Politics Across the World Final

Lee: Legibility and the Informational Foundations of State Capacity

State capacity is fundamentally rooted in "legibility"—the breadth and depth of a state’s knowledge about its citizens and their activities. A state cannot effectively govern, tax, or provide public goods if it does not first "know" its population.

Collier: Understanding Process Tracing

Process tracing is a document/archive based method of causal inference by examining a single case in its entirety. There are four tests that each illustrate different levels of sufficiency: smoke-in-the-wind (weak support that can’t est. cause), hoop (this test is necessary but doesn’t provide enough info to prove the hypothesis), smoke-in-gun (sufficiently confirms the hypothesis but is not necessary), double decisive (necessary and sufficient enough to prove the hypothesis).

Fuji: The Puzzle of Extra-Lethal Violence

Extreme violence cannot be explained by traditional rational or strategic models of war but by the suspension of norms in high-stress environments that stage violence as “sport” or “play.” The way people are killed is very important to understand why they are.

Weber: Politics as a Vocation

Legitimacy relies on three justifications: traditional authority (customs and traditions such as monarchies), charismatic authority (personal devotion/heroic qualities such as prophets), rational-legal authority (based on laws and bureaucratic rules). True politicians must be passionately devoted to a certain cause, have a sense of responsibility to see that cause through, and a sense of proportion that allows them to assess the situation from a detached pov.

Scott: Seeing Like a State

The state perceives populations and land through simplified "abstractions" like censuses, maps, and standard units of measurement. While useful for administration, these abstractions "flatten" the nuance of real-life interactions (legibility). This means that large-scale soceal engineering projects will often fail because top-down systems ignore the complexity of real life situations.

Go: Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present

The uniqueness of the American empire as opposed to the British empire is generally fabricated by American exceptionalism narrators in order to justify American colonial efforts. Formal empires annex territory and directly rule over it (spectrum from colony to naval base) and informal empires try to financially/militarily control the state. Britain mixes formal and informal whereas US in predominantly informal

Tilly: How War Made States & Vice Versa

Modern European states were byproducts of leaders’ efforts to wage war which required them to control their populations through taxation and coercion. Wars require taxation, resources, bureaucracy which help create the state.

Hao: State Formation in Korea & Japan

Eastern Asian states developed out of emulation and learning not war

Herbst: The Challenge of State-Building in Africa

State building in Africa is complicated by vast inhospitable land, low population density, ecological conditions, and colonial state boundaries.

Mazzuca: Latecomer State formation: Political geography and capacity failure in Latin America

Latin American states relied significantly on trade-led state formation because they were established in a post-capitalist society, relied on tariffs for revenue and ports for power, depended on export-led growth.

Anderson: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

Nationalism replaced religion as an immortal identity because vernacular replaced classic languages and automatic legitimacy declined. Nations are imagined communities that emerged over time not ahistorical.

Marx: The Nation-State & Its Inclusion

Nationalism encourages selective inclusion certain groups over others. Citizenship is tied to nationalism and often citizenship does not include the whole population of a state.

Prezworski: Why bother with elections?

Elections are not perfect (rarely create big economic/political changes) but they are necessary to avoid violence and provide losers with hope that they can win in the future.

Schmitter: What Democracy Is…And Is Not

Conditions for democracy: fairly/competitively elected officials who control gov, right to vote, freedom of expression, seek alternative sources of info, right to form independent associations, officials can’t override constitution, polity must be self-governing. Democracy is not more economically or administratively efficient or more stable, orderly, or governable.

Taagepera: Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems

Electoral systems translate votes into seats and these rules shape the behavior of parties and voters. The structural rules of an electoral system such as district magnitude and assembly size are the primary determinants of political outcomes like the number of parties and degree of disproportionality.

Linz: The Perils of Presidentialism

Parliamentary systems are more stable democratically than presidential systems because of its flexibility and shared power (less winner-take-all).

Przeworski & Limongi: Modernization: Theories and Facts

Democracy can emerge in any country but its survival is dependent on its economic success/growth.

