IPOL 7: Democracy through elections

• Democracy and elections: A ‘match made in heaven’?

o “The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political
decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a
competitive struggle for the people’s vote”- Joseph Schumpeter (1942)
§ Linking democracy and elections
§ People are sovereign
§ Meaningful vote between different alternatives
§ Multiple options for voter to choose
§ Through these election powers is given to representatives
§ Representative democracy as a model
§ Elections are crucial methods to arrive at representative democracy
§ Is the mean where citizens can give power to representatives in
parliament or candidates.
• Most countries hold elections
• Many of these elections are not democratic to contemporary standards
• Hence, elections are a necessary, but not a sufficient feature of democracies.
o Brunei doesn’t organize elections
• How to make elections democratic?
o Transparency: vote counting, control (citizens can check this control)
o It must be competition, more than one alternative to choose
o Political equality
o State cannot interfere to make one candidate win or have more support than the
other
o Free and fair elections: individual votes
• In democracies elections are:
o Periodic: it occurs in a regular basis to prevent people in power to decide when
or not there should be an election
§ Citizens are sovereign
§ US example: Every 1st Tuesday of November they are elections
o Inclusive: Universal suffrage
§ Every person can vote, it doesn’t care its ethnicity, gender, social status,
education
• Women in Switzerland get to vote in 1971
• In Australia in 1967, indigenous were not allowed to vote
• South Africa in 1994, non-whites were not allowed to vote
• Afghanistan 2004
 • Saudi Arabia in 2015 give some women the chance to vote
o Competitive:
§ A lot of parties compete to reach to power
• In China this don’t happen
• China is getting more control over Hong Kong, citizens can elect just a 20% of the
candidates of the council in Hong Kong, before they got 50%, so the state has control.
It’s not a competitive free choice
• Lower the voting age to 16, no taxation without representation.
o In history, universal suffrage starts at 25 years old
• In the US you vote for a specific candidate for your district, but this district is re drawn
to exclude certain groups in societies in order to generate majorities and therefore,
affect competitivity.
• US prisoners:
o Most of countries have a law that people with psychological problems are unable
to vote
o Most of us prisoners are Hispanic and Black, and they don’t have the right to
vote, and, in some states, you don’t even get this right when you are released,
and it is difficult to get this right back.
• What are the functions of elections in democracies?
o We select our representatives, and we hope they represent our policy
preferences and us as citizens, that they mirror the diversity existed in society,
reflect our background characteristics.
o Influence policy outcomes
o Legitimacy
o Determine dominant conflicts in politics
§ Social-class conflict between us as a group (how we think of a welfare
state)
§ Determine what conflict are most important, and what we think as group
identities, in elections the two most important candidates are of the sides
of this conflict
o Give direction to policymaking
o Select representatives, and hold them accountable for their elections
o Also: community building, discussion, education, expression
• Electoral systems: just translating votes into seats?
o Institutional rules for orderly elections
§ Behave differently depending on electoral system
o Shape societal and political outcomes
§ The way we interact with other countries
 § The way we treat each other
o Shape the behavior of parties and voters
• Almost all the Anglo countries have a majority system
• Almost all the colonies of countries that have majoritarian system have a majoritarian
system
o Working with a system you know
• Proportional representation system in continental Europe and their colonies in Latin-
American countries
• Plurality versus PR systems
o Majoritarian system
§ Clear governmental mandate
§ Forming a government is very easy (the electoral system produces this
government)
§ Easy to determine the responsible for policy outcomes, easy to show
dissatisfaction
o Proportional system
§ Good representation of voter preferences
• In terms of preferences and backgrounds (gender, religion,
ethnicity)
§ Difficult to determine the responsible for policy outcomes, difficult to
show dissatisfaction (because parties in coalition governments changed
coalitions with new parties in next elections)
o If three parties compete for a seat in district in a plurality system, what is the
smallest percentage of votes which they can win the seat?
§ 34%
o If a country’s parliament consist of 100 such districts, what is the smallest
percentage of the total vote which a party can win a parliamentary majority?
§ 51 seats
• The other 49 seats don’t matter
• Why vote?
o Voting as irrational:
§ No clear benefits
• No being able to influence the outcome in an individual
perspective
• Benefits: electing the candidates of your preference which enact
the ideas you want
• How do I know if candidates would represent my interests?
§ But clear costs
 • Transport, registration, inform yourself
§ Minimal impact on outcome
o Collective action problem
§ They don’t want to vote because they think their individual vote doesn’t
make a change
§ In a proportional system this is worst as they interest are reduced in
coalition governments
o Why they don’t vote:
§ No faith, no trust in politicians or parties
§ They don’t believe their vote make a difference
§ It doesn’t match with their ideas
§ The opportunity cost is not worth it
§ Not interested in politics
§ They don’t care about the outcomes.
o Awareness of consequences of ‘free rider’ behavior
§ If everyone is a free rider, we don’t have a collective good
o Civic duty, loyalty to the system
§ Showing that we care about the democratic system even if we know that
we have a minimal impact.
o Social pressure
o Routinized behavior (tends to become a habit)
§ Once you don’t go to vote, it is likely you never will go
• Factors that explain turnout
o 65.3% global average voter turnout in 2018
o Countries with short history of being a democracy has a low turnout
o Costs and benefits associated with an election
o Benefits
§ What is at stake?
• In Europe for European parliaments for example
§ What impact can vote have on outcome?
o Costs
§ Effort to get informed and vote
• How to vote, understand an electoral system
§ Financial costs
o No interest, no knowledge, no efficacy, no political trust
o Education level and social class
§ People that have higher level of knowledge, have more confident to go to
vote
 o Age and generation
§ Older voters have a strongly civic duty under their experience with
compulsory voting in the past (even though voting is not anymore
compulsory)
§ Younger voters have less identification with voting and therefore their
interests are less represented
• It’s not a normative requirement to have political thought to vote, but it’s more likely
that people with this skill will go to vote
• Explanations for voting behavior
o Sociological model (bottom up)
§ Group identity (shared characteristics in society)
§ Political preferences, and hence voting behavior, are influenced by group
identity
• Students that support education funding and therefore their
political preferences are the candidates that address education
issues
• Social class
• Religion
• Ethnicity
§ 4 traditional cleavages
• Owner vs workers
• Church vs state (religious vs secular)
• Urban vs rural
• Centre vs periphery
o Political and cultural center (Washington) with other
states (Wyoming)
• Formed around 1900
§ Dealignment versus realignment
§ New cleavages around...Education? Generation? Urban-rural and center-
periphery divide?
o Social psychological model (bottom down)
§ Political preferences, and hence voting behavior, are influenced by party
identification
§ Political socialization by parents
o Sociological versus social psychological model
§ VS in the US: identification with party
§ Europe (most multiparty systems): identification with ideology
§ Stability between blocs of parties, changes in these ‘blocs’
 o Economic model
§ Electoral market of:
• Demand: voters’ preferences for policies
• Supply: parties’ offer of policies
§ Assumptions:
• Actors behave rationality
o Want maximize profit by maximizing votes
• Voters want to influence policymaking
• Parties want votes (to govern and influence policymaking)
§ Requires that voters have detailed information about the policy
preferences of voters
§ Getting informed is costly
§ Ideology can be a shortcut to reduce costs
• If you are left wing, you just focus on a side
§ Rational choice based on issue stances
• Strategic voting:
o Voting for a party that is not your preferred choice
§ To not waist your vote
§ To influence to composition of the government
§ Requires that votes have information about the polls
• Voting as a multi-stage process:
o Stable ‘consideration sets’
§ Ideology
§ Structural factors
o Instable choice within ‘consideration sets’
§ Party leader
§ External events
§ Strategic voting
• Conclusion:
o Voting is central activity in democracy
o But what individual vote expresses is far from certain
o Institutional context matters

IPOL 8: Get organized! Political parties and social movements

• United states:
o Democratic party
o National Rifle association
 § Defending the interest of those who manufacture weapons or those who
support the use of weapons.
• Effective in lobbying, in influencing congressional debates about
these issues
o Civil rights movement in the 1960s which help black citizens to get civil rights like
to enter as the same school with white people.
§ Put these issues into agenda
o Similarities of the last 3 points: hierarchical organization, all have and agenda
and political aims, made up of members
• Parties, movements, interest groups
o Shared characteristics
§ Intermediaries between society and the state
• We need organization that link the government with society
(what groups want)
§ Represent general or group interests
• Speak on behalf of their members
o NRA
§ Have a say in the organization and being
represented by their officials like in the lobby
congress
• Represent group of citizens or the whole society
• Representation takes place in elections
• Representation in parties is less evident than in social movements
since there is no formal link
§ Articulate demands
• Legislation, making policy or acknowledging the existence or
interest of groups or putting issues on the agenda
• In doing so, they have a challenge
o Cost of voting for example
§ Collective action problem
• High risk of free riding
• For individual citizens joining this organizations are not rational
o Parties, movements, and interest groups generate ‘collective goods’
o Rational not to participate on basis of cost-benefit calculation
§ If NRA get a law, where they could carry a weapon freely, it benefits the
whole society
§ Civil rights movement, even if you don’t support the movement, you get
benefit by the changes in the legislation they have pushed through.
 § Altruistic decisions to join them
o Solution: offering individual incentives
• Student Union ASVA:
o Their members consider it as interest group as it represents the claims of
student and articulate demands for improve the quality of student education.
§ Incentive: give them a bike
o Protest for policy measures to improve the life of student
§ Protests online teaching
o Protest for collective goods (better housing, better quality of teaching)
o It provides an incentive (free rider problem): a bike, free courses, legal aid if you
have a problem as a student, borrow materials) to evade the free rider problem
(and the collective action problem).
• Resource mobilization theory:
o The more resources an organization has, the more successful it will be in
achieving its objectives
o Resources:
§ Members or supporters (income and labor)
• People that support the movement, financial contributions
through membership for example.
• Member of political parties that go to stations to influence the
people’s vote (Human capital)
§ Organizational strength
§ Public support, solidarity
§ Social network
• Association/interest group: organized group of people that aims to influence the policies
or actions of government
o Through lobbying
o Want to influence the government from outside by talking with government
representatives.
