- Difficult to do good science if you live in a state of war – idea of human flourishing – Eudaimonia – most important aspect in life – reaching maximum potentially

The public activity of individual and groups in complex societies the aim of which is the acquisition and manipulation of power for the purpose of governing, or making group decisions

- Public activity

- We live in political communities – cities, towns, states, EU – comprised of many people

- Power – economic, persuasive, military

- Group decisions – for the common good

- The fight for WHO makes the decisions is what makes up politics

Power

Friedrich Nietzsche – Analysis of power

- Understood power as being everywhere

- Ability to influence people and impose will on them

- Exercise power by doing them good or ill – power is everywhere and once people have power, can use it for normatively good/bad things

Types

- 1^st Dimension: Active – Forcing others to do things they wouldn’t have done

o Ex. Refugees

- 2^nd Dimension: Preventing people from doing something

o Ex. Mass incarcerations

- 3^rd Dimension: Persuading Abstract – convincing people to act in ways that are contrary to self-interests – to justify own status, throwing good and convincing through soft power

o Consumer culture

o Engage in political activities that aren’t in their own interest

Comparative Politics

- The study and comparison of domestic politics – the pursuit and exercise of power – across countries

o Only deals with country, not IR

o CP is supposed to be empirical (PT is normative)

How will we study?

- Look at key concepts, inst.s and processes – Methods (Comparative method – mimicking lab conditions – pick two countries that are identifiable similar) - Big Ideas (Theories)

Thinkers

- Aristotle -

- Machiavelli – First modern PS

- Hobbes – father of modern conservatism - social contract theorist

- Locke – liberal thinker – private property – social contract theorist

- Montesquieu – separation of powers + checks and balances

- Rousseau - social contract – have certain rights that can never be taken away, people have legitimate right to stand up against those taking rights away

- Marx – Capitalism and democracy will eventually collapse

- Weber – Challenged Marx – Capitalism is recipient of other forces – bureaucracy

- Theda Skocpol – Revolutions

- Mala Htun – Women in politics

- Leonard Wantchekon –

- Moises Naim – globalization

- Atul Kohli – development “global south

- Elinor Ostrom – Political institutions

Institutions

- Org.s + activities that are self-perpetuation and valued for own sake

- This course take Inst.s perpective

- Can be formal (congress) and informal (don’t be rude to old people)

- Institutions vary from one place to another

o Can be givers or receivers of politics

o Argued that nations fail because of poor political and economic institutions

Where do they come from?

- Elites – rich people set up power together to protect own interests

- Societies – bottom-up pressure – rise of capitalism

- Both – interaction between both – Poland – communism to democracy

Germany and Japan

- Both forced to write constitutions from US to stop them from attacking

People struggle for political power

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Better Definition:

Study of Political ideas, inst.s and behaviors, most often within indv. States

- Goal is to arrive at testable general theories about political life by analyzing similarities and differences across time and space

- Develop and test general theories – always comparing – general

theories can explain things in more than one case – want some level of generality – the more general, the more valuable

o Similarities and differences

o Space – two countries

o Time – ex. Mexico 30 years ago v today

What explains Political behavior?

- Political Behavior – large numbers of people doing things in politics

o Why is civil society weak in Eastern Europe? – Communism – people didn’t want to engage with each other

o Why do some countries have more liberal citizenship policies?

§ some have harder/easier citizenship policies – necessary to learn language, watch videos, dissimilate to culture

§ secondary factor: the more strong right-wing parties are

§ Primary: countries had empires/colonists, made it easier to accept immigrants

o Why does populism become salient?

o Under what conditions does nationalism lead to civil war?

§ Sometimes contained, or goes out of hand

§ Why are people willing to kill their neighbors?

o Why do some revolutions succeed while others fail?

Some Answers

Interests – making calculations – more short term

- Rational Choices – they calculate what they want then behave in particular ways

- Psychological factors – irrational side - 1^st Dimension, 2^nd Dimension, 3^rd dimension – interpret interests as something else and will act in how they’re told opposed to what they actually want

Beliefs/Culture – ideological - grew up – not about calculating what brings you better utility – what you’re used to seeing in day-to-day life

- Widely held values – usually studied statistically – World Value survey – how much they value democracy, market system, how happy are they – what are the things that people actually believe in

o Found that there are cultures – Anglo-Saxon, post-colonist, post-communism

- Symbols analyzed more interpretively (post-modernists) – rejecting certainty, rejecting binary opposites, questioning stable identities

o Big on participant research – uncover meaning in certain patterns

Structures – Difficult to move over time – more material in nature

- Marxism (economy and social classes) – Tell me your beliefs/culture, and I can tell you what social class you’re part of

- Formal and informal institutions that are hard to change

o presidency, electoral system – difficult to turn it into proportional rep. system

Who rules and who benefits?

- Ruling – someone benefitting from rule – there is always power and someone with privilege over others – politics is trying to gain power over others

o Why do some interest groups more powerful than others?

- Who would benefit or lose politically from campaign finance reform?

- How is power negotiated between civilian and military rulers in Latin America?

Answers

Pluralist Societies matter most

o Org.s in civil society

o Elections

o Social divisions – every society divided – rich v. poor, Catholics v. protestants

When you give answer to Who rules and who benefits? You recognize that there is interest groups

- Authoritarianism – tries to get rid of pluralism bc the more likely for uprising

- Even in Authoritarianism – there are challenges, but interest groups redirected through areas like military

Elites Matter Most

- Nuance matters

- Ruling Classes – Marxist

- The Rich – Elon Musks, Zuckerburgs – dictate politics

- Inst. Elites – not rich in the same sense the rich are rich – Lenin had no money and didn’t care about money – leader of Polish didn’t have money – care about power

- Post-Modernist Answer – Patriarchy – Men who keep the reigns of power in expense of women – gender divide

- Ethnic groups – minorities ethnic groups

Where and Why?

