PoliSCI
Terms
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- Interest Intermediation
- Political interest intermediation: the process of bringing the interests of ordinary people to those with the ability to address those interests in the political arena (i.e. elected officials and policymakers). (Think about how banks act as intermediaries, bringing borrowers together with lenders. In politics, we would look for an institution that brings regular people together with those who have power in the political arena.) Traditionally, parties and unions acted as interest intermediators. However, as parties and unions are less effective in this role due to programmatic and coalitional challenges, other organizations (such as NGOs, social movements, and neighborhood organizations) are seeking to act as interest intermediators.
- ⬢ Nomothetic vs idiographic explanations
- o Nomothetic – Explanation that searches for all encompassing laws that cover everything o Idiographic – focus of a few or specific case studies to gather information and describe the specific dynamics of an individual case.
- State
- o Organization that has monopoly of violence over a territory, have primary authority over a territory.  Must control territory, with boundaries recognized internationally  Have monopoly over legitimate use of violence within borders  Within their territories states govern economic activity, regulate foreign trade and issue currency  Must have bureaucracies, and extract resources  Other countries must recognize that state has right to exist
- • “weak†state
- o Low autonomy and low capacity. Cannot fulfill basic tasks like defending borders, collecting taxes, managing economy, or extracting resources. Lacks authority and legitimacy. Often leads to collapse of structure of state. Example is Nigeria
- ⬢ Ethnic identity
- o Sense of belonging to an ethnic group  Groups has to have name  Common ancestry  Common historical memories/experiences  Common culture  Attachment to specific territory  Sense of solidarity
- Instituions
- o Mechanisms of social cooperation that structure human behaviors. Examples – catholic church and congress. The way we set up institutions matters, if you change incentives, people will behave differently.
- Rostow
- o Stages of Growth Theory – start with traditional society, limited action, tribes. Society develops leading economic sector and transportation/ infrastructure. Take off of economy. Leads to investment and growth, power shifts from tribes to investors. Next economy matures, people save and invest, goods are traded internationally. Last economic growth and stability. People become wealthy start consuming, democracy emerges. No role for state here. Does not clarify way to start process.
- ⬢ Gershenkron
- o Revised Modernization Theory. Where early theorists said that the path to modernization was linear, Gerkenshron believed it wasn’t not mono-linear and that democracy is not always the outcome. In 1962 He wrote Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. Looked at England, Germany, France, Russia. Timing was key in all this. For England, the availability of private capital from entrepreneurs led made it easy. France and Germany had to go to banks and financial institutions to back them. Russia had to turn to states for capital(most backward) o Conclusion: In late developing countries, you need state to help create conditions of development. World Bank helps relieve poverty, loan money. IMF loans money to help country out of financial crisis. These loan lots of money, fun investments through foreign aid. Theorists believe private sectors are too weak we should provide institutions with loans so they can grow. Recognizes international community, dependence on it.
- ⬢ André Gunder Frank
- o Early Dependency Theory – different countries have different places in national economy, in peripheral countries leaders act in interest of not heir own but of core countries. Frank – everything goes back to colonization. World is separate between colonizers and colonized. Peripheral countries start at disadvantage, are servants to international community, resources flow from periphery to core. This continued exploitation which led to poverty. Core countries have no interest in helping periphery countries. Solution – self-sufficiency, cut off all trade with international, no state role because all state does is exploit the poor.
- Liberal Welfare State
- o least generous of the 3, provides low levels of public benefits, there are means test to show you need welfare. Ex. US and Canada don’t provide universal coverage to everyone. Money comes from middle/upper class through taxes. o Benefits – higer levels of market efficiency but higher poverty and inequality
- Corporatist Welfare State
- o middle, called conservative, Christian w.s. society is body, society works its best when everyone has and stays in their role, everyone has a place, organized into vocational, or industrial organizations that are integrated in state. Rooted in ChURCH, PEOPLE STAY IN THEIR ROLE, SOCIAL STABILITY PLUS PRESERVATION OF HIERARCHY. Allocate benefits according to what group you’re in not on need. EX. France and Germany
- ISI
- o 1930’s-1960s – Import substitution industrialization. Idea is to manufacture things within state to replace all imports. At first didn’t have protective barriers because Depression made natural protection because all other countries were doing poorly. Protection continued due to WWII. Everyone concentrated on war effort.
- EOI
- o Export oriented industrialization. Return to exports as growth center of economy. Export processed and refined product. Not primary products. Switch from ISI TO EOI because general trend towards internationalization of trade. Multi National Corporation’s role changed. Compainies went to Latin America to produce goods and sell overseas because of cheap labor, few worker protections. Goal was to export. Not sell at home. This is how the asian tigers got RICH AS FUCK.
- Civic Culture
- o A political culture characterized by (1) most citizens\' acceptance of the authority of the state, but also (2) a general belief in participation in civic duties. The term was systematically deployed in Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba\'s influential 1963 book, The Civic Culture, and revived in their The Civic Culture Revisited (1980). Prompted by a concern about a perceived problem of political stability in Western democracies, the civic culture model suggested that a polity in which citizens were informed about political issues, and involved in the political process, could not of itself sustain a stable democratic government.
