POLITICAL SCIENCE

Professor: Dr. Carl Johan BLYDAL (Humboldt University of Berlin)

carl_blydal@[Link]

Schedule: Monday from 7H45 to 9H00 and Wednesday from 7H45 to 9H00

Abstract:

La evaluación de la realidad política se apoya en un marco teórico que facilita la

comprensión de las fuerzas de poder y su interacción social, así como su influencia en las
distintas formas de gobierno. Al finalizar el curso, el alumno debe estar en capacidad de
preparar un informe sobre las fuerzas políticas y sociales que definen una sociedad, país o
continente, así como explicar la coyuntura y proyección a futuro.

Introduction

For the first time since WWI a major power in Europe has attacked a sovereign country
militarily. There is consensus in most of the EU countries. Here, in Peru, at the
Diplomatic Academy, we are in a context of diplomacy and Peru is a country that has
good relations with all countries and has an experience of gaining its freedom. Peru
gained its independence 200 years ago.

When we look at something from far away, it is easy to simplify. When in Europe we
look at South America, we see a place far away with a lot of cultural heritage in common
and it is easy to think of it as one place, whereas when we look at Europe we see a
myriad of very small places with a lot of history and very strong heritages.

When we think about politics, we can see that it is one way to think about what happens
around us. We can pick an example: the COVID-19 pandemic of the last two years that
might or might not be over and look at what it can be seen. We can look at it as an event
that has affected public health policies. We can also look at it as something that has
affected economy. We can also look at it as something that has shifted the power
structures within States. On one hand we can take the US where the government
recommended the use of facemasks and the opposition rallied against it. On the other
hand, we can take another country like Sweden where the government didn’t
recommend the use of masks and the opposition rallied on getting the use of mask
mandatory. We can also look at it as something that changes the power structure among
States, threatens democracy, but also authoritarian rule. The same phenomenon can be
perceived from different perspectives and using different concepts.
 Unit I: Why do diplomats need political science? What is political
science?

Bibliography:

 Heineman, Robert A., Chapter 1: The Study of Politics

Political science is a discipline that focuses on politics. Politics can be defined as the
human activities related to the organization of societies and solution of the
problems that arise in this context. This is not the only definition. It is more of a broad
idea of what this is all about because political science in the West has a 2500-year long
tradition. As such, this course will be centred in the West. This does not mean Chinese,
Indian or Arabic thoughts are not important. However, the world we live in today has
been shaped by European ideas. It has two main roots:

 Empirical tradition seeking to understand how politics do work

 Normative tradition seeking to establish how politics should work

This is a very basic distinction. In real life, this is often mixed up, going from one
tradition to the other. However, these are the two main roots of the political thought in
the West, beginning with Greece, going through the Romans and so on.

What does political science do?

Political science looks at, among other things, political authority and social stability,
political systems and political power. Heineman talks about dichotomies in political
science:

 Empirical and normative

 Institutions and behaviour
 Institutional forces and external forces

Moreover, the author distinguishes several methods used to describe what is going on
or what should be going on:

 Case study
 Ethnographical research
 Survey research
 Modelling
 Historical descriptive approach

In the US tradition for the last 50 years, which has also influenced the Latin American
tradition of political science, we talk about it as a social science. However, political
science has some of its roots in philosophy, which is part of the humanities.
There are also different perspectives on politics:

 Quantitative approach
 Rational choice
 Pluralism and elitism approach
 Ideological perspectives
 Comparative perspectives

Unit II: Politics – Definition, dimensions (politics, policy, polity)

Bibliography:

 Heywood, Andrew, Chapter 1: Politics

 Weber, Max, Politics as a vocation (1919)

Max Weber was a lecturer who dedicated his work to very different topics: law,
economics and political science. This text was written in a very specific political context:
January 1919, after World War I and the Russian revolutions. In March 1918, the
revolutionary Russia signed the peace accord with Germany and Austria-Hungary. In
October 1918, the latter lost the war.

In Germany, the Spartacus League tried to declare the communist revolution in front of
the Reichstag in Berlin. There were civil wars breaking out in Berlin and other German
cities. This is the context wherein a student asked Max Weber to give a lecture about the
situation. To understand the text, it is not important to know who the characters he talks
about are.

This text is organized according to his idea of what he wanted to explain to his students.
They asked him to tell them if they should be politicians. First, he defines politics. Then,
he defines the Modern State, based of legitimate domination. This domination is based,
among other factors, on charisma, which he defines, and so.

The concept to which Weber refers is politics understood as the direction or

influence on the direction of a political association, specifically, the State. From the
author’s perspective, what characterizes this political association and what makes it
different from the other is that the State is founded on violence. The State is a human
community that successfully claims the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force
within a given territory. The State is the only source of right violence.

What makes people see this domination as something “legitimate”?

There are three internal justifications:

 Traditional domination: historical custom

 Charisma domination: talent
 Domination by legality: validity of legal precepts
Organized domination requires two things:

 The obedience of people to the people who have the legitimate power as the
administrative staff.
 The disposition of those material goods necessary for the use of physical
power.

The administrative staff represents the organization of political domination. However,

they do that in order to satisfy two personal aspects:

 Material reward
 Social honour

To maintain the domination by force, it is compulsory to have material resources.

To sum up, the modern State is an association of domination with an institutional

character that has tried, successfully, to monopolize legitimate physical violence
within a territory as a mean of domination. Besides, Weber says that occasional
politicians, semi-professional politicians or professional politicians could exercise
politics. Regarding the professional politician, there are two ways to be one:

 The politician who lives “for” politics, enjoying this activity

 The politician who lives “off” politics, having politics as a permanent source of
income

These concepts are not exclusive according to Weber, due to the fact that every man
who lives for something, also lives off something. Nonetheless, there are preconditions
to live “for” politics as a vocation. Politicians must have a personal position in life,
which yields a sufficient income. Furthermore, there are landlords who receive their
income without working.

The broad meaning of politics, according to Weber, is any kind of independent

leadership in action. The specific meaning would be the leadership or the influencing
of the leadership, of a political association, hence today of a State. Hence, politics for us
means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power,
either among States or among groups within a State.

When a question is said to be a “political” question, when a cabinet minister or an official

is said to be a “political” official or when a decision is said to be “politically” determined,
what is always meant is that interests in the distribution, maintenance or transfer of
power are decisive for answering the questions and determining the decision or the
official’s sphere of activity.

How to define the State?

There is scarcely any task that some political association has not taken in hand, and
there is no task that one could say has always been exclusive and peculiar to those
associations, which are designated as political ones. Therefore, the State must be
defined by what distinguishes it from other forms of organizations: the use of
physical force. The modern State is a compulsory association, which organized
domination. It has been successful in seeking to monopolize the legitimate use of
physical force as a mean of domination within a territory. To this end, the State has
combined the material means of organization in the hands of its leaders.

This argument seeks to establish that the modern State is different from the feudal State.
In the latter, these material means of organization and war were legally in the hands
of the vassals of a King or an Emperor. There were different lords on different levels.
The modern State took away these means and the legality to centralize the mean but
also to make the State the only institution to legally administrate and make war,
as well as exercise violence.

In reality, obedience is determined by robust motives of fear and hope –fear of the
vengeance of magical powers or of the power-holder, hope for reward in this world or in
the beyond– and besides all this, by interests of the most varied sort. Nevertheless, there
are reasons that are used to convey meaning to why people should obey, as sources of
legitimacy or legitimate domination (authority). To Weber, power is the probability of
bringing to be your will even against somebody else’s by any means. For him, it’s the
capacity to impose your will on somebody else, however you do it. He distinguishes
power from legitimate power. People obey for various reasons: because they’re afraid of
vengeance, because they want to be rewarded. Nevertheless, there are three categories
he defines for legitimacy. His method is to work with pure types or “ideal types”:

 Traditional domination: authority of the “eternal yesterday”. People obey

because they have always obeyed. Rules are obeyed because they are old.
 Charismatic domination: it is based in the devotion to and belief in the
extraordinary qualities of the leader. The domination of the “prophet, the elected
war lord, the ruler, the great demagogue or the political party leader”. The leader
is personally recognized as the inner called leader of men.
 Legitimacy by legality: the obedience is based on rules and laws. The rules are
believed to be rational and be appropriate to the goals. Domination “by virtue of
the belief in the validity of legal statute and functional “competence” based on
rationally created rules”. Whoever is appointed according to the rules is the
legitimate ruler.

