polisci

Spatial variation

differences across places/countries

Why is Country A democratic while Country B is authoritarian?

Temporal Variation

changes over time

What makes political science a science?

Political science isn't "having opinions about politics." It's making evidence-based, testable claims with the scientific method

1. Q: What is comparative politics?

A: The study of political phenomena by comparing variation across countries, within countries, and over time.

2. Q: What is the main goal of comparative politics?

A: To explain why political outcomes vary rather than simply describe what happens.

3. Q: Is comparative politics primarily descriptive or analytical?

A: Analytical. It focuses on explaining causes and effects.

4. Q: What is a theory?

A: An explanation for why something happens.

5. Q: What is a hypothesis?

A: A testable statement about a relationship between variables.

6. Q: What is an independent variable (IV)?

A: The variable you think is the cause.

7. Q: What is a dependent variable (DV)?

A: The outcome/effect you are trying to explain.

8. Q: What does it mean for a hypothesis to be falsifiable?

A: There must be some possible evidence that could show the hypothesis is wrong.

9. Q: What are the four major theoretical approaches?

A:

• Rationalist → incentives/self-interest

• Materialist/Structural/Marxist → economic organization and material interests

• Cultural → values and identity

• Institutional → rules and institutions

Rationalist Theoretical Approach

People make decisions based on self-interest incentives/self-interest

Materialist/Structural/Marxist Theoretical Approach

• Economic organization of society produces interests, divisions, and conflict among groups or classes

• Economic interests also determine political preference

economic organization and material interests

Cultural Theoretical Approach

• Values and identity determine human action

values and identity

Institutional Theoretical Approach

• Poltiical institutions affect behavior and outcomes, cosndiered path dependent and sticky

• Often combined w/ rationalist explanations, but ehmpahszies that people are constrained by institutions

• rules and institutions

10. Q: What does a rationalist approach focus on?

A: How actors respond to incentives and self-interest.

11. Q: What does an institutional approach focus on?

A: How rules and institutions shape political behavior and outcomes.

12. Q: What is a state?

A: An administrative organization that exercises a monopoly over the legitimate use of force within a territory.

13. Q: What is a government?

A: The specific institutions and actors that act on behalf of the state.

14. Q: What is a nation?

A: A group of people who share a sense of identity, potentially based on language, religion, ethnicity, history, or other characteristics.

15. Q: What is a nation-state?

A: A state whose political boundaries largely correspond to a particular national identity.

16. Q: Can you have a nation without a state?

A: Yes. A group can share a national identity without having its own sovereign state.

17. Q: What is the key difference between a state and a nation?

A: State = political organization. Nation = group of people with a shared identity.

18. Q: What is a public good?

A: A good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable.

19. Q: What does non-rivalrous mean?

A: One person's use does not reduce the amount available to others.

20. Q: What does non-excludable mean?

A: It is difficult or impossible to prevent people from benefiting from it.

21. Q: What is the free-rider problem?

A: People can benefit from a good without contributing to its provision.

22. Q: How can the state address the free-rider problem?

A: Through things like taxes, direct provision, regulation, fines, or fees.

23. Q: What is a coordination problem?

A: A situation where people want the same outcome but have difficulty figuring out how to coordinate their actions.

24. Q: How can the state help solve coordination problems?

A: By providing rules, resources, institutions, or penalties that help people coordinate.

25. Q: What is state capacity?

A: The ability of a state to accomplish things.

26. Q: What are three ways to think about state capacity?

A:

1. Institutions — what the state is capable of doing

2. Outcomes/implementation — whether it actually accomplishes things

3. Relations with society — responsiveness and accountability

27. Q: What is despotic power?

A: The ability of elites to make decisions without routinely negotiating with society.

28. Q: What is infrastructural power?

A: The ability of the state to penetrate society and implement decisions.

29. Q: Easy way to remember despotic vs. infrastructural power?

A: Despotic = power over people.
Infrastructural = power through society.

• Despotic Power: The power of rulers to make and enforce decisions without consulting or negotiating with society or other groups. It relies on commands, force, and fear (like a dictator ordering a punishment without a trial). [1, 2, 3, 4]

• Infrastructural Power: The practical capacity of the state to penetrate society and actually implement its decisions across its territory. It relies on systems, logistics, and cooperation (like collecting taxes, building roads, running schools, and providing public services)

30. Q: What is conceptualization?

A: Defining what a concept actually means and identifying its important dimensions.