Boix & Stokes: Endogenous Democratization

Economic development predicts both a transition to democracy and its stability because as development increases so does income equality which decreases incentives for dictatorships.

Bermeo: On Democratic Backsliding

The methods of democratic decline have fundamentally shifted from overt, violent seizures of power to subtle, incremental, and often legal maneuvers by elected leaders.

Levitsky & Ziblatt: How Democracies Die

In order to erode democracy slowly get public officials and citizens on your side, court packing, buy off/instill fear in opponents/media, silence popular cultural figures, gerrymandering, subversion. In order to save democracy use political parties to isolate and defeat extremists before they get on the ballot.

Eatwell: Ten Theories of the Extreme Right

Extreme right supporters are influenced by supply-side factors (ie. fringe issues, uphold national traditions, charismatic leader) and demand-side factors (ie. anti-immigration, anti-politics, class breakdown, social liberation, economic improvement). Extreme right can be explained by a multitude of factors, basically if democratic legitimacy decreases they will rise.

Mudde: Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe

Radical right parties are democratic but extreme right parties aren’t because they rely on a combination of nativism and nationalism.

Svolik: The Politics of Authoritarian Rule

Two problems with authoritarian rule: power-sharing is difficult, hard to control citizens (repression, services/benefits, co-opt, violence). Single or dominant party regimes are more stable because they provide a structure for sharing benefits and managing the careers of elites, reducing the need for violence to settle disputes.

Tarrow: Contentious Politics and Social Movement

Social movements do not emerge simply from grievances or resource availability, but are triggered by changes in political opportunity structures. He defines a social movement as a specific, sustained form of contentious politics—collective challenges by people with common purposes in interaction with elites and authorities. Contention often occurs in "cycles”: periods of heightened conflict where successful mobilization by one group lowers the costs and increases the perceived opportunities for others to join in which are ended either with institutionalization or violence.

Tarrow: Print and Association

Print media and association with vast amounts of people can fuel contention. National movements need more than contention though, they also need a pull of solidarities and common targets.

Davenport: State Repression and Political Order

Government authorities respond with repression to behavior threatening political systems. When political institutions and the economy are strong repression decreases (full democracies/autocracies).

Tsourapas: Global Autocracies: Strategies of Transnational Repression, Legitimation, and Co-Optation in World Politics

Autocrats don’t just repress citizens within their territory they also repress people abroad through blacklisting, threatening family members, coercing return, exile, threats, etc.

Huntington: Democracy’s Third Wave

Democracy occurs in waves and we are/were in the third wave. Countries that are unable to democratize are limited by wealth and culture (Islam and Confucianism are incompatible with democracy).

Gunitsky: Democratic Waves in Historical Perspective

There are vertical waves of democracy which stem from disruptions in the international system (major wars, imperial collapse: Soviet Union, WWII) and horizontal waves which are unrelated to global transformations (revolt that spreads: Arab Spring). Contagion-driven waves occur when contention overrides domestic influences and emulation-driven waves occur when domestic issues set it off.

Polanyi: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

Self-adjusting market can’t last forever. People are treated like commodities within the market: when the market is good their lives get better and when it is bad they get worse.

Harvey: A Brief History of Neoliberalism

In practice neoliberalism doesn’t work because the government has to create a good climate for businesses to be successful but simultaneously not interfere in the market. Neoconservatives are the same as neoliberals except they want to use militarization to stop chaos of individual interests and restore “moral purpose” in the country.

Acemoglu: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Because of colonial repression, only Europe could be most industrially advanced because it exploited the rest of the world in order to advance its economy.

Haggard: The Developmental State is Dead: Long Live the Developmental State!

While the classic model of the East Asian developmental state has faded due to globalization and democratization, its core principles of state-led coordination remain essential for modern economic growth (insulation from society) to the political foundations of state capacity. Even in democracies, states can be "developmental" if they maintain coherent, meritocratic bureaucracies capable of negotiating with private actors to achieve collective economic goals.