• Political party: organized group of people that aims to form the government, usually
through elections
o Influence policy making from the inside
o Elections need to be democratic
• Social movement: loosely organized group of people that aims to collectively achieve a
social goal/social change
o Citizens that team up together without an any formal organization structure. Try
to achieve social change. Getting the issue into the agenda, influencing fellow
citizens so they can support the cause.
• Interest groups and political parties shared an organized structure. They can make a list
of their members. Social movements don’t, anyone could join this movement without
creating a link.
• Interest groups and political parties have a formal membership, while social movements
don’t
• Political parties and social movements have a broad focus (ideology, world view that
address issues) while the interest groups have a narrow focus and issue based (national
rifle association for example, where they want to get weapons)
• Interest groups and political parties have a conventional behavior strategy (promote
activities from conventional behavior which are ways to influence the system within in
like lobbying, petitioning, voting in elections), where interest groups show this through
lobbying petitioning and political parties show it through electoral mobilization.
Contrarily, social movements, use an unconventional behavior (protest, boycotts,
strikes) shown in extra parliamentary mobilization, design to pressure politics from the
outside.
• Social parties and political parties have collective incentives (big policy changes).
Interest groups have individual incentives specially in the case of sectional interest
groups (employment position for example).
• Theory vs reality
o Climate march in Amsterdam this weekend (40,000 people attend)
§ Social movement as it addresses issues related to climate change, where
they want to put it in agenda to change legislation and to change the
mind of the citizens to make them aware of this issues and fight for a
change.
§ Anyone can join without any membership
§ Under this social movements they were a lot of political parties and
interest groups that participate.
• Dutch parties and environmental aid, health care group, etc.
§ Social movements can be comprised from different interest groups and
political parties.
o Greenpeace looks like an interest group
§ You can be a member
§ Try to influence policy making through lobbying, concerns in climate and
environmental regulation
§ On one hand it lobbies politics and on the other hand they use
unconventional behavior
§ Use unconventional behavior, they obstruct vessels, occupy the oil
platform, parachuted into stadiums.
 § They have more characteristics of a social movement
o Dutch politics are very fragmented (SGP, 50 plus and BBB)
§ In a sense they are political parties, but they have sectarist interest (50
plus represent older citizens, BBB represents rural citizens and the SGP
represents orthodox citizens)
§ This doesn’t mean that their focus is narrowed, they still speak on issues
of different issues, but they are determined but the group they
represent.
o During the financial crisis there was a social movement in Spain, occupied activist
campaign outside the stock exchange in Spain to protest the capitalist system.
Spain was strongly affected by the financial crisis.
§ This social movement cause the creation of a political party (Podemos)
§ The conclusion was that the kinds of social changes that the movement
was aiming for could only be realize through parliamentary means and
elections
o Trump elected by a republic ticket, but once in office he creates asocial
movement to exert pressure outside policies.
o Reality is messy, create judgements based on the characteristics we have, but it
is not a minimal requirement.
• Political parties in democracies and autocracies
o A political party are “Any political group identified by an official label that
presents at elections, and is capable of placing though elections candidates for
public office” Giovanni Sartori (1976:63)
§ Political parties that candidates use as vehicles to get to power also fit
this definition.
§ Under this definition, the Chinese communist party is a party, it doesn’t
need to be democratic
o In democracies: political parties are organization through which representatives
are democratically elected
§ Elected by citizens and party members (the process of becoming a
candidate and then a representative)
o In most democratic countries, the position of political parties is anchored in
constitution and parties are bound by legislation
§ Political parties are not equivalent to sports clubs or other associations, it
protects political parties from state interference (like the free
organization of parties and free competition)
§ Netherlands doesn’t protect political parties, little legislation about this
party which make them quite vulnerable.
 o Programmatic function
§ Articulation and aggregation of interests, formulating of ideology and
program
§ Identify the concerns that citizens have
§ Specifically in citizens they seek to represent (50 plus party with old
people in terms of pensions and health care)
§ Weight the interests and see if they can reconcile them into a coherence
in a vision of the world or give priority to some interest.
§ Bring all the demands together and make them fit in a coherent narrative
of the ideal society they want to achieve and what kind of policy they
need to imposed.
o Mobilization function
§ Socialization and integration of voters, communication, and mobilization
of voters
§ Make society engaged to parliamentary decisions or into their ideology,
give them or shaped their identity.
• Through debates
o Selection function
§ Recruitment, selection, and training of representatives
• Recruit members to have a large pool of candidates to selections
and train them to select the right ones to selections. Who
represents citizens best and who has the best qualities as
representatives?
• Do autocracies fulfill these functions?
o Mobilization function less important as they are other ways for them to achieve
power like in Rwanda
o They claim to fulfill these functions, but they not compared with democracies
o In autocracies: political parties are organizations through which an authoritarian
leader gains power through elections and then make the country less democratic
creating an autocratic regime.
o Party and state overlap substantially
§ In autocracies the party and the state become one
• Political parties in autocracies:
o They maintain the proggamatic function because most of the ruler parties have
an ideology that they want to enact.
§ They claim to act on behalf of the interests of a group (working class) but
this rarely happens.
o Mobilization function, no because the state and the party overlap
 o Selection function yes, the recruitment of members that went up to the
organization and are advocated the ideology. The difference is that less citizens
can apply to this selection process.
o Staying in power through patronage, corruption, clientelism, to keep the
authoritarian regime intact.
• Types of parties, their origins, and functions
o Cadre parties (+-1860)
§ Countries with parliaments and elections
§ However, in most of these countries voting rights were just for men with
a certain age and status. Small electorate that chooses representatives.
§ They were no political parties
§ Collaboration between groups of like-minded representatives if you want
to collaborate with the rest of representatives
§ Groups loosely organized around the idea of the general interest
• No party labels or party organizations
• Not basis on an ideology
o Parliamentarians think they were collectively acting for the
interest of the whole society
§ Groups try to restrict outsider access
• They thought they were acting in a correct full way, so universal
suffrage wasn’t necessary
• Progressively more men have rights to vote
§ Develop into political factions campaigning in elections and obtain
features of party
• Forza Italia, no ideology, no strong organization
o Mass parties (+-1900)
§ Mass parties originated as social movements
• Labor groups and Christians were asking for more rights
§ Represent group of interest
§ Focus on interests of specific groups and articulate oppositions in society
• Brought conflicts into parliament, conflict with workers and
owners, religious vs non-religious
§ Formulate coherent ideology informed by worldview
• Christian democracy, social democracy
§ Membership organizations
• They find city participation important
• That’s why they have a big and strong structure organization (you
can subscribe to become a member)
 § Territorial organizations, organization based on background
characteristics, and auxiliary organizations
• Local and regional branches, youth and women organizations,
trade unions to bring workers together, affiliated media channels,
civil societies organizations
§ Democratically organized but top-down decision making
• The influence of decision making of members was very limited,
local branches need to go to regional branches and so on to
influence national level (go up)
• Parties become more democratic over time
o Catch-all parties (1960s)
§ Transformation of existing mass parties
• Post-war effects: individualization, emancipation, secularization,
rise of mass media, people don’t need parties any more to link
with candidates or look what is happening in politics, they can just
watch tv. Voters become more volatile, less support for parties,
they change of parties candidates every year etc. Membership
decline.
• Mass parties become catch-all parties
§ Party as electoral machine
• Focus on the general interest, downplay oppositions in society
o Stop creating divisions, polarization of groups (like for
example workers with businesses)
o Idea of a general interest
• Broad ideology and movement towards the political center (they
can find more voters)
o Becoming more like each other
• Large and open but professional organization
o Like a business model
• Getting most votes as possible
o Cartel parties (1990s)
§ “Colluding parties become agents of the state and employ its resources
to ensure their own survival”
§ Catch-all parties experience problems on stability on their existence
(member parties that rely on a large membership), and those voters are
more volatile, and hence less willing to join this parties in a regular basis.
There is something missing in this party, thus there is a decline in
membership.
 • Members are their income and labour.
§ Transformation of existing mass parties
§ Party as an extension of the state
• Focus on governing
o Give them stability and influence
o Focus less on represent their citizens and focus more on
governing.
• Financial dependence on the state
o Subsidies for parties
o Those that dominate the market, leaves the others out
(financial for parties that have shown that they can gain
seats)
§ This discourages parties to still seeking for recruits
as they have already stability
• Minimal and closed but professional organization
o It’s not necessary because of the financial aid
o This economic incentive has been created to leave out
new parties to enter to the system
§ Like an economic party
§ Cartel: shielding the market from competition
• Therefore, many populist parties have a point of why it is difficult
to make it into the system
• Types of parties, their origins, and functions
o Only mass parties were truly equipped for programmatic, mobilization and
recruitment functions
§ Because of their extensive organization
o Social movements and interest groups have taken over programmatic and
mobilization functions
• System of parties and interest organizations
o System: pattern of relations between organized groups
o Constraint by institutional set up
§ Electoral system -> party system
§ Political system -> interest group system
• Party system and cleavages
o Party system: the structure of the relations between parties (conflict and
cooperation)
o Cleavages shape the party system
§ Societal opposition (owners vs workers for example)
 § Group identity (aware of your group membership and need to mean
something for you)
§ Shared values (expressed in political institutions, socialist parties)
§ Political organization
• Party system and cleavages
o One dominant cleavage -> two-party system
§ UK they are oppositions, but everything is based on left/right society.
o Cross-cutting cleavages -> multi-party system
§ Catholic workers, protestant workers and secular workers
o But multi-party systems come in many shapes and sizes
§ Number of parties
§ Degree of polarization (conflict between the parties, how deep it is, the
extent of forming coalitions in the center)
§ Bloc structure
• In the last decades, societies become more similar
• Party systems transform over time
o Traditional left/right
o New structural conflict between winners and losers of globalization
§ Winners: higher educated, ‘socio-cultural specialists’
§ Losers: lower educated, unskilled workers
o Party systems characterized socio-economic and socio-cultural dimension
o The four coalitions in the two-dimensional space
§ Interventionist cosmopolitan: Greens, social democrats, public interest
groups, communist, left socialist, unions
§ Interventionist nationalist: (Right-wing populists), communist, left
socialist (union)
§ Neoliberal- cosmopolitan: Liberals, Christian democrats and
conservatives, state authorities, business associations, corporations
§ Neoliberal-nationalist: Right-wing populist (transformed Christian
democrats, liberals, and conservatives)
o Parties’ systems start to look more alike
• Party systems transform over time
o India
§ Dominant party system
§ Multiparty system
§ Two-party system
§ Dominant party system
• Interest group systems
 o Pluralist model:
§ Free competition for access, no formal ties
• E.g., UK and the US
o Corporatist model
§ State organized access, formal ties
§ Self-regulation, delegation of tasks
§ e.g., Austria, Germany, the Netherlands
• An electoral system has a majoritarian/plurality system in a majoritarian democracy and
a proportional system in a consensus democracy
• A party system has a two-party system in a majoritarian democracy and a multiparty
system in a consensus democracy
• Interest group system has a pluralist model in a majoritarian democracy and a
corporatist model in a consensus democracy
• Executive-legislative relations has a dominance of executive in a majoritarian democracy
and a balance of power between legislative and executive in a consensus democracy
• Executive power has a concentration of power in a majoritarian democracy and a
sharing of power in a consensus democracy

IPOL 9: Separations of power? Parliaments and governments

• Political leaders
o Biden: he is directly elected as president, head of state, direct mandate from
citizens
o Boris Johnson: directly elected as prime minister, not directly elected as head of
government, monarch in uk, parliamentary majority
o Bolsonaro: President and head of state, he is directly elected as president, direct
mandate from citizens, limited mandate he needs to be elected each 4 years.