According to Max Weber, a professional politician who lives “off” politics may assume
the character of an entrepreneur who considers his costs a capital investment, which
he brings to fruition thorough exploitation of his influence. Living “for” and “off” politics
is not mutually exclusive. Any politician who lives “for” politics will also try to live “off”
politics. Where people without independent means can enter politics, they have to earn
an income. These professional politicians strive to gain an income “off” politics.
Therefore, party politics is also about distributing spoils to party members and
supporters.

Modern bureaucracy is highly qualified and with a high sense of status honour.
Historically, a minister emerged to direct the officialdom in a unified way. Modern
bureaucracy emerged in order to make politics work. The career bureaucrat can be
much higher educated than the elected political official appointed his superior. Weber
describes something that existed in some European countries and takes that as an
example.

The demand for professionals led to specialization in the emerging European modern
States beginning in Italy in the 15th century:

 Finance expert
 Expert and specialized officer
 Trained jurist

Public functionaries are divided in two groups:

 Administrative officials, linked to technical management

 Political officials, who can be transferred at any time at will. He or she can be
dismissed, or at least temporarily withdrawn.

Professional politicians:

 Clergy
 Literary educated humanist
 Court nobility
 Gentry
 University-trained jurist

The craft of the trained lawyer is to plead effectively the cause of interested clients. The
lawyer successfully pleads a cause that can be supported by logically strong arguments,
thus handling a “good” cause “well”, making a lawyer a successful civil servant and
high-lightening the importance of lawyers in Occidental politics.
Weber established a distinction amongst political parties:

 Party of “notables”: some kind of popular representation vis-à-vis the King,

mostly noblemen and some bourgeois (the “Gentry”). They were important
people within their communities to represent the interests of their elite. They
formed elite blocks to impose their interest against others.
 Parliamentary parties, formed in Parliaments and spread.
 “Machine” politics: plebiscitary democracy.

The plebiscitary democracy is defined as the situation wherein the power rests in the
hands of those who, within the organization, handle the work continuously.

What inner enjoyments can this career offer and what personal conditions are
presupposed for one who enters this path?

The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all,
the feeling of holding in one’s hands a nerve fibre of historically important events can
elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in
formally modest positions.

Through what qualities can he hope to do justice to his power and how can he hope to do
justice to the responsibility that power? What kind of a man must one be if he is to be
allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?

There are three preeminent qualities are decisive for the politician:

 Passion
 Feeling of responsibility
 Sense of proportion

Passion to a cause is not enough. That would be a deadly sin characterized by the lack of
distance. Politics are made with the head, not with the heart. All three qualities are
necessary to balance the politician’s actions.

Vanity is a very widespread quality and perhaps nobody is entirely free from it. With
the politician the case is quite different. He works with the striving for power as an
unavoidable means. The sin against the spirit of his vocation begins where this struggle
for power ceases to be objective and becomes purely personal self-intoxication, instead
of exclusively entering the service of “the cause”. There are only two kinds of deadly sins
in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and irresponsibility.

What relation do ethics and politics actually have?

Demagoguery is the action of winning support by exciting the emotions of ordinary

people rather than by having good or morally right ideas. Since the time of the
constitutional State, and definitely since democracy has been established, the
“demagogue” has been the typical political leader in the Occident. He makes use of
oratory in election speeches. The political publicist, and above all the journalist, is the
most important representative of the demagogic species. He therefore is constantly in
danger of becoming an actor as well as taking lightly the responsibility for the outcome
of his actions and of being concerned merely with the “impression” he makes. His lack of
objectivity tempts him to strive for the glamorous semblance of power rather than for
actual power. His irresponsibility, however, suggests that he enjoys power merely for
power’s sake without a substantive purpose. Although, or rather just because, power is
the unavoidable means and striving for power is one of the driving forces of all politics,
there is no more harmful distortion of political force than the parvenu-like braggart with
power, and the vain self reflection in the feeling of power, and in general every worship
of power per se. A vain, irresponsible, self-centred politician who seeks power for his
own interest alone is dangerous.

There are two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed maxims:

 Ethic of ultimate ends: importance of the acts. The problem is that if the
outcome is undesired in spite of one having followed the “manual”, somebody
else is to blame.
 Ethic of responsibility: importance of the results. The problem is that it is easy
to see the results as justifying any kind of action.

Both maxims can result in acts according to the idea “the ends justify the means”. This
leads to Weber’s conclusion:

“Whoever wants to engage in politics at all, and especially in politics as a vocation, has to
realize these ethical paradoxes”.

- Max Weber

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and
perspective.

For Weber, power is the probability of having your will or your orders been followed
even against opposition. It is making other people do what you want them to do.

Unit III: Power – Aspects, legitimacy, application

Bibliography:

 Lukes, Steven, Power. A Radical View

We have already seen that Weber considers power to be a very central or the central
point of politics. For him, politics are about power. Others state that politics should be
about using power to do something, for regulating social conflicts, for instance.
However, there are others, like Steven Lukes, who commented the debates of their time.
He talked about the radical view of power. We can look at power from different angles.
There is a distinction between power and authority.

The author presents three types of views on power:

  One-dimensional view or pluralist (Dahl, Polsby, Wolfinger): there’s an open
conflict where can be seen the interests and participations of the actors
 Two-dimensional view or elitist (Bachrach and Baratz): one observable
dimension and other which can be seen in the dissatisfaction or complaints
 Three-dimensional view or radical (Lukes): pluralist + elitist + preconceived
preferences

One-dimensional view

It focuses on behaviour in the making of decisions on issues over which there is an

observable conflict of subjective interests:

 Concept of power: intuitive idea of power (capacity) vs. intuitive view of the
power relation (successful attempt)
 Focus: study of concrete, observable behaviour
 Central task: studying decision-making
 Assumption that “decisions” involve actual and observable conflict
 Conflict happens among consciously made preferences that exhibited in actions
 Decisions are about issues in key issues-areas (actual disagreement in
preferences)
 Interests define policy preferences

The method is strongly “behaviourist” since it implies that only observable behaviour
can give information on who has power. Power is a successful attempt by A to get B to
do something he would not otherwise do. The problem is that it is only possible to
assess visible power when there is a visible political conflict.

Two-dimensional view

It is a qualified critique of the behavioural focus of the first view and allows for
consideration of the way in which decisions are prevented from being taken on
potential issues over which there is an observable conflict of subjective interests, seen
as embodied in express policy preferences and sub-political grievances:

 Concept of power: A devotes his energies to limit the scope of the political
process to public consideration of only those issues, which are innocuous
to A. As a result, B is prevented from bringing any issues that might be
detrimental to A’s set of preferences.
 Central point: one has power when, consciously or not, creates or reinforces
barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts
 Organization is the mobilization of bias
 Two senses to the typology of power:
o A’s securing B’s compliance (power over influence, authority, force,
manipulation)
o Securing the compliance through the threat of sanctions (coercion)

A satisfactory analysis of two-dimensional power involves examining decision-making

and non decision-making since it prevents potential issues from being concrete. Key
issues may be actual or potential. Conflict is among the interests of those engaged in non
decision-making and the interests of the excluded of the political system.

Bachrach and Baratz’s method is to observe both decisions and non-decisions: “so-
called non-decisions which confine the scope of decision-making are themselves
(observables) decisions”. This method allows for consideration of the ways in which
decisions are prevented from being taken on potential issues over which there is an
observable conflict of (subjective) interests, seen as embodied in express policy
preferences and sub-political grievances. There is power when non decision-making
can prevent potential issues from becoming concrete. The problem is that it is still
only possible to ascertain who has power by analysing observable conflicts.

Three-dimensional view

It involves a thoroughgoing critique of the behavioural focus of the first two views
as too individualistic and allows for consideration of the many ways in which
potential issues are kept out of politics, whether through the operation of social forces
and institutional practices or through individuals’ decisions. This can occur in the
absence of actual, observable conflict.

