Summary

Summary Core Module: Comparative Politics, UvA

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Course
73220030LY (73220030LY)

Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)

This document provides notes and summaries of the lectures, tutorial discussions, and professor insights. It includes the most essential elements to remember from the course readings but does not go in-depth into each. With this summary, I received 7 and 8/10 for the take-home exams and finished th...

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Uploaded on November 10, 2023
Number of pages 42
Written in 2023/2024
Type Summary

comparative politics
elective
democracy
autocracy
regime change
politics
war making
state formation
tilly
weber
citizenship
chibber
verma
uva

Institution
Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)
Education
Politicologie
Course
73220030LY (73220030LY)

2024UvAstudent

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Tutorial 1

The comparative method
Look at points of comparisons and differences to hypothesise factors that have a causal role in a
certain phenomenon

Common mistakes MSSD and MDSD
Similarities/differences not made explicit
Not based on theory
Omitted variables
Too many variables, too few cases

Spain Italy

Differences/ Similarities

EU Yes Yes

Party system Multi-party Multi-party

Type of elections Parliamentary Parliamentary

Time Beginning of 20th century Beginning of 20th century

Outcomes

Party in power Social democrats Conservatives

Factors

Discontent with previous
government

Political culture and context Social uprisings encouraging
people to go vote

Voters outcome 71.8% 63.9%

Relation with EU

Response to migration flux

Tutorial 2

Tilly on the state
➢ State is an organisation
○ Centralisation of powers
➢ Functions of the state directed towards organised violence
➢ Functions reinforce each other (interdependent)
○ War-making

, ○ State-making
○ Extraction
○ Protection

Organised crime
Origin of state-making (until 1648 - Westphalia)
➢ Power, ressources, money – individual driver
○ Which also applies to rulers, competitors should be eliminated
Unintended consequences is the state-making
➢ Wanting a monopoly on ressources and violence on a particular
➢ Wanting the resources of other – constant war-making – “survival of the fittest”
Tilly “Most European efforts to state-building failed”

‘The word territory should not mislead us’
‘Case of a government that generates protection rents for its merchants deliberately attacking their
competitors’
Venetian traders (to have a monopoly on certain goods)
Used the army for that = protection rent (Tilly)

Today
Degree of respect for international laws
War-making as a means of state-building not as critical anymore

Three stages of EU statemaking
➢ Power struggles bring the centralisation of power in the power holder
○ Differentiates internal and external arena for use of force
➢ External competition (=war) generates internal state-making
➢ Internal coalitions among states influence

Tilly rationalist and realist approach to state formation

Weber politics as vocation
State: “human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical
force within a given territory”

3 justifications for use of force
➢ Traditional
➢ Charismatic
➢ Legal rational

Tilly and Weber
Rationalist view
State seen in its organisational capacity
Common denominators: state violence, defined territorial bounds
➢ State action for Weber legitimised by fear/hope and by three types of authority
➢ Tilly says it is legitimised by

Marshall: dimensions of citizenship in the state

,Internal statemaking of citizenship as a construct made of three parts: civil, political and social.

18th century: civil => rights of individual freedom, ensured by courts
19th century: political => right to participate in exercise of political power, formation of parliaments
and local councils
20th century: social => range of rights that cover economic welfare, security, education, health, social
services

Marshall’s view of citizenship fits into Tilly’s scheme of the fundamental functions of the state

Nistotskaya & D’arcy: Getting to Sweden: Origins of High Tax Compliance in the Swedish Tax State
Relation between State Building and Taxes

Connects to Tilly - act of violence
Bureaucracies enforcing violence
Sweden as an example for rational state building - tax organisation

Administrative capacity for taxation

Weber
Evaluate whether this definition validly reflects contemporary use of the term ‘state’?
Ideal type definitions – At the time relevant, today does not represent everything
Third actors (supranational organisations) may also have a say for legitimate violence

When time allows: are these states? Moldova, Central Africa Republic, 'Ndrangheta, Mexico, Belarus

Tutorial 3

Moore (1966) Lords and peasants in the making
Modernisation takes different routes, not without violence
➢ The peasant problem: issue rose with modernisation, agriculture becomes less complicated,
peasants are left without a job
➢ Argument: class and social change explain why government develop into democracies/
autocracies

, Moore on India (outlier)
➢ Weak modernisation – India does not fit in any model
➢ Peasant are always worse off – only argument that applies to India

Chibber and Verma
Ideological politics does not work
➢ Why? India too multiethnic, large and underdeveloped pop, making policies complicated
➢ Policy overlap, parties have the same policies

Idea is not non-ideological
➢ But: Idology = Western
➢ Use of Gerring’s conceptualisation ‘based on an intell;ectual tradition that includes a set of
coherent ideas about the state

➢ Elites who offer resources in support for a position
➢ These ideas must have the support of many people

Less politicisation of the pandemic
➢ India population size consensus over prevention and treatment
➢ Rural and underdeveloped

Gingerich and Volger
Pandemics and political development

Black death (1374-1351)
➢ Politically decentralised
➢ 30-60% mortality of total pop
By increasing price of labour relative to land
➢ Black death created patterns of coercion and repression towards labours

Demographic collapse
➢ Land and capital stayed intact
➢ Labour from abundant to scarre
➢ Societal shift subsistence agriculture economic and sustained growth
Theory of elite reaction (coercion and repression) and Malthusian exit (grow economy, not only
agriculture)

Political impact
Strong labour supply shock
➢ Higher death rates
➢ New relation between lord and peasant
➢ Increase in wages
➢ Inclusivity in political engagement more self-government

Weak labour supply shock
➢ Lower death rates
➢ Labour coercion
➢ Exclusionary political engagement

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