Bicameral system. Multiparty system
o Merkel: prime minister, coalition, ceremonial president in Germany
o Presidents and prime ministers
• Classifying political systems
o Arend Lijphart: Patterns of democracy
§ Dutch student that went to study in the US (70 years ago this was not
normal)
• He identifies differences between Dutch and the US government
• He creates a typology to identify which type of government
countries have
o Consensus model
 §Diffusion of power
• Shared between political parties (coalition governments or
multiparty systems) and institutions (parliaments and
government, the central bank, treasury, national and sub national
governmental institutions)
o This secures the abuse of power
o Majoritarian model or Westminster model
§ Concentration of power
• Concentrated in 1 or 2 institutions
• Concentrated in the executed power (the government that
execute policy making)
• Concentrated in one party
• Extent to which power is concentrated in the hands of the few or shared amongst the
many
o His claim: the system where power is more concentrated to amongst the few, is
most vulnerable to a democratic backsliding
• Electoral system: in the majoritarian model they have a plurality system and in the
consensus model they have a proportional system
o Plurality system: power in two groups
o Proportional system: power in several groups
• Party system: in the majoritarian model they have a two-party system and in the
consensus model they have a multiparty system.
o If you share your power with different parties, your position is different from
two-party systems party. In multi-party system they may also support opposed
parties.
• Interest group system: In the majoritarian model they use the pluralist model and in the
consensus model they use the corporatist model
o Pluralist model: free from all competition of different groups to influence policy
making, groups try to convince politicians
o Corporatist model: interest groups are organized to influence policy making
(cooperation). Based on the idea of representation
§ Regular institutionalized cooperation and consultation between labour
groups and plural groups in the state. Is not free for all but is organized
based on the idea of representation
• Executive-legislative relations: in the majoritarian system it has a dominance of
executive and in the consensus model it has a balance of power between legislative and
executive
 o Boris Johnson has majority and can enacted all the laws he wants. Role of
opposition is weak
• If we have a proportional system which multiparty representation, then we would have
coalition government (compromise between different parties)
o Multiparty system is basically sharing power amongst different groups
• In the majoritarian model, the two-party system almost inevitably produce majority for
one party, this means that one party has the mandate to be the government and it has
absolute power (more or less)
o Position in parliament is different from multiparty system
• Government in the Netherlands compromise 3 or 4 parties, but this parties could
support opposition parties to pass legislation. Cooperation is crucial. Balance of power
between government and parliament
• Executive power: in the majoritarian model it has a concentration of power and in the
consensus model it has a sharing of power
o In consensus model there is a proportional system that disperse power between
actors
• Dispersion of power: in the majoritarian system there is a unitary and centralized
government, and in the consensus model there is a federal and decentralized
government
o The US and Germany has a federal state.
• Legislature: in the majoritarian system there is a unicameral system (only one chamber
to centralized power), and in the consensus model there is a bicameral system.
o Bicameral: the upper system checks the quality of the law
§ Congress and senate to give both actors the same power for legislation
• The first chamber vote if they agree with law and the second
chamber votes on the legal quality of the law
• Constitution: In the majoritarian model there is a flexible constitution (change it to have
more power) and in the consensus model there is a rigid constitution (difficult to change
constitutions, 2/3 to change constitutions, pass it twice in parliament, broad consensus,
broad support)
• Judicial review: In the majoritarian system there is a parliamentary sovereignty (few
ways that the judiciary can’t revoke parliamentary legislation as the parliament is a
prime institution as they receive majority of votes, the population vote for them) and in
the consensus model there is a parliament subject to judicial review (supreme court).
• Central bank: in majoritarian model there is an executive control over the central bank
and in the consensus model there is an independent central bank (to disperse power to
many actors as possible, operate without government or parliament support in the
monetary policies)
• These models are ideal types (theoretical)
• Majoritarian model: UK as an example
o Unicameral system (Even though it has the house of lords, this chamber is
different from other countries)
• Consensus model: Germany as an example
o Proportional electoral system, coalition, corporatism, multiparty system, federal
system, constitutional court to check legislation
• Netherlands: We always think that it is a consensus model, hybrid
o It’s very proportional, it produces coalition governments and multiparty systems
etc.
o It’s not a federal state, no subnational parliaments with independent legislated
and executive power
o It has a decentralized government (in terms of executing national policy, and
provinces municipalities have important roles).
o The Netherlands has a bicameral system, lower house, and upper house
o It has a rigid constitution (it needs two rounds of revisions, sent to parliament
twice where in the first rounds 2/3 of the parliament needs to agree and then it
goes to election and then in the second round it need to have an absolute
majority). Then put it through houses. The last major revision of constitution was
in the 1970s
o However, the Netherlands is not subject to judicial review (judges cannot
declare legislation as unconstitutional, they can only test legislation in
international treaties).
§ This is because they don’t need judicial review because the upper house
already makes the second check on quality of legislation
o Netherlands a case of a hybrid model
§ If we have an upper house for extra checks, we don’t need a judicial
review
o Independent central bank
• Federal-unitary dimension and executives-parties dimension
• The US is also a hybrid system, it has a bicameral system
• The relationship between parliaments and governments is not only determined on if it
has a coalition system or a two-party system. It is also dependent by how parties in
government and opposition acts
• Executive-legislative relations
o When both are united in the same person, there can be no liberty.
§ In the past, monarchs have the executive and legislative power (decide
how law should be and how to be implemented)
 o If you concentrate legislative power and executive power in the hand of one
person, it almost led to tyranny because if a person decides how a law should be
but also how should be executed, this shows the oppression in society.
o Trias politica:
§ Executive (government): power to put law in action
§ (legislative) Parliament: Power to make and change law
§ Judiciary (judges): Powe to make judgments on law
• Executive-legislative relations in parliamentary and presidential systems
o In the presidential system, citizens choose the executive power and the
legislative power
• In parliamentary system is it parliament that has a direct mandate from voters and is the
government who is formed from parliament. Strong mutual dependence between
parliament and government.
• In presidential system to truly separates executive and legislative power, both are
directly elected (directed mandate from citizens) Executive and legislative operate
independent
• Parliamentary system:
o Head of state is not equal to head of government
§ The head of government, there is a ceremonial head of state which
represents the country internally and externally
• Someone that unifies and portray the country outside the country
o Parliament direct mandate, executive
§ indirect mandate
o Mutual dependence
§ In parliament system the government is dependent from the support of
parliament to stay in office, either formally (through votes, in
Scandinavian countries, parliamentary votes for the coalition outcome) or
informally
§ Government can send parliament home, dissolve parliament and call for
elections
§ Parliament can dissolve ministers and the entire cabinet, and ask for the
formation of a new coalition
§ Governments is formally charged with executing policies, but in
parliamentary system the government proposed most of the legislations
(work with the bureaucracy and presented to the parliament plans where
the parliament discusses those plans and check if fits and vote in favor or
against it)
o No fixed terms
 § It is possible to call early elections
§ Prime ministers can be in charge for longer terms
o Powers are fused
o Advantages:
§ Cooperation between parties and between parliament and government
• Cooperation means that there is compromise and hence there is
broad support amongst the population about the policies that are
made (they make the legitimacy of the outcomes)
§ Prevent autocracy (because of cooperation and dependence between the
parliament and the government)
• They would sack each other if they want to have more power
(government calling early elections to stop parliament to get
power or the parliament dissolving the government when they
want to have more power)
• Prevent democratic backsliding
§ Representation
• The government (its members, junior ministers, ministers,
secretary of states) come from parliament and parliament must
endorse its tenure
o Disadvantages:
§ Instability (because it relies on cooperation and dependence)
• Italy in the 1970/80s: Fragmented party system, many party
represented, system polarized, people have different opinions
o Every 3/4/5 month the government would fall, and a new
government need to form, and if it could not be formed it
call elections
o It is very difficult to make policies, it just consists in
building support for coalitions.
§ Lacks accountability
• City can vote por parliaments, but they can’t vote for members of
government
o Netherlands: Ministers that were sent home (for incorrect
decisions) by parliament return in a coalition government
because they are invited by political parties’ leaders
§ Party dominance
• Party discipline became strong and is very difficult for individuals’
parliamentarians to speak up and deviated from the party line.
