What are being compared? Introduction to the comparative analysis of political systems
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A method, not just a convenient term describing one’s research focus.
A subfield of political science → encompasses major similarities and differences between and
among countries.
A family of strategies and techniques that advance our understanding of what politics is.
Comparative politics as a family of strategies and techniques
● How do we make sense of various political phenomena given the limitations of the
experimental and statistical method?
❖ Democracy
❖ Democratic breakdown
❖ Political participation
❖ Social movements
❖ Elections
❖ Informal institutions
Advantages of Comparative Politics
1. Learning about other governments broadens our understanding.
2. Comparison improves classifications of political processes.
3. Comparison enables testing of hypothesis about politics.
4. Comparison strengthens potential for prediction and control.
Plotting dominant paradigms in political science across time
What are being compared?
Institution
● Institutions are far more than a theater within which political actors perform; they also shape
the script. (Peters 1999)
● Roles matter more than the people who occupy them.
● Accepted rules for interaction between their members.
Societies
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The central tenet of behaviouralists was that ‘the root is man’ rather than institutions
(Eulau,1963). People are more than badges of the institution they work for; they possess and
indeed will always create some freedom to define their own role.
How social factors influence behaviour in politics.
Brought upon by the question as to why newly decolonized states were not able to take root
in former colonies.
States
● How the priorities of the state impinge on society.
● “Bringing the state back in”
● The state as an active agent, shaping and reshaping society.
● State-centred analysts suggest that the uses to which public power has been put by those
charged with its exercise cannot be understood by the routine analysis of specific institutions.
Comparative politics during the past decade
● Messy center of comparative politics → pragmatic and causal analysis of critical political
questions
❖ Electoral behaviour
❖ Political networks
❖ Political institutions
❖ Contentious politics
❖ Comparative political economies
❖ Welfare states
❖ International-comparative linkages
● Disciplinal friction stems from contrasts between research paradigms and pragmatic causal
accounts.
The messy Center: Big Picture pragmatism
● Comparative politics is a field of many paradigms and methods
● Comparative politics faces a complex interdependence of the contemporary political universe.
A stagnant subfield?
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Behavioralism - mass sample surveys used to discover common social bases of electoral
results
Structural functionalism - identify universal tasks that all political systems had to fulfill
regardless of differences in formal institutions and informal behaviours.
Progress of subfield
● Push towards PROBLEM-DRIVEN RESEARCH.
● Politics, not just states.
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Lessons on the state in Comparative Politics
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Modernism sought to find a definition of state
Why the state was abandoned?
● The state as a concept was vague and its excluded important aspects of political processes
(almond 1988)
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There were changes in the post-war relationship between American political science and
American political power.
Neglecting the state
● The state was treated as a constant; an unchanging variable
❖ Behavioralism centred on non-state variables - pushed for pluralist theorist of
politics (i.e Robert Dahl's “Polyarchy”)
❖ Rational choice theory centred on the individual political behaviour; does not
believe in “collective action” (i.e Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow’s “the
essence of Decision”)
The trouble with the state in comparative politics post-WWII onwards
● Decolonization of former colonies raised doubts over our understanding of the state.
● Newly decolonized did not fit the definition of the state under the modernist paradigm
The state, as it turns out, is not constant
Political science grows largely relatively in response to outside stimuli (Almond 1988:845)
Return to the state - A movement
● Both classic pluralist theories and classic sovereignty theories overstated their case.
● The state as a concept fell into disuse and ws subsumed in the concept of the political
system.
The concept of the state within the political system (structural functionalism)
● The state is a legally empowered and legitimately coercive institution.
● Included are extralegal and paralegal institutions such as:
❖ Political parties
❖ Interest groups
❖ Media of communication
❖ Social institutions (Family, Church, school)
The state as an instrument of the ruling class (Marxism and neo-marxism)
● The state is an instrument of the ruling class through which they maintain and preserve
power.
● The state is a repressive state apparatus; a representation of the class interest of the ruling
class.
Arguments for a “return to the state”
● Democratisation led to the devaluation of normative concept to the state
● The state as a concept remains as a central polemical issue.