The bias of the system is sustained not only by a series of individually chosen acts, but
also by the socially structured and culturally patterned behaviour of groups, and
practices of institutions. There is no need to associate power with observable conflict: A
also exercises power over B by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants. The
most insidious use of power is to prevent conflict from arising in the first place, and to
prevent people from having grievances by shaping their perception. To assume
that the absence of grievance equals genuine consensus is to rule out the possibility of
false manipulated consensus.

This method searches for the “latent conflict, which consists in a contradiction between
the interests of those exercising power and the real interests of those they exclude”. It
allows for consideration of the many ways in which potential issues are kept out of
politics, whether through the operation of social forces and institutional practices or
through individuals’ decisions. In this case, A exercises power over B when A affects B in
a manner contrary to B’s interests.

The problem is that this view defines interests as “what people would want and prefer,
were they able to make the choice”.
The concept of power is ineradicably value-dependent, that is, linked to a set of values
assumptions. They predetermine the range of its empirical application. Power is also
essentially contested. Inevitably, it involves disputes about its proper uses.

Basic common core: A affects B in some way

 In a “significant manner”: What counts as a significant manner?

Answering this question yields “views of power”, that is, ways of identifying cases of
power: “A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B’s
interests”. Therefore, there is a conflict of interests.

There are two alternative concepts of power:

 Talcott Parsons: “Power of A over B is the right of A, as a decision-making unit

involved in the collective process, to make decisions which take precedence over
those of B, in the interest of the effectiveness of the collective operation as a
whole”. Power is the use of authoritative decisions to further collective goals.
Characteristics:
o Ties power to authority
o It disassociates power from conflicts of interest and from coercion
and force
o Power depends on the institutionalization of authority

 Hannah Arendt: “Power corresponds to the human ability to act in concert.

Power is never the property of an individual; it belong to a group (…) It is the
people’s support that lends power to the institutions of a country”. Power is
disassociated from the command-obedience relationship. It becomes consensual.
It separates from violence, which is a mean, not an end. Power is the condition
that enables a group to act in terms of the means-end category.
These conceptualizations seek to lend persuasive support, to the general theoretical
framework of their authors.

The notion of interest is an irreducibly evaluative notion. Talking about interests

enables normative judgements of moral and political character. Different conceptions of
what interests are associated with different moral and political positions.

There are three different notions of interests:

 Liberal (one-dimensional): interests are what people want, manifested by their

political participation
 Reformist (two-dimensional): interests are what people want, but they may be
revealed in more indirect ways
 Radical (three-dimensional): people’s wants may themselves be a product of a
system that works against their interests, what people would prefer, should
they be free to chose.

The debate regarding the definition of power entails one fundamental question: how can
we study power? Each approach focuses on different ways of studying it. They go from
more overt to covert ways of exercising power. However, there is a gap: what happens
to inactivity? According to Lukes, “non-events make more significant policy than policy-
making events do”, so inactivity is a way of exercising power.

Counter-arguments to three-dimensional view focus on inactivity:

 Infinite variety of possible non-decisions

 Desired but not achieved events explicitly stated VS stipulated by outside
observers (inappropriate)
 Hard to prove that people do not behave in certain ways due to the exercise of
power
However, just because it is difficult to prove, that does not mean power was not
exercised in a given situation.

What is it to exercise power?

We must move away from individualistic and intentional assumptions. Power can be
exercised whether by individuals, groups or institutions, consciously or not.

In an operative sense, power is sufficient to produce the result. No matter who exercises
power, the result is the same.

In an effective sense, A’s intervention makes a difference on B. Successful exercise of

power happens when A does not want behaviour 1, but behaviour 2. A’s actions are
meant to secure B’s compliance. Thus, there is an intention.

What exactly is involved in identifying an exercise of power?

There are two claims: A acts (or fails to act) in a certain way and B does what he would
not otherwise do, think, want or feel. It would be relevant to have a relevant
counterfactual, what B would otherwise have done.

How to explain things that do not happen (political inactivity)?

Lukes took the case of air pollution (Crenson 1971), where a company could prevent an
issue from being raised and influence policy-making without acting.

The third dimension of power describes the power to prevent the formation of
grievances by shaping perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way as to
ensure the acceptance of a certain role in the existing order.

How can anyone study what does not happen?

There are two major challenges related to this idea:

 Justifying the relevant counterfactual

 Identifying the process or mechanism of the alleged exercise of power

The process requires justifying that B would think and act differently if it wasn’t for A’s
action or abstention. We should observe how people behave when the apparatus of
power is removed or relaxed. Lukes encounters three issues:

 The exercise of power as inaction. The goal is to find a causal link between
inaction and its consequences, such as the non-appearance of an issue in the
political agenda.

 The unconscious exercise of power. How can power be exercised without the
exerciser being aware of what he or she is doing? It depends. If A’s ignorance of
those effects is due to his or her failure to find out, then there is an exercise of
power.

 Power exercised by collectivities. The problem is when can a social causation

be characterised as an exercise of power? To identify a given process as an
exercise of power is to assume that it is in the exerciser’s power to act
differently.

Unit IV: The State

Bibliography:

 Heywood, Andrew, Chapter 5: The State.

 Tilly, Charles. War Making and State Making as Organized Crime

The frame of Tilly’s text is the decolonization during the XXth century. This text was
first published in 1985, during the Cold War and at the end of the decolonization era,
which began mostly after World War II. That was the real independence movement,
mostly for African and Asian countries. The central argument is the connection
between war making and State making and its analogy with the “protection”: racket
of organized crime.
What Tilly is pointing out, and this is really central in his argument, is that the people
who made the State in Europe didn’t have this plan; they only wanted to have more
power. They were not doing this to be nice with anyone. According to Tilly, this was not
going according to any particular plan. He defends the idea that State making was the
result of coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs. Banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry,
policing and war making all belong on the same continuum.

There are many ideas that try to explain the emergence of State:

 The idea of a social contract

 The idea of an open market in which operators of armies and States offer
services to willing consumers
 The idea of a society whose shared norms and expectations call forth a certain
kind of government
 The idea that war makes State: a continuum of banditry, piracy and war making,
meaning that there are no clear cuts among them.

A racketeer is defined as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its
reduction, but States also create threats and charge for their reduction. The difference
between racketeers and States is the “sanctity of government” which States have.

National States are relatively centralized, differentiated organizations the officials of

which more or less successfully claim control over the chief concentrated means of
violence within a population inhabiting a large, contiguous territory.

According to Stinchcombe, legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to
confirm the decisions of a given authority.

War making, extraction and capital accumulation interacted to shape European

State making, but it was no a conscious goal. The point of departure was the need of war
makers to monopolize the use of violence in territories close to their power base.
Creating the difference between legitimate and illegitimate violence implied
“eliminating local rivals” and creating their strongholds. At the beginning of the “State
building” era many power holders had legal right to exercise violence and had own
armed followers and fortified castles. Territorial lords in many parts of Europe began
disarming local competitors and raze their strongholds, such as the Tudors in England.
The victorious lords needed the collaboration of the vanquished to govern their
territories. To balance the old local lords, the central government tried to extend their
administration to the local level and to create police forces.

The government sells protection. The “monopoly profit” or “tribute” is the difference
between the cost of producing violence and the price paid by the “customers” for their
protection. The “protection rent” is the advantage the protected client have against
foreign competitors. Merchant subjects to an efficient lord who can attack their
competitors have an advantage against merchants who are subjects to a less efficient
lord.

The relationship between State making and the accumulation of capital follows four
stages:
  Anarchy and plunder
 Tribute takers attract customers and construct States
 Merchants and landlords gain more rent than the cost of their tribute
 Income from technological progress becomes more important than protection
rent

Tilly points out that there is a coincidence among war making, State making and capital
accumulation. There is a very interesting model concerning the artillery. What Tilly
points out is that Bean stresses the importance of artillery to State making since it
raised the costs for war making and forced war makers to raise more money. However,
artillery was not alone in raising the costs; indirectly, artillery fortresses did. Navies
were more important for the necessity to raise capital.

