Introduction to Politics PDF

02/10-07/12 2023 Introduction to Politics What is Politics? ○ Depends on: mode of thinking and mode of investigation (how we ask this question) Epistemology: the nature of knowledge and various methods of gaining knowledge How can we learn about individuals and institutions (= rules)? ○ P...

02/10-07/12 2023 Introduction to Politics What is Politics? ○ Depends on: mode of thinking and mode of investigation (how we ask this question) Epistemology: the nature of knowledge and various methods of gaining knowledge How can we learn about individuals and institutions (= rules)? ○ Positivism ○ Non-positivist approaches (Constructivism/Interpretivism) ○ Between a mechanical or organic view of the world ○ Ontological critique Core concepts and terms ○ Empirical ○ Rigorous and formal use of data to support analysis (answer is in the pattern) ○ Black box assumption: the world is discoverable in some way ○ Qualitative (Empirical) Research ○ Use of data such that similar things are grouped and dissimilar things are separated by qualities and attributes ○ Quantitative Research ○ Use of statistics, formal logic, or other computational solutions to analyse data What is Science? ○ It is a means to understand the world ○ Core = assumption that world is knowable and we can converge on that knowledge through the application of an agreed upon and rigorous methodology ○ Scientific Method = objective and replicable analysis of data which results in evidence which can be used to assess proposed explanations for a relationship (...) A lot of what we know about the world is discovered and explained in the language of empirical and scientific studies What’s wrong with Common Sense? Common sense appeals to logic and may even be empirical, but there is a limit to its validity: it is likely to be subject to the errors of inaccurate observation, overgeneralization, selective observation and illogical reasoning The Scientific Method What makes research scientific?  02/10-07/12 2023 1. Scientific method requires a transparent and replicable description of the research design and analysis (what you decide to include and leave out of your research will affect it) 2. Scientific Method attempts to identify and explain the relationship under investigation (“why do certain things happen?” finding explanations) 3. Scientific Method seeks to derive and make proper inferences from the results of the research Principle N.1 ○ Scientific Method is not a tool, it is an approach ○ The choice of tools (statistics, …) can be subjective and therefore lead to different conclusions ○ Scientific study provides an accurate, comprehensive and objective description of the analysis so that other can replicate the world ○ Objectivity = attempt to eliminate or minimise the influence of our own prejudices, biases, etc ○ Political phenomena often represent an event and its significance (e.g. investigating elections) ○ The Challenge of Objectivity ○ Politics is inherently value-laden ○ Uniform, non-normative method of inquiry as a means to impose objectivity ○ Normative-evaluative = How things should be? ○ Non-normative (factual and objective) = How things are? ○ Because choices must be made, scientific study must be a public procedure (transparent and replicable) ○ E.g. peer review = results of research are nearly secondary to how you arrived at them → Scientific Method doesn’t describe what we study, but how we study it Transparency and replicability ○ Scientific study intends to be objective ○ All forms of analysis (qualitative + quantitative) are subjective ○ Transparency Principle N.2 ○ Control ○ In order to evaluate the nature of the relationship in which we are interested, we must control for all other potential intervening or moderating influences ○ We are challenged to determine whether this relationship exists and continues to exist … ○ Theory  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ (description) People with higher levels of education vote more often → (explanation) easier for them to gather information about politics (costs of voting are lower for them) → (prediction?) Principle N.3 ○ Levels of Scientific Debates ○ Epistemological = study of knowing ○ Methodological = how we find out ○ Research technique ○ Descriptive vs. Causal Inference ○ Descriptive Inference = discrete expectations about an unstudied group by observation of a selected group ○ Causal Inference = Inferring causality from observation ○ Element of scientific research methodology = ability to be confident about findings ○ Probabilistic = random variation exists in the world and there is nothing you can do about it ○ Deterministic = given the right explanatory variables, the world is entirely predictable ○ Difference between a statement of certainty and a statement we have a great deal of confidence in Scientific Study of Politics is Crucial Use and Importance of a Scientific Approach in Political Science ○ Many phenomena have potentially many correct answers What is Politics? ○ Collective action-solution mechanism ○ Assumes a defined community and some form of a common good (or worldview) ○ Negotiation and compromise vs. Domination ○ What is not politics? ⟷ What is (still) not political? ○ Power ○ Politics is about outcomes, a battle over power (and resources) ○ “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that he would not do otherwise” (R. Dahl) ○ “Who gets what, when and how” (H. Lasswell) ○ Some battles are for literal life and death The State and Beyond Theory in the Social Sciences  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ A systematically related set of propositions that provide possible explanations for a set of phenomena. Theory’s Role in Social Science 1. Identifies relationships about the phenomenon that we are interested in. 2. Summarises work that has been done on our subject. 3. Suggests where to look for future testing. ○ Theories are necessarily simplified models of reality ○ “All models are wrong, but some are useful” (because they leave out details/some information) ○ All models are simplifications of the universe as they must necessarily be (they are as simplified as they can be, without leaving out crucial details) ○ e.g. models of planes, trains or automobiles ○ A theory’s validity is determined through observation tested against competing theories which - over time - make an explanation more probable or more “correct” than others ○ Theories are not right or wrong, but weak or strong Theory and Causality in the Social Sciences ○ Why is causality so important? ○ It is helpful to think casually and to develop models that have causal implications ○ However, in seeking empirical support, causal thinking belongs completely on the theoretical level ○ Causality is a working assumption or tool of the scientist rather than verifiable statements about reality ○ Causality cannot be “solved” statistically - or experimentally - as it is not a “statistical” or “experimental” problem ○ Causality as a working component of theoretical thinking ○ Causation and the Problem of Measurement ○ e.g. Inequality and Democracy (Gini Index) ○ Universal Causal Mechanisms ○ How universal is causality? What are the limits? ○ e.g. CEE Mass Media ○ Causation as a Limit on Discovery ○ “Demonstrate” causality where we can, avoiding the messier topics The Unit of Analysis ○ Disassembling Politics ○ The Nation State ○ Institutions ○ Individuals  02/10-07/12 2023 Grand Theories ○ Macro-structural perspective: Where does power rest? Who governs? ○ Old and New Institutionalism ○ Path-dependency? Deterministic structural histories and institutions? ○ History – Marx, Wallerstein etc… The (Nation) State ○ Necessarily stands at the intersection b/t domestic socio-political order and the transnational relations they must navigate. ○ State autonomy and capacities of states ○ How they formulate and pursue their own goals ○ The dialectic between the state and society ○ Impacts of states on the content and working of politics (Political) Institutionalism ○ Old Institutionalism: ‘Structural functionalism’ ○ A descriptive attention to structures: Abstract function satisfied by organisation or structures ○ Historical institutionalism: emphasis on path dependency ○ How power over political processes was structured by the specific character of the state. ○ States also influence how various groups came to define their particular political interests 2 Changes 1: The Poverty of Description ○ The historical methods of (primarily) description are inefficient in capturing concepts of increasing importance such as power and sovereignty (Popper 1957). ○ Compounded by the limitations of existing methods in facilitating comparison ○ What did it mean for something to increase, become weaker, or grow? ○ The study of politics needed to be able to compare, measure, generalise, replicate, and to try to explain phenomena rather than simply describe it. ○ New Institutionalism: explicit concern with theory development and the use of quantitative analysis. ○ Creating a more comparable system of analysis 2: Institutionalism and the Individual ○ Institutions determine who are the legitimate actors, the number of players, the order of action, the distribution of information (about the game and the other players):  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ They defined the rules of the game, both formal and informal, for participants ○ Early Attempts of Rational choice [as a solution to collective action] ○ The Notion of Incentives ○ In this way, political institutions shape self-interested individuals into “reasonable” actors. ○ The ‘logic of appropriateness’: what they ought to prefer in a specific situation ○ In this way, institutions are not simply the rules of the game, they also shape the values established in a society e.g.: justice, collective identity, belonging, trust, solidarity ○ Introducing the notion of incentives Culture and the Individual ○ Culturalists pointed out that if people act