Neotatism
For “return to the state”
Arguments
Nettl
Disaggregation of the state into several
components for quantifiability and measurability
Stepan
Argued against the alleged reductionism of
pluralist and marxist approaches that treat the
state as a dependent variable.
Nordlinger
Operationalized the state as a sum of
individuals
Pitfalls of neostatists (Almond 1988)
● Neostatists appear to want to return to large and relatively loosely defined concepts
● Neostatists conflate so many dimensions that the central concept is not clearly specified or is
confused with other concepts
What Gabriel Almond argues is
● The move to the return to the state is hardly a paradigm shift
● Attributions of societal reductionism to pluralist and structural functionalist approaches is not
supported by the preponderance of evidence..
An alternative approach (Mitchells 1991)
1. The state should not be taken as a free-standing entity.
2. The state cannot be dismissed as an abstraction or an ideological construct.
3. The state as essentially a phenomenon of decision making is inadequate
The logic of comparison
Uses and limitations of different scientific methods
Comparative Method
Experimental
Statistical
Uses
Determine the
relationship between
variables
Specific treatment
influences an outcome
by providing a specific
treatment to one group
and withholding it from
another and
determining how both
groups scored an
outcome.
Determine trends and
patterns to arrive at
generalizable conclusions
on a given phenomenon
limitations
Does not measure
Nature of social
science
Not all questions are
meant to be quantified
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Methods of Comparison
Mill’s methods of comparison
❖ Method of differences / method of most similar systems - similar systems,
different dependent variables / outcome
❖ Method of agreement / method of most different systems - Different systems,
same dependent variables / outcomes
Method of most similar systems
Country cases (unit of
comparison: state)
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Authoritarian Experience
Level of state repression
Indonesia
✔(present)
↓(low)
Philippines
✔(present)
↑(high)
What explains the difference in outcome?
Method of most different systems
Countries Cases (unit
of comparison society)
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Composition of Ouster Movement
Success of ouster
Thailand
Grassroots
✔(successful)
Philippines
Middle to upper class
✔(successful)
What explains the similarity in outcome?
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Democracy in Comparative Politics
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Capitalism, socialism, and Democracy - Joseph Schumpeter
Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition - Robert Dahl
Some social requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy Seymour Martin Lipset
What Democracy is… and is not - Philippe Schmitter and Terry Karl
DEMOCRACY
Schumpeter
Dahl
Lipset
Schimitter and Karl
Political system in
which the principal
positions of power are
filled through a
competitive struggle
for the people’s vote.
Political system being
completely or almost
completely responsive
to all citizens.
Political system which
supplies regular
constitutional
opportunities for
changing the
governing officials.
A system of governance in
which rulers are held
accountable for their actions
in the public realm by
citizens, acting indirectly
through the competition and
cooperation of their elected
representatives.
*DEMOCRATIC
METHOD*
The Democratic Method
● Institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions which realizes common good by
making people decide through the election of individual who are to assemble to carry out its
will.
Polyarchy
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Regimes that have been substantially popularized and liberalized, that is highly inclusive and
extensively open to public contestation.
Some social requisites of Democracy
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Economic Development
❖ Industrialization
❖ Urbanization
❖ Wealth
❖ Education
❖ Political Legitimacy
❖ Effectiveness
❖ Legitimacy
Delegative Democracy (Guillermo O’donnell 1994)
● Horizontal Accountability - Checks and balance / Institutional level
● Vertical Accountability - Elections/relationship / People and state
● Diagonal Accountability - Civil society, social movements
A look into democratic erosion / Break down / Backsliding
● Citizens’ capacity to make enforceable claims upon the government are reduced due to
changes made in formal institutions and informal political practices.
● State-led debilitation or elimination of any of the political institutions that sustain an existing
democracy.
Contemporary forms of erosion
1. Promissory coups
2. Executive aggrandizement
3. Strategic harassment / manipulation (Media and judiciary)
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DEMOCRATIC WAVES AND AUTHORITARIANISM
How does democracy come and go in Comparative terms?
