Politics

Lecture 1: What is Politics?

- What is politics?
o Any groups not just governments.
1. Struggle in any group for…
a. Who gets what, when and how -> but this view overly focused on
material.
2. … for power that will give one or more persons the ability to make…
a. Authoritative allocations of values for a society.
b. David Easton: aspect of values; politics is mostly about physical
interests.
c. Values: material/non-material. -> determined by top-dogs/those in
power.
3. … make decisions for the larger group.
Ideal definition: Struggle in any group for power that will give one or more
persons the ability to make decisions for the larger group.
POLITICS IS ABOUT STRUGGLE.
Politics is about the ideas, the organisations (institutions) and the morality
(including legitimacy) of pursuing power at the public level, in all its forms and
varieties.
o Legitimacy different from popularity; governments can rule without
social emotion? Those in power are accepted, nonetheless.
Politics is above, personal and civil level.
- Political Power: ability to get others to do something that they would not
otherwise do.
o Key notion for every discussion on politics
Lecture 2:
Lecture 3:
Lecture 4: Nations and Society
- Ethnic Identity:
 o Specific attributes and social institutions that make group of people
culturally different from others.
▪ Institutions: organisation/activities -> self-perpetuating and valued
for their own sake: language, religion, customs, history, traditions.
o Based on customs, language, religion, etc
o Ascriptive: assigned at birth.
o Not inherently political.
o Concept of race incorporates elements of ethnicity, alongside dubious social
construct that biological differences are socially meaningful.
- National Identity:
o Sense of belonging to a nation and a belief in its political aspirations
▪ Nation: group that requires self-government, often through an
independent state.
o Often derived from ethnic identity
o Inherently political
o Basis of nationalism: pride in one’s people and belief they have a unique
political destiny.
- Citizenship:
o Individual’s relation to the state: citizen swears allegiance to the state and in
return the state provides certain benefits and rights.
o Purely political -> more easily changed than ethnic/national identity.
o Basis for patriotism: pride in one’s state and citizenship.
▪ Patriotism: pride in one’s political system, desire to defend it and
promote it. Emphasis on the state
- Political Ideologies:
o Political values regarding fundamental goals of politics
o 5 ideologies:
▪ Liberalism:
• Political attitude: slow, evolutionary change
• Political ideology outside North America: free market,
individualism, accepting greater inequality.
• Political ideology in North America: greater state role in
limiting inequality; many would consider this Social
Democracy
• Political-economic system: limited state role in the economy
▪ Communism
▪ Social Democracy
• Us survived Social Democracy
o Tradition of liberalism too strong?
 o Political culture explanation: founding ideals
emphasised individua liberty over state power ->
scepticism towards state-supported equality.
o Emphasis on individualism weakened working-class
solidarity needed for formation of social democratic
parties.
▪ Fascism
▪ Anarchism
o Universalistic: not specific to one country or more
o Distinct from political attitudes
Liberalism Communism Social Democracy Fascism Anarchism

State -> neutral State control over all State with strong One-man rule State -> threat to
regarding resources produce capacity to ensure by dictator in freedom and
conceptions of true economic greater economic one-party equality
good life equality at expense equality: job state
of human freedom protection, social
benefits
Priority on Freedoms are Equality requires Rejects both Personal freedom
economic & meaningless when limitations on freedom and and social
political freedom granted on the freedom: equality equality for all
condition that people regulation of
do not change the market, taxation
status quo

Maximum Individual liberty Individual liberty Society -> State protects

liberty: free give way to needs of complementary to organic body vested interest and
speech, society equality with different curtails freedom
association elements
ruling over
others
Limited degree of Inevitable struggle Strong role for High degree Private property
autonomy, over economic private ownership of state leads to inequality
controlled and resources, small and market forces, autonomy
checked by group of people but also equality and capacity:
public wield power over absolute
market and sate and control over
exploit society as a society and
whole economy
Liberal Liberal democracy: Replace state with