Where is social welfare more likely to be generous?

Why is social welfare more generous in Scandinavian Countries than the US?

Why are there social protests in the US at a particular moment?

Open ended questions about cause and effect – not supposed to be based on judgements

Social Science Research Answers Questions by using

Concepts, Theory, Analytical Methods (Comparative Method )

Comparative Method

- A way to compare political systems by focusing on similarities and differences in order to test theories

o Arguments on Cause and effect

Claim

UK is a Democracy

- Argument A –

o UK is a monarchy with a parliament

o Long-term Ally of US and is led by elected prime-minister

- Argument B

o UK holds free and fair elections, election losers step down in favor of election winners

o Correct

How do we arrive at the truth?

- Plato - idealist – what we see in reality is just a conception – never will be perfect

o Need to analyze by looking philosophically – where the truth is

- Aristotle – break politics from philosophy – look what is happening in empirical world

o Primary – there is variation, study by using science

o Development of Western thought

Use empirical evidence – facts

+

Formulating and testing hypotheses in order to arrive at theories

=

Scientific method

- Repeated process of deductive and inductive reasoning

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How is Comparative Politics Practiced? (Continued)

Hypothesis – Test the facts – before research

Advance a theory – advance after research

Theory: approximation of explanation

Parsimonious – economical – something is explained with the fewest number of factors

- Very economical an very general

Uncovering the truth (with social science)

- Try to uncover the truth with social science

- Have ideologies, manipulations, propaganda – socially changing

- Repeated process of Inductive and Deductive reasoning

Deductive Reasoning – Top-Down

- Reasoning begins with general then going down to specificities

- If final conclusion does hold, reevaluate, then can derive new meaning

- Relies on logic and certainties

- Begin with theory, develop hypothesis, then look at facts

Inductive reasoning – Bottom-Up

- Specific Observations to general claims

- As we look at empirical evidence )the more the better) we can reach different conclusions

- Relies on observation and probabilities

Evidence-Based

- Data is everywhere and is very valuable

o Can look at it and make predictions on what we might need

- How do we collect? And what do we do with it?

o Can be expensive

Quantitative

- Favored

- Breadth over depth – prioritizes the many/large numbers

- Doesn’t care about specifics of cases

- Uses statistical surveys, mathematical models, number, approximation of methods used in natural sciences

- Priority: collecting as much as possible

Pros:

o Rigorous Hypothesis testing – can ask more people on a large scale

o Generalizing power

Cons:

o Disregard of context – difference between natural and social sciences (historical complexity and cultural factors)

§ Matters if there is a background

o Weak at tracing processes – things don’t happen in isolation

Qualitative

- Depth over breadth: study one or few cases

- Focus on large events that don’t happen too much

- Rely on interviews, archives, case studies, participant observations

Pros:

o Contextual sensitivity

o Careful tracing of causes and effects

Cons

o Hypotheses not sufficiently tested

o Weak Generalizations

Neither approach is superior

- Methods should depend on questions asked

- Both are scientific, aiming at causal inference and using variables and research designs. They can be mixed

How do we make inferences/conclusions based on evidence, about cause and effect?

- Best I can do given the data

- Est. Variables of interest – figure out what we’re going to analyze

- Figure out research design – how do we analyze it

Variables

- Factors that change from case to case or over time

- Make causal arguments based on similarities and differences of variables across cases

- Cause: Explanation/ X / Independent Variable – driving factor

- Effect: Outcome / Y / Dependent Variable

2 Examples of Research Design:

- John Stuart Mill – Induction

- Basis building blocks of comparisons goes back to this

Methods of Difference – Why do similar systems end up with different outcomes?

- Look for differences

- More scientific

- Must consider alternative hypothesis based on literature

Make an actual argument

Method of Agreement – Why do different systems end up with similar outcomes?

- Look for similarities

- Can say this design is weaker

- Less scientific

Generalizability

- Check conclusion against other variables

- Refine hypothesis

o Timing?

o Environmental conditions?

- Correlation does not equal causation

Correlation – relationship between variables

Establishing causality is difficult

- Practical problems in causal analysis

o Hypothesis testing through experimentation

o Selection bias

o Not enough information

Judging Theories

A good theory fits following criteria:

- Accuracy – Does it fit the facts? – does it describe what is going on with the world?

- Causality – The “Why” question – does it draw casual relationships? – Explanatory and outcome/IV +DV

- Parsimony – Make the fewest possible causes and assumptions – simple

- Generality – Make a claim “general,” often at odds with accuracy – very prized

- Falsifiability - Can the theory be proven wrong? – If a theory cannot be wrong under any circumstances, it is not a theory in social sciences – ask what can it take for the theory to be proven wrong – not be impossible

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The State

- 195 Recognized by UN

- Without the state, you don’t have anything to study

o Organizes political life and where power is most concentrated

Why are States Dominant

- Economic development

- States are engines for economic development

o China – most impressive economic growth

- Property Rights – State/collective property, you can have a situation where a person can buy an estate, but the land underneath is the state’s

§ Different from western point of view – however has fostered massive economic development

§ Associated with increases of productivity

§ If you protect them, strong economic development

- Taxation – funds national defense

- Warmaking

- Technological innovation – defense purposes, economic development, India is an example of this

§ India – actively foster technological innovation – over time, the state has been actively involved in tech sector

§ Can foster Domestic Stability

- Domestic Stability and loyality– states are agents make stability possible – eudemonia

§ To ensure coherence in a state, need powerful bureaucracy – Germany is an example

- Nationalism

- War-making

- States are made indispensable with these key functions – claim they are the best experts

- Virtuous Cycles – once you set up these functions, then you continue to strengthen the other parts

States, Regimes, Governments

- Nation – Group of people with common identity

- Those in charge can be referred to as: States, Regimes, or Governments

- The more institutionalized, the more predictable and organized – States (more inst.)  Gov. (less inst.)