• Presidential system:
o Head of state = head of government
§ Head of state is not a neutral partisan figure
o Executive and legislative direct mandate
§ Operate independent (international relations, where the president act
without consent of the parliament), however, they are areas where they
cooperate (president must present budget to parliament and if the
congress is of another color, it would generate conflict),
o Independence (Dualism)
§ Impeachment procedure is there is a very serious problem
o Fixed term
o Powers are separated
o Advantages:
§ Checks and balances
• Everyone has its separate task and tasks that are designed to
check by other actors
§ Stability
• Everyone knows what to do and they don’t need to argue
§ Strong accountability
• Citizens can punish both parliament and president for their action
o Disadvantages:
§ Conflict
• Disagreement about budget, there would not be good relations
and caused and deadlock between congress and president
(bureaucrats can’t even get to work until is solved)
§ Lacks representation
• Presidents select its members of the government, parliament has
no control
o He can select from any place he wants
§ Personal dominance (because of direct mandate)
• Of individuals
§ Risks autocracy
• Presidentialism is more prone to democratic backsliding
o This is the parallel of presidentialism
§ Even though if we separate powers and give
individual power and direct mandate to
government and parliament and then we have the
check and balances that prevent tyranny, there can
still be democratic backsliding.
• Dominance of parliamentary systems in Europe, monarchs were quite reluctant to
separate powers
• Presidentialism in the US, Latin-America, Russia, south-east Asia, and some places in
Africa
• The US has a presidentially system, but the president doesn’t possess much power
because of the check and balances
o Russia instead has a very strong presidentialism, also Venezuela and China
• Executive-legislative relations in autocracies
o Party controls executive and legislative
§ In democracies, political parties are the intermedia of society and states,
and in autocracies they collude with the state, the party is the state
o China has a parliament and has a government, but the communist party is the
most influential
§ It influences congress rather than the congress be a representation of
various parties
§ Xi Jinping has been president for two terms so he should resign
§ But last year provision was made that if the president has a crucial role in
the system and he has done things for the country that he can only do,
then exception of this system can be made
• Who determines where the president can enact this rule?
o In democracies it would be parliament and government
o In China is the political party that make this decision
because his role was very substantial so he can be
appointed to a third term
o Illiberal democracies (Hungary and Poland)
o Elected autocracies:
§ They are autocratic but elections functions to a certain extent.
o Putin, Maduro, Erdogan
§ Process of becoming less democratic presidential systems
§ They brought more power to their current position, taken power of other
institutions and give it to themselves (like parliament)
§ Increased control over judiciary (like by political appointment to the
judiciary)
§ They claim that there is a type of crisis to advance their position and to
pool power to their presidential function to deal with that crisis.
§ No fixed terms
§ To increase their power, they get rid of fixed term limits
§ Russia was a semi-presidential system (prime minister and president)
 • The president appoints the cabinet which is reliant on
parliamentary support
§ Putin become president for the next two terms and then prime minister
for the next two terms, and this become a cycle
§ They organized referendum to change the system, ask citizens to agree to
the process of the democratic backsliding
• “We are in crisis”, I need more power to deal with these
problems, I need you to agree to the abolishment of presidential
terms or the changing of the legislation of the presidential terms”.
o Chavez did this first in the 90s by abolishing all fixed terms
in all governmental positions (attracting politicians,
mayors, increase in benefit)
o Erdogan did this when there was an attempted coup in
2016
§ He changes the parliamentary system to a
presidential system (2018)
• He can be in charge for 2 more political
terms even though he was in the last
system governing
o Putin put a referendum to change the term limits and just
to have two terms
§ By changing the rules, all start from 0 and he had
another two terms to go (staying 10 more years)
• The use of referendum makes them able to stay in power.
• Parallel of presidentialism as it is directly elected
o This power-grab by ministers is a threat to the rule of law
§ UK: ever since Boris Johnson has been in power, he tries to do things
without parliamentary interference as he has already majority
• He is controlling other facets of our balance of powers, concerns
about him changing electoral legislation
o Everyone can vote but now they need to show their
passport.
§ Not everyone has a passport, and it would make
voting for groups more difficult.
o He has been pointing political figures head to controlling
organizations:
 § The supervisory organization of the public
broadcaster BBC, and he has presented political
figures for their supervision.
§ This risk also exists in parliamentary system
• Armenia: from (semi-) presidentialism to parliamentarism
o 2015 Constitutional referendum
o Ask approval of citizens for transition from (semi-) presidential to parliamentary
system
o Proposal:
§ President to become ceremonial head of state
§ No veto powers
§ No possibility of re-election
§ Not to be a member of a political party
o Arguments in favor of old system:
§ External threat creates need for speedy decision-making
§ Dominant party system might emerge in which there is no alternation in
government
o Arguments in favor of new system
§ Parliamentary majority accountable to citizens
§ Incentives for compromise and long-term planning
§ Representation for ethnic groups in society
o Electoral system
§ Proportional electoral system with seat allocation to ethnic minorities
§ Two-round electoral system to create parliamentary majorities
o Outcome 2015 constitutional referendum
o 68.2% in favor of parliamentarism
o 50.8% turnout
o Two different governments since 2015

IPOL 10: No one is above the law

• There is not only concern in presidential systems about executives, presidents,

governments overstepping the mark
o Example UK: Conflict between the speaker of the house, chair of parliament, and
prime minister Boris Johnson
§ Today the House of Lords (upper house) publish a report that sound the
alarm about how much power is having the executive via legislation.
Highlight a growing trend by government due to Covid and Brexit, giving
 power to ministers to make regulations, which create new laws without
proper scrutiny by parliament. Parliament is losing control over the
legislative process, imbalance between the two powers.
• Liberal democracy:
o These three powers are very important in defining liberal democracy
o If we define democracy, is very much about elections (competitive elections lead
to representation in parliament and government)
§ The judiciary did not play a big role in this definition
§ But if we take another perspective, a broad concept of an ideal
democracy, the judiciary will become important
o Alterative name of liberal democracy is Constitutional democracy
§ Law is central on how we understand democracy in its most complete
form
o A democratic system not only characterized by free and fair elections, popular
sovereignty, and majority rule, but also by the constitutional protection of
minority rights
§ Competitive elections for office
§ Democratic pillar of liberal democracy that seeks elections as a decision-
making mechanism in democracy
§ The liberal/constitutional part balances this principle (the democratic
pillar is about majority decision making, while the liberal is about
minority protection)
• Promote minority rights and protect citizens
o A democratic system of government in which individual rights and freedoms are
officially recognized and protected, and the exercise of political power is limited
by the rule of law
• Individual rights and freedoms
o Positive and negative rights refer to the state (rights of citizens visa state)
o Civil rights -negative rights (emerged in the 18th century)
§ After the absolute despotism of monarchs vanished, there was a
consensus that all humans have several human rights,
• The right to own property
• The right to not be enslaved
• A basic notion of equality between citizens
§ Negative rights: noninterference and the government, not restricting the
freedom of individuals, the state should not enter, and citizens are free to
do whatever they want
o Political rights (become popular in the 19th century)
 § Right to vote, to join political party, to run for office
o Social rights -positive rights (become popular 20th century)
§ The rights to education, housing, employment, basic welfare
§ Oblige the state to act
§ The state should make policies to assured that people have social rights
• By provision of public schooling, social housing, labour market
policies oriented toward full employment, for example
o Nowadays political and civil rights are not seen very different
§ Because political rights like the right to vote are meaningless without civil
rights like the freedom of expressions to demonstrate for example.
o Civil rights + full employment (social rights)
§ The idea that become prominent is that it is not enough to have civil and
political rights if you don’t give social rights since not having social rights
prevent you from effectively using your political and civil rights
• For example, if you don’t have access to education, what does the
freedom of expression mean, how can you participate in a debate
• What political rights mean if you don’t have a roof over your head
or have a stable income
o Havin basic social rights produce the effectiveness of civil
rights
• Universal declaration of human rights
o Specify the mentioned rights
o It is essential that human rights should be protected by the rule of law
o Seek that these rights are protected in the countries by rule of law
o Human rights are nothing without the rule of law
• Rule of law
o Equality before the law
§ General equality is a human rights principle
§ There can only be rule of law if everyone is equal to the law
• Human rights: these rights recognize everyone is equal and should
not be discriminated based on the background characteristics
(religion, ethnicity, gender etc.)
• State is obliged to treat citizens equally in legislation and when
they formulate and implement law.
§ State should treat similarly if the cases are similar
§ If both similar citizens (similar characteristics) want to apply to social
rights, they should both treat equally
§ Citizens are equal for the law, but states are also equal of the law
 • It doesn’t have special status, it should follow similar rules, not
opposing the law
o Rule of law, not rule of men
§ The law governs
§ There is a process of interpretation of law based on those who
implement or judicate based on law
§ The content of the law should be leading and should not be individual
preferences
o “The subordination of arbitrary power and the will of public officials as much as
possible to the guidance of laws made and enforced to serve their proper
purpose, which is the public good of the community as a whole”
§ Arbitrary power: no systematic behind the sue of power, no consistence
and logic behind decisions are made
§ Will of public officials: preferences, should be avoided
• How should they interpret law?
o You need to interpret the law with their proper purpose, go back to when they
were discussing in parliament, or where the government presented the law to
parliament, an see their motivation for the law, why it was introduced?
§ The objective of the law
§ The goals they wanted to achieve
§ Not personal conviction, but it should be the parliamentary and
governmental logic behind the law
§ When you interpret the purpose, you should keep in mind that the public
good is what is trying to achieve here
• The good of society, not of private actors
• The public good is what it’s good for society irrespective of what
citizens necessarily want.
• It is ideologically in political, but it should be detectable in the
motivation for the law, the common good that was in mind when
the law was design.
• Utopian vision to think that actors will not be influenced by their
interest
• What mechanisms can be used to ensure the rule of law
o Constitution
§ Written or unwritten
• Individual rights and freedoms are documented, and the judiciary
can refer to them when they judge the law
 • If rights are not written in constitution, they are including in
international treaties that most of the countries signed
§ Control power through institutional design
§ Checks and balances and/or diffusion of power
• Institutional map that assures that the judiciary can call upon the
legislative and the executive when they overstep their
boundaries.
