Through these first several units, you will learn the general concepts of political science, setting the stage for the remainder of the course.

What is Politics?

Politics - has to do with human decisions and is inherently social

• there is no such thing as ‘political solitaire’

  • political decisions and ideas impact and affect the society

  • political decisions ALWAYS take place within the community (called a political system or public sphere)

    • most social decisions are made in the private sphere

Political Science - the study of human decisions

Summary: Politics is social, public, and have a sense of authority

Authority: power vested in individuals or groups with expectations that decisions will be carried out and respected

those who have political authority have access to the “means of coercion”

• force, dominance, and differential access to monetary resources

Politics ultimately refers to the use of authoritative and coercive means

• who gets to employ the “means of coercion” and for what purposes typically determines those in power

Comparative Politics:

• it is a subject of study: comparing the nature of politics and the political process across different political systems

• it is a method of study: how and why we make such comparisons

System - a set of interdependent parts

• has boundaries toward outside environment with which it interacts

• examples: ecosystems, social systems such as family, and political systems

Political systems are a specific kind of social system which makes authoritative public decisions

• set of institutions such as Parliament's, bureaucracies, and courts, that formulate and implement the collective goals of a society or of groups within it

• outside institutions such as churches, schools, corporations, media, etc. make up outside “environment” political systems

Legitimacy: the popular acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a regime (”basically the right to rule”)

• rule of legitimacy is preferred over rule of force

• poor legitimacy results in public policy failure

State: a political system that has sovereignty

Sovereignty: independent legal authority over a population in a particular territory, based on self-determination sovereignty rests with political decision-makers

• internal sovereignty: the right, without external intervention, to determine matters having to do with one’s own citizens

• external sovereignty: the right to conclude binding agreements (treaties) with other states

state vs. country vs. nation vs. nation-state

• a state is a political system that has sovereignty, a self governing political entity

• what is a country?

  • the term country can be used interchangeably with state

nation: a tightly-knit ground of people who share a common culture

nation-state: a nation which has the same borders

What is a Government?

Government: organisations of individuals empowered to make binding decisions on behalf of a particular community

Different types with different goals:

• Nightwatchmen State - John Locke advocated for this

  • Someone who watches/protects people at night —> police officers, security guards

  • Just focused on providing law & order —> individual decision making is kept with you

  • Laid back form of government

• Welfare State

  • Focuses on providing for the individual

  • Government is much more involved in the decision making of the country

  • Could be universal healthcare (NHS in the UK)

• Regulatory State

  • regulating business activities and the economy

the level of government involvement in everyday life differentiates between these states

State of Nature: condition of humankind if no government existed

Spectrum of State of Nature:

Jean-Jacques Rousseau on one side - John Locke in the middle - Thomas Hobbes on the other side

• philosophers used their ideas about the State of Nature to identify an ideal social contract (Agreement) on which to build a political system)

• Thomas Hobbes (Absolutism) (1588-1679)

  • pessimist; thought that the State of Nature was mercilessly inhospitable, a situation of eternal conflict of all against all, and a source of barbarism and continuous fear

  • believed humans were inherently evil —> needs a government (specifically an absolute state with an absolute monarch)

  • Hobbes stated that the “life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

  • wrote during the English Civil War (Charles I was beheaded) —> Parliament having control (uncertainty and state of fear)

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Democracy)

  • optimist; saw the State of nature as an ideal that existed before the creation of governments (humanity before its fall from grace)

  • believed that “man is born free: and that governments take away this natural born right from individuals

• John Locke (1680s)

  • No “Leviathan,” as Hobbes proposed, but rather limited government (Somewhere in between the two)

  • believed humans needed natural rights and that governments should protect those natural rights

  • writing during the Glorious Revolution: William & Mary came in power

    • accepted concessions for the people

    • people had more control and power in the government

    • Parliament had more control and say in the government

Public vs Private sphere

the public sphere deals with collective decisions that extend beyond the individual and typically involve government action

private sphere deals with actions that do not bind anyone outside a group (e.g., family, friends)

the values placed within this sphere influence political, involvement, as well as the type of political decisions an individual will make

Boundaries exist between the two, but these boundaries can change

Arguments for & against government

For:

• community/nation-building

  • helps create a national political order

• security and order

• protecting property and other rights

• social justice

• protecting the weak

• promoting economic efficiency and growth

Against:

• violation of basic rights

• economic inefficiency

  • monopolies, job protection

• government for private gain

  • rent-seeking: self interested political pursuit of private gain

• vested interests

  • individuals, groups, or firms that benefit from specific government hons, contracts, or policies have a “special” interest in existing government; once establish, agencies, and politics tend to live on far beyond their usefulness (I.e. the House of Lords in the UK)

