoer

Government Definition

• Leadership or elite in charge of running the state
• Its its operator, if the state is its machinery, and the regime its programming

Country Definition

• Seen is a shorthand for the concepts like state, government and regime
• Also defined by the people who live within that political system

Origins of a State

• Important factor is environment
• This allowed nomadic hunter gathers to be now able to domesticate

Collective groups are needed

• Family, Tribe/Clan, Kingdom, Empire
• Rising agriculture with food surpluses allows specialization with societal transformation to nomadic lifestyle
• Hierarchical society results from egalitarian society

The State

• Protects theft from the less fortunate
• Society is a concept of individualism
• These political parties all need certain powers

Political Origination's two paths

• Coercion involves bringing individuals together with a ruler, and force theory
• Consensus involves individuals banding together, with security through cooperation and democratic rule

Rise of the Modern States

• Modern state is essentially organized crime
• Groups that adjust survived and the ones that didn't, were conquered

The Age of the State

• Advantages include technology and domestic stability
• Modern capitalism occurred -Involves free market, with the rise in ethnicticity

Treaty of Westphalia

• Possessing the ability to conquer and control larger pieces of land, states began to defeat and absorb their European rivals.
• Spiritual rivals and religious tolerance were all key in the making of the new "state"

Analyzing states

• Criteria uses differences in "stateness", like legitimacy, and decentralization
• Power Autonomy and Capacity

Political Legitimacy

• Something or someone is recognized/accepted as valid

State Legitimacy

• Important because allows for lower tax rates

Types of Legitimacy

• Traditional is where is built upon habit or custom
• Charimastic in where a leader and ideas carry its legitimacy
• Rational-legal follows rules to maintain and have a legal power in play
• States are then founded on this rationale, from bureaucracy, paperwork and processes.

Is legitimacy confined to political actors?

• Driver's license ID and papers are all related

How to view the world

• Traditional stresses ritual and the rational

Centralization and decentralization

• Distrubrutes poewr
• Dispersal of power is importnaw
• The advantage is is represented without regional bodies
• Disadvantages in the lessening of power among many local authorities

State power

• Includes the degree of autonomy, from what individuals are doing
• High capacity is where things run with ease, with full enforcement
• Low is a high degree of the autonomy is from not being suspetiable the influence

Strong and Weak States

• Strong states able to fill basic tasks
• Weak states cannot execute such tasks very wel
• Also that the extremes break down the most.

State and Autonomy Capacity

• High levels that have strong influence, versus low state

Characteristics of Society

• How we define ourselves and conduct relationships

Understanding Ethnicity

• How it is "social constructed"
• How it shows people to understand society

National Identity

• This defines how people have common political aspects

Fundamental Aspects

• Ethnicity is specific
• Generally assigned at birth

What Is Fixed Throughout Life

• People's ethnic identity

Community Power

• Greater equality/ redestribution
• When people acknowledge outsiders, and is apart of the culture

National

• A set of institutions that bind people together
• Through Self Government

Creates Nationalism

• By belief in Sovereign rights

Is a national identity needed

• What a leader should do when making national pride

Ideologies

• Has high importance due to trade and power
• Has cultural and trade relations,

Modern Capital

• Is increase from the state and government itself

Common Culture

• Is religion, that helped bond societies

Growing Ethnicity

• Ethnic groups will also become close-knit

Nation -States

• Is sovereignty of each

2 Ways Of Ethnic National

• Through a one group lead state or conflicting

State Conflict

• Ideology and Culture
• Ethnic/National
• Political Attitudes

Top-Down

• Generated by elites _ Animosisty must self burn

Up to Down -

• Institutions should have the natrure to solve the problem

All types of states should have

• More focus on economics To help people

What Creates vicious cycles

• Solidarity helps people see what to do and help prevent other things.
• It also helps people devolve and unite

What attitudes do those in power have

• Have support and not always against one another,

The Modern State

• Helps with the greater number of people

Ideologies Attitudes and what makes up the state

• What gives a sense of unity/power
• Culture can also help

Idealogical Thoughts

• Universal, from attitude

More on Political

• It expains countries from cultures and the impacts

More information of ideologies and poltics

• To make it easier to compare different countries and see the differences between economics through a variety of aspects.