Comparative Politics

Lecture 15: Revision for Final Exam

Bogdan G. Popescu

bogdan.popescu@johncabot.edu

John Cabot University

Learning Outcomes, Skills, and Themes

Introduction

Learning Outcomes of the Course (Reminder)

Engage critically with questions falling under the headings

Use the comparative method for political topics

Understand the advantages and disadvantages of different theoretical frameworks and research methodologies

Think about theoretical arguments as well as empirical testing and evidence regarding such arguments

1. Engaging Critically with Questions

We covered thought-provoking questions and analyzed political phenomena such as:

When and why does ethnicity become politically salient?
How do electoral rules shape party systems and policy?
Why do parties form and what explains their persistence?
When does federalism accommodate diversity — and when does it deepen conflict?
How do clientelism and populism threaten democratic accountability?

You are (should be) able to analyze these topics from multiple perspectives and have a (more informed) opinion.

2. Using the Comparative Method

We explored a variety of topics using comparative analysis. For example, we:

Compared ethnic politics in Zambia vs. Malawi to show how borders shape identity (Posner)

Analyzed how electoral rules shape outcomes: UK, New Zealand, Sweden (Duverger, Boix)

Compared federal arrangements in India, Belgium, and Argentina (Stepan, Gibson)

Compared democratic erosion in Hungary vs. Venezuela (Mudde & Kaltwasser, Ginsburg & Huq)

3. Understanding Pros and Cons of Theories and Methods

We investigated a variety of theoretical frameworks, including:

Primordialism vs. constructivism for ethnic identity
Duverger’s law vs. social cleavage theory for party systems
Riker’s federal bargain vs. Stepan’s coming-together/holding-together federalism
Patronage-based vs. programmatic models of party–voter linkage
Economic grievance vs. status threat explanations of populism

4. Considering Theoretical Arguments and Empirical Evidence

We evaluated the applicability of theoretical frameworks to real-world contexts. For example, we:

Used Posner’s natural experiment to show political institutions — not culture — determine which ethnic identities become salient

Tested Duverger’s law against cases like India where FPTP produces multiparty systems (Cox)

Assessed whether Riker’s theory explains why some federations hold together while others fragment (Roeder, Stepan)

Evaluated whether Mudde & Kaltwasser’s thin ideology framework explains populism across Hungary, Venezuela, and Mexico

Skills Gained/Enhanced

Critical Thinking: evaluated pros and cons of different theories and methodologies
Analytical Skills: learned how research questions are formulated and answered using qualitative and quantitative data
Effective Communication: articulated your ideas verbally
Cultural Awareness: examined political phenomena in various global contexts — Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, Oceania

Week 9: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Political Identity

Week 9: The Construction Problem

Are ethnic identities fixed or built? Two views:

Primordialism: ethnic ties are ancient, deep, given — explains intensity of ethnic conflict
Constructivism: ethnic categories are produced by historical processes — explains variation over time and place

Key theorists:

Gellner (1983): nationalism is a product of industrialization, not ancient sentiment
Anderson (1983): nations are imagined communities — made possible by print capitalism
Brubaker (2002): reject “groupism” — ethnicity is not a thing but a perspective

Week 9: When Does Identity Become Political?

Posner (2004): Natural experiment in Zambia — same country, same people, different institutions.

Under one-party rule: tribal identities were politically salient
Under multiparty democracy (post-1991): linguistic identities became salient
Lesson: political institutions — not culture — determine which identities become salient

Wimmer (2008): Ethnic boundaries are actively made and remade through five strategies — expansion, contraction, inversion, repositioning, blurring (e.g., Belgium vs. Switzerland).

Week 9: Ethnic Conflict

Fearon & Laitin (2003): Ethnic diversity does not predict civil war — what matters is state weakness, rough terrain, and insurgency opportunities.

Horowitz (1985): Ethnic outbidding — moderate ethnic parties face flanking by extremists, ratcheting toward radicalization (e.g., Sri Lanka)
Yugoslavia: intermarriage for decades, then war within months — primordialist accounts cannot explain the timing

Week 9: Potential Questions

Are ethnic identities fixed or socially constructed? Discuss with reference to the theories covered in class.
Under what conditions does ethnic identity become politically activated? Discuss Posner’s natural experiment.