differently, then some actors hold different preferences (‘The Logic of Inappropriateness’?) ○ Theoretical individualism: Individuals hold preferences - and these preferences are exogenous to the institutions ○ That is, if the institutions change, actors change their strategy but not their preferences. ○ Problem: So, where do these preferences come from? ○ Culture - in addition to institutions – is important. But (very) unclear how. The Individual, Herself ○ Modern Behaviouralism ○ Originated from psychology in the 60-70s ○ Individuals are autonomous and integrated ○ Designers and outputs of politics ○ Part of a larger thing ○ Since then, there are a variety of competing psychological, economic, sociological approaches to understanding individual political choices and profiles ○ Not only to identify patterns of individuals’ attitudes and behaviours, but also to explain them What are we talking about? ○ What does it mean to say “Political Behaviour”? What political behaviours do we hear the most about? ○ Voting, racism, ideology, riots, tolerance, democracy, green politics, nationalism ○ Where does Political Behavior fit in Political Science? ○ Political Theory, IR, Comparative Politics, Political Methodology, Area specialisation (i.e. ‘American politics’). ○ Versus ‘behaviour’ in  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Psychology: is an organism's external reactions to its environment. Other aspects, such as emotions, thoughts, and other internal mental processes, don't usually fall under the category of behaviour. ○ Economics: is the economic decisions of individuals (and institutions) as a function of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors. ○ Sociology: is caused and a consequence of social life and social change such as social inequality, forces for social change and resistance, and how social systems work. ○ Biology: is the acts or reactions an individual produces in response to internal or external stimuli or inputs from the environment, conscious or subconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary. ○ Political behaviour: is whenever individuals or groups try to influence or escape the influence of others. Political behaviour is the subset of human behaviour that involves both politics and power. ○ It is primarily concerned with engaging politics (e.g.: voting, participation, protesting, …) Analysing Political Behaviour ○ Political Behaviour also includes political values, attitudes, and opinions. ○ Values: Are a general and enduring standard or express individuals’ preferred (political/global) ideal and the procedural framework through which these ideals ought to be achieved. ○ Attitudes: Are individuals’ specific orientations to the political world, often held loosely in place by a reasonably sophisticated network of values, emotions, education, and experiences. (mix of both) ○ Opinions: Are feelings on political topics du jour; in the aggregate (i.e.: polls - they are ephemeral) often used as indicators of the success/failure of policies, candidates, or political events. - Despite the common use of the term, opinions are the least interesting (because of their insubstantiality). Organising our thinking ○ How does this all fit together? ○ Simply, individuals tend to think and act (in politics) derived from more abstract principles – pre-existing broad conceptual schema - which provide a basis by which to merge with new information and contexts ○ At the same time, institutions – the rules of the game – guide those same choices in conspicuous and meaningful ways and constitute larger units of analysis ○ The interaction between institutions and individuals Problems in Political Science ○ Definitions and Measurement  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Conceptualisation and Operationalisation ○ Conceptual Congruence ○ How much can we really compare? ○ How universal is our concept for comparison across our units of analysis? Core Concepts: Conceptualisation ○ What is it that you want to measure? ○ Connotation (i.e. intention) = characteristics and properties, this is what we mean when we refer to something ○ Denotation (i.e. extension) = this is the object itself as opposed to something else ○ Are you measuring what you think you are measuring? ○ Examples of challenges to conceptualisation ○ Power, justice, inequality, dominance, support for a party Core Concepts: Operationalisation ○ Reliability = repeatedly consistent ○ Validity = the extent to how closely aligned the concept and the measure are ○ How would you measure the following attributes of individuals? ○ Age, income, gender, vote in the last election, political participation, trust in/satisfaction with government, ideology? The interest in both institutions and individuals is sustained by the search for effective ways of incentivizing and conducting democratic governance. ○ Parties, countries, groups are still important. ○ Focusing on the maintenance and long-term legitimacy of democracy Political ideologies Politics is Ideologic ○ Evidence-based policy making ○ A lot of questions may seem to be a matter of policy questions ○ Food distribution, income distribution, tax systems, climate disaster ○ We have the technology and know-how to resolve most of this fairly quickly ○ We lack the will ○ Fiercely competing visions of what constitutes a “better” or “worse” way of doing things ○ What might be a great way of doing something for you might be the worst way to do it for someone else ○ Politics is not and cannot be merely a pragmatic debate on what can be done ○ Ideology is a set of values (?)  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ It must speak to worldviews and deeply held values and it must propose things that go far beyond what is practical and merely possible (e.g. public healthcare in the US) ○ Politics must be ideological The Ideology of Individuals ○ Objective = cognitive knowledge about the political system and its inputs and outputs ○ Subjective = how individuals feel about and externalise values and attitudes (how you feel about democracy - rate fell from 90% to 72% - 1 in 4 does not care if they live in a democracy) ○ Evaluational = judgements about the system ○ Affective = feelings about this system ○ Normative = means to attain valued ends Politics is Ideological ○ Ideology ○ Generic sorting of liberal and conservative ideas and ideals along a continuum of intensity ○ Worldviews in which beliefs and reality align on this continuum ○ Ideology has to cohere in some way, it should help understanding the way people align ○ Graph = ideological distribution ○ Left-right schema = ideological continuum, mechanism to make sense of politics, mechanism for the reduction of complexity and a means for citizens to orient themselves in a complex political world ○ Way for us not to have to know everything (if we know one thing/article is not liked by a certain party then we have a shortcut to know if we like that thing or not - it is heuristic) ○ Left positions = equality, universal healthcare ○ Right positions = flat tax, being against immigration ○ Moderate or centrist position = freedom of speech, democracy ○ What matters is alignment (consistency) = the continuum number we pick is (not) the same on every issue Ideology Ideology as a cognitive schema ○ Individuals expressed views and behaviours that are similar, related or linked in a meaningful way ○ Why alignment in the political mind? ○ Easier to study (it’s intuitive) ○ Easier for actors (assumably)  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Citizens have the freedom to not organise their thinking ○ Politics can function Ideology ○ 2 ideological profiles ○ Very liberal = EU, environment, LGBTQ+, immigration ○ Very conservative = income inequality (even though it can help motivate) Ideology and Behaviour ○ Ideology → Attitudes → Behaviour ○ 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 (people who are more extreme, are more likely to vote) Ideology at the individual-level ○ American Voter = study about politics in the US ○ Vote according to party identification (“inherited” party = party voted by their parents) ○ Ambivalence = individuals possess multiple and often conflicting opinions ○ Study in UK = people are way more coherent in Europe (follow the left-right schema more) ○ “The Nature of Mass Belief Systems in Mass Publics” ○ Alternatives? ○ Values: as a more generic form of ideology ○ Organising principle [value] -> general political orientation [ideology] -> specific issue [opinion] ○ Organising principle [value] -> general political orientation [ideology] -> Behaviour ○ Structure of Values are a function of our environment and upbringing and even political awareness Ideology and Behaviour ○ Specific attitudes often correlate with specific neviours, broad global values do not necessarily predict specific behaviours A Values Approach ○ Primary limitation = methodological ○ It is intuitive, but unlike ideology we are left to figure out how to capture and structure its process and influence Other explanations ○ Partisanship  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Rise in partisanship as not merely a psychological identification with a particular party but the basis for their social identity Ideology and Parties ○ Politics is Ideological: ○ The left-right ideological schema has been useful for the analysis of parties. ○ For organising national party systems (where parties are located) ○ Linking individuals to those parties (via ideological congruence) ○ Understanding why certain parties do what they do ○ Left-right ○ = Party’s overall ideology on a scale ranging from 0 to 10 ○ GAL-TAN ○ Parties classified by their views on democratic freedoms and rights ○ Economic ideological location ○ Social left-right dimension ○ green/alternative/libertarian (GAL) to traditional/authoritarian/nationalist (TAN) dimension Refugee Crisis - Centre Right Parties ○ “Strategic positioning” theory Political Theory: What is Justice? What is Political