Multilevel Politics

Werner Diaz → Liberal intergovernmentalism

Traditional intergovernmentalism developed from the mid 1960s as the main theoretical alternative to neofunctionalism.

Neofunctionalism →  It argues that European integration develops gradually because cooperation in one area creates pressure for further integration in other areas - Spillover effect.

Liberal intergovernmentalism as Theory

LI rests on two assumptions about international politics:

• states are critical actors in a context of international anarchy → states seek to achieve goals through intergovernmental negotiation and bargaining, rather than through a centralized authority that makes and enforces political decisions.

• States are purposive and at least boundedly rational → actors calculate utility of alternative courses of action and choose the one that satisfies their utility under the circumstances.

Stage one: forming national preferences

States do not always prioritize producers or economic interests. Instead, what a state wants depends on the specific policy issue.

So, there is no single definition of the “national interest.” What counts as the national interest changes depending on the issue.

Liberal Intergovernmentalism argues that state preferences are issue-specific and arise from domestic interest-group preferences rather than from one fixed conception of the national interest; concentrated producer interests tend to dominate issues such as agriculture, while broader societal and regulatory interests are more important in diffuse issues such as environmental policy.

Stage two: reaching a substantive bargain

States must overcome collectively suboptimal outcomes and achieve coordination or cooperation for → mutual benefit

Yet, at the same time, they must decide how the mutual gains of cooperation are distributed among the states.

Asymmetrical interdependence: states depend on each other, but not equally.

LI argues that the distribution of gains from European integration depends on asymmetrical interdependence: states that depend most on reaching an agreement tend to make greater concessions, while states with better alternatives or less to gain have greater bargaining power and can impose more conditions.

Traditional theories may argue that international negotiations are inefficient because governments don’t have equal information and therefore need third parties—such as the European Commission—to help them reach agreements → LI disagrees with this to some extent. It argues that states can usually negotiate directly with each other efficiently, without needing supranational actors to solve these information problems.

Federalism/neofunctionalism: supranational actors and integration entrepreneurs can actively drive integration.

LI downplays informational asymmetries and the role of supranational “entrepreneurs.” Unlike federalist and neofunctionalist theories, which see actors such as the Commission as important drivers of integration because they possess information, ideas, and influence, LI argues that interstate bargaining is generally sufficiently efficient for states to reach agreements themselves.

Stage three: creating regional institutions

Once states are prepared to strike a substantive agreement to coordinate policy, LI theory moves into a third stage, in which it seeks to explain the establishment and design of international institutions.

From a “regime-theoretical” perspective, international institutions help states cooperate to reach collectively superior outcomes by reducing the transaction costs of further international negotiations to implement, enforce, and extend existing interstate agreements.

→ They facilitate flows of information that reduce the state’s uncertainty about each other’s preferences and strategies.

States establish rules for the distribution of gains according to the pre-existing bargain.

Money and Migration: two liberal intergovernmentalist accounts

• LI argues that external shocks exposed weaknesses in existing EU arrangements, as seen in the euro and migration crises. These shocks revealed different vulnerabilities among member states.

• Countries had different national preferences because of their different structural positions — e.g., whether they were financial creditors or debtors in the euro crisis, or their geographical position along migration routes in the migration crisis.

• These differences created divergent interests, bargaining power, and collective-action problems among governments.

• As a result, countries differed in their willingness to accept EU policy coordination and institutional commitments.

They fought over the distribution of financial adjustment costs in the euro crisis, and over the distribution of migrants in the migration crisis.

The crisis of the euro

The euro was created largely to achieve economic goals: competitive exchange rates for Northern European countries and lower interest rates in Southern European countries. In the short term, both groups got what they wanted. But these results proved unsustainable.

The euro crisis resulted from an exogenous shock starting in 2008.

A subprime mortgage crisis in the US triggered a global financial and banking crisis, spilling over into a balance-of-payments and debt crisis of several euro area countries. This put in question their ability to retain the euro as their currency.