Week 10: Electoral Systems

Week 10: The Taxonomy

Two concepts do most of the work:

District magnitude — how many seats per district?
Electoral threshold — minimum vote share to win representation

Three families:

FPTP (plurality): single-member districts, winner takes all (UK, US, India)
Proportional Representation (PR): multi-member districts, seats proportional to votes (Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark)
Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP): combines both (Germany, New Zealand)

Week 10: Duverger’s Law

Duverger (1954): FPTP tends toward two parties; PR permits multiparty systems.

Two mechanisms:

Mechanical effect: small parties win votes but not seats under FPTP
Strategic/psychological effect: voters and elites anticipate this and coordinate

Scope condition: Duverger’s Law holds within districts — national party fragmentation can still exist under FPTP if cleavages are regionally concentrated (e.g., India, Canada).

Week 10: Electoral Systems and Policy

Iversen & Soskice (2006): PR → coalition government → center-left coalitions → higher redistribution. FPTP → single-party government → center-right wins → lower redistribution.

Boix (1999): Electoral systems are endogenous — incumbents adopt PR when facing rising challengers (e.g., Sweden 1907). Rokkan (1970): similar argument — PR adoption reflects social cleavage pressures, not just elite strategy.

The identification problem: if rules reflect political conditions, how do we isolate what the rules themselves cause? New Zealand’s 1993 referendum (voter-driven switch from FPTP to MMP) offers cleaner causal identification.

Week 10: Potential Questions

How do electoral systems shape party systems and policy outcomes? Discuss Duverger’s Law and its limitations.
Are electoral systems causes or consequences of political competition? Discuss with reference to Boix and Rokkan.

Week 11: Political Parties and Party Systems

Week 11: Why Do Parties Exist?

Aldrich (1995): Parties solve collective action problems — they coordinate candidates, pool resources, and create stable coalitions that individual politicians cannot.

Downs (1957): Parties are vote-maximizing firms — they position themselves on a left-right spectrum to capture the median voter.

Tension: Aldrich = policy-seeking (divergence); Downs = office-seeking (convergence)

Week 11: Cleavages and the Freezing Hypothesis

Lipset & Rokkan (1967): Party systems reflect four historical cleavages from two revolutions:

National revolution: center vs. periphery; state vs. church
Industrial revolution: urban vs. rural; owners vs. workers
By the 1920s, major cleavages were organized → parties “froze” the structure

Challenge: New cleavage dimension — GAL-TAN (Green/Alternative/Libertarian vs. Traditional/Authoritarian/Nationalist) — cuts across the old left-right axis. Kitschelt (1994) anticipated this shift.

Week 11: Party System Institutionalization

Cox (1997): Extends Duverger — strategic coordination occurs at entry and voting stages, not just mechanically.

Mainwaring & Scully (1995): In weakly institutionalized systems (Latin America), parties are volatile, programmatic commitment is low, and personalism dominates — Downsian logic breaks down.

Key insight: Party systems need both electoral rules and stable social cleavages to consolidate. Rules alone are insufficient.

Katz & Mair (1995): Established parties use state resources to insulate themselves — the cartel party — eroding competition and fueling anti-party sentiment.

Week 11: Potential Questions

Why do political parties exist? Discuss the main theoretical perspectives.
What explains the structure of party systems? Discuss the roles of cleavages and electoral rules.

Week 12: Federal Arrangements

Week 12: What Is Federalism?

Riker (1964): Government activities divided between central and regional governments, each with final authority in at least one area.

Federalism ≠ decentralization — Denmark is highly decentralized but unitary; Austria is federal but relatively centralized
Key institutional features: bicameralism, subnational constitutions, amendment rules requiring regional consent

Week 12: Origins — Why Federalism?