Rodrik: How to Save Globalization from its Cheerleaders

Globalization beneficiaries aren’t those with the most open economy (ie. Latin American countries liberalized but weren’t as successful as state-led projects in East Asia), globalization is often unstable and remains unpopular. Gradual liberalization with a diverse economy is the best strategy but each country also needs to create a unique stategy

Ross: What have we Learned About the Resource Curse

Petroleum helps authoritarian regimes, increases corruption, and triggers conflict because oil causes states to accumulate wealth through oil not taxes. That money can then be used for repression and militarization.

Bradford: Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology

The challenge that comes with the internet is with increasing free speech it allows for misinformation, the state can monopolize on tech and use surveillance and censorship to ensure loyalty. US goal: advance open markets and internet freedoms (helps big tech), China goal: regime survival, control, tech supremacy, EU goal: safeguarding citizen rights.

Zuboff: Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization

A new logic of accumulation has emerged that unilaterally claims human experience as "free" raw material for translation into behavioral data. This system, which she terms surveillance capitalism, moves beyond traditional market capitalism by commodifying not just our labor or land, but our private lives and future behaviors. Big tech collects vast amounts of information about users and then uses that to tailor ads this removes a lot of human agency and privacy.

Call: Beyond the ‘Failed State’: Toward Conceptual Alternatives

Change the definition of ‘failed states’ towards different gaps (security gap: unable to provide security against armed groups, legitimacy gap: lots of elites/society reject the rules of the government, capacity gap: states can’t deliver minimum public goods/services). Help each by strengthening institutions, assisting competing groups, assist counterweights to the gov (ie. elections).

Malejacq: Warlords, Intervention, and State Consolidation: A Typology of Political Orders in Weak and Failed States

External attempts to consolidate state power allow for warlords to gain power so intervention is often ineffective. Warlords are always able to keep enough resources to survive, they are often involved in international trade and their flexible structure allows for easy resource transfer.

Fearon: Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War

Civil wars post-Cold War emerge from accumulated struggle rather than sudden change (poverty, political instability, rough terrain, large population). The more rich countries are less civil war prone but ethnic diversity is irrelevant. Semi-democracies are most prone

Wimmer: Ethnic Politics and Armed Conflict: A Configurational Analysis of a New Global Data Set

Diverse societies aren’t more conflict prone but certain ethnopolitical state configurations have increased violence. Nation-states are ruled for ethnically defined people so ethnicity is a factor. Terms: rebellions, infighting, secession.

Kalyvas: A Theory of Irregular War

In irregular wars it is hard to distinguish between the insurgent, contested, and incumbent zones. Beliefs don’t always determine behavior, often people are motivated by other factors and defection is very common.

Kalyvas: Selective Violence

Selected violence allows for collecting info and relies on denunciation either politically or for private gain. Actors use violence when benefits outweigh the costs and most likely occur in zones where one group is weaker but still a substantial part of the population.

Bellin: The Iraqi Intervention and Democracy in Comparatice Historical Perspective

Military occupation can increase democratization but it is largely shaped by factors that military engineers are unable to control. It is impossible to compare the cases of US intervention in Japan and Germany to that of Iraq because of differences in economic development, ethnic homogeneity, state institutions, prior experiences with democracy, leaders, level of commitment.

Horowitz: Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems

Ethnically divided countries make democratization difficult. The majority wants majority rule (centripetalists: compromise authority) and minority wants guarantees (contrasociationalists: try to establish a regime that guarantees space for different groups such as Lebanon). Have to completely destroy the divisions in order to establish a system that both groups perceive as fair.

Skocpol: France, Russia, China: A Structural Analysis of Social Revolutions

Social revolutions require an administrative breakdown, elite rebellion, and peasant insurrection. They occur in agrarian societies because they give peasants relative autonomy and when grievances emerge there is a clear direction for anger. Often require an intellectual class with special skills but not nobility and wealth so they can rally the people.

