Comparative Government and Politics of West and East Europe
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Comparative Government and Politics of West and East Europe Ronald Car Course book required reading: - Hugh Cunningham, The challenge of democracy: Britain 1832-1918, Longman, 2001; Or: - Anthony McElligott, Rethinking the Weimar Republic: authority and authoritarianism, 1916- 1936, Bloomsbury,London, 2014; Or: - Geoffrey Swain, Nigel Swain, Eastern Europe since 1945 (5th Edition), Palgrave MacMillan education, London, 2017. Working materials • Attending students will obtain their final grade through 3 steps: 1. one written partial exam showing their ability to compose three short essays concerning the key arguments of the course in a comparative manner; 2. weekly discussion times throughout the course; the grade will be based on the level and quality of participation in team-work; 3. oral final exam showing the overall learning based on: frontal lessons, public discussions and course books. Final grade • Understanding the peculiarities of the State building process in West and East Europe. • Examining the interactions between the political, economical and institutional sphere related to social changes of the last Centuries, specifically the industrial and urban revolution. • Reflecting on different models of "modernisation" and "transition processes; "modernity: an epoch of crisis. What is this subject aiming at? Religious- irrational to Communitarian Rural to Agricultural to secular- individualistic urban to industrial scientific ethics environment economy culture Modernisation as social transformation Modernisation is an open-ended process of continuous challenging of existing rules, structures and culture. In politics, it fosters the awareness that dominant values and social consensus can (and sooner or later will) move away and transform. Modernity as crisis • A framework within which the holders of Social, public authority Competition economic between (religious, traditional and political or charismatic cultural agencies relations leaders, elected representatives) take decisions according Ideologies, to their ideas, beliefs laws and or benefits, thus social rules creating and changing the social order. Political institution • System of government based on Authority authority - the right to rule, so long as people accept its right to make Legitimacy decisions – consent. • Representative democracy – form of Consent legitimacy typical of modern age. Legitimacy Alexander Hamilton, «The Federalist», n#1, 1787: “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force”. From sacred authority to modern legitimacy • Since 18th Century the political institutions are trying to meet the legitimacy quest by adjusting their answers to people’s expectations: 1.Who? - who elects the representatives and who can be elected? 2.How? - how public opinion forms, how people organise in parties and other type of unions, how the elections unfold, how public officials take decisions? 3.What? - what can the citizens pretend from the government? 3 key questions Diachronic comparative approach: Evolutions of rules and institutions seen as conflicts among different social, political and economic behavior across time and space (deriving both from the past as from other countries), focused on changes and continuities in: - England (18 - 20 th Century), - Germany (19 - 20 th Century) - Central and Eastern Europe (World War II - today). Where, when and how to compare? Wave of industrialisation in 19th Century Europe percentage of the population living in centers with more than 5,000 inhabitants Year Europe England France Germany Russia/S oviet Union 1800 12 23 12 9 6 1850 19 45 19 15 7 1910 41 75 38 49 14 1959 51 83 48 53 34 Urbanization in 19th and 20th century «Blue banana» model, Roger Brunet, 1989: Active Europe (Manchester -Ruhr-North Italy) vs Passive Europe (Rural area and South- East Europe) Proposed by Immanuel Wallerstein in The Modern World- System, 1974: Core – urban, Periphery – Unlike the division industrialised, sub-urban, raw between developed political and materials, lack and developing financial of capitals, countries, it points power, politically to the mutual relations within the scientific and weak, cheap world system and it cultural centre labour, brain doesn’t imply any drain future change; Explains the perpetuation of (semi-)colonial relations Core-periphery model • Evolution of rules and institutions seen as struggle for hegemony between a plurality of would-be core models (British, German and Soviet) and their impact on peripheral countries, such as Central and Eastern Europe. • Each core model of modernity assumes its way to organize