- -
democracy: bourgeois democracy self-government
political system of workers and
which promotes peasants, and
participation, collective
competition, ownership
liberty, individual
freedom and
human rights
Human race Abolishment of

- - -
divided into state and private
superior and property
inferior
human beings

- Political Culture:
o Basic norms for political activity in society.
o Determining factor in what ideologies will dominate a country’s
political regime.
o Unique to a country or given group.
o Distinct from political attitudes and ideologies.
 o 4 types/variations:
▪ Traditional: religion, family, deference to authority, national
pride
▪ Secular-national: not so much focus on those values
▪ Survival: economic and physical security, low level of trust
▪ Self-expression: high-level of tolerance; demands for individual
participation

Lecture 5: Youth and Social Change

- Crisis:
o Political apathy
o Democratic deficit: low voter turnout
o Limited focus on voting, party membership
- Establishment reaction to Youth Engagement
o Authoritarian leader: children used in someone’s shady interest (Putin)
o Conservative leader: let kids be kids, we’ll do the work (Morrison)
o Liberal leader: this radicalism polarises society (Macron)
o Co-optation: I’m with the kids BUT approves pipelines through indigenous
territories (Trudeau)
- Political participation: both individual and collective shared values and
actions (online and irl) in public and in private -> seek to maintain or bring
change to political, societal or environmental contexts within a community,
locally, nationally or globally.
- Defining political participation:
o Period sensitive: depends on time in history as definitions evolve to prevail
social, economical, technological and political contexts.
o Ex: 1960’s Student Movements: Japan, Germany
o Beholder sensitive: depends on who is doing the defining.
o Period and beholder sensitive: limited viewpoints: Taiwan
▪ Taiwan’s embrace of democracy and human rights -> successful
adoption of western political structures
▪ BUT actually in Confucianist thought always strain of thinking that
emphasised humane -> these ideas played important role in drafting
of UDHR
- Framing political participation:
o Political science: emphasis generally placed on quantitative work.
o Political sociology: importance placed on qualitative work.
- Conventional and unconventional politics:
o Conventional: voting in elections, member of political party, work for
party, belong to trade union, reading about politics, take part in discussion
about politics.
o Unconventional: acts carried to contest and influence traditional forms of
political science: sign a petition, protest, demonstrations, boycott, take part
in unofficial strike, refuse to pay rent or tax
- Elite-directed activities: voting, political party membership, stand for
office.
- Elite-directing activities: take part in political discussion, protesting,
demonstrating, boycott, striking unofficially.
- What is Politics?
o Narrow definition:
▪ Voting
▪ Election campaign for political parties
▪ Taking part in communal activities
▪ Contacting decision-makers
o Broader definition: all voluntary activities by individual citizens intended to
influence either directly or indirectly political choices at various levels of
the political system.
- Types of POWER:
o Positional: power wielded by virtue of authority of one’s position
o Relational: derived from charisma, interpersonal trust, solidarity
o Expertise: derived from value within an organisation based on specialised
insight
- Why aren’t young people involved in state-based/electoral politics?
o Political Alienation Theory
▪ Lack of youth participation has to do with:
• Perceptions about being excluded from politics.
• But also their lack of interest and understanding of politics.
▪ Young people do not feel listened and view politicians as
untrustworthy, self-interested, ineffective, remote and
unrepresentative.
▪ Young people find the business of politics uninviting and
irrelevant.
▪ Elitist nature of political system alienates them.
▪ Austerity politics: using taxpayer money to bail out banks while
cutting out of work benefits.
o Opportunity structures:
▪ Most people are seeking to participate politically.
▪ The course they choose depends on the structures made available to
them.
▪ Also shaped by beliefs and sentiments: do they feel they can
succeed?
- DIO Politics: Do-it-Ourselves political participation
o Young people take the initiative to participate offline and online with other
like-minded citizens.
o They find a specific issue particularly important to them, leading to
political participation and engagement.
o Ex: Black Lives Matter, War in Ukraine
- Online vs Offline Activism: Slacktivism
o Slacktivism: feel-good online activism that has zero political or social
impact.
o BUT selectivism: critiques that people only express their opinion in online
area.
▪ This phenomenon does not take in consideration the actual impact
online participation can have.
▪ People in the online medium are more likely to participate in an
event, donate, sign a petition.
o This in relation to 2011 protests:
▪ New technologies (Twitter, YouTube) and smart phones used for
mobilisation.
 ▪ For most part, actions initiated by individuals and small groups
rather than existing political parties, labour unions or political
organisations (structures/institutions with actual influence)
▪ Actions primarily driven by people’s desire to voice their
disapproval rather than by desire to achieve a specific goal.