Greitens: Surveillance, Security, and Liberal Democracy in the Post-COVID World

In response to COVID democratic governments increased democratic practices (increasing healthcare access, voluntary participation) and authoritarian governments increased authoritarian practices (surveillance and social control). Countries leaning towards authoritarianism did cancel elections, constrain media, and implement curfews.

Mittiga: Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change

Authoritarian governments can combat climate change better because they have the ability to quickly implement changes and effect change. Governments first priority is foundational legitimacy which ensures basic rights and their second is contingent which ensures quality of life. Issues that concern foundational legitimacy such as climate change take precedence over contingent legitimacy therefore if action cannot be achieved democratically it could require restricted authoritarian measures.

States

Independent, sovereign government exercising control over a certain spatially defined and bounded area, whose borders are usually clearly defined and internationally recognized by other states.

Empires

An aggregate of many territories under a supreme ruler or oligarchy.

Legitimacy

Popular acceptance and recognition by the governed that a government or authority has the rightful, moral authority to exercise power and enforce laws.

Institutions

The humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic, and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights).

Legibility

Something a state imposes on its people and resources. It is a coercive abstraction, not only treating different people, places, and ways of life as if they were the same, but creating an environment which encourages people to forget those differences ever existed. (Scott)

Monopoly of Violence

The concept that the state alone has the right to use or authorize the use of physical force.

State Formation

The processes leading to the centralization of political power within a well-defined territory.

War made the state…

Modern states arose from the necessity of rulers to win wars, which forced them to build centralized bureaucracies, standing armies, and efficient taxation systems to extract resources. (Tilly)

Nationalism

Ideological movement aimed at attaining and maintaining the identity, unity (through social cohesion) and autonomy (through national self-determination) of a "nation," or a peoples united under a "national" banner.

Political Culture

What the people, the voters, the electorates believe and do based on their understanding of the political system in which they have found themselves.

Regime Type

Set of institutions that determines who gets access to principal offices of the state and how publicly binding decisions are made. Examples include oligarchy, aristocracy, democracy.

Electoral Democracy

Political systems in which citizens have the right to choose the chief executive and the legislature in multi-party, uncertain elections.

Presidential Systems

A system of government where the powers of the executive and the legislature are totally separated.

Parliamentary Systems

Unlike presidential systems, are typified by a fusion of powers between the legislative and executive branches.

First Past the Post

Each voter marks one candidate as their first preference, and the candidate with more first preference votes than any other candidate (a plurality) is elected, even if they do not have more than half of votes (a majority).

Proportional Representation

The creation of multi-member districts in which seats are allocated to parties in proportion to their vote. Advocates argue that this reform would lead to policies with broader support, improve the accountability of elected officials, and enhance political stability.

Liberalism

The political concept holds that the state is not subject to external authority of other states nor is it subject to other internal authorities such as the military.

Ideology

A set of ideas, beliefs and attitudes, consciously or unconsciously held, which reflects or shapes understandings or misconceptions of the social and political world.

Democratization

Transition from an authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime.

Backsliding

Democratic backsliding involves the weakening of democratic institutions, such as the peaceful transition of power or free and fair elections, or the violation of individual rights that underpin democracies, especially freedom of expression.

Modernization Theory

Asserts that technological change is the key driver of development. Technological change along with population growth leads to more wealth, more wealth leads to a larger middle class, and a larger middle class provides the social basis for democracy.

Far-Right Populism

Populism purports to act in the name of “the people” and claim that political programs are currently not serving the people and therefore need to be amended. Far-right refers to extreme nationalism, nativism, and authoritarian ideologies.

Causes of Far-Right Populism

The support for these ideologies commonly comes from people whose employment might have low occupational mobility. This makes them more likely to develop an anti-immigrant and anti-globalization mentality that aligns with the ideals of the populist party.

Social Movements

An organized effort to change laws, policies, or practices by people who do not have the power to effect change through conventional channels.