There was a symbiotic between State and finance because, to build these things, we
needed a huge amount of money. The costs of war making led to rulers having to
borrow money from merchants. Early modern States were indebted already in the XVI th
century. Higher costs for war also forced governments to levy taxes on a greater scale.
France, Spain and England were constantly in debt for centuries due to warfare. The
interesting thing about Spain is that the country had a lot of money from its colonies, but
this led to inflation because they needed more and more money.

The central argument in this text is that there are four different activities for the State:

 War making: eliminating or neutralizing their own rivals outside the territories
in which they have clear and continuous priority as wielders of force
 State making: eliminating or neutralizing their rivals inside those territories
 Protection: eliminating or neutralizing the enemies of their clients
 Extraction: acquiring the means of carrying out the first three activities: war
making, State making and protection

War making led to standing armies and navies. State making led to control of the
territory. Protection led to institutions where the protected could claim their right, for
instance, through courts and assemblies. Extraction led to fiscal structures.

The costlier the activities were, the bigger the organization was. A big standing army
needed a big bureaucracy to raise levy the necessary taxes. A small country with a big
army needed a big bureaucracy, like Prussia, for instance. A country with a few big
landowners and/or religious heterogeneity needed more bureaucracy, like parts of
Germany or France. A country with many small landowners and religious homogeneity
needed less, such a Sweden. The bigger the territory that had to be protected was, the
higher the protection costs, like Portugal.
The intertwined four activities let to a certain kind of State emerging in Europe. The
relation among these four activities within one State influenced its shape. The flow of
resources among State, the competition for hegemony over certain territories, which
favoured war making, and the coalitions among States, connected any given nation State
the network of European States. War became a normal state of international affairs.

From 1648, if not before, at the end of wars all effective European States coalesced
temporarily to bargain over the boundaries and rulers of the recent belligerents. From
that point on, periods of major reorganization of the European State system came in
spurts, at the settlement of widespread wars.

“External” State making in three stages complements “internal” State making:

 The success of some power holders in external struggles establishes the

difference between “internal” and “external”
 “External” competition generates “internal” State making
 “External” agreements influence the shape and place of States

In Europe, there was a steady process of interaction among rulers, their military, the
economically dominant classes and the governed in general as well as between rulers
and their counterparts in other countries within the European State system created
mechanisms to moderate the behaviour of rulers as well as of the military. Looking at
the newly independents countries of the 1980s, the author observes that many of these
States became military dictatorships. The reason for this he sees as that the new States
received their boundaries from the colonial powers, so they did not have to fight for
them, the military was the only functioning institutions, the military often was funded by
outside powers and it was not balanced by interior forces in a national context. State
building outside Europe thus often did not follow the pattern of how State-building, war
making, extraction and protection converged in Europe to form the modern Nation
State.
 Unit V: The Nation, nationalism and national identity

Bibliography:

 Heywood, Andrew, Chapter 6: Nations and Nationalism

 Eastwood, Jonathan and Liah Greenfeld, National Identity.

Identity can be understood as an aspect of one’s cognitive map that concerns the
configuration and structure of one’s self in relation to the social world.

What is a cognitive map?

It’s the image of the social order held by a given social actor and is differentiated into a
variety of subcomponents. There is a human need for identity that is tightly connected
to the human need for order. This functional need is satisfied by culture.

Identity has multiple layers among experiences in multiple cultures. Those layers are
cast into relief by one’s environment, by conversation and interactions. There are
different types of identities:

 Central identity
 Political identity
 Religious identity
 National identity

The national identity is connected to a specific “world image”, the “national” image of
the world and is characterized by secularism, division into communities and popular
sovereignty.

Nationalism is the form of culture where national identity represents an outstanding

feature. It’s the most fundamental image of the social order in modernity. It represents
the specific form of modern social consciousness.

There are two main implications of nationalism and national identity:

 Social structure: open system of social stratification; all members of society are
understood to be in some crucially important sense equal. Nationalism
perpetuates and institutionalizes anomie due to its clear prescription for an
open system of stratification means that national identity is tightly bound to
ambition and envy, open stratification (expression of political discontent) and
meritocratic understanding of the social order that is prescribed by most
nationalisms.

 Political institutions. The primary and fundamental implication is the State.

Nationalism implies State-centred politics and the most important
characteristic of the State is it impersonality. The State is entirely independent
for its existence and legitimacy of the individuals who staff and run it. It’s a
 function of nationalism’s principle of popular sovereignty. In actual practice, it
means the delegation of authority.

There are historical explanations for the rise of nationalism:

 Primordialism: nationalism has always been with us

 Perennialism: nationalism has been with us for many centuries
 Modernism: nationalism is a modern phenomenon

Regarding modernism, there different explanations on how it concerns nationalism:

 Relationship between nationalism and capitalism: nationalism arose to cause

certain actors to behave in certain ways necessary for the extension and world
dominion of capitalism. It’s functional in relation to the emergence of national
markets and for the creation of national industries. It’s a Marxist perspective.

 Relationship between nationalism and the State: State men promote it as a

basis for social solidarity and as a strategy to legitimize the State’s power

 Nation as an imagined community: it is imagined to be sovereign and

evidencing deep horizontal comradeship

There is an alternative approach, which doesn’t look for a “first cause” because there is
multi-causality in social life. It tries to understand the emergence and spread of national
identity in relation to the consciousness of the individuals who turned to it.

The idea of nationalism and national identity is that they were out-dated 30 years ago. It
is important to keep this in mind. Back in the Cold War era, there was a contradiction:
there was the Western idea that nationalism was an idea of the past, which led to World
War I and World War II. Back then, the world was understood as divided among
ideologies. At the same time, there were liberation movements in the former colonies
based on nationalism in many cases. During the Cold War, the contradiction existed but
it was not that important if we look at what was discussed in the West. Then, the Berlin
Wall was shut down and Europe was confronted to conflicts motivated by nationalism.
That nationalism was supposed to be extinct in Europe. This cost problems in
perceptions in Western Europe. At the beginning of the 90s, Yugoslavians were killing
each other based on nationalism and religious identity. This was one part of this
nationalism that came back at the time to Europe. The Western Europeans were
confronted with a nationalism of the newly liberated Eastern and Central European
countries, which were ideological allies and brothers for many decades and were
somehow liberated by nationalism.

After the Cold War, States began to adapt to liberalism, according to Fukuyama.
Obviously he was wrong. Nationalism has been understood as a feeling of togetherness
or belongs. Samuel Huntington became known through his book Clash of civilizations
where he stressed a way back to cultural fractures among people. There were other
positions with strong ideas, especially in Europe, wherein the world would surpass
nationalism. This was particularly true in Germany because the idea of German
reunification was that there was a German nation, a cultural nation that was divided into
two States and that this nation should be reunited in one State. That was the feeling in
Eastern Germany.

These discussions about what is a nation and what is national identity are not just
theoretical questions that we can arise. We live in an age where people are dying
because of these ideas.

Unit VI: Political institutions

Bibliography:

 Rothstein, Bo, Political Institutions: An overview.

 March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen, Elaborating the “New Institutionalism”.

Institutions are concepts that we know as things that have been here for long and that
“everybody” knows. It implies a certain trust and everybody goes there. However, that
it’s not what we mean by institutions in political science. In this field, when we talk
about institutions today, this is part of an approach that is known as new
institutionalism. This means there has to be an old institutionalism, which considered
Constitutions to be institutions and compared them, comparing legal frameworks. That
was at the beginning of the XXth century. Then arose fascism in Europe.

The idea of the total rational human being, who makes decisions on rational grounds,
doesn’t explain all actions.

What could explain actions as well?

Scholars started to think about rules that limited the actions. They called these rules
“institutions”. That’s basic idea of the new institutionalism approach: people are not
only guided by interactions and rationality, nor only by their own interest or utility.
People are guided in their actions by rules.

What are these rules?

There are those who say that only written rules count as institutions. Others say that
institutions can be written or unwritten, but they are both important. Unwritten rules
would be cultural. There is a huge discussion about this. Some say that written rules
(law) affect the unwritten rules (culture) whereas others say the opposite. There is a
huge part of scholars who think about why and when do these rules change. All of this is
under the roof of new institutionalism.