• If you don’t have this documented or not being accurate, it is easy
to grab more and more power without anyone checking
o Independent and impartial judiciary
§ It needs to be able to make autonomous decisions in conflicts between
citizens individually, or between citizens vs the state (where citizens think
their individual rights and freedom has been violated)
• If the executive or the legislative has control over the judiciary, is
very difficult for the judiciary to side on the side of the citizens
and to oversee their rights and freedoms
• That’s why judiciary should be independent
§ Non-political appointments
§ Long and fixed terms
• Not concerned about being re-appointed and then losing their
autonomy
§ Proper payment
• Independent from society pressure
• Poland case
o Struggling with independent and impartial judiciary
o Judges protested
§ This is very uncommon because they are used to have independent
charges from the state
o Number of measures taken by the polish government
§ The executive to gain more control over the judiciary
o The organization that appoints judges to the supreme court has been stuffed
with party officials, politicians and this had several consequences, appointment
become political
o Many of the serving judges have been sacked
§ Like the judges that criticize these measures
o Disciplinary chamber has been implemented that punishes judges that criticize
the regimes and their measures
§ Sanctions, penalties, losing their position temporarily
 o These measures made the judiciary impartial and not independent
• Rule of law
o Due process:
§ Law established in advance
• It is not allowed to make legislation and apply it retrospectively
o Citizens need to know the law and to complied to the law,
if the law is already in effect
§ Not possibly to retrospectively make things
punishable
§ No arbitrary arrest, detention
• To not arrest without proper evidence
§ Fair, speedy, public trial
• Transparency about the kinds of arguments and evidence that are
exchanged to find someone guilty or innocent
§ Innocent until proven guilty
§ No inhumane treatment (no torture)
§ Example of cases where this don’t happen: Guantanamo Bay
§ If you make exceptions to these rules, there need to be good reasons to
do so and put other check and balances in place (terrorism legislation)
• Terrorism legislation: if you want to arrest citizens because of this
reason, you need extra evaluation whether justify, like by having
multiple public prosecutors’ evaluation the same case or let civil
society check if they are not using inhumane treatment.
§ Public prosecutors should make independent assessment
§ It is unclear which legislation has been violated to prosecute
§ National level: legal system, judicial system with judges and public
prosecutors
• They can process these cases
§ International courts
• Liberal democracy in practice
o Robert Dahl (1971)
o It is very difficult to identify a pure liberal democracy as every democracy will
violate a rule of law to some extent
o Liberal democracy is an ideal type, polyarchy is its empirical manifestation
• This polyarchy in practice has two main characteristics:
o Contestation
 § The extent which there is open public debate, permissible opposition that
can truly contest to office (there is a realistic chance that they can get
elected), and political competition
o Inclusiveness
§ The breath of the right to participate to this contestation
o His perspective in polyarchy informs almost all empirical way we can measure
how liberal democratic a country is
§ V-dem liberal democracy index
• Electoral democracy index
o Suffrage
o Elected officials
o Clean elections (free and fair)
o Freedom of association for public debates
o Freedom of expression and alternative sources of
information
• Liberal component index:
o Equality before the law and individual liberty index
o Judicial constrains on the executive index
o Legislative constraints on the executive index
§ Yesterday, V-dem present its annual report
• Liberal democracies are backsliding (because of covid-19
pandemic and other problems during the last 5 years)
• Established democracies are in decline: US, Brazil, India, Hungary,
Poland, Japan
• This is important because it means that there is a problem
between individual rights and their rule of law, and therefore how
democratic political decision making is in these countries
• Also, because, how democratic you are talk about how your
society is.
o Access to justice, basic welfare, and low inequality is more
trend in democracies
• Liberal democratic backsliding
o Liberal democracy is the best model we have (not the ideal but is further the
best)
§ There is a backsliding of this democracy
§ Traditional view of democratic backsliding: liberal democracy can only
exist if it’s supported by a political culture that really embraces it. Liberal
democracy can only be successful if citizens believed liberal democracy as
 a model, are convinced liberal democracy is the best model, if they are
satisfied with how this system as a whole works, if it has political trust to
the institutions that make up liberal democracy, in parliament, in
government, in the judiciary and if they have faith in the political actors
that populate this institutions (that they are doing it for the general will).
§ Political culture is not eroding because if that happen people would vote
for parties that articulates concerns like populist parties.
o Erosion of norms and values
o Erosion elite initiated
§ Those in power, elected to parliament, government
§ Political elites influence attitudes of citizens against the system
o Rule of law most clearly under pressure
§ Elites want to affect the rule of law
• UK: Making a lot of legislation without consulting parliament
• Giving more control over how elections should be organized
• Giving more control over the judiciary
o Leads to illiberal democracy or elected autocracy
• Liberal democratic backsliding in India
o India fails to 53rd rank in liberal democracy. Now is a flaw democracy
o I.4 billion citizens
o Largest democracy in the world, very diverse society
§ Religiously diverse (Muslims, Hindus etc.), socio-economical, and
ethnically diverse with a very strong caste system,
• The cast where you were born, very much determines how will be
your life
• Social markers that determine group identity and can be
translated politically (cleavages)
o Basic ingredients for strong liberal democracy
§ Parliamentary democracy
• It avoids a presidential system because it has the risk of
presidential power grabbing
• Based on the idea that parliament and government should work
together dependent on each other
• Liphart recommend for divided societies that has many different
social oppositions that might need political translation
o Proportional electoral system
o Consensus democracy the way to deal with societal
oppositions and diversity
 § Federal system with bicameral legislature
• Power is dispersed between different political institutions
• This groups have some autonomy over policy making in their
provinces and has political representation in the parliament and
government
• Bicameral system: Regional differences become translated in an
upper house which also serve as a check on decision make in the
lower house in parliament
§ Strong constitution and judicial review
• Clearly outline individual rights and freedoms, outline institutional
map and detailed responsibilities of all the institutions in their
system
• Constitution is secular to overcome religious differences
• It has a strong supreme court which is not afraid to say the
parliament and government that they are overstepping the mark,
that they are trying to implement legislation which conflicts with
the constitution
§ In the second dimension it looks like a consensus democracy but in the
first one it doesn’t.
§ But majoritarian rather than proportional electoral system
• Likely to produce a two-party system which is likely to generate
absolute majority for one of the two rivalry parties, and that is
likely to make the executive powerful vis a vis parliament
o Influence as a British colony.
• Lipjhart (in 1966) said that India has some elements of power sharing in the second
dimension, and this should be able to resolve some tensions in society but because they
have a majoritarian system, there is a risk of increase hostility and violence
• India has two moments in history were the rule of law and democracy were under
pressure
o State of emergency 1975-1977 (Indira Gandhi)
§ Indira came into conflict with the supreme court because she wanted to
revise the constitution and make policy changes (to become more
socialist)
• She was popular for her socialist measures (she concentrated
more power)
• Top-down problem
• She started concentrating power in her position of prime minister
vis a vis other members of parliament (within the cabinet)
 • Then she tries to revise the constitution, and when this failed, she
declared state of emergency
• There was unrest in India because they conflicted with Pakistan
and because socialist promises were not fulfilled.
o Unrest in society, more protest mobilization
o Her claim was that the country was in crisis, so she needs
to take measures (state of emergency)
§ This means that the government can pass
parliament to take emergency measures
§ Rule by decree
• By her own decision rather than by proposing legislation to
parliament
§ Cancel elections
• Postponed elections because of the “emergency”
§ Constrain civil rights
• Since she was not constrained by parliament, since she was no
longer constrained by the chance of new elections, she felt much
free to go against the supreme court and ignore their verdicts.
§ Control over judiciary
• By making political appointments
§ Political prisoners
• Political opposition, party leaders, critiques in the media,
terrorism legislation.
§ She had control over India and in that case, it was not a liberal democracy
• Political and civil rights were violated, rule of law also violated
§ Then, she thought she could call new elections to legitimize its position
• She thought that because she controlled the media, imprisoned
her opposition, and constrained civil rights, there is no way she
could lost elections.
• All the different oppositions parties rallied together to take her
out (like in Hungary) and the citizens fed up to make the
opposition won.
o Now
§ The new party obtained an absolute majority which give him a lot of
room and self-confidence to take power.
§ The president believes that Hindu majorities should have more rights
than religious minorities like Muslims.
§ He proposed the new citizenship law
 • New Citizenship Amendment Act fast-tracks citizenship
application from non-Muslims from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and
Pakistan
• This amendment prioritizes citizenship application from
surrounding countries with non-Muslims backgrounds
• Religious take into consideration, Muslims applications become
difficult
§ Stifle protests and criticism in academia and media
• Forbidden them to protest or arrest them
• He is shutting down the internet the days they are protests since
it makes it impossible to citizens to organize and mobilize
§ 9,000 prisoners’ under-terrorism legislation
o Basic ingredients for a strong liberal democracy but become vulnerable when the
majoritarian electoral system produces a dominant party system (they don’t
want to lose elections)
§ This country has a strong constitution and a supreme court which is not
afraid to interfere when it is necessary
§ This could also happen in parliamentary system
• Cas Mudde (Populism and liberal democracy)
o Populism is an ideology that considers society to be separated into two
homogenous and antagonistic groups, the pure vs the corrupt elite, and which
argues that politics should be an expression of the volonte generale (general will)
of the people.
• Populism almost combined with socialism or cosmopolitan nativism
• Populism and liberal democracy
o Populism is anti-elitist and anti-pluralist
§ Majority preferences prevail over minority rights
o Populism is not necessarily anti-constitutionalist
§ Constitutions should reflect values of the people
o Populism promotes popular sovereignty (general will)
§ Parliamentary sovereignty over checks and balances
o Populism can have positive and negative impact for liberal democracy
§ Positive because it gives citizens more voice and make them participate
in political process
§ Negative impact because they sometimes imposed measures to
constrained minority rights
• Poland: restrained freedom of women to decide upon their own
body by the recent abortion legislation
 o Depends on the kind of ideology populism is combined with
§ Left-wing or right-wing
§ Nativism or authoritarianism
o Depends on whether populist have majority and whether democracy is
consolidated

IPOL 11: The EU: A polity like no other?

• Multilevel governance
o Definition: complex decision -or policy-making processes in which different levels
of government and governmental and non-governmental organizations
§ How states emerged in the first place and the way their national political
system looks; we already observed a strong national character.
