Politics Exam PDF

Politics lectures summary ○ Politics is a collective action-solution mechanism; it must be ideological ○ Theory = systematically related set of propositions that provide possible explanations for a set of phenomena; simplified models of reality; weak or strong (not right or wron...

Politics lectures summary ○ Politics is a collective action-solution mechanism; it must be ideological ○ Theory = systematically related set of propositions that provide possible explanations for a set of phenomena; simplified models of reality; weak or strong (not right or wrong) ○ Causality = working component of theoretical thinking ○ Political behaviour = whenever individuals try to influence or escape the influence of others (e.g. voting, participation, protesting, racism, ideology, democracy, nationalism - but also political values, opinions) ○ Ideology = generìc sorting of liberal and conservative ideas and ideals along a continuum of intensity ○ Left-right schema = ideological continuum (GAL-TAN) ○ Less-aware people are more likely to base attitudes on feelings; more-aware people tend to respond on the basis of ideological principle ○ More intense ideologues use ideology as a guide more than ideological moderates ○ Strategic positioning = electoral strategy adopted by certain parties to exploit a particular issue and capture disaffected voters concerned with this issue (e.g. CR parties adopting hardline positions on immigration, in order to minimise voter losses) ○ Political Theory = branch of politics, which seeks to answer normative questions about what we should be doing (normative questions do not necessarily have an objective answer, but try to give some arguments) ○ Rawls’ Theory of Justice = justice is about fairness; what would be fair if I did not know anything about myself? ○ 2 principles of justice: ○ Equal assignment of rights and duties (liberty is the most important principle) ○ Social and economic inequalities are fair if they benefit the least advantaged (so that even the poorest would have a certain standard of living) ○ (inequality of wealth and income should be allowed, because personal talents are important) ○ Nozick = possession is just or not depending entirely on how it was acquired ○ 3 principles: ○ Just acquisition (right to private property) ○ Just transfer (whatever is justly held can be freely transferred) ○ Rectification of injustice (if the distribution of holdings is the result of unjust acquisition, then a redistribution must be rectified) ○ Liberalism = formal, procedural process that guarantees fairness, but justifies inequalities ○ Political Culture = describes some rough aggregate of individual attitudes and orientations toward the governing structure ○ Culture and Politics must be congruent (tend to function better and last longer) ○ Maximum Feasible Freedom = we want to have as much freedom as possible ○ Democratic political culture = emerges from the competition between individual attainment (liberty) and the collective nature imposed by living in a society (equality) ○ Electoral systems: ○ Plurality system (“first-past-the-post”): Majoritarian model = adversarial, competitive, exclusive, more “effective”, high accountability but low responsiveness ○ Proportional representation: Multi-party model = more inclusive, bargaining, compromise, nearly always require coalition governance, more “democratic”, high responsiveness, low accountability ○ Democracy = second-best solution for political and economic elites (still, elites have more to gain from competing within a democratic framework than they do from overturning it) ○ Formal Theory = theory formalised (clearest e.g. game theory) ○ Game Theory = mathematical analysis of strategic interaction; actors attempt to maximise their payoffs within the context of other actors, choices and constraints, either by knowing everything about what they and other actors want (“complete information”) or not (“incomplete information”) ○ Prisoner’s dilemma: Dominant Strategy Equilibrium (Nash) is that both confess, but it is not the best outcome for all (“Pareto Optimal”) ○ Free riders = actors who calculate that they can reap the benefits of collective actions without paying any of the costs ○ Public policy = whatever governments choose to do or not to do ○ Public policy analysis = identifying and attempting to solve difficult societal problems ○ Plato believed that a Philosopher King should lead society, if that is not possible then a group of experts or enlightened aristocrats is the second-best solution, while democracy is the worst option ○ Idea that democracy is the best solution = universalist fallacy ○ Democracy = right to vote, to be elected, to compete for votes, free elections, freedom of association and expression, alternative sources of information, institutions depend on votes and other expressions of preferences ○ Elite Theory = elites are caretakers of democracy (they safeguard democracy against the danger of both totalitarianism and “mass society”) ○ Iron Law of Oligarchy = all forms of organisations/governments (regardless of how democratic they may initially be) will eventually develop oligarchic tendencies (“ideal” democracy is impossible) ○ Authoritarianism = political system characterised by the rejection of political plurality, near or complete power is concentrated in a leader and attacks on the rule of law, separation of powers and political opposition (e.g. fascism and socialism) ○ Modernisation includes changes in individuals’ values (Inglehart) ○ Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs = these individual-level changes subsequently affect structures in the system on which they exert some influence, to which political institutions then