ICP READINGS
READING CHAPTER 1
OVERVIEW
- Democracy: a political system in which government is based on a fair and open mandate from all
qualifies citizens of a state
- Importance of compare societies, governments, places, period of time, …
GOVERNMENT AND GOVERNANCE
- GOVERNMENET: the institutions and structures through which societies are governed.
- Highest level of political offices in a society es. President, minister, mayor, governor, …
- Organization reaching a sense of community
- Entire community of institutions endowed with public authority
- Group of people who govern a specific administration, the form of the system of rule, character of
the administration of the community
- Influenced by forces, groups, parties, media, corporations, opinions, …
- 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 enforced collective decisions
- GOVERNANCE: process by which decisions, laws and policies are made, with or without the input of
formal institutions
- Highlight the process and quality of collective decision-making
- Emphasis on the activity of governing
- Activity of ruling
POLITICS AND POWER
- POLITICS: the process by which people negotiate and compete, the process of making and executing
shared or collective decisions
- Different opinions about what politics actually is
- Interpretation of politics as community – Aristotele → politics is unavoidable and the highest human
activity
- Competitive struggle for power and resources between people and groups seeking their own
advantage
- It is a competition, pursuit of the public interest
- Continuation of war by other means, without bloodshed
- POWER: the capacity to bring about intended effects. The term is often used a synonym for
influence, but is also used more narrowly to refer to more forceful modes of influence notable,
getting one’s way by threats
- 3 dimensions of power:
- 1. Decisions are made on issues over which there is an observable conflict of interests
- 2. Keep issues off the political agenda by preventing the emergence to topics which would threaten
the values of interests of decision-makers
- 3. Potential issues are kept out of politics, whether through social forces, institutional practices, or
the decision of individuals
- 1 + 2 → conflict preferences
- 3 -> manipulated consensus, not just preventing their expressions
,THE STATE, AUTHORITY, AND LEGITIMACY
- AUTHORITY: states need to be authoritarian in order to function effectively
- -concept broader than power
- The right to rule
- Creates its own power, so long as people accept that the person in authority has the right to make
decisions
- Fundamental concept to comparative politics
- Built on a range of foundations: tradition, charisma, legal-rational norms
- LEGITIMACY: political concept, referring whether people accept the authority of a state, without
which its very existence in is question
- Built up from its past success
- Stable foundation for rule
- 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, idea on how politics, economy, society
should be structured
- Any system of thought expressing a view of human nature
- Matter of judgement
- Spectrum between right and left
- Usually right and left are associated with different ideologies and ideas:
CONCEPTS IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS
- Analyse concept, after looking at the countries and see how concepts fit, and see why you need to
know about these countries
- Most controversies in political science are about concepts and their definitions
- Concepts: ideas or terms with clear definitional structure
- 1. Concepts give meaning to reality, they are tools through which we think, reason, argue and
analyse es. Presidential system
- State: Set of ideas about organization in political life
- 2. Use of concept sets us apart from the world of practical politics es. European integration, political
scientist asks what is really EU integration?
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
- Major field of political sciences
- How government and politics work across range of cases
- Broadening and understanding of the political world and predicting political outcomes
,- The systematic study of government and politics in different countries, designed to better
understand them by drawing out their contrasts and similarities
- Broadening understand: improves the understanding of government and politics
- Learn about places, interpret events outside our boarders grows in importance as globalization
continues to deepen and broaden the political, economic and social links
- Predicting political outcomes: better understand the possible outcomes of political decisions,
elections, …
- Problem in the way we compare, information, reliability of data, …
- Variety of forms in which government and politics can be found
CLASSYFING POLITICAL SYSTEMS
- TYPOLOGY: a system of classification by which states, institutions, processes, political cultures, and
so on are derived into groups or types with common sets of attributes
- Divides states into groups with common features
- Stability and effectiveness
- Aristotele → 2 dimensions: 1. Participation in a political system 2. Rules governed in the common
interest → political system would be more stable and effective when its rules governed in the long-
term interest of the community
- 3 types of system in The spirit of the Laws, treaty on political theory, Montesquieu and de Secondat:
republican system→ people had supreme power, monarchical system → one person rules on the
basis of field and established laws, despotic systems → a single person ruled on the basis of their
own properties and perspectives
- Three world system: a political typology that divided the world along ideological lines, with states
labelled according to the side that took into the cold war
- First world: Wealthy, democratic, industrialized, states, patterns in the western alliance against
communism
- Second world: communist systems, most of states against Western alliance
- Third world: poorer, less democratic, less developed states, some took side in the cold war
- System provides labels
- End of the cold war = end of this typology
- Important relationship between politics and economics
- GDP to compare economic size
READING CHAPTER 3
- Many options for conducting comparative political research with advantages and disadvantages
- Comparative research makes choice that include the unit and level of analysis, and the variables to
be studies
- Research methods include the case of study, the qualitative, quantitative methods and the historical
method
- Comparative research has difference approaches and results according to whether it is empirical,
normative, or quantitative, qualitative
- Comparative research can benefit from taking the historical approach, comparing current cases with
the past examples, or development over time across countries
OVERVIEW
- COMPARATIVE METHOD: the process by which different cases are compared in order to better
understand their qualities and to develop hypothesis, theories and concepts
, - METHODOLOGY: the systematic analysis of the methods used in a given field of enurit. Also used to
describe the body of methods used, or the eans used to reach a particular set of conclusions
- UNIT OF ANALYSIS: the object of study in comparative politics, which could be the state, political
office institution ….
- LEVEL OF ANALAYSIS: the level of study in comparative politics, ranging from the macro political
system level to the micro individual level.
- 4 key methods: case studies, the qualitative, quantitative and historical method
THE CASE STUDY METHOD
- One of the most used strategies in research
- A research method involving detailed study of a particular object and the context within it exists
- Focus on policy, event, political institution process
- Case studies must be understood in terms of both their scope and their features
- Look in the depth of the phenomena within its actual context
- Intensive examination of one particular case and the context in which it exists
- Political science research methods:
- Techniques used by case studies:
- Reading the academic literature, examining primary and secondary sources, interview with
participant and other observers, direct observation
- Case analysis aims to identify how range of facts interact
HISTORICAL METHOD
- A research method based on studying cases from the past, often with a focus on their development
through time
- Help to examine across different periods
- Connect political sciences to history by process tracing (the study of the sequence of events linking
to cause and effect)
- Path dependence: the idea that the outcome of a political process depends on earlier decisions that
lead down a particular path
- Try to explain change in technology impacted the evolution in business
- Critical junctures: a turning point which establishes interests, structures, or institutions persisting
through time
- Sequencing: the idea that the order of events, not merely their occurrence, affects the outcome
- The order can help to account for dependent
