Midterm Review

Democracy

• There is no universally agreed-upon definition of democracy

• Not an all-or-nothing concept, it’s more of a spectrum

• A competitive multiparty system

• free and non-corrupt election

• an effective legal framework to protect civil liberties and human rights

• universal suffrage: Everyone gets the right to vote

V-Dem Project

• A liberal democracy index that measures how democratic a country is from 0(most autocratic) to 1(most democratic)

• Measures things like are the executive and legislative branch are elected, are there free and fair elections, can everyone participate in elections, checks and balances, freedom of expression and association, does the government follow the laws, access to justice, gender equality

V-Dem: Closed Autocracy

• No multiparty elections for the executive position

• Absence of fundamental democratic components such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and free and fair elections

V-Dem: Electoral Autocracy

• Multiparty elections for the executive exist

• Insufficient levels of fundamental requisites such as freedom of expression and association, and free and fair elections

V-Dem: Grey Zone

• Countries belong in this category if confidence intervals overlap making the classification more uncertain

V-Dem: Electoral Democracy

• Multiparty elections for the executive are free and fair

• Satisfactory degrees of suffrage, freedom of expression, freedom of association

Liberal Democracy

• Requirements of electoral democracy are met

• Judicial and legislative constraints on the executive along with the protection of civil liberties and equality before the law

V-Dem: Qatar

• Old fashioned absolute monarchy

• 0.08 VERY authoritarian

• The position of being in charge is hereditary, no one competes

• There is a legislative assembly, but is fully appointed

• No political parties, and it is illegal to criticize the Emir

• One of the richest countries on a per-capita basis due to its massive oil wealth

V-Dem: China

• LDI=0.04

• Single-party state

• The President is selected by a 25-member Politburo. The senior members decide who the leader should be

• Significant restrictions on freedom of speech, press, and assembly. And the internet is regulated

V-Dem: El Salvador

• LDI=0.09

• The President was elected and had a very tough approach towards criminal gangs

• Corruption is rampant, rendering many legal protections meaningless

• Although people have constitutional right to free speech and assembly, critics of the president are subject to intimidation and harassment

V-Dem: Russia

• DLI=0.06

• Nominally a multi-party democracy

• Putin has become a strongman for Russia, and has made it more authoritarian

• He imposed restrictions on his political opponents, severe restrictions on social media and civil society organizations. Independent media outlets have been shut down

• Example of a zombie democracy

V-Dem: India

• DLI=0.29

• Often referred to as the world’s largest democracy

• Larger than China

• Parliamentary Democracy. But is classified by the V-Dem project as an electoral autocracy

• It’s going in a more authoritarian direction

V-Dem: Kenya

• DLI=0.43

• In 2022 was an electoral autocracy, but is now an electoral democracy

• In 2024 large-scale protests broke out against the government that were met with harsh repression

V-Dem: France

• DLI=0.80

• Is a liberal democracy

• Is going in a more authoritarian direction

Presidential System Key Ideas

• Separation of powers (checks and balances)

• Elections are held on a pre-defined calendar (government doesn’t get to choose the dates of elections

• Both the legislatures and the executive (President) are elected

• Divided government often makes lawmaking difficult

Parliamentary System Key Ideas

• New elections can be called when necessary to replace an unpopular government, not a fixed election cycle

• Citizens only elect the members of the legislative branch. The leader of the party who can command a majority in the House of Commons becomes the Prime Minister and forms a government

• King and Queen have no power

Plurality System

• First Past the Post, meaning that the candidate who wins the most votes (even if not a majority) wins the election

• System in the US, UK, and in many other democracies

• It’s simple to explain to voters, but it raises questions of fairness. Voters can only express their preference for a first-choice candidate, and makes it very difficult for small parties to win seats in the legislature

Majority System

• Create a system that ensure that a leader only gets elected if they win a majority of the vote

• If no single candidate wins a majority, some will use run-off elections OR ranked-choice voting

Run-Off Voting

• If no-one wins a majority in the first round, the weaker candidates are eliminated, and further elections are held to determine who can win a majority

• Pick out the two top people that were voted for by the people, and have a second election to get someone with a majority vote

Ranked-Choice Voting

• Meaning you fill your ballot with your 1st choice candidate, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, etc.

• This is referred to as instant-runoff voting. It allows you to find a candidate who will get more then 50% support by taking account of voter’s 2nd and 3rd choices

• Called an instant-runoff, because all the information needed to hold a runoff election is already in the ballots that the voters have filled out

Single-Member Districts

• This means that each congressional district has a single member of Congress representing it

• This makes for a simple system of representation, but it again gives rise to questions of fairness

• It often means that there are big gaps between each party’s share of the popular vote and its share of the vote in the legislature

• Gives rise to questions of fairness, when it comes to smaller parties like the green party. With a single-member district there is a very very small chance of smaller parties being represented. Making it seem like you’re wasting your vote on them

Proportional Representation

• This means that the parties represented in the legislature more closely match their share of the popular vote

• In order to achieve this, you have to get rid of single-member districts and replace them multi-member constituencies

• Citizens vote for a party, rather than a single candidate, each party is allocated a number of seats, due to the results of the election

Advantages of Proportional Representation

• The clear advantage of these is that smaller parties aren’t excluded from the legislature, and larger parties aren’t unfairly over-represented

• This ensures that the legislature better represents the full range of political views found among the population

Disadvantages of Proportional Representation

• Tends to make it difficult for a single party to form a governing majority, so instead two or more parties usually have to form coalition governments

• These coalition government often have trouble reaching agreements on their legislative agenda and sometime break down completely, requiring new elections to be held

Modernization Theory

• Presidents that as state’s economies begin to develop, they’ll be more likely to transition to democracy

• As a country gets richer the structure of society changes in a way that makes it difficult for a dictator to maintain control, and difficult for a country to NOT become a democracy

• The beliefs that ordinary people hold, changes as a country gets richer, because of this change it makes them more likely to resist an authoritarian form of government. And be more likely to push towards democratic reforms

The Resource Curse

• Many countries that are sitting on top of large oil reserves have become rich without becoming democratic

• Ex. Oil-rich countries in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia or Qatar

• Because they have complex oil reserves, they can get rich without having to develop a complex market economy

Examples of Democratic Backsliding

• Concentrating power in the President/ Prime Minister, creating a “strongman” leader

• Clamping down on opposition groups and civil society

• Weakening the independence of the judicial branch

• Restricting or delegitimizing independent media outlets

• Promoting xenophobia and intolerance

Levinsky and Ziblatt argue that democratic backsliding depends on…

• Mutual Toleration: You view your political opponents as legitimate rivals as opposed to illegitimate actors who threaten the state

• Forbearance: Means that you don’t try to win “by any means necessary;” instead, you respect traditions and norms that limit your parti’s power

Examples of the mutual toleration norm

• Hungary’s attempts to link opposition parties to some sort of anti-Hungary conspiracy

• Russia’s frequent prosecutions of opposition leaders on charges of holding unapproved protests, or for tax evasion

• Repeated attempts to legitimate your political rivals by unjustly labeling them as criminals, or agents of a foreign state

Examples of Forbearance norm

• Poland’s 2015 efforts to pack the Constitutional Tribunal with justices loyal to the ruling party

• Israel’s repeated attempts in 2023 to greatly curtail the power of the judiciary

Democratic Backsliding Key Idea

• Usually there is no single event that causes a democracy to stop being a democracy

• Once we accumulate enough of these violations of democratic norms, the health of the democracy becomes endangered

• When we think about democracy, avoid thinking of it as an all or nothing thing. Think of it as a spectrum

Economic Theory

• If two countries trade with each other, they’ll both end up better off than they were before

• Trade is a win-win

• Both parties will be better off if they specialize in producing the goods in which they have an absolute advantage, and then trade these goods with each other

• Every country has a comparative advantage in something, even if a country doesn’t have an absolute advantage

Why are some people opposed to free trade agreements

• Even if the country as a whole gets richer, the gains from trade are not evenly distributed

• Certain industries will no longer be profitable, when faced with cheaper imports

Economic Nationalism

• Thinking of trade as a zero-sum game

• Trade isn’t a win-win situation, trade is always about one country benefiting at the expense of another country

• This idea is practiced by the US government, but goes against the original thinking

Tariffs

• The importing company pays the tariff to their government, just like a tax

• Most of the time the importer will pass this cost along to the customer, by raising the price of each T-shirt by an additional 2$

• Ultimately, it’s the consumers who pay the cost of tariffs, but the exporting economies will also suffer from lower sales because their products will become too expensive for many customers

Trade Barriers

• Giving subsides to domestic industries to help them produce their goods more cheaply

• Setting quotas on how much of a certain type of good can be imported

• Creating other kinds of laws that make it hard to for other countries to sell their goods, technical or safety standards that may not really be necessary

Free Trade Agreements

• States sign agreements with each other to lower trade barriers

• They operate on the principle of reciprocity ex. state A lowers tariffs on imports from state B, while state B lowers tariffs on imports from state A

• This is where international institutions like NAFTA, EU, or WTO play a role in developing rules regarding trade and monitoring the member states’ compliance with these rules

What are the negatives of economic globalization

• Trade might facilitate a race to the bottom in wages and labor standards

• Can lead to job losses in industries that can’t compete with cheaper imports

• Can exacerbate social divisions, leading to an increase in support for authoritarian populist leaders

• Whether this occurs is likely to depend on various characteristics of the individual states, the strength of the social safety net, levels of income inequality, pre-existing social divisions

The Arab Spring

• A lot of pro-democracy movements fired up in most of the middle east, it was a spring of democracy

• Began in December 2010 when a street vendor set himself on fire to protest the mistreatment by government officials

• This act was videoed and was shown on social media, it spurred a huge political awakening

What three critical roles did social media play in the Arab Spring

• A practice tool for mobilization

• A platform for spreading news of the protests both domestically and internationally

• A platform for fostering a pan-Arab identity

Long-term results of the Arab Spring

• Tunisia and Egypt became more democratic for a few years. It did not work in the long run

• A few other countries were granted a few democratic things

• Many countries were working towards a democracy, but it did not work

How is social media good for democracy

• Allows ordinary people to easily share information with potentially huge audiences

• Allows people to quickly and easily find like-minded people to mobilize around a cause

• Helps to overcome the collective action problem associated with political activism

• It is difficult for authoritarian leaders to fully restrict access to information

How is social media bad for democracy

• We choose to connect with people who share similar views to our own. This means we exist in “echo chambers”

• Without exposure to alternative viewpoints, we tend to get pushed further to the extremes

• Social media platforms optimize their algorithms for user engagement, not for careful deliberation

• Misinformation can spread more easily

• People rely less on news outlets like the NYT that provide a balanced mix of well-reported stories; instead, we “choose our news”

Kreps and Kriner position on AI

• Floods the internet with huge amount of false information

• Make people no longer know who to trust or what to believe

• Causing people to be more likely to disengage with politics altogether, creating space for authoritarian rulers to come to power

Ovadya suggests some ways in which AI can help the democratic process

• LLMs like Chat GPT are great at synthesizing huge amounts of information and explaining ideas to people

• Large AI and social media platforms are experimenting with giving users the change to weigh in on how their platforms are governed, might help to give citizens more input over the institutions that shape their day-to-day lives

Collective Action Problem

• This problem arises whenever people fail to do what’s in the interests of a group to which they belong because they worry about being taken advantage by others.

• Ex. If my coworkers all got together to demand better working conditions out boss would probably have to make some changes. But if I’m the only one who speaks out, I might get fired

• What is a rational perspective of the group is not necessarily rational from the perspective of another individual

• The US Constitution is an example of this. It creates shared expectations around how our society should be governed

Inter-Government Organizations (IGOs)

• Inter-government means that their membership is made up of states, as opposed to individuals

• Generally, exist to solve international collective action problems

• Ex. UN, NATO, WTO

• An attempt to solve international collective action problems by getting states to agree on a set of rules to govern their behavior

How are IGOs supposed to work?

1. States face a collective action problem

2. They get together and agree on a set of rules or laws to try to manage the problem

3. They create an IGO to monitor states’ compliance with the rules and to serve as a referee when disputes arise

4. The states comply with the rules because they know that doing so is necessary to solve the Collective action problem (they know that if they don’t, they’ll be worse off in the long run)

Neoliberal Institutionalism

• The name given to International Relation theories that believe in the power of international insitutions to solve global collective action problems

The UN Charter

• The UN charter is the constitution of the UN, and was created when WWII was near its end

Important Articles of the UN Chater

• The UN was created first and foremost to maintain international peace and security

• To develop friendly relations among nations, based on repect for equal rights and self-determination of people

• To achieve international cooperation in solving international problems

• All members shall refrain in their IR from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of political independence of any stat

• Nothing contained in the Charter shall authorize the UN to intervene in matters which are within the domestic jurisdiction of any state

• Describes how the UN wants its member states to behave in a situation where war does break out

Key Features of the UN Charter

• Declares was illegal, unless it’s in self-defense or has been approved by the UN security council in response to a threat to international peace and security

• Reinforces the idea of sovereignty

• It promotes the idea of human rights

UN Security Council

• 15 members

• 5 Permanent members: US, Russia, China, France, UK. The other 10 rotate on and off

• Each member of the P5 has the power to veto UNSC resolutions. These resolutions are legally binding

UN General Assembly

• All 193 UN member states participate. Much more democratic than the security council

• Resolutions pass by simple majority (not O5)

• UNGA resolutions are not legally binding

What the neoliberal institutionalists believe

• It’s in every state interests to try to solve the global collective action problems that they face

• International institutions like the UN help states to create a system of rules that everyone can agree to

• International institutions make it easier for states it comply because they give specific directions and allow states to keep track of who’s complying and who’s breaking the rule

• Makes all states better off than they were before, it’s a win-win for the international community

What the realists believe

• International institutions don’t really make a difference; they just reflect the interests of the powerful states

• International institutions can make a difference in the “low politics” of trade, environment, etc., but not in the “high politics” of international security

• Problems of trust are too great to generate cooperative outcomes

• Policymakers would be foolish to place too much faith in international institutions

Russia-Ukrainian War

• On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine

• It was expected that the war would be over quickly due to Ukraine being a smaller nation, but it fought back, and the Ukrainian resident managed to rally the people by saying that he won’t back down

• Ukraine is not a member left of NATO, but has had significant support from most European states

• Ukraine believes that Russian invasion was a blatant violation of international law, Ukraine is a sovereign nation

• Europe believes that is Ukraine falls; it will be a domino effect where Russia will continue to conquer and threaten other eastern states

• Russians believe that Ukraine used to be under their rule, and after Ukraine was starting to be recruited by NATO, Russia saw this as a direct threat and wanted to reclaim Ukraine

The War in Gaza

• Palestinian territories are places where Israel is technically in charge but is not legally recognized as being under Israel. Both groups have legitimate claim to the land

• On October 7, 2023, Hamas gunmen from Gaza crossed into Israel and launched a brutal surprise attack. More than 1,2000 Israelis were killed and 200 more were taken hostage in Gaza

• After this Israel went to war with Haza with the aim of destroying Hamas, but it has expanded into a brutal war that has resulted in a lot of deaths

• Israel is facing allegations of genocide and has lost the support of many key allies

• Israelis argue that the action of Hamas and other extremist groups are signs that the Palestinians are not serious about a two-state. The same view as the US had after our 9/11 with Al-Qaeda

• Palestinians are viewing the conflict as them being punished for the actions of extremist groups. And see Israel as using this as a way to use this as a pretext for trying to drive the Palestine’s out of Gaza entirely

The War in Sudan

• An Intra-state war involving the Sundanese Armed forces and rapid support forces who are vying for control

• The civil war has led to massive amounts of human suffering involving armed attacks, sexual violence, famine, and disease

• the RSF has been accused of committing genocide against a certain minority community

• Sudan does not occupy a strategically important position in global affairs; there has been less interest on the part of the major powers to try to settle the conflict

The conflict over Taiwan

• China and Taiwan ae not currently at war, but their relationship is very tense because Taiwan functions as an independent country with its own government, but China views it as a breakaway province, not an independent country

• Both China and Taiwan are deeply integrated into the global supply chains, so a war between them would have massive implications for the health of the global economy

Interstate War

• Wars that take place between states

Intrastate war

• Wars that take place within states

• Civil Wars

Reasons that the world is getting more or less peaceful

• The past couple of centuries there have been very large wars, WW, etc. Showing a larger amount of people that have been killed due to wars in comparison to the pas

• The number of battle deaths has been increasing since the end of WWII. There are fewer inter-state conflicts, but more intra-state conflicts

• Most ancient human societies are much more violent than ours. Now in comparison to them less than 1% of deaths are due to violence. This evidence shows that ancient societies were much more violent than ours

• We are seeing a rising rate of Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs), ANY situation where there is a military getting involved in an actor with another state

• Terrorist attacks are becoming more frequent, with an increase in terrorism as a form of political violence

• There are arguments to why it may seem like the world is getting more peaceful, but doesn’t mean that wars are getting less likely than in the past

Major changes since the end of WWII that affect the probability of wars occurring

• Nuclear Weapons

• Balance of power between USA and USSR

• The Spread of Democracy

• Economic Interdependence

• Post-WWII international organizations

• Changing Beliefs

Sovereignty

• The leaders of each state get to decide how their own state is run

• Ex. Rulers get to choose what the state religion will be

Anarchy

• No central source of authority in the international system

• Anarchy does not equal chaos

• There can still be order even in conditions of anarchy

• Ex. The social order that emerged in Lord of the Flies even with no adults present

Realism

• The International system is an anarchy

• States are the main actors

• States’ interests are pretty straight foward: they want to maximize their security and wealth

• States act in rational wars to advance these interest

• Neorealists (structural realists: focused more on the structure of the international system

• Classic Realists: Focused more on the structure of the international system

Relative Power

• Structural realists like Mearsheimer argue that the distribution of power is extremely important in IR

• What matters is not how powerful an individual state is, but how powerful is it relative to other states

• Even if your state’s level of military spending is pretty high, you need to be concerned about how it is compared to other states

• Zero-sum nature of power: “one states gain in power is another state’s loss”

Security Dilemmas

• Tells us that the steps one state takes to make itself feel more secure will very often have the unintended consequence of making other states feel less secure. This can lead to a dangerous arm race

• Ex. The US decides to double the number of troops stationed at its bases in Asia; it argues that this is necessary to better defend the US against any possible future attack by China

• China would then build up its forces in return

Status Quo States

• States that are happy with their current territory and have no desire to attack other states or to threaten their position in the international system

• If your state is happy with international order

Revisionist States

• States that are aggressively trying to expand their territory or change their position in the international system

Distribution of Power. 3 ways

• Multipolarity: Lots of centers of power in the international system

• Bipolarity: Two main centers of power in the international system

• Unipolarity: Only one main power in the international system