Summary Comparative analysis of political institutions:
Caramani (2020): Comparative politics
Introduction to comparative politics
Politic is the human activity of making public authoritative decisions. They are public
because, in principle, they may concern every aspect of a society’s life. Like all
scientific disciplines, comparative politics is a combination of substance (the study of
political institutions, actors, and processes) and method (identifying and explaining
differences and similarities following stablished rules and standard of analysis).
The question is what comparative politics does in practice:
To compare means that similarities and differences are described in
classifications and typologies.
Similarities and differences are explained.
Comparative politics aims to formulate predictions.
The classical cases of comparative politics are national political systems, but not the
only cases that comparative politics analyze, we also see:
Non-national political systems (like the EU).
Types of political systems van be compared.
Comparative politics compares single elements of the political system rather
than the whole system.
In the beginning, comparative politics focused mainly on the study of institutions. The
behavioral revolution between the 1930s and the 1960s shifted the substance of
comparative politics away from institutions. This was because people understood
then that not only Western politics are important, but that other types of political order
could exist and needed to be understood. The mobilization of the masses that took
place in communist and fascist regimes in Europe turned attention away from
institutions and directed it towards ideologies, belief systems and communication.
What have been the consequences of the broadening of the geographical and
historical scope:
It increased the variety of political systems.
It pointed to the role of agencies other than institutions, in particular parties
and interest groups.
It introduced a new methodology based on empirical observation, large scale
comparisons, statistical techniques, and an extraordinary effect of quantitative
date collection.
A new language namely systemic functionalism.
The emphasis on institutions and the state was dropped because of the need for
more general and universal concepts. But it soon became clear that that resulted in
an excessive level of abstraction. The counter-reaction to systemic functionalism start
is 1967 and involves a shift of substantial focus, a narrowing of the geographical
scope, a change of methodology and a theoretical turn. The focus went back to the
state and his institutions. But also, the varying historical structures, cultural elements,
and geographic location, in which the context plays a central role. At the end of the
1980s, another change took place in comparative politics, strengthening further the
place of institutions. It was the change given by the increasing influence of the
rational choice theory in comparative politics. This theory is based on the idea that
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,actors are rational. They are able to think and make a decision that maximize their
preferences.
As we have seen, there has been an almost cyclical process (as well for the method
who went from big N cases to small N cases). However, comparative politics did not
simply return to its starting point:
The 1950s and 1960s left behind an extraordinary variety of topics.
Second, the great contributions made by the systemic paradigm had not been
lost. Mainly because of the work of David Easton.
Easton’s concepts have marked the minds of political scientist, as well as
those of the wider public. His concept of the political system, as a set of
structures (institutions and agencies), whose decision-making function is to
reach the collective and authoritative allocations of values receiving support as
well as the international environment which it shapes through outputs in the
feedback loop, includes all aspect of what is described in his book.
The substantive scope had not ceased to grow, and this trend had continued
over the most recent decades.
New trends also include awareness of the interdependence between national
systems.
Comparative politics does not rely on one specific method only, for four main
reasons:
The research method depends on the research question.
The dimensions of comparison can be diverse. Examples are:
Spatial (cross-sectional)
Functional
Longitudinal
Units of analysis can be diverse, either whole political systems of single
actors.
Comparative research designs can focus on either similarity of differences.
For a long time, data for comparative politics was only available via statistics.
Important were the aggregate data, which was available on a territorial level. With the
behavioral revolution, the approach to data collection changed radically:
There was always a risk that state statistics were manipulated, that is why
independent university studies became very important.
Statistics could not describe feelings and individual values. Therefore, the
survey became very important.
The large datasets that came from the surveys could be delt with dure to
computerization of the social sciences.
Surveys of experts allow establishing the positioning of actors, such as parties,
in a multidimensional ideological space.
N.B. important to note that what is true on a aggregated level is not necessarily true
at the individual level, this is called ecological fallacy. But still aggregate date had not
disappeared and sometimes provide more solid bases than individual level data for
international long-term comparisons.
Comparative politics employs statistical techniques when research designs include
many cases and quantitative indicators (variable-orientated large-N studies), or
comparative methods when research designs include few cases and qualitative
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,indicators (case-orientated small-N studies). Case studies van also be carries out in
a comparative perspective. Research designs aim either to select similar cases and
explain their different outcomes (Most Similar Systems Designs, the Method of
Difference), or to select different cases and explain similar outcomes (Most Different
Systems Design, the Method of Agreement).
