comparative politics midterm

Comparative politics

The systematic study and empirical comparison of domestic political systems, institutions, processes, and outcomes across different countries.

Political order

The maintenance of social and institutional stability through effective, predictable political bodies capable of managing societal conflict.

Modernization Theory (Lipset & Rostow)

A 1950s paradigm arguing that industrialization, urbanization, and sustained economic growth systematically lead to democratization and social progress.

Samuel Huntington's institutionalization hypothesis

The claim in Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) that rapid socioeconomic modernization produces social disruption and instability unless accompanied by strong, adaptable political institutions.

Francis Fukuyama's three pillars of a successful political system

1. A capable state (capacity to exercise power and enforce laws).

2. The rule of law (binding constraints that apply equally to leaders and citizens).

3. Democratic accountability (mechanisms allowing citizens to inspect and remove leaders).

Path to Denmark

Francis Fukuyama's term describing how countries successfully construct and balance state capacity, the rule of law, and institutional accountability over time.

Stateness

The administrative capacity and technical competence of a governing authority to deliver basic public goods, enforce legal mandates, and maintain order across its territory.

Patrimonial state vs. Impersonal state

Governance based on personal loyalties, kinship networks, and clientelist favors, contrasted with an administrative system operating via objective, formalized rules and professional civil servants.

Politics (Timothy C. Lim)

A continuous struggle over power and the distribution of scarce material resources, public goods, social opportunities, and societal well-being.

Comparative Politics vs. International Relations focus

Examining domestic political institutions, actors, and processes within states, contrasted with analyzing cross-border diplomacy, interstate wars, and global transnational actors.

Most Similar Systems (MSS) design

A comparative methodology that compares cases sharing numerous common baseline traits but exhibiting divergent outcomes to pinpoint the decisive explanatory difference.

Endogeneity and Reverse Causality

Methodological problems in causal inference where two variables mutually influence one another, or where an alleged effect is actually causing the supposed cause.

Areas of limited statehood (Risse & Stollenwerk)

Territorial regions or functional policy areas where central state institutions lack the capacity to enforce decisions or maintain an effective monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force.

Empirical legitimacy

The observable social reality of whether governed populations in practice accept an authority's right to rule and voluntarily comply with its directives.

Input, throughput, and output legitimacy

Legitimacy derived respectively from participatory citizen input, fair and transparent decision-making processes, and effective delivery of public goods and governance outcomes.

Parsimony vs. Thick description

The scientific goal of explaining political outcomes using a minimal number of variables, contrasted with an exhaustive, highly contextualized qualitative account incorporating multiple intricate factors.

Deductive vs. Inductive reasoning

Deductive

Starts with a theory or general principle.

Tests a theory against evidence.

Inductive

Starts with observations of specific cases.

Uses evidence to develop a theory.

Moves from specific to general.

Structural / Macro-historical approach

A theoretical tradition (associated with Marx, Barrington Moore, and Theda Skocpol) arguing that broad socioeconomic configurations, class conflicts, and historical trajectories shape political outcomes.

Rational Choice Theory (micro approach)

An actor-centered perspective (associated with Anthony Downs, Mancur Olson, and Robert Bates) that models politics as the result of self-interested individuals calculating costs and benefits to maximize utility.

Institutions (Douglass North)

Humanly devised formal laws, constitutions, and informal conventions and norms that structure political, social, and economic interactions ('the rules of the game').

Historical, Rational Choice, and Sociological Institutionalism

Three theoretical strands examining, respectively: path dependency over time; how rules structure the incentives of calculating actors; and how shared cultural scripts and norms shape organizational behavior.

Culturalist approach (Weber & Putnam)

A theoretical tradition explaining political and economic patterns through the influence of shared values, moral codes, civic customs, and ideological worldviews.

Structure vs. Agency debate (Karl Marx)

The theoretical debate regarding whether macro forces constrain human behavior or individuals possess autonomous choice, epitomized by the idea that people make history, but not under circumstances of their choosing.