One issue was how to rescue troubled national banks and banking systems.

Governments undertook financial sector bailouts that increased sovereign credit risk, which in turn increased the vulnerability of banks invested in sovereign bonds.

→ Governments used public money to rescue their banks.

Because governments had to borrow/spend a lot of money to rescue banks, their government debt increased. Investors then became less confident that these governments could repay their debts → sovereign credit risk increased.

The Greek government faced a sovereign default that could drag down its national financial system.

For the highly indebted countries, abandoning the euro would have meant sovereign default, a likely breakdown of the EMU system.

Whereas the other euro countries would have been able to cope with a default and exit of Greece alone, some feared that financial markets would lose trust in the euro and withdraw from other debt countries.

→ The exit of Greece would have resulted in market panic.

Creation of major intergovernmental coalitions during the euro crisis.

• The “southern” coalition → less wealthy, highly indebted, and under immediate pressure from the financial markets.

southern coalition pushed for the “Europeanization” of sovereign debt and soft adjustment policies → entailed bailouts, eurobonds, or fiscal equalization schemes.

This Europeanization placed a burden on the solvent member states to pay heavily indebted member states and their banking systems.

• The “northern” coalition (Germany, Netherlands, Austria) → united by more favourable balance of payments

The northern coalition sought to minimize their liabilities and financial assistance by demanding that crisis countries adjust through “austerity”.

These mixed motives in the euro crisis constituted a “chicken game” characterized by hard intergovernmental bargaining.

For this reason, creditor countries, led by Germany, consistently found themselves in a better position than the southern countries to impose their preferences.

→ At each stage of the crisis decision-making, Germany shaped the terms of integration in return for giving up its opposition to bailing out insolvent eurozone members.

Eurobonds → jointly issued government debt backed by eurozone member states collectively, rather than by individual states. They were proposed during the Euro Crisis as a way to pool sovereign risk and reduce financing pressure on highly indebted countries.

Germany blocked eurobonds or any formally mutualized sovereign debt.

In exchange for financial assistance, it imposed conditionality and strict austerity, and strengthened the EU’s monitoring and sanctioning of national budgets.

SGP → Stability and Growth Pact

SGP was established to commit countries to provide this discipline,

ESM → European Stability Mechanism

The ESM is basically the eurozone’s permanent bailout/rescue fund. It was created in 2012, during the euro crisis, to help euro-area countries that can no longer borrow money from financial markets at sustainable rates.

The country receiving the money must generally accept conditionality - economic reforms/adjustments in exchange for the financial assistance.

ESM creates fixed and centralized rescue procedures, thereby more firmly committing solvent countries to the rescue of insolvent ones.

Migration crisis

Dealing with migration poses two common political challenges for European governments

• To distribute and determine the asylum status of those migrants who arrive in Europe.

• To limit the number of migrants who reach Europe.

So far, the EU has tried and failed to establish a centralized scheme to share migrants proportionately.

Overall, European migration policy remains in many respects decentralized, giving large discretion to national governments.

In the migrant surge of 2015, the number of asylum seekers rose, with most of them arriving in Greece across the Aegean Sea.

→ The second policy is to redistribute those migrants who succeed in reaching Europe, averaging out the load across countries. This generates disagreement over how many migrants each country will take.

In migration policy, the structure of interdependence reflects the relative position of countries on migration routes.

Each European government can find itself in one of four positions:

• front-line: Greece, Italy, Malta → the impact of migrant flows on them is high in the short term. Yet they don’t offer social or political conditions attractive to asylum seekers in the long term.

• destination: Germany, Sweden → their robust economies and relatively generous asylum conditions make them attractive ultimate destinations for asylum seekers.

• transit: Hungary, Slovenia

• bystander state → has no interest in cooperation at all, positive or negative, as it is not located on the migration stream.

• Common border controls → EU countries agree that the EU should strengthen its external borders.

• Centralized quotas → an EU-wide system deciding how many migrants each country should accept.

