Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction – 10th edition
By Rod Hague, Martin Harrop & John McCormick
Chapter 1: Key Concepts
A concept is an idea, term or category such as democracy or power, that is best approached with a
definition restricted to its inherent characteristics.
A conception builds on a concept by describing the understanding, perspectives or interpretations of
a concept.
In order to better understand human behaviour, we need to examine different cases, examples, and
situations in order to draw general conclusions about what drives people to act the way they do.
Government and governance
Government consists of all organizations charged with reaching and executing decisions for the whole
community. By definition, the police, the armed forces, public servants and judges all form part of the
government, even though such officials are not necessarily appointed by political methods such as
elections. Thomas Hobbes judged that government provides us with protection from the harm that
we would otherwise inflict on each other in our quest for gain and glory. By granting a monopoly of
the sword to a government, we transform anarchy into order, securing peace and its principal bounty:
the opportunity for mutually beneficial cooperation. The risk of Hobbes commonwealth is that it will
abuse its own authority, creating more problems than it solves. A key aim in studying government
must therefore be to discover how to secure its undoubted benefits, while also limiting its inherent
dangers.
One way of referring to the broader array of forces surrounding and influencing government
is through the concept of a political system. Another related concept is governance, which refers to
the whole range of actors involved in government. Where political system suggests a rather static
account based on organizations, the idea of governance highlights the process and quality of
collective decision-making with a particular focus on regulation. The emphasis is on the activity of
governing, rather than on institutions. Because governance refers to the activity of ruling, it has also
become the preferred term when examining the quality and effectiveness of rule. In this context,
governance refers to what they do and to how well they do it.
Politics
A simple definition of politics – one which fits just those things we instinctively call ‘political’ – is
difficult, because the term is used in so many different ways. 3 aspects however are clear:
1. It is a collective activity, occurring between and among people
2. It involves making decisions on matters affecting two or more people
3. Once reached, political decisions become authoritative policy for the group, binding and
committing its members
Politics is a fundamental activity because a group which fails to reach at least some decisions will
soon cease to exist. As a concept, politics can be defined as the process of making and executing
collective decisions. It can be interpreted as a competitive struggle for power and resources between
people and groups seeking their own advantage. From this second vantage point, the methods of
politics can encompass violence as well as discussion.
Aristotle saw politics not only as unavoidable, but also that it is the highest human activity,
the feature which most sharply separates us from other species. According to Crick, politics is an
activity whose function is preserving a community grown too complicated for either tradition alone
or pure arbitrary rule to preserve it without the undue use of coercion. The difficulty of both these
,conceptions is that it provides an ideal of what politics should be, rather than a description of what it
actually is.
Power
There are 3 dimensions of power:
The first dimension of power (Robert Dahl) states that power should be judged by examining whose
views prevail when the actors involved possess conflicting views on what should be done.
The second dimension of power (Bachrach and Baratz) focuses on the capacity to keep issues off the
political agenda (or the ability to put them on the political agenda).
The third dimension of power (Lukes) broadens our conception of power even further. Here power is
extended to cover the formation, rather than merely the expression, of preferences.
The state, authority and legitimacy
The state provides the legal of formal mandate for the work of governments, allowing them to utilize
the authority inherent in the state. Authority is a broader concept than power and in some ways
more fundamental to comparative politics. Where power is the capacity to act, authority is the
acknowledged right to do so. To acknowledge the authority of your state does not mean you always
agree with its decisions; it means only you accept its right to make them and your own duty to obey.
Weber distinguished 3 ways of validating political power: by tradition, by charisma and by appeal to
legal-rational norms.
When a regime is widely accepted by those subject to it, and by other regimes with which it
deals, we describe it as legitimate. Thus we speak of the authority of an official but the legitimacy of a
regime. Legitimacy thus refers to whether people accept the authority of the political system.
Ideology
An ideology is today understood as any system of thought expressing a view on:
- Human nature
- The proper organization of state and society
- The individual’s position within this prescribed order
Even though the age of ideology has passed, we still tend to talk about ideologies, placing them on a
spectrum between left and right; left is associated with equality, human rights, and reform, while the
right favours tradition, established authority and pursuit the national interest.
Comparative politics
The core goal of comparative politics is to understand how institutions and processes operate by
examining their workings across a range of countries.
- Broadening understanding The first strength of a comparative approach is straight-forward:
it improves our understanding of government and politics. When we talk of understanding, it
is not only the need to comprehend other political systems, but also to understand our own.
- Predicting political outcomes Comparison permits generalizations which have some
potential for prediction. If the explanation of a phenomenon is sound, and all the relevant
factors have been reviews and considered, then it follows that our explanations should allow
us to predict with at least a high degree of accuracy, if not with absolute certainty.
Classifying political systems
,A typology is a system of classification that divides states into groups or clusters with common
features. The ideal typology is one that is simple, neat, consistent, logical, and as real and useful to
the casual observer as it is to journalists, political leaders, or political scientists. Unfortunately, such
an ideal has been proved hard to achieve. The result is that there is no universally agreed system of
political classification.