the social, political and economic life as the best one; • As political power, its elite aims to win the consent from those it subjugates Struggle for hegemony between core models British parliamentary democracy and free trade German authoritarian dictatorship and organised capitalism Soviet one-party dictatorship and state economy 3 competing European core models Economics Politics • 1/4 of world population No political rights for: (447,250,000 in 1913) • Colonial subjects - 9/10 of the population of Empire (subject • ¼ of world land area races); • 1/3 of world trade • Women – ½ British citizens • ½ of world iron • Working class – ¾ of British • 2/3 of world coal male citizens; • Excluded from political • 5/7 of world steel offices: Protestant • ½ of world cotton Nonconformists and Catholics cloth until 1829, Jews until 1858, atheists until 1888 Social structure of 19th Century British Empire • Secretary for Foreign Affairs 1830-1851, Home Secretary 1852-1855, PM 1855-1865: • “All we want is trade and land is not necessary for trade” (Informal Empire); • “We stand at the head of moral, social and political civilization. Our task is to lead the way and direct the march of other nations” (Liberal interventionism). Lord Palmerston British parliamentary system Requirements: 1. Substitution of the king with the prime minister – an accountable political leader; 2. The structuring of the parties inside and outside the Parliament; 3. The relationship between government and public opinion that allows the alternation of governments; 4. A stable Public administration unrelated to the clashes between the parties. • 4 C Scheme - Crown Constituent powers held in relationship by ‘mutual responsibility’ – not a fixed rule Cabinet Communication Commons but a convention changing throughout different epochs. • 5th C - Communication Constituency Shifting legitimacy 1650 350-400,000 • From the birth of the party 1700 550-600,000 system to the epoch of mass 1750 700,000 democracy, London grows 25 times larger. 1801 959,300 • Since 1700 London is a trading 1831 1,655,000 centre handling 80% of England’s 1851 2,363,000 import-export. 1891 5,572,012 • London’s Fleet street is the 1901 6,506,954 centre of national press, which 1911 7,160,525 grows from 12 newspapers in 1921 7,386,848 1720 to 53 in 1776. 1931 8,110,480 • From 1668 to 1936 London 1939 8,615,245 witnesses 18 major popular riots. London – a political laboratory Whigs (Liberals) Tories (Conservatives) •Ridiculed as Scottish •Ridiculed as Irish bigoted Presbyterian, uneducated Catholic, greedy and hypocritical outlaw, unable to fit in the exponent of the new new world of commerce; bourgeois class; •Tory alliance: Privy •Whig alliance: City of Council - Justices of the London - House of Peace of Counties - high Commons - Protestant Anglican Church, nonconformists, supporting the institution supporting supremacy of of monarchy and of a state parliament over the Church excluding the monarch and religious Dissenters tolerance Birth of the party system - end of 17th/ beginning of 18th century Formation of governments During 18th and 19th century, general elections are considered significant, but not directly binding. Professional politicians get ministerial assignments if they have parliamentary support. First Prime Minister – Robert Walpole 1721-1742 – governs thanks to the favour of the king and the majority in the House of Commons of MPs under his patronage (personal influence instead of political programme). Civil society Public interest associations: - Committee for the abolition of the slave trade (1787), founded by Quakers. - Birmingham Political Union - National Political Union (1830) promoting electoral reform for a fairer representation (inspired by Catholic Association which obtained emancipation in 1829), - Chartism - for universal suffrage and more frequent elections (1838-1848). Parliamentary reform • Peterloo massacre in Manchester 1819: peaceful protest of 60,000–80,000 attacked by cavalry; • Extra-parliamentary pressures (threats of armed insurrection, bank run) decisive in securing the reform, “one of the times when the UK came closest to revolution” (Eric Hobsbawm). Days of May 1832 The Parliament is reformed more in terms of redistribution of seats than in extension of the right to vote: • It abolishes 143 seats in rotten or pocket boroughs and gives representation to new industrial towns as Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield; • Gives the right to vote to adult males owning property worth £10, enlarging the electorate from 13% to 18%. • It includes the middle class (shopkeepers, artisans) where property prices are high (London), but not where they are low (in Birmingham