Political scientists agree that there are only two origins for formalized political power:

 Good, democratic, community based political power

 Bad, dictatorial, adversarial political power

How does the “good” or “democratic” political power emerge?

Individuals share characteristics, live in the same area or need the same resources. They
discover that they have common interests. Then, they have a common need for norms
that regulates conflicts about property and other rights. They discover that working
together the cost of their activities tend to reduce and also want to regulate the use of
natural resources, so they organize for these means. They just establish any type of
economic co-operative, which also needs to be administered.

In any of the previous cases, communities discover that in order to accomplish their
interests they need four types of political institutions:

 Rule-making institution: Legislative Power

 Rule-applying institution: Executive Power
 Rule-adjudicating institution: Judiciary
 Rule-enforcing institution: Police

Each institution has sub-institutions: decision-making, voting procedures, etc.

How does the “bad” or “dictatorial” political power emerge?

The supreme force of an individual ruler or a united ruling group, whose objective
is to extract resources from the ruled group as efficiently as possible, historically
controls the shared area. To make this possible, the supreme force also needs four
institutions:

 Rule-making institution (legitimacy)

 Rule-applying institution (implement will)
 Rule-adjudicating institution (disputes of subordinates)
 Rule-enforcing institution (action against opponents)

Why do they have common institutions?

Both democracy and dictatorship need institutions for the same tasks: making and
implementing policy, and to decide what to do with and how to handle rule-
breakers. Every political analysis is an institutional analysis, but there are not only
democratic and under-democratic political institutions. There is a wide range of specific
institutional forms. Each country has its own combination of institutional variations,
which makes them unique.

How do political scientists study institutions?

They make three questions about them:

 Which institutions are best suited for creating good governments and societal
relations?
 What explains the enormous variation in institutional arrangements? Why are
there so many different institutional configurations?
 How the difference between institutions in each country affect the political
behaviour, power and processes?
Classical political theorists strive to find which political institutions produce the best
society: Plato and Aristotle.

For Rawls, only institutions can create a just society, but not the other way around.

For Ricci, the study of institutions is no longer normative, only positive. That’s the
tragedy of political science.

Institutions are seen as arenas where political battles among groups with predefined
interests took place, but the specific construction of the arenas, as such, was not
considered as an important variable for determining the outcome of such battles. But
maybe the arena is important. Otherwise, it would be a reductionist understanding of
institutions. Political processes cannot be reduced to social, economic or cultural
variables.

For behaviourists, rational actors would simply construct the type of institutions that
would serve their predefined goals. In face of many major historical events, formal
political institutions seemed to have played little or no role.

He criticizes the neglect of the analysis of political institutions. The author talks about a
rediscovery of political institutions, which is attributed to several factors, such as:

 The collapse of what can be called the meta hypothesis of convergence in the
social sciences
 Historical institutionalism
 Exogenous factors such as the disjuncture arisen from what theory predicted
and what empirical observation… PPT

In contemporary institutional analysis, if the institutions... PPT

What are political institutions?

There seems to be a general agreement that, at their core, political institutions are the
rules of the game and there is a division between formal and informal rules.

In a narrower sense, political institutions can be defined as formal arrangements for

aggregating individuals and regulating their behaviour through the use of explicit rules
and decision processes enforced by an actor or set of actors formally recognized as
possessing such power.

A way out for the dilemma of which rule to apply is to acknowledge a third type or rule:
standard operating procedures.

There is a general agreement that institutions influence actors’ strategies… PPT

The institutions are enduring entities. The economic approach analyses institutions as
points of equilibriums. Cultural or historical approach argues that institutions are in
most cases not chosen. Historical institutionalism argues that power is what causes
institutional stability.

Institutions may change for three different reasons:

  Accident or unforeseen circumstances
 Evolutionary change
 The institutional design of strategic actors

Economic approach to institutions proposes that the “need” explains a certain

institutional order and this approach focuses on institutions as mainly constraining
individual choices.

The historical or cultural approach has shown that, at certain moments, political agents
can structure the political future, that is, men do make history. However, there is no sign
of a general theory coming out of this. It has been shown that, at certain moments,
specific actors have… PPT

What kind of institutional frameworks increase the possibility of permanence of

democracies?

PPT

There are two types of analysis in political science:

 The hard analysis that seeks universal laws (rational choice theory and
behaviour theory)
 The soft analysis that is historically oriented

Rational choice theory can explain why equilibrium is stable but it cannot explain why
equilibrium arises. The emergence of co-operation is a hard problem, one that may
require other methods of analysis. Co-operative action can be explained by the previous
existence of cultural, social or political bond.

What is an institution?

Institutions are invariant and resilient to idiosyncratic preferences, expectations and

changing circumstances.
Institutionalism serves as a perspective to understand and improve political systems. It
complements other perspectives: rational actor and cultural community. There are two
core assumptions:

 Institutions create elements of order and predictability

 Comprehensive and routine processes generate structures, political action, and
continuity and change

There are other perspectives of political institutions:

 Autonomy and independence of institutions

 Politics organized around interpretations of life, meaning, purpose and direction
 Institutionalized rules, norms and standard procedure impact political
behaviour
 History as “inefficient”

What do political institutions do?

They define basic rights and duties, shape or regulate how advantages, burdens and life-
chances are allocated in society. They also create authority to settle issues and resolve
conflicts, give order to social relations. They reduce flexibility and variability in
behaviour and they restrict possibilities of self-interest drives cannot be changed
arbitrarily.

The question is not “do institutions matter?” but rather to what extent, through what
processes and under which conditions.

Case study: European Union

Is political order achievable in multicultural societies?

In democracies, political debate and competition has been assigned importance as
source of change. The ideal would be citizens and their representatives should be able to
design political institution at will, making governing through organizing and
reorganizing institutions an important aspect of political agenda. Modern democracies
also seem to have limited capacity for institutional design, reforms and intended
reorganizations. That happens because Constitutions limit the legitimacy… PPT

This statement underestimates both intra- and interinstitutional dynamics as sources of

changes and how incremental steps can produce transformative results.

There are two theories of adaptation:

 Exploitation: using existing knowledge, rules and routines that are seen as
encoding the lessons of history
 Exploration: searching knowledge, rules and routines that might come to be
known

New institutionalism has three core concepts:

 Normative commitments: virtue

  Cognitive abilities: only bounded by rationality
 Social control: capabilities

There is need to improve the understanding of the process that translate political action
into institutional change, a need to go beyond rational design and environmental
dictates as dominant logic for institutional changes and a need for new… PPT

The approach of institutionalism has been very fruitful, a very positive way of trying to
understand politics and how they work, but also applied on societies. Here, these texts
talk about political institutions and political change, but we can also apply this to
societies as a whole and especially when we have a slightly different approach when we
talk about informal and formal institutions.

Rothstein points out that political institutions have four basic tasks:

 Rule-making
 Rule-applying
 Rule-adjudicating
 Rule-enforcing

These tasks exist whether there is a democratic or an authoritarian system, even an

assembly of some kind.

In general, what all new institutionalism can agree upon is that the institutions
determine a number of things. In a system, they determine legitimate actors, the number
of actors, they order actions and they determine the information actors have about other
actors. If we take a system like the Peruvian, the Constitution determines a lot of this:
who are the State powers, why they are legitimate, who can act in a given context (for
instance, how many Congressmen there are), procedural rules that have to be followed
(for instance, the steps for a given bill or law), what the actors can or cannot do (for
instance, citizens know the prerogatives of the President).

Different theories put different focus on the relationship between actors and
institutions. Economic approaches believe that only individuals have preferences and
that institutions do not influence preferences. Sociological approaches believe that
institutions socially construct actor’s “identities, belongings, definitions of reality and
shared meanings”.

Political institutions depend on written and unwritten rules alike:

 Rawls: just institutions can create just societies, not the other way around
 Putnam: democratic institutions are stable if its actors practice a civic spirit in
other social associations
 Gooding: institutions may change because of accidents, evolution or intentional
design

The old institutionalism, a hundred years ago, didn’t see this as a problem. One could
take a Constitution like the one of the United States and copy it and introduce it in other
countries. That wasn’t considered a problem. After the World War II, one could take a
principle like parliamentarism and introduce it in a country like Germany and think that
could work.

