Comparative Political Institutions PDF

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Comparative Political Institutions
Comparative Politics (Universiteit Antwerpen)
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What is Comparative Politics?

Introduction
Introduction
Comparative politics is one of the three main subields in political science
 Focusing on internal political structures, actors and processes
 Analysing them empirically by describing, explaining and predicting their variety
 Across political systams
KEY POINTS
 Politics is the human activity of making public and authoritive decisions
- Activity of acquiring the power of making decisions and exercising this power
- Conlict or competition for power and its use
 Who decides what and how, is important for the life of societies
What is comparative politics?
Three subields of political science:

 Political theory: deals with the normative and theoretical questions (values about
equality, justice)
 Comparative politics: empirical questions and interactions within political systems
(value-neutral)
 International relations: studies interactions between political systems (balance of
power, war, trade)
CP includes three traditions:

1. Country focus: comparative description of (aspects of systems) of countries
2. Methodological focus: establish rules and standards for comparative analysis
3. Analytical focus
 Describe similarities and diferences between cases (substance and method)
 Diferences between countries and their institutions, actors and processes
 Through systematic, explicit comparison
What does CP do in practice?

1. Describe similarities and diferences: classiications and diferences
2. Explain similarities and diferences: test hypotheses
3. Predict which factors might cause speciic outcomes: formulating predictions
Aim of CP is to explain, comparison is the method

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 As a social science
 CP is not experimental, requires diferent cases and systematic, explicit comparison
KEY POINTS
 Comparative politics is one of the three main subields of political science, alongside
international relations and political theory
 Empirical science that studies chiely domestic politics
 The goals of CP are to describe diferences and similarities between political
systems and their features, to explain the diferenceand to predict which factors
may cause speciic outcomes
The substance of comparative politics

What is compared?
1. Structures: national, sub-national and supra-national political systems
2. Actors: voters, parties, social movements
3. Processes: policymaking, government formation, candidate selection
1. Before WWII: mainly analysis of state and its institutions

 3 state powers: legislative, executive, judiciary
 Formal analysis of constitutional texts and documents: legalistic study
 Study of formal political institutions in W-Europe and N-America: case-oriented
(small N)
 Idea of convergence towards Western models of political order
2. 1950-1960: behavioural revolution + new cases

 Shift away from insitutions: focus on politics in practice
 Broadening geographical and historical scope: communism, dictatorship,
postcolonalism
 Other types of democracies which were not of the Anglo-Saxon type: consensus
 Consequences
- Increased variety of political systems: variable-oriented
- Role of non-formal institutions: parties, interest groups, media
- New methodology: empirical data, large N, statistics, systematic data
collection
- A new language: systemic funtionalism
> Many concepts and categories used in traditional CP did not it the
new cases
> Western concpets did not travel well
> Search for more general and universal categories
> State -> political system (Easton)

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3. From 1967 onwards: high level of abstraction of systemic approach

 Leads to counter-reactions: back to institutions
 Shift of substantial focus: new focus on states and their institutions (new
institutionalism)
 Narrowing of geographical scope: from universal back to middle-range theories
(grounded theory)
- Change of methodology: case-oriented + back to small N
- Focus on actors as rational and self-interested, and instutions as constraining
actors’ possibilities: theoretical turn to rational choice theory
Cyclical process: institutions to functions to institutions

 Broader focus on institutions and features of political system
 Easton’s work in contribution by the systemic paradigm is integrated in CP
 More attention is paid to the output-side: public policies, policy-making, outcome
and impact
 New challenges: awareness of interdependence between national political systems?
KEY POINTS
 Not limited to the comparison of national political systems, but includes other units
such as sub-national and supra-national, single political actors, processes and
policies
 With the widening of the number of ‘cases’ (new states or other regions) the need
for more general concepts that could ‘travel’ beyond Western countries led to a
focus on functions rather than institutions
- In the last two decades reaction against overely abstract analysis
- Led back to ‘grounded theories’ limited in space and time
 As for the behavioural revolution: rational choice also aims at a general and uniied
theory of politics applicable in all times and places
- Paradigm was imported into political science from economics
- Stresses the rol of institutions

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 CP includes as a subject matter all features of political systems and has turned its
attention towards the interaction between them, approaching international relations
The method of comparative politics

Methods in CP difer with respect to:
 Research design
- Intensive research design: small N, many variables
- Extensive research desing: large N, few variables
 Dimensions
- Spatial comparison: cross-sectional + synchronic (between countries in one
point in time)
- Functional comparison: cross-organizational (focus on parties, not on
countries)
- Longitudinal comparison: cross-temporal + diachronic
 Unit of analysis: single actors, institutions, processes
 Focus on similarities or diferences
- Most similar system designn: focus on very similar cases and try to explain
diferences
- Most diferent system design: focus on very diferent cases and try to explain
similarities
Cyclical process in methods in CP:

 Before behavioural shift: small N, case-oriented -> intensive research design
 Behavioural revolution: large N, variable-oriented, statistical techniques ->
extensive research design
 More recently: return to small N, case-oriented, focus on parsimonious explanatory
designs
Two types of data:

 Aggregate or ecological data: available at some territorial level
 Individual data: information attributable to an individual
Behavioural revolution: shift from aggregate to individual data

 Sceptical oicial statistics in non-democratic countries: creation of datasets by
university researchers
 Aggregate data were subject to manipulation
- Growing interest in personalized information like ‘values’
- Computerization of social sciences
- Ecological fallacy: undermined assumption that correlations at the level of
aggregate units could be inferred at the individual level
 Recovery of ecological data from 1970s onwards
- Creation of international networks and datasets for comparable hard data
worldwide
- Individual data have limitations as compared to aggregate data sets: highly
subjective, very costly, lack of long time series
 Towards a combination of both data
Before WWII Behavioural shift Recently

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Substantial focus States and Politics in practice: States and

institutions systems and institutions
funtions
Methodology Case-oriented: Variable-oriented: Case-oriented:
- Small N - Large N - Small N
- Empirical
- Statistics
Method and data Aggregate and Individual data Combination of both
ecological data data: international
datasets
KEY POINTS
 Comparative politics employs
- Statistical techniques when research designs include many cases and
quantitative indicators (variable-oriented large-N studies)
- Comparative methods when research designs include few cases and
qualitative indicators (case-oriented small-N studies)
- Case studies can also be carried out in a comparative perspective
 The dimensions of comparison are multiple: spatial, temporal and functional
 The purpose of comparative politics is descriptive, explanatory. and predictory
 To this end research designs aim either at
- Selecting similar cases and explaining their diferent outcomes: Method of
Diference
- Selecting diferent cases and explain similar outcomes: Method of
Agreement
 Comparative politics relies on diferent types of data
Conclusion
Comparative politics was born out of diversity and deals with divergence
 No comparing without diference
 But: globalization, interdependence…: how much divergence is left?
- Galton problem: interdependence of cases because of same inluence
- Indicators for ongoing divergence: role of religion, new-regionalism
 Role of behavioural revolution for contemporary comparative politics

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Approaches in CP
Introduction
Moving beyond the description of single countries
 New approaches: useful across political systems
 Political theories are the source of these approaches
At the broadest level, political theories can be categorized as:

 Positivist: facts are real and observable
- By objectify data, you have an objective interpretation
- Often use statistics, but typically based on hypothesis testing
 Constructivist: facts are socially constructed
- Researcher cannot step out of the social network, which clouds his
judgement
- Qualitative research: discourse analysis
KEY POINTS
 Given the high complexity of political systems and the wide range of variation :
important to develop approaches that are useful across them all and not simply in
single countries
 Political theories are the main source of such approaches
- The division between positivism and constructivism
- Being the more general distinction
Uses of theory
Theory is the best friend of comparative researcher
 Necessary for interpreting and generating analytical insights
 Provides scholars with puzzles to be adressed
Theory is the worst enemy of comparative researcher

 Theory is a blinder: tendency to ind support for it
 Testing multiple theories is costly
Grand theories versus middle-range (or grounded) theories:

 Grand theories
- Encompassing: claim to integrate all cases

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- Explain every single system in the world: leads to limited explanatory

capacity
 Middle-range theories
- Appy to more speciic geographical, political and historical context
- Generalize within welll-speciied boundaries: particular cases in particular
context
Major approaches to comparative politics

 Structural functionalism
- To identify the necessary activities or functions of all political systems
- To compare the manner in which thes functions were performed
- Developmental assumptions about the manner in which governing could
best be performed
- Closely related to the Western democratic model
 Systems theory
- Considered the structures of the public sector as an open system
- Had extensive input and output interactions with its environment
 Marxism
- Class conlict as interest-based explanation of difernces among political
systems
- Ofering some empirical predictions about those diferences
- Developmental pattern that would lead through revolution to a dictatorship
of proletariat
 Corporatism
- Stresses the role of state and society interactions in governing
- Stresses the legitimate role of social interests in inluencing policy
 Institutionalism
- Focus on the central role of structures in shaping poltics and individual
behaviour
- Deined in terms of their rules and their routines: emphasize their normative
structure
 Governance
- Similarities to structural functional analysis
- Argues that certain tasks must be performed in order to govern a society
- Interested in roles that social actors play in process of making and
implementing decisisons
KEY POINTS
 Theory is necessary to guide empirical research in comparative politics
- To interpret the indings
- Provides the puzzles and the questions that motivate new research
 Without theory, comparative politics would be a mere collection of information
- Would be no analytical perspective attempting to answering important
questions
- However, theories and approaches should never become blinders for the
researcher
- Ideally: investigate the same question from diferent angles
 An important distinction concerns grand theories and middle-range theories
- Behavioural revolution: great emphasis on all-encompassing theories

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- Present: tendency to develop ‘grounded theories’ or middle-range theories

- Apply to more speciic geographical, political and historical contexts
Alternative perspectives
The ive I’s as main approaches
 Diferent approaches to explain a political phenomenon
 Key is to ind which approach works best in which case
- Institutions
- Interests
- Ideas
- Individuals
- International environment
 Provide the means of understanding for almost any political issue
Institutions
Structures matter
 Institutions shape behaviour of individuals: formal rules, networks, norms of
appropiateness
 Institutional analysis: initial focus on central state institutions and constitutions: the
root of CP
 Institutionalist approaches stress importance of initial structures and choices
(incrementalism)
Contemporary: New institutionalism

 Approach to institutions is more conceptual and empirical
 A larger set of institutions is considered and studied
 New institutionalism: centrality of institutions
- Normative institutionalism: sees institutions as composted norms of proper
behaviour
- Rational choice institutionalism: provides incentives for people to behave in
a typical way
- Historical institutionalism: once established: consequences remain (path
dependency)
 Each approach to institutions provides a view of how indivduals and structures
interact in producing collective choices for society
 For example: disctinction between presidential and parliamentary regimes, federal
and unitary states

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Interests
Rational chocie analysis

 Individuals are self-interested utility maximizers and engage in political action
 To receive beneits and avoid costs
 Consider the interests that actors presume through political action
Group intersts
 States legitimize the role of groups in society and access to the state
- Connects back to institutions
- Recently more interest in networks
 Corporatism: socio-political organisation by major interest groups on basis of
common interests
 Organisations can inluence the desicion making: connects back to the institutional
approach
Inluence of ballot structure

 Closed ballot structure
- The larger the district size, the smaller the incentive for candidate to
cultivate personal vote
- The possibility of diferentiating between cadidates within each party
decreases
- Which leads to the election becoming battle between political parties rather
than individuals
 Open ballot structure
- The larger the district size, the greater the incentive for candidate to
cultivate personal vote
- Need to diferentiate between candidates from te same party
- Which leads to election becoming battle between individual politicians rather
than parties
- The more people you are competing with, the more you will have a personal
campaign
Ideas
Ideas matter for output

 Political culture, ideologies, policy ideas, social capital
 How should society look like?