If the EU strengthens its external border, all Member States can potentially benefit from fewer irregular arrivals.

Migration shocks increase support for both EU-wide border controls and centralized migrant quotas, but agreement is stronger on border controls. Border controls create a shared interest because all Member States can benefit from stronger external borders. By contrast, migrant quotas redistribute migrants between states, creating a zero-sum conflict: any allocation benefits some states while imposing costs on others, making agreement more difficult.

Moreover, destination and transit states, which favour stronger external border controls, have an incentive to undermine schemes for such redistribution of migrant within the EU in order to dissuade migrants from coming in the first place.

→ In this situation, front-line states have limited bargaining power because they have few viable unilateral options. They cannot simply push migrants onward if destination and transit states refuse to accept them. Their only remaining option is to prevent migrants from entering their territory or territorial waters in the first place, but this would violate international law and worsen the immediate humanitarian crisis.

the only stable solution (“equilibrium outcome”) is for European countries to cooperate to reduce migration before migrants reach destination countries.

• Closing ports → making it harder for migrant boats to arrive.

• Building fences → strengthening borders to prevent entry.

• Cooperating with non-EU neighbouring countries → encouraging countries outside the EU to stop migrants from travelling onward and to host migrants themselves.

→ EU’s Dublin asylum system

The system has two main principles designed to prevent secondary movement and asylum-shopping.

• EU countries recognize each other’s asylum decisions → mutual recognition of asylum decisions.

The idea is that national asylum systems should become roughly comparable, so that asylum seekers cannot choose a particular country simply because they think they will receive better treatment there.

• Principle of first contact

The country where an asylum seeker first enters the Schengen area is generally responsible for registering them and processing their asylum application.

States that wanted to join Schengen or the EU were obliged to accept the “principle of first contact”.

Cleavage theory meets Europe’s crises

Cleavage theory, originating in Lipset and Rokkan (1967), conceives a national party system as the expression of underlying social conflicts.

They don’t focus on how parties strategically choose their positions and compete with each other.

The national revolution produced a cleavage between the central state and peripheral communities and between the central state and a supranational church; and the industrial revolution produced an urban/rural cleavage, and later a worker/employer cleavage.

Lipset and Rokkan show little interest in the factors that bind individuals into collectives. What matters in their theory is that fundamental divisions in a society give rise to durable cleavages that structure party competition.

Lipset and Rokkan saw class conflict becoming weaker, but they did not predict the return of nationalism and territorial conflict. They believed national states were stable and that politics would mainly focus on left–right economic issues like taxes, welfare, and the role of the state. They failed to see that national territories and identities could later become contested again.

A transnational cleavage

The intellectual basis for transnationalism is broad and deep. The lower the transaction costs of international economic exchange, the greater the scope for specialization and economies of scale.

Opposition to transnationalism is for many a populist reaction against elites who have little sympathy for national borders.

A transnational cleavage has emerged, dividing political systems along a GAL - TAN axis

Causes: European integration, immigration, and globalization, which challenged national sovereignty and cultural identity.

Impact on party systems:

• Mainstream parties struggle to adapt, resulting in the rise of new parties mobilizing these issues

• Radical right and left-wing parties have capitalized on this divide, leading to a realignment of traditional party competition.

The social basis

Just as the Bolshevik revolution was a critical juncture in the expression of the class cleavage, so the euro crisis and the migration crisis can be considered critical for the emergence of a transnational cleavage.

Sticky political parties

Change comes chiefly through new political parties that challenge existing parties along a new cleavage.

Seminar 5 → Electoral volatility in European multi-level politics

Electoral volatility: It measures how much voters switch their support between parties from one election to the next.

While for most of the second half of the twentieth century the prevailing interpretation was that party systems had stabilised based on ‘frozen’ political cleavages (Bartolini and Mair 1990), today the evidence shows us a more complex and unpredictable landscape.

→ de-institutionalisation of party systems

In recent decades, “meso-level” democratic institutions, typically referred to as “regional” institutions, have played an increasingly significant role.