Theory? ○ Branch of politics ○ 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) ○ What is justice and how can we achieve a just society? ○ Philosophy and political theory often overlap ○ Wide range of different, contradictory ideas ○ Thomas Hobbes = wrote Leviathan (contract theory) ○ Mary Wollstonecraft = influential thinker (contract theory excluded women) ○ Karl Marx = exploitation and emancipation ○ Franz Fanon = anti- colonialism thinker The dominant approach: Liberalism ○ Modern political thought ○ 17th-19th century = early phase of liberalism ○ Tries to protect individual form the modern state, from the interference of the state ○ Power became much more diffuse and less concentrated ○ Political doctrine that freedom (of the individual) comes first  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Individual = cannot be divided (?) ○ John Locke ○ Area of freedom is quintessential ○ What is a good way of organising a society? What can we do to improve society? ○ Freedom ○ Protection of the individual ○ Constitutionalism (wanted rights to be written down, so that when people went to court they could say they were protected by this and this right) Contemporary liberal movements ○ Movements that want to protect individuals ○ Me too movement (Liberal Feminism) ○ Black Lives Matter Rawls’ Theory of Justice ○ Most influential theory in political science ○ Rawls ○ Influential liberal thinker ○ How can we be free and at the same time promote equality? ○ How can we lower inequalities without taking out people’s properties? ○ Justice is about fairness ○ Veil of ignorance = not knowing essential characteristics about yourself (e.g. social class and status, political orientation, …) ○ 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, without this first principle we cannot have a second one ○ Social and economic inequalities are fair if they benefit the least advantaged ○ = because we do not know where we could come out in a society, could be in the worst possible position, so we’d want everyone, even the poorest, to have at least a certain standard of living ○ Equal opportunity ○ Difference principle ○ = personal talents are important, so inequality of wealth and income should be allowed ○ justifies redistribution of wealth (through taxation) Nozick: the Libertarian Alternative ○ Nozick = colleague of Rawls ○ New idea of the social contract to justify libertarian ideology  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ If we lived in a period of anarchy / if there was no state, what would we accept? ○ Goods are justly acquired and transferred (right to property) ○ Just transfer = using freedom to negotiate (e.g. Wilt Chamberlain had his team charge more for tickets), but people still have freedom, they can choose whether they want to pay more ○ Taxation = it is forced, because people do not have a choice to decide in they want to pay more or not (it becomes a problem) Okin’s Liberal Feminism ○ Susan Okin ○ Studies with Rawls ○ Accepted one of his key ideas ○ 2 principles of justice ○ But thought they only really applied to public institutions ○ Gave too much power to the patriarch ○ Led to inequality ○ Family is where oppression comes from ○ Misogynistic background culture led to misogyny on a public place ○ Family should be included as a political institution because it has a huge influence on society Sandel: the Procedural Republic ○ Rawls’ “heir” ○ Was also a critic of Rawls ○ Argued that the view roles promoted was essentially the political procedure ○ Democracy does not follow the right procedure, it need deliberation ○ In civic republicanism there is public deliberation ○ Societies are only fair if deliberation is taken into account ○ Democracy chooses what counts and what does not What is Justice? ○ Liberalism: a formal, procedural process that guarantees fairness, but justifies inequalities ○ Libertarian, feminist, republican critiques ○ Marxist critique: protects the interests of the bourgeoisie, the owner of capital ○ Ecological critique: based on constant growth and ecological destruction Political Culture Does (political) culture exist? Source: Culture ○ 3 sources of explanation for political values  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Political culture ○ Institutions ○ Economics Broad Strokes Definition ○ Culture = historically transmitted patterns of meaning embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life ○ Political culture consists of distinctive clusters of attitudes that are widely held across individuals ○ Durable clusters form subjective world orientations that are highly resistant to change and are seen as the fundamental generator of economic and political performance ○ Democracy depends on deep-rooted orientations among people What is (Political) Culture ○ Describes some rough aggregate of individual attitudes and orientations towards the governing structure ○ Mortar that holds the bricks of the political structure together comprise ○ Citizens’ feelings, their knowledge, propensity towards political activity, … ○ Broad normative attitudes on how the government should function ○ What citizens value, and how this affects politics (i.e. institutions) Definitional assumptions: Culture ○ Humans are social animals ○ Society as a part of the analysis (individuals part of a group) ○ Meaning is integral to understanding action ○ Shared norms lead to observable outcomes ○ Culture is not: ○ Just the “average” or “modal” values ○ Consensual validation ○ Devolvement to ideographic thinking So what? Culture ○ A resurgence of political culture ○ Political culture might be able to explain some things we can’t explain otherwise ○ Fall of USSR (90s) ○ (Democratic) institutional stability: Congruence postulate ○ Some evidence that culture stabilises institutions ○ “End of history” as post-Cold War convergence ○ Context matters  02/10-07/12 2023 Democratic Political Culture ○ Research approach ○ Culture is closely linked with power as it legitimates the established social order ○ It integrates society by selecting the values it has ○ i.e.: goals – common and individual ○ This is a mechanism for political socialisation (agencies of socialisation can change your values) ○ What constitutes it? ○ What elements, characteristics, and activities of individuals are necessary and sufficient for democratic governance? ○ Which values? ‘Right’ Values? ○ Which attitudes? ‘Right’ Attitudes? ○ What behaviours? ‘Right’ Behaviours? Civic Culture: Culture ○ A democratic political system requires a consistent political culture ○ Britain, US, Germany, Italy, and Mexico ○ The link between micro- and macro-politics is political culture ○ Culture = particular distribution of patterns of orientation toward political objects among members of the nation ○ There is more to political culture than knowledge or cognition. ○ How people feel about their political system is crucial ○ Almond and Verba cont. ○ Parochial = Almost tribal, rural arrangement: citizens are only indistinctly aware of the existence of government ○ Subject: Oriented only to outputs: citizens see themselves as subjects of the government ○ Participant: Oriented toward the entire system: citizens believe both that they can contribute to the system and that they are affected by it (not mass politics - they want to partially be in control of decisions that affect them). ○ Or mixed political cultures (mix of subject and participant) ○ Desiring to participate in politics is important ○ A successful democracy requires that citizens be involved and active in politics, informed, and influential. ○ The importance of self-learning and moderation ○ Orientations defined by cultural norms include: ○ Cognitive (knowledge) (cultural norms have to include what people know) ○ Affective (feelings) (how they feel about it) ○ Evaluations (judgments)  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Cultural and institutional congruency: congruent ones tend to function better and last longer ○ Culture and politics must be congruent ○ No need to be fully involved in democracy, there is the luxury of non participating Where to start? Culture ○ ‘Maximum Feasible Freedom’ (of the individual) ○ Democracy as an instrument to human development: instead of satisfying a maximum number of wants, it minimises the number of political concerns by providing an orderly, universally understood, and peaceful process for doing so. ○ Democracy is a collective action solution mechanism (individuals are given the freedom to do something) ○ Theory of limited democracy: There are fundamental political rights that cannot be infringed upon - even by democratic means ○ What constitutes the maximum feasible freedom, we want to have as much freedom as possible ○ Liberty: All adults subject to binding collective decisions ○ (We want to be as free as we possibly can) ○ Citizenship (relationship with everybody else) ○ Strong principle of equality: The idea of equal intrinsic worth of each citizen ○ Presumption of personal autonomy: more or less that everyone is the best judge of her own interests ○ (As we seem to expand our personal freedom, we must extend this freedom to each member of this society) Citizenship Values: Culture ○ Equality and Liberty ○ Democratic political culture emerges from the competition between individual attainment (i.e.: liberty) and the collective nature imposed by living in a society (i.e.: equality). ○ Democracy is egalitarian ○ This is a dilemma ○ Some would like more freedom, but not to extend them to everybody else ○ No limits to freedom is anarchy ○ Liberty: Individual freedom represents the freedom from constraint indicated by freedom of the individual to engage freely in activities = sometimes called, ‘negative’ freedom. ○ The collective imperative reflects ‘positive’ freedom manifesting as imposed equality among constituents (i.e.: restraint on individuals, even as majorities). ○ ‘Positive’ freedom includes values of authority and legitimacy.  