LECTURE 1: COMPARATIVE POLITICS AND COMPARATIVE METHOD
Two different traditions of teaching comparative politics:
• Northern American tradition: Start to teach by looking at different countries; then, you start to draw conclusions
• European tradition: Start with concepts, classifications and theories; then, you start to look at different countries —
Leiden, this course
Political Theory deals predominately with normative and theoretical questions: What is justice? What is democracy?
International Relations deals predominately with interactions between states (and addresses empirical questions): What are
the causes of war?
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
• Sub-field of political science studying political structures, actors, and processes within a political system and
analyzing them empirically by exploring their similarities and differences across political systems
• Focus on empirical questions: Is political participation good or bad for democracy?
• Level of analysis is political systems (democracies, developing countries, individual countries)
• Defined both by its substance and methods
• Importance has to do with the general importance of comparative method in political analysis
• Comparative politics elevates intuitive comparisons to systematic comparisons e.g. comparing what you consider
normal in your national context to some other situation (intuitive comparison)
• Comparative method is a valuable way of analyzing political phenomena
Why comparison? What is the value of comparative methods (systematic comparison)?
1. Provides knowledge about other countries
2. Descriptions, classifications, typologies
o Allow us to classify or typologize particular phenomena
o Comparison allows us to identify similarities and differences and cluster them together on the basis of
some common attribute, e.g. Belgium and The Netherlands are both democracies with free and fair
elections, but their electoral systems are different
Classifications cluster actors and institutions into a group/class that shares common attributes;
comparing two countries with each other or changes within one country over time
o Why is it important to have classifications?
There is no good explanation without good classifications
You need good classifications to systematically arrive at some explanation, e.g. different kinds of
non-democratic regimes
3. Hypothesis testing
o Comparative methods allow us to test hypotheses
o Social sciences don't have an experimental method; we can’t subject political phenomena to the same kind
of manipulations that other scientists can in a laboratory
4. Prediction
CONCEPTS IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS
• Concepts are ideas or terms with clear definitional structure
• Why do we need concepts?
o Concepts give meaning to reality, they are tools thorough which we think, reason, argue and analyze
e.g. presidency is a set of ideas about how to organize executive within a given country;
knowledge built by refining the concept
o The use of concepts sets us apart from the world of practical (or beer) politics
Through conceptualization and definition, we avoid using the same language used by politicians
when they talk about phenomena
e.g. Brexit: Euro-scepticism because of a dislike for European integration; but, what is European
integration?
• Controversy related to concepts and their precise meaning: What is a political party/interest group/social movement?
Which activities fall within this concept of political participation?
COMPARATIVE METHODS
• Rules and standards of comparative analysis
• They give us an answer to how a comparison should be carried out in order to improve description, classification,
prediction or hypotheses testing
Issues in comparative politics
• Comparative politics focuses on very different units of analysis
o What is the typical unit of analysis?
Mostly focused on individual components of political systems (structures, actors) — not on
individual countries
We study these different units of analysis on different levels
o Difference between units of analysis and levels of analysis
One of those levels of analysis is the country level
• There is NO one comparative method
, o Distinction between these different comparative methods of analysis depends on the number of cases
employed in the comparison
Methods in comparative politics (Lijphart, 1971)
1. Case study method
o Intensive examination of one particular case and the context in which it exists
o Some case studies are comparative, and some are not comparative
e.g. Study of electoral performance of Front National in the last French election because it is a
representative case of a wider phenomena of electoral breakthrough of populist parties in
Europe (representative case study that is part of the comparative method)
o Case study method is most of the time quantitative in nature; focus on the interpretative evidence from a
particular case
o Types of case study methods:
Deviant case study
Identifies and examines an exception to what is generally expected from an
established theory, e.g. Deviant cases of democratization: Costa Rica, countries that
are relatively poor but managed a transition to democracy
Deviant cases are useful for theory rebuilding or refining
Theory-testing case study
Case study in which you probe an existing theory in a new empirical context
Can we use that theory to explain a particular case/phenomenon in a different
context?
o Advantages: Holistic; sensitive to the context, studying a particular phenomenon in the context in which it
exists and you study one case, e.g. studying democracy as it is
o Disadvantages: If it's just one country/party, how can you generalize? How representative is this case of
this phenomenon?