need to respond (shift in the priority of values) ○ When democratic culture and institutions align, stability (proper functioning of institutions), legitimacy (increased popular support) and longevity increase ○ Political Parties = representatives in the legislative process, have several roles ○ Vote-seeking (focus on winning as many votes as possible) ○ Policy-seeking (focus on influencing government policies) ○ Office-seeking (focus on obtaining the perks associated with holding government office) ○ Parties participate within the electoral marketplace with the twin goals of meeting constituents’ demand and electoral competitiveness (battling with how much to represent and ignore the constituency) ○ Social Cleavage Theory = historically determined social or cultural line which divides citizens within a society into groups with differing political interests, resulting in political conflict (opposition) among these groups (political cleavages are relatively stable patterns of alignment in which given social groups support parties) ○ Duverger’s Law = proportional representation electoral rules produce proportional systems, and the first-past-the-post type of electoral rules produce majoritarian systems ○ Fragmentation = scattering (number) of parties across the ideological continuum ○ Polarisation = the greater the overall ideological distance between the parties, the more the system is polarised; often evidence of more intense ideological conflicts than less polarised systems ○ Spatial theories = parties figured the cleavage alignment and, in order to form substantial alliances, worked out where to place themselves on the ideological continuum ○ Median Voter theorem = the one in the middle, 50%+1, political parties will moderate their policies to attract this voter ○ Party systems are political marketplaces (voters = consumers; parties = product) ○ Proximity spatial model / theory = utility as a declining function of distance between voter and candidate ideal positions (voter prefers party closest to them) ○ Directional spatial model = utility as keyed to intensity of preference and communality of direction between voters and candidates (voter prefers party strongest on the same side of issue as them) ○ Elections = primary instrument for democratic governance ○ Political representation = assumption that what we vote for matters ○ Dynamic representation = public policy adapting to public opinion ○ Accountability = the linchpin of the relationship of citizens to their government is the relationship they have in controlling it ○ Responsiveness = political elites are responsive to “mass public opinion” in a timely and accurate reflection of what people want ○ Social Choice Models, Condorcet paradox, Cognitive Capacity Hypothesis ? ○ Party Identification (PID) = specific partisanship-based heuristic that allows citizens to make reasonable decisions at a modest cost and without perfect information (personal attachment to a party) ○ Partisan de-Alignment = PID has waned in importance and predictive power because of electoral volatility (citizens are exhibiting less partisan political behaviour) ○ Social Identity Theory = voters may align with parties that represent their group interests (social, ethnic, racial or cultural identities influence vote choices) ○ Negative PID = voting against another party ○ Political participation = actions of individuals to affect the policy-making bodies through conventional and unconventional political methods (voluntary manifestation of political interest and action) ○ Traditional political participation = iterated and organised (e.g. voting) ○ Unconventional political participation (e.g. strikes) ○ Illegal acts (e.g. rioting, unauthorised demonstrations) ○ Overall (national) voting has been declining, while political participation (especially unconventional) has slowly been increasing in the EU (even high performing democracies have low levels of participation) ○ Luxury of democracy is not having to do anything (participation is not mandatory) ○ What counts as political participation? (e.g. boycotting and buycotting, vegetarianism) ○ Free media are essential for democracy to exist ○ Media = key institution in society through which citizenship is carried out (role = connecting citizens to the world); can shape people’s knowledge and behaviours ○ 2 types: ○ Legacy media (= denoting or relating to media that has been superseded but is difficult to replace because of its wide use) ○ New media (Internet and social media) ○ Mass Communication = takes place in public, directed towards a large, heterogeneous audience, uni-directional, indirect (is mediated through technical means) and impersonal (sender-receiver are distant) ○ Bullet theory = strong and more or less universal effects of mass communication messages on all audience members (if you watch TV, you will be affected by it) ○ Agenda Setting theory = most prominent issues are also the issues that are most important in public opinion (media do not tell people what to think, but what to think about) (theories of Priming and Framing) ○ Self-selection = people consume confirming information ○ Internet as a medium = inter-personal connectivity, speed, anonymity, unlimited bandwidth; may be considered as a hyper-object ○ Citizens = no longer passive consumers, but active selectors of information; exposure tends to depend on previous patterns (selective exposure) ○ Information on the internet is less subject to verification (fake news) ○ Misinformation (unintentional mistakes) ○ Disinformation (fabricated and deliberately manipulated content) ○ Malinformation (deliberate publication of private information for personal rather than public interest) ○ Democratisation of voice (loss of expertise) - the internet has made everyone an expert ○ IR = academic discipline that examines interaction among sovereign states, non-state actors and international institutions in the global arena ○ IR theories: ○ Realism (power, self-interest and national security; limited role of law and morality, alliances are tricky and dangerous) ○ Neorealism (systematic factors influence state behaviour: states’ positions in the international system (ranked by power) determine their choices) ○ Liberalism (cooperation, potential for peaceful conflict resolution; free trade and economic globalisation, negotiation and dialogue) ○ Wilsonian philosophy (utopian) = spreading democracy with the ultimate aim of world peace ○ Balance of Power = states seek to maintain a distribution of power that prevents any one state from dominating the international system (maintain stability) ○ Hegemony = one state or alliance holds a predominant and disproportionate share of power in the international system ○ Multipolarity (multiple great powers) ○ Unipolarity (dominance by a single superpower) ○ Periodically hegemonic / Great Powers (US, China, RU, EU) ○ Hegemonic stability theory = global stability and economic prosperity are more likely to be achieved when there is a single dominant world power (hegemon maintains institutional order) ○ Foreign policy = a nation’s interactions with other countries ○ Power = politics is about outcomes, a battle over power (A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that he would not otherwise do) ○ Types of power: ○ Hard power (military, economic strength) ○ Soft power (influence, diplomacy, cultural appeal) ○ Rational choice theory = actors are presumed to be instrumentally rational (self-invested actors seeking to maximise their utility) ○ Tit for Tat (T4T) strategy = cooperation based on reciprocity (trust can be compatible with self-interested behaviour) ○ Strategic Bargaining (similar to Prisoner’s Dilemma: 2 drivers speed toward each other - swerving or not?) ○ War = direct or instrumental utility of conflict as defence, deterrence or aggression (“it is the continuation of policy with other means”) ○ Rules of War (laws of armed conflict) ○ International Humanitarian Law (IHL) = set of legal norms and principles that govern the conduct of parties involved in armed conflicts; designed to protect civilians, limit the methods and means of warfare ○ Intrastate Armed Conflict = most start/continue for (often) overlapping reasons: ○ Identity and ethnicity  ○ History (past conflicts or injustices) ○ Social psychology (prejudice, stereotyping) ○ Cultural and religious factors ○ Political economy (competition for resources, political power, ethnic disparities) ○ Institutional factors (discriminatory policies) ○ Media and propaganda (misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric) ○ Multi-level governance (MLG) = distribution of authority and decision-making across multiple levels of government, institutions and stakeholders (may involve supranational organisations, such as the EU) ○ Vertical distribution of authority = the use of a hierarchy (local, regional, national, supranational), each level has its authority and responsibilities ○ Horizontal cooperation = collaboration and coordination between these different levels of government, including the sharing of information, resources and decision-making ○ For EU membership: european, democracy, free-market economy and accept the Acquis Communaire (all of the EU’s treaties and laws) ○ EU institutions ○ EU now has a common foreign and security policy (multi-actor) ○ Conditions for entering the EU: ○ Rule of law (separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, protection of minorities) ○ Functioning and competitive market economy ○ Good neighbourly relations (must not have any ongoing/frozen conflict) ○ Alignment to EU foreign policy positions ○ Aim of the EU = promote peace, its values and the well-being of its people ○ Common values = respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, human rights, pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice and solidarity ○ Four Freedoms: free movement of People, Goods, Services and Capital ○ International Organisations (IOs) (e.g. UN, WTO) = location for resolving difference, arbitrating contests, establishing rules (e.g. international law) (can facilitate cooperation and regulate state behaviour) ○ IOs set the rules of the games, distributing power adjudication, in order to contribute to the management of global issues (?) ○ Diplomacy = The efforts to manage relations among states (manage conflicts, negotiate trade agreements, maintain peace, confront humanitarian emergencies and resolve public health crises) ○ Tools and instruments of diplomacy = negotiations, treaties, peacekeeping operations ○ Globalisation = increasing interconnectivity and interdependence among countries in terms of trade, finance, culture and communication  ○ Economic: rise of global markets, flow of capital, impact of multinational corporations ○ Cultural: spread of ideas, values and the impact on languages, traditions and identities ○ Technological: expansion of the internet, telecommunications and digital technologies to facilitate global communication ○ Political: spread of democratic values (?), the role of IOs in global governance ○ Impact of globalisation on societies is both good and bad ○ Public Good = welfare as a bargain between the states and its citizens (welfare was bad for growth, but was in fact very good) ○ Maximum Feasible Freedom: ○ Highest payoff playing self-interestedly gets Nash ○ Putting the common good first gets Pareto ○ (short-term selfish interests very often undermine long-term group interests)