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Comparative government and politicsChapter 1: key concepts
Government and governance
Government: the institutions and structures through which societies are governed
--> small groups of people can make decisions by themselves, for larger groups this is difficult. They need to
develop procedures and institutions
Institutions: a formal organization or practice with a political purpose or effect, marked by durability and
internal complexity
Political system: the interactions and organizations through which a society reaches and successfully
enforces collective decisions.
--> a political system can be designated as the interactions through which values are authoritatively
allocated for a society; this is what distinguishes a political system from other systems lying in its
environment
Governance: the process by which decisions laws, and policies are made, with or without the input of formal
institutions
--> this highlights the process and quality of decision-making
Good governance should; be accountable, transparent, efficient, responsive and inclusive (this is an ideal)
Politics and power
Politics: the process by which people negotiate and compete in the process of making and executing shared
or collective decisions
Three aspects of politics:
It is a collective activity, occurring between and among people. A lone castaway on a desert
island could not engage in politics, but if there were two castaways on the same island, they
would have a political relationship.
It involves making decisions regarding a course of action to take, or a disagreement to be
resolved.
Once reached, political decisions become authoritative policy for the group, binding and
committing its members (even if some of them continue to resist, which is - in itself - a political
activity)
Politics according to Aristotle is a peaceful process of open discussion leading to collective decisions
acceptable to all stakeholders in society. In reality it is more a competitive struggle for power and resources
between people and groups seeking their own advantage.
Power: the capacity to bring about intended
effects. The term is often used as a synonym
for influence, but is also used more narrowly
to refer to more forceful modes of influence
notably, getting one's way by threats.
,First dimension: power should be jugded by identifying whose views prevail when the actors involved posses
conflicting views on what should be done. The greater the correspondence between a person's views and
decisions reached, the greater is that person's influence: more wins indicate more power.
Second dimension: focuses on the capacity to keep issues off the political agenda by preventing the
emergence of topics which should threaten the values or interests of decision-makers.
Third dimension: broadens our conception of power by extending it to cover the formation, rather than
merely the expression, of preferences. It focuses on on manupilating preferences rather than just preventing
their expression.
Where the first and second dimension assume conflicting preferences, the third dimension adresses the idea
of a manipulated concensus. E.g. in war time governments often seek to sustain public morale by preventing
news of military defeats or high casualities from seeping into public domain.
The most efficient form of power is one that allows us to shape people's information and preferences, thus
preventing the first and second dimension coming into play.
The state, authority, and legitimacy
Authority: the right to rule. Authority creates its own power, so long as people accept that the person in
authority has the right to make decisions.
Power is the capacity to act, authority is the aknowledged right to do so. Weber said that in a relationship of
authority, the ruled implement the command as if they had adopted it spontaneously, for its own sake.
Authority is the foundation for a state
Three ways of validating power according to Weber:
By tradition, or the accepted way of doing things
By charisma, or intense commitment to a leader and his or her message
By appeal to legal-rational norms, based on the rule-governed powers of an office, rather than
a person
Legitimacy: the condition of being legitimate. A legitimate system of government is one based on authority,
and those subject to its rule reconize its rights to make decisions.
When a state is accepted by its citizens and other states with which it deals, it is described a legitimate.
We speak of the authority of a leader and the legitimacy of a state.
Ideology
Ideology: a system of connected beliefs, a shared view of the world, or a blueprint for how politcs,
economiscs, and society should be structured.
figuur 1.1 invoegen
Eventhough ideologies may have ended, we still use them; placing them on a spectrum from left to right.
Comparative politics
Comparative politics: the systematic study of government and politics in different countries, designed to
better understanf them by drawing out their contrasts and similarities.
Core goal: to understand how government and politcs works by examining its varieties scross range of cases.
Broadening understanding
First strength of comparative approac is improving our understanding of government and politics.
Understanding other countries helps in political relationships
, Predicting political outcomes
Comparison helps us make generalizations that can help predict the outcome of politcal events. E.g the
outcome of elections.
Social sciences dont make laws like physical and nature sciences.
Classifying political systems
Typology: a system of classification by which states, institutions, processes, political cultures, and so on are
divided into groups or types with common sets of attributes.
The ideal typology is simple, neat, consistent, logical, and as real and useful to the casual observer as it is to
jounalists, political leaders, or politcal scientists.
Three Worlds system: a political typology that devided tje world along ideological lines, with states labelled
according to the side they took in the Cold War.
First world: whealthe, democratic industrialized states, most of which were partners in the
Western alliance against communism
Second world: communist systems, including most of those states ranged against the Western
alliance
Third world: poorer, less democratic, and less developed states, some of which took sides in
the Cold War, but some of which did not
Gross domestic product (GPD): the core measure of the size of economies, calculated by giving a monetary
value to all goods and services produced within a country in a given year, regardless of who owns the
different means of production.
This is the sum of domestic and foreign economic output of the residents of a country in a given year. Per
capita GPD gives a better idea of the relative economic development.
Focus 1.1 Hobbes's case for government
The case for government was made by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. His starting point was the fundamental
equality in our ability to inflict harm on others. So arises a clash of ambition and fear of attack: from this
equality of ability, arises equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. Without a ruler to keep us in check,
the situation becomes grim. People therefore agree to set up an absolute government to avoid a life that
would otherwise be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'.
Focus 1.2 two options for classifying political systems
Two most compelling typologies:
Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) maintains a Democracy Index. These include factors as the
protection of basic political freedoms, the fairness of elections, the security of voters, election
turnout rates, the freedom of politcal parties to operate, the independence of the judiciary
and the media, and arrangements for the transfer of power. Then each state gets a score out
of 10, and get sorted in 4 groups. Full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and
authoritarian regimes.
The Freedom in the World index. It looks at records of states in the areas of polical rights and
civil liberties and gives them a score out of 100. Then they get divided into three groups; free,
partly free and not free.
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