The State, Democracy and Dictatorship

Week 2

David Easton’s concept of Political System

David Easton’s concept of Political System

what is a state

• monopoly of legitimate violence (war makes states and states make war)

• territory

• sovereignty

some also include

• plurality (or ‘anarchy’ in international relations)

• a certain relation (‘regime’) between:

  • political elite and state institutions, on the one hand

  • and population and citizens, on the other

    → leads to: administrative legal order (constitutions, laws, rights, policies, etc.)

what is a nation state

• Monopoly of legitimate violence

• Territory

• Sovereignty

but also:
Political community

• Citizenship

  • Legal relationship subject – state

  • Equality before the law

• Nationhood

  • From: blood

  • To: “an imagined political community” (Benedict Anderson 1991: 6)

Westphalian order: Peace of Westphalia (1648)

• Each state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs

• No interference in other states’ internal affairs

• Equality among states in international law

failed states (and examples)

• impaired state like entities

  • weak, competing, or non-existing governments

  • not exactly sovereign in practice, weak regime acceptance

  • cannot exercise rule over their inhabitants

    • examples: chad, somalia, libya, sudan (all unable to control inhabitants across their territory)

→ no security (due to no monopoly on violence)

→ no legitimacy

indicators of fragile states

• fractionalised elites

• weak economy

• immigration

autocratic regimes

• have no (or hardly any) executive turnover

• are therefore non-polyarchies

• fully authoritarian regimes have been in decline over time

  → BUT: authoritarian can be remarkably durable

what keeps authoritarian leaders in place

• repression

• building legitimacy

  • to be able to calculate their opposition’s moves

  • want to seem as a ‘good’ regime

  • education policies/ propaganda

• co-opting groups/ elites

  • can backfire when the regime misjudges the strength of the opposition

  • creating the illusion of power and influence

    • getting them on their side

• elections

  • gives them legitimacy

  • can handpick the opposition with a huge electoral victory - seems as though they have the public’s support

• international relations

  • no intervention/ interference from others to keep international peace

Robert Dahl’s view on democracy

• two dimensions:

  1. contestation

     1. procedures of democratic competition

  2. inclusion

     1. who has the right to participate in politics

minimalist view

minimalist view of regime type

• Institutions and procedures matter, not the outcomes

• Focus on electoral contestations for political office

substantive view of regime type

includes minimalist view and adds:

• outcomes as a forms of classification

  • includes outcomes in terms of values

    • e.g. freedom, rights, …

(as in David Easton’s complete model)

measures of democracy

1. DD (democratic-dictatorships measure)

2. polity IV

3. freedom house

DD (democratic-dictatorships measure)

minimalist

dichotomous

four criteria of classification:

1. the chief executive is elected

2. the legislature is elected

3. There is more than one party competing in the elections

   a. Ex ante uncertainty

   b. Ex post irreversibility

   c. Repeatability

4. An alternation in power under identical electoral rules has taken place

polity IV

minimalist

continuous

(democracies are classified from a minimum of -10 (as autocratic or dictatorial as possible) to a maximum of 10 (as democratic as possible))

A country’s polity score is based on five attributes:

1. The competitiveness of executive recruitment

2. The openness of executive recruitment

3. The constraints that exist on the executive

4. The regulation of political participation

5. The competitiveness of political participation

number 3 is special because it wasn’t mentioned by Dahl and introduces checks and balances

freedom house

substantive

continuous

measures a country’s freedom based on two dimensions:

1. a country’s level of civil rights (15 questions)

   • four sub-categories:

   1. freedom of expression and belief

   2. associational and organizational rights

   3. rule of law

   4. personal autonomy and individual rights

2. a country’s level of political rights (10 questions)

   • three sub-categories

   1. electoral process

   2. political pluralism and participation

   3. functioning of government

type of conceptualisations of regime types

dichotomous and continuous

dichotomous conceptualisation

a dichotomous view examines dictatorships and democracies separately

→ there are two discrete categories

• people using this think that it is impossible/ senseless for a country to be equally dictatorial and democratic, as it would be possible in the continuous view

• they also believe that countries with uncontested political offices (china, north korea) should not be considered partly democratic at all

(example of pregnancies - either pregnant or not)

binary → either/ or

continuous conceptualisation

• in a continuous view, one assumes that there is only one range between more dictatorial and more democratic

→ intermediate value

• many people believe that politics: “democracy is always a matter of degree” (Bollen and Jackman, 1989:618)

interval/ scale → more/ less

what makes indicators or measures more desirable than others in research?

• validity

• transparency

• reliability

validity

= the extend in which our measures reflect the concepts they are intended to correspond to

in minimalist measures (polity IV and DD):

• do not capture everything

in substantive measures (freedom house):

• too many attributes with which one can’t come to a clear conclusion/ finding

transparency

⇒ replicability of the process by a third party

DD and polity IV are easier to replicate

freedom house doesn’t show their process/ coding rules → makes replication difficult

reliability

= the extent in which measurements can be repeated and produce the same outcome, even when conducted by third parties

DD is the more reliable measure

polity IV and freedom house rely on subjective judgements

modernisation theory

→ predicts that democracy is more likely to emerge and survive as countries develop and become richer

(both: more likely to survive in wealth and more likely to become democratic, if not yet, through wealth)

survival theory

→ predicts that democracy is more likely to survive as countries develop and become richer but not more likely to emerge