Riker (1964): The federal bargain

Units join federations when facing external threats
Leaders seek territorial expansion
Military motive is the key driver

Stepan (1999): Two paths

Coming-together: sovereign units pool authority (US, Switzerland)
Holding-together: center devolves power to prevent secession (India, Belgium, Spain)

Week 12: Promises and Risks

Three promises of federalism — and their dark mirrors:

Accommodation of diversity — but also risk of secession (Roeder, 2009: ethnofederalism strengthens separatist identities)
Checking power through veto points (Tsebelis, 2002) — but also risk of veto-point collapse when one party captures all levels (e.g., Hungary post-2010)
Policy experimentation (“laboratories of democracy,” Tiebout, 1956) — but also subnational authoritarianism (Gibson, 2012: local bosses capture state institutions)

Key lesson: Federalism is a channel, not a cause — its effects depend on the political configuration it operates within.

Week 12: Potential Questions

What is federalism, and why do countries adopt it? Discuss with reference to Riker and Stepan.
Does federalism strengthen or weaken democracy? Discuss the tradeoffs.

Week 13: Corruption, Clientelism, and Accountability

Week 13: Three Concepts, Often Conflated

Concept	Definition	Key feature
Corruption	Abuse of office for private gain	A transaction
Clientelism	Benefits exchanged for political support	A relationship
Patronage	Discretionary allocation of public jobs	An organizational resource

Source: Kitschelt & Wilkinson (2007). Conflating these → wrong policy prescriptions.

Week 13: Why Does Clientelism Persist?

Demand side (Stokes, 2005): poor voters prefer certain small transfers now — clientelism as insurance
Supply side: parties with weak programmatic credibility invest in targeted delivery instead
Nichter (2008): not vote-buying but turnout-buying — patrons pay supporters to show up, not opponents to switch
Brokers are the enforcement infrastructure, not cash

Week 13: The Low-Capacity Trap

Weak states → patrons fill gaps → patrons block reform → weak states persist.

Korea vs. Philippines:

Park: insulated technocrats, dismantled brokers — but via authoritarian means
Marcos: chose patronage to sustain regime survival

Ferraz & Finan (2008): Brazil’s random audits show information + elections = accountability — but clientelism undermines both.

Week 13: Potential Questions

What is clientelism, and why does it persist? Discuss demand-side and supply-side explanations.
Compare South Korea and the Philippines. What does this divergence reveal about escaping the low-capacity trap?

Week 14: Competition, Populism, and Democratic Erosion

Week 14: What Is Populism?

Mudde & Kaltwasser (2017): Populism is a thin ideology that pits a pure “people” against a corrupt “elite.”

Left populism: people = the dispossessed; elite = oligarchy (Chávez, Morales)
Right populism: people = the native majority; elite = cosmopolitans (Orbán, Trump, Le Pen)
The real contrast is populism vs. pluralism — populists reject institutional constraints on majority will

Week 14: Why Now? Demand-Side Explanations

Two competing channels:

Economic grievance (Colantone & Stanig, 2018): trade shocks from globalization → job losses in manufacturing regions → populist voting
Status threat (Mutz, 2018): cultural displacement and perceived loss of social standing drive populist support more than material hardship

Key insight: economic grievance ≠ populism. Grievance needs a populist frame to become politically mobilized.

Week 14: Populism and Erosion — The Connection

Ginsburg & Huq (2018): Democratic erosion through constitutional retrogression — incremental hollowing-out of institutions.

Populism and erosion are logically connected:

Populist logic: “the people” have spoken → institutions that check the majority are obstacles
This justifies court-packing, media capture, electoral manipulation — all framed as “the people’s will”

Builds on Week 6: Bermeo’s incremental backsliding + Scheppele’s executive aggrandizement via autocratic legalism — populism provides the legitimating narrative for these mechanisms.

Cases: Hungary (court packing, media capture, new constitution); Venezuela (Chávez packed supreme court, oil-funded patronage → full authoritarianism under Maduro); Mexico (AMLO’s INE budget cuts, 2024 judicial reform).

Week 14: Potential Questions

What is populism, and how does it differ from ordinary democratic politics? Discuss with reference to Mudde & Kaltwasser.
What explains the rise of populism in recent decades? Evaluate economic vs. cultural explanations.