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 But efect of ideas is diicult to measure: political culture often ‘residual’

explanation
Individuals
Individual level explanations can be focused on political elites or the mass level
 Elite level
- Highlights importance of political biographies and diaries
- A prominent approach in political psychology
- Understand personality and background of political leaders
 Mass level
- Sociological approaches stress the importance of social backgrounds: role of
personality
- Understand the political behaviour of the mass level
Orientation to Activity
politics Active Passive
Positive Bill Clinton George H. W. Bush
Tony Blair Jim Callaghan
Negative Richard Nixon Calvin Coolidge
Margaret Thatcher John Major
International environment
In CP focus is on individual countries

 Quid globalization, hierarchy of countries, difusion, multi-level governance?
- Galton problem: problem of external dependencies in making statistical
estimates when the elements sampled are not statistically independent
- Homogenization of European party systems
 Becoming diicult to understand one country in a global environment
KEY POINTS
 Comparative politics has institutional roots
- Stresses institutions in shaping and constraining the behaviour of individuals
- Weak in explaining change
 Rational choice analysis assumes that individuals are self-interested utility
maximizers
- Engage in political action to receive beneits (and avoid costs)
- Approach: less relevant in comparative politics than in other ields
 Although cultural explanations are often vague and residual: ideas matter and a
great deal of research investigates the impact of cultural traits (recent research
stresses factors as social capital and trust)
 Single political systems are increasingly facing international inluences: integration
and globalization
What more? Interactions as a 6e I

Taking types of explanations separately underestimates complexity of real world
 Sources (theoretical and methodological) need to be considered together
 So as to enhance quality of research
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- Processes: emphasis on dynamics and underlying processes of politics

- Outcomes: dependent variables in CP vary according to approaches
KEY POINTS
 Weak points of CP
- Focus on static elements of the political system
- Neglect of dynamic political processes
 Greater attention to processes is comparative public policy analysis
 The dependent variable in comparative politics varies according to approaches, but
the ultimate dependent variable is governance: establishing goals for society,
inding means to reach those goals, and then learning from the successes or failures
of their decisions
Comparative Research Methods

Introduction
How should a proper comparative research design be developed?
 The research design (RD) can be considered to be a bridge
 Between research question (RQ) and the researsh answer (RA)
 This is called the triad: RQ -> RA -> RD
KEY POINTS
 The proper use of correct application of methods essential in comparative politics
- Implies that the comparative method meets the standards set
- In terms of validity, reliability, and its use in a wider sense, i.e.
generalizability
 The relationship between variables and cases in comparative research is crucial
- In order to reach empirically founded conclusions
- That will further knowledge in political science
Linking theory to evidence

Theory comes before method
 RQ should always be guided by theory
 A theory in its simplest form is a relationship between two real-world phenomena
- The independent X variable: use to explain
- The dependent Y variable: want to explain
This theory is then linked to evidence or data
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 Linking theory to evidence always entails reduction of real-world complexities
The RD links RQ (theory) to the RA (evidence) by means of comparative methods

 The comparative method allows to test hypotheses
 Conclusions are drawn from comparisons, not experiments
- Quasi-experimental method
- Trying to get as close as possible to a real experiment
 Quasi-experimental method enables to make inferences: deductions that go beyond
collected data
Validity
 Internal validity: whether inferences are correct for most cases under inspection
 External validity: whether results are valid for other more or less similar cases not
included in research
Causality
 Diicult to establish: depends on
- Whether variation in dependent variable is evidently and systematically
related to variaton in independent variables
- Whether this relationship makes theoretical sense
KEY POINTS
 Theory comes before method and is expressed in its simplest form
- As the relationship between dependent Y and independent X variables
- Research method follows the research question in order to ind a proper
research answer
 Research answers are tentative hypotheses
- Interpreted by means of descriptive inference on basis of comparative
evidence
- Possibly allowing for causal interpretation
 Research design is the toolkit
- To systematically link empirical evidence to theoretical relationships
- By means of comparative methods enhancing the validity of the results
Case selection
Cases: units of observation comparable at certain levels of measurement
 Micro, meso, macro
 In data matrix: the variables are the columns and the cases are the rows
The number of variables and cases involved determines the research strategy
 Intensive research strategy: few cases and many variables
 Extensive research strategy: many cases and few variables
Five types of research designs can be distinguished:

1. Case study: one case at one time point (low external validity)
2. Time series: one case over time (one longitudal analysis)
3. Closed universe: relevant cases in relevant periods (focused comparison)
4. Cross section: all cases at one time (cases that resemble more than they difer)
5. Pooled analysis: maximizing cases across time (impact of time held constant)
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The case selection depends on:

 The theoretical relationship under review
 Type of required and available empirical information
Mixed method strategy

 Combine diferent methods in one research design
 Lieberman: statistical analysis with large n
 Focusing on cases in the regression line and under the line
 See how diferent explanations complement or it in initial model
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KEY POINTS
 In comparative research case selection is a central concern for the research design
- Level of inquiry as derived from RQ related to type of system under
investigation
- The comparative variation across systems is empirically observed
- By means of indicators representing the variables that are in use
 The balance between many or fewer cases and variable: important option for case
selection and the organization of the data set
 The selection of cases depends on the RQ and the hypotheses that direct the RD:
the choice of cases can be limited due to lack of data and therefore can impair the
chosen research design
Use of Methods of Agreement and Diference

Two diferent research designs in comparative methods which employ a diferent
logic:
 Method of Agreement: search for commonalities among dissimilar cases
 Method of Diference: search for diferences among similar cases
Method of Agreement
 Uses the Most Diferent Systems Design (MDSD)
- Selection of cases that are dissimilar on many features
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- Which are not part of the X -> Y relation

 Elimination of irrelevant variables
 Diferent cases with similar outcomes: explaned by similarities between diferent
cases
Method of Diference
 Uses the Most Similar Systems Design (MSSD)
- Selection of cases that show similar features
- Which are not part of the X -> Y relation
 Positive identiication of relevant variables
 Similar cases with diferent outcomes: explaned by diferences between similar
cases
Limitations of rules of comparison

 No list of potential causes
 Assumes that one factor is the unique cause, but in reality the cause might be
combination of factors
Alternative logic of comparison: QCA and fuzzy-set logic

 Attempts to cater for multiple causalities
 Many variables: relatively high number of cases
 Which combination of factors explains outcome: based on Boolean algebra
KEY POINTS
 The point of departure is a hypothesis concerning the relationship between two or
more variables X-Y whose empirical validity is to be veriied by means of real world
data across a number of cases
- The Method of Agreement uses MDSD to allow descriptive causal inference
- Conversely, the Method of Diference derives its explanatory capacity from
MSSD
- Shared goal: to eliminate those variables that exemplify no systematic
association between X and Y across the cases selected
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 An alternative logic of comparison has recently been developed: QCA/fuzzy-set

logic: allows scrutiny of multiple causality across cases and variables
Constraints and limitations of comparative

method
The comparative method has a number of constraints and limitations
1. Conceptual stretching
2. Interpreting results
Conceptual stretching
 Concept developed for one set of cases is extended to additional cases
 To which features of concept do not apply in the same manner
- Inherent trade-of between internal and external validity: Sartori’s ladder of
generality
> General strategy to avoid conceptual stretching
> The fewer features or attributes that deine a concept, the more
cases it will cover
> The more identifying traits we attribute to a concept, the fewer cases
it will cover
> Scale of inverse variation relating the number of properties of a
concept and the number of cases it covers
- Conceptual travelling: risk of overstretching
 Attempts to cope with conceptual stretching
- Family resemblance: extending the initial concept by adding features which
share some of the attributes of the original concepts: requires degree of
commonality
> Initial concept: A+B+C
> Add cases: A+B, A+C, B+C
- Radial categories: each step of extension is deined by a hierarchy of
attributes belonging to the initial concept: requires that the primary attribute
A is always included
> Initial concept: A+b+c
> Add cases: A+b, A+c
Interpreting results
 Galton problem: interdependence of cases because of same inluence
 Individual fallacy: data measured at the individual or group level as if represented
the whole
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 Ecological fallacy: conclusions about individuals based only on analyses of group

data
 Over-determination: dependent variable is over-determined by another diference
not catered for RD
 Selection biases: proper randomization is not achieved at the selection of data for
analysis
KEY POINTS
 There are many hazards and pitfalls in comparative methods that ought to be taken
into account to link theory and evidence in a plausible fashion
 Conceptual travelling is a sensitive instrument to widen the case selection
- As long as overstretching is avoided
- Radial categories and family resemblance: remedy by extending number of
cases
 Interpretation problems are often due to biases
- Galton’s problem, over-determination and individual and ecological fallacies
- Avoiding these problems reduces the probability of drawing invalid
conclusions
Conclusion
The progress in comparative methods was an important factor for the succes of
CP
 Debates in comparative methods were led in a productive way
 More than endless debates among competing schools of thought
 Advantages and disadvantages of the comparative method are widely
acknowledged
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Democracies
Introduction
CP focused on classifying diferent regime-types
 1970: less than one third of all independent states were democratic (27,5%)
- Democracies seen as a small homogenous group
- Little attention paid to comparison of democratic regimes
- Focus on diferences between institutions within democracies: political
parties
 2005: many states are democratic but heterogenous group
- Variations among democracies have become more important for CP
Quote Francis Fukuyama

 The end of history and the last man
 What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a
particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: the end point of
mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal
democracy as the inal form of human government
 Evolution to all countries in the world becoming democracies
KEY POINTS
 Having constituted fewer than one in four of world regimes in the 1950s and 1960s
- Democracies now count for almost three in four
 What had once been a small and homogenous group of democratic regimes
- Now become large and heterogeneous
- Typologies and classiication: important in understanding how democracy
function
Comparing democracies
New interest in comparing democracies
 Comparison of regimes: majoritarian vs. consensus models (Lijphart)
 The third wave of democratization: after the fall of the Berlin wall and Soviet Union
(S. Huntington)
 Institutional engineering: the challenge of building democracies from scratch
 Neo-institutionalism: institutions as independent variables that are shaping
behaviour of individuals
3 waves of democratization in recent history: The Third Wave, S. Huntington

(1991)
 A group of countries transitioning from non-democratic regimes to democratic
within a speciied period of time: universal voting rights + free and fair elections
1. 1e wave: 1826-1926
- Western Europe and North America
- After World War I: demoracies had won at the expese of other types
of regimes
2. 2e wave: 1943-1962
- Germany
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- After World War II: as a result of decolonisation processes

3. 3e wave: 1974-…
- Spain, Latin America, Asia Paciic (South-Korea and Taiwan) and
Eastern Europe
KEY POINTS
 Democracy has developed in waves, with the ‘third wave’
- Coming in 1974 and reaching explosive proportions after 1989
 Since the onset of the ‘third wave’, constitutional engineers have become especially
interested in why some systems appear to perform better
 Since democracy has become ‘the only game in town’
- Scholarly research has tended to focus on the quality
- Rather than the quantity of democracy
Deining democracy
Two diferent approaches to deining democracy:
1. Procedural deinitions
 More common
 Speciies minimal electoral criteria
 Free competition for a free vote: Schumpeter
 Mostly focusses on the how question: How organize so that the people can
govern?
2. Substantive deinitions
 Stresses the goals of a democratic regime: the common good
 More about the content, the goals
- Not only elections, but democracy should be responsive to the people
- The result of democracy should be responsive to what the people
want
 Diicult deinition to operationalize
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Polyarchy (R. Dahl, 1971)

 Procedural understanding of democracy, but ‘thicker’ deinition compared to
Schumpeter
 Thin version
- Democracy is about elections
- Free competition for a free vote
 Thick version
- Requires constitutional rights, civil liberties and executive control
- Elected oicials, free and fair elections, inclusive sufrage, right to run for
oice, freedom of expression, alternative sources of information,
associational autonomy
Similar classiications
 Populism (thin) vs liberalism (thick) (Riker, 1982)
- Populism voting: election to enact the general will
- Liberalism voting: mechanism to control as tool that citizens have to control
the people they have elected
 Popular democracy (thin) vs constitutional democracy (thick) (Mény en Surel, 2002)
- Popular democracy: government by the people
- Constitutional democracy: government for the people
 Electoral or illiberal (thin) vs liberal democracies (thick)
- Illiberal democracy: popular elections + limits on individual rights and
freedom + arbitrary executive power
- Liberal democracy: popular elections + civil rights
Growth of illiberal democracies in mid 1990 (Zakaria, 1997)

 In liberal democracies: constitutionalism often precedes participation
 New democracies or transition countries:
- First popular elections
- Zakaria was seeing a growth in illiberal democracies, linked to the fall of the
Berlin wall
- Countries that then became democracies: often were illiberal
Illiberal democracies are disappearing (Moller, 2007)

 Decreased proportion of democraties that combine electoral freedoms and
constitutional restrictions
 27% in 1998 -> 8% in 2005
 Two dimensions of democracy
- Participation and constitutionalism
- Tend to coincide and cumulate
 Most democracies tend to be liberal and democratic, or not liberal and not
democratic
KEY POINTS
 Democracies have a popular participatory pillar and a liberal constitutional pillar
- Procedural deinitions much more common than substantive deinitions
- Schumpeter speciies very minimal electoral criteria, whereas the thicker
deinition of polyarchy by Dahl identiies a long list of conditions
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 Since 1989, policy-makers have warned of the emergence of illiberal democracy

- In which popular elections combined with limits on individual rights and
freedoms
- Recent evidence suggests that most democracies tend to be liberal and
democratic, or not liberal and not democratic
Developing democracy
Three milestones in development of democracies (Dahl, 166)
1. Incorporation of the masses: voting rights
2. Representation: rights to organise parties and their capacity to break into the
system
3. Organized opposition: right to appeal for votes against government
Diferences in duration of milestones between waves (S. Huntington)

 During 1e wave of democratization: milestones were passed one by one
 During 3e wave of democratization: milestones were reached more or less
simultaneously
1. Incorporation
 Extension of voting rights to all adult citizens
- Often gradual
- Restrictions on right to vote:
> Capacity voting: only people who had an education
> Census voting: linked to the level of wealth
> Race: distinctions in terms of race
- Plural voting systems
- Male sufrage ≠ female sufrage: the West no longer leads in
democratization
 How universal is universal sufrage?
- Restricted in terms of age and nationality
- Actual proposal: family voting rights to minimiz efect on elderly votes
2. Representation
 The right to be represented
- The right to organize parties
- Have these participate in parliament on equal terms with other parties
 Shift from majoritarian voting systems to proportional systems
- Due to threat posed by new political parties
- Emerging with a strong mass base among new and previously
disenfranchised electorate
3. Organised opposition
 Right of opposition to appeal for votes against government
- Executives fully responsible to legislature can be dismissed by majority in
parliament
- Social democratic parties accepted to government
 Full executive turnover diicult in multi-party systems with coalition governments:
more frequent in two-party systems
 Bipolarism more common in recent decades: when two dominant parties switch
powers (USA)
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Paths of democratisation (Dahl, 1971)

 Along two dimensions
1. Liberalization: public contestion (right to be presented and to mobilise
opposition)
2. Inclusiveness: right to participation and voting
 Paths of democratisation have consequences for quality and stability of regimes
- Stable: liberalization and inclusiveness at the same time
- Stable: liberalization precedes inclusiveness
- Unstable: inclusiveness precedes liberalization
KEY NOTES
 The three great milestones on the path to developing democracy have been those
of incorporation, representation and opposition
- The older and more established democracies reached these milestones one
by one, and over a longer period of time
- The newer democracies have reached these milestones simultaneously
Typologies of democracy
Only a few attempts to categorise democracies as whole systems:
 Almond’s classiication of political systems in the world: focus on democracies’
political culture
 Lijphart, 1984: diferentiate in a lot of dimensions (focus on executive-parties and
federal-unitary)
1. Majoritarian democracies: concentration of power in single-party cabinets
2. Consensus democracies: power-sharing in broad multiparty coalitions
 Gerring et al, 2005: explaining cases that Lijphart cannot explain (broader typology)
1. Decentralist democracies: several core features with difusion of power
2. Centripetal democracies: strong and uniied government
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Elite behaviour Structure of society