2. Comparative method (Small-N method) (qualitative method in the book)
o A systematic analysis of a small number of cases (small-N analysis); difficult to define “small number of
cases"
e.g Why are small European countries economically more successful than their larger and
economically more powerful neighbors? (study of 7 democracies) Because they employ a
particular form of policy-making called corporatism.
o Problem 1: Too few cases, too many variables
e.g. “If you employ corporatist policy-making, you will be a successful country” However,
economic performance is also impacted/influenced by other factors: level of corruption, type of
business culture, freedom of enterprises. How do you know it's policy-making that is responsible
for good economic performance?
Solutions
Increase N: Increase the number of cases
But you could run out of cases because there is not an infinite number of
cases
MSSD: Most similar system design
Choose countries so carefully that you control for all possible variations
except the one you want to explain
Choose countries that look alike except for the variable you want to explain;
controlling for impact and variation, e.g. Choosing all Northern European
countries, not corrupt and similar freedom for enterprises
o Problem 2: Selection on dependent variables
e.g. What about small countries (New Zealand) that are also economically successful, have low
levels of corruption, and have a business culture, but they are not corporatist?
Solution:
Choose the most dissimilar system (MDSD): Selecting all countries that are small,
economically successful and compare them to countries that are not so small and
economically successful/unsuccessful
o Advantages: Reaching more robust conclusions because there are more cases than one; sensitive to the
context; studying few cases allows you to study them holistically
o Disadvantages: Suffers from selection bias in the dependent variable selection; how representative are
these cases?
3. Statistical method (quantitative method in the book)
o Comparative method based on a large N of cases, using statistical techniques to examine relationships
between variables
o Advantages: Less/no risk of selection bias because all available variables are thrown into the analysis
o Disadvantages: Largely insensitive to context or meaning, e.g. Corruption Perception Index: Corruption
might get overrepresented
o Differences from Small-N: Turning dependent and independent variables into numerical indicators and you
draw your conclusions not by interpreting the evidence/case, but by looking at the relationship between
these variables
Conclusions
• Comparative politics is one of the most important sub-fields of political science
, • Comparative method is an important tool for studying politics (+analyzing political phenomena)
• Plurality of comparative methods
LECTURE 2: DEMOCRATIC AND NON-DEMOCRATIC REGIMES
I. PROBLEMS WITH DEMOCRACY
1. Democracy is not a norm
2. There has been a lot of concern in the last 10-15 years with democratic backsliding
o Democratic backsliding is a process by which democratic systems have been reverting to institutional
forms, which are democracies on paper but not in substance
o Recommended book: How democracies die
3. We have alternatives to modern representative democracy
o These alternatives are not necessarily non-democratic
o Within democracies some people argue we should abandon representative democracy and replace it with
new and radical forms of democracy
II. DEMOCRATIC REGIMES
Representative democracy (features of)
1. Rulers (political leaders) are chosen in competitive, free and fair elections
o Two dimensions of democracy (Robert Dahl)
Contestation: Refers to the extent to which citizens in a given political system enjoy or have
unimpaired, unmitigated opportunities to express their political preferences
Ability of citizens to freely express their preferences; either by voting or demonstrating
Inclusiveness: Refers to a percentage of the population that is entitled to participate in the
political system
o Why did Dahl introduce these two dimensions?
To prove you don't only need elections for democracy; you need more than just elections, you
need freedoms (to participate, protest, demonstrate)
There needs to be a serious degree of inclusion of the population in the political
process
South Africa under Apartheid: Incomplete democracy? Good in contestation, bad at
inclusiveness
Hungary: Good at inclusiveness, but bad at contestation
Real democracies will never be perfect in terms of their inclusiveness and contestation
Dahl referred to democracies as ‘poliarchies’
2. People (demos) rule indirectly, by electing their representatives and holding them accountable during next elections
Representative democracies are NOT self-evident
1. They have varying qualities
o No two representative democracies are the same; different qualities; related to the dimension of
contestation and inclusiveness
o Liberal/full versus Electoral/flawed democracies
o India: Routinely classified as a flawed democracy because poverty informally excludes large part of the
population from the political process, plus political violence that undermines principle of contestation
o France as an example of flawed democracy?