State (Max Weber)

A continuous human community and political organization that successfully claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a defined geographic territory.

Charles Tilly's state formation thesis

The historical argument that repeated interstate warfare compelled European monarchs to construct fiscal bureaucracies, establish standing armies, and collect taxes, summarized as 'war made the state, and the state made war.'

Four activities of state extraction and survival (Charles Tilly)

1. War making (neutralizing external rivals)

2. State making (neutralizing internal domestic competitors)

3. Protection (shielding political clients from enemies)

4. Extraction (garnering resources, capital, and recruits from society)

Hendrik Spruyt's institutional selection theory

The explanation for why the sovereign territorial state triumphed over city-leagues and city-states: hierarchical domestic jurisdiction reduced transaction costs, halted defection, and facilitated credible interstate diplomacy.

Jeffrey Herbst's African state development thesis

The argument that vast, sparsely populated territories, low population density, and an absence of existential interstate war removed the historical imperatives that forced European monarchs to build extractive territorial states.

Quasi-state (Robert Jackson)

A former colony granted formal juridical sovereignty and legal international recognition from the outside, but lacking empirical statehood and domestic governing infrastructure on the inside.

Rent-seeking and Elite capture

Pathological state behaviors where governing elites exploit political power to extract unearned economic privileges or redirect public administrative institutions to serve private interests.

Nation vs. State

A cultural-psychological community sharing common heritage, language, or identity, contrasted with a legal-political administrative apparatus holding coercive control over a physical territory.

Imagined Communities (Benedict Anderson)

The concept that a nation is socially constructed because its members will never personally meet most compatriots, yet each member mentally conceptualizes a deep horizontal comradeship.

Print capitalism

The commercial expansion of mass-circulated books and newspapers printed in vernacular languages, which Benedict Anderson argues allowed people to imagine belonging to the same national entity.

Ernest Gellner's theory of nationalism

The structuralist perspective arguing that modern industrial economies require mobile, literate workforces, prompting centralized state educational systems to enforce cultural and linguistic uniformity.

Eric Hobsbawm's theory of nationalism

The historical argument emphasizing how nineteenth-century ruling elites and the middle class deployed public schooling, state symbols, and 'invented traditions' to turn disparate regional peasants into patriotic citizens.

Kanchan Chandra's definition of ethnic identity

A subset of identity categories based on attributes associated with shared descent (such as physical appearance, native language, or kinship), which are relatively visible and subject to constrained change.

Associational vs. Quotidian civil society

Formal inter-ethnic civic organizations (business clubs, trade unions), contrasted with informal daily interactions (friendships, neighborly mingling) that prevent communal rumors and violence.

Clash of Civilizations (Samuel Huntington)

The thesis that post-Cold War international conflicts would divide along cultural and religious fault lines rather than economic or ideological frontiers.

Edward Said's critique of the Clash of Civilizations

The argument that civilizations are internally contested, complex, dynamic, and historically entangled, making binary cultural classifications reductive and misleading.

Competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky & Way)

A hybrid regime type in which formal democratic institutions exist as the primary means to power, but state power is routinely abused to tilt the electoral playing field heavily against the opposition.

Four arenas of competition in competitive authoritarianism

1. Electoral arena (contested votes subject to government manipulation)

2. Legislative arena (parliaments utilized for genuine dissent)

3. Judicial arena (courts co-opted or pressured)

4. Media arena (independent journalism harassed through biased laws and state control)

Twin Tolerations (Stepan & Linz)

The democratic requirement of mutual accommodation whereby religious organizations grant elected authorities autonomy to make laws, while the state guarantees religious groups freedom to worship and engage in public discourse.

Sultanism

A personalized autocratic regime in which political authority is fused with the private sphere of the leader, characterized by arbitrary rule, absence of rule-bound ideology, and weak independent institutions.