This position has also been taken over to the new institutionalism in some tendencies.
We can take a institution and, if it works, it can be transplanted. This is a simplification.
There are others, such as Rothstein, who have a historic view. For instance, important
parts of the 1979 Peruvian Constitution are literally translations from the 1949 German
Constitution, such as the opening articles.

Unit VII: Government

Bibliography:

 Heywood, Andrew, Chapter 2: Governments, Systems and Regimes

 Linz, J. 1990. The Perils of Presidentialism

Linz establishes that there are two ways of organizing governments: presidential and
parliamentary systems, the latter being the most stable democracies according to Linz.
He argues in favour of parliamentary systems as more conducted to democracies,
especially for nations with deep cleavages and numerous political parties, with the
notable exception of the United States. Parliamentary systems are more stable than
presidential systems.

Presidential systems

There are two issues:

 The President’s claim to democratic legitimacy: the ceremonial function of the

Head of the State and the effective function of the Chief of government. He has a
 particular aura and expectations. However, legislators can also claim legitimacy
and there is no democratic principle to resolve it.

 Fixed term in office: breaks the political process up, a factor in political
calculations, and the succession in case of vacancy can be a source of instability.

Therefore, there is a paradox because what it is supposed to be a strong executive than

can stand out to Congress could lead to a suspicion of the personalization of power,
hence the mechanisms to control the Executive power.

Presidential elections are “winner takes it all” elections, that is, zero-sum games. This
exacerbates tension and polarization. Independent authority and the popular mandate
give the President a sense of power and a mission. Danger is compounded by the fixed
term where there are winners and losers, and there is no hope for shifts in alliances or
grand coalitions.

Presidential elections go offer advantages, such as allowing people to openly and

directly electing a President for a predictable period. However, this only works if a clear
mandate results, which most of the times is not the case. In a single round election,
victory margin may be too thin. There are mechanisms for choosing: lower limit on the
size of the winning plurality. Run-off provisions could lead to broad coalitions, giving as
a result more power to extremist parties.

Linz wonders about what happened after the Presidential election. The election is one
thing, and the victor’s term in office is another.

Can he not set himself to healing the wounds inflicted during the campaign and restoring
the unity of the nation? Can se not offer to his defeated opponents, but not to the extremist
elements of his own coalition, a role in his administration and thus make himself President
of all the people?

The office of the President is by nature two-dimensional, in a sense, ambiguous. The

President is the Head of State and the representative of the entire nation. He stands for a
clearly partisan political option. The President may find it difficult to combine his role as
the Head of “deferential” or symbolic aspect of the polity with his role as an effective
chief executive and partisan leader fighting to promote his party and its program.

The problem of dual legitimacy opposes the Ministers or parliamentary colleagues

(parliamentary system) with the Cabinet officer appointed by the President
(presidential system).

Which of the two, the executive or the legislature, actually represents the will of the
people?

Linz points that he is not suggesting that polarization, which often springs for
presidential election, is an inevitable concomitant of presidential government. Is there
are some conditions of moderation and pre-existing consensus, presidential campaigns
are unlikely to prove dangerously divisive.

Perils of Presidentialism
Linz starts with a statement that presidentialism brings more stability than
parliamentarism. This is a popular belief, but Linz denies it. For him, this statement
overlooks some aspects. Regarding presidentialism, he points out that it is unstable
(cabinet crisis, difficulty to replace the leader when needed, making political crisis even
bigger). Parliamentarism is actually stable because it offers a continuity of parties in
power, endures the character of coalitions and the leader has the ability to weather a
potential political crisis without leaving the post, which makes him able to avoid a
political crisis.

This happens because presidentialism is a more rigid system, where it is difficult to

replace the President, generating a full-scale crisis. Parliamentarism is more flexible and
makes it easy to replace the Prime minister, keeping the crisis political.

The time factor

Democracy is a pro tempore regime that causes an important paradox when we consider
its pros and cons regarding presidentialism… PPT

Fixed term of presidency is valuable, but we will need to produce capable and popular
leaders in a short period of time. This wastes the political expertise of the former
President. Presidents will worry more about their succession and their successors. The
former and incumbent President may have a difficult relation. Parliamentarism can
suffer of those problems too, but hey mitigate them easily.

Linz talks about presidentialism and parliamentarism in a particular historical context.

What he points out is that presidentialism, the system where we have an elected
President parallel to an elected Legislature, has the situation of double legitimacy
because of the Executive an the Legislative Powers have democratic legitimacy. This can
lead to problems because both of these branches of the State could say that they have
more legitimacy. Another problem is the “winner takes all” system, hence the lack of
compromises within the Executive Power. If there are compromises, Linz says that these
happen among various candidates of the first round of voting are made before the
second round. Typically, we could observe this in 2021 during the Peruvian general
election since a candidate entered the race as an unknown within the political
establishment with a quite radical platform. The program he handed in as a presidential
platform was very radical because the party backing him is Marxist-Leninist-
Mariateguist. This candidate ran on a platform that explicitly claimed this heritage and
to nationalise mining, to kick out foreign investors from mines and so on and so forth.
After the first round, this candidate that was totally unknown in Lima’s political circles
was within the final two. What happened was that suddenly all the media started to look
at his platform. In many steps, these radical positions were refitted and what sounded
like claims of a radical program of nationalisation of property was refitted and the
candidate had to explain again and again that he wouldn’t take away property.

Another problem is the Head of State, as a unifying symbol and Head of Government as a
leading politician in one person. This can intensify an existing polarization of the voters
instead of healing it, for instance, through the use of the word “people”. Is the President
a representative of his constituency or is he representative of the whole nation? We
could look at the United States where President Trump lived the same party. He was a
representative of part of his voters; he claimed to be a representative of the original
settlers but, after his election, he was supposed to be the President of all Americans.
However, both his campaign and his presidency were very polarized. The interesting
thing in Linz’s text is that he wrote his text 30 years ago stating that this couldn’t be
applied to the United States because of the heterogeneity within each main party so
there could be cross-party politics. Linz sees the US as an exception: Presidentialism in
the US didn’t work like this, but what he describes as a danger of presidentialism in
Latin America is currently present in the US.

On the other hand, he talks about parliamentarism. There is one people and citizens vote
for a Parliament. Citizens transmit their power to one institution and from this
institution all real power surges. Many parliamentary systems have multi-party systems
where cabinets normally are based on coalitions among political parties. This leads to
compromises within the Executive Power. For instance, Germany has only had one party
majority Government since 1949, with Konrad Adenauer. Compromises among the
parties that make up the government coalition are made after the parliamentary
elections. The Head of State can have purely ceremonial functions and thus serve as an
integrating figure, whereas the Head of Government can be perceived more purely as a
party politician.
 Unit VIII: Government authoritarianism – Current international
examples

Bibliography:

 Levitsky, Steven, Lucan A. Way, Elections Without Democracy.

 Maravall, José María. The Myth of the Authoritarian Advantage

The context of the competitive authoritarianism is the 1990s in Africa, post-communist

Eurasia and Latin America. There are many different points of view:

 Incomplete regime or transitional form of democracy (optimistic expectations)

 Africa and Eurasia moved in an authoritarianism…

There are two weaknesses of this kind of regimen:

 This regime is not stable; it has a democratic bias so it could move in a

democratic direction, while other move in an authoritarian direction. In
particular cases, the regime moves in multiple directions…
 PPT

In competitive authoritarian regimes, formal democratic institutions are widely viewed

as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority. It must be
distinguished from democracy on the one hand and full-scale authoritarianism on the
other.
There are four arenas of democratic contestation due to the persistence of meaningful
democratic isntitutions… :

 Electoral arena, the first and most important arena of contestation. Elections
bitterly fought and are characterized by abuses of State power, biased media
coverage, harassment of opposition candidates and activists and an overall lack
of transparency. Elections are regularly held, competitive and generally free of
massive fraud. The cost of trying to manipulate elections can even bring them
down.
  Legislative arena. Legislatures tend to be relatively weak but they occasionally
become focal points of opposition activity. This is particularly likely in cases in
which incumbents lack strong majority parties. There are attempts to evade or
even shut down the legislature can be costly in the international arena… PPT
 Judicial arena. Governments routinely attempt to subordinate the judiciary, often
via impeachment, or through bribery, extortion and other mechanisms of co-
optation. In some cases, governments resort to threats and violence. However,
the combination of formal judicial independence and an incomplete control by
the executive can give judges an opening. Courts have also…
 Media. Independent media outlets are not only legal but often quite influential,
and journalists emerge as important opposition figures. Independent media
outlets often play a critical watchdog role by investigating and exposing
government malfeasance. Executives often actively seek to suppress the
independent media, using more subtle mechanisms of repression than their
counterparts in authoritarian regimes (bribery, the selective allocation of State
advertising, the manipulation of debts and taxes owed by media outlets). Efforts
to repress the media may be costly to incumbents.