Change, instability, and the dimensions of electoral volatility

Continuous radical changes in voting patterns and excessive shifts in the composition of the political class from one election to the next can be a sign of weakening in the organizational and representational foundations of a party system, a process known as “ party system de-institutionalization”

Electoral instability has also been a sign of citizen disengagement.

The level of electoral volatility between elections can indicate the extent to which changes in voting patterns reflect political instability. Indeed, consistently high volatility over a prolonged period may indicate that key political actors are unable to maintain stable and consistent patterns of political interaction.

The Pedersen Index is commonly used to quantify shifts in net party support between two elections → 0 indicates no change, 100 indicating complete change.

The Pedersen index is limited because it measures changes in parties’ aggregate vote shares, rather than tracking individual voters. Therefore, it can underestimate the actual level of vote switching. For example, if many voters switch between parties but these movements cancel each other out, the parties’ overall vote shares may remain almost unchanged, making volatility appear low even though substantial voter realignment has occurred.

However, it helps detect a significant rise in national electoral instability.

The Pedersen Index cannot distinguish between changes caused by voter switching and changes caused by transformations in the party system, such as parties merging, splitting, disappearing, or new parties emerging. Therefore, a high level of measured volatility does not necessarily mean that voters themselves have changed their party preferences.

When focusing on regional rather than national elections, the Pedersen index can be adjusted to account for the territorial dimension of politics.

Far‐right protest mobilisation in Europe: Grievances, opportunities and resources

We define far-right protest mobilisation as the set of demonstrative, confrontational, or violent protests in which nativist groups partake.

Mobilising on grievances

We advance hypotheses on the drivers of far‐right protest and present them in the form of three heuristic models: grievances, opportunities, and resource mobilisation.

Since the 1960s, political sociologists have suggested that changes in levels of protest mobilisation can be explained by specific preconditions fostering (or inhibiting) social grievances.

So‐called ‘grievance’ models see these factors as altering the social status quo and triggering some form of collective behaviour. To put it simply, the greater the grievances, such as in periods of worsening economic conditions and stagnation, the higher the level and magnitude of protest

Research has, in fact, associated electoral support for far‐right parties with objective socioeconomic grievances, such as rising levels of unemployment in times of economic hardship and cultural grievances linked to the presence or increased arrival of migrants → can also trigger politically motivated racism, hate crime and grassroots violence against migrants and minorities.

Previous studies have, however, shown that the far right also thrives on subjective institutional grievances, such as dissatisfaction with government, democratic institution and existing modes of organised elite‐mass political intermediation, or ‘the desire to abandon the intermediaries that stand between citizens and rulers’

• − H1a: negative economic performance (economic grievances).

• − H1b: high inflow of migrants and asylum seekers (cultural grievances).

• − H1c: high dissatisfaction with democracy (institutional grievances).

Mobilising on political and discursive opportunities

Grievances alone cannot fully explain why people protest; the political environment also matters.

Political opportunity structure theory: Explains how the political environment influences whether people decide to mobilise. It examines opportunities and constraints, such as government openness, political repression, and the ability of social movements to influence decision-makers.

The intensity of protest might hinge on the political and discursive opportunities at the contextual level, which can be broadly interpreted as the ‘openness’ of the political system to forms of collective action.

Political Opportunity Structures (POS) → refer to the formal political institutions and structures that make collective action easier or more difficult.

• Open political system: Citizens can organise protests and influence government decisions.

• Access to political institutions: Social movements can communicate their demands to politicians.

• Political repression: The government restricts demonstrations, making mobilisation more difficult.

As regards political opportunities, they refer to the availability of potential allies in government and the presence of institutional access points

• − H2b: conflict between the executive and legislative branches(POS access points).

Discursive Opportunity Structures (DOS) → refers to the ideas, beliefs, and arguments that are considered legitimate or acceptable within a society’s political culture.

