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Vergleichende Politik, Non-Democratic Institutions, Theories, Regime…
Vergleichende Politik
Non-Democratic Institutions
Authoritarianism
Once of key characteristics of authoritarian regimes is the
absence of impartial authority to enforce shared agreements (Svolik)
More attention in recent years to understand variation
within authoritarian regimes
Authoritarianism - residual category - opposite of
democracy
But how do we think about institutions?
Polyarchy - contestation and inclusion
Geddes
Military regimes: where military came to power following
coup to save country
Personalistic regimes (sultanistic) where power is vested in
a single leader.
One party regimes: (USSR, Mexico) with stable
institutionalised party but no competition.
Argues that these regimes have di erent trajectories based
on their underlying structure
Seminal distinction amongst authoritarian regimes
Regime Types - Howard and Roessler
Miller - 2015 BJPS
Miller - Continued
Competitive Authoritarianism
Both backsliding democracies and liberalizing autocracies
But also some countries with stable longer run competitive
authoritarian structures
Puzzle of `electoral authoritarianism'
Three questions then: Why do some authoritarian regimes
hold elections? What shapes authoritarian stability? Are these related?
Thinking about institutions in authoritarian regimes
Older research - institutions less interesting/important
Finding that authoritarian regimes could persist with
electoral institutions - raised questions
Could things that look democratic - elections, parties, etc,
actually help autocrats survive?
In order to conceptualize this, we need to think about
what di erent tradeo s autocrats face
Svolik - Palace coups versus Mass Uprisings
Authoritarian leaders always face risks - other elites and
the masses
Sometimes a tradeo between the two - e.g. Henry
Thomson's work on food prices
Other times, may be able to neutralize both threats
Three key strategies - legitimation (active consent),
repression (high and low intensity), cooptation (tie strategically relevant actors to the regime) (Gerschewski
2013)
Problem - Control and power sharing
Military then can become a threat to regimes - moral
hazard problem
Elites can be coopted through power sharing (sharing
rents etc) - but that can cause discontent with the masses
Masses - autocrats can repress them, but in order to do
so, need a strong military
Challenge for autocrats - need to keep a credible
commitment for joint rule but in an environment with no credible commitments (Svolik and Boix)
Electoral institutions
Legislatures, parties and elections can all play a role in
helping with the dilemmas of control and power sharing
Brownlee nds little evidence that elections reduce
authoritarian durability (although are associated with democratic transitions when change does occur)
Large literature trying to theorize how electoral institutions
can help with these tasks
Di erent mechanisms in the literature
Institutions
Demonstrate Strength: Elections can allow regimes to
demonstrate their power (Maglioni, Simpser)
Signalling internationally: Elections may build support
amongst foreign allies (Hyde)
Monitoring: Legislatures can allow monitoring in the
absence of other credible commttments (Boix and Svolik)
Targeting resources: Elections may allow the distribution
of patronage (Gandhi)
Provide information: Elections may signal areas of
strength and weakness
Example - Gandhi's Political Institutions under
Dictatorship
Autocrats need to worry about social bases of support, as
these can be a tool for rivals
Autocrats can provide concessions to citizens to coopt
them - and will do so when threat from rivals grow
Problem - how to make concessions credible
Having multiple legislative parties can do this
Example - Morocco - opposition Istiqlal demanded a more
permanent place through legislative institutions
Pepinsky's critique
In HI theory, institutions move from "e ect to cause"
For many scholars of authoritarian rule, problem is that
they are both strategically caused and meant to have structuring power
Riker's objection - institutions reflect strategic power amongst those that introduce them
In the case of Gandhi, question of what causes institutional
selection - threats to incumbents about credibility of opposition - that can be related to many economic factors
and resources that might a ect regime survival
Conclusion
How do we think about what institutions do?
How can we think about institutions as both cause and
e ect?
Many of the same debates in the study of democratic and
authoritarian institutions
Danger of functionalism in strategic theories
HI and cultural perspective might understand these
questions di erently
Pepinsky: The Institutional Turn in Comparative Authoritarianism
Authoritarian Institutions and Institutional Theories
The Riker Objection
Institutional and Critical Political Economy
Parties, Legislatures and Political Outcomes
Factionalism and Regime Typologies
Elite Consensus and the Orginins of Dominant Parties
Selecting Institutions
A Future for Authoritarian Institutions
Theories
Theory
Waves of theoretical approaches
An approach is differnt than particular theory - there are often competing theories within an approach
Approaches share broad ontological claims
Set of assumption about how the world works
Often speak about comparative method
Key approaches
Structural theories (Marxist)
Actors: Class based
Preferences: Conflictual, from economic structure
Beliefs: Historical: classes realize interests in economic crisis
Constraints: Economic structures
Rational Choice
Actors: Individuals
Preferences: Complete, stable, transitive - utility maximizer, economic change can alter
Beliefs: Calculate strategically, lack of information can lead to different outcomes
Constraints: Institutions may shape CBA
Cultural
Actors: State a key actor; others defined by context
Preferences: not fixed entirely
Beliefs: Information may be provided contextually, no automaticity from structural changes
Constraints: Institutions are both constraints and resources
Historical institutionalist
Actors: Societies, groups
Preferences: Shaped by norms, values
Beliefs: Crucial to behavior, not derived directl from the economy
Constraints: Narratives / values shape opportunities for behavior
Puzzle of Clientelism
In Swiitzerland, most party competition is programmatic
In many other countries however, parties compete on more targeted exxchange with voters - patron client relationship
What explains the difference
Macro-Structural Approaches
Marx: Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstance, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past
Marxist Variant
Actors are classes, defined by position in the economy - peasants, workers, owners etc
Their peferences come from the economic position in market system, which is fundamentally exploitative / conflictual
Beliefs can matter (class consciousness), and may have an independent role (Gramsci), but still a fundamentally material core
Institutions are terrains for conflict, for Marx institutions are largely epi-phenomenal, but others see as resources and constraints in states as shaping balance of class power
Example - Skocpol and Revolutions (siehe VL)
Clientelism and Macro-Structuralism
Clientelism is a pre-modern form of political competition, modernization leads to more programmatic class conflict
But how to understand persistence of clientelism, and non-universality of the class based economic model of mobilization?
Clientelism as a form of class politics?
Clientelism as a strategy of elite exploitation?
Rational Choice
Actors are individuals who are utility maximizers
Their preferences may be economic (so can overlap with structural-Marxist), but assumptions about underlying confolct in the system are weaker
Central issue here is that they have a degree of rationality in preferences
Collective action problems exist
Institutions can both constrain and enable, rules shape startegic behavior
Example - Prisoners Dilemma
Institutions
Exchange beset by transaction costs
Hard to make credible commitments
Institutions can reduce TC abd enable commitments
But different rules shape strategic tradeoffs in varying ways
Historical Institutionalism
Range of actors, but state is central
Preferences are endogenous to institutions
Institutions shape the distribution of not just incentives but power
But different rules shape strategic tradeoffs in varying ways
Where weak incentives to deviate from clientelistic practices, can persist in equilibrium even if collectively inefficient
Ex. Shefter and Clientelism
Sequencing of democratization and state capacity matters
Where democracy precedes bureaucratization parties mobilize on patronage terms
Path Dependence as Increasing Returns
Paul Pierson makes a number of arguments about increasing return in politics
Technical costs to change
Political costs to change
Social or normative costs to change
Put differently, as time passes both the interests of actors and their power become entrenched
Institutions will not automatically adjust to new pressures (even if adjustment would be efficient)
Pierson effect becomes cause
Cultural Approaches
Actors are societies or groups
Preferences are shapedd by norms not necessarily
Culture is a text, meanings are shared by members - behavior can only be understood in a context
Few primordial theories left, but if we take a more constructivist approach to culture, question of its causal status
Institutions
Clientelism
Banfield - amoral famlialism in backwards communities (1958)
Rothstein - high trust in societies the exception, not the norm, trust enable programmatic competition
Group identities linked to patronagee through constructed collective appeals
Approach and Method
Peter Hall: match methodology to ontology
Macro structural: how to study processes in which individuals act, but not in ways of their own choosing?
RC: how to study individuals, equilibrium produced by institutions?
HI: how to study endogenous preferences over long period?
Culture: how to study shared meanings systematically?
Katznelson: Strong Theory, Complex History
Regime Effects and Introduction to Institutions
Example from Current Events - Sudan
Recent shifts
Some fragmentation in the military as al Bashir looked to
create alternate power sources
Protests, ultimately supported by military, lead to power
sharing agreement
Proximate economic triggers for revolutionary action in
2019 - wheat price subsidy ended
Now military coup
Past transitions in 1964 and 1985 not long-lived, al Bashir
coup in 1989
Broader economic discontent based on weak opportunities, political corruption - i.e. extractive political and economic institutions
But, longer structural changes - growth of middle class in Khartoum following some (oil based) economic development - SPA key mobilising force
Questions from the last few weeks
Transitions: mix of structural and short term economic
factors, but do these explain everything? (e.g. Slater)
Economic development: extractive institutions under al
Bashir, but are democratic institutions a fix?
State capacity - high despotic low infrastructural in parts
of Sudan - why?
Analytical tools for understanding
HI focus: institutions and nature of pacted transition,
which itself drew on civil society leaders (Gerwan)
RC focus: Uneasy power sharing b/w military and civilian
leaders, strategic interaction for power
Macro-historical: systemic weakness of Sudanese state - prolonged periods of instability that relate to geographic/historical evolution of state
Cultural focus: Proximate cause of inflation/economic disorder meet with di erent cultural frames and symbols - civic mobilization on the streets of Khartoum
Next 3 Weeks - Introduction to Institutional
analysis
Institutions may also have a thicker role - structuring
preferences
Institutions may both express and shape behavior
Institutions structure strategic interaction
We start with a RC approach, and then think how far it
can take us
Above discussion raised questions as to how to think
about institutions
Condorcet's Paradox
Max: Soft Brexit > Second Referendum > Hard Brexit
They hold a rst vote - Hard Brexit or Soft Brexit
Cora: Second Referendum > Hard Brexit > Soft Brexit
They then hold a second vote - Soft Brexit or Second
Referendum
Ali: Hard Brexit > Soft Brexit > Second Referendum
They then hold a third vote - Second Referendum or Hard
Brexit
Three people are trying to decide what to do on Hard
Brexit, Soft Brexit, or Second Referendum
What happens?
Arrow's Theorem
Ranked group choice, IIA, and monotonicity
So what?
No system of group decision making that turns group
preferences into the analogue of individual preferences
Institutions create di erent tradeo s in stabilizing choices
Institutions
But they set a framework for thinking about institutional e ects
We can look at how far this approach to institutions takes
us, and where it may not
Agenda setting and Arrow's approach - both very RC in
assumptions
Institutes are the "rules of the game" - set the framework
for action
Key insight - institutions condition startegic interaction, but are also not selected arbitrarily - reflect power dynamics
7.1 Elster: Mechanisms
7.2 Elster: Desires and Opportunities
Regimes and their Effects
Institutions as Causes, does it matter?
Do institutions cause growth? Better social outcomes?
Institutions, broadly defined, are the \rules of the game"
Seems intuitive to think they might matter, but neither the theory nor empirics are clear cut
Previous discussion - regime selection not random - so do we distinguish the causes and consequences of regimes?
Empirical debate
Growth emerges in many di erent contexts - e.g. US
North and South, China and India
So too do good health outcomes
Very dicult to empirically disentangle institutional e ects
from the processes that selected them
Institutions often covary -e.g. wealthy democracies have
both democratic institutions and state capacity
Often di erent claims rely on di erent measures and
causal tests
What is the appropriate counter-factual?
Theoretical debate
Di erent underlying views about the role of institutions
These lead into di erent views of why \Democracy" might
matter
Democracy as a regime type often packages many
di erent institutions (as do non-democracies)
We need to think through the underlying model linking the form of political order and the incentives it creates in the broader economy
Many of these debates are `within' a RC approach, but some draw on other assumptions about how institutions work
Democracy and Growth
Clearly, there is a strong correlation between wealth and the status of being a consolidated democracy
But, does democracy precede or follow development?
What is the relationship between democracy and economic growth?
The proximate causes of growth are themselves dicult to map, but in standard growth theories: physical (and human) capital, technology, and population matter
Some argue that democracy encourages innovation and the accumulation of physical and human capital, others argue that non-democratic can achieve this better at early stages
Democracy Promotes Growth
Democracy is a contested concept - what about
contestation or inclusion might matter for growth?
Responsiveness
Democracy as a market
Elite rotation via economic voting checks poor policy
Voters are able to \turf out" poor performing leaders
Democracies>Monarchies>Personalistic Rules for Mancur Olson, stable rules that allow competition (but....Olson sees democracies as open to rent seeking too, more on that later)
Lake and Baum argue that the \invisible hand" of democracy reduces incentives for rent-seeking and leads to better public services
Information
Democracy as a social network
Condorcet Jury Theorem - Goffman
Dreze and Sen argue that famines are not just about too
little food (e.g. crop failure) but government failure
Democracies allow a free press and \many to many" contacts between representatives and citizens, allowing governments to learn about problems
Representation
Democracy as an opinion poll
Poorer citizens demand more services that target their
needs - such as education
This redistribution of public goods can be pro-growth -
e.g. Saint Paul and Verdier
Democracies allow the preferences of all citizens to be
represented
Autocracies more likely to target public goods narrowly to
the wealthy (less redistributive)
Credible Constraints
Democracy as handcu s
Access to credit increases for the state and the private
sector
Institutions allow credible commitments, which reduces
many transaction costs in economic exchange
Much work following in the framework of Douglass North, looks at how institutions reduce transaction costs and solve commitment problems
North and Weingast: England in 17th Century - king needs to borrow but had a bad track record. Parliament limits in 1688, allowing a credible commitment to repay
Why Nations Fail
Dispute geographic or technological theories of growth
They argue di erent forms of institutions encourage more
or less private investment in physical or human capital
Acemoglu and Robinson's work takes these arguments
further
Extractive and Inclusive institutions
Where elites have allowed economic inclusion without
political inclusion, question of sustainability
Inclusive economic institutions allow property rights and
reward e ort
Authoritarian states may not be predatory, but harder to
commit against
They encourage investment in skills and innovation
Small elite in these environments can run policy to their
own ends even if in the long-run this is counter-productive
Political inclusion supports economic inclusion, through a
number of mechanisms
Predatory states make property right insecure
Raises the question of the relationship between economic
inequality and political inequality
Critics of Democracy
But... Do all good things go together?
Democracies may be undercut credible commitment
through responsiveness or vice versa
Equally, very representative governments may be hard to
hold accountable through competition
There may be tradeo s among these mechanisms
This suggests a more complex set of outcomes and
potentially democratic variety
Some argue that democracy can undercut growth at the early stages
Development requires political order
Pressures for democratic redistribution create a \leaky
bucket" of ine ciency
Need for a "big push"
Authoritarian States as Developmental
More recent debate on whether market liberalisation
should precede democratization
Market reforms create LR prosperity but short-run
dislocation, need a strong state ("Lee hypothesis")
Older arguments focused on the need for a \big push" due to the complementarities of types of development (Rosenstein-Rodin, Gerschenkron)
Here, economic or political elites have more \enlightened" preferences than the MV, so allocate public goods and engage in more rational market reforms
Counterfactual is that non-democratic leaders are better able to impose unpopular (but necessary) economic changes due to lack of inclusion
Order Matters
Huntington focuses more on order than state activity in
the economy
Rapid social changes lead to demand on the state, but few
resources to address
Can lead to disorder in cities, and potentially undercut
political order
Lack of order is bad for growth
Does conflict in a new democracy prove this claim or not?
Counterfactual is a non-democratic leader would have fewer incentives to respond to ruinous political demands that emerge from economic change
Redistribution and Growth
Voters and interest groups in democracy may demand
redistribution
Others suggest that distributive politics can in the long
run have negative e ects (e.g. Mancur Olson)
Many claim such redistribution can have labour supply e ects - create a deadweight loss (e.g. Okun, Meltzer and Richard)
Counterfactual here is to think about what would happen to tax policy - and thus incentives - if only narrowly selected by the elite
Endogeneity in BIG problem
Can try to test mechanisms
Or come up with an `instrument' for institutions
If growth causes institutions and institutions cause growth
what do we do?
AJR - Settler Mortality
Since institutions not selected randomly, very dicult to
develop appropriate empirical tests
Democracy and Public Goods - Michael Ross
People often over-estimate the e ects of democracy - associate with country speci c e ects (e.g. trust)
Democracy linked to other things producing `good' things over time - global trends in mortality reduction
Sample biases in reporting
Theoretically - not necessarily the case that MV in
democracy should support investment in the poor
But is Ross too critical?
Many of the same methodological and theoretical questions when it comes to other outcomes - health, education
Case of Education - Harding JOP 2020
But Democracy not always a route to educaton -
Paglayan APSR 2021
What matters here?
Accountability
Information
Elite incentives
Other features - cultural aims, institutional norms?
Evaluating the debate
Methodological debate
Problems with a throwing countries in a time-series
regression
Need to think about the appropriate counterfactual
Methodological debate about how to identify causes of
growth
Not all democracies versus all autocracies, but a country
in a given situation with di erent institutions
Governance?
Key question has to do with the role of the state
State can be both a package of institutions and an actor
But broader theoretical question - do we need to think
about democracy in conjunction with other factors
Corruption within the state does seem to be bad for
growth - and is not always \corrected" by democracy
Types of Democracy
Much literature looks to trace these more carefully across institutions, such as federalism (e.g. Weingast), constitutional structure (Persson and Tabellini), electoral systems
Key to evaluating these arguments is to trace out the impact on the underlying political incentives, and how these translate into incentives for LR growth
It may be that the incentives for various mechanisms - competition, information, representation, commitments on the one hand, coordination, control, taxation on the other - vary as much across types of democracies as types of regimes
Other approaches
If we cast a wider net than a narrow RC approach to institutions, then some of the questions raised by other approaches return
Do we need to theorize culture?
The historical evolution of institutions?
6.1 Ross: Is Democracy Good for the Poor?
Theories of Regime Type and Poverty
Empirical Studies
Data,Model, and Variables
Model
Independent Variables
Dependent Variables
Control Variables
Results
Theories of Democracy and
Redistribution Revisited
Conclusion
Introduction to Behavior
Redistributive Preferences
Today - we are going to use redistributive preferences as a framework for understanding di erent approaches to behavior
Puzzle of the class - why do some people want to
redistribute income/wealth more than others?
Look at a range of theoretical perspectives to understand this puzzle
Then conclude by examining the question of preference falsifi cation and how it complicates our analysis
Why Might Citizens Want Redistribution or Spending?
Three Puzzles:
Why do some individuals want redistribution/spending
more than others?
Why might citizens on average in some contexts be more
interested in redistribution/spending than others?
How do changes in context matter?
Many answers to this question
Some suggest general reasons we might all agree on -
eciency (free lunch), fairness, compassion
Others suggest con
ict among groups
Psychological Approaches
Invisible Factors
Notions of deservingness and conditional altruism
Notions of group identity
Many ideological predisposition seem to matter
These are individual (not cultural) but they are not
necessarily `rational material' preferences either
Some work to combine RC and psychological approaches
(more on this next class)
Social Psychological Research
Strong evidence that individuals receive bene ts from
cooperating - pro-social behaviors
Individuals in lab experiments often adopt fairness norms
Ex. Dictator game - dictators often split rewards even
when they do not have to
But individuals do respond to incentives - can be made to
be self-interested
And they respond to strong cues about deservingness and
out-groups/ethnic others (more on this next class)
What's the matter with Connecticut?
Many ask why the rich would like redistribution
There are a number of formal models of altruism -
Przeworski, Rueda et al, see also Fehr Schmit on fairness
Why variation?
David Rueda and Daniel Stegmueller argue that it stems
from concerns about crime and heterogeneity
Others turn to notions of deservingness
Combine RC and social identity
Rational Material Approaches
Economic Approaches
Economic models do not necessarily presume con
ict
Some suggest no income e ects on demand if we assume
future uncertainty of eciency gains
Starting point is an individual utility maximiser
Others suggest that redistribution is `taking', and thus
creates conflict amongst economic actors
Meltzer-Richard Model
siehe VL Formel
Three people in the economy - 60, 80, 130 - mean income
is 90 CHF, median is 80
Let's assume individuals earn n * xi = yi
If taxes are 50% - 30+40+65 in taxes, everyone gets
135/3 in return - does MV support this tax rate?
If taxes are 100% - 60+80+130 in taxes, everyone gets
270/3 in return - does MV support this tax rate?
Simple t=1 model
Leaky Bucket!
The "bucket leaks" as welfare payment increases, as
overall output depends on labor supply
Those with average or higher earnings withdraw labor
There are some people who will choose not to work
What this says is that individuals are choosing their labor
supply based on the welfare payment and the after tax wage
Those with lower xi than x demand is increasing in
distance from x siehe VL
M-R then move a more complex set up - here we think of
a utility function with both consumption and leisure
Graphically
siehe VL Formel
Preferences
Individuals with more income should want less redistribution
Places with more inequality (x > xmed ) should demand
more redistribution
Prediction at the individual level, and a prediction at the
macro-level
As inequality increases voters should demand more
redistribution
Where median voter is decisive, and income is right
skewed, then t greater than 0
When mean=median, MV could support multiple tax rates
Insurance Models
To understand this, we need a model of risk and risk
aversion
To assess risk aversion we compare expected utilities of
`sure things' to those associated with gambles.
This points out that income not permanently high or low,
but varies over the life cycle
Utility functions with diminishing marginal returns are risk
averse.
An alternative, which comes from Moene and Wallerstein
is to think about the welfare state as demand for insurance
siehe VL wegen Formeln
Moene and Wallerstein is complicated, but two key claims
If some spending goes to unemployment, high income
have more have more income to lose and demand more insurance
Inequality could reduce support for insurance (MV poorer)
If relative risk aversion is constant and greater than unity, then workers will choose a higher tax rate as they become wealthier. In other words, their aversion to risk outweighs the increased cost to them of insurance as their income increases. Thus, the relationship between income and preferred level of spending is positive
(Moene and Wallerstein: 878).
Iversen and Soskice argue insurance motives vary by skill
speci city
Other approaches
POUM
Mobility
Many other approaches expand on the idea of
inter-temporal choices
Key point - people look to maximize their material well
being, leading to particular patterns of redistributive preferences
HI Approaches
HI Approaches - Korpi and Palme's Paradox of
Redistribution
System would create political opt-in, both e ecting system
level support and reducing class gradient
Result is a positive feedback on public attitudes from
policy
Early work by Korpi and Palme, and Esping-Andersen,
suggested a feedback from policy to attitudes
How taxes and transfers matter
In Sweden, 46% reduction in Gini, 8% from taxes, 38%
from transfers
Decompose: 5% sickness, 10% disability, 38% pensions,
4% child, 9% unemployment, 4% maternity, 4% social assistance, 5% cash, 1% payroll, 15% taxes
Decompose this reduction: 12% from disability, 27%
pensions, 6% child bene ts, 24% social assistance, 15% cash ben, 4% payroll, 11% taxes
What do you notice?
In UK, 30% post-TT Gini reduction: 5% due to tax
system, 25% transfers
Testing the mechanism
Jaeger (2006) - income least polarized in CD welfare states
Brady and Bostick nd that redistribution preferences not
related to universalism
Svallfors (1997)- class gradient higher in SD welfare states
Non- ndings
Even high pro le policy change - such as welfare reform
seems to have few e ects (e.g. Soss et al 2007).
And yet, contextual di erences exist in many ways, and
these seem to matter
Many null results in feedbacks on mass attitudes (see
Campbell 2012)
Measuring and Conceptualizing Preferences
Methods 1: Endogeneity
Over time data can also be problematic
More recent work emphasizes design: panel data, clear
identifying assumptions
Research on attitudes often cross-sectional, can be hard to
gure out why attitudes di er
Identifying the e ect
Most of this work is suggestive, not causally identi ed
Rehm et al. get closers with a panel, but still suggestive
Some evidence that very big policy changes (German
reuni cation) do lead to attitudinal shifts (Alessina and Fuchs), but these are few
Methods 2: Measurement
Econometricians - RD; pscyhometricians - measurement
Measures of attitudes can be problematic especially if
single item
What do respondents actually mean? Implicit levels?
Cross-context comparability?
Measurement of IVs also unclear - income, class etc
Preference Falsi cation
Kuran raises a bigger question - what are preferences?
Public preferences, private preferences
Intrinsic utility - getting what you want
Reputational utility - Asch experiment
Expressive utility - costs to preference falsi cation
Makes surprises inevitable - Donald Trump, Arab Spring,
etc
Helps explain diculties of collective action
Also raises bigger questions about how to understand
individual preferences and behaviors
Sociological Approaches
Class traditionally thought of as a product of education and life-time income, with a stronger socialization component
This approach leads to an association between class and spending and redistribution preferences, that is both material and organizational
Huge occupational upgrading in the past two decades, with some polarization (although varies)
Complicates the idea of class, but does not necessarily invalidate it
Post-Materialism
These voters would prioritize post-material over material
issues
This could replace traditional cleavages based on class,
both altering group behavior and the salience of welfare attitudes
Inglehart argued that upgrading would breed new group of
post-materialist voters
Large debate over post-materialism
Kitschelt
Occupations are a site of socialization for Kitschelt, both
sort and shape attitudes
Key di erences not just from education level, but types of
work
Kitschelt instead argues that there are meaningful
socio-economic groups, but that these groups have preferences on multiple dimensions
Cultural or social component of preferences
Preferences
Cultural and Religious Norms
Religion associated with more conservatism, but also
empathy and concern
In some countries religion then associated with less
support for redistribution and others more (Arikan and Bloom 2019)
Relationship on between religion and redistribution varies
across studies
Intersection of cultural and historical factors
Behavior and Group Conflict
HI Approaches
Sociological approaches
Measuring and Conceptualizing Preferences
Group Identitiy
But why?
Lower reciprocal altruism
Strong in-group preferences
AGS hypothesize ethnic diversity undermines solidarity
Fragments working class - reduces the power of a socialist movement -
Di erent ways to understand this con
ict
Strategically mobilized by rational elites
Part of sociological process of boundary creation
In-grained psychological orientation
Linked to institutional structures that shape resource
allocation
Social Psychology
Intergroup bias - see your own group positively (and want
to cooperate) and possibly other groups negatively
Also strong incentives to conform to group behavior
Groups a source of status - relies on emotional ties
Not speci c to ethnic conflict, but suggests that ethnic
identities can be activated in some contexts (threats etc)
Tajfel and Turner formative work (1970s) develops the
idea of social identity theory
Rational Choice
Question of strategic mobilization of identity
Posner - Chewas and Tumbuka's - argues it is about group
size
Still a question - why are some group identities more
salient in some places and for some groups
Where groups are larger, more incentive for elites to
mobilize them as groups
Huber
Some identities are not credible in making promises to
(e.g. women) others are
Two most common - class and ethnicity - group size
matters
Parties need to be able to make credible commitments to
groups
Key for Huber, minimize the winning coalition, because
provides elites and voters with greater speci c rents
Voters are materially oriented - just care what they can get
Example - Malaysia
No class based moblization, instead elites mobilize on
ethnicity
Targeted welfare and job bene ts for Bumiputera - the
historic Malay
Immigrant Chinese and Indian groups part of the "working
class" (around 35%)
These targeted bene ts less attractive over time, as
Bumiputera group size grew
Post-1960, multiple ethnic identities and income inequality
Shayo - Social Anity
Class identi ers vote their economic self interest, national
identi ers less so
Since lower classes more numerically large, where they
identify with redistribution, less so
Argues for a `Social Identity Equilibrium' where one
identities with class or nation
Combines psychological and RC approaches
Shayo have a formal model, combining national identity
and redistribution
Cultural Mobilization and Boundary Creation
Sense of status linked to own moral standards
Di erent ways boundaries are drawn - in the US white and
black working class men de ne moral standards di erently, and the white working class exclusionary notions
The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries
of Race, Class, and Immigration - ethnographic research of French and American working men
In France, white working class men see commonality with
the poor (and sometimes black wc) but not necessarily immigrants and not the upper classes
Bourdieuan perspective
Di erent ideas of cultural membership
Lamont - boundary creation not necessarily instrumental
(i.e. resource driven)
Other approaches to understanding these questions -
Wimmer, Brubaker e
Dancygier - Institutions and Public Goods
Finds some boroughs of London there is con
ict and others none - why?
About the degree of scarcity and the way institutions
allocate resources over public goods
She does in depth case work in Germany and UK
Tower Hamlets vs Ealing - more immigrant clout over
resource allocation in TH, creating more con
ict
Dancygier looks at immigrant-native con
ict
Identitiy in Switzerland
Contemporary Democracies
Cleavage theory - identity component as part of concepts
of cleavages
Some countries, long-standing ethnic or class con
ict remains
How does this matter for contemporary democracies?
In others, new cleavages - what role does identity play?
Bornschier et al.
Ask people who they feel close to - di erent types of
identities
Also estimate who people feel distant to
Look at class based realignment of political identities in
Switzerland
Strong di erences in cosmopolitans and those holding
national identities
Voting realignment has a basis on perceptions of group
identity, others, and voters' self-perception
Economic class realignment can rest on underlying cultural
identities
Conclusion
Connection between them is important but contested
Commonality in pointing to the importance of identity in
shaping political behavior
Di erent frameworks for understanding both identity and
con
ict
Huber: Exclusion by Elections
The Argument
Party Competition and Social Structure
Empirical Implications
Some illustrative Observation and Examples
Voting and Naturalization by Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century American Cities
The Bumiputera in Malaysia
Organization of the Book
Why Worry about Inequality and Ethnic Policies?
Problems with Inequality
Group Identity and the Politics of Exclusion
Elections with Appeals to Atomistic Voters
Group Identity and Electoral Competition
Social Structure and Electoral Politics
From SOcial Structure to Party Systems
Democratic counter-powers: Veto points and counter-majoritarian institutions
Counter-Majoritarian Institutions
Institutional Variation
SOme countires are unitary others are federal, some have two effecive legistlative houses other have, some have formalized constitutional rights others do not, some have strong judicial oversights
These institutions shape who has both positive agenda
setting power and negative veto power
Democratic institutions can vary in how much they
concentrate power
What do they mean for `democracy'?
Institutions
Separation of powers - separation/fusion of origin and
survival between the exec-leg (parliamentary/presidential)
Federalism - constitutionally guaranteed independent
subnational authorities
Bicameralism - multiple legislative assemblies
Constitutional rights
Independent judiciaries - ability to exercise oversight
What do these institutions do?
All of these institutions create limits on the ease with
which elected majorities can act
They do so by creating more points at which actors can
say `no'
These distinctions emphasise di erent aspects of how
institutions shape the operation of democratic responsiveness
These
veto points' can empower di erent
veto players' in
ways that shape the nature of policy
Di erent ways to think about con gurations of democratic institutions - e.g. majoritarian/consensus, presidential/parliamentary
Veto Points
Veto Players
Tsebelis defines VP as individual or collective actors whose agreement is necessary for a change of the status quo
PVP are created by the `political game'
IVP come from the institutions we discussed above -
federalism, bicameralism etc
At any given point in time, institutional veto points may
be muted or enhanced by PVP
Veto players can be institutional or partisan
At any given point in time, institutional veto points may
be absorbed
Why do VP matter?
Core predictions from Tsebelis - there will be more policy
stability with more VP and greater preference divergence
Nature of VP can also matter for how agenda setters
behave
These di erences subsume many others (pres-parl)
Rational choice/game theoretic framework
An Example - Health Reform
siehe VL
Veto Ponts - Unpacking the logic
Thinking about change
When actors are bargaining, they have preferences over
policies relative to each other - and to the status quo
The status quo is sometimes called a `reversion point' -
meaning where things end up if things end up if things fail
How can we think about the scope for change?
Actors have preferences over both the status quo (SQ)
and over some kind of policy outcome
Recap
If we have policies on one dimension, where an actor can
make a take it or leave o er to others
Actors evaluate policies vis-a-vis SQ, accept if better than
SQ and veto if not
A few intuitions from our simple model
if 1, 2, and 3 all have to agree, SQ prevails - no policy
makes them all happier than SQ
If 3 is not a VP (imagine 1-2 are in a coalition), then
policy can change
If 1 sets the agenda, will pitch at point A (ideal point)
If 2 sets the agenda, will pitch at point B (not ideal point)
Tsebelis
Draws indi erence curves over two-dimensional space
Key idea - the `winset'
The smaller the winset, the less likely policy change
Adding a new VP can reduce the size of the winset, but
may not (it will never increase it)
Adding a new VP will not a ect the winset if it is absorbed
Agenda setting matters, but less so as winset becomes
smaller
Let's be more concrete - US Senate example
US Senate has 100 Senators, and they need to approve
policy - sometimes with 50% and other times with 60% majorities
In the language of this lecture, the Senate is an
institutional veto player
When the Democrats controlled the House, and the
Republicans controlled the Senate (as was the case up to a last year), we see a lot of policy stability
Let's say the Democrats in the House want to increase
COVID wage support, but Republicans in the Senate want to expand tax cuts
We have two veto players whose preferences are far apart,
which means a small (or no) overlap - a very small winset
The result is no change
What happens now
In other words, between the House and the Senate, a
bigger winset - so more likelihood of policy change
But what shapes the `ideal point' of the Senate - need
50+1 Senators - which means that the most moderate are VP within the state
Where 50% majorities chosen, and party discipline is
strong, then R less powerful as a PVP, the IVP in the Senate matters less
Policymakers proposing policy know they have to appeal
to more moderate D (which is why followers of US politics are hearing a lot about Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema)
Where there is still the need for 60% majorities, no real
change (R in Senate will be an e ective VP)
VP `negative' power, will a ect agenda setting
Key lesson: We want to look at IVP, then at PVP, and
then see if any of these are `absorbed' by PVP
Di erence to the UK
Fewer VP - less of hard constraint from House of Lords,
Courts, or nations - this means fewer IVP and bigger winsets
Why then, was the Brexit bill so painful to reach.....?
Winsets still can be small when very heterogeneous
preferences (on multiple dimensions)
In general though, two key insights - likely to be more
policy change in this case, and the agenda-setting role of cabinet to matter more
Two types of power
Negative - vetoing
Both can shape how much policy, and what type of policy
Positive - agenda setting
Beyond VP
Other ways to think about these institutions
It focused on one (important!) set of outcomes, policy
stability
But institutions like bicameralism, federalism etc create
other incentives and have other roles
Above discussion was highly strategic, and focused on
negative and positive power (e.g. vetoing and agenda setting)
VP literature one way to think about them
What would non-RC approaches to these
institutions tell us
HI perspectives - norms within the institutions are
important
Cultural perspectives - institutions may re
ect underlying norms/cleavages - not an accident Switzerland more VP than Sweden
Tsebelis: Veto Players, How Political Institutions Work
Introduction
Veto Players, Policy Stability, and Consequences
Substantive and Methodological Reasons for Veto Players Analysis
A Partial History of the Ideas in this Book
Overview
Veto Players Theory
Individual Veto Players
Veto Player and Policy Stability
Number of Veto Players and Policy Stability
Winset of Status Quo i Non-empty
Winset of Status quo is empty
Quasi-equivalence and Absorption Rules, Distances among Veto Players, Policy Stability
Quasi-equivalence and Absorption Rules
Distances among Veto Players and Policy Stability
Seqquence of Moves
Conclusions
Why compare?
Introduction
Research Cycle
Identify a research question
Use theory to develop specific hypothesis
Test using clear RD
Geddes - we need both good theory and good RD to accumulate knowledge
What is Theory?
Aim to explain (and predict) political phenomena
Most theories are causal not just descriptive - set out relationships among concepts
Hypotheses should follow from assumptions
Debate over whether assumptions need to be realistic
Debate over degree of generalizability
Theories should be testable and falsifiable
Observation without theory is unfocused, may tend towards narrative
Some argue the goals of PS should be to replace proper names with variables names (many disagree)
Theory helps establish causal relationships
Theories often cluster into broad scholls which share beliefs about how the world works
These are particularly important when we have low-n / non-experimental data
Turning big theories into tractable hypotheses
Geddes - need precise testable hypotheses
Popper - standard of falsifiability
Parsimony
Multiple observable implications of a causal claim
causal process observations
Descriptive and Causal Inference
Descriptive: say something valid about the characteristics of a populations
Causal: to evaluate a causal process
Example: Posner's "Why Chewas and Tumbukas are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi"
Big RQ: When are ethnic identities politically salient?
Narrower RQ: Why do two groups mobilize in opposition in Malawai, but as allies in Zambia?
Theory: group size shapes political mobilization strategies
Research Design
shapes how - and whether - you can answer your research question / testing hypothesis
Geddes argument - poor research design inhibits what we learn
Campbell and Stanley (1963): goal of research design is to eliminate alternative explanations though design
The RD shapes what kind of conclusions we can draw from the study
Posner - what kind of RD does he need?
Winning office key to accessing many benefits
Where group size is larger, politicians have an incentive to mobilize along group lines to win office (or partake in a coalition)
In Malawi, Chewas are larger constituency, politicians mobilized these groups along Chewa lines
In Zambia, politicians had an incentive to mobilize Chewas and Tumbukas together, as "Easterners"
What kind of RD does Posner need to try to test this theory?
Recap
Comparative politics looks at comapring places, people, events to understand the world
To advance knowledge we need a) clear questions b) testable theory c) good research design
Causal Inference
What is causation
Big debate in the social sciences and philosophy about how to understand causation
Some take an "average treatment effects" view - i.e. you look to understand the precise effect of a given cause (Note/Anwesenheit - Note/Nichtanwesenheit = Kausaleffekt Anwesenheit)
Others see causes as mechanisms/ processes linking events (Anwesenheit ... liebt Thema ... liest mehr Artikel ... lernt mehr über Thema ... schreibt bessere Prüfung)
In general
Relationship between cause and effect (correlation)
No effect if cause absent in most similar world - no other plausible explanation for effect (counterfactual)
Effect follows the cause (prior)
Cause and effect linked by a mechanism
How to get at causality
Almost impossible because it suggests a counterfactual - we cannot observe world Y with and without "treatment" X
Mechanisms are hard to trace
Means that we have to try to get at this in other ways, but in the real world there are problems
X may be linked to other variables causing Y
Can't be sure X came before Y
X in one case can "spill over" to other cases complicate comparisons
Thinking about these threats is important to understanding how to evaluate research
Internal and External Validity
Internal: how far can we make causal claim
External: how far can we generalize the claim
Some people argue there is a tradeoff between internal validity and external validity
Threats to internal validity
Many different threats
Campbell and Stanley: history, regression, maturation, instrumentation, testing, mortality, selection
Some designs may be better than others at eliminating threats to inference
Omitted variable bias
OVB is a term used in statistical analysis for bias in estimation due to correlation of the error term the DV
We can think more generally - if something is systematically related to both the cause and effect, it may reduce our confidence that X (cause) we want to test is the true cause
Selection - big problem in PS - because very few interesting causes are distributed randmly - the selection process od getting the cause is almost always linked to the effect
History - Something else could be happening at the same time as our cause that explains the outcome
Ex. 1 More educated people are more likely to vote - does education CAUSE an increase in political participation? What are the problems OVB here?
Cont'd Endogeneity
Oftentimes we might be worried that the effect is actually the cause
In statistical models - this can cause the same problem as OVB (special case)
More generally causal inference requires cause to precede effect
Posner's Challenge
He sees Chewas and Tumbukas have a different relationship in Malawi and Zambia
What else might cause this difference than group size?
Needs to design a study that tries to eliminate these threats to inference
External Validity
Heterogeneous treatment effects - where the cause does not have the same effect on all things (people places etc.)
Big problem in lap experiments - do college students watching political ads tell us anything about politics beyond how college students react to ads in a lab?
Recap
Philosophers conceptualize causality differently - ATE and mechanism based
Many threats to making causal inferences in study of politics
Selection into treatment a key one, but not the only
OVB and endogeneity are key concepts to watch for
Research Design
Quantitative vs. Qualitative
Different ways to do both types
May draw in different parts of casual process
One not inherently better or worse, but all types can be better / worse designed
All use comparisons (even single case studies) to make inferences
Experiments
The researcher
control
the treatment (no concern about endogeneity)
Random
assignment
to treatment and control groups - no concerns about selection, randomnes is orthogonal to all other vaiables (mathematical property) (counter-factual)
Can look at difference between treatment and control groups to establish causal efffects (correlation)
Mechanism can still be uncertrain however - black box
Quasi-Experiment - Posner
Control and assignment not done by researcher
But can sometimes treat the world as akin to experimental condition - as if random
Posner treats the border are in this regard
Large-N Observational
N in social science refers to the number of observation - so large N could be anything where we are observing lots of things (all the countries in the world)
Here we often use statistical techniques for analysis
Try to deal with OVB by controlling for other factors
Harder to address threats to inference with bug units like countries where lots of things vary
But we are often interested in country level - so need to think about how to design these studies as best as possible
Smaller-N Comparisons
Different ways to structure small-n
Choices in both case selection and within case technicques
Often speak about comparative method
Case Selection
Geddes- danger of selecting on the dependent variable
Think about what your cases allow you to say
Mill's method of agreement
Example from Schrrank
Select cases that agree on core DV but are most different
Mill's method of difference
Most similar systems
Agree on almost everything, but disagree on outcome (DV)
Case Studies
Within case analysis - process tracing
Not just correlational, but steps in a chain
Example: Posner's argument - process tracing in Malawi and Zambia based on mobilization structures, unpacks steps in the argument
What about descriptive inference?
Better and worse ways to think about descriptive inference
Large-n studies - standards of sampling
Smaller- n quality of historical/interview research
Recap
Not one wya to do research, but better and worse ways within given approach
Need to think about threats to inference if we are trying to make causal claims
Different designs tell us different things
2.1 Geddes: Research Design and the Accumulation of Knowledge
The Rise and Fall of Paradigms: An Example
Causes of the Fragility of Theories and Paradigms
The Uncertain Future of the Field
Plan of the Book
State
The state
Political unit: An entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force (Weber defined territory)
Sovereignty
Treaty of Westphalia
Modern state sovereignty often dated to 1648 treaty
Religious leaders agree to recognize secular territorial authority
In practice, religious leaders had already begun to defer to kings
From the early to middle ages however, huge variety in political organizations
European Experience
Many forms of political organization in early modern Europe - city states, empires, and state
State wins out
Early development of agriculture, population growth
14th century, change in technology of warfare
Favored more centralized forms of authority
Approaches to the State
RC - Contractarian / Predatory approaches
State as a contract
Everyone is better off if people follow the rules (dont steal / kill)
If we dont know if others will follow rules, it is rational to defect and not follow them
As a result we are all worse off than we would be if we followed the rules - collective action problem
Coercive institutions can solve this problem and provide public goods like protection
The State as a Predator?
But why should the state abide by the contract when the roving bandit becomes stationary one?
And do people seem to comply?
Others turn to less contractual views of the state that stress the predatory nature of the state
See state institutions as using coercion for private gain - not solving CA problem
But why do some states seem to provide welfare and not predate?
Many look at the incentives for rulers and bargains underpinning coercive institutions (Levi) - state be a predator or not
Macro - Structural - Tilly
War makes states abd states make war
Kings more effective than feudal lords in running the protection racket
Wars are expensive, so states need to build up administrative capacity to tax
In capital rich areas, they create deals with economic elites leading to more constitutional order
In less rich areas, they develop more coercive institutions
Over time states become dominant because they are more effective (Darwinian logic), number of units in Europe fall from 200+ to 25 in 1830
Cultural - States and nations
Conceptually, we distinguish states and nations
Nation is a political identity, imagined community (Anderson)
Whithout a state, a nation lacks political autonomy
Historically bounded and varying form of rule
Unanswered questions
Historians debate: asprects of the war-state nexus (centralization pre-gun power invention)
Economic motives
Role of institutions
Why does coercion work?
Where is legitimacy?
What role does nationalism play?
Is looking at the state enough?
Centeno
State building in LA looks different (Lateinamerika)
Stable borders, but internal civil conflict - limited wars
Weak fiscal capacity, a disconnected military, weak neation building
Wars in Europe hat "positive" externalities, but they are largely negative in LA - why?
Colonial legacies, no nations, land owning elites, timing of conflict
State Capacity
State Fragility
Not all states succeed at remaining sovereign in minimalist sense of continuing a) to exist b)exercise authority (monopoly on violence, tax collection)
Political science used to speak of "State failure" - generally defined a prolonged absence of authority by the state, now more fragility
Other agents - private militias, int'l actors etc - may provide somer order
Civil War: Example ISIS
Some areas lack stable governments for long periods of time - eg Somalia, Afghanistan, parts of Iraq
Lack of state authority
Alternative structures can emerge
But these themselves can be fragile
Link to State Building
Colonial origins
Lack of domestic legitimacy
Resource curses
Strong societies
Are some states doomed to instability?
Herbst links state capacity to state building process
Reversal of Fortunes
Acemoglu and Robinson: geography not destiny - least dense settler colonies most prosperous today
Border cases - US / Mexico, N / S Korea
What explains these differences?
Institutions
Institutions are chosen and can have long run effects
Where institutions of the state are extractive they end up with extractic economic institutions (slavery, plantation labor, resource extraction)
Incumbent elites prevent better outcomes, but doom country to poor long-run growth, increasing the chance of fragility
Where politcal institutions are inclusive, so too are economic ones
Allow credible commitments (North and Weingast) which create investment
Does this mean democracy good for state capacity?
Does this approach tell us enough?
Extreme predation by the state is likely very bad for growth
For Acemoglu and Robinson, this is a key difference between Somalia and Sweden
But is the state just bundle of inclusive or exclusive institutions?
Why do inclusive institutions emerge?
Isnt an exctractive state strong?
What about China?
Many points to a more expansive role for the state, raising new questions
Thicker View of Institutions
If one views the state as potentially predatory then good government means creating institutions that prevent predation and rent seeking
However, many view that states have a positive role to play beyond establishing property rights and providing basic public goods
Ths role raises the question of administrative capacity
Mann argues that states not only vary in their "despotic" power but also their "infrastructural power"
Mann - Power
Infrastructural power "the capacity to actually penetrate society and to implement logistically political decisions"
Soifer adds the idea of "reach" - how even this implementation capacity is across an area
It is also relational, works through networks
Distinguishies it from despotic power
Governance
Fukuyama sees "governance" as about performance - i.e. the ability of the state to deliver services
This capacity draws on the administrative side of the state - the state as an actor - not just a set disembodied institutions
Conceptually distinct to democracy
Capacity and Autonomy
Capacity is about the ability of states to act (i.e. actually collect taxes, conduct business with corruption)
Autonomy refers to the insulation of bureaucrats from the political process (discretion v rules)
Need "Goldilocks" approach
State Society Relations
Peter Evans argues that states need "embedded autonomy"
State needs some autonomy from elites (must be insulated from rent seeking) but it also needs connection to them
Evans argues that states are crucial to economic development in an active sense, but this beneficial role requires a rational, insulated bureaucrac which has links to social groups
This can do more than just providing inclusive institutions - can steer economic developments
But whre does the "right" mix of capacity, autonomy and purposive economic development come from?
Seeing like a State
While much of the literature on state capacity sees it as "good" - Scott warns against the dangers of "high modernism"
Census, records, etc, which make populations legible dont always improve well being where they undercut local knowledge
Hayek (from a different perspective) makes similar claims about the limits of planning
Centeno: Blood and Debt: War and Taxation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
European Paradigm
A Gauge of Strength
Challenging the Paradigm
Wars and States in Latin America
Explaining the Latin American Pattern
Artificial Wealth
Timing is everything
The Hollow State
Blood and Dept
Conclusions
State and Regime Stability
Recap
The State
But debate about scholars how to understand it
Contractarian (Hobbes/Locke) /Predatory (Olson/Levi)
RC
Emerges at a particular point in time and history
Macro-structural views - Tilly - technology of warfare,
economic development
Core Weberian definition
Sociological views - Anderson - linked to nationhood
Tilly
Consolidates external borders and control over domestic
power bases
Builds up tax extraction capacity
War makes states in three regards:
Invests in resources for protecting citizens to allow capital
accumulation - property rights, courts, legal systems
States=high capacity states in some regards
Centeno
Weak fiscal capacity, a disconnected military, weak nation
building
Wars in Europe had `positive' externalities, but they were
largely negative in LA - why?
Stable borders, but internal civil conflict - `limited wars'
Colonial legacies, no nations, land owning elites, timing of conflict
State building in LA looks different - the logic of
war- states - state capacity does not play out the same way
Historically bounded processes of state formation look different - need to separate out the concept of state and state capacity
Regimes
Link between states and regimes
Olson - the limits of the stationary bandit
A&R - some regimes more prone to state failure
However, question of regime stability is linked, but
separable from state stability
Empirically, fragility often related to movements of regime change - nationalist, succession, or democratic, autocratic movements
What is a regime?
Many di erent debates about how to de ne democracy
(binary or continuous)
How to distinguish types of democracy (democracies with
"adjective" - Collier and Adcock)
Dahl's older concepts of contestation and inclusion are
useful
Allows us to distinguish di erent types of regime even
within binary categories
Howard and Roessler
Democratization Debate
Economic and social modernization would bring democracy - democracy the `natural' point of development (structural argument)
Also some "agency" seems to matter (or at least, we need
mechanisms)
But, connection between development and democracy uncertain empirically (Przerworski and Limongi, Boix and Stokes
Question in the literature then, moved rst to questions of democratic consolidation and then to questions of authoritarian durability
Regime Stability and Change
Question of stable alignments
Democracies need some mass opt in
What produces these?
Both capacity of state, demands on population, and
structure of power that come from that need theorizing
Events (food price shocks, protests in neighbouring countries, global order) can trigger instability, but whether these lead to either instability or regime transitions depends on a broader set of factors
Autocracies need support for various groups for regime to
be stable - economic elites/military
Rainfall - Ciccone and Ismailov
Macro-Structural/RC approaches 1 -
Redistributivist
Inequality and democracy - Acemoglu and Robinson/Boix
Class actors key, demand regimes based on anticipated
redistributive gains
Costs of repression need to be weighed against demands
for redistribution
Leads to an inverted U-shape in relationship between
inequality and democracy
Assumes order/repressive capacity is possible
Macro-Structural/RC approaches 2 - Contractarian
Ansell and Samuels argue that growth often brings a particular type of inequality, one that increases the size of the middle class
Where it creates new economic elites, these citizens want some rpotection of property
Barrington Moore "no bourgeoisie, no democracy"
Macro-Structural/RC approaches 3 - Resource curse
Resource curse
Some agricultural types more labor repressive
Di erent forms of economic production can create di erent incentives
Oil wealth can sever connections to citizens as tax payers
Slater's Critique
1) Linked democratization to a model of class politics
2) Assumed the politics sustaining democracies (property
rights, redistribution) drove their introduction
Above approaches made di erent claims, but all did three
things:
Slater makes an alternative cultural and institutional
argument
3) Undertheorized the collective action that produces change - costly (deadly) for many (are people will to die just to tax the rich more in democracy?)
Institutional arguments - Lust's claim
In world values survey, respondents in these countries are
favorable to many democratic ideas (Norris 2002)
Lust emphasizes institutional features that shape
coalitional space between secularists and Muslim elites
Where secular elites worried about Muslim dominance in a
democracy, tended to coalesce with authoritarian rulers
These perceptions partly followed from the ways in which
Muslim elites incorporating into existing structure
Cultural claims about the compatibility of Muslim values with democracy (Fish 2002) , but the relationship is contested - many Muslim countries in Arab world with oil dependent economies
Slater: Revolutions, Crackdowns, and Quiescence: Communal Elites and Democratic Mobilization in Southeast Asia
Who mobilizes against Authoritarianism ... and why?
Communal Elites, Collective Identities and Symbolic Power
Social forces in Democratization: Rethinking the How, Who and Why
How?
Who?
Why?
Revolutions, Crackdowns and Quiesence in Southeast Asia
Symbolic Advantage and Democratic Revolution: The Philippine Case
Symbolic Disadvantage and Chronic Quiescence: The Vietnamese Case
Symbolic Deadlock and Authoritarian Crackdown: The Burmese Case
Communal Elites and Democratic Mobilization beyond Southeast Asia
Regime Politics: Regime Effects and Introduction to Institutions
Electoral Institutions
FPTP v PR systems
Single member districts
PR - votes allocated proportionally
FPTP/majoritarian - winner takes all
Many di erent types - varying DM, thresholds, formula etc
Duverger/Cox
Duverger's law - FPTP produces two party systems -
mechanical and psychological e ect
Cox - but why does FPTP lead to nationalized party systems?
Coordination incentives among elites and voters
District magnitude key
Number of e ective parties lower in high DM ES
One argument for why - Iversen and Soskice 2006
L wants higher taxes and distribution (the "poor"), H wants lower taxes and redistribution (the "rich")
in PR systems, M has their own party, which gives them
more scope to create median conforming polici
3 groups in society - L, M, and H
M needs to decide whether to ally with L (with risk of too much redistribution) or H (with risk of too little redistribution)
In majoritarian systems, M unable to extract credible concessions from L or H, and because of risk aversion, chooses H
Origin of institutions
But if institutions systematically bene t di erent actors -
maybe these same actors introduced them?
If that is the case, then maybe institutions don't matter
that much - they are just endogenous to existing structures
Classic argument by Rokkan - PR introduced where
socialists were a growing threat
Revisiting of these claims in last 2 decades, with a look at
the origins of electoral systems
Origins of Electoral Institutions
Boix's argument
Electorate Change*Threat=Rules
Electorate change no strong Socialist party==no
threat== no move to PR (e.g. USA)
This occurs when both a) new challengers emerging and
b) right is fragmented
Electorate change dominant non-Socialist party== no
threat== no move to PR (e.g. UK)
Where su rage extension threatens a dominant socialist
party, then move to PR
Electorate change competitive party
environment==threat==change to PR (e.g. Sweden)
Conservative elites dominate politics in late 19th century
Boix Continued
Where su rage extension threatens a dominant socialist
party, then move to PR
Elites and voters are strategic actors, who respond to institutional incentives - elites anticipate voters strategic behavior and will manipulate rules for future electoral advantages
He is arguing with non-strategic/or economic necessity arguments that emphasize the globally welfare enhancing e ects PR
Quantitative analysis of the likelihood of transition to PR in the period of mass su rage expansion. Complements this analysis with some use of illustrative examples.
Historical Critique
Both Boix (and an alternative by Cusack, Iversen and Soskice) present evidence for contrasting arguments about the origins of PR that they test use quantitative techniques, rather than a deep engagement with cases.
Kreuzer wants to examine whether this analysis yields
conclusions consistent with historical fact
Broader range of motives, although some evidence that
Boix's logic holds in some - but not all - cases
Question of endogenous institutions
Institutions often selected as key tool to expand the power
of a group - not just the good of society
If that is the case, then we need to understand institutional selection process and see if that is driving the alleged institutional relational
Need to theorize the conditions under which institutions
matter, and which they express existing power structures
Kreuzer argues because causes of ES selection were more heterogeneous than these theories allow, endogeneity may be less of problem
Woman's Suffrage
Rise of Women's Su rage
Raises the question - why did elites extend the su rage?
We discussed some arguments about this in the democratic transitions week - demands from the public (for redistribution? for property rights?), cost of repression, spread of norms
Women's su rage however did not always follow the same path as class based su rage extension - how do we explain it?
Key insight of the institutional selection literature - changes in suffrage may drive changes in institutions, as groups look to preserve some power
Paths to Su rage - Teele
Imposed path - men and women gained the vote at the
same time due to a colonial imposition
Gradualist path - men and women gain the vote at
di erent times (US, Sweden)
Universalist path - men and women gained the vpte at the same time (this is the case in most contemporary democratization processes)
Hybrid - mix parts of other models
Potential arguments
Cultural norms: will be more likely in places with
progressive or egalitarian norms
HI: patterns of political mobilization and power, possibly
related to war and conflict
Macro-historical: part of broader proess of economic modernization that creates incentives to mobilize women in LF and state
RC: Strategic incentives for elites to extend su rage
Puzzle of the gradualist path: why NZ so early (18..) and
CH so late (1970s in some cantons?)
Teele's argument
Where women offer competitive advantages for incumbents - they were seen as a potential ally, then elites more likely to change
This calculus rests on two parts - the nature of party
competition and beliefs about women's behavior
But e ects of su rage extension remain uncertain -
politicians may not know what women will do
Women's own actions matter, structure of the suffrage movement shapes in part beliefs of elites about women's voting behavior
If women just voted identically to men - then extending
the su rage would o er no bene ts to exising parties
Where system competitive, women believed to be more conservative, right elites introduced suffrage
UK - Teele's analysis
In early 20th - number of options on the table - widows and spinsters, property ownining women, universal, and status quo - in early 1910s, no majority for change
Su ragettes in the UK made an alliance with Labour - o ered resources and support, in return for Labour's support for women's inclusion
These resources allowed Labour to contest more seats, spltting the Liberal vote (which gave the Conservatives an advantage)
Liberals who had resisted women's su rage, began to
move towards it
When Labour included in wartime cabinet it put women's votes on the agenda - 1918 Representation of the People Act
Switzerland - Teele's framework
Not about weakness of the left
ABout political system that is more weakly responsive to changes in vote shares, reducing incentives for federal politicians to extend
Not about Catholicism
Skorge - Women and PR systems
When women enfranchised, question of whether parties
had an incentive to mobilize them
Skorge argues that where district uncompetitive, less
incentive for parties do so
PR systems tend to have better representation of women -
but do institutions really cause these outcomes?
PR creates a competitiveness shock - which encourages
elite mobilization on women
Tries to causally identify these outcomes by looking at Norway from 1916-1919 where municipalities used di erent electoral systems
Conclusion
Institutions are often chosen strategically, but some
historical patterns that require analysis
Actors likely matter in speci c cases
This may solve the "endogenous institutions" question in
some cases, but not all
Still useful to think of institutional adoption as partially
strategic
Teele:
Introduction
The Argument, in Brief
Suffrage Politics in the United Kingdom, The United States and France
Reading this Book
Democratization and the Case of Women
Theories of Franchise Reform
Macro-Historical Process of Women's Suffrage
The Modernization Thesis
Women in the Workforce
Wars bring Enfranchisement
Women's Scarcity
Micro-Bevaioral Accounts of Enfranchisement
Men's Preferences
Elite Incentives
The Logic of Women's Suffrage
Politician and Party Vote Choice on Suffrage
Expectations about Women's Voters
Women's Mobilization Strategy
Crosscutting Cleavages and Group Consciousness
Women as future voters
Methodological approach
Populism
Populism
What is populism
Mueller - anti-elitism is necessary but not sucient, also
anti-pluralist (only populists are the `true voice' of the people)
Populists often challenge aspects of liberal democracy -
challenge intermediate institutions
Society separated into two antagonistic groups - the (real)
people and (corrupt) elites
Populism often pairs with another ideology - so we can
distinguish left and right populism
Cas Mudde - thin centered ideology
Right and Left Populist
Examples: FN in France, Sweden Democrats, AfD in
Germany, and SVP in Switzerland
A few commonalities - tend to question some existing
institutions (the EU), often critical of mainstream parties, present as outsiders - but di erences on economic issues.
Often engage in `blurring' (Rovny and Polk)
Radical right populists - often combine these approach
with nativist and anti-immigrant language
Left populism more present in Latin America, but
Podemos, Syriza and other left challengers
Much internal variation in these categories
Economic Anxiety or Cultural Backlash - the debate
Coincides with post- nancial crisis elections, in areas
experiencing economic shock, and amongst working class voters
But, attitudinal variables predict better, are cross-class
coalitions (not just `losers' of economic change) and these parties emerge in very di erent distributive contexts - big
and small states
The rise of populism appears
related
to economic issues
Connection between both debated
Economic Arguments
Economic arguments 1 - Losers of Globalization
Not all groups winners of economic change - individuals in
high automation jobs more likely to vote RRP (Im et al 2019), Kurer (2020)
Colatone and Stanig - China Shock - voting in Europe and
Brexit higher in large areas with more trade competition
Kriesi et al. globalization and cultural shifts work together
to create a disa ected group
Why populism not redistribution?
Trade, robots, deaths of despair etc
Do places and people tell the same story?
Ecological fallacy
Lots of correlations
between types of places and voting
Economic arguments 2 - Austerity and
Representation
Dal Bao et al find Sweden Dem candidates more likely to be LM outsiders
Piketty - the "Brahmin left" has created a representational and policy lacuna, that enocourages backlash
Fetzer- UK loval governments with more spending cuts have greater Brexit voting
Economic arguments 3 - Status Threats
Subjective decline in social status (Gidron and Hall) or
`positional deprivation' (Burgoon) associated with populist voting
Kurer nds an association amongst those in more
automatable choice of right/populist voting amongst those that survive in the job
Mixed sociological and economic arguments
Baccini and Weymouth - deindustriazation in the US
linked to Trump vote where it a ects white workers, whereas Black voters move more to Democrats in the face
of economic change
How convincing?
Not totally clear shocked regions or places follow the full
logic - disenchantment with democracy etc
At individual level, questions about the relative strength of
the relationship compared to other features
But even so, mechanisms are contested - e.g. Oesch and
Vigna challenge the status mechanisms
Supply side matters - di erences across countries in
mobilization
Economic duress alone does not drive voting for populists -
often combined with some other factors (race, gender, etc)
Cultural Arguments
Cultural Backlash - Norris and Inglehart
Argue that revolution in social attitudes - mass
tertiarization, the rise of cities, and growing ethnic diverity - all push societies towards new attitudes
But these shifts have led to a counter-revolution - creates
cultural grievances related to immigration
Norris and Inglehart argue that populism is a cultural not
an economic backlash
Also activates authoritarian attitudes
Armin Schaeffer's Critique
Cohorts not consistently dfferent on actual populist attitudes (mistrust in government)
Very weak cohort differences in voting, and younger actually vote more for populists when control for other variables
Data transformed to exaggaret differences - a lot of overlap amongst cohorts
Trump Election
White voters have been tended to the Republicans
however since 1960s - post-civil rights
Major education-urban realignment in the US
Big debate about `white working class' post Trump
Strong evidence that racial prejudice played a key role in
voting (not economic anxiety per se)
Diana Mutz - 2016 Election
Finds very little connection between changes in personal circumstances and vote switching
Does find change in preferences, which she relates to status and voting
Panel study of voter 2012-2016
How convincing?
And there is good evidence that these attitudes are not
fully determined by economic variables
But the link between macro and micro not always clear -
why in some places? Why now?
Strong micro evidence - attitudes towards immigration
strong predictors
Mobilization
Parties as actors
Question is how to do this credibly?
David Art - requires some recruitment of credible
candidates
Populist parties may have more
exibility in responding to
new issues - allow them to be challengers (De Vries and Hobolt)
This may change over time
Haffert - AfD
Regions in Germany with more Catholic opperssion in the 19th century have less AfD voting today
Why? Haffert Argues that they develop more local intermediate organization that continue to mobilize voters over time
Mobilization then, not jst about challengers but also existing institutions
Conclusion
Connection between them and supply side - party
strategies and approaches is where some of the interesting current work is occuring
How parties adapt to change economic and cultural
circumstances and shape narratives important - both by mainstream and challenger parties
Most work suggests and mix of economics and culture
matters on the demand side