Lecture 6: Developing Countries

- Developing Countries:
o Middle Income Countries:
▪ Latin America and Asia
▪ Strong rates of economic growth and democratisation
▪ Between $4000 and $13000 GPD/capita at PPP
o Lower Income Countries:
▪ Weak or weakening economic and political structures.
▪ Also known as less-developed countries
▪ Bellow $4000 GDP/capita at PPP
- Imperialism and Colonialism:
o Empires: single political authorities that have under their sovereignty many
external regions or territories and different people
▪ Central to this definition is the idea that lands and people that are not
seen as an integral part of the country itself are nonetheless under its
control.
o Imperialism: system where a state extends its power to directly control
territory, resources and people beyond its borders. -> gathering and
management of an empire
o Colonialism: to a greater degree the physical occupation of a foreign
territory through military force, businesses, or settlers. -> a means to
consolidate one’s empire.
o Exports of Imperialism/Colonialism:
▪ State -> institutions
▪ Identities
▪ Dependence
- Institutions of Imperialism:
o Export and imposing of the state.
o Imposition of modern political, societal and economic systems onto non-
Western societies -> important effect seen in the present as well.
o Bureaucratic structures of “home country” imposed on local populations.
 o Little democratic practices or political rights for natives of the occupied
countries.
o New borders -> shape of colonial ambitions rather than pre-existing
realities.
o Externally imposed arbitrary boundaries -> demarcations of newly
independent postcolonial countries (borders from colonial era were kept
after the states gained independence -> territorial conflicts)
- Social Identities:
o Make colonial population controllable.
o Ethnic and national identities created where sometimes none existed before
colonialism.
o Basic rights tied to these classifications.
o New hierarchies further exacerbated -> nonindigenous people started
moving to colonies.
o Ethnic and racial divisions sharpened.
o Inequality connected to race.
o BUT new concepts of nationalism and sovereignty provide people with
means to challenge foreign rule.
o Gender roles often imposed on colonised countries.
- Dependent Development:
o Dramatic economic change.
o Transformation of traditional agriculture to accommodate needs of
industrialising capitalist home-country.
o Cash economies replaced systems based on subsistence agriculture and
barter.
o “Extractive Economies”: cotton, tea, wood.
o Revenue extraction from colonies and export destination for finished goods
from home country. -> destruction of indigenous trade networks.
o Negative consequences for domestic development.
o Infrastructure developed to facilitate extraction and export -> not benefit
local population.
o Jobs in extractive sector –> limited local industrialisation and
entrepreneurship.
o Large scale agricultural production for exports -> drove farmers away from
their land and damaged ability to feed population -> large scale
urbanisation.
- Challenges of Post-Imperialism:
o Building state Capacity and Autonomy:
 ▪ Capacity: ability of state to wield power to carry out basic tasks:
defending territory, making and enforcing rules, collecting taxes,
managing the economy.
▪ Autonomy: ability of the state to wield its power independently of
public or independent actors/Practical ability to act on sovereignty,
independence.
o Developing Countries: Capacity
▪ Little capacity.
▪ Often unable to carry out basic tasks: infrastructure, education,
healthcare.