Aristotle made a classification about the city-states in Greece at his time. He based his
scheme on 2 dimensions. The first was the number of people involved in the task of governing: one,
few or many. His second dimension was whether rulers governed in the common interest (“the
genuine form”) or in their own interest (“the perverted form”).
The Three Worlds system was less a formal classificatory template developed by political
scientists than a response to geopolitical realities, diving the world into three groups of countries
based on ideological goals and political alliances:
- First World: wealthy, democratic industrialized states
- Second World: communist systems
- Third World: poorer, less democratic and less developed states
The relationship between politics and economics in particular is so intimate that there is an entire
field of study – political economy – devoted to its examination. This involves not just looking at the
influences on economic performance: good government is more likely to produce a successful
economy, and bad government less so.
Wordlist Chapter 1:
Concept = a term, idea or category
Conception = the manner in which something is understood or interpreted
Social science = the study of human society and of the structured interactions among people within
society. Distinct from the natural sciences, such as biology and physics.
Government = the institutions and offices through which societies are governed. Also used to
describe the group of people who govern, a specific administration, the form of the system of rule,
and the nature and direction of the administration of a community.
Political system = the interactions and organizations (including but not restricted to the government)
through which a society reaches and successfully enforces collective decisions. Interchangeably used
with the term regime, but the latter tends to have negative connotations.
Governance = the process by which decisions, laws and policies are made, with or without the input
of formal institutions.
Politics = the process by which people negotiate and compete in the process of making and executing
shared or collective decisions.
Power = the capacity to bring about intended effects. The term is often 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.
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.
Legitimacy = the state or quality of being legitimate. A legitimate system of government is one based
on authority, and those subject to its rule recognize its right to make decisions.
Ideology = a system of connected beliefs, a shared view of the world, or a blueprint for how politics,
economics and society should be structured.
Comparative politics = the systematic study of government and politics in different countries,
designed to better understand them by drawing out their contrasts and similarities.
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.
,Three worlds system = a political typology that divided the world along ideological lines, with states
labelled according to the side they took in the Cold War.
Political economy = the relationship between political activity and economic performance.
Gross national income = the total domestic foreign output by residents of a country in a given year.
Chapter 2: The State
Although we now take for granted the division of the world into states, we should assume neither
that the state always was the dominant principle of political organization, nor that it always will be.
Before the modern state, government mainly consisted of kingdoms, empires and cities. These units
were often governed in a personal and highly decentralized fashion, lacking the idea of an abstract
political community focussed on a defined territory which characterizes todays states. Yet the modern
state remains distinct from all preceding political formations. They possess sovereign authority to rule
the population of a specific territory, a notion which contrasts with the more personal and non-
centralized rule adopted by traditional kings and emperors. This modern idea of the state emerged in
Europe between the 16th and the 18th centuries, with the use of the word state as a political term
coming into common use towards the end of this period.
What is a state?
States are the world’s dominant form of political organization, and the building blocks of the
international system. Max Weber described it as ‘a human community that (successfully) claims the
monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’. How does state differ from
government? In essence, the state defines the political community of which government is the
managing agent. Much of the theoretical justification of the state is provided by the idea of
sovereignty, which refers to the unfettered and undivided power to make laws. The word sovereign
originally meant ‘one seated above’. So, the sovereign body is the one institution unlimited by higher
authority: the highest of the high. However, as democracy took ground, so did the belief that elected
assemblies acting on behalf of the people are the true holders of sovereignty.
Inherent to the notion of the state is the idea of the citizen. The concept of the citizen implies
full and equal membership of the political community defined by the state. To be a citizen is to
possess both rights (such as legal protection) and duties (such as military or community service).
Emergence of the state system
The birth of the modern state system is often tied to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. This brought an
end to the Thirty years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty years’ War between Spain and
the Dutch Republic. The French philosopher Jean Bodin argued that, within society, a single sovereign
authority should be responsible for five major functions: legislation, war and peace, public
appointments, judicial appeals, and the currency. John Locke argued that citizens possess natural
rights to life, liberty and property, and that these rights must be protected by rulers governing
through law. In his work we see a modern account of the liberal state, with sovereignty limited by
consent.
The expansion of states
During the 19th century, the outlines of the state became more precise, especially in Europe. For most
of the 20th century, Western states bore deeper into their societies, causing total wars, which are wars
fought between entire countries, rather than just between specialized armed forces. After these wars,
peace led to the emergence of the welfare state instead of the warfare state, with rulers accepting
,direct responsibility for protecting their citizens from the scourge of illness, unemployment and old
age.