These determine whether a movement’s message resonates with the public and receives attention and legitimacy.

• Widely accepted ideas: A movement demanding democratic freedoms may gain support in a society that values democracy.

• Public attitudes: A movement opposing immigration may attract support if its arguments resonate with widespread concerns about national identity.

• Media attention: A movement’s message may gain legitimacy if influential media outlets present its demands as reasonable.

Restrictions on hate speech: Laws and measures against hate speech may limit the ability of far-right movements to spread certain messages publicly.

Bans on extremist symbols and groups: These restrictions may make it more difficult for far-right movements to promote their ideology, gain visibility, and mobilise supporters.

→ If a far-right group can publicly display extremist symbols and spread its message without restrictions, it may find it easier to attract supporters. If such symbols are banned and hate speech is restricted, its opportunities for public mobilisation may decrease.

Mobilising resources

The “resource mobilisation” model complements grievance and political opportunity models. The resource mobilisation model emphasizes organisational factors and focuses on the role of mobilisation structures to turn grievances and contextual circumstances into protest.

Unlike grievance theories, which focus on why people are dissatisfied, resource mobilisation theory focuses on the capacity of movements to turn dissatisfaction into collective action.

For example, it stresses the importance of a professional organisation to mobilise public support.

Two far-right groups may share similar grievances about immigration. However, one has professional organisers, funding, a strong online presence, and established networks, while the other has very few resources. The first group may be better able to organise large demonstrations.

Symbolic resources are non-material assets that help a social movement attract supporters, gain legitimacy, and make its message persuasive.

• Public credibility: Being perceived as trustworthy by the public.

• Media visibility: Receiving attention from journalists and media outlets.

• Recognisable symbols: Flags, slogans, or logos that create a shared identity.

• Charismatic leadership: Leaders who can inspire and persuade people.

• Political connections: Relationships with influential politicians or public figures.

Visibility constitutes another symbolic resource for social movements. Especially public visibility, interpreted as the ability of a movement to establish itself and its causes in media outlets.

Material resources are the tangible and financial assets that a social movement uses to organise and carry out protests.

• Money: Funding to organise demonstrations or run campaigns.

• Equipment: Megaphones, banners, and sound systems.

• Infrastructure: Offices, meeting spaces, and transport.

• Staff and personnel: Paid organisers and campaign workers.

• Communication tools: Websites, computers, and other technology used to coordinate activities.

→ Furthermore, on top of binary distinctions between ‘movements’ and ‘parties’, we recognise a third type of collective actor in transition between these two organisational forms, that is, the ‘movement party’.

Movement party → social movements that have taken the “electoral option” but still preserve their commitment to grassroots politics and engagement in the protest arena.

Far-right collective actors’ qualification as a movement, movement party, or party essentially depends on their degree of institutionalisation.

• Social movement: Low institutionalisation. Relies mainly on protests, demonstrations, and grassroots activism.

• Movement party: Intermediate institutionalisation. Participates in elections but maintains grassroots mobilisation and protest activities.

• Political party: Higher institutionalisation. Has a formal structure and focuses primarily on elections, parliamentary representation, and policymaking.

Specifically, we expect that: Far‐right protest mobilisation will be higher when:

− H3a: far‐right collective actors endorse a radical (rather than extreme) ideology (ideology).

− H3b: far‐right collective actors enjoy high public visibility(exposure).

− H3c: far‐right collective actors are embedded in large networks (network).

− H3d: far‐right collective actors take the form of movement parties (organisation).

− H3e: far‐right collective actors are represented in public office(representation).

Explaining far‐right protest mobilisation: Grievances, opportunities and resources

In general, most of the protests in which far‐right collective actors participate are conventional gatherings such as small public meetings and assemblies, but far‐right mobilisation also features a considerable number of confrontational actions and blockades, especially but not exclusively in Central and Eastern Europe.

Across all countries surveyed, extra‐parliamentary activities involving far‐right collective actors focus overwhelmingly on nativist issues (i.e., migration, national identity, and the presence of ethnic or religious minorities) and, to a lesser extent, on security and law and order.