31. Q: What is measurement/operationalization?

A: Deciding how to observe or measure a concept using indicators.

32. Q: What is reliability?

A: Whether a measure produces consistent results.

33. Q: What is validity?

A: Whether a measure actually measures what you claim it measures.

34. Q: Can a measure be reliable but not valid?

A: Yes. A measure can be consistently wrong.

35. Q: What is a nominal measure?

A: Categories with no inherent order.

Eye color, country of birth
Political party affiliation, Country, Religion

Binary - Either are or not

36. Q: What is an ordinal measure?

A: Categories that have an order/ranking, but the distance between categories isn't necessarily equal.

Finishing positions in races: 1st, 2nd, 3rd

1. Education, socio-economic status, religiosity

1. U can ask someone like did u do elementary, middle, high, undergrad, grad, masters, phd, etc As u move up the more educated u are

37. Q: What is an interval/continuous measure?

A: A measure with ordered values where the spacing between values has meaningful, equal intervals.

1. Age, income, percentage of vote for a candidate. 

   1. Numerical usually. Like 8-80, the distance between categories are very even.

38. Q: Memory trick for nominal → ordinal → interval?

A: Name → Order → equal Intervals.

39. Q: What is democracy?

A: A political system in which rulers are accountable to the ruled.

40. Q: What does political accountability mean?

A: There are mechanisms allowing citizens to peacefully/constitutionally remove rulers.

41. Q: What are the two major dimensions of democracy?

A: Participation and contestation.

42. Q: What is participation?

A: Who gets to participate in politics, including whether the electorate is broadly inclusive and people can vote without coercion.

• Clear and consistent rules defining the electorate (who is eligible to vote)

• Universal Suffrage (?)

  • All adult citizens have the right to vote.

  • Evolved over time in early democratizers. 

  • Women did not have the right to vote in the UK and US until the 1920s.

  • African Americans in the USA did not achieve universal suffrage until the Voting Rights ACt (1965)

• No coercion

  • Requires real choice

43. Q: What is contestation?

A: Whether there is meaningful political competition, including multiple genuine competitors and meaningful choices for voters.

• More than one party or person competes for offices

  • Question: what abt during primaries when only one person runs for the party? Especially at the state level?

    • Limited choice, but no choice. Open primary: u can vote in republican or democratic primary, so u can have choice in Michigan. 

• Competition is REAL

  • Electoral outcome not predetermined

    • Cant say elections r rigged when u lost but not rigged when u win (trumpy)

  • Losers must conceded defeat - fundamental threat to democracy when they dont 

    • When Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro declined to concede defeat, he couldnt run for office again. 

    • Hungary ?

• Free expression (?)

  • Marketplace of ideas

  • Ability to express unpopular (but not antidemocratic?) views

44. Q: Why aren't elections automatically enough to make a country democratic?

A: Because democracy requires both participation AND meaningful contestation.

45. Q: A country allows almost everyone to vote but only one party can realistically win. What dimension is weak?

A: Contestation.

46. Q: A country has several competing parties, but large groups of citizens cannot vote. What dimension is weak?

A: Participation.

47. Q: How should you approach an exam question asking whether a country is democratic?

• Define democracy.

• Examine participation.

• Examine contestation.

• Ask whether the evidence actually fits the definition.

48. Q: What is Madison's dilemma?

A: Government needs enough power to govern effectively, but not so much power that it becomes abusive.

49. Q: What are the two sides of Madison's dilemma?

A: Effective government vs. limited government.

50. Q: What is a unitary system?

A: Political power is primarily concentrated at the national level.

51. Q: What is a federal system?

A: Political power is constitutionally divided between national and subnational governments.

52. Q: What is judicial review?

A: The ability of courts to determine whether laws or government actions are constitutional.

53. Q: What is parliamentary supremacy?

A: The legislature is considered the supreme lawmaking authority.

54. Q: What three dimensions distinguish presidential and parliamentary systems?

A: Separation of origin, separation of survival, and separation of power.

55. Q: What is separation of origin?

A: Whether the executive and legislature are selected through separate processes.

56. Q: What is separation of survival?

A: Whether the executive depends on the legislature to remain in office.

57. Q: What is separation of power?

A: Whether executive and legislative powers are institutionally separated or fused.

58. Q: What is a presidential system?

A: The executive is separately elected, generally has a fixed term, and executive and legislative powers are separated.