• They were monarchies in most cases that transform to democratic
states with parliament and governments
o In monarchy the power was concentrated in the hands of
the monarchs in the national level, and it was natural that
democracies do the same (with exception of federal
states, that from their earlies conception already
distributed the power to legislate between the federal
level and the state level)
o Vertical: supranationalization and decentralization
§ Over the years, power has become more dispersed
• A process of distributing power to lower levels
• Decentralization and in some cases, devolution like in the UK
o In the UK, some of the power of the national state has
been transferred to Wales, Scotland, England, Northern
Ireland etc.
o Transfer power to local governments
o Also, in systems where we don’t have independent
parliament below the national level to local government,
to regional government that has received more
responsibilities.
§ But also, the power has been dispersed upwards
• Transfer power to international organizations
o States has recognized that many of the societal problems
we face, have cross border implications or can only be
resolves through cross border cooperation
 § Vertical redistribution of power between the different levels of
government
o Horizontal: privatization, public-private partnerships
§ States themselves also at the national level started to share their power
with non-state actors and institutions
• Civil societies organizations
• Businesses corporations
• In partnership with this kind of organizations
§ Some government tasks have been completely privatized to the private
sector
• Railroads, privatization of clean water, energy provisions
o In the past they were state tasks, they were legislated at
the national level but now they have been increasingly
outsourced to private actors
§ Companies that provide you these services that are
no longer considered state services
§ Cooperation between states and private organizations (public private
partnership)
• Student loan granted by DUO (Partly independent organization
that works with the Minister of Education and the private sector)
o This process of vertical and horizontal distribution of power lead to the idea of
multilevel governance
§ For almost all policy fields we are dealing with very complex decision and
policy making processes were different levels of government and
governmental and non-governmental organizations all participate in
some way (they all have some role to play and some power)
§ Why we say multilevel governance and not multilevel government
• We speak of governments when we are dealing with
geographically and politically defined systems that has the power
to legislate and imposed binding decisions that can be enforced
o This is the national government
§ They can make legislation that can make us to
wearing a face mask and the police can fine you if
you don’t wear it
o This also is the local government
§ Local rule that you can’t drink beer in the square
and you can be fine if you don’t comply
 o There is an element of enforcement and formal legislation
here which relates to the fact that we are dealing with a
geographically and politically defined unit that is doing the
governing
• Governance is much a broader concept, that doesn’t have these
strict requirements, is about the rules and the norms that
structured and regulate our interactions
o Corporate governance
§ The rules that a sector has agreed upon and
companies must respect it
• Paying bonuses to their employees
o University governance
§ How you should conduct yourself on campus
§ Rules here that can be enforced by the institution
itself, but it can’t (legally) punish you if you don’t
follow it
• The sanctions are much softer
o Governance is a much wider concept than government
and that is why we speak about multilevel governance
§ On the one hand because some of the local and
international actors that are involved in multi-level
governance are not governments
§ And, because the societal actors (businesses,
NGOs) that are involved are not governments in
the street sense
• Decision making in multilevel governance setting is very complex, because we have
multiple territorial levels that we must consider, not only the national level, regional
level, and city level, but also the neighborhood level and the supranational level
o Neighborhood level:
§ Amsterdam also has neighborhoods councils that also make policies and
redistribute funds for certain neighborhood activities
o Supranational level:
§ Regional level: EU, the Americas
§ Global level: UN
§ Multilayer in terms of the types of actors that are involved but also in the
sense of what the multilevel governance network structure looks like
differs from policy field
• State and non-state actors
 • If we deal with energy policies, the network might look different if
we deal with tourism policies, in the sense that the balance
between governmental and non-governmental actors might be
different, and the balance between the territorial regions that are
relevant in the policy field are different
• Multilevel governance
o Multilevel governance departs from several principles as to how to do multilevel
governance well, how to organize it in a such a way to make it effective and
democratic
o Subsidiarity: higher authorities should only perform those tasks which cannot be
performed at a lower level
§ Any kind of decision and policy making should be happened at the lowest
level possible
• If a municipality is capable of legislating and implementing
something effectively because it concerns a local problem, then
the municipality should do that, and you only scale upwards if this
is not possible
o If it is not a purely local problem but for instance a
regional problem or national problem, or even a
superregional or global problem
o And if lower authorities cannot solve it by themselves
o Proportionality: actions should match the intensity: severity of the problem
§ This allocation of decision-making power should be proportional
• The level that takes the problem should be able to deal with the
scope of the problem
o Climate change, the local level cannot legislate the kind of
measure necessary to deal with this problem
o These principles create a complex layer system
§ Because some problems must be better solved in a local or regional level,
and each level involved different type of actors
• This create polycentricity
o Polycentricity: a legal or political structure in which systems (policy areas)
overlap or compete
§ Struggle in who is competent and who should take up the issue
§ Berlin, policy area of water:
• If you govern water quality, it involves different policy relevant
actors
o Even if you look at the local and geographical level
 o Water is regulated within the state (in the state level)
§ State level actors
• Policy experts form fisheries
• Experts of water authority, water
management, water conservation (different
policies competences in the Berlin Senate)
o Lower level
§ Different districts in Berlin dealing with water
quality
• The competences are divided by green
space agency and environmental protection
agency, and we have different levels of non-
state companies
o Berlin water level company and
different NGOs
o Power is dispersed over different actors in the territorial
level
§ Different actors must work together to come to
policy making (we see the polycentricity)
• Different type of structures necessary to
make all this kind of actors work together
and play their part in the making of the
policy which creates new kinds of networks
and institutions (meetings of experts with
other actors).
• Multilevel governance
o “Hollowing-out of the state’
§ Creates a democratic deficit
o Power shifting vertically and horizontally, away from national government
§ A problem is that in terms of democratic decision making, we still play an
emphasis in the governmental level
• How we organize democratic representation and democratic
accountability, this is organized through national parliament
reelection
• Also, to some extent in the local and regional governments but to
a lesser extent
o The procedures there are less oriented to the transfer of
sovereignty that we see in national parliament
 § Power is not only moving away from national government, but also that
democratic control over the decisions we are making become weaker
• It shifts to levels and actors that are not democratically
accountable, and it became more difficult for the citizens to
identify where power is and who is involved in decision making
o Who to hold accountable for a certain actor?
§ This is creates a hollowing-out of the state
• Supranational level
o For different policy areas, different international organizations exist that govern
in the governance sense, rules, and regulations in that area
o International organizations are partly overlapping in geographic areas
§ US: part of the OAS, NATO, NAFTA
• Different kinds of institutions that is a member, and all impact
national policy making but the membership of each institution
does not necessarily overlap
o The main exception of that rule is the EU
§ Their member states try to organize policy making in different areas
within one political system (with exception of some security policy which
is part of NATO)
• The EU is quite unique
o If we evaluate democratic deficit of the EU, we shouldn’t hold it to the abstract
ideal of liberal democracy since we can never achieve it any way and because is a
supranational organization (he claims that we shouldn’t compare it in terms of
democratic functioning to other countries that function differently like the UK)
• She disagrees: It is sometimes useful to compare the EU with other democratic polities
to see if they function
• EU vs the US
o Similar political system, federal system which in both the federal state and the
states below have independent legislative power
o Similar GDP
o Similar population
o Less similar GDP per capita, but is in the still size range
o Differences:
o In the US there is a national identity of being American, in the EU they are
national identities, but they have also European identity (identities composite)
§ In the EU they rank their identities (Dutch or European for instance)
o The position of the EU in international affairs differs (even though some types of
the EU can appear as an independent actor)
o The EU doesn’t have a ‘constitution’ (even though they want to treat the Treaty
of Lisbon as a constitution)
o Division of power is more inflex in the EU than in the US
o USA has the control over their territory, monopoly of violence (police and
military), and monopoly over their territory in terms of taxing the citizens and to
use that taxation to invest in society and redistribute well. The EU doesn’t tax
citizens, it gets income from states but is a fraction of how a normal state budget
looks like
§ The European Commission has a low budget compared with the US
• Given that the size of the GDP is similar, this is a striking
difference, and it has massive implications of what the EU can do
in terms of legislation
• They can’t do a lot of things
o To invest, redistribute
o This means that it has a small bureaucracy
§ They talked about of the EU being a supranational
state
§ Its bureaucracy it is not large (as they claim) if you
compared it with the size of the population they
are governing or compared with the US
o The US is not interventionist compared to European countries
o The US and the EU has a similar institutional structure
§ Executive branch: US president and its cabinet similar to the European
commission and its Directors General
§ Legislative branch: Council of the European union and the European
Parliament are similar to the US senate and house of representatives
• The lower house is directly elected, and the upper house is the
representation of the geographical unit
§ Judicial branch: Supreme court in the form of European Court of Justice
and special auditors to look at the financial things.
o At first, they are quite similar, but if we look how it work in practice, how much
power they have and how the power is divided within them
§ The US has a classic structure of a federal system = check and balances,
trias politica
§ In the EU this is different, legislative power only partly resides within the
European parliament because the initiative to develop, propose bills,
impalement and execute legislation is within the European commission,
 not in parliament. Parliament votes on laws that are proposed by the
European Commission
• The difference with parliamentary systems is that governments
come from parliament and have a dull dependency on
parliaments from their support
• In the EU, the EC is quite autonomous from parliament and has
number of prerogatives where parliament can’t really interfere.
o In treaties, the members state of the EC develops this, and
parliaments can advise them, but the EC can ignore it if
they want
o The European parliament is powerful in some areas (voting
in the budget) but in other areas they are weak
• In the EU, the council of ministers always has co decisions powers
with the EP, they are actually veto powers that has to agree with
the legislation, both can propose amendments and changes and
they both have influential role in voting in legislation.
