Comparative Politics Notes

Chapter 1: Introduction

• Politics: Competition for public power.
  • Power: Ability to extend one’s will.
• Comparative Method: Comparing cases to draw conclusions.
  • Inductive Reasoning: Studying a case first, then generating a hypothesis.
    • Example: Observing nationalism in North Korea to understand authoritarian rule.
  • Deductive Reasoning: Starting with a hypothesis and then gathering evidence.
    • Example: Applying the hypothesis of nationalism to different countries.
• Institutions: Self-perpetuating organizations or activities valued for their own sake; they structure political life by establishing rules, norms and values.
  • Example: Baseball as an American institution.
    • Legitimacy and indispensability command authority and influence human behaviors. Baseball provides norms and rules to follow.
  • Formal Institutions: Based on officially sanctioned, relatively clear rules.
  • Informal Institutions: Unwritten and unofficial.
• Area Studies: Concentrating focus on a limited geographical area.
  • Complicates the comparative method and comparative politics.
  • Example: Studying communist Cuba in relation to other Latin American countries, not China or Russia.
  • Uneven research around the world limits the knowledge of the politics of other countries
• Selection Bias: Focusing on cases that support a hypothesis instead of considering all cases.
• Endogeneity: The difficulty of distinguishing cause and effect.
  • Example: Does low female literacy limit public participation, empowering autocratic leaders, or do autocratic leaders limit female literacy by not caring about voting equality?
• Modernization Theory: As societies develop, they become capitalist democracies with shared values.
  • A set of hypotheses about how countries develop using deductive reasoning.
  • Generalized from Western European countries and the United States, assuming all countries would follow the same path unless diverted by communism or fascism.
• Behavioral Revolution: Social scientists using statistics and behaviors to predict future political activity, spurred by modernization theory and the Cold War.
  • A set of methods to approach politics using inductive reasoning.
• Types of Methodologies:
  • Qualitative Method: Involves documentary research with interviews, observations, and archival work.
    • Narrowly focused, deep investigations of one or some cases of scholarly expertise or a bunch of cases spread around the globe and spanning centuries. Mainly using inductive reasoning, beginning with cases and generating theories.
  • Quantitative Method: Uses a wide variety of cases globally, focusing on statistical analysis and mathematical models.
    • Deductive reasoning is applied, where a model/hypothesis is tested on different countries.

Chapter 2: States

• State: An organization that maintains a monopoly of violence over a territory.
  • A set of institutions that seeks to wield the most force within a territory, establishing order and deterring challengers from the inside-out.
  • Protects citizens from external armies and internal crimes in exchange for money.
  • Relies on sovereignty and power.
  • Strongly Institutionalized.
  • The public views it as vital, appropriate, and legitimate.
• Regime: Fundamental rules and norms of politics.
  • Long-term goals that guide the state on where power should reside and how power should be used (in accordance with freedoms and equalities).
  • Nondemocratic regime: Limits public participation and favors those in power.
  • Democratic regime: The public has a large role in governance and individual rights.
• Government: Leadership that runs the state.
  • Composed of democratically elected officials, monarchs, or forceful leaders.
  • Limited by the existing regime when trying to realize their ideas of governing a state.
  • Weakly institutionalized (easily replaceable).
• Consensus: Individuals band together to protect themselves and create common rules.
  • Leadership chosen by the people with security through cooperation (Democratic).
• Coercion: Individuals are brought together by a ruler who imposes authority and monopolizes power.
  • Security through domination (Authoritarian).
• Legitimacy: Recognition as right and proper, giving the right to authority and power.
  • Traditional Legitimacy: Valid because it has always been that way.
    • Based on cultural values or history; strongly institutionalized.
    • Example: Monarch family.
  • Charismatic Legitimacy: Based on the power of ideas or beliefs.
    • Embodied by those who can move and persuade the public through ideas and the manner in which they present them; weakly institutionalized.
    • Example: John F. Kennedy, or Jesus.
  • Rational-Legal Legitimacy: Based on a system of laws and procedures that are presumed to be neutral or rational.
    • Less about the person in charge and more about the office they hold; strongly institutionalized.
• Devolution: Decentralization of government; moving power closer to the people instead of keeping it at the national level.
• Weak State: Not well institutionalized, lacking authority and legitimacy.
  • Failed State: An extreme version of a weak state where structures break down.
    • Low capacity and low autonomy.
• Capacity: The ability of a state to wield power to carry out basic tasks of providing security and reconciling freedom and equality.
  • Requires money, organization, leadership, and legitimacy.
• Autonomy: The ability to wield power independently of the public or international actors.
  • Informal, practical ability to act independently, unlike sovereignty, which is formal and legal independence.

Chapter 3: Nations and Society

• Society: Complex human organization, a collection of people bound by shared institutions that define how human relations should be.
• Ethnic Identity: Institutions that bind people together through common culture (language, religion, location, customs, appearance, history).
  • A shared identity assigned at birth (ascription).
  • A social, not political, identity, although it has become political, distinguishing one group from another.
• Nation: A group that desires self-government, often through an independent state.
  • A group of individuals with the same political aspirations.
• National Identity: An institution that binds people together through common political aspirations (self-governance and sovereignty).
  • Often, but not always, derived from ethnic identity.
  • Example: American nationalism, lacking a single ethnic group.
• Nationalism: Pride in one's people and belief in their sovereign political destiny separate from others.
• Citizenship: An individual or group's relation to the state.
  • Citizens swear allegiance to their state, and the state, in turn, is obligated to provide certain rights or benefits.
• Nation-State: A sovereign state encompassing one dominant nation that it claims to embody and represent.
  • Example: Napoleonic France, inspiring and threatening Frenchmen to follow him to take over Europe on the basis of being part of the same nation-state.
• Ethnic Conflict: Conflict between ethnic groups struggling to achieve certain political or economic goals at each other's expense.
  • Each group may hope to increase its power by gaining greater control over existing political institutions like government or state.
  • Example: Ethnic groups in Afghanistan fighting for power over each other, not autonomy or to break off into another state.
• National Conflict: Seeking to gain (or prevent others from gaining) sovereignty and autonomy.
  • Example: The US Civil War.
• Political Ideologies:
  • Radicals: Believe in revolutionary change (Far left).
  • Liberals: Believe in evolutionary change (Left).
  • Conservatives: Change might not be necessary (Right).
  • Reactionaries: Desire a return to tradition (Far right).
• Liberalism: High priority on individual and economic freedom.
  • Liberal democracy: A system of politics, economy, and society based on freedom, competition, participation, and contestation.
• Communism: The state should control all economic resources to produce true economic equality (against the bourgeois economy from a liberal democracy).
• Socialism (Social democracy): A strong role for private ownership while heavily advocating for economic equality.
• Fascism: Justifies a hierarchy in society; rejects democracy and believes the state should have the highest power and control all of society.
• Anarchism: Rejects the notion of a state altogether.
• Fundamentalism: Theocracy.
• Culture: The content of the institutions that help define a society.
• Political Culture: A society's norms for political activity.
  • A determining factor in what will dominate the countries regime.