Comparative Politics

Bottom up transition and cause

1. one in which the people rise up to overthrow an authoritarian regime in a popular revolution

Civilian dictatorship

1. an autocracy that is neither a monarchy nor a military dictatorship

Collective action

1. Collective action: groups of individuals with common interest act collectively to produce or achieve the provision of public goods 

Competitive authoritarianism

1. regimes employ formal democratic institutions as the principle means of obtaining and exercising political authority. However, incumbents violate those rules so often, and to such an extent, that the regimes fails to meet conventional minimum standards for a democracy

Contractarian view of state

1. sees the creation of the state as resulting from a social contract between individuals in the state of nature in which the state provides security in exchange for obedience from the citizen 

Culture

1. attitudes, values, and understandings that are widely shared in a given society, and that are transmitted across generations

1. Democracy (maximalist and minimalist definition)

• Maximalist: classifies political regimes according to: their formal institutions and rules, how those institutions or rules function in practice, the outcomes they produce

• Minimalist: classifies political regimes according to their formal institutions and rules

Democratic backsliding

1. deterioration of the quality of a democracy within the context of a democratic regime 

Equilibrium

1. the actions chosen by actors when all actors are pursuing their goals and considering the choices of others 

Expressive motives

1.  refer to concerns that derive directly from the meaning or symbolic significance of actions or choices themselves, rather than the political outcomes they produce

Fiscal capacity

1.  a state’s ability to extract taxes 

Free-rider problem

1. refers to the fact that individual members of a group often have little incentive to contribute to the provision of a public good that will benefit all members of the group 

Hybrid regime

1. a regime that combines some democratic rules with authoritarian governance

Institutions

1. the rules of the game in a society or, more formally, are the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction 

Instrumental motives

1. refer to the costs of taking an action and the benefits associated with affecting a political outcome 

Legibility

1. a state is legible when the population is arranged in order to simplify classic state functions like taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion 

Liberalizing reform

1. entails a controlled opening of the political space and might include the formation of political parties, holding elections, writing a constitution, establishing an independent judiciary, opening a legislature, and so on

Military dictatorship

1. an autocracy in which the executive relies on the armed forces to come to and stay in power 

Modernization theory

1. as societies develop economically, they also tend to become more democratic 

Monarchic dictatorship

1. an autocracy in which the executive comes to and maintains power on the basis of family kin and networks

Nation-state

1. a state in which a single nation predominates and the legal, social, demographic, and geographic boundaries of the state are connected in important ways to that nation

Populism

1. political ideology that claims to be the voice of “the people”, often invoking anti-elite sentiment 

Predatory view of the state

1. holds that states exercise an effective control over the use of violence, which they can use to extract from their subjects 

Preference falsification

1. because it is dangerous to reveal opposition to a dictatorship, individuals who oppose the regime may falsify private preferences when public 

Property rights

1. the exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used 

Protest

1. instances of disruptive collective action aimed at institutes, elites, authorities, or other groups on behalf of the collective goals of actors or of those they claim to represent 

Public good

a good that is both non-rivalrous and non-excludable

Regime

1. set of rules, norms, or institutions that determine how the government is constituted, organized, and how major decisions are made

Reliability (of a measure)

1. refers to the extent to which the measurement process repeatedly and consistently produces the same score for a given case

State

an entity that uses coercion and the threat of force to rule a given territory

Strategic behavior

1. when the choice of one actor depends on the choices of another

Top-down transition

1. one in which the dictatorial ruling elite introduces liberalizing reforms that ultimately lead to a democratic transition 

Validity (of a measure)

refers to the extent to which our measures correspond to the concepts that they are intended to reflect