2. They have democratic alternatives
o Representative democracies have democratic alternatives; one of those being Athenian city-state direct
democracy
o There are two democratic alternatives to representative democracy: Direct and deliberate democracy
1) direct democracy, in which all members of the community (citizens) take part in making
decisions directly; directly voting in every issue being discussed (e.g. Brexit referendum)
2) deliberate democracy, a system whereby voting is replaced by deliberation and consensus
making in arriving into political decisions (e.g. citizen assemblies to discuss climate change
programs)
3. They come in waves
o Representative democracies come to us in different processes, or waves of democratization
o Waves of democratization
Samuel Huntington (1991), term coined by
A wave of democratization is a group of transitions from non-democratic regimes to
democracy which occurs in a specific period of time and that significantly outweighs
the number of transitions in the opposite direction
Waves of democratization occur when a lot of countries move towards democracy, and
very few move in the opposite direction
Why do we need Huntington’s waves of democratization?
Each of those waves is characterized by a specific process by which
democracy arrives
FIRST WAVE (1828-1926): Netherlands
Long wave because there was a gradual extension of the principles of democracy
(contestation and participation/inclusiveness) into the political systems
Best way to arrive to democracy? Better than revolution?
, Extension of universal suffrage, more people can vote e.g. women, Native Americans
Voting rights in the US: It took 150 years for the US to become inclusive
SECOND WAVE (1943-1964): India, Japan, Germany
Associated with 1) post-war rebuilding of countries involved in WWII (Germany, Italy,
Japan) and 2) decolonization (India)
THIRD WAVE (1974-): Spain, Chile, Hungary, South Africa, Ghana
Global in scope, involved many countries
Starts in Southern Europe (1974) with the fall of Salazar and Franco, moves to Latin
America (in the 80s and 90s, and finally the fall of the Berlin Wall, plus African
countries transitioning
Came with optimism about the prospects of democracy — The End of History
(Fukuyama)?
4. They have non-democratic alternatives
III. NON-DEMOCRATIC REGIMES
• Rulers (political leaders)…
1. Are selected in a non-competitive process
2. Are not accountable to the citizens
3. Are not subject to the rule of law and other constitutional constraints
Types of non-democratic regimes (Juan Linz): Totalitarian, authoritarian, and sultanistic regimes
• Differences between regimes related to:
o Degree of pluralism: Refers to the extent to which society under that regime is allowed, or not, to be plural;
related to contestation
o Type of mobilization: The means the regime uses to entice people to participate in the system, and
perhaps support
o Type of leadership: How do leaders in those non-democratic regimes govern? What source of authority do
they use for that process of government?
• There are significant differences between different types of non-democratic regimes
o Why is this variation important?
It matters to the citizens that live in these non-democratic regimes
The type of non-democratic regime matters when there is a transition to a democratic regime
o 3 phases of democratization (read the book): liberalization, transition and consolidation
Important points
• We make distinctions because there are implications these regimes have to the transition to democracy
o Problem in transition totalitarian-democracy: Absence of a vibrant civil society, destroyed by the previous
regime
o Problem in transition authoritarian-democracy: Containing the military (Latin America)
o Problem in transition sultanism-democracy: There are no state-structures or bureaucracy to operate
institutions
• No one regime will perfectly fit a category
• Countries often move from one category to another e.g. Cuba, Soviet Union
Types of non-democratic regimes
1) Totalitarian regime
• Plurality
o Totalitarian regimes try to eliminate all sources of independent activity within a society
o Alternative parties are banned; no social groups independent of the regime are allowed to exist
o One party de facto rules the system and usually exercises that rule on the basis of some big overarching
ideology
o Communist regimes: ownership of economic means put into the hands of the state
• Mobilization
o Totalitarian regimes are trying to mobilize people heavily into political activity
o Create a vast regime of organizations (trade unions, parties, militaries) that are used as vehicles for a
forced type of participation
o These regimes like to be liked and use massive forms of mobilization to show support for the regime
o Military parades in North Korea
• Leadership:
o Undefined limits, high degree of unpredictability; generated by huge political organizations
o Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler: Massive political parties delivered them to power, huge political organizations as
mobilizing machines
o Ceaușescu: Cult of personality to create an image of an invisible, friendly ruler
• Seemingly a matter of the past (North Korea yes, Cuba no)
2) Authoritarian regime
• Plurality: Limited form of pluralism, some groups allowed to exist (usually in the social and economic fields like
charities), often don’t have massive ideologies
• Mobilization: Massive mobilizations take place occasionally; no extensive or intensive mobilization of the population