Although the state was born in Europe, its form was exported to the rest of the world by
imperial powers. Consequently, most states of today’s world are postcolonial. In settler colonies, the
new arrivals ruthlessly supplanted indigenous communities, re-creating segments of the European
tradition they had brought with them; as a result, the political organisation of these countries
remains strong and recognizably West. Non-settler colonies emerged into statehood in 4 waves:
- The first wave occurred in the 19th century
- The second wave emerged in Europe and the Middle East around the end of the First World
War, with the final collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires.
- The third and largest wave took place after 1945, with the retreat from empire of European
states diminished by war
- The fourth and final wave occurred in the final decade of the 20 th century, triggered by the
collapse of communism
The diversity of states: Political authority
Quasi-states are defined as states that won independence from a former colonial power but have
since lost control over much of their territory. They are recognized by the international community as
having all the rights and responsibilities of a state, but they barely exist as a functioning entity. Other
cases are de facto states, meaning that they control territory and provide governance, but are mainly
unrecognised by the international community.
National and nationalism
Anderson describes nations as ‘imagined communities’ and are often viewed as any group that
upholds a claim to be regarded as such. We can however be more precise. Firstly, nations are people
with homelands: a nation – like a state – implies ‘a claim on the particular piece of real estate’.
Second, when a group claims to be a nation, it usually professes a right to self-determination within
its homeland. It seeks sovereignty over its land, exploiting or inventing a shared culture to justify its
claim.
Because the concept of nation is political, there is no necessity for nations to be united by a
common language. A shared tongue certainly eases the task of cultural unification, but it’s not
necessary (e.g.: Switzerland). A shared nationality provides an emotional bond for an increasingly
rational world. In particular, it allows the losers from the emergence of a large market economy to
take comfort in the progress of their country as a whole. Nationalism is the doctrine that nations have
the right to determine their own destiny, to govern themselves. In this way, nationalism is a universal
idea, even though each individual nation is rooted in a particular place. An archetypal nation-state
contains only the people belonging to its nation. In a multinational state, by contrast, more than one
nation is fundamental to a country’s politics, and assimilation to dominant nationality is unrealistic.
Challenge to the state
First, public loyalty to states has long been undermined by economic, social and political divisions.
Second, international borders have been weakened by the extension of economic ties among states.
Nothing today poses as much of a threat to state sovereignty as globalization: increased economic
interdependence, changes in technology and communications, the rising power of multinational
corporations, the growth of international markets, the spread of a global culture, and the
harmonization of public policies in the face of shared or common problems. Third, just as the number
of states has grown since 1945, so has interstate corporation on a wide range of issues, which has
diluted their independent existence. Finally, in the face of the threat of international terrorism, many
, states have found themselves reasserting their power over their citizens, giving themselves
broadened powers to impinge upon personal privacy and to limit movement and the choices of those
who live and travel within their borders.
Dimensions of state fragility are:
- Authorities have difficulty keeping control and usually face insurgencies or armed revolts
- Criminal violence worsens as state authority weakens
- Political institutions are ineffective, with all but executive losing control or ceasing to function
together
Wordlist Chapter 2
State = the legal and political authority of a territory containing a population and market borders. The
state defines the political authority of which government is the managing authority; that authority is
regarded as both sovereign and legitimate by the citizens of the state and the governments of other
states.
Sovereignty = the ultimate source of authority in a society. The sovereign is the highest and final
decision-maker within a community.
Citizen = a full member of a state, entitled to the rights and subject to the duties associated with that
status. Citizenship is typically confirmed in a document such as a passport of identity card.
Westphalian system = the modern state system that many believe emerged out of the 1648 Peace of
Westphalia, based on the sovereignty of states and political self-determination.
Natural rights = those rights (such of life, liberty and property) supposedly given to humans by God or
by nature, their existence taken to be independent of government.
Total war = war requiring the mobilization of the population to support a conflict fought with
advances weaponry on a large geographical scale, requiring state leadership, intervention and
funding.
Welfare state = an arrangement in which the government is primarily responsible for the social and
economic security of its citizens through public programmes such as incomes for the unemployed,
pensions for the elderly and medical care for the sick.
Microstates = states that are small in both population and territory. Andorra, Barbados, Palau and the
Maldives are examples.
Quasi-states = states that exist and are recognized under international law but whose governments
control little of the territory under their jurisdiction.
De facto states = states that are not recognized under international law even though they control
territory and provide governance.
Self-determination = the ability to act without external compulsion. The right of national self-
determination is the right of a people to possess its own government, democratic or otherwise.
Nationalism = the belief that a group of people with a common national identity (usually marked by a
shared culture and history) has the right to form an independent state and to govern itself free of
external intervention.
Diaspora = a population that lives over an extended area outside its geographical or ethnic homeland.
Nation-state = a sovereign political association whose citizens share a common national identity.
Globalization = the process by which the links between people, corporations, and governments in
different states become integrated through such factors as trade, investment, communication and
technology.
International organization = cooperative bodies whose members are states that are established by
treaty, possess a permanent secretariat and legal identity, and operate according to states rules and
with some autonomy.
