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Comparative Political Systems
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Lecture notes of 60 pages for the course Comparative Political Systems at UNAV (Course notes)
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Lais SuassunaCOMPARATIVE POLITICAL SYSTEMS CLASS NOTES TOPICS 1-4
TOPIC 1: THE STATE
DEFINING THE STATE
1. STATE VS. REGIME
2. THE RISE OF THE MODERN STATE
3. STATE POWER
a. POWER, AUTONOMY, CAPACITY
4. CHAPTER 2 NOTES
- The state should protect (against external and internal threats). As humans, we want to be
protected.
- Contradictory: abiding by the laws of the Taliban for protection.
- The idea we have of the state is deeply rooted in our own context.
- Since states are the highest institutionalized body, it is very difficult to change.
1. STATE VS. REGIME
- Regime: is the system utilized to govern the state. The regime has functions norms,
and can also be connected with people as they organize individual freedom and
collective equality. The regime tells us how things should be.
- Democratic regime vs. non-democratic regime → centralization of power in
terms of freedom and equality.
- North Korean regime, Castro’s regime → is deeply connected to the
leader.
- France: semi-presidential system (5th republic). Charles de Gaulle established
a system resembling the monarchy →President and Prime Minister.
- Government: political leaders, elections, about reaching power. Short-term policies,
are less institutionalized than states, few governments have complete authority.
- Gorbachev → Perestroika + changes to the Soviet system. Gorbachev shows us
that a political leader has a lot of power, but if you go too far you can
definitely be ousted.
- When we talk about the state we see some distinctions:
- Hegel: state and civil society → Western constitutions. According to
this understanding, politics is extremely relevant to the people. It
addresses all and only the political aspects.
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- Civil society → relevant areas → religion and market. The
interaction between society and government is key.
- States were associated to the church. For years, the
states tried to control the spiritual welfare of the
people. → Spain: Catholic Monarchs.
- The state also controlled the market. →
Argentina: today a failed state, a kleptocracy.
- Modernization causes the state and society to grow
apart.
- Public sphere: a hinge between state and society. The place
where we can target policies and public issues. Today, it is
more complex than hundreds of years ago. For example, the
parliament was not able to process without the monarch.
- Liberalism: lowering barriers
- Spiral of Silence: fear of isolation
- Political participation:
- Horizontal split: what occurs in the public sphere and
where politics enter. There are contrasts of opinion
regarding political matters.
- Cleavages can explain some of these alignments.
- Political cleavages → religion, language
(Basque, Catalán, Gallego), centered
periphery.
- The Burden of Conflict: Identity voter vs. Rational voter
- Identity voter: justifying their vote based on identity → “I’m a socialist.”
- Rational voter: judging the past → “I didn’t like this government, I’ll try the
other.”
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- For the common good?
- Not afraid of change
- Accountability
SCHEME
- Two types of voters → rational vs idealistic
- Idealistic
- Rational
- When we think of rationality and politics, many questions come up
- Should rationality guide politics?: If you have all rational voters, that doesn’t help the
system's stability, the more rational voters, the less stable the system is. This is
because you cannot rely on those voters.
- Does identity harm politics?: it can be positive for parties.
- Can we be rational at all?: political scientists have been trying to answer this question
for a long time. Two types of political scientists, one group that questions the idea of
rationality.
- When we talk about identity, identity influences politics, and it is part of politics as it is part
of what and who we are as humans. Demanding voters and citizens to be 100% rational is
delusional. Most of the voters decide for who they’re voting just a couple of days before
voting. This is why we must take identity into account. Identity can influence politics, and
social pressure can also affect politics.
- If we follow Belen Romero's approach, the goal should be that citizens want political parties
or politicians to abide by their will, citizens have will, and politicians should make it happen.
→ dui o demisio. If we follow this rational approach, voters think from a perspective of the
future and judge what has happened in the past.
- How can one select the party that best aligns with one’s needs correctly?
- Position ourselves in the ideology axis
- What has the political party achieved in the past?
- Know the composition of the political party
- How can we judge party performance?
- First impressions?
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- If we follow this approach, politicians should be better. This never happens because
political parties are structures. Therefore, this is not realistic.
- How do you behave in a supermarket?
- Selection or control voting. Selection shopping and control shopping. When you go to
a supermarket, how do you choose the products you buy? This is because they rely on
what they know. Has that product worked for me? Do I feel identified with this
product? → When you go to BM, there is a particular brand called Eusko label, which
is a selection that a brand makes that guarantees that these products were made in the
Basque country, like local products. Therefore, identity applies to products in the
same way that this applies to products.
- Can politicians be influenced by citizen preferences? Are they persuaded by what we
think?
- What is a good politician? What makes a good politician? Should a government always listen
to what citizens say about specific issues?
- Given this complex situation and environment where identity shows how relevant it is in
complex situations, and the political situation is difficult itself, as it says itself, politics is
influenced by what we think, and this influences how we behave in general and how we
behave politically.
- Identity: identity destroys the “incentive structure”
- Party voter alignment: this identification or alignment with the political party helps the voters
and politicians, but it also helps voters. This party-voter alignment helps voters because it
makes choices more accessible. Party alignment can work as a filter and help us understand.
The negative part is that it foments polarization. However, ideological polarization is not the
problem, it is the affective polarization (how the distance makes me feel and makes me
distance from people who do not vote like me). That is the polarization that is the most
dangerous one. Polarization and party alignment can also be positive because they can help
voters decide.
- This generates two concepts, the in-groups and the out-groups. If there is a “them,”
there is an “us.” This has to do with cleavages and salience. This is where the window
of Overton comes into place.
- Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner) → application to politics
- University of Sussex experiment → Sussex vs Brighton shirts
- The same applies to nationalism, religion, race, and ideology. Identity
has to do with salience, cleavages, and issues. We find things that we
have in common. There are several things that we must take into
account when we are talking about the mapping of the people into the
ideological axis.
- Origins of the political organization: the combination linking states, regimes,
and governments is relatively new. We know that when we look at how the
political organization has evolved, we know that even if the state is a relatively
new structure, some other structure exists. We knew that there were tribes
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