- Three Ways Economic Development Helps Democracy
- o education: income goes up so people are more educated, people have more sophisticated beliefs, can read or write to learn more about politics, more that people want to make political changes into democracy o urbanization: with economic development more people move to cities, live densely and associate with people and have more interactions, talk to people more often that are different than you, can talk about politics more easily and form political ideas. o strong middle class: important because if you move from poverty level to secure middle class you’re not thinking about day to day survival and then you have more leisure time to spend on political involvement, when you have strong middle class people are as dependent upon rulers and people are more critical of rulers, business owners want to have control over money, demand representation in politics because as they gain more money then they want their interests represented
- ⬢ 3 functions that political parties serve in a democracy
- o Parties structure the vote, are organizational framework by which local political leaders link up nationally. o Act as interest intermediators in representative democracy. o Agrigate and articulate interests – everyone wants different things each interest has interest group that focuses on own cause but parties bring interest together, make policy that represents big group of people.
- Giovanni Sartiori
- o Says parties are important because of links they make. Parties are working for the good of the nation as a whole. Parties have different views on what is good for nation as a whole, dissent over policies. In democracy people have right to disagree with dominant policy. If you don’t like party then you are free to affiliate with different party.
- ⬢ Cadre Parties
- o Cadre parties—i.e., parties dominated by politically elite groups of activists—developed in Europe and America during the 19th century. Except in some of the states of the United States, France from 1848, and the German Empire from 1871, the suffrage was largely restricted to taxpayers and property owners, and, even when the right to vote was given to larger numbers of people, political influence was essentially limited to a very small segment of the population. The mass of people were limited to the role of spectators rather than that of active participants.
- ⬢ Mass Parties
- o Shift from cadre to highly organized mass parties, mass parties tend to stabilize electorates because they structure political behavior because it took class cleavages and froze them. People start to mobilize around class identities, mass parties transit and reinforce political identities. Tightly organized, rely on members for support and financing. o Sartori says mass parties construct political behavior because it ended up taking up class cleavages in society and freezing them o Inherently collected to the electorate for support and financing
- Catch All Parties
- o WWII changed mass parties to catch-all. Organizational style and social structure changed. Changed original style because they receive state funds. Didn’t need private investors. Could appeal to public through TV and radi. Didn’t need strong organization anymore. Change in social structure- blurring of class boundaries, welfare state eliminate need for solidarity. Catch all don’t have extreme ideologies, want to catch as many voters as possible, tend to represent multiple interests in society, have smaller roles for individual members, close alliances with interest groups. Describes most western euro countries in 1990s
- Civil Society
- o Civil society is the intermediary sphere that stands apart from family, state, and market. They are comprised of volunteers, accept overlapping membership and compete in the political arena generally using non-violent means.
- Interest Group
- o Groups that organize, channel, and defend the interest of their specific constituency. They don’t seek candidates for office, and what’s good about them is that they introduce items on the political agenda which are important to their constituents.
- Social Movement
- o Characterized by low levels of organizations, they are groups of ordinary people possibly joined by more influential citizens that engages in sustained confrontations with authority in order to achieve social change.
- ⬢ Grievance-Based theories of collective action
- o Grievance based theory of collective action is the idea that people engage in collective action when they have a grievance, in particular they are responding to what came before. o Rude’ said that collective action is a rational response to grievances. When things go wrong people want to do something about it. o Davies on the other hand believed, that people who had living with grievances such as hunger never knew they were hungry because that’s how they always been. Elaborated with J-curve. We see collective action when peoples expectations are high and the outcome is sub par.
- Mancur Olson
- o Resource mobilization theory. Believed that selective incentives are what brought people to participate in certain things such as government. Question was in large groups, if everyone was going to benefit, why should individual participate?
- Political Process Theories of Collective Action
- o Political opportunities are important, can rise or fall with social movements. There has to be a political opening or opportunity to spark the movement. Collective action isn’t about preventing free-riders, its about coordination. You need to mobilize people in their social networks.
- 2 Things Islamists want to achieve
- o Want to end western influence in Muslim world, return to traditional Shari’a law. Call for pull out of all western forces from whole middle East. o Change how international organizations treat Muslim world. (IMF gives money to Muslims world with strings attached)
- Two Reasons why Islamism is Rising in popularity
- o Islamism is reaction to decline in Muslim-Arab world. For centuries it was center of literature, science, technology. Decline seen as failure, people aren’t following fundamental policies of Islam. Want to get Muslim world back on top by following fundamentalists. o Reaction to colonial legacy – Western colonizers cam in and fractured traditional Unity in Arab world. They created true states where states shouldn’t exist because there isn’t true nation of people along ethnic lines.
- ⬢ Muslim Democrats
- o Believe that Shar’ia law is compatible with democracy in certain countries. They are influenced by Islam but don’t want theocracy. Policies they implement would draw on principles of Islam, willing to participate in democratic process, respect the process. They are mostly in Turkey.
- Rule of Law
- o Idea goes back to Machiavelli who asked why would governments want to be constrained by laws when government can get people to do what they want. He answers they do it for the sake of ensuring social cooperation with the government. It makes their behavior predictable, and citizens are then protected and in turn are confident in government. Groups in society can than see the government as legitimate. In short the rule of law exists when government works its will through legislation when all people have the right to equal treatment under the law and no one is above the law.
- 3 Reasons Why Rule of Law Is important
- o Necessary for market economy to exist o Necessary if countries are going to have international agreements o Legitimacy of Government
- 3 of O\'Donnell\'s flaws in Rule of Law
- o Flaws in existing Laws – laws that discriminate against women, indigenous people, and subject prisoners to inhumane conditions o Flaws in application of law - use of the law against the political enemy or the vulnerable can be an efficient means of oppression. The other side of this is the manifold ways in which, even in a democracy, the privileged manage to exempt themselves from the law. o Flaws in relationship between state agencies and ordinary citizens – ordinary citizens are not able to approach bureaucracies and obtain documents, go to the hospital, get help from police, or acquire anything that is normally their right while the rich and influential can.