COMPARATIVE POLITICS
PS 2082
EMFSS
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LAHORE
WISAM KHURRAM
UG2

COMPARATIVE POLITICS

Comparative Politics, as the name suggests, utilises the comparative approach in terms of empirically analysing a number of issues within political science.

Essentially, we're going to be comparing and contrasting several elements of Political Science

CHAPTER 1: MODES OF COMPARING POLITICAL SYSTEMS

DEMOCRACY?

All states need to be minimally legitimate in the sense of being
supported by some people on the basis of some notion of rightfulness

Dictatorship >> Legitimacy problem
=
Unstable

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?

INSTITUTIONALISM

Rules - Formal and Informal

Drinking is Illegal (Rule)

Institutions: Parliament
Supreme Court

(Different from IR)

Should rule changes have widespread acceptability in the sense that rules are valued by the people who are expected to follow them?

Are people in democracies
more likely to follow rules because they have given their active consent to
the rule-makers?

POLITICAL CULTURE

People in different
societies think about their political system in quite different ways.

why
does Britain have a monarchical democracy and the USA have a
republican system of presidential democracy?

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

Stable systems
generally need quite a lot of self-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.

Hence, Politcal Culture and Institutionalism go hand in hand.

For example, when Peruvian
President Fujimori quite illegally used the army to close the National
Congress in 1992, his popularity went up

How to reform
poorly-functioning democracies?

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.

What's the most important of the three?

DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY

It is the state itself, not a monarch,
a president, or a prime minister, that possesses this legitimacy.

STATE?

A state is a human community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.

- Max Weber

The state also has a monopoly on the making of laws and develops special
institutions, such as parliaments, for that purpose.

A State should be recognised by the
international community in order to be legitimate.

Legitimate power in this
context simply means official, rightful power as opposed to the power
of bandits, warlords or insurgents.

What would Weber say to the pirate?

If democracies and authoritarian forms of government can be legitimate, the question is whether democracy possesses a special
type of legitimacy

Democratic government requires
legitimacy because it relies much more on self-policing than authoritarian
government does.

Democracies are different from
non-democracies because when faced with crises, it is much easier to get rid
of ineffective rulers in democracies.
- Beetham

Nevertheless, people can accept the existing system for negative reasons:
1. fear or apathy
2. for instrumental reasons
3. for principled reasons

Democratic legitimacy may
also come from a sense that people have a stronger sense of ownership of
the state.
e,g, Switzerland

LEGITIMACY AS A COMPARATIVE CONCEPT