The Third (3rd) wave: Democratization in the late twentieth Century by Samuel P. Huntington
(1991)
● Follows the procedural definition of democracy (Shumpeterian democratic method) combined
with Dahl’s Polyarchy.
● The work attempted to produce explanatory variables that led to massive democratic
transitions between 1974 and 1990.
● Neither theoretical nor historical, but rather explanatory.
Waves of Democratization
From:
- Absolute monarchies
- Lingering feudal aristocracies
- Successor states to continental empires.
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First long wave of democratization (1828-1926)
First reverse wave (1922-1942)
❖ Fascist states
❖ Colonies
❖ Personalistic military dictatorships
Second short wave of democratization (1943-1962)
Second reverse wave (1958-1975)
❖ one -party systems
❖ Military regimes
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❖ Personal dictatorships
Third wave of democratization (1974)
Explaining the waves (Huntington, 1991: 45)
● Deepening legitimacy problems and the performance dilemma
● Unprecedented global economic growth
● Striking changes to national churches’ stance on authoritarianism
● Changes in policies of external actors
● Snowballing / demonstration effects (Latter part)
On Authoritarianism
Posing simplistic Differences
Democracy
● Individuals vie for power through a competitive struggle for the people’s vote (democratic
method)
Authoritarianism
● Absence of opportunities for participation and opposition on avenues for power contestation
and decision-making.
Authoritarian Regimes
● one-party systems - effective monopolization of power by the party, access to power was
through the party organization, and the party legitimated its rule through ideology.
● Military regimes - created through coups d’etat replacing democratically-elected
governments or civilian governments. The military exercises power governing collegially as a
junta or circulating the top governmental position among top generals.
● Personal dictatorships - the individual leader is the source of authority and that power
depends on access to, closeness to, dependence on, and support from the leader.
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Particular regimes did not always fit neatly into particular categories.
Huntington contented that regimes that combined elements of two types are categorized in
terms of what seemed to be their dominant type as the transition got underway
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On hybrid Regimes and Political participation
“Thinking about Hybrid Regimes” (diamond 2002)
● Regimes are, in one way or another, a hybrid
● Comparison of new regime classifications for authoritarianism:
❖ Electoral
❖ Competitive
❖ Politically-closed regimes
Common
Hybrid Regimes
● Within the political “gray zone” not a full-fledged democracy nor outright dictatorship
❖ (Ex. Frankenstate: hungary under Viktor Orban)
Why the claim “hybrid regimes”
● Classic definitions of democracy raised more questions after the third wave.
❖ The dramatic trend towards democracy was met with more dramatic trend towards
pseudodemocracy
● Resulting complexities in terms of regime classification.
❖ Electoral democracies may actually be competitive authoritarians.
Political participation
“Ordinary people in Extraordinary Times”
● Ordinary
❖ No extraordinary powers vis-a-vis states.
● People
❖ Individuality of group members.
1. How often do they abandon individual pursuits of comfort to contribute to the creation of new
political landscapes?
2. Do they defend democracy or embrace dictatorship?
Civil society
● Networks of formal and informal associations that mediate between individual actors and
the state.
● Offers the fellowship, resources, and reinforcement that make acts of defiance seem
feasible.
Civil Society as “Salvation”
● A barrier against tyranny.
● Serve as reservoirs of resistance to arbitrary or tyrannical actions.
● Basis of good and effective government because of diffusion and distribution of state power.
Civil society as “spoiler”
● Classified literature in the 1960’s and 1970’s as harmful for democracy.
● Unregulated: “asking too much” or being overly active could spoil democracy.
● Involvement and commitment of civil society must be moderated. Political cleavage still exists,
but in check (civil culture).
Polarization
● When political actors group themselves in opposite and distant ideological camps, they
vacate the middle ground where cooperation is most likely leave democracy vulnerable to
collapse.
● Not a single process but a set of processes unfolding with different sets of actors in different
spheres, and with different degrees of intensity.
● Weakness of elites democratic convictions lead to use of polarization as rationalization for
creating their own authoritarian regime.