COMPARATIVE POLITICS PS 2082

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COMPARATIVE POLITICS PS 2082 EMFSS UNIVERSITY OF LONDON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LAHORE WISAM KHURRAM UG2	OFFICE HOURS: WALK INS OR THROUGH APPOINTMENT wisam.khurram@ucl.edu.pk
COMPARATIVE POLITICS	Comparative Politics is one of the oldest fields of political analysis, forming the basis for much of the writings of political philosophers throughout the ages.
Comparative Politics, as the name suggests, utilises the comparative approach in terms of empirically analysing a number of issues within political science.	Presidential vs Parliamentary system Dictatorships vs Democracy Federations vs Centralised systems
Essentially, we're going to be comparing and contrasting several elements of Political Science	We will not only be analysing the differences between two or more differing concepts but also examining if said concepts complement each other in any way
CHAPTER 1: MODES OF COMPARING POLITICAL SYSTEMS	The chapter introduces some necessary comparative concepts: 1. Democratic legitimacy, 2. Institutionalism 3. Political culture
DEMOCRACY?	All democracies have: • some form of electoral system • some kind of legislative assembly • some system of decentralisation
DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY Image: Cp1 (binary/octet-stream)	The basic idea of legitimation is that the exercise of political authority should be seen as right by those required to obey it (Weber, Lipset and Beetham)
All states need to be minimally legitimate in the sense of being supported by some people on the basis of some notion of rightfulness	However, democracies need to be actively supported as well as just passively accepted, which raises the question of whether there is something called ‘democratic legitimacy’
Dictatorship >> Legitimacy problem = Unstable	Democracy >> Legitimacy problem = Deep Political Crisis
Observations: 1. Is Democratic Legitimacy different from Legitimacy alone? 2. Is Democracy the only Globally Legitimate system of Governance? 3. Does the nature of democratic legitimacy vary from country to country?	Image: Cp2 (binary/octet-stream)
INSTITUTIONALISM	INSTITUTIONS?
Rules - Formal and Informal	Law vs Social Etiquette
Drinking is Illegal (Rule)	Remove one’s hat in a church (Ettiquete)
Institutions: Parliament Supreme Court (Different from IR)	Should a state only concern itself with the enforcement of rules?
Should rule changes have widespread acceptability in the sense that rules are valued by the people who are expected to follow them?	If the breaking of a particular rule has significant support, should that rule be changed?
Are people in democracies more likely to follow rules because they have given their active consent to the rule-makers?	Institutionalism and Democratic Legitimacy?
POLITICAL CULTURE	Political culture can be defined as the way in which people think about politics
People in different societies think about their political system in quite different ways.	Political culture can be understood, in part, as the outcome of particular historical processes that translate into different life experiences
why does Britain have a monarchical democracy and the USA have a republican system of presidential democracy?	Most British people want to have a monarchy and most Americans want to have a presidential system
Historically, most British people were able to achieve their rights under the Crown, which was not true for the Americans, who had to fight a war of independence from the British	In the Nordic region, democracy has been understood to have a strong element of social equality which is different from a number of capitalist democracies across the globe
Stable systems generally need quite a lot of self-reinforcement	In stable democracies, people are both subject to the law and authors of its reinforcement
While law enforcement agencies have a responsibility to uphold the law, they also need to be stopped from breaking it themselves. It takes one ambitious judge, general or politician to overstep institutional boundaries.	Public opinion and public culture may help restrain such steps.
Hence, Politcal Culture and Institutionalism go hand in hand.	However, if there is a legitimacy problem, people may not assist in the upholding of institutions. In fact, people may even support their violation
For example, when Peruvian President Fujimori quite illegally used the army to close the National Congress in 1992, his popularity went up	However, such cases may arise because the political culture is so different from the institutions that govern the people
Image: Cp3 (binary/octet-stream)	Countless examples of political systems failing to generate democratic legitimacy: Pakistan _ Democracy? Afghanistan - Democracy?
How to reform poorly-functioning democracies?	Deliberation, the thought gone into policy, is essential to every political system. No matter how democratic the processes by which government are elected, the absence of deliberation will eventually discredit the system because of its poor performance.
Just as the enforcement of laws requires courts and judges, deliberation requires a professional civil service and the employment of expertise in the making of political decisions.	Hence, for a democratic system to work : Democratic Legitimacy and the Enforcement of Law is both enabled by Political Culture.
What's the most important of the three?	INSTITUTIONS
DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY	What kind of legitimacy democratic states possess?
It is the state itself, not a monarch, a president, or a prime minister, that possesses this legitimacy.	People should retain the belief in the worth of the political system regardless of who happens to be in power.
STATE?	A state has a legitimate monopoly on the exercise of physical force within its borders
A state is a human community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. - Max Weber	Democracy can only exist if a recognisable sovereign authority can, if necessary, impose itself by force. There would be no point in having a system of contested elections unless the winners eventually had something to govern. This monopoly of force is the backbone of ‘state-ness’.
The state also has a monopoly on the making of laws and develops special institutions, such as parliaments, for that purpose.	Symbolic expressions such as flags, monuments, or the presence of rulers on stamps remind the society of the state's existence complementing its legitimacy as a law-making body.
A State should be recognised by the international community in order to be legitimate.	Weber did not reduce ‘legitimacy’ to any particular form of government. He was prepared to define monarchies and communist systems as legitimate, as well as constitutional democracies.
Legitimate power in this context simply means official, rightful power as opposed to the power of bandits, warlords or insurgents.	A French pirate who, early in the nineteenth century, was arrested and brought before Napoleon. Napoleon asked him what he was doing. The pirate replied that he was doing exactly what Napoleon was doing, but on a smaller scale.
What would Weber say to the pirate?	The official, public, power of the state should be considered in a different way to that of the power of a particular individual or private group
If democracies and authoritarian forms of government can be legitimate, the question is whether democracy possesses a special type of legitimacy	It is generally agreed that a system of government is legitimate if the majority of people in the country consider it to be the best available form of government
Democratic government requires legitimacy because it relies much more on self-policing than authoritarian government does.	Competitive elections provide one source of legitimacy since the public gets the final say on who governs them and can ideally remove unpopular leaders, so they should be more inclined to support the system.
Democracies are different from non-democracies because when faced with crises, it is much easier to get rid of ineffective rulers in democracies. - Beetham	Barack Obama? What did his election do?
Nevertheless, people can accept the existing system for negative reasons: 1. fear or apathy 2. for instrumental reasons 3. for principled reasons	Most stable democracies are systems that perform well economically and have traditional sources of loyalty. e.g. Britain has a traditional monarch and a reasonably successful economy.
Democratic legitimacy may also come from a sense that people have a stronger sense of ownership of the state. e,g, Switzerland	The way in which specific institutions reinforce legitimacy is also important e.g. French Presidentde Gaulle using presidential powers to resolve a deep crisis over Algerian decolonisation.
LEGITIMACY AS A COMPARATIVE CONCEPT	Weber believed that different types of states in history depended on different types of legitimacy.

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	Created by Wisam Khurram almost 7 years ago