Homogeneous Plural
Coalescent Depoliticized democracy Consociational democracy
Adversarial Centripetal democracy Centrifugal democracy
The problems of holistic (whole-system) models:

 Diicult to apply to real-world democracies
 Typologies are ideal types
 Real- world democracies show incongruent dimensions
 Cross-national learning + difusion of particalar institutional arrangements:
undermine ideal types
KEY NOTES
 Developing typologies of democracy as whole systems has always proved very
diicult
- The most important attempt to develop a comprehensive typology is seen in
Arend Lijphart’s distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracy
- The increasing transnational difusion of institutions and ideas tends to make
models of democracy less internally coherent and consistent
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Audience democracy?
Democracy in danger?
 Declining levels of conventional political participation: election turnout, party
membership
- Decreasing conidence in politics: in US, less in EU
- People become indiferent and passive
 Audience democracy: people turn into an audience and withdraws from the politics:
only look at what is taking place, but are nog actively participating
 Government legitimacy has taken a hit, but regime legitimacy (faith in democracy)
is as strong as ever
Alternatives
 Pass decision-making down to citizens:
- Participatory democracy: referenda
- Deliberative democracy: G1000 in BE, We the Citizens in IRE
 Pass decision-making up to non-political agencies:
- Non-political agencies and institutions
- Expert judgement and technocracy
KEY POINTS
 Audience democracy: tended to replace representative democracy and party
democracy
 Citizens have often withdrawn from political life
- More likely to distrust their democratically chosen leaders
- Decision-making procedures are now often depoliticized
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Authoritarian Regimes
Introduction
Authoritarian regimes are all non-democratic political systems
 They show a huge diversity of characteristics
 System based on non-competitive elections
- Very strong central power of an organization or a person
- Limited political freedom
KEY NOTES
 Until the nineteenth century: most of the world’s states were ruled by authoritarian
regimes which were mostly hereditary monarchies
 During the nineteenth century: important new form of authoritarian regime emerged
- Modernized dictatorship by a military organization or a military leader
- With some however spurious claim to democratic legitimacy
 In the twentieth century: there was a second phase in the modernization of
dictatorship
- With the emergence of the ideological one-party state
- Such as the communist and fascist regimes
 In the third quarter of the twentieth century: the majority of the world’s state: ruled
by modernized dictatorships, including such new varieties as the African one-party
state
 The inal quarter of the twentieth century
- Global wave of democratization
- Third phase in the modernizaton of dictatorship
> With the appearance of democratically disguised dictatorships
> Claiming the democratic legitimacy with ‘competitive’ multiparty
elections
Who rules?
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Personal rule
Ruling or dictatorial monarchies: Louis XIV, Saudi Arabia
Ruling or dictatioral monarchies

 Not a reigning monarch: Western Europe
 Ruling monarch has a lot of power, where reigning monarch has a ceremonial
function
How can the survival of ruling monarchies be explained?

 Dynastic monarchies: royal families who can decide who succeeds the throne
 Oil and other wealth recources
 Present in a lot of diferent spheres: engage in public service in government, civil
science and military (control over state)
 Democratic-like accessibility and power-sharing with elected politicians in some
cases
Personal or monarchical dictators: Idi Amin, Uganda
Leaders of a military or party organisation become personal rulers

 Succesful reversal of principle-agent relationship between ruler and (party)
organisation
 Ruling party as agent or instrument of personal rule
Presidential monarchies
 1960: third world dictators institutionalised their rule in the monarchial
- Extensive presidential powers
- Many disappeared in 80-90
 Monarchal element: presidential monarchs try to appoint a family member as their
successor
Populist presidential monarchies

 Elected president becomes dictator: often during or soon after democratisation (self-
coup)
 Reversal of principal-agent relationship: electorate becomes instrument of personal
rule of president
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 Semi-competitive election: only candidate on the list, election fraud, ‘puppet’

parties
Organizational rule
Military rule
Dominant form in Third World War during 1970

 Government Junta of Chile
 Often short lifespan: seem strong but in practice unstable
Open military rule

 Military coup leads to oicers forming a junta (council) to act as the country’s
supreme government
 Appointing themselves to key positions in the country’s legal government
Disguised military rule

 Civilianezed rule
- Highly publicised ending of obivous features of military rule
- Supposed democratization through some form of elections
 Indirect rule: disguises dictatorship by controlling a civilian government from behind
the scenes
One-party rule
Dictorial party either seizes power:

 Trough a revolution
 Trough misappropriation of power after winning government positions through
democratic elections
 Less common, but often long-lasting dictatorship
Three structural forms:

1. Openly and literally one-party state: all other parties are banned
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2. Partly disguised and vitually one-party state: coalition with one or more puppet
parties
3. Efectively one-party state: when all other parties are stopped from competing
properly
Organizational rule: military or one-party

 Often transformed into personal rule
 By the organisation’s leader
Subtypes of one-party rule

 Based on ideological variations
 Communist: China, Vietnam, Laos
 Fascist: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany
 Third World type: Party of Revolution (Tanzania), Party of Institutionalised Revolution
(Mexico)
KEY POINTS
 A ruling monarch is a
personal ruler, but a
reigning monarch is typically a democracy’s constitutional head of state
 Dictatorship by an organization, such as the military or a party: transformed into
personal rule by the organization’s leader
 Dictatorship can result from
- A military or revolutionary seizure of power
- A misappropriation of power by an elected party through self-coup
Why do they rule?

Claims of legitimacy, based on:
1. Religious claims: claim on authory based on religious texts or principles
2. Ideological claims: claim on authority based on ideological thoughts
3. Democratic claims: claim on authority based on democratic election
1. Religious claims
 Constitution includes several public elements
 New public oice for religious and political leader: constitutionally outranks the
president: Ayatollah
 Islamic Republic of Iran: since 1979
2. Ideological claims
 Replaced religious claims in 20e century
 Needs social presence + inluence of religions: instruments to shape social presence
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3. Democratic claims
 Institutional: claims to be using or preparing democratic institutions such as an
elected parliament or presidency
 Most dictatorships claim a form of democratic legitimacy
- By preparing the country for democracy
- By employing democratic institutions
 But elections are non-competitive or semi-competitive
 Hybrid regimes: competitive authoritarianism
KEY POINTS
 Authoritarian regimes claim that they have legitimate authority, i.e. right to rule
 Dictatorships claim to be a form of democracy or to be preparing the way for
democracy
 Holding elections is a sign of shrewd dictatorship
- Rather than real democracy
- If these elections are non-competitive or semi-competitive
How do they rule?

Diference between
1. Totalitarism
2. Authoritarianism
Totalitarianism
 Seeks total extenal and internal control: private sphere, people at home
- No political pluralism: only one person rules the country
- Ideological indoctrination and leadership
 Mass mobilisation, but only to support regime
 Fascist totalitarian leaders: Mussolini in Fascist Italy, Hitler in Nazi Germany
Authoritarianism
 Less extreme than totalitarianism
 Limited political pluralism
- Absence of a regime-guiding ideology
- Absence of political mass-mobilization
 Limited political leadership
Various mechanisms to exert control over state and society

 Political or secret police
 Martial law: military’s policing and judicial powers
 Strong and extensive party control
KEY POINTS
 Totalitarianism seeks total control including control of thought: historically rare way
of dictatorship
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 Authoritarian regimes use various control mechanisms

- Such as the political or secret police
- Which monitor and enforce obedience
Conclusion
Two possible conclusions for authoritarian regimes:
1. Extinction scenario
2. Evolution scenario
1. Extinction scenario:
 Authoritarian regimes are political dinosaurs
 Non of the forms lourished for a long time
 Democracy will prevail
2. Evolution scenario:
 Authoritarian regimes have shown great ability to evolve and adapt: eras of
authoritarian comebacks
 Double movement
- Global movement away from outdated forms
- Towards modern democratized forms
The Nation State

Introduction
The term ‘state’ refers to some large political units (polities), which irst
developped in the modern West
 A political-legal unit with sovereignty over a particular geographic territory and the
population that resides in that territory (Samuels, 2012)
- State: political-legal unit deined by territory and by laws (institutional basis)
- Nation: a group of people deined by shared identity or culture based on
language, ethnicity, religion (emotional-psychological basis)
- Nation-state: sovereign states in which a majority of the population is united
based on factors that deine a nation
- Government: group of people who do the state’s businnes and rule in the
name of the state
- Regime: type of political organisation within the state (democracy,
authoritarian regime)
 Government (short-term entity) vs state (long-term entity)
What do states do?

1. States rule: make laws and enforce them
2. States provide: public goods
3. States extract: taxes
4. States solve: collective action problems
Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes, 1651)

 The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government
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- State of nature: very messy, total anarchy, war of all against all, but total
liberty
- People will wilfully give up freedom and liberty in return for order en
protection: state
 Leviathan is a creature made to create order: body is made of people
 People have to be part of the state: you cannot have a state without people
KEY POINTS
 Most contemporary political units (polities) share aspects which justify calling them
states
- To that extent, they all constitute present-day embodiments of a kind of
polity which irst developed in the modern West
- A sustained scholarly engagement with ‘comparative politics’ consider both
the constitutive features of that kind of polity and the major steps in its
development
A portrait
The ive most fundamental components of a state are:
1. Territoriality
2. Sovereignty
3. Monopoly of legitimate violence
4. Link with the people
5. Plurality of states
1. Territoriality
 Area with clearly deined borders to which state lays claim: physical aspect of
state’s identity
 State does not have a territory but is a territory
 State defends its territory, guards borders, exploits own resources
2. Sovereignty
 State is sole authority within its boundaries and the people residing in it: no higher
authority
 Internal (within borders) and external (laws legally recognised by family of state)
sovereignty
- Internal sovereignty: sole authority within its borders: possibility to make
laws
- External sovereignty: legally recognized as the sole authority by fellow states
3. Monopoly of legitimate violence

 Monopoly on legitimate use of physical force: Max Weber
 To protect internal (police) and external (army) sovereignty
- People excersising the rules (minority)
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- People subject to the rules (majority)

 Violence should be proportional and limited to achieve its goal: accepted by the
population
4. Link with the population

 State exercises power over people: state ruled by people
 State is its population: state exists out of people
5. Plurality of states
 Part of a system of states
 Exist next to each other and accept each other
KEY POINTS
 Internally, states possess a single centre of power that reserves for itself the faculty
of exercising or threatening legitimate violence
- A state does not respond to any other power for uses to which it puts that
faculty and others
- The state uses the faculty of violence to protect one portion of the Earth
which it considers its own territory
- Claims exclusive jurisdiction over the population inhabiting that territory
- Considers itself the guardian of its interests
 Externally each state exists side by side with other states: all endowed with the
same characteristics and treats them as contenders, allies or neutral parties
A more expansive concept

From the 19e and 20e century onwards: additional features can be identiied:
 Rule of law
 Centralized organization
 Diferentiation between state and society
 Religion and the market
 Formation of a public sphere
 Democratic participation
 Citizenship and nationhood
Rule of law
 Development of a public- and state-binding law replacing religious norms
 State makes the law: but is also bounded by its law
Centralised organisation
 State hierarchy: state as a pyramid
 Hierarchy in legal sources
Diferentiation between state and society

 State: political activities and the political aspects fo the management of a territory
 Society: social activities which individuals undertake in their private capacities
 Should be seen as two diferent things: how they are linked is dependent on the
culture of a country
Religion of the market
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 Secularisation of the state

 Property rights and freedom of contract
 Modernisation furthers distinction between state, religion and economy
Formation of a public sphere

 Intermediate layer between state and society
 Citizens can observe activities of the state, communicate about them, criticise them
and ofer inputs
 Made possible by rights, freedoms and representative government
 Legitimate debate and criticism: freedom of speech, freedom of press
Democratic participation
 Elimination of electoral restricitons
 Only have democratic participation if you have a state: voting right only used within
a territory
Citizenship and nationhood

 Citizenship: equalizing principles in terms of civil, political and social rights
 Construction and feeling a sense of nation: imagined communities (Anderson)
 Response to emerging socio-economic and cultural cleavages
 By granting citizenship and nationhood: state tries to keep thes cleavages from
bursting
Imagined communities (Anderson, 1983)

 Members of even the smallest nation will never know their fellow members, meet
them, hear them: yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communication
- Community always conceived of as a deep horizontal comradeship
- By socialisation, collective memory, media, public education and various
symbolic pratices
 Nation as an imagined community: something that doesn’t necessarily exists, but
that lives in the minds of people and creates solidarity between them
KEY POINTS
 States diferentiate between their political activities and those of the civil society
- Pursuit of private economic interests and the expression of personal beliefs
and values
- Articulate themselves through legal instruments (constitutions, statutes,
decrees, various kinds of rulings) into units operated by distinct bodies of
personnel
- Entrusted practices involving internal order and external defence to police
and military
 In democratic state decisions over state policies are the products of peaceable
competition between
- Parties seeking to maximize their electoral support in order to occupy the top
positions
- To promote the interests of their supporters
 Policies pursued by states since 1850 have sought to moderate inequalities by
assigning, individual members of the population civil, political and social rights –
citizenship
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 To counter divisive tendencies between groups, states have undertaken policies

intended to generate a sense of commonality – chiely, a sense of national
belonging
State devolopment
Patterns of state formation
1. By absolutist kingship which obtained independent power by building up armies and
bureaucracies solely responsible to monarchs: France, Prussia
2. Through kingship facing judges and representative bodies which developed
suicient strenght to become independent powers: England, Sweden
3. State formation from below through cofederation or federation, due to maintenance
of efective autonomy for the constituent states and a general emphasis on the
division of power within the centre through ‘checks and balances’: Switzerland, USA
4. State formation through conquest and uniication: Germany, Italy
5. State formation through independence: Ireland, Norway
Three phases of European state formation

1. Consolidation of rule
2. Rationalization of rule
3. Expansion of rule
1. Consolidation of rule: 12e-17e century

 Decreasing number of political centres with more power
 Increasing territorial reach
 Decisive role of military resources
- States make war and war makes states
- Guaranteeing public safety and a secure environment for trade to take place
- States with the largest military resouces remained, while smaller ones wher
defeated
 Mercantilism: need for security and stability by promoting governmental regulation
of a nation’s economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of
rival state powers
 Larger, more visible and stable containers of state power
2. Rationalization of rule: 17e-19e century

 Centralization
- In need of a of a system to exercise power in a reliable, uniform and fast
manner
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- Implementation of bureacracies: centrally organised, power exercised in

impersonal and formal manner, agents or agencies instead of co-operators
 Hierarchy
- Hierarchical structuring of the state and bureaucracies: vertical structure
> Higher levels make decisions
> Lowel levels execute and give information about new situtions
- Growing role of knowledge instead of tradition
 Function
- Diferentiation and specialization within centralized systems
- Financing through taxation
3. Expansion of rule: 19e-20e century

 For centuries states focused on securing themselves on the international scene and
maintaining public order and the efectiveness of law: night watcher state
 From 1850 states expanded their activities to intervening in and managing society
 Possible explanations
- Demands from the market economy: skilled labour-force
- Bureaucracies have an inherent tendency to grow: Wagner’s law
- Dynamics of representative democracies
- Demand for redistribution of welfare: welfare state
KEY POINTS
 One can distinguish, within the historical career of the modern state, three main
phases which diferent European states have illowed in somewhat varying
sequences.
- Consolidation of rule
> Within each larger part of the continent (beginning with its Western
parts) one particular centre of rule asserted its own superiority
> Generally by defeating others in war, subjecting the respective lands
to its control, and turning them into a uniied territory
- Rationalization of rule
> Each centre of rule increasingly relied on functionaries selected and
empowered by itself, expressly qualiied for their oices
> Forming hierarchically structured units, their careers within which
would depend on the reliability and efectiveness of their actions
- Expansion of rule
> States progressively took on broader sets of functions, in order both
to confront social needs generated by ongoing processes of economic
modernization, and to respond to demands for public regulation and
intervention from society
> Added new specialized administrative units and funded their activities
by increasing their ‘iscal take’ from the economy
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Conclusion
Nation-state is a distinctive ‘Western and European story’
 Transposed to the rest of the world
 Become the dominant form of operation polities around the world
 Difer considerably in the manner in which they are interpreted and implemented
Federal and Local Government

Institutions
Introduction
Nation-states as dominant form of political organisations, but nation-states have
not gone unchallenged:
 Pressure from above: globalisation, EU
 Pressure from below: rise of regions and local authorities
Result is a large diversity among nation-states

 Unitary vs federal
 Regionalization and decentralization
 More complex forms with distincitive features of territorial organisation
KEY POINTS
 The nation-state is the quintessentially modern form of political organization with
distinctive features of territorial organization
 Claims that it is disappearing have been exaggerated
 The classical distinction federal vs unitary states is giving way more complex forms
of the nation-state
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Modern nation-state in combination with

territorial governance
Diferent kinds of modern states emerged from diferent historical experiences:
 Parliamentary and industrial revolution in England: the multi-national union state
 American revolution: the modern federal state
 French revolution: the modern unitary state
The French model gave rise to the ideology of nationalism

 Nations ought to have states and states should fall together with nations
Nationalism: driving force behind development of unitary states

 Uniication of Germany and Italy
 Break up Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, British and French empire
 Other states that adopted the French model: Albania, Finland, Romania, Burlgaria
Unity of the nation: important in unitary and federal systems, but not all nation-
states have succeeded in maintaining unity
 Some failed in constructing an overarching national identity: Yugoslavia
 Some have moved from unitary to federal states: Belgium
 Some experience internal nationalism: Spain, France, UK
KEY POINTS
 The diferent kinds of modern state resulted from three distinctive historical
‘moments’ in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
- The parliamentary and industrial revolutions in England (seventeenth
century)
- The American revolution in the US (1776)
- The French Revolution (1789)
 Each of these revolutions produced distinctive kinds of modern states
- The union state in the UK
- The federal state in the US
- The ‘one and invisible’ Jacobin state in France
 The modern nation-state gave rise to the ideology and political movement of
nationalism
 In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nationalism has shaped the territorial
organization of modern states – breaking up the older empires and uniting disparate
territories into single states
 Nationalism afected both federal and unitary states
Federal vs unitary
Traditional distinction between unitary and federal states
 Diference in constitutional division of labour and in national and sub-national levels
of government
 Federal state: principle of organization upon which a state is based of the division of
powers between distinct and co-ordinate governemts: certain powers are exercised
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by the federal government and other powers by the regional govenrments of the
constituent states
 Unitary state: governed as a single power in which the central government is
ultimately supreme and any administrative divisions exercise only powers that the
central government chooses to delegate
However, traditional dichotomy is actually more a spectrum or continuum:
Federalism vs federation
 Federalism: normative political ideology that advocates the application of federalist
principles in state organisation
 Federation: state which fully applies these principles albeit in diferent forms leading
to a variety of types of federation
Federal systems (Watts, 1996)

 Common feature: combination of shared-rule and regional self-rule within a single
political system
 At least two levels of decision-making: both are autonomous , neither is subordinate
to the other
- Each has a number of policy domains and inancial resources
- Subnational entities are represented at the federal level
How to classify non-unitary states? (Watts, 1996)
 Unions, constitutionally decentralized unions, federations, confederations,
federacies, associated states, condominiums, leagues, hybrids…
 Reveal the diversity of systems from a federal perspective
 Unions and constitutionally decentralized unions are in fact unitary states with
varying degrees of regionalization or decentralization
Type Description Examples

Unions Polities compouned in such a way that the - New Zealand
constitutent units preserve their respective - Lebanon
integrities primarily or exclusively through the - Belgium: pre-1993
common organs of the general governemnt rather
than through dual government structures
Constitutionally Unitary in form in the sense that ultimate - China
decentralized authority rests with the central government but - Italy
unions incorporates constitutionally protected sub- - Netherlands
national units of government which have - UK
functional autonomy
Federations Compound polities, combining strong constituent - Argentina
units and a strong general government, each - Australia
posessing powers delegated to it by the people - Austria
through a constitution, and each empowered to - Belgium: post-1993
deal directly with the citizens in the exercise of its - Brazil
legislative, administrative, and taxing powers, - Canada
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and each directly elected by the citizens - Germany

- Nigeria
- Switzerland
- US
Confederations Where pre-existing polities join together to form a - USSR
common govern-ment for certain limited purpose - Benelux
(foreign afairs, defence or economic afairs), but - European Union
the common government is dependent upon the - Switzerland (1291-1847)
constituent governments - US (1776-1789
Federacies Political arrangements where a large unit is linked - Azores (Portugal)
to a smaller unit or units, but the smaller units - Puerto Rico (US)
retains considerable autonomy and has a - Aaland Islands (Finland)
minimum role in the government of the larger - Faroe Islands (Denmark)
one, and where the relationship can be dissolved - Isle of Man (UK)
only by mutual agreement
Associated Similar to federacies, but can be dissolved by - Bhutan (India)
states either of the units acting alone on prearranged - Cook Islands (New Zealand)
terms - Liechtenstein (Switzerland)
- Marshall Islands (US)
- Monaco (France)
Condominiums Political units which function under joint rule of - Andorra (1278-1993)
two or more external states in such way that
inhabitants have substantial internal self-rule
Leagues Linkages of politically independent polities for - Arab League
speciic purposes that function through a common - ASEAN
secretariat rather than a government and from - Commonwealth of Nations
whcih members may unilaterally withdraw - NATO
- Nordic Council
Joint functional Agency established by polities for joint - Internat Atomic Energy
authorities implementation of a particular task or tasks Agency
- International Labour
Organization
Leagues Political systems which combine characteristics of - Canada (1867)
diferent kinds of political system - South Africa (after 1996)
- European Union after
Maastricht
KEY POINTS
 There is a diference between federal and unitary states, based mainly on the
constitutional division of labour between the national and sub-national levels of
government
 Both federal and unitary states must be further disaggregated into diferent kinds of
federal and unitary states depending on their degrees of centralization and
decentralization
 There is an intermediate group of states which are neither federal nor unitary
 Diferent typologies are available for organizing and classifying this complexity
Trends towards decentralization and region-

alizaton in unitary states
Unitary states vary according to their degree of decentralization and
regionalization:
 Decentralization
 Regionalism
 Regionalisation
Decentralization
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 Transfer of political decision-making powers from central state to sub-national levels

of government: elected regional assemblies in Italy or Spain
 Transfer of administrative tasks from central state to sub-national level:
déconcentration in France
Regionalism
 Bottom-up political ideology that advocates greater control over the region’s afairs
by its inhabitants
- Can go hand in hand with a regional identity
- Italy, Spain (reaction to strongly centralist state) and UK (devolution)
Regionalisation
 Top-down process in which a central government develops a set of policies directed
toward regions
 France: initial trigger in economic development and modernization
 Role of EU: Europe of regions
- Administrative regions: Greece, Portugal, Ireland
- Administrative – political regions: Denmark, Finland, Sweden
The emergence of the region as a political actor

 Accommodate regionalism and cultural diversity within a country: Italy, Spain,
France, UK
 Promote modernization of government and state: Italy, Spain, France, UK
 Trigger economic development: France
 European inluence: UK, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland
How to classify federal and unitary states? (Lijphart, 1999)

 Federal and decentralized: Australia, Belgium (post 1995), Germany, Canada,
Switzerland, USA
 Federal and centralized: Venezuela, Austria, India
 Semi-federal: Israel, Netherlands, Spain
 Unitary and decentralized: Denmark, Finland, Japan, Norway, Sweden
 Unitary and centralized: Botswana, Colombia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg,
New Zealand, Portugal, France, UK
 Allows for a more clear-cut division of types, but some allocations are questionable:
Italy, France, UK
KEY NOTES
 Unitary states, like federal states, vary according to their degree of regionalization
and decentralization
 It is useful to distinguish between
- Regionalization (top-down approaches to regions by central states)
- Regionalism (bottom-up political movements from the regions themselves)
- Various kinds of decentralization (political, administrative, iscal) as these
describe diferent processes which may not coincide
 There are diferent kinds of regions (political, administrative, economic, cultural)
which do not always coincide with each other
- In recent decades, there have been tendencies towards strengthening
regionalism as well as political decentralization
- The European Union has encouraged these tendencies, although its regional
policies are more akin to regionalization than regionalism
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The local level

Almost all states have levels of local government, but there are diferences:
 Unitary states: usually direct relationship between local and central state level
 Federal states: local government no direct relationship with federal government, but
with meso-level
 Local level: characterised by huge variety of structures, powers and processes
Typology of local government (Page and Goldsmith)

 Political localism in S-Europe: few functions, small autonomy, high access to the
centre
 Legal localism in N-Europa: many functions, lot of autonomy, low access to the
centre
Anglo-Saxon Germanic French Scandinavian

Is there a legal No Yes Yes Yes
basis for the
state?
State-society Pluralistic Organicist Antagonistic Organicist
relations
Form of political Union state + Integral + organic Jacobin Decentralized
organization limited federalist federalist unitary
Basis of policy Incrementalist Legal corporatist Legal technocratic Consensual
style muddling through
Form of State power (US) Cooperative Regionalized Strong local
decentralization Devolution and federalism unitary state autonomy
local government
(UK)
Dominant Political science Public law Public law Public law
approach to and sociology (Sweden)
discipline of public Organization
adminstration theory (Norway)
Countries UK, US, Canada, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway,
Ireland Netherlands, Spain until 1978, Denmark
Spain after 1978, Portugal, Quebec,
Belgium after Greece, Belgium
1988 until 1988
KEY POINTS
 There are great variety of systems of local government, which makes it diicult to
classify
 A classical way of typologizing local government in Europe to distinguish between
- Systems in Northern Europe (legal localism)
- Systems in Southern Europe (political localism)
 This simple division needs to be complemented by more complex typologies which
take into account the diferences within the two broad categories: the Anglo-Saxon,
Germanic, French-Napoleonic, and Scandinavian systems
 There are trends towards greater local iscal autonomy, but this has recently been
somewhat tempered by the new iscal orthodoxy which makes central governments
responsible for their countries’ iscal rectitude (thus constraining local authorities)
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Conclusion
The territorial dimension of governance is as important as ever
 Traditional forms of governance of the nation-state are not abolished
 But new territorial conigurations are introduced
General trends of territorial reconiguration:

 A broader variety of systems of governance are emerging
 Former hierarchical, symmetrical and standardised nation-states are transformed
 Regions and local authorities are becoming important political actors
These trends occure in surroundings of

 Distinctive histories, political and administrative cultures
 Making the territorial dimension a highly complex phenomenon
Elections and Referendums