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ This perspective maps easily onto the role of the state in the form of the rule of law, a collective preference for order and stability (enforcing rights and diversity). ○ Institutions keep us in our lane, they constrain us ○ Authority to impose rules on us is justified, we see that it is part of the solution ○ With authority we can have democracy ○ Rule of law is necessary to maintain freedom ○ Equality: Democratic political culture is in large part defined by individuals’ beliefs about the demos. ○ The dilemma is that individuals are equally allowed individual liberty. ○ Must be extended to all of society before it can be secure by any one person or class. ○ Rights are created not for the good of individuals but for the good of societies. ○ Individual freedoms are manufactured to achieve group ends ○ As such, citizenship insures universal individual (vs. collective) liberty. Freedom above equality 40s-70s Citizenship Values: Culture ○ Presumption of personal autonomy: Tolerance and Trust ○ Trust can be a good measure about how we feel in terms of equality with other people. ○ Crucial ingredient = citizens’ confidence in each other ○ PUTNAM = The role of social trust and cooperativeness as a component of the civic culture cannot be overemphasised. Without either, democratic politics is impossible. ○ The ability (desire) to participate fully (fill one’s political space) constrained by our obligations of living in a society (citizenship) merged with our willingness to extent this same dilemma to everyone else (equality) Citizenship Values: Tolerance ○ Tolerance of which ideas? What is the limit? ○ Satan statue (for equality)/burqa ○ I don’t agree with what you say, but will fight for your right to say it ○ I don’t have to approve the way you choose to express yourself, but it is your right to do so ○ Versus Equality: Who is the demos? Jim Crow Institutional Values: Culture ○ Diffuse support = a long-standing predisposition, an “attachment to a political object for its own sake” that “taps deep political sentiments and is not easily depleted through disappointment with outputs”  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Thus, diffuse support refers to what an object is or represents, not of what it does. ○ Even if my party loses, I still believe in the elections ○ Specific support derives from a citizen’s evaluation of system outputs; it is performance-based and short-term. ○ I like democracy: Diffuse support consists of “a reservoir of favourable attitudes or good will that helps members to accept or tolerate outputs to which they are opposed or the effect of which they see as damaging to their wants” ○ Normative preference for democratic governance ○ I like my democracy: Lack of specific support can carry over to more general feelings of dissatisfaction with the political system. ○ Evaluational preference ○ Specific support is necessary for the maintenance of a government ○ Diffuse support is a reservoir of goodwill in periods of short-term bad performance Culture and Legitimacy ○ “Maximum Feasible Freedom” and “Citizenship” values ○ Why do we care about what people feel about tolerance or equality or trust in their democratic institutions? ○ LEGITIMACY = The extent to which citizens trust the government to do what is right most of the time ○ Does not mean that outcomes satisfy all demands but fair deliberation but rather the extent to which the government satisfies the basic needs of most of the population. ○ I can lose but I know I can win back (shows there is fairness) Democratic Political Culture ○ The dilemma of democratic political culture is simply to what extent are individuals equally allowed individual liberty ○ Differing cultural solutions move with different institutional settings Learning Democracy ○ Institutional learning = nation’s institutional framework shapes individuals’ basic values ○ When institutions work well people tend to leave them alone ○ Key citizenship-qualities are developed when individuals have an opportunity to practise them ○ Citizens of different political systems are exposed to different political processes and ideals. Some of these processes nurture democratic restraint, self-reliance, and democratic ideals, while others prevent the development of these democratic citizenship qualities.  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Citizens who lack the opportunity to develop these ideals are consequently less likely to endorse democratic values which reflect them. Political Socialisation via Institutions (of democracy) ○ Elite commitment and mass political culture (socialising citizens to new norms and beliefs) ○ Earlier institutionalists = mechanism on the performance argument in which outputs determine support ○ Rohrschneider ○ Macro-level institutional effects on political culture ○ Examines these effects as they interact with ideological values ○ His critique of the culturalist approach fails to identify the mechanism of transformation (i.e. when and how citizens should learn ideological values) ○ How can you learn some of these values if you don’t live in a place where they are taught? ○ Institutions “teach” cultures to respond ○ In CEE, exposure to information about western democracies creates a preference for civil liberties, but the ability to behave democratically and develop corresponding ideals is substantially affected by citizens’ exposure to appropriate (democratic) institutions Political Socialisation: Culture ○ Change political values only over a long period ○ Culturalists are not passive, clock-watchers ○ Therefore, a theory: Instead of how, which values are developed. Different mechanisms for different values. A more complete culturalist explanation - and a means to append it to an institutional explanation: individuals’ values and attitudes development requires and institutional determined and protected civic space Political Socialisation ○ Institutionalist and culturalist explanations for political socialisation ○ Instead of how values are determined, we gain more from which values are developed ○ This merges 2 approaches ○ Institutional approach = democratic governance (“core” values) are likely to be developed early and substantially ○ Culturalist approach = political values that pertain more to citizenship and others in society (“periphery” values) are developed more slowly Democratic Political Values  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Authority and legitimacy: individuals’ normative attachments to new democratic institutions, such that this form of government is the preferred form of self-governance ○ Normative preference for democratic governance ○ Evaluational preference (satisfaction with & trust in democracy) ○ Individuals’ beliefs about the demos: radiate outward from individuals towards other members of their society in the form of conflict and cooperation, plurality and citizenship ○ Trust, tolerance and individual freedoms A theory: Combination ○ In the process of democratisation, values oriented to institutions are necessarily developed first. ○ Values associated with a preference for the new democratic solutions ○ Other values emerge more slowly, i.e.: citizenship values associated with individual liberty and equality ○ Individuals’ values that orient toward political institutions are driven by institutional exposure and “practice”, while their values oriented toward others in society are the function of gradual and long-term development. ○ Most Evident in countries in which civic space is created (or not) ○ Only in countries where the civic space is protected and as time goes on, institutional and cultural values tend to align ○ When there is a strong protection, cultural values tend to go up, when not the cultural values tend to stay flat Political Institutions Electoral systems ○ Plurality system ○ Majoritarian model = adversarial, competitive, exclusive, more “effective” ○ Proportional representation ○ Multi-party model = more inclusive, bargaining, compromise, more “democratic” ○ Constitutional arrangements: Presidential vs. Parliamentary ○ Parliaments make laws, represent interests of the people and control resources ○ Strength comes from control over the budget, committee structure, create legislation ○ Role of the Executive: Control over the function of government ○ Committees, the power of assignments, issues and veto power An institutional approach to democracy  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Institutionalism: the origins of political systems per se ○ Distribution of power ○ Order and choice ○ Modernisation and development is an attempt to explain… ○ Success and failure of democratisation ○ How to build democracy where it was not indigenous ○ How “modern” institutions evolved in the West Modernisation theory ○ Emphasises institutional building in a context of diffuse economic growth ○ Fundamental assumption: the development of economies push both social/political values and attitudes toward inevitable modernisation ○ Development is understood as modernisation ○ Modernisation is understood as Capitalism and as a function of this, eventually Democracy Explaining Development ○ Structural explanations: CLASS ○ Shift in the balance, alignments and thus power of class to confer advantage to a new group ○ “No bourgeois, no democracy” ○ Mass society is fundamentally transformed, and with it, expectations of (and demands for) political self-determinism Directional continuum of development ○ Middle class being able to grow wealthier Modernisation and Institutions ○ Mechanism Institutional design ○ Institutional explanations are satisfying for explaining the establishment of the “the rules of the game” ○ Legitimising political actors, norms, and practices ○ Creates a space for civil society ○ Opportunities for political socialisation ○ Process models: democracy by undemocratic means ○ Elite bargaining : Economic change chooses the appropriate actors that get to shape the institutions and resulting