Comparative Politics: Institutions
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Democracy's Value
Democracy's Value Edited by Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-CordoÂn published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU, UK http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011±4211, USA http://www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia # Cambridge University Press 1999 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1999 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in 10/12pt Plantin [ce] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 521 64357 0 hardback ISBN 0 521 64388 0 paperback Contents List of contributors page xi Preface xiii 1. Promises and disappointments: reconsidering democracy's value 1 ian shapiro and casiano hacker-cordOÂ n Part I: Minimal democracy 21 2. Minimalist conception of democracy: a defense 23 adam przeworski 3. Does democracy engender justice? 56 john e. roemer 4. Democracy and other goods 69 partha dasgupta and eric maskin Part II: Beyond minimalism 91 5. Democracy and development: a complex relationship 93 pranab bardhan 6. Death and taxes: extractive equality and the development of democratic institutions 112 margaret levi 7. Democracy and development? 132 john dunn 8. State, civil society, and social justice 141 iris marion young 9. Republican freedom and contestatory democratization 163 philip pettit ix x Contents 10. -
Arend Lijphart and the 'New Institutionalism'
CSD Center for the Study of Democracy An Organized Research Unit University of California, Irvine www.democ.uci.edu March and Olsen (1984: 734) characterize a new institutionalist approach to politics that "emphasizes relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics." Among the other points they assert to be characteristic of this "new institutionalism" are the recognition that processes may be as important as outcomes (or even more important), and the recognition that preferences are not fixed and exogenous but may change as a function of political learning in a given institutional and historical context. However, in my view, there are three key problems with the March and Olsen synthesis. First, in looking for a common ground of belief among those who use the label "new institutionalism" for their work, March and Olsen are seeking to impose a unity of perspective on a set of figures who actually have little in common. March and Olsen (1984) lump together apples, oranges, and artichokes: neo-Marxists, symbolic interactionists, and learning theorists, all under their new institutionalist umbrella. They recognize that the ideas they ascribe to the new institutionalists are "not all mutually consistent. Indeed some of them seem mutually inconsistent" (March and Olsen, 1984: 738), but they slough over this paradox for the sake of typological neatness. Second, March and Olsen (1984) completely neglect another set of figures, those -
PSC13 Introduction to Comparative Politics Course Description
PSC13 Introduction to Comparative Politics Instructor: Richard S. Conley, PhD Office hours: TBA Email: [email protected] Teaching Assistant: Li Shao Course Description This course introduces students to the discipline of comparative politics, a subfield in political science. Students of comparative politics study politics in countries around the world. Our course will focus on several important themes in the subfield including the science and the art of comparative politics, ideology and culture, political development, democracy and democratization, and the political economy of development. The approach in the class will be global in three senses of the term: 1) it provides broad coverage with select cases in Europe, Asia, North and South America, the Middle East, and Africa, 2) it offers conceptual comprehensiveness, and 3) it promotes critical thinking. Learning Objectives: The general objective of this course is to increase the students knowledge of political realities all aver the world. Students will learn the many ways governments operate and the various ways people behave in political life. By the end of the term students should be able to: accurately describe political life in select countries in all of the world’s geographic regions; show a familiarity with a wide range of substantive issues in comparative politics and be able to discuss them critically; demonstrate mastery of the main theoretical and analytical approaches to the study of comparative politics. Required Text Mark Kesselmen, Joel Krieger, William Joseph (eds.). Introduction to Comparative Politics (6th Edition, 2012). Available as an Electronic Book. ISBN-10: 1111831823; ISBN-13: 978- 1111831820. Other texts will be available as electronic files Course Hours The course has 26 class sessions in total. -
POL 224Y1: Canada in Comparative Perspective Course Outline Fall 2015 & Winter 2016 (Section L5101)