- In order to change the state – you need a revolution

- State – hardware – means of achieving things in political life

o Unlike Regimes, which have ideologies, States are basic apparatus running the country

§ Gov – people

§ Regime – Software

§ State – Hardware

o Regime – people within the regime can change – but mission doesn’t

Weber

- “A human community that successfully claims monopoly of the legitimate use of violence within a given territory”

o If other use violence – considered wrong

o State only real and legal authority to use violence - legitimate

§ No other entity has that authority

o If you have a state – inevitably, there will be violence

o Fascist v. Democratic – WHEN violence is used

- A set of political institutions that are widely accepted as legitimate (necessary/good/proper), are characterized by impersonal bureaucratic organization, generate and carry out policy, and provide public goods.

o If you constantly oppress, you will lose legitimacy

o Have to provide certain things for people

- Saw Bureaucracy as necessary but also prison, but double edged sword

Characteristics of Modern States

- Legitimacy

o If state is not seen as legit – state is under threat

- Territories

o About controlling violence within given territory – can only use violence within territory

- Autonomy

o Can act independently from what people want

- Sovereignty

- Capacity

o Capable to provide public goods

Modern

- Not feudal or absolutist

- Feudalism

o Europe: 7 Centuries

o Multiple tiers of rulers who claim sovereignty over that territory

o

o Vassal system – each layer is vassal to the other layer

o Each layer claim that this is their land

§ Arguing that there is techno-feudalism

- Absolutist

o 17^th Century-French Rev

o Single monarch exercising power over territory – absolute unchecked power

- When these two ended, modern era began

Legitimacy

- Recognized right to rule

o There are people in charge – it’s good and proper

- Traditional

o Strongly institutionalized

o Certain things have always existed (longevity) – and that makes them good

o British Monarchy – longest standing institution

§ British Parliament – 13^th Century – lot of power as long as prime minister is in majority – can make England into a dictatorship – the fact it hasn’t done so can be equated to Traditional

- Charismatic

o Weakly institutionalized

o Some extraordinary person who capture the spirit of a nation who guides a nation

o Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minn – changed history of their country

o Task of following rulers – preserve that spirit

§ Lenin – Stalin hated Lenin, but turned him into a legend

- Rational-Legal

o Strongly institutionalized

o Bureaucratic and organizational efficiency

o Impersonal treatment before law – makes states legitimate – various inst.s to make people well served through legal and rational well means – sense of fairness

§ Germany example

§ State is seen as legitimate

Sources of Legitimacy Vary

- Qing Dynasty – Imperial Rule  Mao  Bureaucratic capitalism

Territory

- Defined by borders (walls too)

- Relatively Stable

- Germany – Berlin wall

- When borders change, means country has taken over typically, but usually associated with formation of new states

So Far

- Modern states –

o are dominant for good reasons

o Difficult to get rid of – hard to change or eliminate

o Draw legitimacy from various sources, but can resort to violence

o Territorial

o Kinda like bandits – not too different from the mafia

- Even though states provide public goods, they aren’t considered kind – evolve through violence

Two Types of Sovereignty

- Sovereignty – central work in the Leviathan – if states gain control through contract or force, they are necessary to ensure stability

- There is no power on earth that can be compared to the power of the state

Internal Sovereignty

- State has authority over own territory

o State with problems: Mexico – drug cartel – people living in fear because state cannot control violence

o In Washington DC- Civil societies being influenced through lobbyists – people coming in and out of government – seen as not good for autonomy – influence the channeling of interests – state gets told what to do through interest groups

o Autonomy – independence from interest groups

External Sovereignty

- Ability to carry out actions and policies independently from outside powers

o Colonies are not sovereign

- Final authority over people within a demarcated territory

- Requires international recognition – accepted into club of other sovereign states – Treaties of Westphalia – ended second bloodiest war – led to the rise of idea of sovereignty

o Authority of pope was limited. States got to decide own religious affairs independently from the pope

- perspective of recognition: degree of recognition

- Internationally recognized

o UN security council – US, Russia, China, France, UK – P5 +

o 2/3 majority to say you can be recognized – 9/15 – have to have the 5 permanent members agree. If one of the P5 doesn’t agree, blocks the vote

o Goes to general assembly – 2/3 majority

- Majority Recognition from everyone

o Exceptions (all are UN members):

§ Cyprus with exception of Turkey – recognized by everyone else

§ China – not recognized by Taiwan (both return the favor)

§ The Koreas – don’t recognize each other

§ Israel

- Degree under: Not full members of UN

o Palestine – most countries of global north don’t recognize it

o Kosovo – most of countries of the global south don’t recognize it – China and Russia consider it to be a Serbian territory – territory has been linked to Serb narrative

- Limited Recognition

o Western Sahara – claimed by Neighboring Morocco – recognized by few states

o Taiwan – China is not willing to recognize countries that help Taiwan

o Abkhazia and South Ossetia – breakaway from Georgia - recognized by 4-5 countries – Frozen conflicts: after collapse of USSR – cannot control all territories, there are breakaway regions who want to become independent – there is no actual fighting, but it’s a conflict because there’s no resolve

o Cyprus – The northern part of the island has only been recognized by Turkey

- Not recognized (but de facto sovereign)

o Somaliland (failed state) – merged within Somalia – Somaliland have been former British colonies – eastern part was Italian – when they came together, not productive to have them together – have been functioning independent from each other