• Principles of EU decision-making
o EU is hybrid: Intergovernmentalism (member states decide on certain issues) +
supragovernmentalism (EP and EC decide on certain issues)
§ Not all policy areas have equal involvement of the EU and members
states as actors
§ Historically the EU it was divided by 3 pillars
• European Community
o EU as an actor was strongest
o Trade policy, EURO
• Common foreign and Security policy
o National states actors were strongest
• Police/judicial co-operation in criminal matters
o National states actors were strongest
§ This model has been abandoned since the implementation of the treaty
of Lisbon, no longer talk of pillars but exclusives competences of the EU,
shared competences of the EU and the member states, and competences
where the EU only has a supportive role to the member states
• It is clearer where the EU can act alone without consultation of
the nation states and where they need to have a joint decision
making
• There are only 3 main areas where the EU have exclusive
competence (supranational governance is taking place)
 o Custom Union: trade with the world
o Competition within the EU: competition law with regards
to companies and the regulations they must meet to
compete on the internal market on the EU
o Monetary policy
o Limited number of areas where the EU is really and
independent actor and truly a supranational governance
o Vertical + horizontal power sharing
§ The EU is built on the idea of power sharing
• Between the institutions
o Council of ministers and the parliament and the EC
• The EU, the member-states, and the regions within the region
states
o The EU recognizes that the Europe is a Europe of regions
where the regions have different identities and interests
that need to be articulated at the EU level
o Subsidiary and proportionality as decision making is very important
§ The EU only does things that in terms on scope and skills are so large
(problems and policy measures) that the member states can’t do it
• Principles of EU decision-making
o The idea of power sharing can be seen when we look how decisions are made at
the Council of Ministers
o Whenever when the council must decide on something, usually legislative
proposal for the EC, it can’t be accepted with a simple majority
§ Qualified majority
• 55% of ministers or 15 out of 27 member states representing at
least 65% EU population
o Need to agree on the proposal
o Very high threshold which shows that the EU is a
consensus democracy, it needs to be abroad majority to
show that there is a broad support across different
countries and societal groups for the proposals that are on
the table
§ Blocking majority:
• To vetoing legislation
• 4 out of 27 member states representing at least 35% of EU
population
• Article 3b Treaty of Lisbon
 o “Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive
competence, the Union shall act only if and insofar as the objectives of the
proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member states, either at
central level or regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale of
effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level.”
§ It explains why the EU only has supranational power in the custom Union,
exclusive competition, and monetary policy
• Why this model?
o Not by institutional design
§ Not the case that the people that was involved in the EU since the
beginning had a strong idea of what eventually the political should look
like
• It started by cooperation in different areas that had to be brought
together in the European community and then was further
developed over time
• Organic way of building a political system
o Neo-functionalist spill-over
§ There are objectives to be reached, goals you wanted to achieve
(economic growth, peace, prosperity) and that then you started thinking
if you need to transfer power, and if yes, to what kind of institutions you
will transfer it
• Political system is a spill-over of the substantial goals you wanted
to reach, politics follows other goals rather than the political
system come first and then you make policy decisions
o The community method: multi-level governance, polycentric
§ You tried to achieve different goals in different policy areas and the
system start to look very complex
• Every policy area requires to think different on how to organize or
relate to each other, different type of steps that you must take to
keep everybody aboard
§ Organic system where everyone can take part and you try find the most
common denominator to get everybody to accept the political system
• The EU: a democratic deficit?
o Brexit
§ Fundamental rejection of transfer of sovereign to the EU
§ There was an idea that the decision making in the EU was not democratic
enough and did not leave enough room for influence of citizens of
different member states
o Rise of soft and hard Euroscepticism
§ Soft Euroscepticism: If citizens or political movements are very critical of
the EU but do not reject membership and believe that through reform
the EU can improve, and the democratic deficit can be minimized
§ Hard Euroscepticism: when citizens or political movements and member
states, reject the EU and prefer inter-governmental bilateral relations
between the member state countries.
§ Different types of Euroscepticism: Cultural, economic, and political
opposition
• Cultural opposition: lack of European demos and therefore
grounds for democratic system
o Transfer of power from nation states to supranational
power
§ Radical right wing populist groups says that nation
states are sovereign, and it doesn’t make sense to
give power to a supranational actor
• Economic opposition: The EU is a neo-liberal project and the
policy making of the EU is in the areas of competition and trade,
but it does not come with social phase (social welfare system and
support for working citizens)
o Socialist left wing
• Political opposition: Ordinary citizens do not have enough
influence on decision making at the EU level and that because
they only elect European parliament which is weak make their
voices not be heard and that in political terms the EU is a project
to promote the interest of the established parties.
o Unite left- and right-wing opposition groups
o Soft and hard Euroscepticism support has been growing but they were relatively
uninfluential is because the political groups are divided by the parliamentary
groups
o Different explanations of why Euroscepticism is on the rise
§ New cleavages
§ Correlation between citizens and anti-immigrant attitudes, citizens being
climate skeptic and Eurosceptic
§ Economic hardship (level of education, income, social status being
employed), general dissatisfaction with politics (national level), national
identity (preference), nationalist attitudes
§ Elite and media cues
 • Citizens are also influenced by elites’ actors and medica coverage
§ Distance to Brussels, duration of membership
• What citizens think about the EU and EU democracy
o How EU citizens think about EU membership
§ Small decline on people that support EU membership (maybe for the
Euro crisis)
§ EU citizens has become more positive about euro membership after
BREXIT, they value the membership more
§ Positive evaluations are much higher than the negative evaluation and
positive evaluations are stable
o How citizens in difference countries feel about the membership
§ There are more citizens that has a positive and neutral evaluation
§ Most of the west-European countries have a very positive evaluation, and
central-east European and some south-European countries (like Italy)
have a negative evaluation
• Except from UK
o How do EU citizens think about EU democracy?
§ Support is higher
§ Citizens has very different opinion, you are either satisfied or dissatisfied
• Much more conflicts here than in membership
• Citizens are very pleased with the Euro system (low hard
Euroscepticism) but they are not very pleased with how
democracy function at EU (high soft Euroscepticism)
o How citizens in difference countries feel about the EU democracy?
§ Countries with completely different opinions (about membership and
democracy)
§ Correlation with how these citizens feel about democracy in their own
country
• The differences here is that they are satisfied with the EU
democracy but not with their own country and vice versa.
o This might signal is that how we evaluate European
democracy is in reference to our own system (our
situation)
• Opposition between cosmopolitan and authoritarian citizens, the
lower educated vs the higher educated. General division
o Younger generations are very positive about the EU and its
democracy, while the older are negative (except from
Ireland)
• The EU: a democratic deficit? (Critiques against the EU)
o European Parliament is only directly elected institution
§ European Parliament has a limited power
o Elections are considered second order
§ Because they cannot influence the executive that comes from these
elections, they can’t control the composition of the EC based on these
elections, so they become less important
• Citizens don’t have to vote physically and therefore they vote for
radical parties that reflects their values and interests)
o That’s why this parties become so popular
o Elections have low turnout
§ Limited legitimacy, because less than the half of the population vote of
parliament
o Elections are not European
§ European demos
§ There is still not a fully European public space with media, campaigns,
public debates of both candidates and citizens where all European come
together.
§ Also, of the issues that are addressed
• Part of the deficit rely with the European parliament
o How European citizens are satisfied with the European parliament?
§ Most of the people don’t care about the parliament
• Which for a political institution that are directly elected is not a
good thing (they need legitimacy)
o How do EU citizens think about European parliament?
§ Country differences are smaller
§ Citizens are more neutral
• The EU: a democratic deficit? (Critiques against the EU)
o European Council can change the game
§ They can agree to revise treaties, come with new rules (and parliament
has little said, parliament can’t determine what the political system look
like, the Council has more influence)
o Semi-autonomous institutions in form of ECB and ECJ
o Technocratic, depoliticized decision-making
§ Older institutions
• EU actors don’t like themes, topic, problems to be very political,
they don’t want political conflict
 o There is a broad idea of consensus making and to
depoliticize to come to a solution
o Asymmetrical political spill-over: transfer of means without accountability and
representation
• The EU: a democratic deficit? (Response for the critiques against the EU)
o EU is largely an intergovernmental organization, of which the members are
democratically controlled by national parliaments
§ There are only 3 cases where legislation is supranational, everything else
is made together with member states (intergovernmental) like in other
international organizations
§ In all intergovernmental organizations, the representatives of the
members, the ministers, are accountable to parliament and therefore to
citizens
o EU is more transparent and open than most domestic political systems
§ The way decisions are reach
• Thanks to how the EP and the EC relate to each other and who
decides about proposals, the process is more transparent.
o Under democratic practices at the EU level are copies of existing national
practices
§ This happens in other national states
• Is a valid critique toward democracy but not specific at the EU
o Checks and balances and power sharing support pluralism as key liberal
democratic principle
§ The complexity and balance decision making where the council of
ministers and European parliament have veto powers is like hard
consensus democracies
• It assures that minorities (in terms of social groups and smaller
member states) still have a say

IPOL 12: Is politics broken?

• “Politics is dying, politics is dead! This funeral oration is delivered time and again but
what is it that is being mourned?” Pierre Hassner 2012
o We need to pinpoint what kinds of institutions and actors are not functioning
properly
§ What kinds of institutions or actors does citizens are dissatisfied with?
§ Whether the objective not functioning is linked with the dissatisfaction
• O whether is other cause of the dissatisfaction?
 § What kinds of models of democracy are performing not well?
• If it is the case that specific actors or institutions are not
functioning well, maybe we are dealing with a crisis of
representative democracy since political parties as intermediaries
(between the government and society) are not functioning well
o Or maybe we are dealing with a crisis of liberal democracy
because maybe it’s particularly the rule of law that is
under pressure
• Potential causes of the “crisis” of politics
o Change in the part of citizens
§ Consumerism (how they relate to politics, makes decisions, voting
behavior)
§ Distrust
§ Dealignment and voter volatility
§ Polarization (it can also relate to institutions and actors)
§ Participation crisis
o Change in the part of institutions and actors
§ Political parties, parliament etc.
o Big societal trends thar are largely beyond the control of politics
§ Globalization, neo-liberalization, mediatization, emancipation,
individualization
• Root causes in society that change the behavior of citizens,
politicians, political parties, and the institutions in which they
function (as they shape the broader context in which they are
actives)
• Big societal trends all over the world, long-term processes that are
slowly re shaping our societies and hence affecting citizens and
parties and their relation between the two
• The context to which everyone must adapt, not only the citizens
and the actors, but perhaps also our institutions
o Institution reform as a solution to these problems
§ What kinds of democratic models fit the society we
are getting slowly?
§ Model of representative democracy and the model
of political parties as intermediaries was the model
of societies at the beginning of the 20th century
• But the 21st century doesn’t look equal to
the 20th century
 • What fits our polity?
o Technocracy?
