Introduction to Comparative Politics

1. Introduction to Comparative Politics

2. Issues to be discussed • Why do we study politics • (what is politics and why is it important to study it) • How do we study politics (methods of studying comparative politics) • Normative approach • Empirical approach: experimental, statistic, comparative, case studies • The nature of comparative political analysis • Most similar and most different system designs • what we study: public policy, political behav., governmental struc. • Nation states • The political system • Analytic system: super-system, system, subsystem • Political culture • System, process, policy cultures • Globalization • Economic globalization

3. What do you associate with the term politics?

4. Why do we study politics • Lets first understand what is politics • Aristotle: Politics is the interaction between individuals and groups in a society • Interactions that involve power and authority • Hobbes: Power refers to the general capacity to attain goals in a society • Lasswell: Politics is about “who gets what, when, and how?” (share of resources)

5. How do politics impact your daily lives?

6. Why do we study politics • To understand for example, why • A given election is won by one party, but not the other one • To learn about issues, such as • Justice • How policies are made • comparative politics along with the other social disciplines tries to help us understand the complex world around us

7. How do we study politics • Lets first understand the difference between comparative politics and area studies • Area Studies  Politics in a single area, f.e., Germany • Comparative Politics  compares different cases, such as Germany, Turkey, and Japan (in terms of politics) • The goal in comparing is to find similarities and differences between political systems, institutions, behaviors, or cultures in different countries

8. How do we study Politics • Normative Approach • Philosophies or “shoulds” • Empirical Approach • Measurements and observations

9. How do we study politics (Normative vs. empirical) • Normative Explanations seeks to answer f.e., • What is justice • What is a just society • How do we decide what is just and what is not • Does the concept of justice ever change so • Should there be free education, etc. • Empirical explanations tries to answer f.e., • What is… • Do all people have access to free education in a society (quantifiable) • Do all judges feel the same way about a particular law (quantifiable) • What is the relationship between the voting behaviors and SES (quantifiable)

10. How do we study politics: Empirical approach (4 methods) • Experimental Method • Manipulates one variable in order to observe its impact over another variable. • For example, the medical studies and experiments on patients • Case study method • Intensive study of individual cases, such as individuals, interest groups, institutional groups, regional groups • Comparative method • More than one case is compared. • For example, voting behavior in Germany, Turkey, and Japan • Statistical method • Quantitative data is used, public opinion polls, survey research etc.

11. How is case study different than area study?

12. How do we study politics • Comparative method can be carried out in two ways (Przeworski and Teune) • Most similar system design • Highly similar nations with different policy outcomes (Canada vs. Australia) • there must be a difference between them that causes the difference in policy outcome. • Most different system design • Highly different nations with some similar political outcome(England vs. Saudi Arabia) • then some aspects of these nations must be similar.

13. The nature of comp. political analysis • What do we study? • Public policy • Deals with what governments do, • For example, agricultural, fishery, or fiscal policies • Political behavior • If we understand why people behave the way they behave, then it will be easier to understand the political system within which they operate • Voting behavior, political leader, etc. • Governmental structure • Deals with the governmental institutions, such as legislatures, courts, militaries, executives, and political parties

14. The nature of comp. political analysis • These are all about Nation-states, so what is nation-state • Nations: a group of people with the shared characteristics • States: political entity, created by people, has accepted boundaries. • States’ borders might change • Can we have nations without states?

15. The nature of comp. political analysis • two crucial features of nation-states • Sovereignty: • having the right to make the final decision regarding policy • Legitimacy: • citizens of that state have loyalty to it • lack of loyalty  rebellions, civil wars, and revolutions(give an example) • the other states diplomatically recognize the state, and agree that it has the right to exist • lack of recognition  wars and conflicts(give an example)

16. The Nature of comp. political analysis Three common mistakes political scientists do • Political Ethnocentrism (Example, US Democracy export to Iraq) • Individualistic fallacy (individual level analysis) • When you meet a South-African with PhD, it would be wrong to assume that South-Africans are more educated than the Americans in general based on this observation. • Ecological-Fallacy (Aggregate level analysis) • As a result of a survey if you find that Americans are more educated than South-Africans in general, • But, it would be wrong to assume that Americans are more educated than every individual South-Africans. • Ex: American vs. East German legislatures in terms of passing laws

17. The Political-System • Analytic Systems • Refers to groups of objects that are connected with one another in an analytic way. • What connects different parts of the American governmental systemis the power that is provided by the constitution for each of the institutions making up the government.

18. The political system • Easton’s political system theory : • Demands and support (input)  IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII (political machine)  authoritative decisions and actions (output)

19. Political culture • Three dimensions of political culture • System culture • attitudes towards nation, regime, and authorities • as well as values related to national identity, regime change, etc. • Process culture: the role of individuals in the political arena • Policy dimension: attitudes towards the outcomes of the political system (policies)

20. Globalization • Increasingly economic activity in the world takes place between people living in different countries. • Nations, individuals, firms, and institutions are interconnected more than ever. • Capital moves around the world as if there is no nation-state; • People easily go and invest in another nation-state. • Therefore, issues such as international trade, foreign direct investment, environmental policy, and human rights are more relevant in daily life.

21. Globalization • The position of the world bank is that • Globalization is not knew • Globalization does not effect all nations in the same way, or same extend • Globalization in economic sense is different than globalization in other senses. • Some problems related to globalization: • Difficulty for the governments in planning and controlling national economies. • Multinational companies and job drains. • What are some factors accelerating globalization?

22. Institutional approach • Institutions survive longer than individuals • It is easier to generalize by observing institutions • It is easier to find observable and measurable data on institutions. • Thus, the text book uses an institutional approach.