§ If you recognize breakaway regions, you have to recognize other breakaway regions – will encourage further disintegration

o Transnistria – Eastern Moldova - one of the poorest and most corrupt, one of the units within the federation – USSR federation of many nationalities – in order to prevent nationalism problems, USSR decided to extend Moldova into Ukraine – when Moldova departed, it took ethnic Russians with them – has been functioning as it’s own state – frozen conflict

Bureaucratic Capacity

- Ability to control violence, tax population, and achieve objectives

o Extract money

o Control violence

o Requires money, organization, legitimacy, leadership

High BC

- Well-developed 20^th c.

o Develop early on

- Slower and under democratic rule (UK and USA)

- Statehood and investment in function for a long time

- Germany and Japan developed under

o Germany – developed under Bismarck

o Japan bureaucracy prestigious and powerful

- China: based on Confucian principles of merit, expanded under communist rules

Low BC

- Developed and expanded in 20^th c.

- Under non-democratic rule (Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Iran)

- Under colonial rule (India, Nigeria) – when colonial rule ends, full of defects

- Problems: corruption, resource curse, something to fight over

High Capacity – Use Bureaucracy to achieve goals

Low Capacity

High Autonomy

Centralized authority in a strong state

China

Danger: Authoritarianism – can do whatever you want

Centralized authority in a weaker state

Russia

Danger: Poor economic development can lead to public unrest and repression

Low Autonomy

Dispersed authority in a strong state

USA

Danger: State can fail to respond to new challenges

Dispersed authority ina weaker state

Somalia, Nigeria

Danger: State Failure

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Function of States

- Like protection rackets, states demand money in exchange for security and order. – once they have claimed territory for themselves – they need money to run their affairs – make you an offer you can’t refuse – if you refuse, you will be punished

Taxation:

- Heart of what states do

- Provides money for other functions

- Creates a sense of loyalty due to shared contribution to national goals

- 2 great liberal revolutions:

- American Revolution “No taxation without representation”

- Glorious revolution – civil war – what kind of religion should the king have and how much power should the king have, especially over taxation - against monarchal overreach – given English Bill of Rights

- Catch 22 – to become strong, weak states must tax citizens – but can’t – difficult to answer how do you this?

Defense

- Protection of citizens against foreign threats

- Requires military force

- A key component of state’s emergence

- Argument: Without need to defend people from violent threats, there is no reason for states

- In US – ½ discretionary spending is on military

Domestic Order

- Policing and judicial system

- Needed for successful maintenance of the monopoly of physical force

- Some states – skeptical of police in own territory

Legibility

- Needed to administer (and control) complex societies – make categories to classify people

o Can provide for us

o Or can control us

- Collection of information about the territory and population

- Maps, Surveys, censuses (central)

- The better you know your population – the more you can administer it – the larger they become, the more the states require complex instruments

Legitimacy is a characteristic – not a function

Measuring State Strength and Weakness

States provide public goods

- Public safety, legal system, infrastructure (roads), public education, healthcare

- People trusts state to provide

Indicators

- Societal – group conflicts, demographic pressures

- Political – elite polarization , extremism, human rights, rule of law, security

- Economic – poverty and inequality

Weak States

- Poverty and corruption undermine economic growth and political stability (public goods)

- Porous borders: illegal arms, contagious diseases, terrorists, illegal drugs

- Civil wars are common – bc states can’t control inside

Where do they come from?

- Former colonies

- Late development of bureaucracy and rule of law

- Resource curse – lots of natural resources on the market – the state/elites don’t care about providing public goods if they get support outside

o Fighting over who is going to take over sectors of economy

o Often go unresolved for a long time

o Sierra Leone and Liberia – Charles Taylor – formed a dictatorship with trying to take over diamond production – massive scandals with famous ppl taking diamonds from him – civil war resulted from this

- Can result in Failed State

Failed States

- Cannot project authority over territory and boundaries

- Provide minimal public services

- State is illegitimate in the eyes of the international community

- More and more failed states around the world as time has gone on – US and USSR created incentives to support states for ideological reasons – once cold war ended, states were left on their own devices – money stopped pouring in, cannot support themselves

Why do states emerge and expand?

Charles Tilly: Bellicist/ Darwinist Model – Survival of the fittest

- Imagine Medieval Europe:

- Territory experiencing external threat

- From inside the territory – someone rises and claims that they will protect everyone

- In order to protect you: I need money (weapons) and people (to organize protection force)

- Protector then creates institution and takes money extracted from people – constructs tax office and war ministry

- Protector having taken resources from people – then turns on population with machinery to neutralize internal rivals

- Only those who win wars and protect their domestic territory get to make states

- “War made the State, and the State made war”

o Frequent warfare serves 3 purposes:

§ Revenue extraction (systems of taxation) developed to support costly military innovation (gunpowder)

§ Mobilization of the population for a common goal: nationalism

§ Centralization of political power marks end of feudalism

Jeffrey Herbst

Postcolonial Model

- Colonial dependency

- Boundaries created by imperial fiat; destruction or cooptation of indigenous political institutions

- Local institutions focus mainly on colonial rule and domination

- Sudden independence and external soveriegnity

- Independent model

- Rent-seeking

Economic Elite-Driven Model

- Powerful landowners dominate territories by forming and shifting alliances

- Economic development changes material circumstances

- Elites begin preferring rights to special privileged

- Elites form coalitions to protect interests against t competitions and monarchs

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Structure and Culture

Overview:

Structuralism

Idea that there are big processes that are difficult to change by human beings

Culturalism – Religion, languages

Rationalism – people act on personal self-interests

Structuralism

- Focuses on continuity and change of large historical processes – change over time

- Large historical processes – figure out if its continuing and changing

- Argument: Difficult to change economic structures best explain human behavior

- Marxist tradition – studies historical dynamics

- Prioritizes general explanations

Culturalism

- Values, ideas, traditions, norms, are most important and as independent explainers political behavior

- Focuses on detail, nuances, of particular cases seeking to provide reliable interpretations

- Emphasizes accuracy at expense of generality

Marx

- Structuralist thinker

- 19^th century – supported co-authored work with Engels – The Communist Manifesto – paid for this work

- Das Capital is more important

- Focused on working classes

Weber

- Culturalist thinker

- Focused on middle class

Marxist- Leninist Governments

- 20^th century – lots of communist countries – attractive political system around the world – driven by USSR and China

- End of cold war – communism lost power – cold war marked end of communism

- Few countries communism – Asia and Cuba – to what extent it’s economy is communism?