• Is Politics broken?
o Politics as an arena
§ Traditional political arena of institutions and actors
o Politics as a process
§ A way of resolving conflict and distributing and redistributing power
o Politics as the art of government (Politics as an arena)
§ Too much governance, too little government
• Primacy of politics is in the traditional institutions (parliament
government and in the political parties that populate these
institutions)
• Globalization, neo-liberalization, supranationalism, and
decentralization take power of this traditional institutions that
form the core of the political arena and hence decrease control of
these institutions and actors over decision-making and plays those
controls elsewhere (with civil society, businesses, supranational
and intergovernmental organizations, local governments)
o Bring decision-making outside of democratic control, the
scope of accountability and representation
• Technocracy, de-ideologization, managerial style, professional
politicians
o Politics as compromise and consensus (Politics as a process)
§ Most peaceful way of resolving any kind of societal tensions that exist
§ Too much conflict, too little compromise
• Mediatization (selling news when its more conflictual)
o Social media used to foster conflict
• A lot of polarization in society and institutional and actor level
• Majoritarian system (more conflict oriented approach) and the
consensus system (more compromise seeking)
§ Too much compromise, too little conflict (this can be seen more at the
international level)
• Depoliticization of policy making (technocracy and managerial
politics)
o Suppression of conflict
• Less ideological conflict in politics because parties has become
more centrist, more look a like
o Politics as the distribution of power and resources (in society)
 § Redistribution of power and resources in the different levels of power
§ Those with more power and with less power depending on the political
situation and ideology
§ Neoliberalism as creating more inequality and articulating group
identities and interests but also creating a strong welfare system in some
countries that pools the opposite direction
§ Forms of distrust
§ Too much inequality, too little representation
• Politics is about citizens and their influence on decision making, whether that is through
representation where they can give mandate to others to govern on their behalf or
other forms of democracy where they decide themselves
o Disengagement
§ People are discontented because they are disengaging
• Participating less
§ Conventional political participation
• Declining turnouts, memberships of political parties, trend of
members of political parties just being check-book members (pay
their membership but are not active as they were used to, like
volunteer or protest in the streets)
o This also mean that the pool from which political parties
can drop candidates are smaller
o Engagement
§ Unconventional political participation
• Protesting more
o More anti-government protests
• Citizens are taking more to the streets to show their message
§ Populist voting
• Participating by voicing discontent with conventional politics
§ Both are communicating vessels
• Citizens who drop from traditional forms of politics (traditional
parties and ways of being actives) to newer forms of engagement
(by protesting in the street because they don’t feel they can’t
realize their message through traditional representative channels,
or by voting to populist movements that replace traditional
parties)
• Stronger populist attitudes (feels that politicians are acting on their own interest) , more
unconventional participation (demonstrations, sign petitions, other means to show
discontent)
• Stronger populist attitudes and parties, higher turnout amongst some groups in some
countries but not amongst other groups and in other countries
o In Central-Eastern Europe populist parties succeed
o This is not the case in Western-Europe
§ Maybe because of how the electoral/political system looks like, or
because the levels of participation in Western Countries are so high that
they are not additional bonus of having new parties to channel this
dissatisfaction (where in Central-Eastern Europe it does)
o Turnout does not increase in younger groups, but it does in older groups
• At the end of the day, we need to look at citizens attitudes to have an idea of how they
related to the political system and the institutions and actors in the system
o Disaffection with which systems institutions actors?
o What type of disaffection?
§ Distrust
§ Lack of satisfaction
§ Value problem
o And for what reason?
• A typology of political support
o Legitimacy as
§ Compliance with rules of the game
• Elections contribute to legitimacy when they are organized
democratically, political parties can contribute to legitimacy
• We comply because we believe the rules of the game are the
rights one
§ Acceptance of authority conferred by these rules
§ Acceptance of outcomes produced by those with authority
• Economic growth, policies
• All start from complying of the rules
§ Consent of the people who are governed and the reason why they
consent
§ Historically, legitimacy come either through tradition, from your inherent
position (monarchs, tribe leaders) or through charisma (personal
leadership)
§ Today legitimacy is bureaucratically idealistic
o Losers’ consent: acceptance of defeat
§ The crucial element of legitimacy is that those who loose (don’t benefit of
the outcomes and not win the elections) still see the outcome as
legitimate
 • Loser’s consent is crucial for democracy
o Citizen’s willingness to accept the rules
o “Legitimacy of democracies is affected by the extent to which citizens trust
government to what is right most of the time” David Easton (1965,1975)
§ For legitimacy to be present, for citizens to accept the rules and the
outcomes based on the rules, it is crucial that they trust those in power at
least to do the right thing most of the time, to give them the benefit of
the doubt
§ Diffuse support: for the basic structures and values
• Institutions and values of the system (rule of law)
§ Specific support: for its current actors and their actions
§ We have values and attitudes that are at the most general level (most
diffuse level)
• Formed by our national identity and adherence to our community
• Core regime and values (adherence to democratic rules)
• Then you evaluate the regime performance (your satisfaction
towards the system of governance)
o Positive and negative evaluation
§ You can have very high levels of diffuse support but at the same time be
quite critical to specific support
• Levels of satisfaction toward democracies varies largely across countries and that’s why
we can’t claimed that there is a crisis
o Within countries, this also varies depending on education levels and the political
context.
• If you are less satisfied with democracy, you are more likely to be less satisfied with the
elected officials in your system
• Political trust
o Trust in institutions and the people that populated
§ Track record of keeping their promises (consistency)
§ Transparency
§ Knowledge
o Citizens’ assessments of the core institutions of the polity
§ Body of representatives or governments consisted of ministers and prime
ministers: you evaluate the quality of those people
o Positive evaluation of the most relevant attributes that make each political
institution trustworthy
§ Evaluation is very much about their behavior and how they relate and
treat citizens to their behavior
 o Procedural justice and fairness
§ Whether they feel that those that populate the institutions treat us as
citizens the right way and equally
• If I write to a member of parliament, I need to get the answer as
the same speed that someone else
o Political trust it can be about competence, the care that representative has for
citizens, commitment
§ We can apply this evaluation to representatives in parliament, judges in a
court, police officers in the street
o If the evaluation is positive you are going to say you trust an institution or actor,
if they are negative, you are likely to say that you distrust them
o People can also be neither trustful or distrustful and this led to skepticism
• Striking the balance
o Democracy: a system of organized distrust
§ Why do we have separation of power?
• Because we don’t trust those institutions to deal well when they
have all power
o Disaffection with policy outputs and skepticism about politicians are important
incentives for citizens to become active politically
§ If citizens are dissatisfied or angry, it can motivate them to act
§ Having citizens that are extremely pleased are not always good for your
system
o A vital democracy requires a certain degree of skepticism towards political actors
o Democracy at the same time requires citizens to trust the system, its core values,
and processes: legitimacy of the rules of the game
§ High levels of diffuse support
o Democracy does not require citizens to have (blind) confidence in specific actors
and their action within the political system
§ We want a degree of skepticism which doubt in actors so they can
improve
• In the US, there is a decrease in trust since the 1960s
• In Central and Eastern Europe there is also a decrease in trust
• In Western Europe, is more stabilized trust
• High trust versus low trust countries
o Less political trust in Eastern Europe and in Latin America
o Low trust in the UK
o A population that has over 80% of trust in their institutions is perhaps equally
problematic to the country where they are not level of trust
 o It is ideal to have between 50%-80% of political trust
o Welfare states (they have government intervention) has higher political trust
• Explaining differences
o Trust is higher in countries with electoral proportional representation
§ Different interests are represented, and this is reflected in policies
o Between countries: Structural factors
§ Level of corruption
§ Neutral government
• The government treats all citizens equally and the government
itself is bound by the rule of law
§ Proportional representation
o Over time: Conjectural and cyclical factors
§ Political trust is based on economic performance compared to a country’s
own past
§ Specific periods of endemic corruption or political scandal
§ Occurrence of elections
• Elections push up political trust because it gives citizens the
chance to voice their dissatisfaction
o Political trust is an evaluation
§ Is not only based on your personal circumstances, but is also based on to
what extent you are politically sophisticated
o Politically sophisticated citizens are more likely to evaluate
o Higher educated do not always have more trust in politics than lower educated:
difference is inverted in the most corrupt countries (compared with western
countries)
§ They are more negative towards educated people in corrupt countries
• Trust can become more or less politicized
o Political trusts become more structured by your political identity and
preferences
• Is institutional reform the answer?
o Many of the issues are challenges of representative democracy
§ Political parties as weak link
o Improve on representative democracy
§ Strengthen political parties
• Introducing more legislation
o Make their financing more dependent on their member-
ship base
 § So, they have an incentive to recruit more
members and make them become more active in
the political party
§ More proportional representation
• The problem with this measure is that it requires the cooperation
of political parties in countries that the organization is not
working very well
§ More elected offices
• Is institutional reform the answer?
o What kind of democracy address these societal trends that erode the link
between citizens and political parties?
o What kind of democracy fits society?
o Compliment representative democracy with direct democracy and deliberative
democracy (alternatives)
o Emancipated citizens with degree of skepticism
§ More interested and willing to decide
§ Want to express healthy skepticism
o Direct agenda-setting and decision-making power
§ Direct and deliberative democracy provide this
§ In representatives’ democracies, citizens transfer decision-making to
their representatives.
• Direct democracy
o Referenda and citizen initiatives
§ Give citizens the opportunity to decide what is important
§ Citizens can ask parliament to deliberate on something, to considerate
proposal (Agenda-setting power is stronger)
o Majoritarian logic
• Deliberative democracy
o Citizens Assembly, G1000, mini publics
§ Citizens deliberate proposals
§ Citizens discussed issues with the government
o Focus on process: knowledge, mutual understanding, better policies
§ If you put a selection of citizens together and you feed them with
information from experts, important actors, government, and you make
them discussed the issue at length, it generates more knowledge, it
creates mutual understanding (decreased polarization), and through
deliberation the proposals are qualitatively better.
o Representation and equality through randomization
 § Participants of the selection process are selected randomly.
• To have different backgrounds and preferences that shape the
policy
• Is institutional reform the answer?
o Part of the solution, but no magic bullet
o Combination of reforms of representative democracy, and new form of
democracy