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Samenvatting Comparative PoliticsChapter 1: The relevance of comparative politics
READER’S G U I DE :
Empirical research shows that the manner in which a country’s political institutions are designed
and the quality of the operations of these institutions have a strong impact on measures of
population health, as well as subjective well-being and general social trust.
A result is that democratization without increased state capacity and control of corruption is not
likely to deliver increased human well-being.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : W H A T S H O U L D C O M P A R A T I V E P O L I T I C S BE
RE L E V A N T F O R ?
First, comparative politics could be relevant for informing the elite, giving advice to parties on how
to win an election, …
In this approach comparative political science act as consultants, advisors, or grey
eminences to politicians
One problem is that most public policies are connected to a specific ideological and political
orientation, and many argue that science should be about finding out what is the truth and not
about supporting any specific ideology or group interest.
A second idea for making comparative political science more relevant is based on informing the
general public and not the political elite.
This is the comparative political scientist as the public intellectual writing op-ed articles,
giving public lectures and commenting upon current political affairs in the media
One argument for this approach is that everything else being equal, it cannot be a
disadvantage to the quality of debate about public policies in a democracy if people with
more knowledge choose to participate
A fear of being seen as ‘normative’ seems to hinder many from becoming engaged in issues that
many citizens care deeply about.
Another problem is paternalism. Should the choice of policies in a democracy not be left to the
citizens?
Amartya Sen’s theory of justice (the capability theory of justice or capability approach) rests on
the idea that a just society provides people with effective opportunities to undertake actions and
activities that they have reason to value, and be the person that they have reason to want to be.
It implies that the problem of justice is not to equalize economic resources or social status
as such, but to ensure for all individuals a set of basic resources that will equalize their
chances to each their full potential as humans
Hard objectives measures from population health, there is no an abundance of interesting
subjective measures.
These include perceptions of social trust, and whether people report satisfaction with their
lives
Comparative politics can thus be relevant for its potential for increasing human well-being.
1
,Key points:
Comparative politics can be relevant for informing the public debate and for giving advice
to politicians and government agencies about public policies
Comparative politics also has a potential for serving more general goals, such as
increased social justice and improved human well-being
POLITICAL I NS T I T U T I O N S A N D H U M A N W E L L - BE I N G
The pollical institutions were seen as a superficial reflection or as the superstructure of underlying
structural forces and thus had little impact on the overall prosperity or well-being of a country.
This changed in economics, sociology and political science during the 90s the
institutional turn
Douglass C. North was the first to point the importance of institutions ( the rules of the
game) for explaining why some countries were much more prosperous than others
o The new institutionalism or historical institutionalism
Comparing societies with almost identical structural conditions revealed that they could be
dramatically different in their ability to produce human well-being
The scholars in the various institutional approaches could empirically show that what
explained the differences was the variation in political, legal and administrative instituions
The institutional turn and comparative politics
The implication is that for CP to be policy relevant it isn’t necessary to side with a specific political
ideology or special interest group. The capability approach to social justice is a normative theory,
but based on the generally held idea that most people would prefer to live in a country where few
newborns die, there’s safe water, etc.
The ability to become a successful society in this sense is decided by the quality of the
society’s political institutions
Achieving broad-based human well-being for populations is achieved by the quality of
government
Institutions rule – but which?
There’s little consensus on which particular political institutions matter, how they matter, how
they’re created, …
The importance of the informal institutions in society should not be overlooked and the
importance of formal institutions has often been exaggerated.
If people in a society perceive that most other people can be trusted, this has a positive impact on
overall prosperity and most measures of human well-being.
2
,T HE M A N Y F A C E S O F DE M O C R A C Y
Research in a democratization has been very high on the comparative politics agenda, one
problem is that far from all democracies produce high levels of human well-being.
1 problem is that we tend to speak about democracy as a single political institution, when it is a
system that is built on multiple separate institutions.
Democratic theory doesn’t provide precise answers to how these institutions should be
constructed.
To be concrete, the Swiss, Danish and British democracies are institutionally configured in
different ways. There is some clustering in these dimensions but there are also surprising
differences.
If there are many uncoordinated actors, the democratic machinery may be unable to produce
coherent and effective policies.
From the institutionalist-capabilities perspective presented above, we would like to know which
institutional configuration of a representative democracy is most likely to produce a high level of
human well-being.
Since the number of democratic countries is 100, finding a solution to this 1.024 problem
is difficult.
o Even if there are interesting results from this research, changing long-established
political institutions may still be a difficult task
Key points:
Democracies turn out to have dramatic variation in their institutional configurations
The manner in which a democratic political system is organized is linked to its capability
for producing valued outcomes such as economic prosperity, political legitimacy, and
social justice
Knowledge about the link between the design of political institutions and valued outcomes
is essential for the relevance of CP
D E M O C R A CY AND STATE CAPACITY
There has also been a lot to study since the waves of democracy that have sept over the globe
have brought representative democracy to places where it seemed inconceivable years ago.
The fact is that more countries that ever are democratic.
There are cases where democratic rule has been established for decades but where the score
still is low on measures of human well-being.
India became a democracy in 1948
Representative democracy is not a safe cure against severe poverty, being unhappy, etc.
3
, The spectre that is haunting democracy
Larry Diamond In National Endowment for Democracy:
“Bad governance (governance that serrves only the interests of a narrow ruling elite).
Governance that is drenched in corruption, patronage, favoritism, and abuse of power.
Governance that is not responding to massive and long-deferred social agenda of reducing
inequality and unemployment and fighting against dehumanizing poverty. Governance that is not
delivering broad improvement in people’s live because it’s stealing, squandering or skewing the
available resources.”
representative democracy is not enough for creating human well-being. Without control of
corruption and increased administrative capacity, the life situation of citizens will not improve.
Clientelism is about various forms of vote buying.
State capacity, quality of government and human well-being
Measures of good governance have strong effects on almost all standard measures of human
well-being, including subjective measures of life satisfaction and social trust.
The correlation with government effectiveness is substantial.
Key points:
The administrative capacity of the political system in a country is essential for bringing
about human well-being
Democracy alone seems not to generate human well-being
Corruption in the public sector and other forms of low quality of government has a strong
negative effect on human well-being
DOES DEMOCRACY GENERATE POLITICAL LEGITIMACY?
The possibility of operationalizing and measuring corruption is problematic since the practice is
usually secret. Getting accurate information is problematic.
Government effectiveness is of greater importance for citizens satisfaction with the way
democracy functions, compared to factors such as ideological congruence on the input side.
The argument is that if a liberal democracy system is going to produce increased human well-
being around the world, quality-of-government factors such as administrative capacity, the rule of
law and control of corruption must be taken into account.
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