Untitled Flashcards Set

Legitimacy

• attitudes of citizen and state

• distinction between legitimate and illegitimate exercises of power

Legitimate: people think it RIGHT that the person/body exercises power

• authority is the legitimate exercise of power

The difference between being popular and legitimate e.g. may not be of same party as person in power but accept they should be

Difference between stability and legitimacy. Even illegitimate governments can be in power a long time through force

useful for leaders- fewer threats

Not just democracies can be legitimate (such as England's monarchy)

How2BeLegit

1. Ideological/cultural/historical claim (civil war, race, religion, etc)

2. Process election/chosen/inherited

3. claims vary across regime type

“rizzler”

Political Culture

• The attitudes and beliefs held communally by a people that form the basis for their political behavior

• “Political Culture is the pattern of individual attitudes and orientations toward politics among the members of a political system. It is the subjective realm which underlines and gives meaning to political attitudes”

3 Types of Political Culture

• Parochial: suitable for traditional system

• Subject: suitable for centralized authoritarian systems

• Participant: suitable for democracy

Political Socialization

• The process by which individuals internalize and develop their political values, ideas, attitudes, and perceptions via the agents of socialization. Political socialization occurs through socialization processes, which can be structured as primary and secondary socialization.

Attitudes shaped by family, school, work, friends, media, gov

• Some are implicit (friends, parents) some are explicit (government, civics)

Political Culture of a Democracy - a Participant Culture

• Support for the state and regime

• Tolerance - but maybe not for other ideologies

• Active participation

• High level of interest and information

Criticisms of the argument about democratic political culture

• Factually over-stated, also great variation across populations

• If the regime is authoritarian why participate?

 Criticism arguments about culture (eg. Huntington's clash of civilizations)

• Human history one of “civilization” since West has “won” the war of the economies (or seemed to) clashes between civilizations replace those of ideology

• ‘Rise’ of islam 

Citizens and Democracy

• Legitimacy

• Political Socialization

• Political Culture

• Political Culture of Democracy

Voting & Electoral systems

1. General comments

2. Elections and Legitimacy - who/what is being legitimized, how?

1. Established authority- the government or the state

2. Idea of opposition

3. Ordinary People 

How does it work?

1. Ritual

2. Due Process

3. Representation

4. Participation

In whose eyes?

• Population

• Opponents

• Military

• International community

• Themselves

3. Elections as choice or symbol

   1. Examples of limits of choice (Russia)

      1. Vote buying

      2. Election rigging (ballot stuffing, dishonest counting)

      3. Dummy/Restricted ‘Opponent’

2. Western elections

   1. Malapportionment - When the amount of seats elected in a district is not proportional to the population

   2. Gerrymandering - Drawing boundaries to give an advantage - even if equal sized; ‘cracking’ and ‘packing’ are common techniques

      1. Cracking: splitting groups of people with similar characteristics (eg. party affiliation/race) into different districts

      2. Packing: the opposite of cracking, distributing voters into 

*with both malapportionment and gerrymandering politicians choose voters don't

3. Duverger’s law - The electoral system gives voters incentives to combine, thus fewer parties

   1. “First past the post” system = 2 big parties

Proportional systems

2. Proportional representation - amount of voter support = seats in parliament (eg. Sweden)

4. A. voters | b. Paradox of voting

4. Broad takeaways

10/22/24

With Proportional Representation… Elections are different

• Pick the party but not the candidate (UK), Pick the party and specific candidate (Belgium)

Consequences of PR

• Many parties!

• This may mean coalition governments

• Some implementations can be quite complicated; 

Other electoral systems

• Open list pr

• Single transferable vote

• Mixed member proportional

• Ranked Choice Voting 

  • Problems of first past the post

  • May not have a winner who is majority-preferred, but usually has to have 50% to win

Voters

• “The Voters are not what elections are about”

• Maybe just need a few people to pay attention and change their views at election time

• An attentive group can make elections “work” as a form of bottom-up control 

• People who change their minds aren't always most informed

Elections don’t necessarily give democratic outcomes