party system. ○ The moment of transition is the critical juncture - and agency plays an outsized role  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ The negotiated process of transition directs the institutionalisation of the new regime (hopefully toward democracy). ○ Democracy is the second-best solution for political and economic elites. That is, elites continue to play the game (of democracy) as the prospect of eventually winning dominates a strategy of deviating from the game ○ Disincentivise deviations: the longevity and legitimacy of democracy originates from the capacity to determine that elites have more to gain from competing within a democratic framework than they do from overturning it Institutions: Formal theory ○ Can be found in nearly all areas of Political Science ○ Bargaining models in the study of international security and legislative policymaking ○ Principal-agent models to study elections and terrorist organisations ○ Models of political-economic interactions to study redistribution, revolutions, and military capacity ○ Social choice theory and mechanism design to study judgement, information, and preference aggregation in a large array of institutions. ○ Formal theory is just that, theory formalised ○ Not intended to connect with reality but rather manipulate logical propositions to arrive at a solution using incentives, institutions (“rules”), and payoffs ○ That is, solutions precede data testing (i.e. reality) ○ Game-theory - the mathematical analysis of strategic interaction - is a clear example of the use of formal theory. Game theory ○ Actors attempt to maximise their payoffs within the context of other actors, choices, and constraints (“rules of the game”) ○ These actors can know: ○ Everything about what they want, what the other actor wants, and the rules (“complete information”) ○ or not (“incomplete/asymmetric information”) ○ e.g. Prisoner’s dilemma ○ Dominant (rational) strategy = both confess ○ Not the best outcome (actually 3rd best outcome) ○ This is a “Dominant Strategy Equilibrium” = Nash Equilibrium Dominant strategy equilibrium (NE) ○ NE = where the game naturally wants to stay ○ At equilibrium, no one wants to change or move off that strategy ○ Not “Pareto Optimal” = best outcome for all  02/10-07/12 2023 Variations ○ Game can change and become more complicated by incorporating “incomplete information” ○ “Risk” = known probabilities of actors ○ Produces “mixed strategy” games = probabilistic strategy sets ○ “Uncertainty” = probabilities are unknown ○ “Equilibrium selection” and “Iterated Dominance” procedures ○ One assumption underpins them all: Rationality Implications ○ Identification of the “Free Rider” Problem ○ Free rider is a person who enjoys the benefits of goods without contributing to the cost of providing them. (benefitting without participating) ○ It is “Nash” (and non-Pareto) to not participate because one can reap the benefits of others without paying the “cost” ○ EX: Joining a union ○ Collective Action Problems – particularly true for the provision of “public goods” ○ Formal theory often used ○ Idea of “utility” = quantifying preferences and payoffs ○ Basis for Rational choice theory ○ Actors are presumed to be instrumentally rational meaning that they take actions not for their own sake but insofar as they secure desired, typically, private ends. ○ Cost/benefit analysis provides a clear motor specifying the causal mechanism behind the phenomenon in question Rationality ○ Extremely effective in Economics ○ Thinking about cost benefit trade offs of economic outcomes makes sense, less so for explaining the highly personal and often sensitive issues related to politics ○ Less so in Political Science ○ Failure of rationality to explain voting at all: R = BP −C ○ Failure to account for contexts or significant inter-personal differences ○ i.e.: heterogeneity assumption” individuals ‘make up their minds’ in several different ways ○ Politics is not Economics (i.e. market behaviour) in a different setting Challenges to Rationality ○ Rationality - reason-ality  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ (assumption) rational actors are expected to know their preferences of everything, both present and future, are supposed to make good decisions that will maximise these interests, and never make mistakes ○ Limits on information-processing: similar to “bounded rationality” Political Institutions ○ What is it we are to orient ourselves to? ○ Most people evaluate the performance of a government according to how fair the process is ○ Fairness is not (always) about winning ○ Research Question: do constitutional rules governing early election calling influence citizens’ satisfaction with democracy ○ If constitutional regulation of early election calling are at least as important as electoral rules in shaping a range of governance outcomes, might they play a role explaining citizen satisfaction with democracy? ○ Constitutional regulation of early election calling shape ○ Timing of elections ○ Negotiations about the making and breaking of governments ○ Incumbent electoral success ○ Executive legislative success ○ Number of potential views about what these might mean for democratic quality (lower levels of satisfaction with democracy) ○ Negative impact on accountability when PMs and Cabinets can call elections freely ○ Power to call early elections by PM or cabinets enhances the quality of democratic government because bargaining power of PM and cabinet increases ○ Giving presidents unilateral powers to call elections ○ Range of individual and country level controls drawn from the democratic satisfaction literature ○ Individual level = experience of democracy, satisfaction with economy, trust in political institutions, winning party voter, ideological proximity to the government ○ Macro-level = age of democracy, Gini Index, change in GDP annual growth, Inflation, Unemployment, Government Performance Political Institutions ○ Main result = parliamentary dissolution rules are correlated with democratic satisfaction ○ While it appears that no form of constitutional rules for early election is directly related to citizen satisfaction with democracy, when early elections are called by PMs or presidents, democratic satisfaction drops significantly,  02/10-07/12 2023 and this effect is more pronounced the later in the term the early election is called. ○ Requires us to think more carefully about the trade-offs involved in the constitutional regulation of early election calling Varieties of Regimes Idea that democracy is the best solution = universalist fallacy For Plato ○ Person that should lead society = Philosopher King ○ If that cannot be done, a group of experts or a group of enlightened aristocrats is the second best solution ○ To some extent there would have to be some support ○ Worst option = democracy ○ Government formed by the people should be avoided because they are stupid ○ Inefficient way to govern But we cannot do this - why? ○ The King would become a monarch or a dictator because it would have all the power ○ Expert aristocracy could become an oligarchy ○ Democracy = safest form of government because it is the least likely to turn into something else, into something we don’t want Democracy as a Form of Government ○ Right to vote ○ Right to be elected ○ Right of political leaders to compete for support and votes ○ Elections that are free and fair ○ Freedom of association ○ Freedom of expression ○ Alternative sources of information ○ Institutions for making public policies depend on votes and other expressions of preferences Rule of accountability is fundamental Democracy as Human Development ○ Human life has intrinsic value ○ Political freedom is part of human freedom ○ Instrumental value ○ Power of political accountability ○ Constructive value  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Norms of social relations Democracy as a Universal Value ○ Who is the demos? Who is a citizen? ○ Who is legitimate? ○ Economic development is better and faster under non-democratic regimes ○ Is there an odd relationship between democratic politics and economic developments? ○ Philosophical dilemma of a horizontal political norm (equality) and vertical economic organisation (inequality) ○ Economics seems to be a motivator for democracy, but not much of a supporter for democracy ○ A country does not have to be deemed fit for democracy, rather, it becomes fit through democracy ○ Democracy is the means through which we create … How democratic is democracy? ○ It is not democratic at all ○ Elites = (weakly representative) caretakers of democracy ○ Different Elite theories ○ The citizen’s chief role is the acceptance or rejection of political leaders ○ Political elites safeguard democracy against the danger of both totalitarianism and ‘mass society’ (i.e.: ‘too much democracy’) ○ Elites are not an imperfection of democracy but, if they are themselves democratic, are the guarantors of the system ○ Non-elite participation is neither a goal nor a requirement ○ Regardless of how democratic all forms of governments may be initially, they will eventually develop oligarchic tendencies ○ Thus for any and all large groups, this “iron law” makes ideal democracy practically impossible Democracy as a Universal Fallacy? ○ Are there other valid regime types? ○ Fundamentally democratic but not unambiguously liberal-democratic ○ Enlightened leader/autocrat ○ Rotating civil service ○ Anarcho-syndicalist commune ○ Authoritarian/Totalitarian Democracy / Authoritarian Continuum ○ Less than 43 countries are considered as democracies  02/10-07/12 2023 Authoritarianism ○ A political system characterised by the rejection of political plurality (i.e.: coexistence of different interests, ideologies, and preferences) ○ Near or complete power is concentrated in a leader (or a small elite) not constitutionally responsible to the people ○ A strong central power to preserve power ○ Attacks - or overt limits - on the rule of law, separation