▪ Absence of professional bureaucracy in wake of independence.
▪ Politicization of the state: bureaucracy as source of jobs and
resources.
▪ Clientelism: giving benefits to a particular person/group in
exchange of support.
▪ Rent-seeking: giving preferential access to public goods that should
be distributed non-politically.
▪ Patrimonialism: one group dominates the state while effectively
freezing other groups out of the political process.
o Developing Counties: Autonomy
▪ Little autonomy.
▪ Often the state is penetrated by groups that see it as a resource to be
exploited rather than as a tool to achieve national policy.
▪ Sometimes also constrained by other powerful states and
international actors: UN, NGO’s, World Bank.
- Corruption and Economic Growth: China, Nigeria and Mexico
o China: why high level of economic growth despite corruption? -> high
level of autonomy and capacity due to authoritarian structure.
▪ Strong capacity due to:
• Centralised institutions and relatively meritocratic
bureaucracy.
• Strong central state -> able to fight back against corruption at
least on local level.
o Mexico and Nigeria:
▪ “Resource curse”: phenomenon of countries with an abundance of
natural resources having less economic growth, less democracy, or
worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural
resources. -> oil resources allow leaders to be rich, but not rest of
population/country.
 ▪ Democratisation: shift from authoritarian “patrimonialism” to
democratic “clientelism”. -> expanded circle of corruption rather
than exterminating it.
▪ States lacked capacity and institution accountability to tackle
government corruption.
- Creating Nations and Citizens
o Pre-colonial ethnic/class distinctions = colonial favouritism = postcolonial
class/ethnic distinctions.
o Colonial divide + rule around ethnicity + religion = ethnic and religious
tensions.
o Challenge: forging a single nation out of diverse societies.
o Group divisions -> economic implications.
o Ethnic and religious divisions -> complicate politics.
o Groups try to take control of state for own ends and access to resources.
o Resulting social divisions -> difficult to create a single national identity,
weakens notion of citizenship.
- Generating Economic Growth
o Under imperialism: economic modernisation in developing countries ->
needs of home country.
o Neo-colonialism: after independence, postcolonial nation produces raw
resources in return for finished products -> continuous economic
dependence on former colonial empire
▪ Basically, if they want to get a wooden table, the postcolonial nation
will produce and export the wood as raw material to its former
coloniser. The coloniser will produce the actual table in their
country, and they will sell it to the former colony. Postcolonial
countries do not produce finished products for themselves.
▪ Breaking this cycle -> core concern upon independence of
developing countries.
o Mercantilism: import substitution often leading to “middle income trap”
(a situation whereby a middle-income country is failing to transition to a
high-income economy due to rising costs and declining competitiveness),
or export-oriented industrialisation (trade and economic policy aiming to
speed up the industrialization process of a country by exporting goods for
which the nation has a comparative advantage.)
o Structural adjustment: reducing state intervention and opening country to
foreign investment.
 ▪ Structural adjustment programs consist of loans provided by the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to countries that
experience economic crises.

