Comparative Politics: States, Regimes, Democratization, and Democratic Backsliding

Flashcards testing foundational concepts from comparative politics lectures, covering the state, regimes, public goods, game theory, bellicist state formation, measurement of democracy, non-democratic regime typologies, transitions, and contemporary mechanisms of democratic backsliding.

How does Max Weber define a state?

A state "is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."

What is a regime according to the lecture notes?

The formal or informal institutional rules that define who has power in a state, how the people with power are chosen, and who can hold these people accountable for how they use their power.

What is the distinction between a nation and a nation-state?

A nation is a group of people sharing a common identity (such as language, religion, ethnicity, or history), whereas a nation-state is a state in which a single nation is predominant and the state's legal, social, demographic, and geographic boundaries are closely connected to that nation.

What two defining properties characterize public goods?

Public goods are non-rivalrous (one person's consumption does not reduce availability for others) and non-excludable (people cannot easily be prevented from using the good).

What two primary problems arise from public goods that states help solve?

Free-riding and coordination.

How does Thomas Hobbes describe the state of nature?

A "war of everyone against every man" in which life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" because there is no state.

What is the free-rider problem?

A collective action problem where individuals benefit from a public good without financially contributing to its provision, knowing that if others pay, it will still be available for them to enjoy.

In game theory, what is a Nash Equilibrium?

A combination of strategies, one for each player, such that neither player wants to unilaterally change their strategy given the strategy adopted by the other player.

What is a dominant strategy in game theory?

A strategy that is a player's best reply to all of the other player's possible strategies.

What is the distinction between natural rights and civil rights in social contract theory?

Natural rights are universal and exist in the state of nature, while civil rights do not exist in the state of nature and are created by states through laws.

Under what two conditions is civil society preferred over the state of nature?

1. The punishment imposed by the state is sufficiently large that individuals prefer to refrain rather than steal. 2. The tax charged by the state for acting as the policeman is not so large that individuals prefer the state of nature to civil society.

What is a coordination trap?

A situation involving multiple equilibria where one equilibrium is more desirable than another, but players become stuck or "trapped" in an undesirable equilibrium.

What central statement encapsulates Charles Tilly's bellicist theory of state formation?

"War makes the state… states make war"—the modern state emerged as an unintended byproduct of rulers' attempts to survive through war.

What causal sequence explains state formation in Europe under Charles Tilly's framework?

Population density $\rightarrow$ conflict over land $\rightarrow$ war $\rightarrow$ state formation.

Why did Tilly's model of state formation fail to occur in Africa according to Jeffrey Herbst?

Population density was low and land was abundant, resulting in no conflict over land or interstate war, and thus no impetus to build extractive institutions; additionally, European colonial powers focused on commercial plunder rather than investing in state capacity.

How does James Robinson counter the idea that high population density in the 1500s predicts state capacity today?

He argues a "reversal of fortunes" occurred due to European expansion and the Atlantic slave trade, which reshaped pre-colonial African institutions to predate on their own people rather than provide public goods.

Why did Latin American countries develop weak state capacity according to Miguel Angel Centeno?

Latin American countries avoided large-scale interstate wars and experienced internal rather than external conflicts, and they funded the state through foreign debt rather than building robust domestic fiscal extraction systems.

What is the difference between a procedural view and a substantive view of democracy?

A procedural view classifies political regimes based on their institutions and procedures, while a substantive view classifies political regimes based on the outcomes they produce.

What are the core requirements of Adam Przeworski's minimalist view of democracy?

A thin, one-dimensional procedural definition requiring that rulers are elected and that the turnover in power is peaceful.

What two dimensions define Robert Dahl's procedural view of democracy (polyarchy)?

Contestation (the freedom of citizens to organize into competing blocs to press for desired policies) and inclusion (who gets to participate in the democratic process).

What four conditions must be met for a country to be classified as a democracy under the Democracy-Dictatorship (DD) measure?

1. The chief executive is elected. 2. The legislature is elected. 3. There is more than one party competing in the election. 4. An alternation in power under identical electoral rules has taken place.

How is the annual Polity score calculated, and what is its range?

Polity score = Democracy score $(0\text{ to }10)$ $-$ Autocracy score $(0\text{ to }10)$, yielding an overall score ranging from $-10$ to $10$.

What five attributes are evaluated to determine the Polity score?

Competitiveness of executive recruitment, openness of executive recruitment, regulation of political participation, competitiveness of political participation, and executive constraints.

What two categories and scoring scales are used by Freedom House to assess freedom?

Political rights (assessed via $10$ questions worth $0$ to $4$ points across $3$ categories) and civil rights (assessed via $15$ questions worth $0$ to $4$ points across $4$ categories).

How does Barbara Geddes classify non-democracies, and which type lasts the shortest?

She classifies them according to who rules: military (military junta), party-based (single authoritarian party), and personalist (charismatic figure); military non-democracies are the shortest-lived, while party-based last the longest.

How does Anne Meng classify non-democratic regimes?

According to how institutionalized they are, examining the rules and procedures governing power-sharing and the distribution of resources within the ruling coalition to resolve the autocrat's commitment problem.

What is a pacted transition?

A peaceful transition where regime change occurs gradually over time through bargains negotiated between ruling elites and opposition leaders, often involving immunity or amnesty from prosecution for outgoing autocrats (e.g., Chile).

What is preference falsification in Timur Kuran's tipping model?

The act of publicly concealing one's true opposition to a dictatorship and outwardly supporting the regime because revealing true preferences is dangerous.

What is a revolutionary threshold and what is a revolutionary cascade?

A revolutionary threshold is the protest size at which an individual is willing to publicly reveal their true opposition; a revolutionary cascade occurs when one person's participation shifts the total size, triggering another person's threshold, which sequentially triggers others.

What is the core prediction of classic modernization theory?

As countries develop economically, they are more likely to both become democratic and remain democratic.

What is the difference between classic modernization theory and exogenous democratization theory?

Classic modernization theory argues economic development drives the transition to democracy, whereas exogenous democratization theory argues democracy emerges independently of economic development but survives more easily as countries grow wealthier.

What per capita income threshold did Adam Przeworski identify regarding democratic survival?

No democracy has ever fallen in a country with a per capita income higher than $\$6{,}055$.

How does Nancy Bermeo define democratic backsliding?

The state-led debilitation or elimination of any of the political institutions that sustain an existing democracy.

What is executive aggrandizement?

A form of backsliding where freely elected executives gradually weaken institutional checks on their power one by one through votes, legal decrees, or court packing without being replaced.

What is a promissory coup?

A coup where the leaders frame the ouster of an elected government as a defense of democratic legality and publicly promise to hold elections to restore democracy quickly (though competitive elections rarely follow promptly).

What are the four warning signs in Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's litmus test for identifying would-be autocrats?

1. Rejection of democratic rules of the game. 2. Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents. 3. Tolerance or encouragement of violence. 4. Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media.