of powers, political opposition, and popular participation Subtypes of Authoritarianism ○ Traditional authoritarian regimes: ○ Appeals to traditional legitimacy, patron-client ties, repression, and the crucial role of personal loyalties ○ Bureaucratic-military authoritarian regimes: ○ Military officers and technocrats who govern ‘pragmatically (rather than ideologically)’ ○ Others argue for more finely tuned distinctions ○ Dominant party regimes, military regimes, personalist regimes (often in Sub-Saharan Africa), monarchies, oligarchic regimes, indirect military regimes, or hybrids of the first three Variations ○ Fascism: Nationalism (Nazism: racism) ○ Extreme regimenting of society with rituals (e.g. order) ○ Purification of the state ○ Socialism: Political, economic, and social order based on class divisions Versus Totalitarianism ○ Economic (and social) institutions are under state control ○ Political support is immaterial and usual in the form of passive acceptance rather than genuine popular support Democracy / Authoritarian Continuum ○ Varieties of Democracies ○ Uses a measure from Authoritarian to Democratic to identify a wide range of political institutions on a number of dimensions: Electoral, participatory, deliberative, egalitarian democracy ○ It assesses a vast array of political objects: Elections, Parties, the Executive, the Legislature, the Judiciary, Civil Liberty, Sovereignty, Civil Society, The Media, inter alia… ○ USE: Overall governance with electoral democracy dimension (based on electoral components) Authoritarian to Democracy  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ What is the path from Authoritarian to Democracy? ○ Explanations have been historically dominated by the (change in) institutional design and resultant (change in) socioeconomic factors including macro-economic development. ○ Economic development, cultural change, and political change move together in some coherent and to some extent predictable pattern ○ Inglehart: Modernization includes changes in Individuals’ Values ○ A shift in what people want out of life, transforming the basic norms of government, work, religion, family, and sexual behaviour. These are not mere consequences of economic or social changes but shape the socio-economic conditions and are shaped by them in reciprocal fashion Materialism to Post-Materialism ○ Rational-legal Authority = idea that the state is rightfully there to control ○ De-emphasis of Authority = idea that the state is only there to maintain the status-quo Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs ○ These individual level changes (changes in values, beliefs, and behaviour) subsequently affect structures in the system on which they exert some influence Authoritarian to Democracy ○ Inter-generational value change: Mainly due to the fact that the first-hand life experiences of mass publics in recent decades has been profoundly different from that of earlier generations. This cohort socialisation creates belief structures (and that citizens act on them) ○ Scarcity hypothesis: one places the greatest subjective value on those things that are in relatively short supply ○ Socialisation hypothesis: one’s basic values reflect the conditions that prevailed during one’s pre-adult years ○ Political institutions respond to meet these changing needs ○ Not a change in values per se but a shift in the priority of values ○ Cultural variation tends to follow predictable patterns because some ways of running a society work better than others ○ Specific clusters of cultural characteristics go together with specific types of political and economic change ○ This this gives the rise to the notion that supportive cultural orientations stabilise democratic gains ○ The rise of post-materialist issues tends to neutralise political polarisation based on social class or socio-economic status ○ Yet, a European resurgence of Nationalism, Xenophobia, Class (rich vs. rest) ○ Is this a return to pre-post-materialist (i.e. materialist) values priorities?  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Why do some countries get stuck in transition? ○ Path-dependency: Origins determine outcome ○ Variety of starting points: ○ Transitions from absolutist monarchy to constitutional monarchy or even to republics may be fundamentally different than transitions from a modern military dictatorship or Big-man authoritarian to mass democracy ○ Perhaps “Non-democracy to Democracy” is not one path Democracy / Authoritarian Continuum ○ Why do some countries get stuck in transition? ○ Insufficient diffusion of economic benefits (extreme inequality) ○ The rise of ‘wrong’ values, beliefs, and attitudes ○ Elite disincentivized to continue (to 2nd best outcome) ○ Political Instability: Anocracy (½ Democratic, ½ Autocratic) ○ Conflict, revolution, coup, political breakdown ○ Backsliding ○ Simply, institutions don’t get changed or designed ○ Do all roads lead to Democracy? ○ Economic development may produce social change and yet produce different political outcomes ○ Variety of Endings ○ Non democratic regimes, dictatorships, monarchies, one-party states, totalitarian and post-totalitarian systems, parliamentary democracies, city-state oligarchies, … ○ Are there “adjective” democracies in Europe? Yes ○ Electoral, illiberal, deliberative, constitutional, … Democracy as a Universal Values ○ Universalist fallacy – universal desirable goal of modernization? ○ Democracy as best (“West vs. the rest”) ○ Well, that where democracies are ○ We arrive at this goal via Western values ○ Western [historical] exceptionalism as the definition of ‘success’ ○ The assumption that what is wrong with socialism (authoritarianism) can be fixed by capitalism (democracy)? ○ Democratic capitalism The act of Voting The Act of Voting ○ Divided in  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Ballot box ○ Which party/candidate Party systems as Political Marketplaces ○ Voters as consumers with parties as the product ○ Supply-side (party systems) ○ Demand-side (voters) The not so simple act of Voting ○ Sociological approach: Tradition of class and cleavages ○ Social bases, cleavage ○ Individual Rationality Framework. The rational voter ○ Spatial approaches: Proximity and Directional models ○ Economic voting ○ The Michigan Revolution: The Social-psychological model ○ PID: party identification and partisan theory ○ Why do people vote? And for whom? The act of Voting: Sociological Approach ○ An aggregate perspective on voting including both turnout and party choice ○ The Origins of Party Systems ○ The origin and design of institutions of democracy and their impact on voting ○ Social Cleavage Theory: Political cleavages are relatively stable patterns of alignment in which given social groups support parties (or policies) ○ Best predictor for who you’re going to vote for is who you’ve voted for last time ○ These cleavages impact voting patterns: ○ Saliency of cleavages creates party systems by defining competitors ○ Thresholds of legitimisation and incorporation by parties ○ Relative saliency also defines dimensions of competition ○ Implication: individual voters have little to do with the whole process ○ Thus, although we can foresee patterns of turnout and vote choice, we learn little about why individuals may choose to vote, or who to vote for. ○ Reduction of voting to “competing blocs” of social groups ○ Individual face barriers to exit/enter “their social group” and thus assumed not to ○ Doesn’t explain turnout Individual Rationality Framework ○ Party Systems are political marketplaces ○ Voters as consumers with parties as the product ○ Supply-side (party systems) and Demand-side (voters)  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Democracy is more likely to be found among relatively prosperous nations than among poorer ones, thus rationality was a natural assumption ○ Democracy is more likely to be found among relatively prosperous nations than among poorer ones, thus rationality was a natural assumption ○ Merging the media voter theorem with the assumption that the evaluation of each party depends on the information about its policies and the relationship between those of its policies he knows about and his conception of the good society ○ Therefore, if the party system is a marketplace, individuals’ electoral choices reflect rational reactions to government design and performance on the part of informed citizens ○ The ahistorical individualism of rational choice ○ In this way, with the party system as a political marketplace: ○ A formal ordering of preferences and decision calculus: “rational voters support the party closest to their political ideal point” ○ Both make strong assumptions about voters and parties ○ Every party seeks to maximise political support ○ Voters are assumed to be exclusively motivated by policy considerations ○ Single-shot, no future considerations ○ Very sensitive to uncertainty about voters’ knowledge of parties’ positions and politicians’ uncertainty about voters’ distribution of preferences ○ People may have difficulties in expressing their preferences ○ Both make strong assumptions about voters and parties ○ Not to mention: ○ Variation in national institutions ○ Electoral or party system rules such as varying thresholds ○ Timing ○ Simultaneous voting, midterm voting, early elections ○ Political culture…. ○ Subjective Performance Evaluations: Economic Voting Retrospective Socio-tropic Economic Performance ○ “What do you think about the economy? ○ Compared to 12 months ago, do you think that the general economic situation in [your country]…?” with response categories recoded to: ‘Is a lot worse’, ‘Is a little worse’, ‘Stayed the same’, ‘Is a little better’, and ‘Is a lot better’ (Likert Scale) ○ Key elements in models of voting, participation, EU and national system support ○ They are available in many major cross-national surveys and generally agreed to capture – to a sufficient extent - individuals’ sense of recent national