Marxism as an Ideology

- All classes are linked

- Perlism

- State and state structures – party and party structures – linked – lots of interaction

- Way of governing lost power

Marxism as an Analytical Framework

- Class Struggle

- Ideology and Culture

- Revolution

- Historical Materialism

Class Struggle

- At all times society are divided between groups/classes

- Always tensions with relations between classes

- Some people who own means of production

- Workers sell their labor in exchange for a wage

- Between these two classes there will always be tension

- Relations of production

o Ruling class (Bourgeoisie) owns means of production – will try to get most amount of money from workers – workers are exploited

- All classes had functional role – structure is organized in a way meant to exploit the working people

Ideology and Culture

- A system of ideas that makes power relations seem natural (false consciousness- everyone can make it)

- Secondary to economic level

- Marxist framework: false consciousness is not really true – the class you are born in is the one you die in

o It’s a tool of alienation and exploitation

- Class consciousness – good – organize and work together and overthrow capitalist system

- Cultural is functional – argued that it’s a irrational system

- Idea of ideology comes out of systems of production and supports the system – if you occupy a particular place – this is the way you think about it

- Culture is epiphenomenal – byproduct of relations of production rather than independent

o Dependent

o If you change conditions of the world, your mind changes

o We are products of environment

o When economy changes – your ideological position changes

Capitalism contains seeds of own destruction

- Marx got this wrong

- Capitalist Contradictions

o Profit-making depends on lower wage for workers – meant to maximize value for owners of productions – Marx got this right

o Technological innovation – allows workers to develop class-consciousness away from false consciousness– people will be able to link better with one another – Marx got this wrong

o Environmental exploitation won’t be able to sustain capitalist expansion – also got this wrong – capitalist system is expanding environmental degradation for the expansion

o There are more workers than bourgeois – middle class will eventually fall into working class – perhaps true – middle class is shrinking

Revolution

- If relations of production are no longer sustainable and if workers overcome false consciousness and develop class consciousness – they will revolt and the capitalist state will disappear in favor of communism

o Nothing to lose but chains

- Argues that state is only sitting in place to exploit workers – absolutely wrong

Historical Materialism

- Material relations as the engine of history

- If history is going to move forward – material relations move it forward

- Relations between owners and workers – relations define every historical period

- History is Teleological – goal-oriented

- Goal of history is to end class struggle – the evil needs to end so that the class exploitation

- Telos: end of class struggle

Problem: other things give means

Weber: “Bourgeoises Marx”

- Argued against Marx – life is much more complicated

- Observed Marx was too ideological and made too many assumptions

- Weber did real social science projects

- Observed Northern Europe were more advanced capitalist economies – why is this the case?

- Religious – Protestant ethic

Calvinism

- Predestination – salvation has been decided by god

Predestination

Elect of God

- Some people chosen by god no matter what they did in life

Giest – Spirit

-

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Identity Politics

Nationalism –

Cold war – ideological struggle

Nationalist movements – ended conflicts peacefully in Baltics, violently in Balkans

- Culture, nationalism won

Nationalism – most important, endured the longest

- Accelerated rapidly in Romantic period (19^th Century)

- Producing work with various empires- German, Spain, Portugal, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia

o Only within a couple of years, Europe will stop having empires – standing on their last legs

o By the end of WW1 – key empires collapsed – marked beginning of recognition of nation-state

Ways to view Nationalism

- Source of political legitimacy – linked to state

- Ideology – people believe in – citizenship

- Instrument of social mobilization – if you want to get people do something, Nat. is a strong motivation

- Philosophy of history – framework

Nation-State

- Intellectual product of victors of first world war – Woodrow Wilson’s idea

- Self-determination – when people share idea of who they are, they should be given their own state – borders reflect nations

- Nation-state: a sovereign state encompasses one dominant group that it claims to embody and represent.

o There is a dominant group/majority – build state around group – state will embody that group

- Cultural and political boundaries overlap – most citizens of the state share a common identity and are of the same nation

o The more the overlap, the more homogenous the state will be – homogenous states tend to be easier to build democracy

o Nationalism democratizing undertone

Citizenship

- A social contract between the state and the nation: rights granted to people in exchange for accepting the state’s political legitimacy

- State- we’ll govern on your behalf – we’ll give you document on your behalf

- Developed explicitly by states (with exception for EU) – have to have states

- Because it’s given by the state – a legal category about membership in a particular state and the resultant rights, privileges and responsibilities

o What jurisdiction is responsible for you – way to keep people in check

- Citizenship Policy Index – Ideas:

o within European context, countries that used to be colonizers have more relaxed citizenship policies – easier time for those not born within borders, easier to accept others – counterintuitive

o Rise of right-wing parties – if you have strong parties pushing against parties – makes harder for immigrants to become citizens – short-term

EU

- only non-state entity that gives citizenship – Maastricht treaty 1992 – concept of EU citizenship – challenged idea of citizenship organized around nation-state