Supranational Organizations: An international organization, or union, whereby member states transcend national boundaries or interests to share in the decision-making and vote on issues pertaining to the wider grouping

• Some such organizations are political in nature, some focus on economic matters, whereas others combine politics, economics, and social matters

• supranational organizations attempt to and/or succeed in exerting controls of authority in sovereign states

• European Union as an example:

  • Membership is contingent on complying with the decisions that the member states have made

  • Have to give up large parts of their sovereignty to this supranational organization in order to create a common market economy that can compete globally

Organisations:

• BRICS

• The UN

• The EU

• The World Bank

• World Trade Organization

The Diversity of States

• since WWII 127 new countries have join the 68 states that were recognized

  • Breakup of Yugoslavia and USSR

  • Vatican City - smallest legally independent entity in geographic size and population

  • Russia - largest landmass

  • India & China - largest populations

• Political implications of geographic and population size

  • big countries are not always the most important (Canada)

  • small ones can be VERY important: Cuba, Vatican City

• Area & population do not determines a country’s political system

• Geographic location can have strategic implications

Diversity & Similarity of States

no matter the geographic size, population size or other points of difference, ALL states face similar challenges:

• building community

  • absence of a common identity can have severe political consequences as conflicts can occur over national, ethnic, or religious ties

    • easier for some, like japan, who is pretty homogeneous and shares a long history

    • difficult for others, like Nigeria, with over 250 tribes and whose history is rife with colonial control

  • Nationality & Ethnicity

    • groups that are physically quite similar but different by language, religion, customs and historical memory (Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims)

    • colonial legacies have led to ethno-religious conflicts (Hutus/Tutsis in Rwanda, Muslims/Hindus in Pakistan/India)

  • Language

    • over 5000 languages in the world today, only 8 considered world langues

    • political systems cannot avoid committing themselves to one or several languages

      • conflicts over educational politics or language use in government (I.e. Quebec)

  • Religious Beliefs & Fundamentalism

    • states vary in terms of religious characteristics; can be a rallying point or a source of conflict

    • fundamentalism is characterized as a backlash against modernity

    • found in the US after WWI

    • rise of fundamentalism worldwide has affected everyone as many extremist wings of fundamentalist extremists have employed violence as a means to get attention

  • Political Cleavage: the national, ethnic, religious, and linguistic divisions that systematically affect political allegiances and policies

    • Cumulative Cleavage: Pitting the same people against each other on many different issues —> exact polarization

    • Cross-cutting Cleavage: groups that share a common interest on one issue are likely to be on opposite sides of a different issue

• fostering economic & social development

  a political system cannot satisfy its citizens if it does not foster social and economic development

  • living standards

    • globalization, democratization, and marketization

    • HDI: Human Development Index

  • structure of the labor force

    • agriculture vs urbanization

      • higher percentage of labor force in agriculture, they are less industrialized and developed

  • wide gaps in living standards still exists across countries of the world

  • economic indicators:

    • GNP: Gross National Product, total economic output per person

    • GDP: Gross Domestic Product, a measure of a country's overall economic output; the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year

    • PPP: Purchasing Power Parity, a comparative measure of the economies of countries which takes into account differences in price levels from one country to another; ****not perfect but tends to be the best comparative economic indicator for us!

  • problems of economic development

    • unequal distribution of resources and opportunities

    • first stages of industrialization may actually increase income inequality even though economic development may narrow the differences eventually, but that is not always the case

    • population growth

• advancing democracy & civil liberties

  • Democratization is the second major force transforming contemporary political systems.

    • Includes the enhancement of human rights and the expansion of freedom.

  • Waves of Democratization (as per Samuel Huntington)

    • First: during the first half of the 20th century: Western states

    • Second: 1943 to 1960s: newly independent states and defeated authoritarian powers

    • Third: 1974 involving Southern Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and a number of African states.

    • Result: democracy has become more of a common goal of the global community

  • The most important general distinction in classifying political systems:

    • Democratic systems versus Authoritarian systems (two ends of the spectrum)

    • Democracy: A political system in which citizens enjoy a number of basic civil and political rights, and in which their most important political leaders are elected in free and fair elections and are accountable under the rule of law

      • checks & balances (encouraged)

      • direct representation

      • protection of certain human rights

      • majority rule

      • free & fair elections

    • Authoritarianism: lacks one or several of the defining features of democracy

      • Oligarchy: “rule of a few;” important rights withheld from the majority

      • Totalitarianism

    • Democracy does not guarantee human rights and civil liberties for everyone!!!