economic performance ○ Simply: ‘Accountability’: ○ Better economy → incumbent ○ Worse economy → challenger  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ The effects of economic evaluations on vote choice depend on voter information ○ Effect of 4 types of economic evaluations on the probability of voting for the incumbent as a function of voter’s level of political information, conditional on the voter’s expected outcome of the election ○ Party System as marketplace assumption: ○ Considers voters and parties as unidimensional ○ Fails to explain change in party system itself (i.e.: the marketplace) ○ Which parties arise to represent new interests ○ Party system fragmentation: increasing number or change in competing parties ○ Party system polarisation: increasing centrifugal force on ideological positions ○ Equilibrium does not explain change in party system A Social-Psychological Model ○ Voting at all ○ What are the potential individual determinants? ○ What are the potential institutional determinants? ○ What are the potential contextual (structural) determinants? ○ What are the potential cultural determinants? ○ Voting for a specific party [or for a party family] ○ What are the potential individual determinants? ○ What are the potential institutional determinants? ○ What are the potential contextual (structural) determinants? ○ What are the potential cultural determinants? The act of Voting: Party Identification ○ Voter Alignments: Party Identification/Partisanship ○ Identifying with a party ○ Weak understanding of party identification ○ What is party identification? ○ Campbell et al (The Michigan School) 1960: The American Voter ○ Party ID is a permanent positive id with a particular party ○ Partisanship is largely learned through socialisation (the established cleavages of that society) ○ Socialisation and childhood experience (sounds familiar) ○ How different from Ideology? What about the Left-Right Schema? ○ Fuchs and Klingemann argue that ideological self-identification can be measured as self-placement on a left-right or liberal-conservative scale AND has considerable effects on political behaviour and political attitudes ○ Left-right schema as a reduction of complexities and serves as a general orientating function for citizens  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ A mechanism for the reduction of complexity for politics in general ○ PID a specific partisanship-based heuristic that allows citizens to make reasonable decisions at a modest cost and without perfect information ○ How different from ideology, the Left-Right Schema? ○ Ideological thinking is a form of deductive thinking in which specific attitudes are derived from abstract principles ○ Ideology is a broader, albeit political, cognitive schema. The left-right schema is a mechanism for the reduction of complexity for politics in general ○ Ideology often corresponds to PID. However, PID is a personal attachment to a party (representing an identification with party goals) ○ Thus, PID a specific partisanship- based heuristic that allows citizens to make reasonable decisions at a modest cost and without perfect information ○ Standard model of voting (formula) Graph ○ Partisan De-Alignment ○ Party identification has waned in importance and predictive power because of electoral volatility ○ Voting has shifted from being based on social cleavages such as class, religion, ethnicity, and the like, to political mobilisation based on attachments to specific political objects; and, increasingly today, to cognitive mobilisation reflecting individual decisions based on knowledge of issues, perceptions of interest, and preferences, including values ○ Cognitive mobilisation involves increasing individual processing of information, calculation of interest, and perhaps even the individual “construction” of political identities ○ Citizens are exhibiting less partisan political behaviour and turnout, increased electoral volatility, and new individualistic issue concerns ○ Increase of voter sophistication: the process of cognitive mobility and modernity ○ A shift from class- to issue-based voting ○ Instead of party allegiance, where is my issue being addressed? ○ Value change: increasing heterogeneity among voters’ concerns ○ Parties are failing to perform their functions ○ Reduced ability to aggregate interests ○ No longer primary information sources ○ Rise in availability of the Internet in the 2000s ○ Rise in new issue dimensions (decline of class-based politics) ○ Consequences of partisan de-alignment ○ Electoral volatility and party fragmentation ○ Despite increase in voter education, decrease in citizen involvement ○ Political involvement toward other forms of participation  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Fragmentation and individualisation of political behaviour ○ Decline in group/class consciousness ○ Individuals rather than members of group (social structure) ○ Slide 32? The act of Voting: Cultural Voting? ○ Cultural – the return of (or change in salience of) values/attitudinal voting ○ Issue-specific & single-issue voting ○ Criteria: interest in and knowledge of the position of the candidate on the issue ○ Main advantage: Frames the context in which politics occurs by linking individual and collective identities. Culture is a meaningful way to order political priorities making particular actions more or less likely ○ Main disadvantage: Difficulty explaining individual action: ○ It is intersubjective (shared meanings and identities) ○ IOW: Culture is what we believe, not what I believe. The act of Voting: A Revision of the Michigan revolution ○ The Michigan model is a function of voter attributes that merge the social; basis of voting with political attitudes and orientations ○ But, partisanship or partisan choice has changed. Rather than mere partisan alignment or loyalty, individuals often form a deep psychological attachments to parties ○ Some approaches have been developed to try to tackle this, such as 2-dimensional ideological maps but it is clear that partisanship has changed (started in US but spread in Europe too) ○ Identity based politics ○ Affective Voting ○ Negative PID The act of Voting: Identity ○ Social Identity Theory: The role of group identity ○ Social, ethnic, racial, religious, or cultural identities influence vote choices ○ Voters may align with candidates or parties that represent or promote their group interests The act of Voting: Affective Voting ○ Affective voting: Individuals’ vote/party decisions based on their emotional or affective responses to political candidates or issues ○ Based on their feelings, sentiments, and gut reactions e.g.: anger, fear, hope, enthusiasm, or even personal affinity for a particular candidate, (vs. a careful analysis)  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ (+) Affect allows voters to connect with candidates on a more personal level and can lead to higher voter turnout and engagement ○ (-) Decisions may not be well-informed or are based on fleeting emotional reactions rather than a comprehensive understanding of the issues at hand ○ Susceptible to manipulation by candidates/parties to provoke emotional responses The act of Voting: Negative PID ○ One evident way is the rise of “negative partisanship” ○ A vote against another party ○ Return to tribalism (i.e. land and blood nationalist arguments) are supported by parties’ change from information sources (PID heuristic) to value originator ○ Us vs. them ○ Can voting be strongly individualistic and membership oriented ○ “What’s good for me and my people” ○ And “What’s bad for them” ○ “It’s not enough that I win, others must lose” Psychological Model ○ Can we examine the psychological basis or motivations that connect individual identities to parties? ○ Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious) ○ Progressivism and c… ○ Conscientiousness (efficient/organised vs. extravagant/careless) ○ Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved) ○ Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. critical/rational) ○ Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident) The act of voting: Psychological Profile ○ Compare these potential combinations with the SES/PID attribute model (Michigan). ○ Nearly everywhere: ○ Conservatives: Lower openness and higher conscientiousness ○ Not open to - or searching for - new experiences and don’t like surprises ○ Liberals: higher openness and less conscientiousness ○ Debates: the locus of personal responsibility ○ Personality has a lot to do with politics ○ Voting does not have anything to do with biology but it has a lot to do with psychology The act of Voting: an example ○ Voting for the Far RIght ○ Macro- and micro-level stuff  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Comes down to values and attitudes Why vote for the “Radical Right” Party? ○ Radical Right populism ○ DEF: An ideology that focuses on three core criteria ○ Nativism: Protection of the dominant ‘ethnic in-group’ (i.e.: specifically, a white (male) majority) ○ Scapegoating of ‘ethnic out-groups’ (i.e. immigrants/refugees/anti-Islam) ○ Populism: Two groups in society: ‘Corrupt’ elites v. The ‘Pure’ opposition (self-titled ‘outsiders’) ○ Authoritarianism: Emphasis on law & order, alongside a focus on maintaining traditional values in society ○ Mass Appeal: Disaffected working-class voters ○ Key similarities of radical right parties on issues: ○ (Anti-)immigration ○ “Hard” Euroscepticism ○ Ideological & socio-economic policies differences: ○ The economy: “state socialism” vs. “neo-liberal economics” ○ National Rally (France): Economic protectionism; anti-globalization message (government intervenes in the economy) ○ FPÖ (Austria): Neo-liberal economics (minimal government intervention) ○ 2 approaches ○ The Demand-Side Literature (Micro-Level) examines the ‘types’ of voters that vote for Populist Parties ○ i.e., socio-demographic & attitudinal characteristics/features ○ The Supply-Side Literature (Macro-Level) examines ‘party positions’ of populist parties ○ i.e., Party Manifestos/Strategies; ideological stances; party competition effects; media effects Political Participation Traditional Political Participation ○ The clearest manifestation of political interest and action ○ Generally refers to the actions of individuals (individually or in groups) to affect the policy-making bodies through conventional and unconventional political methods ○ It is the most easily measured activity and most consistently expressive ○ “Expressive”: it is iterated and organised ○ In contrast to unconventional political action which is frequently random and represents a non-institutional linkage between constituencies and government  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Key features: ○ Participation is an activity ○ It is voluntary and not ordered by a ruling class or obliged under law ○ It refers to people in their role as non-professionals or amateurs ○ It concern government, politics or the state ”Verba et al” typology ○ Ranked by “difficulty to perform” (costly for those who do them) ○ 1. Traditional (or Conventional) political participation ○ Voting, working in an election campaign and attending rallies ○ 2. Non-Traditional (or Unconventional) political participation ○ Legal boycotts, picketing, strikes, etc ○ 3. Illegal acts ○ Rioting, unauthorised demonstrations, etc ○ Civil disobedience Theoretical perspectives ○ Explanations for why people do what they do ○ Sociological: SES: age, income, education, gender, class ○ Psychological: PID, internal efficacy: motives, emotions and identity ○ Rationality: agent-based models of utility maximising ○ Culture: beliefs and values, pre-dispositions ○ Context: Zeitgeist, national timing ○ Meso-level (groups): networks, organisation, media ○ Institutions: electoral laws (availability of choices), external efficacy (what I do will resonate, will be heard) SES: Political participation ○ All things being equal, individuals with more SES (socio-economic status) resources, are more active and better able to convert these resources into political ones (in particular, education) ○ But all things are not equal ○ Influence of political institutions ○ Mobilisation by parties ○ Level of difficulty in the type of participation - defined by institutional allowance for such actions ○ Standard socio-economic model: the socio-structural factors most strongly associated with political participation ○ Add: individual predispositions and beliefs (values and efficacy) ○ Key = relationship between institutions and specific cultural and institutional variables ○ As countries vary institutionally, so do the cultures that assign the allowance for various forms of political participation  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ SES model: education, income and occupation ○ (Re-)conceptualised as: time, money and Civic Skills ○ Configuration of a Resource Model corresponds with SES, but communication and organisational capacities are essential to political activity ○ Civic Skills ○ Understanding that being politically involved is important ○ Not acquired early in life but are developed through non-political institutional settings of adult life (workplace, organisations, churches) ○ Education correlates strongly with Civic Skills ○ The Resource Model is a proxy for life circumstances ○ Time, money and skills: which are measurable (unlike, e.g. motivation) ○ This unequal distribution of resources explains the disparity between participation - political interest is not sufficient ○ IF, not why, they participate Confidence in Participating Politically ○ Bulgaria = 60% not confident at all ○ Even in DE, 40% are not at all confident or a little confident Political Participation ○ Bulgaria = almost 90% got 0 ○ Even in Norway, 1 in 5 people got 0 ○ Political Participation could be a cultural value Confidence and Political Participation ○ Average = 0.73 Voice and Accountability & Political Participation ○ Average = 0.87 ○ 2 groups ○ Political apathy ○ Political sophistication Political Participation in Europe ○ What if overall (national) voting was declining while political participation (particularly unconventional political participation) was slowly increasing in the EU? ○ Participation in EU elections since 1979 ○ Used to be 62% ○ 2014 = 42% ○ Italy = used to have 90% of people voting, is slowly decreasing ○ Countries in Eastern Europe = low percentage of voters ○ Western Europe = also decreasing  02/10-07/12 2023 Unconventional Political Participation ○ Has been rising in Europe in the last 20 years ○ Are those the same people that vote or is it another group? ○ 2 explanations ○ People stopped voting and those same people are doing something else ○ Those who are voting are the older generations and the younger ones are participating in unconventional political participation, they feel like it’s the only way to affect policies ○ What does it imply? ○ Ecological consideration ○ Same people (change of strategy) ○ De-alignment? Protest politics? Change of issues? Loss of trust in institutions? ○ Different people ○ Separate cohort norms? Different motivations? Political Participation: Questions ○ To what extent does actual participation need to be a part of democratic political culture? ○ Luxury of democracy is not having to do anything Democratic Performance and Political Participation ○ Compare political participation (other than voting) with measures of democratic institutional performance Democratic Political Culture and Political Participation ○ High correlation ○ 0.82 Political Participation: Questions ○ Political Participation numbers in the graph show even high performing democracies have low levels of participation ○ What does this mean when we think about the importance of participation, how to count it, and how to think about what constitutes it? What constitutes political participation? ○ Do we need to change our list of what constitutes it? ○ Do we need to change the definition, the measure or both? ○ Classic definition = the actions of individuals to affect the policy-making bodies through conventional and unconventional political methods ○ Voting, campaign activity, cooperative activity, and citizen-initiated contacts ○ Can include unconventional forms of participation (e.g. attending demonstrations and joining boycotts)  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Survey in DE in 2018 ○ Institutionalised participation ○ Protest ○ Volunteering ○ Digitally Networked Participation ○ Consumerist participation ○ A multi-dimensional participation taxonomy ○ Voting ○ Institutionalised participation ○ Protest ○ Digitally networked participation ○ Civic participation / volunteering ○ Consumerist ○ Last 3 = similar to older modes of participation, but newer venues ○ Digitally networked forms clearly establish a new and distinct mode of political participation ○ How? ○ Listening, following (e.g. politicians or parties), posting ○ Larger choice, wider audience, create content, efficient (more things in less time) ○ Critique: Digital media platforms dilute the meaning of politically engaged citizenship (“slacktivism” or “clicktivism”) ○ Response: Digital did not replace old forms of political participation, it added new venues and forms ○ Consumerist Participation or Political Consumerism ○ Is everything political now? ○ Clothes, food, lifestyle, accommodation, etc ○ Fully Ethical Model = political participation? ○ What is political participation? ○ Actions of private citizens by which they seek to influence or support government and politics ○ … ○ Is political consumerism aimed at changing politics? ○ Ethically, environmentally or politically undesirable (“boycotting”), or to reward companies for favourable practices (“buycotting”) ○ Is it political participation? ○ New forms involve anything from public acts to local (or even private) acts ○ Creative, expressive and individualised modes appear to be expansions of protest activities ○ Especially for young people ○ More disconnected from traditional politics ○ Highly critical of politicians and the party-political system ○ Includes the “action” of non-participation  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Rise of new forms can be seen as sign of a vibrant democracy, a transformation ○ What counts as Political Participation? ○ Intention: to change something (e.g. Vegetarianism) ○ Impact: does it count? ○ Sufficiency? ○ How much is enough? ○ Woodstock vs. me in my room (playing Rage against the machine songs for others is one thing, learning their songs in my room is just political practice) ○ Does it offer a solution? ○ GDELT (event database) ○ Can creative, individual actions be a part of it? ○ James Scott ○ Malaysian rice-growing village ○ “Public” versus “hidden” transcripts ○ Hidden = Servants found ways to resist the wealthy, would do tiny actions everyday (rebels) (relationship between dominated and dominators) Political Communication What are we talking about? ○ Political communication = its own field ○ 2 types ○ Legacy media ○ Internet and social media ○ Why are media important for democracy? ○ Free media and democracy go together, they are essential for democracy to exist ○ Media affect people So what? ○ Media = key institution in society through which citizenship is carried out ○ Part of the network of opinion-forming institutions ○ Independent media are both elements and facilitators of democratic political culture ○ Citizens more often than not, do not have first-hand knowledge about politics ○ Extreme little exposure to politics ○ Role of media = connecting you to the world and the world to you ○ Mass communication effects: who says what to who in what channel with what effect?  02/10-07/12 2023 ○ Despite all the work, how powerful is the mass media? ○ If media can shape people’s knowledge, attitudes and feelings, they can obviously influence behaviour ○ Yet, are these effects temporal or lasting? What type of exposure? Content? Which mediums?