The Exam

The Exam: Grading

The exam in relation to grading:

Contributions to Class 33%
Mid-term 33%
Final exam 33%

Contributions to Class (Reminder) Average of:

Presentation
Physical presence
Class participation
Questions submitted every week
Quality of questions

The Exam: Format

Format

Duration: one hour
Answer two from six questions
Write on the answer sheets provided

Grading Criteria

Criterion	Points
Answering the question	20
Empirical examples	20
Structure	20
Critical analysis	15
Definitions	10
References	10
Clarity of expression	5

Example Question and Answer

A Strong Answer

To what extent does modernization help explain why countries democratize?

Modernization theory, most associated with Lipset (1959), suggests that as countries become more economically developed, they are more likely to become and remain democratic. The mechanism runs through urbanization, education, and the emergence of a middle class that demands political participation.

However, Przeworski and Limongi (1997) challenge this by distinguishing between transition and survival: development may help democracies survive without actually causing transitions. Rich autocracies like Singapore and the UAE undermine the claim that development inevitably leads to democracy.

Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) offer an alternative: elites concede democracy not because of modernization per se, but when facing a credible revolutionary threat that cannot be defused by temporary promises. South Korea’s 1987 democratization fits this logic — organized labor created a credible threat — while Singapore’s state-managed economy prevented such mobilization.

In conclusion, modernization creates favorable conditions for democracy but does not determine outcomes. The structure of inequality, elite incentives, and institutional design matter at least as much as income levels.

Note: This is an idealized example — your answer does not need to be this polished to score well.

A Weak Answer

To what extent does modernization help explain why countries democratize?

Modernization theory says that when countries get richer they become more democratic. This makes sense because people who have more money want more freedom. We can see this in many countries around the world.

Some countries are rich and democratic, like the United States and France. Other countries are poor and not democratic. This shows that modernization theory is correct.

However, some people disagree with this theory. They think other things matter too. In conclusion, modernization theory is partly correct but not completely.

Why is this weak? No definitions, no specific references, vague empirical examples, no critical analysis, no counterarguments. It restates the question without demonstrating knowledge of the course material.

Criterion 1: Answering the Question (20 pts)

Question: “To what extent does modernization help explain…?”
Strong: “Modernization creates favorable conditions for democracy but does not determine outcomes.” — Takes a clear, qualified position.
Weak: “Modernization theory is partly correct but not completely.” — Vague; does not commit to a specific argument.

Criterion 2: Empirical Examples (20 pts)

Strong: Names Singapore, the UAE, and South Korea — specific countries used to support and challenge the theory
Weak: “Some countries are rich and democratic, like the United States and France” — generic examples that do not test the theory

Good empirical examples do analytical work — they support or challenge an argument, not just illustrate it.

Criterion 3: Structure (20 pts)

Strong answer structure:
1. Thesis answering the question
2. Definition of the key concept
3. Counterargument with evidence
4. Alternative theory with cases
5. Conclusion restating the position
Weak answer structure: Repeats the same point three times with no progression

A reader should be able to follow your argument paragraph by paragraph.

Criterion 4: Critical Analysis (15 pts)

Strong: Compares South Korea (democratized) and Singapore (did not) — two similar countries with different outcomes, directly testing the theory
Weak: No comparison, no tension, no challenge to the theory

Critical analysis means showing where a theory works and where it breaks down — not just saying “some people disagree.”

Criterion 5: Definitions (10 pts)

Strong: “The mechanism runs through urbanization, education, and the emergence of a middle class that demands political participation” — defines modernization theory precisely
Weak: “When countries get richer they become more democratic” — restates the label without defining the concept

Define the key terms before you analyze them. Show that you know what the theory actually claims.

Criterion 6: References (10 pts)

Strong: Cites Lipset (1959), Przeworski and Limongi (1997), Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) — three distinct sources used to build the argument
Weak: No authors mentioned at all

You do not need exact page numbers, not even years (although it would help) — but name the authors and connect their arguments to your answer.

Criterion 7: Clarity of Expression (5 pts)

This criterion rewards clear, understandable writing — not perfect grammar.

I am looking for: logical sentences, readable paragraphs, coherent flow
I am not penalizing: minor grammatical errors, imperfect phrasing, or spelling mistakes
If your argument is clear to the reader, you will receive full marks here

Good Luck!