- Moving okay for about 20 years – 1990s-late 2000s – then had major economic and immigrant crisis – marked return of nation-state – Brexit

United Kingdom

- Broke from EU

- Considered one of the first nationalism

- Made up of four different countries – sperate Olympic teams and soccer teams – sense of different types of nationalisms

- Sense of four different units – developments: 1990s when labor parties was in power, power of devolution of power – taken away from central capital – each of the four got own parliaments – citizens of SNW are doubly represented, but England is less taken care of – West Lothian Question

- Scotland – Nationalism most powerful – incorporated with England in 1707 – despite protest – ever since then it’s been part of UK – Scotland with economic reforms and discovery of oil – in 2014 they held a referendum – whole movement for independence has been powerful

- Brexit – Scotland did not vote to leave EU

- Nationalism – can be based off of many factors, natural resources, economic reform – not static

Nationalism as an Ideology

- Belief that the world is and should be divided into nations that insist they have a unique political destiny and desire self-government through independent statehood

- Often, not always, linked to ethnic identity

o Can have many different ethnicities

o Can have one dominant ethnicity

- Linkage – ethnicity can be used through nationalism

o Violent – Germany - subjugate

o Peaceful – India – used it to eliminate colonialism

o Successful – German state – otto von Bismarck – common language

o Failure – Jefferson Davis – Confederate state

§ Scotland – if you fail to get statehood

- Nationalism is Inherently political – about sovereignty

East Timor - Successful

- Became independent from Portugal in 2000s

- Former Portuguese country – then taken over by Indonesia (Dutch colony)

- Following resignation of dictator – referendum – 80% voters approved by independence movement

- Considered to be a successful case

Montenegro and Serbia - Successful

- Montenegro was part of Serbia – Serbia-Montenegro – part of same state

- Occupied by Italian fascists – after breakup of Yugoslavia – Montenegro decided to stay with Serbia because of shard identity of Eastern Orthodox – as breakup led to atrocities – Montenegro decided to part ways – clear EU wasn’t open to adding Montenegro

- Nationalism that’s been driven by a sense of calculation – what is better for us?

Kosovo – Semi-Successful

- Partially recognized

- Does not have 2/3 in assembly

- Serbian nationalism is linked to territory of Kosovo in 14^th century the Serbs halted advancement of Ottomans

- Serbian perspective: Kosovo is symbol of what it means to be Serbian

- Kosovo was made part of Yugoslavia – wasn’t given same status and autonomy – especially in educating children in language

- US got involved and started bombing Serbia

- After campaign – Kosovo has been given independence

South Sudan

- 2011 Referendum – 99% voted for independence

- Muslim-Arabs – North – south was other

- Plagued by instability - Failing state: civil war and ethnic cleansing since 2013

- 20 year war

- Country constantly under enormous stress

Nationalism as a theory of Social Mobilization

- People fight for nationalist reasons – often voluntary when given good reasons to maintain state

- People are most likely to mobilize along nationalist lines

o For military purposes, including fighting, raising funds and producing supplies

- Mobilization can lead to nationalist conflict over sovereignty

o Ukrainian case

o Prior to 2014 – Russia and Ukraine both languages of the state – after Ukraine only language

o Started to demand Russian as a native language – elevated to reunification with Russia

o Eastern Ukraine has been in War

o Question: how much of this takeover is going to be given to Russia

Nationalism as a Philosophy of History

Primordialism

- National Identities are pre-modern, universal and natural (perhaps even biologically rooted)

- Connected to other identities – deep rooted connection that goes before modern state

- Pre-modern phenomenon – people feel inherently connected

- Universal and natural

- National identity is the same as ethnic, racial, or tribal identity

Modernism

- National identities rose among people, the majority of whom viewed themselves as equal and demanded sovereignty

- National identities are tied to statehood

Eric Hobsbawm

- Nationalism was an elite movement linked to the rapid rise of the middle class and the spread of literacy

Modernism: Structuralism

- Ernest Gellner: Changes in the economy define national identity

o Capitalism required socially-mobile, literate, homogenous and interchangeable workers (people who will move for work)

§ Understand instructions when given

o State standardized language through education and official documents

o Nation as a collection of literate and replicable workers

- Capitalism created nationalism to serve functional needs

Modernism II: Constructivism

Benedict Anderson: Individuals and groups construct national identity

- Mass Literacy led to declining importance of privileged access to script language

- Ideas of divine right and hereditary monarchy declined

- Printing press capitalism allowed people to perceive standardized language time and space – even if we live separately, and we’re reading the same events, there is a similar conception of time and space – imagine belonging to the same community

- People imagined themselves and others as member of the same limited and sovereign group or nation

Types of Nationalism

- Ethnic/Cultural – ancestry, lineage

- Civic – nation defined in terms of citizenship and participation

- Collectivistic – the will of nation transcends will of individuals

- Individualistic– nations as voluntary association of individuals

Germany – Ethic/Collectivistic

France – Civic/Collectivistic – will of whole more important

USA – Civic/ Individualistic – will of individual more important

Immigration Blurs the lines between civic and ethnic nationalism

- 80% of Germans believe refugees should speak German

- 50% of Americans believe that “true Americans are Christian, speak English, and have been born in the US”

o ¼ disagree, and ¼ don’t have a strong opinion – but the plurality speaks as a new idea

Group Identities

- Social categories/ labels given to a group of individuals that identify and locate these individuals in political society

o Creates in v. out group

o Influence and influenced by how power is distributed

- Multiple and overlapping

A Big Idea – Rogers Brubaker

- A category is not the same as a social group

- Categories – labels/concepted/ ideas/perspectives – are socially constructed and shift contextually. It is not immediately clear what categories are most appropriate or relevant

- Groups – mutually interacting, mutually recognizing bounded collectives with a sense of solidarity, corporate identity, and capacity for concerted action

- Social categories can become group – that is salient at different times and in different contexts

o Can lead to political violence

Why do social categories matter – or become salient – at certain times and places?