In the most basic sense, a competitive authoritarian regime is one in which there are
democratic rules, but the incumbent uses autocratic methods to maintain power. The
four arenas create periodic opportunities where the opposing forces can challenge the
incumbent. These challenges create a serious dilemma for autocratic regimes:

 Repressing them is costly, largely because the challenges tend to be both

formally legal and widely…
 PPT

There are inherent contradictions in competitive authoritarianism:

 Egregiously violating democratic rules, at the cost of international isolation and

domestic conflict
 Allowing the challenge to proceed, at the cost of possible defeat.

The result is often some kind of regime crisis and in some cases, autocratic incumbents
weathered the storm and remained in power and in other cases, they lose. Succession is
not democratization though. In some cases, the new elected leaders continue or
intensify the actions of the former leader. In regions with closer ties to the West,
particularly Latin America and Central Europe, the removal of autocratic incumbents
has generally resulted in democratization in the post-Cold War period. This evidence
suggests that proximity to the West…

There are three paths to competitive authoritarianism:

 The decay of a full-blown authoritarian regimes

 The collapse of an authoritarian regimes followed by the emergence of a new,
competitive authoritarian regimes.
 The decay of a democratic regime.
After the end of the Cold War various forms of government emerged that were neither
authoritarian nor democratic. These governments were thought to be transitory and
were categorized under various new labels:

 Hybrid regime
 Semidemocracy
 Virtual democracy
 Electoral democracy
 Pseudodemocracy
 Illiberal democracy
 Semi-authoritarianism
 Soft authoritarianism
 Electoral authoritarianism
 Partly Free

Competitive authoritarianism are neither completely authoritarian nor a liberal western

democracy. As these regimes in many countries showed to be stable they can be
considered to be a proper regime category. It can be thought of as a state where an
authoritarian government co-exists with democratic institutions: “coexistence of
democratic rules with autocratic methods”. There can be free elections, independent
courts, a parliamentary opposition and free media: “arenas of democratic contestation”.
It is a diminished form of authoritarianism rather than a diminished form of democracy.

There are systematical abuses of the basic criteria of modern liberal democracies: free
and fair elections, universal suffrage, political rights and civil liberties, rule of elected
officers. Government uses its resources to create an uneven playing field between
government and opposition.

Elections can be regularly held, competitive and without massive fraud. The government
often abuses state power during the electoral campaign. The government candidates get
all or most media time though (biased media coverage). The government may also
harass opposition parties and candidates, but the costs of manipulating election results
can be to high for the government to bear. In these systems, the opposition such as
journalists or opposition politicians may be spied on, threatened, harassed, jailed, exiled
and even assaulted or murdered. There are also subtle methods of influencing society
and political institutions: bribery, co-optation, tax authorities, compliant judiciaries,
State agencies, harassment, persecution and extortion.

There are threats to the government’s claim to power though. The Electoral Arena can
present unforeseen results. The Legislative Arena can become a focal point of opposition
activity. The Judicial Arena can produce rulings against the government. Independent
media can stir and concentrate public opposition against the government. An
authoritarian government and democratic institutions could coexist indefinitely.
Inherent tensions could also lead to its downfall: high costs whatever the government
does or does not do.

The decay of a full-blown authoritarian regime does not lead to real democracy,
“transition” stops at one point. The collapse of an authoritarian regime leads to weak
institutions but the government is weak as well.
During Erdogan’s regime, he has gradually expanded the scope of his power.

The objective of Maravall’s text is which regime, between democracy and

authoritarianism, reflects the best economic development.

The proauthoritarian thesis defend that economic development in these countries is

more efficient because dictatorships enjoy a great political capacity since they are not
limited by electoral cycles. Moreover, they have limited need to address particular
demands.

For Maravall, economic reforms are more likely to succeed in a democratic political
context:

 Political pluralism
 Democratic institutions
 Free press and political opposition
 Political competition
 Democratic legitimacy
 Majority rule

Maravall concludes that the relationship between political regime and economic
efficiency is largely inconclusive. However, since 1987, better economic performance
has been reported by democratic regimes rather than authoritarianisms.

However, Maravall highlights a major democratic disadvantage, which is a limited

political capacity of democracies to carry out reforms because of the plurality of
interests in the society and democratic procedures. For him, a successful economic
reform depends more likely on internal variations, not on the type of political regime.

What are the conditions that facilitate the success of an economic reform in democracy?

There are many more factors besides a profound economic crisis and a strong political
mandate that must be taken into consideration to carry out a good economic reform:

 International pressures and constraints

 Specific domestic conditions
 Nature of political institutions
 Government able to negotiate and reach a consensus

Reforms are best initiated soon after a new government takes power:

 The ruling party is still united

 High public confidence
 Hopeful national mood

Maravall’s text was written in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and
its satellite States, the fact that many more countries left authoritarian systems of
government behind and embraced democracy. This has been a tendency already
observed in the 70s and 80s in Europe: Portugal, Spain and Greece became democracies.
Maravall focuses on how newly democratized countries could implement necessary
economic reforms under democratic conditions. His mains examples are the South
European countries that transitioned from authoritarianism in the 70s and the Eastern
European countries that became democracies in the beginning of the 90s. The author
emphasizes the importance of institutions as well as of a certain degree of social welfare
for successful economic reform. The author answers the question which system has the
best premises for economic growth (democracy or authoritarianism) with that evidence
is “largely inconclusive”. However, if democratic governments “manage their mandates
skilfully, take advantage of windows of opportunity and work hart to build consensus in
their societies, their risk of failure will diminish”.

It is assumed that authoritarian regimes enjoy a greater political capacity and a higher
level of insulation from particularistic demands. Therefore, it is assumed that market
reforms can be successfully introduced only under an authoritarian regime, economic
reform must precede political reform and only when successful economic development
has occurred can conditions favourable to the installation and consolidation of
democracy emerge. The problem is that authoritarian rulers have either to be
enlightened or respond to enlightened pressure from outside, which is a paradox.
Besides, overlapping of “procedural” and “performance” legitimacy can make
authoritarian regimes more vulnerable to economic crises than democracies.

Political pluralism generates more and better information. Democratic institutions may
reduce the transaction costs of economic reforms, as well as restrict predation of public
resources. A free press and a political opposition serve as important early warning
systems that can help to correct errors. Political, democratic competition provides a
valuable mechanism of punishment and reward. Dependence on electoral support and
the establishment of a good reputation among voters inhibits opportunistic and self-
serving behaviour. The greater legitimacy enjoyed by democratic leaders allows them to
obtain more easily the cooperation of citizens, who feel a greater sense of responsibility
for their society. Majority rule may limit the influence of particularistic interests on
politicians. Political parties and trade unions can often be persuaded to accept trade-offs
and to moderate their demands.

Unit IX: Government – Democracy

Bibliography:

 Heywood, Andrew, Chapter 4: Democracy; Hague, Rod, Martin Harrop and Shaun
Breslin, Chapter 2: Democracy.
 Vergara, Alberto y Daniel Encinas. Continuity by Surprise.

The focus of Vergara’s text is the Peruvian public administration and asking what is it
like and how is this particular form the public administration has contributing to
neoliberalism.
During the 80s and the 90s many Latin American countries experienced a series of
“neoliberal” reforms of their economic institutions. The same happened in Peru during
the presidency of President Alberto Fujimori. Originally left-wing presidential
candidates who abandoned their reformist platforms once in office implemented many
of these “neoliberal” reforms. Susan Stokes in 2001 called this tendency “neoliberalism
by surprise”. At the beginning of the new century many countries in the region were
experiencing a reaction against “neoliberalism” through left-wing Presidents who
implemented reformist agendas. In Peru, this never took place although two Presidents,
Alan Garcia and Ollanta Humala, were identified as left wing before entering office. The
authors ask why this other kind of “neoliberalism by surprise” could happen.