Department of Political Science University of Toronto POL 224Y1: Canada in Comparative Perspective Course Outline Fall 2015 & Winter 2016 (Section L5101) Class Time: Tuesdays, 6{8 PM Class Location: MS 3153 (Medical Sciences Building 3153) Instructor: Prof. Ludovic Rheault Email: [email protected] Office Hours: Wednesdays, 3{5 PM Office Location: Sidney Smith 3005 Course Description This course introduces students to Canadian politics using a comparative approach. It pro- vides essential knowledge about the variety of political regimes around the world, with con- crete examples emphasizing the comparison of Canada with other countries. Topics covered include the evolution of democracies, political institutions, electoral systems, voting, ideology, the role of the state in the economy, as well as contemporary issues such as social policies, representation and inequalities. The objective of the course is twofold. First, the aim is for students to acquire practi- cal knowledge about the functioning of democracies and their implications for society, the Canadian society in particular. Second, the goal is to get acquainted with the core theories of political science. By extension, this implies becoming familiar with the scientific method, from the conception of theoretical arguments to data analysis and empirical testing. By the end of this course, students should have gained considerable expertise about politics and be more confident about their scientific skills. Course Format The course comprises lectures given in class on Tuesdays, combined with tutorials chaired by teaching assistants (TAs) roughly every two weeks. The precise schedule for tutorials will be determined at the beginning of the course. Tutorials provide students with opportunities to participate actively in the discussions undertaken during the lectures, and to prepare for evaluations. -
Capitalism and Social Democracy, by Adam Przeworski (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. DEKADT REVIEW ARTICLE Review of: Capitalism and Social Democracy, by Adam Przeworski (Cambridge University Press, 1986). Raphael de Kadt This brilliant study by Adam Przeworski must surely become mandatory reading not only for anyone who takes his or her socialist commitments seriously but also for anyone who wishes adequately to understand the relationship between class and electoral politics in the countries of advanced capitalism. The principal burden of Przeworski's intricate and multifaceted analysis of the dilemmas facing social democratic parties in the twentieth century is to show that the decision to participate in electoral politics necessarily constrains the capacity of such parties to effect, through command of the parliamentary system, a transition to socialism. This incapacity turns on the pivotal fact that nowhere (with the possible brief exception of Belgium in 1912) has the industrial working class constituted a majority of the population. In the countries of Western Europe, for example, 'from 1890 to 1980 the proletariat continued to be a minority of the population' (p23). The implications of this fact for parliamentary socialism have been profound, for the essence of the parliamentary system is that, in order to govern, parties must be able to claim representation of an effective majority of the population. Given the minority status of the industrial working class, those parties claiming to represent it have been forced into securing alliances with other classes - and white collar workers, petite bourgeois, students and retirees have all been targeted as potential allies in the socialist cause. -
Nationwide Threshold of Representation Rein Taagepera *
Electoral Studies 21 (2002) 383–401 www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud Nationwide threshold of representation Rein Taagepera * School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA Abstract How large must parties be to achieve minimal representation in a national assembly? The degree of institutional constraints is reflected indirectly by the number of seat-winning parties (n) and more directly by the threshold of representation (T), defined as the vote level at which parties have a 50–50 chance to win their first seat. The existing theoretical threshold formulas use district-level reasoning and therefore overestimate the nationwide threshold. This study extends the theory to the nationwide level. In addition to district magnitude (M), the number of electoral districts and hence assembly size (S) emerge as important variables. When all seats are allocated in M-seat districts, T=75%/[(M+1)(S/M)0.5] and n=(MS)0.25. T and n are connected by T=75%/[n2+(S/n2)]. These theoretical expectation values are tested with 46 dur- able electoral systems. 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Effective thresholds; Number of parties; District and national levels; Small party representation 1. The problem As shown by Duverger (1954), electoral systems affect party systems. In Sartori’s (1976) terminology, electoral systems can be “feeble” or “strong”, meaning that they can be permissive or inhospitable to small parties. How large should parties be, to be entitled to representation in a national assembly? Should 1% of the nationwide votes suffice, or 3 or 5%? And if a certain cutoff level is felt desirable, then how can it be approached through institutional design? One obvious means is to stipulate a nationwide legal threshold, but this has been used relatively rarely. -