• Two major ones:

  • the process of economic development

  • political democratization

Structural-Functional systems framework

system: suggests an object having interdependent parts, acting within a setting or an environment with boundaries towards that outside environment

structure: specialized agencies that governments create in order to carry out its many activities, such as parliaments, bureaucracies, administrative agencies, and courts

function: the actions or activities assigned to or required or expected of a person or group

inputs: the term denoting either an entrance or changes that are inserted into a system and which activate/modify a process

a political systems exists in both an international environment and a domestic environment

a system receives inputs from these environments

international:

• exchanges among countries may vary in many ways: small to great (military)

• interdependence has increased enormously in the lase decades (globalization)

• diplomatic communications can also mold this international environment

domestic:

• economic and social systems

6 types of political structures:

• executive branch:

• judicial branch: courts

• legislative branch:

• bureaucracy: departments that will work on nitty-gritty details of government

• political parties:

• interest groups: citizen participation

*these are formal organizations engaged in political activities.

process functions: distinctive activities necessary for policy to be made and implemented in any kind of political system

• interest articulation: expressing what we are concerned about

  • involved individuals and groups expressing their need and demands in government

  • interest aggregation: combining different demands into policy proposals backed by significance political resources

  • policy-making: decides which policy proposals are to become authoritative rules

  • carries out and enforces public policies; policy adjudication settles disputes about their application

system functions: three additional functions which are not directly involved in making and implementing public policy - socialization, recruitment, and communication are fundamentally important

• they determine whether or not the system will be maintained or changed

  • political socialization: how political attitudes are shaped —> involves families, schools, communications media, churches, and all the various political structures that develop, reinforce, and transform the political culture, and the attitudes of political significance in the society

  • political recruitment: refers to the selection of people for political activity and government offices

  • political communication: refers to the flow of information through society and through the various structures that make up the political system

policy functions (AKA outputs): the implementations of political processes

What are outcomes?

• Information, event, object, or state of being produced as a result or consequence of a plan, process, accident, effort or other similar action or occurrence

• Outcomes generally result in new inputs, in new demands for legislation or for administrative action, and in increases or decreases in the amount of support given to the political system and incumbent officeholders

interest articulation —> interest aggregation —> policy making —> policy implementation and adjudication —> policy functions or extraction, regulation, and distribution (now an output) —> feedback (now an input) —> repeat

Types of Regimes

Authoritarianism (One end of the spectrum): lacks one or several of the defining features of democracy

• Autocracy:

  • Ruled by one

  • Different types:

    • absolute monarchy

      • born into it

      • hereditary succession

      • absolute control

        • Examples:

        • The Romanovs in Russia

        • Louis 14th

    • dictatorship

      • one person having complete control

      • associated with military

      • gained power by force

    • tyrants

      • oppressive

• Oligarchy

  • Ruled by a few

  • Ruling cliques

  • Various people coming together

  • Different types:

    • military juntas

      • group of military leaders exerting controls over a nation

    • one-party states

      • one party who controls who is in control

• Totalitarianism —> amps up Absolutism (20th century construct)

  • Different types:

    • fascism

      • extreme nationalism

      • leaders exert complete control over people’s lives

        • reaching into different aspects

      • came from the Italians

      • Different types:

        • Nazism

          • Hitler brought a biological aspect into it

        • Corporatism

          • incorporates the leaders of different interest groups

            • not every interest group was represented

      • Falangism

        • Spanish version

    • communism

      • eventually no government —> to be a true egalitarian system

      • had scape-goats:

        • blamed industrialists & capitalists

        • becomes totalitarism when it becomes stalinism

      • Different types:

        • Leninism & Stalinism

          • Leninism & Marxism were not total control

          • Stalinism is total control

        • Maoism

          • incorporating more of the lower classes (farmers & agricultural workers)

Democracy (difference between types is how the executive is elective)

• Parliamentary

  • A person is elected within their party. If their party wins majority in Parliament, they become the prime minister. (PM emerges from the Parliament)

    • fusion of powers between the executive and legislature branch

  • Electoral rules (different types):

    • Majoritarian

      • Executive

        • Collective/effective---PM and cabinet (head of government or chief executive)

        • The effective executive (PM and cabinet) is a committee of the legislature

        • Ceremonial: monarch or elected president (head of state)

      • majority vote of their electoral rule

        • majority (more than half)

    • Representational

      • Executive

        • Collective/effective--PM and cabinet (head of government or chief executive)

        • The effective executive (PM and cabinet) is a committee of the legislature

        • Ceremonial: monarch or elected president (head of state)

      • proportional representation of their electoral rule

        • % of votes = % of seats in the legislature (above a threshold)

        • Multiparty system---no party captures a majority of seats

        • Coalition governments (two or more parties form the collective executive)

      • single-member district plurality (”first-past-the-post”)

        • AKA: SMDP, FPTP, Simple Plurality, “First-past-the-post”

        • electoral rules guarantee that one party will capture a majority of sets with a plurality of the vote

          • plurality (most amount)

        • Two-party dominant system (two parties alternating as the collective executive)

        • The party capturing the majority of seats following a general election forms "the government" (the collective executive)

• Presidential

  • Executive

    • Individual executive

    • Independently elected

    • President is chief executive and chief of state

  • Directly elected by the people (president is independently elected)

  • Electoral rules

    • Legislature and executive elected independently of one another for a fixed term

    • constitution grants certain powers to each branch of government

Examples:

• Federal PR

  • India

  • Germany

• Federal PM

  • Australia

  • Canada

• Federal Presidential

  • The United States

  • Latin American Republics (I.e. Colombia)

• Unitary PR

  • Western Europe:

    • Spain, Italy, Portugal, Scandinavian countries, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, etc.