59. Q: What is a parliamentary system?

A: The executive comes from the legislature and depends on legislative support to remain in power.

60. Q: What is a hybrid/semi-presidential system?

A: A system combining a separately elected president with a prime minister who depends on the legislature.

61. Q: What problem can arise in presidential systems when different parties control the executive and legislature?

A: Divided government and potential political deadlock.

Presidential vs Parliamentary vs Hybrid

1. Separation of origin

v Are they elected separately?

YES NO YES (for both)

Presidential vs Parliamentary vs Hybrid

v Are they elected directly?

1. Separation of origin

YES NO (for PM) YES (for Pres.)

Presidential vs Parliamentary vs Hybrid

2. Separation of survival

v Do they serve fixed terms?

YES NO YES (for Pres.)

Presidential vs Parliamentary vs Hybrid

3. Separation of power

v Is power fused or separated?

SEPARATED FUSED SEPARATED

62. Q: What is an electoral system?

A: The rules that regulate electoral competition and transform votes into seats.

63. Q: What is a majoritarian electoral system?

A: A system where winning candidates/parties receive seats based on winning the relevant contests, rather than matching seats proportionally to votes.

64. Q: What is first-past-the-post (FPTP)?

A: A candidate wins a single-member district by receiving more votes than any other candidate.

65. Q: What is proportional representation (PR)?

A: A system in which parties' shares of seats are designed to be roughly proportional to their vote shares.

66. Q: Majoritarian vs. PR — biggest difference?

A: Majoritarian → winning contests determines seats.
PR → vote share is translated more proportionally into seats.

67. Q: What is one major advantage of majoritarian systems?

A: They can produce clearer majorities and maintain a strong geographic connection between representatives and districts.

68. Q: What is one major disadvantage of majoritarian systems?

A: They can produce disproportionate results and disadvantage smaller parties.

69. Q: What is one major advantage of PR?

A: It tends to provide more proportional representation and can give smaller parties more representation.

70. Q: What is one major disadvantage of PR?

A: It can produce coalition governments and give smaller parties bargaining power.

71. Q: What is Duverger's Law?

A: Single-member, simple-majority electoral systems tend to favor two-party systems.

72. Q: Why does Duverger's Law occur?

A: Because voters and politicians have incentives to coordinate strategically around viable candidates/parties.

73. Q: What is an autocracy?

A: A hierarchical political system in which leaders exercise control over subjects.

74. Q: What's the simplest contrast between democracy and autocracy?

A: Democracy: power flows upward — people → rulers.
Autocracy: power flows downward — rulers → subjects.

75. Q: What is the difference between an authoritarian leader, regime, and spell?

A:

• Leader = who rules

• Regime = how the political system works

• Spell = the period during which the country is authoritarian

76. Q: What is totalitarianism?

A: An extreme form of autocracy involving extensive repression, mass mobilization, a totalizing ideology, and attempts to shape many/all aspects of life.

77. Q: What's an important difference between ordinary authoritarianism and totalitarianism?

A: Authoritarian regimes may prefer people to stay out of politics; totalitarian regimes actively try to mobilize and reshape society.

78. Q: What are the three major groups of actors in an autocracy?

A: Leader, elites, and masses.

79. Q: What does the leader generally want?

A: To stay in power, maintain resources, and preserve influence.

80. Q: What do elites generally want?

A: Resources, influence, and political security.

81. Q: What do masses generally want?

A: Economic and physical security, and potentially political rights.

82. Q: What is the selectorate?

A: The subset of people who can play a role in choosing or removing the leader.

83. Q: What is the winning coalition?

A: The subset of the selectorate whose support is necessary for the leader to stay in power.

84. Q: Easy way to remember selectorate vs. winning coalition?

A: Selectorate = people who can matter.
Winning coalition = people who must matter.

85. Q: According to the course material, what is a major threat to an autocratic leader?

A: Other elites.

86. Q: What are the four major tools dictators use to maintain power?

A: Ideology, distribution, repression, and disinformation.

87. Q: What is ideology as a tool of autocratic rule?

A: Political beliefs and ideas used to shape interests, justify the regime, and motivate support.

88. Q: What is distribution as a tool of autocratic rule?

A: Strategically distributing resources, jobs, welfare, land, or business opportunities to citizens or supporters.

89. Q: What is repression?

A: The use or threat of force to produce compliance.