Rwandan Genocide

- Created categories that pitted people against each other for territorial control

Ethnicity, Race, and Gender

Ethnicity

- A social category constructed as cultural – the product of cultural beliefs and practices imagined as common and extending back, via real r fictive kinship relationships, to a set of common ancestors

- Set of institutions that establish norms and standards of behavior and are based on a common culture

- Assigned at birth

- Not inherently political but can be politicized and becomes the basis for nationalism

Ethnicity politicized ethnicity in former Yugoslavia

- A federation based on ethnic principles

- When Yugoslavia broke down with the end of communism – half broke peacefully, the other did not – Croatia and Boasian Hercegovina – ethnicity was highly politicized

- Communist regimes had repressed making ethnicity salient – concerned with saliency in nationhood – repressed ethnicity – when country started breaking down – leaders started making it salient

- Bosnian genocide – 8000 Bosniaks killed

Genocide

- Destruction of a people or a culture – willful

- Different from ethnic cleansing – removal – systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial and/or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, usually with the intent of making the territory ethnically homogenous – in attempt to ethnically clean- can lead to genocide

Myanmar

- Rohingya sided with British – the nation state of Myanmar was created by wartime – state after it was created – never forgave Rohingya for fighting its own state

Functions of Ethnicity

- Provide communal identity – with ethnicity – we can identify where we are in society and community

- Useful for building up social capital

- If you identify people from own community – it’s easier to do business with social trust

- Provides social safety net – if you’re in trouble – your own community will pick you up

- Useful for restoring political legitimacy – if a leader wants to gain legitimacy – the first place to go to is culture - We are different from this other culture – based on this commonality – we have to stick together

Race

- Social category constructed as biological that is the product of inherent genetic characteristics, expressed in identifiable physical features and held to be mutable over multiple generations

- The invention of race – Blumenbach – work useful for imperialists – identified physical characteristics depended on geography, diet and mannerisms

- Came up with Caucasian/white, Mongolian/yellow, Malayan (brown), Ethiopian (black), American (red)

- Made observation: one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them – it can not be so easily where one race ends and the other begins – soft lines between races

- When you look at the census, you pretty much have the same categories of race, however the categories have become more multiple

- Brubaker: The reality of race … does not depend on the existence of races – social category is not the same thing as a social group

Is Gender Different?

- A social construction by which human beings “make sense” of sex (the biological differences between people as linked to reproductive potential) but which is not necessarily determined by it – re-constructivist

- Also socially constructed – roles and behavior of people as defined by their gender is also a matter of interpretation and a matter of categorization which is done separately for separate people

- Just like race has changed, Gender has changed in a number of categories

- Because it is socially constructed – the environment

- Global feminist movement – raised the salience

Different Type of Category

- Ethnicity and race tend to coincide with socioeconomic differences

o Easier to form ethnic parties seeking reserved seats

o You are more likely to have what you have if you’re assigned to a certain category

- Gender os more cross-cutting

o Harder to form parties representing the varied interests of women as a group

o Quotes are preferred as they make space for women within existing parties

o Harder to form parties around women

Intersectionality

Two Views

- Individuals have individual identities that interest in ways that impact how they are viewed, understood, and treated. Black women are both black and women , but because they are black women they endure specific forms of discrimination that black men or white women, might not

- A hierarchy of victimhood, which ppl consider themselves members of a victim class by virtue of membership in a particular group, and at the intersection of various groups lies the ascent of the hierarchy, with black women on top and white men at the bottom

o Benefit more than the oppressors

- Intersectionality is a thing

Nation, Ethnicity, Race, and Gender

- None of these is inherently homogenous and externally bounded entities

- These are not real groups

- Framing them as such can contribute to groupism (an discrimination and conflict)

- Can’t have conflict without groups

- Identities are perspectives – ways of seeing, interpreting, and representing the social world

2/25

Political Culture

- Basic beliefs, values and norms for political activity that shape the distribution of power in society

- Related to identity – but more flexible – easier to be subject to propaganda

- Influences and influenced by ideology and attitudes (how fast things should be changed)

Moral Foundations Theory

- People inherently believes in things that cannot be bridged – things are so important that there is no way to compromise – leads to gridlock

- Jonathan Haidt – The Righteous Mind – despite cultural differences around the world – there are certain similarities that we all have –

- As people were evolving – has to confront six major problems – adapted to evolve moral foundations

Ideology

- A systematic and universal set of beliefs about the fundamental goal of politics, particularly about the balance between equality and freedom, and the role of the state

- Inherently modern

- Secular religions

Liberalism

- Freedom over equality

- Role of State Minimal; guarantees political and property right

- Political and economic individual freedom over collective equality

o Freedom in politics – do whatever you want

o Emerged from work of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, John Locke

- Representative democracy with a limited state

o Republicanism, constitutionalism, separation of powers

o Free market capitalism with rule of law and private property

Communism

- Collective equality over individual freedom

- In theory: the state controls economic resources, eliminates private property, delivers economic equality, and disappears

- In practice: A totalitarian state led by a “vanguard party” controls civil society

Anarchism

- Mikhail Bakunin – critical of Marx  said it would lead to tolerationism

- Believe state oppresses freedom

- Both Individualism freedom and collective equality are important

- State and private property threaten both

o Property should be communal

o (Libertarians are for a minimal state and private property)