There would be no comparative politics without diversity of political systems and their
features. First, there was the thought that there would be convergence towards the
model of the major Western liberal democracies. But actually, we see divergence, in
the form of alternative models of political order.
Chapter 1: The relevance of comparative politics
What should comparative politics be relevant for:
Informing the elite, taking the role of an adviser to the politics.
Not informing the political elite but the general public.
More general goals, such as increased social justice and improved human
well-being.
First people thought that well-being rested on non-political factors like natural
resources. This changed during the institutional turn in the 1990s. First the
importance of institutions, the rules of the game, was pointed out and explained why
some countries were more prosperous than others. This became known as the new
institutionalism of historical institutionalism. Not least in research into developing
countries, there is now almost a consensus about the importance of institutions and
the quality of government in term of impact on development and human well-being.
However, there is little consensus on which political institutions matter. Institutions,
broadly understood as the rules of the game, can be both formal and informal.
Moreover, they can be located on the input of the output side of de political system.
Here it is important to state that informal institutions are actually very important,
formal institutions are often exaggerated. There is also a large discussion about
whether the institutions that regulate the access to power are more important than
the institutions that exercise power.
Almost all scholars in comparative politics take for granted that in producing “the
good society”, democratic political institutions are to be preferred. From a capability
theory, one problem is that far from all democracies produce high levels of human
well-being. This is because there are huge differences within groups of countries for
measuring human well-being. Also, we tend to speak about democracy as a single
political institution, when in fact it is a system that is built on multiple separate
institutions. Democratic theory does not provide precise answers to how their
institutions should be constructed. So, that means there are endless possibilities to
constructing a democracy. Examples are the voting system, the use of expert
knowledge in making decisions and the use of veto points. The way a democratic
political system is organized is often linked to its capability for producing “valued
outcomes” such as economic prosperity, political legitimacy, and the social justice.
Knowledge about the link between the design of political institutions and valued
outcomes is therefore essential for the relevance of comparative politics. Research
states that representative democracy is not a safe cure against things like severe
poverty, child deprivation, high levels of economic inequality, illiteracy, being
unhappy of not satisfied with life, high infant mortality, short life expectancy, high
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, maternal mortality, lack of access to safe water or sanitations, low school attendance
for girls of low interpersonal trust.
Why has democratizations not resulted in more human well-being? Researchers
state that representative democracy is not enough for creating well-being. Without
control of corruption and increased administrative capacity, the life situation of
citizens will not improve. If we follow the idea about the importance of what could be
termed quality of government and instead of having degree of democracy as an
explanatory variable, turn to measures of a state’s administrative capacity, control of
corruptions, or other measures of good governance, the picture of what public
institutions can do for human well-being changes dramatically. Empirical research
indicated that the administrative capacity of the political system in a country is
essential for brings about human well-being, not mainly having a democracy is
enough. Corruption in the public sector and other dorms of low quality of government
had a strong negative effect on human well-being.
One counterargument to the lack of valued outcomes from democratization is that the
normative reasons for representative democracy should not be performance
measures like the ones mentioned above, but political legitimacy. Democracy is
important for broad-based political legitimacy, but less so than factors related to the
quality of government institutions that implement public policies. Democracy is not a
“safe cure” against corruption and other forms of low quality of government. In many
elections, voters are not punishing corrupt politicians. This implies that the
accountability mechanism in representative democracy is not working as intended.
Political institutions that seem to be most important for countries to achieve high level
of human development are those that exist at the “output” side of the political system.
This had two implications:
Human well-being ought to be the main dependent variable that we should
strive to explain, and the political institutions that operate on the output side of
the political system (the quality of the legal system and the public
administration) should be central.
This approach to relevance to some extent implies a change for the discipline.
Instead of just explaining politics, more focus needs to be placed on what
politics implies for the actual human well-being of the citizens.
N.B. in general, comparative politics has so far paid little attention t issues about
state capacity, control of corruption and institutional quality.
Comparative politics had a great potential for being relevant for the level of human
well-being in societies. This is based on connecting the empirical research carried
out in the discipline with the normative theory of justice known as the capability
approach. This should lead to three consequences that are important or the
relevance of the discipline:
First, there should be a shift of focus on what should be explained from mere
politics to questions that impact on human well-being. The internal operations
are less interesting that what the political machine can do.
Second, there should be more focus on variables that both have an
explanatory power and that it is possible to change.
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