Patterns of Democracy This Page Intentionally Left Blank PATTERNS of DEMOCRACY
Patterns of Democracy This page intentionally left blank PATTERNS OF DEMOCRACY Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries SECOND EDITION AREND LIJPHART First edition 1999. Second edition 2012. Copyright © 1999, 2012 by Arend Lijphart. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the US Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (US offi ce) or [email protected] (UK offi ce). Set in Melior type by Integrated Publishing Solutions, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lijphart, Arend. Patterns of democracy : government forms and performance in thirty-six countries / Arend Lijphart. — 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-17202-7 (paperbound : alk. paper) 1. Democracy. 2. Comparative government. I. Title. JC421.L542 2012 320.3—dc23 2012000704 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 for Gisela and for our grandchildren, Connor, Aidan, Arel, Caio, Senta, and Dorian, in the hope that the twenty-fi rst century—their century—will yet become more -
The Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention ISSN (Online): 2319 – 7722, ISSN (Print): 2319 – 7714 www.ijhssi.org ||Volume 4 Issue 9 || September. 2015 || PP.30-32 The Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science Nils-Axel Mörner Patron of the Skytte Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden Abstract:Johan Skytte was a true scholar of the 17th century in Sweden. In 1622 he instituted a new professorship in Eloquence and Politics financed by a separate patronage donation. It has survived all through the years and will soon celebrate its 400 years’ anniversary. In 1994, the foundation running the practical/economical parts of the donation founded an international prize: The Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. This year, the 21st prize goes to Francis Fukuyama. Keywords:Political Science, Johan Skytte, the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, Skytte Foundation, Uppsala University. I. JOHAN SKYTTE AND HIS DONATION IN 1622 Johan Skytte (Figure 1) was born in 1577, son of a merchant. Duke Karl, later to become King Karl IX, understood that the young boy was unusually gifted and intelligent, and he paid for his education abroad[1].He staid abroad for 9 years, visiting different universities in Germany, and travelling to France, England and Scotland. In 1598 he took his thesis in Marburg. He was deeply taken by ramism, the philosophy by Petrus Ramus [1, 2]. According to Ramus all sciences were based on the depth and sharpness in intellectual thinking as expressed by eloquence. Eloquence was the base for everything. It could turn and twist the human heart in whatever direction wanted. -
Comparative Political Research MA Core Course, Winter Term, AY 2019/20 4 CEU Credits, 8 ECTS
Comparative Political Research MA Core Course, Winter Term, AY 2019/20 4 CEU credits, 8 ECTS Carsten Q. Schneider September 11, 2019 Instructor Carsten Q. Schneider, Ph.D. Room: Nador u. 9, FT 903 Professor E-mail: [email protected] Department of Political Science Phone: +36 1 327-3086 Central European University Teaching assistant ??? Classes ??? Office Hours Instructor NB: Please sign up beforehand at http://carstenqschneider.youcanbook.me. Teaching Assistant ??? Course Description The aims of this course consist in making students familiar with the basic rules of doing compar- ative research and introducing the most influential approaches and salient topics in comparative political science. The course, thus, will help students to evaluate the methodological merits of those political science publications that use a comparative approach, to recognize which intel- lectual tradition they belong to, and to design their own comparative research strategy. The course is structured into three parts of different lengths. In the first part, we introduce the basic rationale of comparing in political science. Furthermore, we extensively discuss crucial research design and methodological issues in comparative social research, such as the logic of theory testing, the processes of concept formation and data aggregation, and differences of so- called qualitative and quantitative research. During the shorter second part, participants will be exposed to the 'meta'-theoretical paradigms in comparative research. In part three, we will deal with some of the major themes in comparative social research, paying specific attention to 1 Carsten Q. Schneider { Comparative Political Research { Winter Term, AY 2019/20 the most salient political institutions and to the issues of varieties of democracies. -
Domestic Politics and International Cooperation by Andrew Moravcsik Department of Government Harvard University
Center for European Studies Working Paper Series #52 Why the European Union Strengthens the State: Domestic Politics and International Cooperation by Andrew Moravcsik Department of Government Harvard University Center for European Studies, Harvard University 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge MA 02138 Tel.: 617-495-4303, x205 / Fax: 617-495-8509 e-mail: [email protected] Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, NY (1-4 September 1994) Most contemporary theories of international cooperation treat states as unitary actors and, therefore, focus primarily on the functional benefits of cooperation or the collective action problems states confront in realizing it.1 Less attention is paid to the impact of international negotiations and institutions on domestic politics, or to the consequences for international cooperation. This essay offers a theory of when and how international cooperation redistributes domestic power resources between state and society. Redistribution, it is argued, generally empowers national executives, permitting them to loosen domestic constraints imposed by legislatures, interest groups, and other societal actors. These shifts in domestic 'influence have important consequences for the nature of international cooperation. More specifically, I advance three arguments, each of which challenges existing understandings of international cooperation. First, international negotiations and institutions reallocate political resources by changing the domestic institutional. -
Adam Przeworski: Capitalism, Democracy and Science
ADAM PRZEWORSKI: CAPITALISM, DEMOCRACY AND SCIENCE Interview with Adam Przeworski conducted and edited by Gerardo L. Munck February 24, 2003, New York, New York Prepared for inclusion in Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder, Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Training and Intellectual Formation: From Poland to the United States Q: How did you first get interested in studying politics? What impact did growing up in Poland have on your view of politics? A: Given that I was born in May of 1940, nine months after the Germans had invaded and occupied Poland, any political event, even a minor one, was immediately interpreted in terms of its consequences for one’s private life. All the news was about the war. I remember my family listening to clandestine radio broadcasts from the BBC when I was three or four years old. After the war, there was a period of uncertainty, and then the Soviet Union basically took over. Again, any rumbling in the Soviet Union, any conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, was immediately seen in terms of its consequences for our life. It was like this for me until I first left for the US in 1961, right after the Berlin Wall went up. One’s everyday life was permeated with international, macro-political events. Everything was political. But I never thought of studying politics. For one thing, in Europe at that time there really was no political science. What we had was a German and Central European tradition that was called, translating from German, “theory of the state and law.” This included Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen, the kind of stuff that was taught normally at law schools. -
PSA Awards 2000
Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom 50TH ANNIVERSARY Welcome In 1951, its first complete year, the PSA had 100 members. Today we have 800 full members and 300 graduate members and numbers continue to rise. The first annual conference was held at the LSE in 1950 and 50 members attended. The 50th Anniversary Conference was also held at the LSE but this time 720 members attended. By all conventional indicators, the Association has arrived at Patrick Dunleavy, Paul Kelly and Mick Moran. Finally, we introduced its 50th Birthday in good condition. Indeed, at the other side a major addition to the services for members; the new, expanded of an era in which the Social Science Research Council became interactive PSA web site. Members can find information about all the Economic and Social Research Council on ministerial Association’s events; update their personal information on the whim, we should be grateful we survived. Association’s member database; access electronic versions of PSA News and Political Studies. The PSA exists to represent and promote the study of politics throughout higher education. To celebrate our healthy survival It is my pleasant duty to thank the Awards jury, made up of in pursuing these aims, the PSA’s Executive Committee mounted past Presidents of the Association and past editors of Political ‘Project 2000’. It has four objectives. Studies, who decided on their list with a startling lack of discord – a tribute to the winners. Also, I thank members of the Project 2000 Committee – Jack Arthurs, John Benyon, Charlie Jeffery and ■ To raise the profile and standing of the PSA Jon Tonge – for their hard work.