- Has not been seen as dominate ideology for any state – it’s anti-state

o Ideas have been instrumental for leftists

- Utopian – yet its ideas influential in Russian Revolution (1917) and Spanish Civil War (1936-39)’

Fascism

- Polar opposite of Anarchism

- Neither individual freedom nor collective equality is important

- Fascists believe a strong state embodies the nation, which is an organic whole

o The state controls production and capital via corporatism, and represses labor

o Those not belonging to the nation are inferior

o (Nazism was a more racist, totalitarian version)

- Revolutionary, hierarchical, militaristic, authoritarian, and supported by the middle classes

Social Democracy

- Both Individual freedom and collective equality are important and must be balanced

- Representative democracy with a strong state

o To regulate private property and market

o Fiscal policy – you tax and spend (?)

o To guarantee public goods and welfare (job protection, medical care, retirement benefits, higher education) through fiscal policy

None of these ideologies are uniform – lots of variations

Varieties of Socialists

- “Third Way” socialists Gerhard Schroder and Tony Blair – parties that grew out of labor movement – supported by workers during Industrial Revolution

- Became socialists in name but not in practice – stopped providing for workers

- “Pragmatic Socialists” – used state to redistribute wealth and let markets do their thing – Jorge Mujica (Uruguay) and Lula da Silva (Brazil) –

- “21^st century socialists” – Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), & Rafael Correa (Ecuador)- Used state to nationalize oil and redistribute wealth – sacrificed liberal democratic principles – went far in terms of equality and went against concept of freedom being important.

Attitudes

(About the speed and Methods of change)

Radical - For dramatic, revolutionary change of a broken system and its institutions (communists and anarchists) – ready to fight

Liberal – for evolutionary change within the system’s institutions (Social democrats and American liberals)

Conservative – change is not necessary and can be disruptive; institutions should provide order and continuity (European liberals & American conservatives

Reactionary – Restore the political, social, and economic institutions of a previous time (fascists) – ready to fight

Context Matters

- Chen Guangcheng, with US congressional leaders is a fellow at the conservative Witherspoon institute

Ideologies (other than liberalism) are becoming irrelevant because cold war ended

Answers to this:

- Lost relevance

- People still expressing displeasure – embracing religion – people have turned to religion as standard ideologies

Religion

- Supplies key critiques of liberalism

- Samuel Huntington – we can think of world as comprised of different cultures connected to religion – argued that after cold war- the fights are not going to be like what we had before – will be around religion

Fundamentalism

- “God will not be mocked”

- An ideology that seeks to unite religion with the state, make faith the ultimate source of legitimacy…

- Theocracy is type of political regime

Political Culture

- Almond and Verba – Civic Culture

- Inglehart – People in given societies then to be characterized by reasonable durable cultural attributes that come time have major political and economic consequences

Culture

- Think of basic happiness of people

- Can have values that make you happy regardless of material circumstances

World Cultural map

- Survival v. self-expression values

o Either preoccupied that things are taken care of or people worrying about prioritizing other concepts

- Traditional values

- Sanctity or secular values

- If there is such a thing as culture (not perfectly correlated with econ. Development)

o Weber or Marx?

o What drives which

o Does culture drive Econ development (Weber)? Or does Econ drive Culture (Marx)?

What Drives Which?

- As countries modernize, people around the world shift from Traditional authority (Religious and Communal Values) to Rational-Legal Authority (Achievement motivation) – shift of modernization

- As countries stabilize and become rich enough – they start to abandon rational legal authority - Deemphasis of authority (Postmaterialist values) where the focus is maximizing well-being – economic security – shift to postmodernization

- Economic change drive the values that people have

Other Hand

- Such thing as broad cultural heritage that drives econ development

- See that there is economic growth around the world – the more economic growth – the more inequality has grown

- Some of the poorest countries in the world have improved

- As all countries have shifted economically – regardless of economic development – there is such a thing as culture

Conclusion

- Economic development is associated with shifts away from absolute norms and values toward values that are increasingly rational, tolerant, trusting, and participatory

- If you want your people to start caring about other things, give them economic development

- The broad cultural heritage of a society leaves an imprint on values that endures despite modernization

- Differences between the values held by members of different religions within given societies are much smaller than are cross-national differences. Once established, such cross-cultural differences become part of a national culture transmitted by educational institutions and mass media

- Trust is important

Trust

- Associated with civil society

- People that participate in civil society (extracurricular) – associated with trust – positive correlation

- Marc Howard – Weakness of Civil Society in Post-communist Europe

Civil Society

- The array of interest groups, non-state organizations, durable social networks, and other secondary associations that help mediate relations between primary forms of association and the state

Civil Society: An American Example

- In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all others

- If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them

Social Capital

- Networks of civic engagement foster sturdy norms of generalized reciprocity and encourage emergence of social trust

- Allow dilemmas of collective action to be resolved

- Cultural template for future collaboration

Can Social Capital be bad for Democracy?

- Weimar Republic

- Could it be strong civic engagement helped Nazis?

- Germany was cleaved increasingly into distinct subcultures or communities each of which had its own associational life… Private associational activates… were generally organized within rather than across group boundaries

- When depression added economic and political chaos – Nazis stepped into the breach reaching out to the disaffected bourgeois civil society activists and using the country’s organizational infrastructure to make inroads into various constituencies creating a dynamic political machine and cross-class coalition unlike anything Germany had ever seen before – one to which it eventually succumbed

- Dictator step in and take advantage

Conclusion

- Civil society can be good – but has to form bridging ties – people from different cultures have to be included

- Nazis only reinforced division – groupism – they didn’t think of themselves as categories – thought of themselves as groups that excluded others – not much bridging, but lots of bonding

- Bridging social capital makes connections across social ethnic and political groups

- Political institutions must be able to channel societal grievances effectively