- Making a More Effective State

o Often countries fairing the worse are likely to have a presidential system
with limited democratic accountability.
o Developing power -> way to tackle corruption and increase state
legitimacy.
▪ But devolution -> intensify conflicts if it encourages regional or
ethnic parties which can increase political polarisation.
o Shared sovereignty: arrangement in which international organisations play
a more direct role in building and maintaining political institutions.
o Institutionalising the rule of law -> without it: elections = contest to gain
control over resources.
▪ Achieve through:
• Rules: judicial reform, police and civil services reform, anti-
corruption measures.
• Norms: political elites must have a commitment to
institutional change and abide by judicial and electoral
outcomes.
 • Social actors: civic groups/individuals transmitting and
promoting values, often on social movements or NGO’s.
- Developing Political Engagement
o Neglected due to emphasis on economic development.
o Civil society: organised life outside of state -> binds people together ->
web of interests that cut across class, race, ethnicity.
▪ Can hold politicians accountable. Accountability is key: monitoring
achievements of political leaders and state -> social movements
central to this.
▪ But organised groups -> target for clientelist politics.
- Promoting Economic Prosperity
o Informal economy:
▪ Local services, agriculture, manufacture.
▪ Economy not regulated, protected or taxed by state.
• Self-employment or small enterprises.
▪ Why people choose this?
• Do not identify with the nation.
• State -> corrupt and inefficient.
• Hostility towards women in workplace -> discourage
employment outside of the home (think of social reproduction
and women unpaid labour from FPE)
• Lack of recognised assets and collateral -> cannot borrow
against these and grow.
▪ Can represent up to 50% of country’s GDP.
▪ Associated with weak states unable to regulate economy or prevent
corruption.
▪ Micro-credit: small loans made to small business.
- Challenges of Development:
o Legacy of colonialism.
o Fusion of local institutions with those of imperial powers led to:
▪ Weak sates.
▪ Conflict over ethnicity.
▪ Nation.
▪ Religion.
▪ Gender.
o Incomplete and distorted forms of industrialisation.
o Low levels of freedom and equality.
o Little evidence about what works and what does not work.
o Answer: Globalization?
Lecture 7: Authoritarianism
- Non-Democratic Regimes: Totalitarian and Authoritarian Rule
1) Defining non-democratic/authoritarian rule
- Nondemocratic regimes in terms of what they deny their citizens: meaningful
participation, competition and liberty -> O’Neil.
o Public plays no significant role in selecting or removing leaders from
office.
o Leaders -> leeway to develop and execute politics:
▪ Non-transparent -> can lie.
▪ Non-accountable -> can’t be held accountable. No democratic
accountability.
▪ No fixed terms.
o Individual/collective freedoms restricted.
o Power -> exercised by a few, unbound by public or constitutional control.
- Non-democratic governance is the norm – Democracy is not.
o Democratic governance -> rare throughout history.
i. Democracy-authoritarian distinction -> back to Aristotle:
a. Rule by the one, few (intellectuals) or many (democracy)
b. Genuine (common interest: kingship, aristocracy) or perverted
(own interest: tyranny, oligarchy, democracy) rule.
ii. Democracy -> inherent positive connotation, BUT not natural
political state of affairs
a. Most of history: democracy -> non-existent or limited to a small
part of the world; democracy corelated with certain socio-
economic context.
b. Non-democracy -> run whole spectre of wealth and
modernization; non-democracy present in all kinds of contexts.
iii. Democracies highlight their superior nature, BUT
legitimacy/security van be challenged from without (Stalin, Hitler)
and from within (populism)
iv. Authoritarian regimes -> claim democratic legitimacy; authoritarian
regimes enjoy traditional and charismatic legitimacy, BUT in China,
a part of the communist party’s legitimacy is partially rational-legal.
Most democracies enjoy a considerable amount of legitimacy
(rational-legal).
BUT: legitimacy vs non-legitimacy ≠ democracy vs non-democratic
regimes.
a. Max Weber’s 3 basic forms of legitimacy:
 i. Traditional
ii. Charismatic
iii. Rational-legal
b. Distinction between 3 more types of legitimacy:
i. Input: shared values.
ii. Throughput: concerning fair and reasonable procedures
and institutions for decision making.
iii. Output: results.
2) Totalitarianism
3) Varieties of contemporary authoritarian rule
4) Political transition and regime change – why do authoritarian regimes fall or
last; why does democratization succeed or fail?
5) Post-Cold War democratization and ‘hybrid’ regimes: Domestic and
international dimensions
Lecture 8:
Lecture 9:
Lecture 10:
Lecture 11:
Lecture 12: