6-7 page paper on Lebanon government Instructions are below -- we will discuss price

NOTES

September 9, 2014

This Class: The nature, explanations and consequences of the various ways in which societies determine who has the power to make collective decisions

This requires a method…

· Political science

· Shared standards and tools from hard sciences

1) Empirical, not normative (the way things should be)

· Definitions – describing the world as we see it

· Empirical statements help us..

· Describe phenomena accurately

· Explain and generalize

2) Clearly defined concepts

· Ideas we use to think about the processes we study

· Good conceptrs are:

· Clear, consistent and useful for measuring in the real world

· Example: “Democratization”

· “the process of improving the human condition”

· “process by which rights and liberties are extended to all adults”

· Good concepts lend themselves to operationalization

· How would we measure “the extension of rights and liberties”?

· These become variables

3) Theories to answer “how” and “why” questions

· General explanations for empirical phenomena

· Based on supportive evidence

· Polis ci (an all social sciences?) have may theories, but very few laws

· Deterministic vs. probabilistic laws

4) Hypotheses to test evaluate our theories

· Definition

· Inductive and deductive hypothesis formation – general observation to then lead to a very specific prediction

· Must be falsifiable – hypothesis has to have a chance that it is incorrect

· Relate Independent variables to dependent variable

5) Using evidence to compare

· Facts that have implications for a theory or hypothesis

· Must be used in systematic ways to test hypothesis

· Evidence is compared across Cases ( a unit of analysis I comparative politics)

· Often a country, but could be a time period, or set of events, etc/

· Various ways to do this

· All seek to explain outcomes

· Control for rival theories or explanations

The Comparative Method: Most Similar Systems (MSS) design

· Compare cases with similar factors , but different outcomes of interest

· Logic is that analyst can rule out (or control for) many possible variables that are similar

The Comparative Method: Major Social Revolutions

· Different factors but similar outcomes

6) Assessing “casual” relationships

· Important but difficult

· X causes Y?

· Distinction between correlation and casuation

· Correlation- two variables move in predictable relationships to one another

· Causation- changes in one variable cause the changes in the other

A cause relationship-

Author says genes drive both

Probably not ‘casusal’

· Maybe more attractive bike races become leaders

· Maybe those with an already greater probability of reckless behavior are attracted to cheap alcohol

· Maybe healthier people work/earn more and also have more sex

· Each objection illustrates a potential “threatto causality”

Threats to “causality’

X=y

· Definitional problems

· X and y will correlate if they are the same thing

· “military overthrows f elected presidents cause a country to become non-democratic”

· circular, or tautological arguments

· REVERSE CAUSATION

· Y causes x, instead of x causing y

· “spending more money on congressional campains causes candidates to lose”

· Related: endogeneity

· Relationship goes both ways

· Intervening Process

· X leads to y, but only indirectly (through Z)

· More missionaries -> more democracy

· Missionaries -> literacy, education

· Literacy, education-> democracy

· Ommitted variable Problem

· X correlates with Y, but only because both are caused by another variable Z

· Quite common in policitical science

· Why would this be?

Spurious Correlations

· Those without some other explanation

· Just random coincidence

7) Even still, we might have more than 1 “cause”

· Necessary and Sufficient criteria

· Necessary: if X is necessary for Y, Y can not exist without x

· I observe every time lions play at home they lose

· Could be 2 different scenarios:

· Playing at home may be necessary for losing?

· Plaing at home may be sufficient for losing?

· What happens on the reoad in each situations

Building Blocks of Comparative Politics

States

· “States” mean something very different for comparative political scientists

· centralized authority- governing body of people that are in charge of govering within a given territory

· monopoly of legal violence over a given territory (Max Weber)

· states are cohorsive

· Sovereignty

· Ability to carry out actions independently

· Establish order

· States as mobsters?

· Durable (usually)

· Features of States

· States are parts of larger societies

· Other social actors and organizations

· States direct, or cooridinate action

· But not fully autonomous

· Can vary in their capacity

· Accomplish goals, such as…

· Policing, taxation, defense, managing the economy

· Degree of “stateness” with Failed States at the bottom

Where did States come from?

· Bellicist theory

· States emerge as solution to Hobbes state of nature

· War made states, and states made war (Tilly) – seemed effective – emerged from these

· Economic theories

· Modern state represents interests of economic elites (Marx, Beard)

· Are such theories incompatible with the view that states can be autonomous actors?

Explanations cont.

· Cultural theories

· States require lots of their citizens

· Can such obedience occur naturally, or was it the result of cultural change

· Emphasis on national identity and nationalism

· Diffusion Theories

· How did the state become the central unit of political identification?

· Skill of war; colonialism; avenue for extending economic power?

Regimes

· Fundamental rules and norms of politics

· A guidebook for how society and politics operate

· Typically a form of govt, with emphasis on institutions and rules

· Democratic and non-democratic regimes

· Typically “instutionalized” but not as durable as states

· “regime change” in Iraq

· revolutions in china, iran

· usually embedded in some kind of constitution

States Vs. Regimes

· Mac vs. PC

· They are both computers (states)

· Both have similar features

· Both do roughly the same thing

· But different programming (regimes) determine how they do it

Government

· The leadership or the elite in charge of running the state

· Weakly institutionalized

· We do not think of them as irreplaceable

· We can easily imagine life with a different set of leaders ( and may prefer it)

What is Democracy and how common is it?

· Defining Democracy

· Universal (and positive) connotations

· Tends to be used subjectively

· Demos= “the common people”; Kratia= “power”

· Central distinction between process/procedural (electoral) And outcome/substantive(liberal)

· Schumpeters definition

· “the democratic method is that insitutiona; arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the peoples vote”

· Procedural or substantive

· Samuel Huntington

· “Governments produced by elections may be ineffieicient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good. These qualities make such govts undesirable but they do not make them undemocratic” pg 18

· The Fallacy of ‘electoralism”

· Elections are necessary, but not sufficient for democracy

· If x is necessary for y, y can not exist without x

· If x is suffiecient for y, then wherever x is present, y is also present

Unintended consequences

· Even when fairly conducted and honestly counted, can have unintended consequences

· “suppose those elected are racists, facists, separatists… that is the dilemma”

Zakarias concept of “liberal democracy”

· Classically liberal ideas regarding individual rights and fredoms

· Constitutional liberalism limiting governments ability to violate “inalienable” rights

· “rule of law”

· provides abridhe from a narrow def of ..????

Explain Democracy:

1) Global patterns

2)Individual countries

How did we arrive at the “Democratic century”?

· Pattern before explanation

· Democratic regimes are a recent phenomenon

Ancient Athens and Rome give us Direct and Republic systems, but also…

One and a half millennia for the first modern democracy?

· Samuel Huntingtons wave metaphor- the third wave

· First wave of democracy: 1828-1926

· US abolishes property req. for make voting for male voting

· How does he define democracy?

· He used it in electoral forms

· Europe

· Total: 33

· First “reverse wave”: 1922-1942

· Democracy became noticeably less common throughout the world

· Italy and German

· Great Depression

· Total:11

· Second wave: 1943-1962

· Allied victory in WWII

· Latin America

· Decolonization in Africa, Asia

· Total:51

· Second reverse wave: 1958-1975

· Most in the third world

· Rise of military authoritarianism

· Total: 29

· Third wave: 1975-?

· West, South Europe

· All other regions affected

· What about more encompassing definitions?

· Little eveidence of a third reverse wave

· What accounts fro the 3rd wave in particular?

· Complex, idiosyncratic explanations

1). Legitimacy issues

-Defining “legitimacy” – we recognize something as appropriate for our society

- Autocracy- less appropriate or legitimate

-In Autocracies and Democracies

-Economic crisis of authoritarianism – were not able to

2) Overall increases in levels of wealth

- As countries becomes wealthier the odds that theyre democratic increases

- Variety of “causal mechanisms”

demonstration effect-

· 3rd wave cont.

3) Demonstration effect

-“Snowballing”

- Why is this unique to the Third wave?

4) International pressure

-Direct and indirect

What explains this very strong finding?

Modernization theory—what makes a society modern-

-Established govt

-as societies become more modern, they inevitably become more democratic

-what does “modern” usually mean?

· More education

· Weakening of older, traditional institutions

· Greater gender equality

· Rise of middle class

-The Lipset Correlation

· Lipsets (1959( first observation

· Version 1: “emergence” – most influential articles ever –these things are correlated together

· An emphasis on “trasnsitions to democracy”

· Regime replacement

· “democratization”

· Consistent with major cases of democratic transition

The 1st rich country -> the first democaratic country – Great Britian

· Industrial revolution leads to modernization

· Slow but constant evolution toward democracy

· Magna carta (1215)

· Glorious revolution (1928)

· A second explanation of lipsets correlation

Modernization and the endurance of democracy

· Poor democracies ten not to last

· Modernization thus aids in the “consolidation of democracy, for not the initial transition – institutionalized- those that we think that are going to last

· Also consistent with major cases

· Early Germany

2. Social structure and democracy

· Adding a layer to the modernization argument

· Three main varieties

· 1. Elite centered explanations

· concentrated wealth, inequality, obstacle to democratization

· Federalist #10-from the U.S- Madison

· 2. Class-based explanations

· middle class

· 3.culture and democracy

· culture defined

· political culture can influence preference for certain kinds of institutions

· Two varieties

· 1. National culture argument – has an impact on political phenenom

· cultural arguments

· 2. Political values and attitudes

· Churchhills famous argument on democracy

· “The only game in town”

· Important questions have complicated answers

middle class good for democracy book-bugoise

middle classs- not sufficient for democracy