Chapter 7

Chapter 7. Comparative Politics

Last updated 10-28-2009

The United States brags about its political system, but the president says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves. Den Xiaoping

OUTLINE

I. Comparative Politics Defined

A. The Necessity of Comparison

B. What We Compare

1. Systems and Subsystems

2. Structure and Institutions

3. Structures and Function: Process

a. Socialization‑‑who are we?

b. Recruitment‑‑who will lead?

c. Communication‑‑what are you up to?

d. Interest Articulation‑‑what should we do?

e. Interest Aggregation‑‑what should we do first

f. Policy Implementation‑‑who has the power?

g. Policy Adjudication‑‑how do we settle conflicts?

4. Policy Content

a. Government Size

b. Kinds of Expenditure

c. Political Rights and Civil Liberties

d. Outcomes

II. Problems to Avoid

A. The Ecological Fallacy

B. The Individualistic Fallacy

C. Political Ethnocentrism

III. Political Culture

A. Definitions

B. Dimensions

1. National Identity

2. The Role of Citizens (participant/subject/parochial)

3. Expectations About the Role of Government

4. Process‑‑how decisions get made

5. Policy‑‑the kinds of outcomes that are acceptable

IV. Political Development and Modernization

A. Definitions

B. Differences

C. The Five Crises of Development

1. Identity

2. Legitimacy

3. Penetration

4. Participation

5. Distribution

TEXT

I. Comparative Politics Defined

Although political scientists often lump comparative politics together with international relations, they are distinctly different. Rather than focusing on relationships between nations, comparative politics asks us to compare nations. We ask ourselves how politics differ and how politics are similar from one place to another.

This kind of research is not really new at all. If you remember, Aristotle did a comparative analysis of city‑state constitutions in ancient Greece.

A. The Necessity of Comparison

If you think about it, we really have little choice in how we study nations. Alexis de Tocqueville may have said it best: "Without comparisons to make, the mind does not know how to proceed." We really can only understand things in relation to other things. Comparison is a basic method of human thought. We compare ourselves to others on a daily basis: skill in sports, grades, looks, cars, money, and so on. We compare research projects in terms of methods and findings. We compare the qualities of sports teams and players. If you want to know how well our nation does in educating students, you must make some kind of comparison using test scores, literacy, or even expenditures per student.

A more fundamental question, perhaps, is why study comparative politics at all. After all, most of you will never live in another nation. Many of you may never even travel to another nation. So why should you care? Let me give you two answers.

First, even if you never travel to any other nation, the world is traveling to you. It travels to you in terms of the things you use every day and even the food you eat. It travels to you in terms of the career opportunities that are or are not available here in the U.S. It travels to you in terms of the taxes you pay to build the infrastructure that we need to compete in an international marketplace. It travels to you in terms of those who are trying to flee economic and political chaos in their home nations. It travels to you in terms of television news and military commitments that could involve you or someone you love. In sum, you can't stick your head in the sand and hide. The nations of the world and all their problems and abilities are affecting the quality of your life, the choices and opportunities you have, and the challenges you face every day. With each passing year, the effect grows greater. To deal with these things, you need to understand other nations.

We can see evidence of our connection to the world in the local economy of Aiken County, where many of you will have jobs after college. Professor Davis Folsom’s Spring 1996 marketing class surveyed 37 Aiken County businesses and asked them about their international exports. They export textiles, valves, auto parts, processing equipment, pipes, and kaolin (a clay that is used in making glossy finish on paper). They export to many countries, including Canada, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, Hong Kong (now part of China), Brazil, Germany, South Korea, and Australia, in that order. Most have had increasing amounts of exports and expect them to increase in the future (“Aiken and the Global Marketplace.” Enterprise Ink). Much the same picture could be drawn about any community today.

Second, if you are in college to become an educated person—and that is the most general purpose of a college education—then you must understand the world around you. Comparative thinking about politics is one way to understand the world around you.

B. What We Compare

We can compare an almost infinite number of things. We could compare literature, popular culture (movies, magazines, clothing styles, pop music), social institutions like the family or religious groups, transportation systems, climates, and almost anything else you can imagine. However, those who study comparative politics usually limit themselves to a few broad categories. What are they?

1. Systems, Supersystems, and Subsystems

Generally speaking, comparative politics involves comparing political systems. These are the same kind of systems that you learned about in "systems theory" back in Module II. Each system can correspond to a nation‑state that attempts to maintain itself by converting demands into outputs that will generate enough support to keep the system going. (Do you remember inputs, conversion, outputs, and feedback?) So at this level we would compare all of the major elements of nation‑states' political systems.

At a higher level, we could compare supersystems. A supersystem is some group of nation‑states that have something in common. So here we are comparing groups of nations. Using the terminology of the last module, we could compare the first world with the third world. Or we could compare the third world nations with fourth world nations. If you think back to the theory module, this would be called macro‑level analysis at just about the highest level.

At a lower level, we can compare what are sometimes called subsystems. Comparisons of subsystems fall into what we have called middle range theories. We would take parts of political systems and make comparisons. For example, we might compare bureaucratic structures, law enforcement structures, or executives—any part that is big enough to have the characteristics of a system, with inputs, outputs, and so on.

2. Structure and Institutions (social, interests, parties, legislative, judicial, executive, bureaucratic, media, other levels of government)

Comparing structure and institutions is similar to comparing subsystems. In comparing structures we often find ourselves looking at organizational charts. For example, we might ask which nations have chief executives that are structurally independent from the legislature (presidential systems) and those that do not (parliamentary). Or we might ask about the relationships between regional governments with central governments. Is it a confederal system in which the regional governments have most of the power, a unitary system in which the power lies at the center, or a federal structure in which the regional and central governments share and struggle over powers. Listed below are some examples of nations with each type of structure.

Confederal Unitary Federal

‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑ ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑

Confederation of United Kingdom Australia

Independent States France Canada

(parts of former USSR, Japan India

not including Georgia, China Mexico

which broke away in 2008)

The U.N. Switzerland

West Germany

Russia

Even within these three broad groups we can see much variation. For example, the Canadian federal system is much more decentralized than the American federal system. In part this is because of the relatively greater cultural differences that exist among Canadian provinces than among American states. French speaking Quebec is the most extreme case. Even with the great deal of autonomy it is allowed, it still periodically threatens to break away from the nation. Within the unitary group, the U.K. is making some movement toward more decentralization as Scotland has been allowed to create its own legislature with taxing powers. In late 1997 Wales voted very narrowly to have its own legislature, but it will have relatively less power than that of Scotland.

3. Structures and Function: Process

Some comparative political scientists take what is called a structural‑functional approach. In this approach they go beyond comparing formal structures and ask what functions each structure performs in each system. The sections that follow are a list of functions that any political system performs. What may differ from political system to system is the social and political structures that perform these functions.

a. Socialization—who are we?

You already should know what political socialization is. (In case you forgot, socialization is the process by which we learn the values of our culture. In the case of political socialization, we learn the values of our political culture.) You also know that in the U.S. a variety of structures perform these functions: social structures like the family, churches, and clubs, bureaucratic structures like the public schools, and other structures like the media and interest groups. One characteristic associated with a democracy is that a variety of competing structures perform political socialization.

In contrast, in a totalitarian system like the former USSR or China, the government controls and restricts political socialization much more. Private interest groups and some social institutions like churches are shut out of the process. Government dominated structures like political parties, bureaucracy, and an official centrally controlled media stand in their place.

b. Recruitment—who will lead?

Every system needs to constantly identify and train new leaders. In the U.S. leaders (both elected and non-elected) are recruited through many channels, including private business (Ross Perot), the media and entertainment (Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger), sports (Senator Bill Bradley and Jack Kemp), religion (Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson), political parties (George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama), family connections (several of the Kennedys and George W. Bush, though he could be counted as coming up from state government as well), academia (Woodrow Wilson, Phil Gramm, and Newt Gingrich), the military (John McCain) and state and local governments (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton). The only way up to the top in the old USSR was through the party. In modern Japan recruitment takes place through the top universities that feed into government service.

c. Communication—what are you up to?

How do government leaders communicate with each other and with the people? Again, many structures play this communications role in the U.S.: the media (which are very plural), interest groups, parties, the different branches of government, state and local governments, bureaucracy. Almost every structure one can imagine engages in communication. In the modern computer age each person can readily tap into all kinds of communications networks, public and private, on a terminal in ones own home. Of course, this creates an overflow of information that seems to create an overwhelming din of noise to many average citizens. A modern edition of the Sunday New York Times has more political information than the average farmer of 1790 received in his entire lifetime! Having so much communication seems sometimes to stop people from hearing anything. That may be one partial explanation for why people pay less attention to political news than they did a generation ago. (This is the beginning of a theory that could lead to testable hypotheses—remember the module on the scientific method?)

In other less open systems, the government tries to restrict communications to a few official government dominated structures. However, restrictions may not be all that easy today. For example, student radicals in the pro-democracy movement in China found that computer modems are a really good way of communicating with the outside world.

d. Interest Articulation—what should we do?

You might call this the agenda setting function. Who has the power to make themselves heard? Different systems do not listen to the demands of all those in the system. Systems pay attention to some demands and they ignore and/or shut out others. When a parent tells you: "NO MORE! I've heard enough," she is telling you that your chance to articulate an interest has just ended. What you want does not matter—you will be ignored. Your family is somewhat like a totalitarian system or a monarchy. Those in power greatly limit the number of groups and structures that can articulate demands.

In democracies such as the U.S., interest articulation is a competitive exercise in which many structures try to press for their own agenda. Interest groups try to persuade leaders that health care or education should be the top priority. Local governments try to convince Washington that rebuilding the nation's urban infrastructure is most important. Each government bureaucracy tries to press its own claims‑‑environmental concerns, medical research, education, small business supports, and so on. In a totalitarian system, political party leaders set the priorities. While this is a much more neat and simple way of proceeding, it can lead to huge mistakes if leaders are isolated from the reality of what is needed to generate support for the system. (As you can see, this is beginning to sound like the terminology of systems theory—remember?)

e. Interest Aggregation—what should we do first

After demands are made, someone must decide which demands come first. To put it another way, who decides a system's priorities? In Somalia it is the clan leaders. In a monarchy it is the monarch. In a totalitarian state it is the party. In a presidential democracy with separated and shared powers such as the U.S., more competition takes place about what the priorities will be. Congress competes with the executive, especially if a different political party controls the congress. We could see a lot of this as the newly elected Democratic Congress fought with Republican President Bush in 2007-8. In a parliamentary democracy like Britain or France, less competition takes place because the majority party always controls the executive and legislature. When the executive decides something (usually in the form of a cabinet decision), a majority of the legislature almost always goes along. If they fail to support their leaders, they must all face reelection.

f. Policy Implementation—who has the power?

The ability to carry out laws and policies is the power of executing laws. It requires all kinds of resources: people in the necessary locations to do what is required, police power, materials, money, and some degree of acceptance (legitimacy) by those at the receiving end. The alternative is having loyal and well‑armed police officers for each citizen.

In federalist systems both the national and regional governments carry out policies, policies that sometimes conflict with each other. For example, some states fear that if the national government passes a health care plan, it will interfere with state plans. In a unitary system the central government carries out policies. However, except in the smallest of societies, government officials need help in administering the policies. In all modern societies, this help comes from bureaucracy. We will study bureaucracy in another module. In unitary systems the regional governments act as administrative bureaucratic units for the central government. In federalist systems the central government often has its own bureaucratic units scattered throughout the nation. Federalist systems may use state and local units in addition. The central government enacts laws that force state and local governments to perform certain functions, such as pollution control or water quality. These kinds of laws are called mandates. As you can imagine, mandates cause major headaches for state and local officials, especially when higher level governments do not provide the resources to carry out these laws. If you take an American government course or a state and local politics course you will learn more about mandates.

g. Policy Adjudication—how do we settle conflicts?

Every system has to have some way to settle conflicts. But again, in different systems different structures settle those conflicts. One party totalitarian systems such as the old USSR or China use the party to settle most conflicts, although the party works through government bureaucracy. Democracies vary widely in how conflicts are settled, but most use a variety of structures. In the U.S. electoral structures settle many conflicts. Those on the losing side of conflicts simply don't survive the nomination process or lose the general election. Losing prevents them from having any direct voice in government. In democracies where third and fourth parties have an easier time gaining representation in the legislature, conflicts carry over to the legislative stage of policy making. Sometimes if no party has a clear majority, conflicts are settled in building a governing coalition within the legislature. The courts settle other kinds of conflicts, but not always. In Britain, for example, Parliament is supreme with no Supreme Court to overrule its actions.

4. Policy Content

Comparing output is another approach in comparing systems. How much of the economy do governments control? For what do they spend their monies? What political rights do they give their citizens? Finally, thinking about all these things together, what quality of life do citizens have living under each system?

a. Government Size

Obviously, larger and/or wealthier nations will usually have governments that command larger resources. So to make this comparison fairly, we need to account for different sized economies. The most usual measures of a total economy are gross national product (GNP) or gross domestic product (GDP), a more modern version of the same thing that economists seem to prefer today. The percentages of GDP that central governments take from their economy are listed in the table below, based on 1999 figures (Source: MicroCase) for about a dozen nations of greatly varying wealth, region, and size.

Govt Expenditures as a % of GDP

NORTH KOREA---92.34

SWEDEN---79.27

ISRAEL---61.84

GERMANY---48.95

GREECE---42.10

UNITED KINGDOM---39.91

SAUDI ARABIA---23.49

FRANCE---24.59

JAPAN---23.61

UNITED STATES---19.89

POLAND---16.48

CANADA---15.98

MEXICO---9.52

HAITI---3.68

INDIA---3.40

As you can see, with the notable exception of Japan, the U.S. national government takes far smaller a proportion of the total GDP than do most other industrial democracies. (We should note that these figures are not always comparable, because state and local spending are separated out in most nations like the U.S. If added in the total for the U.S. comes closer to 36% in 2006. But other nations would also have to be adjusted upwards as well.) Third world nations generally fall quite low because the citizens are so poor that the government cannot take very much without starving the population to death. You might be surprised that Canada, which is well known for its government provided health care system takes less of its GDP in government expenditures than the US. Can you explain that? Let's look at some other comparisons.

b. Kinds of Expenditure

Governments can spend money in a variety of ways. The two largest categories are defense and welfare. Included in welfare are such big major subcategories as health and education. So "welfare" includes much more than just spending on the poor—in fact, much of “welfare” goes to middle and upper class people. How does the U.S. rank here? The tables below give figures from 1997 for the same countries that we just examined. Without changing their order, let us look first at % of GDP spent on defense.

Defense Expenditures as a % of GDP

NORTH KOREA---25

SWEDEN---2.5

ISRAEL---9.8

GERMANY---1.5

GREECE---4.6

UNITED KINGDOM---3.1

SAUDI ARABIA---10

FRANCE---2.5

JAPAN---1

UNITED STATES---3.4

POLAND---2.3

CANADA---1.6

MEXICO---1.5

HAITI---not available

INDIA---2.7

As you can see, with the exception of nations that are at war with their neighbors or feel very threatened (like Israel, Saudi Arabia and North Korea), the US ranks relatively high here. This may be one explanation as to why Canada (and other western industrial democracies) can have a more sophisticated government health care program. They spend far less on defense. Let's look next at government money spent on education.

Public Education Expenditures as a % of GDP, 1995

NORTH KOREA---not available

SWEDEN---8.0

ISRAEL---6.6

GERMANY---4.7

GREECE---3.7

UNITED KINGDOM---5.5

SAUDI ARABIA---5.5

FRANCE---5.9

JAPAN---5.8

UNITED STATES---5.3

POLAND---4.6

CANADA---7.3

MEXICO---5.3

HAITI---not available

INDIA---3.5

Remember that these numbers represent not actual amounts of money, but rather are a kind of measure of effort, the % of available moneys that could be spent. The US expends relatively less of its available money on education than most other western industrialized nations, but certainly more than most third world nations.

c. Civil Liberties and Political Rights

Political rights and civil liberties are difficult variables to operationalize (to measure, remember?) objectively. However, many political scientists have tried nonetheless. For example, MicroCase includes an index of civil liberties in which it ranks nations on a 1 to 7 scale, with 1 indicating few civil liberties and 7 the highest amount of civil liberties. Civil liberties refer to those freedoms needed to build new groups and protections citizens have from the state.

Civil Liberties Rank, 1997

NORTH KOREA---1

SWEDEN---7

ISRAEL---5

GERMANY---6

GREECE---5

UNITED KINGDOM---6

SAUDI ARABIA---1

FRANCE---6

JAPAN---6

UNITED STATES---7

POLAND---6

CANADA---7

MEXICO---5

HAITI---3

INDIA---4

On political rights, which refers to the chance people have to help elect their own leaders and run for office themselves, the rankings were similar. The U.S., Germany, Japan, Israel, Greece, Canada, France, Poland, and the UK all received the highest score of 7 on a 1 to 7 scale. North Korea and Saudi Arabia were at the other extreme, and Haiti got a 4, much higher than it was under a dictatorship before US intervention. Mexico also got a 4, and India a 6.

d. Outcomes

Several factors influence the quality of life in different nations of the world. Some of them, such as natural resources, have little to do with government policies. Others are simply a matter of good or bad fortune—Machiavelli's fortuna (remember?). Small nations can be devastated by natural disasters of wars over which they have little control. Nevertheless, just as Machiavelli taught, skillful leaders can make a difference. They can create strong institutions and encourage citizens to make the best use of resources available. Strong and skillful leaders avoid wars whenever possible‑‑peace and prosperity.

The following table makes several comparisons that you may find interesting.

	GDP/pc	Life exp	Infant Mort	Calories	%5^th grade	Murders
US	$28,600	76	6.6	3,641	94	9.4
Canada	$25,000	79	5.7	3,340	97	5.6
Japan	$22,700	80.5	4	2,852	100	1.5
France	$20,900	78.6	6	3,529	94	Not avail
Sweden	$20,800	78.1	4.5	3,146	98	7.9
Germany	$20,400	76.1	5.9	Not avail	95	4.7
Unit Kingd	$20,400	76.6	6.3	3,249	Not avail	Not avail
Israel	$16,400	78.2	8.3	Not avail	96	2.5
Saudi Arab	$10,600	69.5	43.9	2,940	70	Not avail
Greece	$10,000	78.3	7.2	3,668	93	2.6
Mexico	$8,100	74	23.9	2,890	84	Not avail
Poland	$6,400	72.2	12.3	3,479	96	Not avail
India	$1,600	62.4	65.5	2,056	62	8.0
Haiti	$1,000	49.5	102	Not avail	12	Not avail
N Korea	$900	70.6	25	2,996*	Not avail	Not avail

* This number does not reflect the famines that have hit N. Korea in recent years.

Of course, we could measure quality of life using nearly an infinite number of means. The ones in the table above are only suggestive, but they are ones that researchers typically use. From this short list you can see both the strengths and weaknesses of life in the U.S. The U.S. is strong on consumption and wealth. In fact, the nation may be too strong! Its citizens eat too much of the wrong things for their own good, which may contribute to a lower life expectancy than many industrial countries that eat less. The two most troubling areas for the U.S. are infant mortality and murders. The infant mortality rate is the highest in the industrialized world. Experts who study this problem attribute it to lack of equal access to health care and too little emphasis on preventive health care. The US murder rate is the highest in the industrial world, except for Russia, which in recent years has become a land of gangs with little police protection. But generally in taking into account other kinds of crime the US also ranks badly. A number of factors contribute to higher levels of crime. (Do you remember "contributing variables?") A more violence prone culture in which personal honor and private retribution may explain part of the difference. Greater income inequality is another factor. Some social scientists argue that not only does the U.S. have relatively more poor than other industrialized democracies, but that in addition, being poor is psychologically more difficult in a society that measures personal worth by income. Easy access to handguns and the high cost of illegal drugs that drive addicts to desperate measures are other possible factors. Family breakdown and transient communities where internal social controls of family and long time neighbors have been lost are additional factors. Being too "soft" on crime relative to other nations is probably not a factor. The U.S. already has more citizens locked up in prisons than any other industrial democracy.

II. Problems to Avoid

In studying comparative politics we must be careful to avoid several problems of thought. We must avoid the “ecological fallacy of over-generalization” and its opposite, the “individualist fallacy.” From the perspective of the U.S., we must be careful to avoid “political ethnocentrism.” All nations are not like ours. Nor will they all inevitably evolve to become more like the U.S. Let us look briefly at each of these thought problems in turn.

A. The Ecological Fallacy of Overgeneralization

The ecological fallacy of overgeneralization is when we find a general principle or relationship and then expect it to apply to all individual cases. We must be careful not to think that every general relationship applies to every nation. For example, as you can see in the last table comparing nations, wealthier nations generally have longer life expectancies. However, this does not mean that every wealthier nation will have longer life expectancy than any relatively poorer nation. Can you find the exceptions in the table? At another level, the ecological fallacy sometimes causes us to move from a generalization about a nation to each of the citizens in that nation. For example, just because the U.S. is wealthier than France does not mean that every citizen in the U.S. is wealthier than every citizen of France. In fact, our percentage of poor is higher than France, which has relatively less income inequality.

B. The Individualistic Fallacy

The individualist fallacy is the opposite kind of problem. Here we mistakenly generalize from one individual case to a whole range of cases. Researchers who perform case studies have to be very careful here. The temptation is to take the results of an in-depth case study too far.

For example, suppose you study citizens in the United Kingdom. You find that British citizens have a strong sense of class status. Those in the lower and working classes greatly resent those in the upper classes. You find that partisan political ties are strongly related to social class. You generalize that this strong relationship must also be the case in all other democracies. However, you would be wrong. In the U.S., for example, social class only roughly correlates with partisanship. To give you an even more simple example on a different level, you would be wrong to conclude that all British citizens are polite because the one British citizen you met was polite.

C. Political Ethnocentrism

Political ethnocentrism is really a special case of the individualistic fallacy. As U.S. citizens, we tend to see the world through American eyes. We tend to assume that anything different from U.S. democracy is abnormal. We see ourselves as best and define progress as becoming more like the United States. We should remember that U.S. democracy was invented to meet particular political problems faced by the people of 1787. The nation’s political structure has evolved as it has in order to meet the problems it has faced since then. Other nations have different problems and different cultures. Therefore, we should not be expected them to use the same political solutions.

For example, the ideal of keeping a separation of church and state has served the U.S. fairly well because of the many religions that exist here. Without it we probably could not have survived as a nation. However, such a separation would not work as well in Islamic nations where virtually all of the people expect religious leaders to be political leaders as well. Such a separation would involve forcing an almost complete change in culture at a tremendous cost in life and resources.

The bottom line is that governments must reflect the cultures in which they exist. If you remember, Machiavelli gave some advice along these lines—know that the people want.

More generally, we tend to view the world beyond the West as evolving toward western standards. We equate modernization with becoming more like western democracies. This is a problem we will see in looking at the ideas of political development and modernization. Nations do not necessarily evolve toward entities that look like western industrial democracies. Sometimes they go in the other direction.

Iran is a good example. On the surface Iran appeared to be less religious in nature and more western in values and style in the 1970s when the Shah of Iran was in control. He introduced one western reform after another. The U.S. encouraged such reforms. In the new middle classes, women stopped wearing traditional religious clothing and adopted western styles. They became educated and took up professions and careers. Below the surface a revolution was brewing. All that was keeping the Shah in power was U.S. military aid. That was not enough to defeat religious extremists who had popular support in taking over and imposing a religious state. The masses resented the loss of traditional Iranian religious values and traditional family roles. You may remember that one of the first things they did was to take over the American Embassy and hold its occupants hostage. This helped Ronald Reagan defeat the incumbent President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

III. Political Culture

Political culture is a very important concept that has been around a very long time. Plato talked about the "dispositions" of governments that result from the "human natures" that create those governments. Virtually every great political thinker has talked about political culture in one sense of another, including Aristotle, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and de Tocqueville.

A. Definitions

The definition of political culture is very similar to the concept of ideology that we studied in an earlier module. Political culture refers to beliefs, values, and symbols that in effect create the political system in the eyes of citizens. What you expect the political system to do, how it is to do it, and the role that you will play in the process, if any at all, are what political culture is all about. Culture tells citizens who should rule, how they should rule, and what citizens should expect rulers to do.

B. Dimensions

Beyond this general definition of political culture we can point to several distinct dimensions of culture.

1. National Identity

Any culture gives the people in a nation a sense that they are indeed a nation. That is, it gives them a sense of identity, usually accompanied by a sense of pride. Identity and pride is what you feel when you watch the Americans in the Olympics and chant "U-S-A, U-S-A!" The French feel identity and pride when they protest the building of a Disney theme park in the middle of France. They also have a great pride in their national health care system that covers everyone with no individual billing involved at all.

As you know, nations can exist within a state, and a strong sense of identity defines those nations. Perhaps the best example of this that you may have a chance to see (outside of the "Southern" nation within the U.S.) is Quebec, a nation within the state of Canada. They distinguish themselves from the rest of English Canada by language, song, history, religion, and even food. Even their vehicle license plates reflect Quebec's distinct cultural identity. On them is a motto (“Je me souviens” I think) that translates roughly into "I will remember." (This reminds me of the "Forget, Hell!" tags you sometimes see on the front of cars in the American South.)

2. The Role of Citizens (participant/subject/parochial)

Culture teaches us about how we should relate to our governments. Comparative political scientists distinguish among three alternate possibilities here: participants, subjects, and parochials. We can distinguish among different nations by the relative mix of these three groups.

a. Participants are those who play an active role in government and politics. They talk about politics and sometimes take a variety of other actions, like voting, contacting public officials, protests, and involving themselves in campaigns. They tend to be educated, though membership in groups like unions can also teach them participatory skills. Industrial democracies tend to have relatively high proportions of participants, somewhere in the range of 50% or more. Both the U.S. and Britain fit this model.

b. Subjects are much more passive. While they know what government is doing and sometimes talk a little about politics, they do not actively involve themselves in politics beyond just obeying laws. Nations that are democratic in form but in fact are controlled by one dominant political party usually have more citizens playing a subject role than any other role. Examples include South Korea, Taiwan, and Mexico.

c. Parochials are those who have little awareness of government or its policies. They tend to be illiterate and live in rural isolated areas. Their involvement and concern do not extend beyond family and immediate community. A democracy such as India has a few educated elites and professionals who actively involve themselves in politics, a large group of subjects who are wealthy enough to pay taxes but do little beyond that, and an even larger group of parochials who are so poor and isolated that they are oblivious to politics. However, if their way of life is threatened, religious and political leaders and occasionally mobilize subjects and parochials. We learned how potent a fighting force subjects and parochials can be when we faced them in the jungles of Vietnam!

3. Expectations About the Role of Government

Political culture tells us about the proper role of government. One reason that the U.S. government controls a smaller share of the GNP than other democracies is cultural. American political culture fears government power more than other cultures. The nation began as a revolution against a government that citizens viewed as too strong and overbearing. We have distrusted government power ever since. Ronald Reagan hit a resonant cultural chord when he told the nation that his goal was to "get government off the backs of the American people." Every school child leans the phrase: the government that governs least governs best. Jokes about the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of government abound in American culture. "Good enough for government work" refers to a poor quality job. Other democratic nations with a different set of cultural values expect more from government. Canadians, British, French, Norwegians, Swedes, and Germans all expect government to provide health care. In other cultures citizens expect government to support religious institutions and values. Governments that fail to do so lose popular support. If you remember, Machiavelli advised that anyone who wants to be successful in politics must know the values of the people. This is good advice from the perspective of comparative politics.

4. Process—how decisions get made

Not only do people have expectations about what government should be doing, they have expectations about how a government should reach decisions. Process is part of a culture. Subjects may expect royalty to make decisions. Thus, decisions made by a hereditary ruler like Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia are more likely to be accepted than decisions made by a government installed by the invading Vietnamese, no matter how good the decisions. In the U.S. interest groups like Common Cause spend a great deal of time and energy worrying about democratic process, making sure that special interests with money do not unduly influence decisions. Reducing the influence of "special interests" finds a great deal of popular appeal because of our political culture. The culture includes the idea that decisions should get made in such a way that everyone's vote counts equally and that decision makers should base their decisions on objective merits rather than on money and favors.

5. Policy—the kinds of outcomes that are acceptable

Political culture includes values by which policy outputs are judged. In a monarchy policies that give preference to those with royal connections may be quite acceptable. In a religious state policies that give public support to religious institutions are expected. In the U.S. citizens expect policies to be consistent with values of individualism, choice, minimal government involvement so that there is still mainly private ownership, equal treatment under the law, and as much local control as possible. Every wise politician will try to mold policies to mesh with these values. You might think about Clinton's failed health care proposals of 1994 in these terms. Was he accounting for American values? Did those who opposed him also try to appeal to American values? The opponents won because they were able to characterize the proposals in terms of central government control and lost individual choice. Those same forces are again at work in the health care reform debate of 2009, though rising costs and diminishing coverage have given the reform forces some advantage the did not have in the 1990s.

IV. Political Development and Modernization

The ideas of development and modernization are important in understanding how the world is changing. As we noted above in discussing the problem of ethnocentrism, we must be careful not to see the world through western or American glasses.

A. Definitions

Some scholars use these two terms interchangeably. They see both terms as referring to nations as they evolve from one stage to another, becoming more urbanized, industrialized, and more dependent on technology. This does have an obvious western bias, as you can see. The assumption is that more developed and more modern is more like the U.S. and other western industrial democracies.

B. Differences

Other scholars make a distinction between development and modernization. They see development as the increasing ability of political systems to adapt and control change rather than simply react to outside forces and copy other systems. In other words, the more developed a system, the better it is able to stay on top of things. This definition has much less of a western bias. It does not imply industrialization or even necessarily democracy. An independent agricultural religious state could be developed if it is able to plan and maintain its independence.

Modernization is the degree to which a nation becomes dependent on technology and technology based industry in growing urban centers. This could be good or bad depending on how well the system is able to control and mold this dependency. A modern but undeveloped nation will be dependent on technology and have little control over how these changes affect the lives of citizens. Many third world nations have modernized at the cost of destroying family and community support structures. That is pretty close to what happened in Iran. The reaction was the downfall of the system back in the late 1970s.

C. The Five Crises of Development

If a system is to survive modernization, it must be developed. To be developed, a system must survive five crises.

1. Identity

In any political system enough people must identify with the system in order to sustain it in a time of crisis. How can any set of leaders ask people to sacrifice if they do not think of themselves as members of the system? In the U.S. this was a problem for a number of generations until people started thinking of themselves as U.S. citizens first and state citizens second. This was a problem in the constitutional convention game you were playing earlier in the semester. Some of those at your simulated convention thought of themselves as regional members first. When Robert E. Lee had to choose between his state of Virginia and the U.S., he went with Virginia. Both sides wanted him to be the military leader of their army. In Somalia people think of themselves as clan members first. The same is true in the tribal areas on the common border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the former Yugoslavia people think of themselves as members of ethnic groups first. That's why it is the FORMER Yugoslavia.

2. Legitimacy

Not only do people have to identify with the nation, they must accept the rulers and procedures of the nation as just and proper—as legitimate. If citizens do not accept those who rule as legitimate, the leaders will have a hard time calling upon citizens to make sacrifices in times of crisis. Of course, some people's support is more important than others. When push came to shove in Russia in the fall of 1993, the people in the Russian army decided that Yeltsin was a more legitimate ruler than those in the Parliament who tried to depose him. But even the military cannot resist an entire nation if the people do not consider military rule legitimate. The people of Haiti refused to accept the military rule of those who forced President Aristide from office. Although the military had the sheer physical power to stay in power a long time, it did not have unlimited resources. Without the cooperation of the people, it could not last forever. It survived as long as it did because it did get cooperation from enough of the wealthy people to provide it with resources and because those most disaffected fled to the U.S., thereby draining off demands on the system. The crisis really came when the military needed the support of the people to keep U.S. troops out. Support was so lacking that the people welcomed the "invaders." The regime came tumbling down.

How do you build legitimacy? You must build institutions that people support. This is no easy task. It means having organizations and procedures that work in ways that people find acceptable: police who are not corrupt, tax collectors who are fair, judges and courts that are impartial, administrators who do their jobs with reasonable efficiency and effectiveness.

3. Penetration

If a government is developed, it must have a structure in place that enables policies to be carried out on the local level. To penetrate is to take policies to the local level. The government of South Vietnam did itself little good to announce new policies in Saigon only to have those policies ignored in the hamlets of the countryside. The South Vietnamese government had no reliable administrative structure outside of a few urban areas. What good are taxes if you can't collect them? To collect them in only a few areas undermines legitimacy. That may be worse than not collecting them at all.

4. Participation

The crisis of participation is a double danger. A developed nation must have the right balance. Too little participation raises questions about legitimacy. Participation is a sign that people accept the institutions as worthy of their involvement. Participation is a sign that the government and its laws and rules are accepted. However, too much participation reduces the discretion that leaders need to choose workable policies. Too much places demands on leaders that may be hard to meet. Populist movements are rarely logical in what they ask for—usually they want more goods and services and fewer taxes. So many groups became active in making demands about health care reform in 1994 that executive and congressional leaders were unable to find any policy that would satisfy everyone. The proposal’s death can accurately be described as the “death of a thousand cuts.”

At its extreme, mass participation can take the form of a popular uprising. The Shah of Iran was better off with less political participation. He needed people to stay home and do their jobs. The same can be said of the Marcos regime in the Philippines. Yeltsin was lucky in that most Russian citizens did stay home and at work when members of the Parliament called for mass protest in early October of 1993.

5. Distribution

Even if governments solve all the other crises, they often fail on this last one--distribution. Successfully developed nations deliver the goods, or at least enable other institutions to deliver them to the people. They meet Machiavelli's test of providing "ordini," peace and prosperity. Most basically, the political system must be able to meet people's physical needs for food, shelter, clothing. Access to some reasonable level of medical care is also important. Some luxuries must be possible in a world where people see luxuries on media that penetrate all state boundaries. Not only must these things be available, they must be distributed with enough equity to meet popular expectations.

Why did the USSR fall? Ultimately it fell because it failed to meet this last crisis. It did not produce enough goods, and it failed to provide enough equity in distribution beyond members of the Communist Party. Nonmembers so greatly resented the shortages and the inequities that the party lost its legitimacy. Institutions lost their legitimacy. Too much popular participation (increased demands) increased the pressure on leaders and reduced their options. Those in charge of institutions began to question leaders--penetration was in effect reduced. Enterprising leaders like Gorbachev were smart enough to ride the popular movement while assuring the military that they would be looked out after. Ultimately Gorbachev was unable to deliver the goods as quickly as people expected them. He too lost power. Yeltsin also struggled with the distribution crisis and lost power to Putin. Current leadership, including Putin, continues to face problems with an unstable price of oil, the major source of Russian economic power today.

As you can see from all this discussion, those who study comparative politics have developed many ways to compare governmental systems. Hopefully, understanding some of the questions they ask will help you in understanding the world around you. Given the growing interdependent nature of the world around us, your future prosperity may depend on that understanding.

KEY TERMS & IDEAS

comparative politics

why we must compare

popular culture

supersystem

subsystem

confederal system

unitary system

federal system

structural-functional approach

socialization

recruitment

communication

interest articulation

interest aggregation

policy implementation

mandates

policy adjudication

GNP

GDP

political rights

civil liberties

ecological fallacy

individualistic fallacy

political ethnocentrism

political culture

national identity

participants

subjects

parochials

process

policy

political development

modernization

five crises of development

identity

legitimacy

penetration

participation

distribution