• Unitary PM

  • UK

  • Ireland

• Unitary Presidential

  • Central America (Honduras, Costa Rica, etc.)

Geographic Distribution of Power (Spectrum)

• Unitary: A state in which all power is centrally located and is governed as a single entity

• Federal: A state in which power is divided between a central authority and constituent political units

• Confederal: Is a loose relationship among a number of smaller political units. The vast majority of political power rests with the local governments; the central federal government has very little power

• Chart:

  Parliamentary Presidential Chart.pdf

Political Culture & Political Socialization

Political culture:

• The public attitude towards politics and their role within the political system

• Political culture is transmitted from one generation to another.

• What are “cultural/political norms”?

  • behavior patterns that are typical of specific groups.

  • behaviors are learned from parents, teachers, peers, and others whose values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors take place in the context of their own organizational culture.

Consensual political culture:

• citizens tend to agree on the appropriate means of making political decisions and agree on the major problems facing the society and how to solve them

Conflicting political culture:

• the citizens are sharply divided, often on both the legitimacy of the regime and solutions to major problems

A country’s political culture includes its citizens’ orientations at three levels:

• The political system (system level)

• The political and policymaking process (process level)

• Policy outputs and outcomes (policy level)

• Chart:

  https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPjYJEM9oazDqEAFgG0cDnfI40gCa5YIxkLWsvBHBdONtxUOAlJse2S_l_a10LkOYYeuo&usqp=CAU

• System Level

  • It is difficult for any political system to endure if it lacks the support of its citizens.

    • Feelings of national pride are considered an affective, emotional tie to a political system.

• Feelings of popular legitimacy are another foundation for a successful political system.

  • Citizens may grant legitimacy to a government for different reasons.

    • Tradition, ideology, elections, or religion

  • In systems with low legitimacy, people often resort to violence or extra-governmental actions to solve political disagreements.

• Process Level

  • The second level of the political culture involves what the public expects of the political process.

  • Broadly speaking, three different patterns describe the citizens’ role in the political process.

    • Participants are involved as actual or potential participants in the political process.

      • informed about politics and make demands on the polity, granting their support to political leaders based on performance

    • Subjects passively obey government officials and the law, but they do not vote or actively involve themselves in politics.

    • Parochials are hardly aware of government and politics.

      • they may be illiterates, rural people living in remote areas, or simply people who ignore politics and its impact on their lives

• Policy Level

  • What is the appropriate role of government?

    • Policy expectations vary across the globe.

    • Some policy goals such as economic well-being are valued by nearly everyone.

    • Variation in terms of what is expected relates to a nation’s circumstances and cultural traditions.

  • One of the basic measures of government performance is its ability to meet the policy expectations of its citizens.

  • Expectations regarding the functioning of government: outputs (providing welfare and security) or process features (rule of law and procedural justice)

• When a country is deeply divided in its political values and these differences persist over time, distinctive political subcultures may develop.

  • They have sharply different points of view on some critical political matters, such as the boundaries of the nation, the nature of the regime, or the correct ideology;

  • they affiliate with different political parties and interest groups, read different newspapers, and even have separate social clubs and sorting groups;

  • thus they are exposed to quite distinctive patterns of learning about politics.

• Political cultures are sustained or changed as people acquire their attitudes and values.

• Political socialization refers to the way in which political values are formed

  • Most children acquire their basic political values and behavior patterns at a relatively early age.

  • Some attitudes will evolve and change throughout life (lifelong process).

Political socialization can either be direct or indirect.

Direct socialization involves the explicit communication of information, values, or feelings toward politics.

Indirect socialization occurs when political views are inadvertently molded by our experiences.

institutions and organizations that influence political attitudes.

• The family

• Schools

• Religious institutions

• Peer groups

• Social class and gender

• Mass media

• Interest groups

• Political parties

• Direct contact with governmental structures (personal experiences)

Trends

democratization:

• the process of transforming an institution to conform to democratic norms

modernization:

• the act of making something current; bringing something from the past into the present; sometimes referred to as westernization

marketization:

• a greater public acceptance of free markets and private profit incentives, rather than a government-managed economy

globalization:

• the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture