2. • States have certain interests, such as raising revenue.
• They attempt to tame chaos in order to pursue those
interests, but their efforts can sometimes create negatives
as well.
• But in some cases, the state’s efforts to plan, coordinate,
and administer, permits societies to achieve things they
could not have done otherwise.
Good Societies
Pearson Publishing 2011
3. • Argument: The good society depends upon a society’s institutional
arrangements, and the most powerful institution of all is the state.
• Good society based on a set of defensible universal values:
• People should be able to meet their physical needs
• People should be secure against others including government.
• People should have the ability to make educated choices about how
they live.
• People should have civil and political rights in order to protect these
conditions so they can develop their capabilities.
• States can promote conditions that develop people’s capabilities or
impede them.
• It is important to understand the origins of the state and its different
parts or components: legislative, executive and judicial branches, its
bureaucratic and military arms, and its subnational or federal levels.
Good Societies
Pearson Publishing 2011
4. • The degree to which countries meet the standards of the good
society depends on their institutional arrangements.
• Institutions create and embody written and unwritten rules
that constrain individuals’ behavior into patterned actions.
• Order and predictability
• Meaning and structure to our relationships
• Imagine driving a car with no rules.
• Institutions exert power.
• Power is the ability to get people to do things that they would not
have chosen to do on their own or to prevail in getting what you
want in the presence of opposing claims and competing interests.
• Authority is a form of power that has been accepted as right and
proper by those who submit to it.
Institutions & Power
Pearson Publishing 2011
5. • Power takes
three forms:
• Cultural
• Economic
• Political
• Cultural power exists when some people
are able to convince others to adopt their
values, ideas, and premises as their own.
• Economic or material power emanates
from those who control critical scarce
resources and are able to obtain
compliance from whose who do not.
• Political power is grounded in coercion
and control over the means of violence.
• The power institutions exert is based on
control over the content of social beliefs,
control of material resources, and control
of the means of violence.
Institutions and Power
Pearson Publishing 2011
6. • Not all forms of power are
created equal. POLITICAL
POWER TRUMPS ALL
OTHERS.
• The institution that
embodies political power is
the state.
• Refers to a set of
organizations imbued
with sovereignty over a
given area through its
control of the means of
violence.
• One government, one
land, one law, one gun.
The State
Pearson Publishing 2011
Four distinct parts:
7. • Powers of states can be truly awesome.
• Groups struggle for control of the state and its powers.
• Groups that are successful in gaining control are said to
form the government.
• Government refers to the group of leaders in charge of
directing the state.
• Different from state, which is a set of organizations imbued
with sovereignty over a given area.
• The state is the car; the government is the driver.
• States are not all-powerful.
• May be challenged by other institutions: foreign
governments, institutions or groups within their borders.
The State
Pearson Publishing 2011
8. • Modernization Theory
• Argues that states arose as a result of the increasing division of labor;
need to solve coordination problems that came with society’s increasing
complexity.
• Portrays states as benign and stabilizing; peaceful and rational.
• Marxist Theory
• Dominant class uses the state and its monopoly over the means of
violence to impose its rule over subordinate classes.
• State represents the repressive apparatus which the dominant class wields
against other classes to cement its rule.
• Narrow theory.
• War Theory
• States developed in response to the extractive necessities of war.
The Origins of the State
Pearson Publishing 2011
9. • Groups struggle for control of the state BUT also for
the nature of the state.
• 1787 Constitutional Convention: what will the state
look like?
• Distribution of power within the state; groups seek to
empower those parts of the state in which they have
the most advantage.
• The way in which power is distributed within a state is
presented in its constitution.
• Constitutions are blueprints that display the state’s
architecture; “power maps” which may or may not be
accurate representations of power distributions.
Political Institutions
Pearson Publishing 2011
10. Unitary Systems
Federal Systems
• Power is concentrated at the
national level.
• Local levels of the state have little
autonomous power to raise
revenue, spend money, or make
their own policies.
• All sovereignty resides at the top.
• China, France, & Japan are
examples of unitary systems.
• More common than federal
systems.
• Constitutions divide sovereignty
between national & subnational
levels.
• Self rule locally combined with
shared rule at the national level.
• More fiscal independence.
• Control over their own
administrative agencies.
• Found predominantly among large
countries (U.S. and India)
• May be found in smaller countries
with intense ethnic, religious, and
linguistic cleavages.
Federal and Unitary Systems
Pearson Publishing 2011
11. • In federal political systems:
• The central state shares
sovereignty with lower
political units of the states.