Introduction
People have two opportunities to vote:
1. Elections
2. Referendums
Elections
 People express their views about how a country should be governed by electing
representatives
 Universal use in democracies
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Referendums
 People express their views by voting on speciic issues or policies to be approved or
rejected
 Use of referendums not universal in democracies
KEY POINTS
 Elections and referendums are the two main opportunities that people have to vote
- Elections are held to ill seats (representatives) in parliament or some other
institution
- Referendums are votes on a speciic issue to be approved or rejected
Elections and electoral systems

Elections are crucial in representative democracies
 Form link between people and representatives
 Provide for legitimacy by achieving representation and accountability
Electoral systems: set of rules that structure:

 How votes are cast at selections
 How these votes are converted inte the allocation of seats
Electoral regulations: set of rules on following dimensions

1. Extent of voting rights: who can vote (age limits, voluntary or compulsory voting)
2. Acces to the ballot: who can become candidate (inancial deposit, support for
number of voters, endorsement by party)
3. Terms: when do elections take place (ixed terms or constitutionally determined
maximum period)
Categorise electoral systems, according to

district magnitude:
1. Single-member constituencies: majoritarian systems with one member in one
district
2. Mult-member constituencies: PR systems with multiple candidates elected in a
district
More useful categorisation:

 Majoritarian systems: mostly single-member districts: the one who wins gets the
seat
1. Single-member plurality
2. Alternative vote
3. Two-round systems
 Proportional systems: always multi-member districts: seats are proportional to
number of votes
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1. Proportional representation list systems

2. Mixed member systems
3. Single transferable vote
Majoritarian systems
1. Single-member plurality
 First-past-the-post
 Country divided in several districts
- Candidate with highest percentage of votes is elected
- Plurality: > %
 USA, UK, Canada
2. Alternative vote
 Voters rank other candidates
 If one candidate receives majority of voters, he is elected
 If no candidate receives majority
- Candidate with lowest number of votes is eliminated
- His ballot is redistributed according to voters’ 2e, 3e, 4e choice
- Until one candidate has received the majority
 Australia
3. Two-round system
 Majority of votes is necessary
- If no candidate wins a majority of votes in the irst round, a second round
takes place with only the top candidates
- In the second round, whoever wins the most votes is the winner
 France
Proportional systems
Proportional representation
 Each party more or less the same share of seats as it won of the votes
- Perfect proportionality: 20% votes is 20% seats
- Majoritarian system overall more disproportional
 Size of constituencies
- National constituency: every voter receives same candidate list to choose
from, no matter where you live: Netherlands, Israel
- Smaller constituency: diferent candidate list for diferent constituency:
Belgium
1. List PR systems
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 Each party presents a list of candidates: voters vote for list or for candidates on that
list
 Seats allocated to lists, then to candidates
 Diferent methods of awarding seats proportionally within each constituency
- D’Hondt: tends to give larger parties a slightly larger portion of seats than
their votes
- Imperiali: designed to disfavor the smallest parties
2. Mixed systems
 Voters cast two votes
- One for a party on a list
- One for a constituency candidate in a single member district
 Germany, Hungary
 1. Mixed member proportional system: compensatory
- Favours small parties
- Seats are allocated by the irst-past-the-post system, then you try to
compensate for the disproportional results
- Germany, Venezuela, New Zealand
 2. Mixed member majoritarian system: parallel
- Favours bigger parties
- Mexico, Japan
3. Single Transferable Vote

 No use of lists but still relatively proportional
 Voters rank candidates in multi-member districts
- Candidate who reaches quota is elected
- Surplus votes transferred to candidate ranked second by voter
- Candidate with lowest number of votes is eliminated and his ballot is
redistributed among other candidates
 Allows for balanced choice of voters: can choose candidates from diferent or same
party
 Multiple candidates for parties: diferent from early discussed systems
 Ireland, Malta
Electoral systems variate in:

1. District magnitude
 Number of representatives elected in a constituency or district
 Ranges from single-member (UK) to whole-country constituencies
(Netherlands)
 Proportionally increases with district magnitude: at least in PR systems
2. Intra-party choice
 Whether voters are able to decide which candidates take the seat that the
party wins
 Ranges from non to total choice
- Single-member constituencies: no choice
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- Single transferable vote: total choice

- PR list system
> Closed lists: candidate lobbying party to get good number on
list: no choice
> Open lists: focusing on voters to get preference votes: express
preference to one or all candidates: balanced by list vote or
not
3. Electoral thresholds
 Threshold for winning seats
 Electoral systems contain some institutions to prevent very small parties
from winning seats
 In order to prevent fragmentation and facilitate stable government
 Thresholds normally between 3-5%: Netherlands 0,67%, Belgium 5%, Russia
7%
Electoral systems have an impact on:

 Party system: Duverger’s law
- Majority system: two parties
- Proportional system: multiple parties
 Cabinet formation: see Lijphart
- Majority system: single party cabinet
- Proportional system: coalition cabinet
 Representativeness and social group representation
- Proportional system: more women and ethnic minorities in parliaments
 Role orientations of representatives
- Majority system: stronger local focus
KEY POINTS
 The most basic distinction among electoral systems is between
- Those based on single-member constituencies (non-PR systems)
- Those based on PR in multi-member constituencies
 Single-member constituency systems all give an advantage to the strongest party in
the constituency and leave supporters of other parties unrepresented
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 The main categories of PR systems are list systems, mixed systems and the single
transferable vote
- PR-systems can be made more proportional by using constituencies of larger
district magnitude and by lowering or removing the threshold
- PR systems vary in the degree of choice that they give voters to express a
choice among their party’s candidates. Non-PR systems do not give voters
any intra-party choice
- Non-PR electoral systems are more likely to engender a two-party system,
especially as regards the distribution of seats, while PR systems are more
likely to lead to a multiparty system, though the shape of the party system
also depends on other factors susch as the nature of the politicezed
cleavages in society
Referendums
Referendums: part of representative democracy
 Mandatory or optional
 Requested by a political institution or by voters (initiative)
 Decision-promoting: plebiscitarian referendum for ratiication
 Binding or advisory impact
The rationale of a referendum:

1. Process-related arguments
 Referendums increase the legitimacy of policies
 Referendums increase political participation and level of political knowledge
2. Outcome-related arguments
 Referendums lead to black-white decisions
 Referendums work against the interest of those who do not usually vote
 Majoritarian device: possible infringement of the rights of minorities,
although:
- Access to referendums is restricted
- Veto role of constitutional courts
- Qualiied majorities: double majorities
 Referendums might prevent policy innovation
Empirical patterns in terms of prevalence

 Use of referendums is widespread but uneven
 Huge national diferences in frequency
 Mostly held on seveignty-related questions, almost never on economic issues:
secession, EU
Empirical patterns in terms of voting

 Issue voting: voters decide mainly on the basis of the issue on the ballot papaer
 Second order election voting: voters take notice of the issue and instead cast vote
according to what really matters to them, i.e. their evaluation of the actors on each
side, especially the government
 Referendum turnout typically lower and less stable than in parliamentary elections
 Campaign efects can be greater in referendums than in general elections
The impact of referendums:
 Referendums can legitimize political decisions but also block them, leading to policy
immobilism and limiting policy innovations
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 No empirical evidence that quality of policy-outcomes is signiicantly afectec by

referendums
 Referendum is optional extra: no alternative and no essential feature of system of
representative democracy
 Signiicance of elections may be reduced when referendums are available and vice
versa
KEY POINTS
 Referendums take many forms, depenending on
- Whether or not people themselves can initiate a popular vote
- Wheter parliament has dicretion
- Wheter to decide a matter itself or put the issue to a referendum
- Whether the verdict of the people is binding or merely advisory
 Supporters argue that referendums give people the chance to make important
decisions themselves and that being exposed to a referendum campaign increases
people’s information about the issue
 Opponents maintain that referendums may discriminate against minorities and can
result in incoherent policy choices
 The frequency of referendums is rising over time, though they are still rare events in
most countries
 When people decide which way to vote in a referendum, their views on the issue at
stake are usually the most important factor, but they also take some account of
cues from parties and politicians
 Despite the fears of opponents and the hopes of proponents, there is little irm
evidence to show that policy outcomes are afected greatly by the availability of
referendums
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Political Parties
Introduction
Parties: central actors in politics
 Governments of most countries are in hands of party leaders
 Parties exist in democratic and non-democratic regimes
 Parties seem to be in crisis
KEY NOTES
 Political parties are the central actors in democratic politics, as well as many
authoritarian and totalitarian regimes
 It is unlikely that social movements or governance networks will replace the parties’
many roles
Deinition of parties
Political party:
 Autonomous group of citizens having the puropose of making nominations and
contesting elections in the hope of gaining control over governmental power
through the capture of public oices and the organization of government
Most deinitions combine the following elements

1. Objectives of parties: win votes, control government, adopt and change policies
2. Methods of parties: operate in electoral and governing sphere
3. Their role in political competition: ighting organizations
KEY NOTES
 Parties are ubiquitous in modern political systems
- The deinition of party is contentious because it speciies which cases
provide appropriate evidence for conirming or discontinuing empirical
theories
- Deinitons centring on the objectives and methods of party, and emphasizing
their role in political competition, relect value-laden assumptions about
proper functioning of politics
Origins of parties
KEY NOTES
 Some parties originated within parliaments, while others originated outside
parliaments with the objective of getting in
 The subsequent power relations of a party generally favour leaders whose positions
in public oice, or in external party organization, are analogous to the positions of
leaders who originally built the party
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Functions of parties
Parties perform a number of central functions:
1. Coordination
2. Contesting elections
3. Recruitment and selection
4. Representation
1. Coordination
 Within parliament and government
- Organise party groups: policy making and circulate information
- Maintaining discipline and communication within the parliament
- Coordinationg action of the parliament in support of or in opposition to the
cabinet
 Within society
- Political events for citizen (information): get people acquainted
- Organizing the political activity of like-minded citizens
 Between government and society:
- Translate what people want into policy
- Patterning linkage between representatives in public oice and organized
supporters
2. Contesting elections
 Providing candidates: linking individual candidates to expectations of team-like
behaviour, histories and recognizable symbols
 Devoloping policy programmes
 Formulating policy positions
 Supporting candidates: media training, inancial support
3. Recruitment and selection

 Selection of candidates for elections: parties decide who gets on the list and can be
elected
 Recruitment of candidated for appointed oice: party staf
 Recruitment and socialization of political activists, potential oiceholders, members,
volunteers
 Integrating new citizens: party youth movements
4. Representation
 Spokespersons of their electorates: advocates of their interests, speaking for their
members and supporters sithin or in front of government agencies
 Social groupings: class, religion, language
 Being the organizational embodiment in political sphere of demographically or
ideologically deined categories of citizens
KEY NOTES
 Political parties play a central role in coordinating among public oicials, among
citizens with common political preferences and between citizens and oicials
 Political parties are generally the central participants in elections, responsible for
both the candidates and the issues among which voters will choose
 Political parties are central participants in the recruitment of political personnel,
both for the elective and appointive oice
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 Political parties serve as representatives of both social groupings and ideological

positions
Evolution in party organization

Models in party organization
1. Cadre or elite parties
2. Mass parties
3. Catch-all parties
4. Cartel parties
5. Anti-cartel parties
6. Business-irm parties
1. Cadre or elite parties

 Earliest ‘modern’ parties: before universal sufrage
- Parliamentary origin
- Minimal and local organizational structure
 Politicians mobilise personal connections and wealth as a primary recource base
- ‘Party in public oice’ dominant
- No need for a party on the ground due to highly restricted sufrage and lack
of members
2. Mass parties
 1950: after adoption universal sufrage: pool of actual voters increased
- Extra-parliament origin
- Development of ‘central party oice’ and ‘party on the ground’
 Power in numbers: mobilise as many members as possible
- Developent of a very strong party on the ground: relied on heavily: get you
elected
- Large and homogenous membership
 Extensive party network: often built on pre-existing organisations: trade unions
 Extenisve organisation: dominated by the party’s elite and supported by large group
of volunteers
 Primary resource base: fees from members and ancillary organizations
3. Catch-all parties
 1950 – recent
 Developed from transformation of mass parties
- Declining role of members and ‘party on the ground’
- Power shifts to ‘party in oice’ and professionals
 Weaker ideological orientation
 Weaker ties between parties and interest groups
 Electoral strategy to appeal across group bounderies
- As any members as possible: heterogenous membership
- Main focus: being appealing for a larger public
- Primary resource base from contributions from interest groups and
individuals
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4. Cartel party
 1970 – recent
 Evolution of existing parties
- Driven by societal and political evolutions: individualisation, decline party
membership, volality, crisis of democracy
- Parties become more agents of the state than of the people
 Pressure on the catch-all model led to 5 changes
- Parties protect themselves: no electoral risks
- State inancing: agencies of the state rather than society: weaker ties with
organisations and the society: more problems representing them: more
government parties
- Increasing role on government
- Disempowering party activists
- Further privileging professional expertise: consultants
 Distinction between member and supporter blurred: members seen as individuals
rather than as an organized body
 State subsidies as a primary resource base
5. Anti-cartel party
 Frustration with mainstream parties
 Organized around an idea rather than a social grouping
 New right parties: left-libertarian, green
6. Business-irm parties
 1990 – recent
 Extra-parliamentary initiative of political entrepreneurs
 Initiative and hierarchical control by a fortuned (political) entrepreneur
- Light party: minimal formal organisation: members irrelevant
- Party on the ground mostly absent
- Corporate resources as a primary resource base
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Party laws
Party laws to maintain democracy
 Centrality to democracy
 Power for special oversight and restrictions
 Adminsitrative convenience
 Regulations regarding inances
Party organization in the USA