To understand their arguments, we have to understand how they define the concept and
the terms they use. They define a neoliberal regime as a “neoliberal citizenship regime”,
a broader way of structuring State, marked and citizenry. It combines prioritization of
private activity to provide goods and services, the retreat of State activity and the
marginalization of social rights. A political class is “weak or absent” when political
parties do not receive a significant percentage of the vote, elected authorities have short
tenures and political vehicles and their leaders are disconnected from social bases.

They use some important terminology for their arguments:

 Technocrats: experts who design policies or prepare major institutional

initiatives
 Bureaucrats: a layer of people with powerful administrative knowledge of the
State’s legal and formal procedures
 Informal bureaucrats: public administrators who are nevertheless not properly
empowered by a civil service law or tenured in any way
 Technical minister: a minister whose recognition comes from his/her high level
of expertise
 Political minister: a minister that in the last ten years was either member in a
political party, a candidate or was elected to a popular election position.
 Businessman minister: a minister who has either had management/executive
positions in the private sector, is the owner of an enterprise or has had
important responsibilities in business organization.
Actors within the State, technocrats and bureaucrats, have progressively gained power
in the years since the 1993 Constitution, while politicians have dramatically lost it.
Reformist politicians simply cannot control this new technobureacratic cadre within the
State, who have mastered the complexities of administrative procedures and ensure the
survival of the neoliberal regime. This happens because the weak political class does not
detect how technocrats and bureaucrats recurrently and silently shield the neoliberal
regime against politicians, and when politicians do clash with bureaucrats, most of the
time bureaucrats prevail.

The Peruvian public administration is no “weberian bucreaucracy” because its power

and legitimacy do not come from the formal law. The strength of the neoliberal
institutions has two sources:

 A shared ideology within the people who implement them that stems from an
“epistemic community” created by transnational intellectual institutions,
financial institutions and especially American universities.
 Networks and socialization

These technocrats and bureaucrats apply mainly three strategies to achieve institutional
continuity:

 Adapting the institutions to new political contexts

 Infiltrating new agencies
 Deploying legal locks against political changes to the organizations and policies

The technocrats’ and bureaucrats’ sources of political weight are the policy paradigm,
their socialization and the resulting esprit de corps.

The neoliberal institutions were stable because they arose from an authoritarian regime
that had destroyed the political parties that had created the previous regime. The
technocrats did not formalize their power because they were shielded by the
authoritarian regime of 1992-1994. The formal institutions (the “neoliberal”
Constitution of 1993) had strong popular support and no political adversaries. After the
end of the Fujimori government in 2000, “neoliberal technocrats” were appointed in key
position by the new democratic governments. These actors “launched democratic
reforms to correct the corrupt, authoritarian deviations of Fujimori’s government,
adapting the regime to a new democratic context by championing government
transparency and anticlientelism initiatives”.

Secretarios generals are the highest bureaucrats within the ministries. An alliance of
technocrats and bureaucrats preserve the neoliberal regime. This alliance is able to
implement its ideas due to the balance of power between politicians and informal
bureaucrats, and the strategies they have developed to strengthen their position. The
alliance forms an efficient informal network that permits bureaucrats to move from one
ministry to the next. The group is decidedly pro-continuity, seeking to preserve the
institutional memory of each ministry. For the, to do things in the right way means doing
them as they were done earlier. The alliance of bureaucrats and technocrats can impose
its will not because it is exceptionally strong but because politicians and parties are
extremely weak.
A key cornerstone of neoliberalism in Peru is Article 60 of the 1993 Constitution, which
defines the economic system by stating, “public participation in the economic sphere
must be only subsidiary”. This means that any attempt to alter the regime and its
policies can be labelled “unconstitutional”. Using this lock, the technocrats and informal
bureaucrats can preserve neoliberal institutions against the will of political majorities
and reformist agendas.

Technocrats and informal bureaucrats could expand their power because of Presidents
without a political and/or social base, Congress representatives without a political
and/or social base, a fragmented party system or a fragmented civil society.
Contemporary Peru seems to be another case in which political combat moves from a
decaying electoral arena towards State institutions and their unelected bureaucrats.

The authors argue that there is an “informal” bureaucracy in Peru. These informal
bureaucrats are allied to powerful unelected technocrats. This alliance strives to
perpetuate neoliberal institutions in the face of left-wing political majorities and/or
presidents. The members of this alliance share a common socialization and ideology and
belong to the same network. They are able to prevail against elected politicians because
the “political class” is weak, for instance, they act within an unstable party system.

Weber says that the modern State needs a highly qualified bureaucracy, specialized in
expertness through long years of preparatory training and a high sense of status honour
in the interest of integrity. In Peru, there are three kinds of bureaucracies: the Foreign
Office, the Armed Forces and the Central Bank.

Harvey (2005), The neoliberal State

The author is a self-described Marxist. The text criticizes what the author calls “the
neoliberal Sate”. The main, often implicit, comparison is to the western European
welfare State of the Cold War era (1945-1990). A main hypothesis of the author is that
the “neoliberal State” is used for the “restoration of class power”, for instance through
the “concentration of wealth (…) at the expense of labour”. Abolishing or diminishing
democracy, majority rule, the welfare State, labour rights, collective solutions and
environmentalism reaches this. The chapter deals with the contradictions between the
liberal ideals of freedom, equality, rule of law and individual rights on one hand and
what the author sees as the acts of the neoliberal State in reality on the other.

The State must “use its monopoly of the means of violence to preserve”:

 Strong individual property rights

 Rule of law
 Institutions of functioning markets and free trade
 Freely negotiated contractual obligations
 Sanctity of contracts
 Individual right to freedom of action
 Individual right of expression
 Individual right of choice
 Freedom of businesses and corporations (legally regarded as individuals)
 Intellectual property rights
From this, there are some advantages of the liberal State in liberal theory, such as wealth
creation, technological changes and continuous increases in productivity that ensure
higher living standards to everyone. For Harvey, the privatization and deregulation
combined with competition eliminate bureaucratic red tape, increase efficiency and
productivity, improve quality, and reduce costs, both directly to the consumer through
cheaper commodities and services and indirectly through reduction of the tax burden.

Personal and individual freedom in the marketplace is guaranteed. Each individual is

held responsible and accountable for his or her own actions and wellbeing. Privatization
of welfare, education, healthcare, pensions, and social security must be compared to the
Golden Age of the European Welfare State in the 70s. Free mobility of capital among
sectors, regions and countries is regarded as crucial. Removing barriers to trade as
tariffs, punitive taxation arrangements, planning and environmental controls are crucial.
State sovereignty over commodity and capital and movements is willingly surrendered
to the global market. States have to negotiate multilateral regulations: G7, G8, WTO.

The neoliberal theorists are suspicious of democracy. They consider majority rule as a
potential threat to individual rights and constitutional liberties. Democracy is a luxury
only possible when a strong middle class guarantees stability. The preferable form of
government is by experts and elites. Key institutions like Central Banks should be
protected from democratic pressures. Conflict and opposition must be mediated through
the courts. Solutions and remedies to any problems have to be sought by individuals
through the legal system. There is a contradiction between individualism and the desire
for a meaningful collective life. Individuals are free to choose but they should not choose
to associate to create political parties with the aim of forcing the State to intervene in or
eliminate the market. To guard against their greatest gears, fascism, communism,
socialism, authoritarian populism, and even majority rule, the neoliberals have to put
strong limits on democratic governance. Neoliberals prefer undemocratic and
unaccountable institutions like the Federal Reserve Bank and the IMF to make key
decisions. Faced with social movements, the neoliberal State is itself forced to intervene,
sometimes repressively, thus denying the very freedoms it is supposed to uphold.
International competition and globalization can be used to discipline movements
opposed to the neoliberal agenda within individuals States.