• Regional governments can
raise their own revenue and
make their own policy.
• Lower state units have their
own officials, agencies and
administrative integrity.
• In unitary political systems
• Political power is
concentrated at the national
level.
• Subnational levels of the
state are primarily
administrative arms of the
central government.
• Lower levels of the state do
not have the power to levy
taxes or make policy.
In Brief: Federal & Unitary
Systems
Pearson Publishing 2011
12. • Political power distributed vertically: national and subnational levels.
• Also distributed horizontally among different branches of the state: the
legislature, executive, and judiciary.
• Legislatures appear under different names in different countries:
• U.S. – Congress; Britain – Parliament; France – the National Assembly.
• They all do the same thing: they are assemblies that approve of policies
on behalf of a larger political community that they represent.
• They do this in authoritarian countries, too, but offer participation
without power.
• Example: China – the National People’s Congress only passes those bills
proposed by the government and not a single bill from an individual deputy has
ever been enacted.
• Legislatures in democracies are more than rubber stamps. They actually
influence policy.
The Legislature
Pearson Publishing 2011
13. • Most legislatures are unicameral – meaning they have one chamber.
• The bicameral structure (two chambers) as is found in the U.S. House and
Senate is atypical.
• Where bicameralism exists, each chamber is based on a different principle of
representation. In U.S., the House is based on population, whereas the Senate has
equal representation for each state.
• Larger countries tend toward bicameralism; also more common in countries with
federal systems.
• Australia and Germany
• Advantage of unicameral legislature is that there is no second chamber to
delay, veto, or amend bills that the first chamber has already passed.
• Advantage of bicameralism: it can offer a broader basis of representation
than one chamber alone.
The Legislature
Pearson Publishing 2011
14. • Another comparative dimension to legislatures: internal
organization, particularly committee systems.
• A strong committee system is a good indicator of a legislature’s
power to influence policy.
• Clear jurisdiction and adequate resources permit their members to
specialize.
• U.S. committee system is exceptionally strong. Indicative of a very
powerful legislative branch.
• In practice, most legislatures today are reactive, not
proactive: they reject and modify bills, but do not often
propose their own.
• Respond to the executive rather than setting their own priorities .
The Legislature
Pearson Publishing 2011
16. • Legislatures tend to be powerful:
• When they have a strong committee system (expertise for
legislators).
• When parties are weak (no disciplined legislative
majorities)
• In some issue areas more than in others.
• Social welfare policy – areas that directly touch their
constituents
• Less so in foreign policy and economic policy – dominated by
the executive
The Legislature
Pearson Publishing 2011
17. • The executive branch is
supposed to elaborate,
coordinate, and
implement the
legislature’s decisions.
• Energy center of
government; agenda
setter
The Executive
Pearson Publishing 2011
• Three distinct parts of
the executive branch:
• Core executive, which
includes the ruling
government;
• The bureaucracy, which
is directly below the core
executive and includes
different departments and
agencies;
• The military, which
includes the armed forces.
18. The center of
the executive
branch is the
•
core
executive
•
.
The core executive includes all the
significant policy-making and
coordinating actors in the executive
branch, such as the president or prime
minister, members of their Cabinet, their
personal advisors, and senior civil
servants.
Apex – resolving disputes within it and
setting priorities for it.
Top of the core executive are its political
leaders: head of state (represents the
country) and the head of government
(directs the executive branch).
•
•
•
Positions can be one in the same (U.S.) or
separated into two (Britain).
Ministers come next – Cabinet
The Executive
Pearson Publishing 2011
19. • The core executive directs the bureaucracy.
• The bureaucracy is supposed to be an extension of the
government in power and its political leadership.
• They execute policy in an impartial and professional way.
• But often the executive has a hard time imposing its will on
the bureaucrats.
• Executive tries to get around this obstacle by strengthening
personal staffs and increasing the number of political
appointees who work in the bureaucracy.
• Spectrum: Democratic Republic of Congo to Great Britain
(cooperative loyalists versus highly professional civil
servants).
The Bureaucracy
Pearson Publishing 2011
20. • According to Max Weber, an eminent German sociologist,
the essential features of bureaucracies include:
• A division of labor in which people are given specific tasks
to perform;
• A hierarchy in which there is a clear chain of command; and
• A set of rules and regulations that govern the conduct of
people in positions and limit their discretion.
In Brief: Bureaucracy
Pearson Publishing 2011
21. • The military is just one specialized department within the bureaucracy
but it is special because it embodies the essence of the state and because
it controls the armed forces.
• Thus it can impose its will on other parts of the state.
• Nature of relationship:
• Civilians control military budget, command structure, and promotion and
assignment of commanders, but there is some deference to military self rule.
• Military may also inject itself into certain policy debates.
• Civilian control of military is more likely to exist in countries where both
state and military institutions are strong.
• Most of the developed world manifests this situation, but in developing
countries, states are weak and unable to maintain order. Military has more
influence.
• Civil-military relations can shift from the military having veto power
over the government to the military actually taking over the government.
The Military
Pearson Publishing 2011
22. • The judiciary is a
political institution that
is, theoretically, above
politics and outside of the
policy-making process.
• Role is to interpret the
laws; not make them.
• In authoritarian systems,
the powers of the
judiciary are very limited.
• Lacks independence and is
subordinate to the
executive.
The Judiciary
Pearson Publishing 2011
• The judiciary enjoys
more autonomy and
political power in
democracies.
• Judicial review, which
empowers courts to nullify
and invalidate laws that
they believe violate the
constitution. Controversial.
• Independence of justices
is important.
• Depends on how members
are selected, how long they
have tenure, and how
difficult it is to remove
them from the bench.
23. • “Judicialization of politics” – political disputes are settled
in courtrooms rather than legislatures.
• Intervention into politics
• Italian judges in the 1990s – Christian Democratic Party –
charges of corruption
• U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the 2000 Bush Gore presidential
election
• 2004 presidential election in the Ukraine: Supreme Court
nullified the results and mandated new elections that produced
a different winner.
• Policy makers increasingly legislate in the shadow of the
courts.
The Judiciary
Pearson Publishing 2011
24. Problem
Methods & Hypotheses
• Do people live better under one
set of institutions than another?
• Lijphart’s dichotomy:
• Lijphart ranked selected
democracies according to the degree
that their institutions conformed to
these two models and then
statistically compared their
economic, political, and social
performance.
• He hypothesized that consensus
democracies would produce better
results because their policies have a
broader base of support and not as
prone to abrupt policy shifts.
• Majoritarian democracies
(unitary system; unicameral
legislature; weak courts; strong
core executives) versus Consensus
democracies (federal systems,
bicameral legislatures, courts w/
judicial review and weak core
executives).
• So what? Do people live better
under majoritarian- versus
consensus-oriented institutions?
Comparative Political Analysis:
Does the Design of Political Institutions Make a Difference
in People’s Lives?
Pearson Publishing 2011
25. Operationalizing Concepts
Results
1.
•
2.
3.
Some of his proxies to test the relative
economic performance of
majoritarian and consensus
democracies included: average annual
growth in GDP, average annual rates of
inflation and unemployment levels.
His measures of political
performance were turnout rates in
elections, number of women holding
nat’l political office, and survey data
on citizen satisfaction with democracy
in their country.
Measure of social performance:
welfare state expenditures; foreign aid
contributions, pollution levels, and
prison incarceration rates.
•
•
He found that consensus democracies
performed better socially, and politically,
but there was no difference on economic
performance.
Consensus democracies did not have
more economic growth or lower
unemployment than majoritarian
democracies, although they (consensus
democracies) did a better job keeping
inflation in check.
Discussion: were the indicators
appropriate? Other tests needed? Why do
you think consensus democracies did
better on the political and social
indicators?
Comparative Political Analysis:
Does the Design of Political Institutions Make a Difference
in People’s Lives?
Pearson Publishing 2011
26. • State is the supreme authority within a country.
• Modern state emerged in response to the insecurity of the
international system.
• The form the states take is not neutral or innocent in its
effects. There are winners and losers depending upon
these arrangements.
• Political actors try to shape how power is distributed
because their success in influencing policy depends on
the state’s structure.
Conclusion
Pearson Publishing 2011
27. • The authors argued at the beginning of the chapter that
power takes three forms: economic, political and
ideological. Are these three forms of power equal? What
claims for preeminence can be made about each of them?
• Do states promote individual’s capabilities or restrict
them?
• If your country was just emerging and was writing a
constitution, how would you organize your political
institutions? What judicial, legislative, federal, and
executive arrangements would you create and why?
Critical Thinking Questions
Pearson Publishing 2011
28. • Over time, the legislative branch has lost ground to the
executive in almost all countries. Why has this happened
and is this state of affairs constructive or harmful?
• Since the military has all the guns, why don’t they take
over governments more frequently? Why does the
military accept civilian control in some countries while it
is reluctant to consent to it in others?
Critical Thinking Questions
Pearson Publishing 2011