Still, in countries most affected by the Great Recession (notably, Italy and Greece), far‐right protest mobilisation also revolved around economic and welfare issues.

While both measures are penalised‐likelihood criteria, the comparison between the parsimonious models and the full model confirms that grievances, opportunities, and resource mobilisation are best understood as complementary rather than competitive explanations for far‐right protest mobilisation.

Economic grievances (economic outlook) and institutional grievances (satisfaction with democracy) have no statistically significant effect on far-right protest mobilisation, leading to the rejection of H1a and H1c. Although better economic conditions are associated with slightly lower mobilisation, this effect is not significant. In contrast, cultural grievances linked to immigration have a strong, statistically significant effect: countries experiencing an increase in migrants are more likely to see increased far-right protest mobilisation, supporting H1b.

The presence of right-wing governments does not significantly increase far-right protest mobilisation, leading to the rejection of H2a. However, divided government—conflict between the executive and legislative branches—increases far-right protest mobilisation.

Formal bans on extremist activities have no statistically significant effect on far-right protest mobilisation, leading to the rejection of H2c. However, counter-mobilisation (protests against the far right) is positively and significantly associated with far-right protest mobilisation, contradicting H2d. This suggests a cycle of mobilisation, where far-right protests trigger counter-protests, which may encourage further far-right mobilisation.

Ideology does not significantly affect protest mobilisation, rejecting H3a. However, public visibility (H3b) and larger networks of actors (H3c) significantly increase mobilisation.

Material resources: The type of organisation (political party, movement party, or social movement) has no significant effect, rejecting H3d. However, representation in public office significantly increases protest mobilisation, supporting H3e. Having elected MPs or MEPs provides resources that can encourage grassroots participation.

Discussion and conclusions

First, as far as grievances are concerned, far‐right protest mobilisation was strongly linked to immigration, especially in the wake of the European asylum policy crisis.

Second, political and discursive opportunities were found to affect the protest mobilisation of nativist collective actors. Protests are influenced by the political context in which they occur.

We noted that far‐right protest mobilisation is higher in contexts characterised by divided governments.

Regarding discursive factors, we noted a strong association between far‐right protest mobilisation and counter‐mobilisations, suggesting that the two tend to feed each other.

Third, our findings further substantiate the importance of resources for protest mobilisation. We have shown that protest mobilisation is more likely to occur when far‐right collective actors can count on symbolic resources (in the form of public visibility) and organisational‐material resources (in the form of networks of actors involved in protests as well as elected officials).

Economic Grievances, political grienvances, and protest

The relationship between economic grievances, political griecances, and protest

Is there a direct link between economic grievances and political protest?

There are two possible effects:

• Mobilisation: People experience economic hardship, become frustrated, and protest to demand change.

• Demobilisation: People experience economic hardship but become less likely to participate in protests or elections.

Jahoda’s latent deprivation model → Being unemployed deprives people of more than just income. When people lose these benefits, they may experience psychological difficulties and become socially isolated. Economic hardship can leave people feeling powerless, isolated, or disconnected from society. Consequently, they may become less willing or able to participate in collective action.

Rosenstone’s withdrawal hypothesis → economic difficulties can discourage political participation because people have fewer resources and less energy to devote to politics. Someone who loses their job may need to concentrate on finding employment, paying rent, and supporting their family.

→ Economic grievances can demobilize participation both in the electoral and in the protest arenas.

Economic hardship is more conducive to political mobilization when citizens perceive the economic situation as unfair or unjust, when they believe that the situation can be changed, → if they attribute causes to factors outside their own control.

We expect protests to be especially strong when economic and political grievances occur together. In other words, the effect of economic grievances on protest mobilization depends on political grievances, which can both influence and strengthen that relationship.

The indirect link means that economic grievances can lead to political grievances when people blame political actors, such as the government, for the country’s poor economic performance.