WUNC Protests

Protests with worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment are more successful.

Authoritarianism

A form of government or leadership that demands strict, unquestioning obedience to authority rather than individual freedom. Power is concentrated in the hands of a leader or small elite who are not accountable to the public, featuring limited political freedoms, suppressed dissent, and controlled media.

Repression

Such repression can range from surveillance and harassment of ordinary citizens to torture and 'disappearances' of opposition activists.

Transnational Repression

A type of state-led political repression conducted across national borders, in which governments target individuals (often political dissidents or members of diaspora communities) through tactics such as surveillance, harassment, intimidation, assassinations, and enforced disappearances.

Surveillance

The focused, systematic, and routine monitoring of behavior, activities, or information that provides either tactical or strategic intelligence.

Waves

Democratic waves are a group of transitions from nondemocratic to democratic regimes that occur within a specified period of time and that significantly outnumber transitions in the opposite directions during that period of time (authoritarian waves are the inverse). (Huntington)

Economic Liberalism

A political ideology based on strong support for a market economy, private property in the means of production and opposition to government intervention in the economy.

Neoliberalism

Holds that a society’s political and economic institutions should be robustly liberal and capitalist, but supplemented by a constitutionally limited democracy and a modest welfare state.

Import/Export Growth

Globalization

The integration of separate nations, regions, or even individuals into a wider global system.

The Resource Curse

The failure of many resource-rich countries to benefit fully from their natural resource wealth, and for governments in these countries to respond effectively to public welfare needs.

Emulation/Diffusion

Diffusion is where policy decisions in one place influence policymaking in another. Emulation is the copying of policies from one place to another.

“Rules of the Games”

Refers to institutions—formal and informal constraints like constitutions, laws, norms, and traditions—that shape political interactions, incentives, and outcomes.

Opportunity Structures

Political opportunity structures (POS) are external, institutional, or contextual factors that determine whether social movements succeed or fail. These structures—including open vs. closed political systems, elite alliances, and repression levels—create opportunities for or barriers to collective action.

Elites

Reversal of Fortune

Describes how relatively prosperous/dense societies in 1500 became poor, while formerly poor, sparse areas became rich. (Acemoglu)

Surveillance Capitalism

Converts the "behavioral surplus" derived from internet usage to manipulate and increase profits based on predictions and mass analytics.

State-Led, Market-Led, Rights-Led Internet

China is state-led with the state in control of how the internet functions, US is market-led emphasizing free speech and big tech, EU is rights led wanting restrictions but mostly free.

Double Movements

The establishment of a free market economy and the subsequent effort by society to make better the destructive effects of the market. (Polanyi)

Failed/Fragile States

Change the definition of ‘failed states’ towards different gaps (security gap: unable to provide security against armed groups, legitimacy gap: lots of elites/society reject the rules of the government, capacity gap: states can’t deliver minimum public goods/services). Help each by strengthening institutions, assisting competing groups, assist counterweights to the gov (ie. elections). (Call)

State Capacity

The ability of governments to effectively implement their policies and achieve their goals.

Civil Wars

Civil wars are likely to occur in countries in between autocracy and democracy.

Violence in Civil War

Diverse societies aren’t more conflict prone but certain ethnopolitical state configurations have increased violence. Nation-states are ruled for ethnically defined people so ethnicity is a factor.

Greivance

Describes strategies that convert perceived injustices into collective claims that can reorder party systems when globalization, demographic change, or state restructuring unsettle expectations, then channels them toward a concrete outgroup or elite.

Greed

Variables representing rebel opportunity or greed akin to loot-seeking are the main reasons for civil war. (Collier)

Interventions

The interference of a state or group of states into the domestic affairs of another state for the purposes of coercing that state to do something or refrain from doing something.

State/Nation Building

Processes of creation, institutional consolidation, stabilization and sustainable development of states, from the earliest emergence of statehood up to the modern times.

Power Sharing

Rules governing the distribution of political offices and the exercise of decision-making powers.