 Share features with cadre parties
- Weak central organisation
- Focus on individuals
- No formal membership organisation
 But candidate selection run by state regulated primary elections
 Registrants instead of formal members (limited control party): people must register
before they vote
 Money in hands of candidates: not parties
 Closed and open primaries: organised by the State
- Closed: primaries where people initially register for a particular group
- Open: people register as voters but don’t have to say which party they are
going to vote for
- Discussion: people register but do not get to vote immediately: possible
change of mind but can’t change their vote
Partymembership
 All modern parties claim to have membership organizations
 Individual or ailiated membership: trade unions
 Measuring membership
- Absolute number of members
- Ratio of party membership to size of electorate
 Party membeship has been declining
Party regulation and inance
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 Parties increasingly subject of lega regulation: party laws

- Deine position and power of parties in democracies
- Give parties special rights and privileges: but also constraints
 Regulations regarding inances
- Spending: bans on particular forms of spending and targets, limitations on
total spending, required disclosure of spending: synonymous with regulation
of campaign spending
- Fundraising: contribution limits of corporations and trade unions to prevent
individuals from exercising inluence over parties
- Public subventions: support of countries for parties through their tax
systems, through direct provision of goods and services or through direct
inancil subventions
- BE: everything is regulated: how much, from who, for what…
KEY POINTS
 Party organizational types have evolved over time as sufrage was expanded and
soicieties changed
 Rather than reaching endpoint: organizations continue to evolve and new types
continue to develop
- Party membership, and involvement of citizens in party poitics more
generally, appears to be declining virtually throughout the democratic world
- Parties are increasingly the subject of legal regulation which, while justiied
in the name of fairness, may also contribute to the entrenchment of the
parties that currently are strong
The end of political parties

Parties remain central to democracy in 21 e century, but they face a number of
challenges:
 Declining party membership, identiication, loyalty, trust
 More dependent on contributions of state
 Representative role: challenged by interest groups
 Growing political capacity of citizens
- New forms of direct democracy
- Parties as intermediaries no longer needed
 Growing complexitiy: do parties have enough expertise: leave it to policy experts
and technocrats
Possible solutions:
 Is there an alternative? No
 Can parties adapt? Yes
- Rebranding: professional staf
- New digital ways of campaigning: cyber parties
- New ways of engaging citizens and voters: through direct communication,
transparency and increased responsiveness
KEY POINTS
 Parties have played, and continue to play, a vital role in stabilizing democracy by
integrating new citizens into the existing political sytem
- Whether new because they have come of age, immigrated, or beneited from
expansion of the rights of citizenship
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- Wheter the electoral success of anti-democratic parties helps to moderate

them and to integrate their followers into democracy, or instead serves to
undermine democracy, is an unresolved but pressing issue
Party Systems
Introduction
Party system: constellation of parties in a political system
 A lot of variation in number, size and ideological distance between parties
 Shapes competition between parteis
Three important questions

1. Which parties exist: relates to origin or genealogy of party systems
2. How many parties exist and what is their size: relates to format or morphology of
party systems
3. How do parties behave: relates to dynamics of party systems
KEY POINTS
 Party systems are sets of parties that compete and cooperate with the aim of
increasing their power in controlling government
 Interactions are determined by which parties exist, how many parties compose a
system and how large they are, the way in which they maximize votes
 It is appropiate to speak of a party system only in democratic contexts in which
several parties compete for votes in open and plural elections
Genealogy of party systems

Modern party families developed in view of socio-economic, political, cultural
changes in 19e-20e century
 Industrial revolution and national revolution
- Created social-economic and cultural conlicts
- Resulting in 4 initial cleavages
 International revolution and post-international revolution
- Created 3 additional cleavages in 20e century
 Modern party families: political translation of those cleavages
National revolutions led to two cleavages

1. Centre – periphery
 Administrative centralisation of state and loss of autonomy or regions:
resistance to state centralization and cultural standardization
 Cultural standardization: oicial language
 Party families: regionalist, minorities, ethnic and linguistic parties (Scottish
National Party)
2. Church – state
 Conlict between
- Liberal and secular state
- Clerical and aristocratic privileges
 Concerning inluence of church in politics and education
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 Party families: Christian democratic parties, conservative and religious

parties (Partido Popular in Spain, CDU in Germany, Swiss Catholic Party)
Industrial revolution led to two cleavages
3. Rural – urban
 Conlict between
- Rural interests: agriculture
- Industrial interests: trade and industry
 Concerning trade policies: trade barriars and agrarian protection vs free
market
 Reinforced by cultural diferences
 Party families: agragrian and peasant parties (Polish Peasants People’s Party)
4. Workers – employers
 Conlict between
- Industrial entrepreneurs vs workers over social rights
- Employers vs employees over social protection
 Strong role of state in socio-economic party vs liberal free market economy
 Most important cleavage: left – right
 Party families: workers, socialist, social-democratic parties and liberal parties
(VLD, Labour Party)
Soviet revolution led to one cleavage

5. Communist – socialitst
 Soviet revolution (1917): cleavage in workers’ movement
 Division within the left ‘workers movement’ over central place of soviet
Union-Communist Party in international revolutionary movement
 Revolution vs reforms and elections
 Party families: communist parties (Parti Communiste Français, Partito
Comunista Italiano, Izquierda Unida)
Post-industrial revolution led to two cleavages

6. Materialism – post-materialism
 Conlict mainly between generations about values and policy priorities
- Older people: materialism, tradition, authority, security, employment
- Younger people: post-materialism, tolerance, equality, participation,
emancipation, respect for nature
 New social movements: civil rights-, peace-, ecological- and woman’s
movement
 Party families: green parties
7. Globalisation
 Open societies vs closed societies
 Winners and losers of globalization and crisis
 Party families: recently left-wing populist and neo-populist protest parties:
often right-wing and xenophobic
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Variation in cleavage constellations

 Not all cleavages exist in all countries
 Two types of cleavage constellations
- Homogeneous constellation: dominant cleavage: Left-Right in UK
- Heterogeneous constellation: more overlapping cleavages: België,
Netherlands, Switzerland
 Party systems rather stable since 1920: Freezing hypothesis (Lipset & Rokkan, 1967)
- Party systems of 1960 relect the cleavage structures of the 1920
- Consolidation of party alternatives and electoral alignments due to the
saturation of the electoral market caused by full franchise and proportional
representation elecotoral systems
 Postmaterialism and globalization have lead to recent restructuring: realignment
KEY POINTS
 Party families originate from socio-economic and cultural cleavages created by
industrialization, urbanization and the formation of liberal states
 The centralized and liberal state creates conlicts with the church and with
peripheral regions, leading to religious and regionalist parties. Industrialization
opposes liberal economic interests to the rural world as well to the working class,
leading to agrarian and labour parties
- Party constellations ‘froze’ and have remained stable until the present
- Examples of recent realignment are the generational cleavage over
postmaterialist values and globalization that led to new party families:
greens and neopopulist parties
Morphology of party systems

Two main elements deine format of party systems:
1. Number: how many competing parties?
2. Size: how bing or strong are these parties?
Types of democratic parties:

1. Dominant party system
2. Two party system
3. Multi-party system
4. Bipolar system
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1. Dominant party system

 One large party with more than absolute majority of votes and seats for several
decades
- No alternation of power: though theoretically possible
- No other party approaching 50%
 One-party government
2. Two party system

 Two large parties sharing together around 80% of votes and seats
- Alternation of power between parties
- Balanced (35-45% each) with one of the two reaching 50% of seats
 One party government
3. Multi-party system
 Several or many parties with none approaching 50% of votes and seats
- Parties of diferent sizes
- Partial alternation of power: alternation through coalition changes
 Parties run for elections individually and form coalitions after elections
 Coalition government
- Moderate: small ideological distance, several centre parties: centripetal
dynamic
- Polarized: larger ideological distance, anti-system parties, occupied centre,
centrifugal competition
4. Bipolar systems
 Two large coalitions composed of several parties sharing together around 80% of
votes and seats, but non of them has a majority
 Coalition government
- Coalitions are balanced (40-50% each)
- Coalitions are stable over time and run elections as electoral alliances
- Two large coalitions of several parties alternate in power
Casestudy: end of a two-party system in Spain?

 Traditionally conservative PP and socialist PSOE alternate power
 Third party challengers: Podemos and Ciudadanos
- Elections 2015: no clear winner: diicult coalition formations
- Combined vote share PP and PSOE: 50% in 2015 but in the past 70-80%
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Number of parties: how do we count number of parties

1. Numerical
 Fractionalization index (Rae, 1967)
- Varies from zero (full concentration of seats or votes in one party)
- To one (total fragmentation with each seat going to a diferent party)
 Efective number of parties (Laakso – Taagepera, 1979)
- Count parties and weight the count by their relative strenght
- Refers to vote share (efective number of electoral parties) or seat
share (efective number of parliamentary parties) in parliament
2. Qualitative
 Coalition potential
- Small party as irrelevant if not necessary for any type of
governmental coalition
- Contrary: party must be counted disregarding its size, if it is pivotal
and determines whether or not a coalition is going to exist
 Blackmail potential
- Small party must be considered relevant when it is able to exercise
pressure
- On governmental decisions through threats or veto power
KEY POINTS
 The morphology of party systems is important for the competition between parties:
it concerns the number of players and their size
- The main types are dominant-party, two-party, multiparty and bipolar
systems
- In two-party systems, moderate multi-party systems and bipolar systems
competition is centripetal and there is alternation in power
- In dominant-party systems and polarized multiparty systems there is no
alternation and competition is centrifugal
 Measures of fragmentation are based on the number and size of parties: however,
small parties can also be important if they have coalition or blackmail potential
 Format of party systems is inluenced by electoral systems: through mechanical and
psychological efects plurality tends towards two-party systems (large parties are
over-represented) and PR tends towards multiparty systems
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Impact of electoral rules

Electoral rules inluence party systems
 Majoritarian systems: two party systems
 Proportional systems: multi-party systems
Causal link?
 Mechanical efects
- Refer to the formula used to translate votes into seats
- In single-member constituencies winning the seat is diicult: only the party
with the most votes gets the single seat (threshold is high)
- With PR on the contrary: in each multi-member constituency many seats are
allocated in proportion of votes
 Psychological efects
- Refer to the behaviour of voters and parties
- On the demand side (voters)
> In electoral systems: in which only large parties have a chance to win
seats, voters tend to vote strategically to avoid wasting votes on
small parties with no chance
> With proportional representation: in which small parties can win seats,
voters vote sincerely on their irst preference because their vote is not
wasted
- On the supply side (parties)
> With plurality: small parties have an incentive to merge with others to
increase their chances of pasing the threshold, thus reducing the
number of parties
> With proportional representation: parties have no incentive to merge:
they can only survive on their own and small splinter parties are not
penalized
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Dynamics and party competition

One of the most important goals of parties is to win as many votes as possible
 By ofering ideological programmes that are attractive to as many voters as possible
 By searching for the optimal location on the left-right axis: parties move to a
position where support is largest and where they can keep challengers at bay
 Median voter theorem: parties focus on the voter who divides a distribution of
voters placed on a left-right scale into two equal halves
- Centripetal competition: more voters concentrated in the centre, fewer
voters towards the extremes: voters in centre more lexible and less
ideological rigid
- Convergence towards the centre is larger in majoritarian systems than in PR
systems
Manifesto items used to build economic and cultural dimensions of the left-right
scale
Dimensions Left-wing items Right-wing items

Economic - Economic planning - Free entreprise
- Corporatism - Incentives
- Keynesian management - Economic orthodoxy
- Controlled economy - Welfare limitation
- Nationalization - Against labour groups
- Marxist analysis - Middle class and professional
- Welfare expansion groups
- Labour groups
Cultural - Anti-imperialism - Anti-internationalism
- Internationalism - Political authority
- Social justice - Nationalism
- Anti-nationalism - Tradition
- Against tradition - Law and order
- Multiculturalism - Against multiculturalism
KEY POINTS
 In the electoral market parties (the supply side) present platforms to appeal to
many voters whose vote is determined by the proximity of their preferences (the
demand side) to the parties’ ofer
- Voters are assumed to be rational, informed about alternative proposals and
able to choose the alternative closest to their top preferences
- Dynamics of party systems: determined by parties’ search for optimal
location on left-right axis
- Depending on the distribution of the electorate along the scale, parties move
to a position where the support is largest
 The prediction of competition models is that parties converge towards the centre of
the left-right axis, as point where most votes concentrate, and as point where voters
are less rigidly ideologized
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Legislatures
Introduction
Legislatures are a global phenomenon
 Fulilling a central role in most political systems
 But have large variations in their powers and structures
KEY POINTS
 Legislatures are present throughout the world and play a central role in almost all
political systems
 However, variations in their powers and structures are large
What is a legislature?
Legislature ≠ assembly, parliament or congress: diferent concepts that are not
interchangeable
 Assembly: coming together of people for some purpose (most general term)
 Legislature: an assembly with political purpose
- Two speciic types of legislatures: parliaments and congresses
Parliaments and congresses difer with regard to type of relationship between

executive and legislative
 Parliament
- Legislatures within parliamentary or fused-power systems
- High degree of mutual dependence: executive-legislature
> Executive branch selected from within and by legislature
> Executive branch can be removed from oice at any time by
perliament
> Parliamant can be dissolved by the executive
- Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Israel, Spain,
UK
 Congress
- Legislatures within presidential or seperation-of-power systems
- High degree of interdependence between executive and legislature
> Executive branch and legislature are selected independently
> Neither has the ability to dissolve or remove the other from oice
(with exception of incapacity or serious legal wrong-doing)
- USA, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, South Korea, Peru, Switzerland, Taiwan
KEY POINTS
 The words ‘assembly’, ‘legislature’, ‘parliament’ and ‘congress’ are not
interchangeable and care should be taken to use the right one to avoid confusion
and a lack of precision
- Parliament exist in fused-powers (usually parliamentary) systems
- Congresses exist in seperation-of-powers (usually presidential) systems
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 Both parliaments and congresses are types of legislature, meaning that they are
political assemblies with some legislative tasks.
Role of legislatures
The activities of legislatures can be put into the following categories:
 Linkage and representation: legislature as an agent
 Oversight and control: legislature as a principal
 Policy-making: legislature as legislator
1. Linkage of citizens to government:

 Legislature act as an intermediary between local constituency and central
government
 Linkage is more efective
- In single member constituencies: sole representation of citizens in their
constituency at the national level
- When executive is indirectly elected (parliamentary systems): mechanism of
communication between citizens and central government
2. Representation of constituents’ interests:

 Delegates: legislators as mechanistic agents of their voters’ interest:
unquestioningly carry messages and initiatives from their constituents to central
government
 Trutsees: legislators rely on own judgement: interpreter of constituents’ interests
and incorporate the needs of the country as a whole, as well as their own moral and
intellectual judgement
3. Debating
 Legislatures as important public forums of debate: diferent opinions are expressed
and confronted
 Finding compromise between opposinggroups and interests within society
4. Legitimation
 Ability of a legislature to create links between citizens and government by providing
an adequete representation to critical groups and minority interests
 Fostering public debate will determine its institutional legitimacy and its ability to
provide legitimacy for the political system as a whole
5. Control of the executive branch

 Seperation of Power: presidential political system: congress has limited control
- Agenda of executive not subject to legislative control or oversight
- Formal impeachment: rare and generally complex legal process: ability to
remove executive is usually restricted to cases of illegal activity and physical
or mental incapacity
 Fused-power: larger control: vote of no conidence
- Executives are responsible to the legislature for their policy agenda
- Removed from oice if their policy goals are deemed unacceptable by
majority in legislature
6. Budget control
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 Legislative control over the power of the purse is the earliest historical funciton of
legislatures
 Powerful: opportunity to inluence policy desings: after all few policy goals can be
achieved without some level of funding
7. Oversight over
 Budgetary implications + timely and accurate implementation of policies
 Oversight instruments
- Question-time: regularly scheduled opportunity for member of the legislature
to present oral and written questions to members of the government
- Hearings and special inquiries: organized to invesitgate speciic topics or
issues considered important by some legislators
- Investigative committees: more formailzed and tend to adress higher-order
issas and have a longer duration
8. Policy-making or policy-inluence
 More important in SoP systems than in fused-power systems
 Minimal function: consultation:
- Grants the legislature authority to present an opinion
- Opinion on legislation, general plan of action or a broad policy programe
 Negative functions: delay, veto:
- Slowing down process by not providing positive input or substantive change
directly
- Veto as most extreme power of dely
 Positive functions: amendement, initiation
- Ability to amend bills: allows legislature to change aspects of the executive
branch’s proposal to achieve an outcome in line with the preferences of a
majority of its members
- Indepedent power of initiative grants individuals or groups within the
legislature the right to introduce their own policy proposals independent of
the executive branch
- In some legislatures all proposals must formally be initiated by the
legislature (US), while in others the legislature has no formal ability to
initiate proposals independently (EU)
 Measuring power of legislatures based on their relative ability to directly impact the
policy process:
- Arena type legislatures: low degree of direct policy-making inluence
- Transformative legislatures: higd degree of direct policy-making inluence
Linkage and representation: Oversight and control: Policy-making: legislature as

legislature as an agent legislature as principal legislator
 Linkage of citizens to  Control of the executive  Policy-making
government branch  Policy-infuencing
 Representation of  Budget control
constituents’ interests  Oversight over budgetary
 Debating implications
KEY POINTS
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 Legislatures: variety of tasks including providing a link between citizens and the
central government, representing citizen interests, executive oversight, and
participating in the policy-making process
- While most legislatures in democratic systems perform all of these roles to
some extent, the emphasis placed on the various roles and tasks will vary
between legislatures
- The very diferent character of the relationship between the executive
branch and the legislature in fused-powers and separation-of-powers
systems inluences which roles and tasks are emphasized by a legislature
 There are a number of diferent tools that a legislature may employ within the
policy-making process, including consultation, delay, veto, amendment, and
initiation. While the powers of delay and veto are negative in that delay or block
policies, amendment and initiation are positive powers
Internal organizational structure

Unicameral
 One chamber (Flanders, Denmark, Finland)
Bicameral
 Two chambers (Belgium, USA, Austria)
 Diferent representative functions
- Lower house: representing the population
- Upper house: representing a socially or territorially deined group
 Relationship between the two chambers
- Symmetric bicameral systems: equally shared powers or equally divided
powers
- Assymetric bicameral systems: unequally distributed powers
Country Unicameral Upper Lower Basis of Legislatures

versus Chamber Chamber representatio
bicameral n
Belgium Bicameral Senate House of Regions Federal
Representative Parliament
s
Brazil Bicameral Federal Senate Chamber of States National
Deputies Congress
Canada Bicameral Senate Hous of Regions Parliament
Commons
China Unicameral / / Regions National
People’s
Congress
Denmark Unicameral / / Regions Folketing
Egypt Unicameral / / Governorates People’s
Assembly
Finland Unicameral / / Regions Eduskunta
France Bicameral Senate National Departments Parliament
Assembly
Germany Bicameral Bundesrat Bundestag Länder /
India Bicameral Rajya Sabha Hous of the States Parliament
People
Italy Bicameral Senate Chamber of Regions Parliament
Deputies
Japan Bicameral House of House of National and National Diet
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Councillors Representative Prefecture

s
Mexico Bicameral Senate Chamber of States Congress
Deputies
New Zealand Unicameral / / Constituencies House of
Representative
s
Pakistan Bicameral Senate National Provincial and Majlis-e-Shoora
Assembly Tribal Areas
Russia Bicameral Council of State Duma Federal Units Federal
Federation Assembly
Singapore Unicameral / / Constituencies Parliament
Spain Bicameral Senate Congress of Regional Cortes
Deputies Generales
Switzerland Bicameral Council of National Cantons Federal
States Council Assembly
Turkey Unicameral / / Constituencies Grand National
Assembly
UK Bicameral House of Lords House of Class Parliament
Commons
US Bicameral Senate House of Federal Units Congress
Representative
s
Number, quality and consistency of members depends on:

 Size of legislatures
 Numbers of days per year in sessions
 Full or part-time legislatures
 Professionalization
 Member turnover from one election to the next
 Amount of time legislators spend attending to legislative tasks
Committees
 Almost without exception legislatures organize internally on the basis of committees
 Indicators of their inluence:
- Permanent or ad hoc: ad hoc less eicient and member lack opportunity to
develop expertise
- High or low specialization: larger inluence if committees mirror organization
of executive branch: subcommittees and temporary committees allow more
specialization and lexibility
 Inluence is largest when legislation is reviewed and amended in committees irst,
before being sent to the plenary meeting
Hierarchical structures and internal decision-making

 Distribution of internal positions
- Facilitates cooperation and compromise between government and opposition
groups
- More time-consuming: incremental policy reforms
 Winner takes it all: only to members of majority
- Discourages compromise: fosters polarization
- Requires strong party discipline or large majority
- More eicient
KEY POINTS
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 Understanding the internal organizational structures, membership and resources of

legislatures is a critical component of evaluating their overall inluence and role
within the broader political system
 Most legislatures have one or two chambers
- In the case of bicameral legislatures it is critical to understand both the
representative function of each chamber and the relative distribution of
power between them
- The relative level of ‘professionalization’ of a legislature (amount of time it is
in session each year, the character of its committees and other interal
organizational structures, the type of members it attracts, and the resources
they have at their disposal): generally an accurate indication of its inluence
and power within the policy process and the broader political system
Assessing a legislature’s power

Power of legislature is tied to its degree of autonomy:
1. Institutional autonomy
2. Member independence
1. Institutional autonomy
 Fused powers
- Centralized legislative authority in the executive
- Hierarchy: voters -> legislature -> executive
- Legislature less inluence on policy-making process: partisan link between
legislative and executive branch
 Separation of power
- Decentralized legislative authority increasing role of legislature
- Leader executive and legislature elected in separate elections
- Legislatures more inluence on policy-making
2. Member independence
 Party organization
- Member autonomy decreases when their selection depends on party
leadership
- Member autonomy decreases in more centralized political parties
 System characteristics
- Electoral system: parties are more imporant in PR-systems: individual
autonomy decreases
- Funding: members’ autonomy increases in systems with public (state)
funding of parties and candidates
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Power of legislature is tied to its degree of autonomy
Separation of power Fused power
Division of power More inluence on policy-making Less inluence on policy-making
Centralized parties Member autonomy increased in Member autonomy decreased in

decentralized party centralized party
Party leadership Member autonomy increased Member autonomy decreased
when selection doesn’t depend when selection depends on
on leader leader
Electoral system Individual autonomy increased in Individual autonomy decreased in
single member district PR-system: parties more
important
State funding Primary source of funds Not primary source of funds
KEY POINTS
 The institutional autonomy of the legislature (from the executive branch) and the
individual autonomy of its members (from political parties) are the most
fundamental variables afecting the policy inluence of a legislature
 Institutional autonomy is largely dependent on the formal political structures
- In fused-powers systems in which the legislature selects the executive the
two branches are mutually dpendent and the institutional autonomy of the
legislature is reduced
- In separation-of-powers systems the legislature and the executive are both
selected by the voters and the institutional autonomy of the legislature is
increased
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 The autonomy of individual members of the legislature is a function of their

dependence on political parties to achieve their electoral and policy goals:
individual members will have less autnomy in party-centred PR electoral systems
 Additional factors inluencing the relative independence of individual members
include the availability of state funding for electoral campaigns
Conclusion
There is no a priori ‘best type’ of legislature
 However: the knowledge of the type of legislature allows to grasp key aspects of the
political process
- Eiciency
- Diferential focus: control or policy-making
- Policy outputs, policy change and policy innovation
Centralized party system Decentralized party system
Fused-power system Parliament: UK, Greece Strong parliament: Italy, Poland
Seperation-of-powers system Weak congress: Colombia, Congress: US

Argentina, Bolivia, South Kora
Government and Bureaucracies

Introduction
The term government has several meanings:
 Broad sense: all public institutions that make or implement political decisions
 Mostly used for the country’s central political executive
Government: ruling and governing the country: not only executing

 Bureaucracies support governments in their tasks of ruling and administrating the
country
KEY POINTS
 Most common refers to the country’s central political executive
 Governing means ruling, exercising overall control over a country: determining the
course it will take
Types of government
Common core
 Notwithstanding the separation of power doctrine: state functions are not fully
separated
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 Most governments have important legislative powers

 Government must be connected to the electoral process
 Government must work under constitutional constraints
Governments can be organized in many ways

1. Presidentialism
2. Parliamentarism
3. Semi-presidentialism
4. Directorial government
5. Directly elected prime minister
1. Presidentialism
 Head of government as head of state
- Quasi-direct popular election of president for a ixed period
- President not politically accountable to legislature
 President appoints member of government: mostly with consent of the legislature
 USA + many Latin American countries
2. Parliamentarism
 Head of government (ex. Prime Minister, Chancellor) not as head of state (ex.
Monarch, President)
- Head of government can be appointed by head of state or elected by
parliament
- Government can dissolve parliament
 Government politically accountable to legislature: can be removed from oice by
vote of conidence
 Many West-European countries
3. Semi-presidentialism
 Quasi-direct election of president
- President appoints members of cabinet
- Cabinet is politically accountable to legislature: president is not
- President can dismiss cabinet and dissolve parliament
 Majority of legislature and president can be from difent partis: cohabitation
 Quasi mixture of the two former systems: Chirac-Jospin, Mitterand-Chirac
4. Directorial government
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 7 members of government individually elected by parliament: Federal Council

- Federal president as head of government and head of state
- Annual rotation for position of federal president
 Government not politically accountable to legislature
 Switzerland
5. Directly elected Prime Minister

 Prime minister popularly elected with absolute majority
- Cabinet nominated by prime minister: requires a parliamentary vot of
conidence to take oice
- Prime minister politically accountable to legislature
 Succesful vote of no conidence triggers dissolution of parliament: leading to new
elections
 Israel: 1996-2003
KEY POINTS
 Today’s governments constitute what remains of absolute monarchs after splitting-
of judicial and legislative functions
- Notwithstanding the separation-of-powers doctrine, state functions are not
fully separated
- The government has retained important legislative powers, although
diferences exist between diferent regime types
- Diferent regime types also distinguish themselves by the deinition of
government
- Constitutionally one-person executives and collective bodies can be
distinguished
- Some governments include the head of state while others have a separate
head
Internal working of government

Presidential government
 Concentrating executive power in a single, directly elected person for a ixed term
 President is sovereign: cabinet executes or advises but no collective decision-
making
 Presdent names and directs composition of government
Parliamentary systems ofer a broader range of forms of organisation

1. Cabinet government
 Prime minister is primus inter pares: the irst among equals
 Cabinet discusses and decides collectively
 Possible when not to many or technical issues: classical cabinet government
disappear
2. Prime ministerial government
 Closer to presidentialism
 More monocratic decision-making by prime minister: decides on important
policy issues and general policy lines
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 Since the 1960: prime ministerial governments increasingly replace by

cabinet governments
3. Minsiterial government
 Also labelled: fragmented government
 Dispersing power among individual members
 Ministers do not interfere in business of other ministers
Variation in government modes:

 Long term changes: cabinet government transformed into prime ministerial
government or ministerial government
 Single-party governments more likely to become prime ministerial than coalition
governments
KEY POINTS
 Constitutions are silent about the internal working and decision-making of
government, leaving much to the political actors who adapt the government modes
to changing circumstances
- Presidential systems provide for presidential government (with its internal
variations)
- Parliamentary systems ofer a broader range of decision modes: cabinet
government, prime ministerial government, and ministerial government
 Coalition governments in parliamentary systems have developed more complex
decision modes
Autonomy of government
Understanding governments
 Requires exploring the autonomy of these layers have from other actores or
providers of essential resources without chich they would not be able to govern
 Parties are essential for getting a government into oice and maintaining it there:
without permanent bureaucracy the government could not govern
 Idea of bureacratic government rests on the assumption that a small group cannot
run the whole show and critically depends on the permanent bureaucracy
Autonomy of government with respect to parties

 Autonomy of government is smaller when party programmes are more explicit
about goals and means
 Autonomy is smaller when parties play role in the selection of cabinet members
 Autonomy increases with presidentialization of politics: strenghtening of the chief
executive
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- Increasing leadership power resources and autonomy within party and

political executive
- Increasingly leadership-centred electoral processes
Autonomy of government with respect to bureaucracies

 Bureacracies can set the agenda by deining what is identiied as the problem
 Bureaucraices can present a choice of political solutions according to their own
ideas and convictions
KEY POINTS
 Party government means that government actions are strongly inluenced by the
values and policies of the government party or parties
 Political parties control their teams in government by the means of party
programmes, the recruitment of party leaders into government oice and
permanent control of the government
- Empirical studies mostly demonstrate that parties have only a limited impact
on government
- Initial fusion of party and government often gives way to government
autonomy and occasionally party dependence on the government
 Individual leaders tend to gain weight relative to the parties: presidentialization
Political capacity of government

Political capacity difers widely:
1. Uniied versus divided government
 Divided government: presidency is held by one party and at least one
chamber of Congress is controlled by the other party
 Uniied government: when all three are under the control of the same party
2. Majority versus minority government
 Minority government: governments comprising parties that collectively miss
mark of majority
 Majority governments: governments that do have reached the mark: at least
50 percent of seats plus one
3. Single-party versus coalition government
1. Uniied versus divided government
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 Uniied government: president and Congress under control of the same party
 Divided government: presiden’ts party has no majority in at least one chamber in
Congress
- Limited power of president: ex. Obama vs Repbulican Congress
- Government capacities constrained in divided governments: risk of gridlock
 Presidential stragegies
- Imperial president: undertake unilateral action to push own policies
- Dominant president: dictates his terms in legislative initiative
- Coalition president: engages in legislative coalition-building
- Nationally oriented president: ofers large-scale patronage rather than policy
concessions
2. Majority versus minority governments

 Majority government: enjoys majority support in parliament (at least 50 percent of
seats plus one) and tend to live longer but not everywhere or always
 Minority government: theory expects unstable minority governments but empirically
minority govern-ments are frequent and often stable
- Viable when they occupy the ideological centre and divide the opposition
- Usually back up in legislature
3. Single-party versus coalition governments

 Single party: homogenous and relatively stable: quick decisions with avoidance of
compromise
 Coalition: more heterogenous: more time consuming internal decision-making
prcess: comprimises and rivalries can divide goverment
KEY POINTS
 The political capacities of governments difer widely, depending on the
government’s support base in the political institutions and the society
- In presidential regimes, ‘uniied government’ suggests greater capacities
and ‘divided government’ requires the president to use institutional
prerogatives, bribe members of the legislature, or compromise with
legislative parties
- In parliamentary regimes single-party majority governments normally have
the greatest political capacity
Bureaucratic capacities
Key characteristics of bureaucratic organisation: Max Weber
 Personnel: based on formal lifelong employment and promotion on the basis of
seniority
 Organization: functional division with specialisation and hierarchy
 Procedure: guided by impersonal general rules
 Goal: rational and politically neutral organization
Problems of bureaucracy:
 Excessive rules and complicated or rigid pocedures may lead to delay, ineiciency
and inertia
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 Bureacracies tend to grow constantly: lack and absence of competitive pressure

 Problems with bureaucrats’ loyalty:
- Leisure-shirking
- Dissent-shirking
- Political sabotage
Politicians respond to bureaucracy power in two ways:

 Spoils systems
- Victorious party appoints large layers of the administration: develop in 19 e
century US
- Administration is committed to government goals: helps to live up promises
from campaign
- Spoil systems are sometimes open (USA), but mostly covert (Belgium,
Austria, Italy)
 New public management
- Personnel: top positions are open to outside candidates and attributed on the
basis of real competition and merit
- Organization: introducing competition among sub-units: more horizontal and
less hierarchical
- Procedure: introducing principles of irms: contractual employment and
entrepreneurship
KEY POINTS
 A government’s capacity to implement its decisions depends critically on the ability
and willingness of bureaucrats and the structures and processes of the public
administration
 Classic bureaucracy aims at making the civil service a neutral instrument
 In practice, the inclusion of individual political preferences by bureaucrats can lead
to agency loss; bureaucratic career concerns foster the growth of the state
 The establishment of spoils systems and New Public Management methods can
provide governments with greater grip on their bureaucrats
Policy-making
Where does policy-making it in?
Polities
 Democratic and authoritarian regimes
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 Nation states and federal states
Politics
 Legislatures and executives
 Elections and referendums
 Political parties and party systems
Policy
 How are policies made?
 How are polities governed?
KEY POINTS
 Policies are the outputs of the political system: come along in diferent forms: laws,
regulations or rules
 The policy analysis literature relies on policy typologies as ‘analytical shortcuts’ for
grasping the costs and beneits elated to a certain policy option
- Based on the respective magnitude of these two parameters expectations
about the likelihood of promulgating new policies and changing existing
policies are formulated
- By studying the policy-making process from a comparative politics
perspective, we gian a fuller understanding of the causes and consequences
of policy decisions
Policy-making
Policies
 The set of interrelated decisions made by governments with the aim of steerdiing
public, social and economic life: outcomes
 Designed to achieve deined goals and present solutions to societal problems
 More precisely: policies are government statements of what it intends to do or not
to do: including laws, regulations, decisions or orders
Policy-making
 Process of making those decisions
KEY POINTS
 The conceptual models represent starting points for the analysis of policy-making
o The models vary regarding their perception of policy-actors as either fully or
partly rational
o The models also difer concerning their focus on either political institutions,
actors or both
Types of policies
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Policy cycle
1. Agenda setting
How do issues become political relevant?
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 Public agenda: those topics found important by the public

 Policy agenda: factors determining whether an issue reaches the policy agenda may
be cultural, social, political, economic or ideological: not all issues perceived by
public as important, reach policy agenda
Tradition models: important, serious, real problems

 Economic cycle
 Political business cycle: in times of elections: popular measures before the elections
and not so popular measures after elections
Initiation models:
 Ouside initiation model: citizen groups put issue on agenda: try to win support from
government
 Inside initiation model: pressure groups close to government put issue on agenda:
try to win support from government
- Belgium: corporate system: peak organisations close to government put
things on agenda and make sure that decisions are made
- Peak organisation: advocacy group, trade association or association of
industries with allied interests: established for the pruposes of developing
standard and processes or to act on behalf of all members when lobbying
goverment or promoting interests of the members
 Mobilization model: government put issues on agenda: rallies support among
citizens
Garbage can model:

 In every polity: there are three streams: problems, policies and politics
1. Problem stream: all public problems
2. Policy stream: all proposed solutions to those problems
3. Political stream: political climate, events and actors
 Agenda setting takes pladce when all three streams are coupled:
- When problems are linked to solutions: policy window: agenda setting can
happen
- Largely independent of one another: each develops according to its own
dynamics and rules
- Result of convergence: opening of a policy window which allows to put it on
the policy agenda
2. Policy formulation
Once a problem is on the agenda: struggle breaks loose to deine, elaborate and
propose solutions
 Actors try to frame their solutions in such a way as to gain maximum support and
increase the chances of policy adoption
 Ex. current problem of immigration: it creates crime, but it enriches our lives with
the human right issue
Diferent ways of framing measures: aimed at facilitating women’s access to the

labour market
 Progressive framing: empowerment and human rights
 Conservative framing: women at home as natural order of things and decay of
social iber
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3. Policy adoption: decision-making

Policy adoption as process through which public oicials decide which proposed
set of solutions to adopt
 Unidimensional explanations
- Those decisions are chosen which have a majority
- Those decisions are chosen which relect the balance between executive and
legislative
- Those decisions are taken which are not blocked by veto players
 Diferent models for policy adoption
1. Rational model
2. Incremental model
3. Group model
4. Elite model
1. Rational model
 Decision makers start from a clear blueprint: choose the policy with the best results
at the lowest cost
 Assumptions: all information is available and cognitively processed: all efects
thorougly assessed
 Problem: bounded rationality: idea that when individuals make decisions their
rationality is limited by available information, tractability of the decision problem
and cognitive limitations of their minds
2. Incremental model
 Decision makers are prudent and conservative: trail and error with no clear aims or
means
 Problem: better at explaining stability than change
 Very applicable to Belgian politics: entire state reform as prime example of
incrementalism
3. Group model
 Politics as process of distributing resources among diferent groups in society
 Policies are responses to group pressures and relections of power distribution
between those groups
 Ex. Belgian Group of 10: corporatism
4. Elite model
 Policies are relections of the preferences of governing elites
 Citizens are considered to be badly informed and play a minor role
 To some extent applicable to EU politics
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4. Policy implementation
Implementation: process of putting outputs and decisions into practice
 Not an automatic process
 Two directions:
- Top-down: ability of policy-makers to produce unequivocal policy objectives
and control the implementation process
- Bottom-up: local bureaucrats as the central actors in policy delivery and view
implementation as negotiation processes within networks
 Central actors: bureaucracies for successful implementation: there must be an
entitiy able to translate the policy objectives into an operational framework
accountable for its actions
Policy instruments: NATO-model (Hood)

 Nodality: giving people information about the consequences of their behaviour
 Authority: imposing formal constraints on behaviour and sanctioning violation
 Treasure: rewarding or punishing people inancially
 Organisation: shaping behaviour by changing the organisation of government
5. Policy evaluation
Once policies are implemented: efects have to be assessed and evaluated
 If actual situation is intended situation: policy termination
 If actual situation is not intended situation: policy feedback
- Types of evaluation: process, client statisfaction, outcome, cost-beneit…
KEY POINTS
 In analytical terms: helpful to view policy-making as a series of political formulation,
policy adoption, implementation and evalution
- Number of actors involved decreases when we move from agenda setting to
implementation
- The evalution indings may lead to the modiication of existing policies
- Which may entail adjustments of varying degrees as well as complete policy
termination
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Policy styles
Policy-making difers strongly among countries
 Anticipatory versus reactive
 Consensus-seeking versus imposing
KEY POINTS
 Policy-making can be thought of as a strategy for resolving societal problems by
using institutions
 Cognitive and normative frames fulill important functions during the policy-making
process and therefore complement the politics perspective
 Similar to the policy cycle, the concept of national policy styles serves as a useful
heuristic tool for elaborating more speciic theoretical explanations
International factors
Countries often learn from each other:
 Policy difusion: spread of policy ideas between countries
 Policy transfer: application of policy insights from another country
- Copying: direct and complete transfer
- Emulating: transfer of the ideas behind the program
- Combining: mixture of diferent policies
- Inspiring: inal policy does not draw upon the original
 Policy convergence: increasing policy similarity between countries
National policies often change because of the changing international context:

 Imposition: international political actor imposes a centrain policy: EU membership
application
 Harmonization: states coordinate policies and set uniform standards: environmental
standards
 Regulatory competition: countries internationally compete to attract investments
 Communication: countries exchange best practices
KEY POINTS
 As internationalization is a complex pheomenon
- Useful to approach its underlying mechanisms via the concepts of policy
difusion, policy transfer and cross-national policy convergence
- Four main mechanisms: imposition, harmonization, regulatory competition
and transnational communication
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Comparative Political Institutions

Comparative Politics (Universiteit Antwerpen)

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What is Comparative Politics?

What is comparative politics?

Three subields of political science:

CP includes three traditions:

What does CP do in practice?

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The substance of comparative politics

1. Before WWII: mainly analysis of state and its institutions

2. 1950-1960: behavioural revolution + new cases

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3. From 1967 onwards: high level of abstraction of systemic approach

Cyclical process: institutions to functions to institutions

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The method of comparative politics

Cyclical process in methods in CP:

Two types of data:

Behavioural revolution: shift from aggregate to individual data

Before WWII Behavioural shift Recently

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Substantial focus States and Politics in practice: States and

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At the broadest level, political theories can be categorized as:

Theory is the worst enemy of comparative researcher

Grand theories versus middle-range (or grounded) theories:

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- Explain every single system in the world: leads to limited explanatory

Major approaches to comparative politics

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- Present: tendency to develop ‘grounded theories’ or middle-range theories

Contemporary: New institutionalism

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Rational chocie analysis

Inluence of ballot structure

Ideas matter for output

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 But efect of ideas is diicult to measure: political culture often ‘residual’

In CP focus is on individual countries

What more? Interactions as a 6e I

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- Processes: emphasis on dynamics and underlying processes of politics

Comparative Research Methods

Linking theory to evidence

This theory is then linked to evidence or data

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 Linking theory to evidence always entails reduction of real-world complexities

The RD links RQ (theory) to the RA (evidence) by means of comparative methods

Five types of research designs can be distinguished:

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The case selection depends on:

Mixed method strategy

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Use of Methods of Agreement and Diference

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- Which are not part of the X -> Y relation

Limitations of rules of comparison

Alternative logic of comparison: QCA and fuzzy-set logic

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 An alternative logic of comparison has recently been developed: QCA/fuzzy-set

Constraints and limitations of comparative