Concepts and Problems of
Comparative Politics
Politics
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Focuses on human decisions
Power
Who gets what, when, where and why?
The authoritative allocation of values for a
society?
• Political science – the study of human
decisions
Why Governments?
• What are the functions of government?
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Enhance security, community, nation building
Secure order
Protect property
Promote economic efficiency and growth
• Addresses problems of market failure (electricity, water, sewer)
• Public good(s) issues
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Non-excludable
Not rival (consumption does not detract from someone else’s)
Subject to market failure
No incentive for private production (clean air, national security)
Why Government?
• Protect the weakest members of society
• Provide parameters of social justice
• Formally defined:
– Governments are organizations of individuals legally
empowered to make binding decisions on behalf of a
community.
OR
– Governments are the formal institutions that make
decisions about public policy and the processes and
procedures of decisionmaking.
Why Government?
• Comparative Politics:
– is thus the comparative study of
decisionmaking in political systems
– Related to a given territory (national territory)
– Backed by authority and coercion (self-defense
or expansion)
Nature of Man in Social Groups
• Thought:
• Hobbes and Weber; Rousseau and Locke
• Weber
– The defining characteristic of government is its
monopoly over the use of force
• Hobbes
– State of nature inhospitable (condition of man without
government)
– Man in conflict against all
– Nature is barbaric and fear filled
– Government is the only solution to inevitable chaos
– Concerned with internal and external security
Nature of Man in Social Groups
– Rousseau
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State of nature brutish without law, morality
Men ally to form “society”
The Social Contract –agreement on membership
Government is a source of power and inequality and thus human
alienation and corruption
– Questioned assumption that majority will always correct
– Government should act morally. Should ensure freedom.
– Locke
• State of nature not in conflict until the creation of property
• Property is the source of conflict (Its mine!)
• Government with a limited role (protecting property) is good
– Must have an agreed upon social contract
– Establish and enforce property rights and rules of economic exchange.
Government as the Problem?
• Critics: Anarchists and Libertarians
– Anarchists:
• Communitarians who see societies as communities
of people who in their natural condition are equal
• Governments lead to corruption in these
communities which leads to oppression and
alienation
• Alternative is voluntary cooperation
Government as the Problem?
– Libertarians:
• Individualists who see society as composed of
human beings with some fundamental rights
(property, freedom of speech)
• The more government gets involved, the more prone
it is to violate basic rights; e.g. law enforcement.
• Alternative is a society of unfettered individualism
– Ayn Rand
Government as the Problem?
• Destruction of Community
– Does government build or destroy communities?
• Violations of Basic Rights
– Define basic rights?
– Does the power held by governments allow them to
violate rights?
• Economic Inefficiency
– Surplus? Deficit?
Government as the Problem?
• Government for Private Gain
– Rent Seeking – benefits created through government
intervention in the economy
• Tax revenue or profits created because government restricted
competition
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Food subsidies
Gas/oil/energy subsidies
Influence trading? (insider information)
One person’s gain is another’s (or society’s) loss
• Vested interest and inertia
– Once rents are created, difficult to abolish
– House of Lords in Great Britain
Alternatives to Government?
• Markets and Voluntary coordination
– Very small government
– Extreme decentralization
– Free market, individual property rights
Thoughts????
Political Systems – Properties of
• Two Elements:
– Independent parts with environmental boundaries
– A set of institutions that formulate and implement the
collective goals of a society or groups within it?
• Defined: A particular type of social system
involved in making authoritative public decisions
that has sovereignty.
– Decisions are backed by legitimate coercion and
compellance (power)
– Legitimacy: those who are ruled believe that their rulers
have a right (by law or custom) to implement their
decisions by force if necessary
• The “right to rule”
• May ebb and flow over time
States
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Internal and External Sovereignty
Old and New States
Classification by Developmental Status
Classification by Size
Classification by Governmental or Political
System Type
• A particular type of political system that has
sovereignty
Internal and External Sovereignty
• Sovereignty
– Independent legal authority over a population in a
particular territory based on the recognized right to selfdetermination
• Kuwait
• Internal Sovereignty
– Right to determine matters regarding one’s own citizens
without intervention
• External Sovereignty
– Right to conclude binding agreements with other states
Sovereignty Today
• Traditional forms joined by new forms
• Supranational organizations
– European Union
– North American Free Trade Agreement
– United Nations
• Eg: 1994 17 peacekeeping missions, 100,000
peacekeepers
– United Nations subunits or related orgs:
• FAO, WHO, UNESCO, IMF, World Bank
Old and New States
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1945 - 68 states; increased by 117 by 1999
1999 – 185 member states in the U.N.
1990s - 20 new states
Taiwan, Switzerland, Vatican not members of the
U.N.
• First, Second and Third World:
– Advanced industrial democracies, Communist bloc,
underdeveloped/developing nations
– Still useful as a categorization?
Does Size Matter in Politics?
• Big and Small States:
– Russia – 17 million square kms
– Vatican City > ½ sq km and >1,000 residents
– China – 1.2 billion population
• Does size determine politics?
• Does area and population determine economic
development, foreign policy and defense issues?
– Geographic location important to defense; central
location means you need a large army; to do this you
need high level of resource extraction =>authoritarian
regime?
• Population growth rates and implications for
economic development
– Economies need to keep pace with population growth
Building Community
• Common identity and sense of community among
citizens important
• Without a unifying factor cleavage can dominate
– Japan: example of a population that is ethnically
homogeneous with shared language, little religious
diversity and strong political history; in addition, enjoys
relative geographic isolation from neighbors
– Nigeria: extremely large and diverse population; no
common pre-colonial history; sharp religious divisions;
250 ethnic groups; language diversity
Nations, states, nation-states?
• Nation – a group of people with a common identity
(how people identify themselves)
– Nations do not necessarily have government or state
– Some nations have close correspondence with state e.g.;
Japan, France, Sweden
– Nationhood as culture?
• State – political system with sovereignty
• Nation-state – cases in which the scope of legal
authority and national identification coincide
• What about multinational states?
– U.S.S.R, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia
Nationality and Ethnicity
• Ethnicity – Weber – humans who entertain a
subjective belief in their common descent because
of similarities of physical type or of customs or
both
• Croats, Serbs and Muslim Bosnians – groups
which differ by religious custom, marriage and
historical memories – but are physically similar;
may believe themselves to be descended from
different ancestors and thus genetically different
• Jewish population of Israel – today heterogeneous
from a homogeneous start – culture endures but
not genetic homogeneity
Other sources of division
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Language
Religious differences and fundamentalism
What happens when divisions persist?
How do these sources of difference impact
politics?
Cross-Cutting Cleavage
• Political cleavage
– When national, ethnic, linguistic and other divisions
systematically affect political allegiances and policies
• Cross-cutting cleavage
– Groups that share a common interest on one issue are
likely to be on opposite sides of different issues
• Eg: Netherlands – class and religion cross-cut
• Catholics and Protestants are equally likely to be rich or poor
and discrimination does not focus solely on Catholics
Cumulative Cleavage
• Cumulative cleavages – the same people are
pitted against one another over and over
again on a wide variety of issues.
– Eg: Northern Ireland; Catholicism and poverty
and history of discrimination: Protestantism and
wealth and no history of discrimination