Political grievances do not necessarily originate from economic hardship. They can also result from poor political performance.

During the Great Recession in Spain and Portugal, political grievances, particularly distrust in parliament, mainly stemmed from political institutions’ lack of responsiveness and citizens’ perceptions of corruption among political elites. Economic protests are driven primarily by the combination of an economic crisis and a political crisis within a country.

The role of context conditions

We expect the political and economic conditions of a country to influence how strongly economic and political grievances lead people to participate in protests.

How context moderates the effect of economic factors on political grievances

Protest mobilization is strengthened when governments are unwilling or unable to address citizens’ economic hardship and when international actors impose strict economic conditions on national governments.

Royo argues that Spain’s economic problems were linked to institutional corruption and political decline, but citizens largely tolerated this behaviour until the economic crisis exposed the unsustainability of the economic model and triggered public outrage towards political elites.

Citizens in Central and Eastern Europe are generally expected to tolerate poor economic performance more than citizens in Western Europe.

Credible commitments

Democratic institutions help governments make credible commitments—promises that citizens can trust because the government’s power is constrained by institutions.

• Dictatorship: A dictator can confiscate citizens’ wealth at any time. Citizens, therefore, fear investing, saving, or producing wealth because the government might take it.

• Democracy: Institutions constrain government power and make it harder for rulers to arbitrarily seize private wealth. Citizens have greater confidence that their property will be protected.

• Economic growth: When citizens trust the government, they are more willing to invest, produce wealth, pay taxes, and lend money to the state.

Measuring democracy

Measuring Democracy — Summary Notes

Political scientists measure democracy to understand how democratic a country is and how its democracy changes over time. However, there is no single universally accepted method because scholars conceptualize democracy differently.

1. Binary measurement (Przeworski et al., 2000)

Democracy is measured as an either/or category: a country is either democratic or non-democratic.

• Uses a minimalist definition of democracy.

• Classifies countries into two categories.

• Advantage: Simple and clear to compare.

• Disadvantage: Oversimplifies reality because it ignores differences between countries that are both classified as democratic.

2. Continuous measurement (degree of democracy)

Instead of classifying countries as simply democratic or non-democratic, scholars measure how democratic a country is.

Several projects use this approach:

Advantage: Provides more detailed information about differences in democratic quality.

Disadvantage: Depends on experts applying measurement criteria consistently and accurately across different countries and historical periods.

→ The main methodological problem

Measuring democracy raises two important questions:

• Conceptualization: What does democracy mean? For example, should it require only competitive elections, or also civil liberties and political participation?

• Measurement: How can we accurately measure the concept we have defined?

Different definitions and measurement methods can produce different assessments of the same country.

→ Key distinction for your exam

Key takeaway: There is no universally accepted way to measure democracy. The choice depends on how democracy is defined and whether researchers want to measure its mere presence or its degree and quality.

You’re describing a Prisoner’s Dilemma in international trade. Your notes mean that both countries would benefit from cooperating, but fear of being exploited leads them to choose a worse outcome.

Example: Two countries trading goods

Imagine two countries, A and B. Each can choose to export either high-quality or low-quality goods.

Why do both countries export low quality?

1. If both export high quality: Both benefit from mutually beneficial trade.

2. If one exports high quality while the other exports low quality: The country exporting high quality is worse off because it gives more than it receives.

3. To avoid being exploited: Each country has an incentive to export low quality, protecting itself against the possibility that the other country will do the same.

Consequently, both countries choose low-quality exports, even though both would be better off if they cooperated and exported high-quality goods.

This is the Prisoner’s Dilemma: individually rational decisions lead to a collectively worse outcome.

Key concept for your exam:

• Nash equilibrium: Neither country can improve its outcome by changing its strategy unilaterally, given the other country’s choice.

• Collectively suboptimal outcome: Both countries end up worse off than they would under mutual cooperation.

Remember: Fear of being cheated prevents cooperation, even when cooperation would benefit both sides.