1

Left-right orientations
❖ In European politics, in sum, the division between left and right is sufficiently
meaningful to allow the vast majority of voters to recognize themselves within these
terms.
❖ Outside of Europe, where people do not place themselves on this scale, this
suggests that there is probably a reasonably pronounced cultural bias in the
acceptability for these terms, a bias that may be compounded by a lack of experience
with democratic political competition.
❖ Left-right terminology is by far the most used and applied.
❖ Although the terms left and right entered ever more common usage, their referents
slowly changed as the political spectrum as a whole shifted in a more radical
direction through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
❖ Left and right often take on and maintain the particular meanings that proved
dominant when mass politics was first institutionalized

Blurring left and right, way of seeing left and right in certain terms has been subject to
change:
❖ 1. the emergence of a new ideological left (in many western democracies) that
sometimes do not have a lot in common with the alternatives
➢ Often radical/green parties, defined as left-libertarian. With goals such as
individual autonomy and a leftist concern for equality.
❖ 2. Lines between left and right blur more as they both converge more to the centre.
➢ There are no longer any specific oppositions between left and right.
➢ Constraints, put on by globalisation and Europeanisation, limit the room to
maneuver for parties, making governments more or less obliged to pursue
certain policies and desist from others.
❖ 3. More emphasis on office-seeking instead of policy seeking goals
➢ So not with substantive political or ideological oppositions.
❖ 4. Conventional positioning with left and right in post-communist countries has been
turned on its head.
❖ 5. by the rise of ostensibly right-wing populist parties which, also, promote the
defence of values traditionally associated with the liberal left.
➢ LPF→ populist party that also preached for rights of women and
homosexuals and wanted a clear separation of church and state.

Lecture One

What is politics? (definitions)

1. Politics is public affairs/anything that happens within the public

○ Assumes strict separation between public and private realms

2. Politics as the art of government

1. What concerns the state, focus on machinery of government, authority
1. Politics is seen as a noble or superior activity
2. This neglects voters and families
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3. Politics as compromise and consensus

1. Resolving conflicts, making the potential actual, pluralist democracies
1. Neglects any sort of simple power games
4. Politics as power over distribution of resources
1. Control over resources (scarcity & conflict) in all social activity; politics is
about dominance & oppression

● Some definitions highlight actors (agents), others focus on institutions, processes

(structures)

○ Divide between actors and structures

● Most definitions give common ground:

○ Focus on power, order and justice

How we define politics shapes WHAT we look for and HOW we analyze politics

Politics as an arena Politics as a process

Definitions of politics The art of government Compromise and consensus

Public Affairs Power and the distribution of

resources

Approaches to the study Behavioralism Feminism

of politics
Rational-Choice theory Marxism

Institutionalism Post-positivist approaches

Is there a science to politics?

History of political science:

● Started as a normative science; people thinking and searching for patterns to

help improve society

● In the 19th century this normative science was challenged when states
started to develop → moved towards an empirical science that relied on
testing etc.
 3

● Politics in a social science because it studies people within society

○ Political science will never be neutral

○ Predicting what will happen will never be the goal

■ We hope to maybe see a pattern or find a theory, but never true

predictability about new things

○ The ultimate objective is to make a social change and create critical

citizens

Tools of political analysis

● Levels:

○ Macro: analysis of societal phenomena as a whole

■ Democracy, capitalism, globalization (international)

○ Meso: analysis of individual actions on a collective scale

■ Political parties

○ Micro: analysis of individual behavior

■ Voters

● Language:

○ Politics: all action and thought concerned with power, order and justice

■ Education politics; gender politics

○ Policy: a set of decisions organising actions, a line of conduct

■ EUC policy for referring APA style

○ Polity: a way of structuring the political order in any given society

■ Wales is a policy within the UK, EUC is a polity within EUR

Lecture 2: Cleavages, parties and parliaments; fragmentation in politics

❖ 1. From fragmentation to cleavages
➢ Individuals have attributes, societies have divisions (ethnicity, religion)
➢ Societies are full of divides but not all divisions translate into cleavages
(context!)
➢ Cleavage: a social division that creates a collective identity on both sides of
the divide
 4

■ Divides become cleavages when identity categories become

organised.
➢ Some societies are more divided than others: the more cleavages, the greater
the demand for distinctive representation (i.e. parties)
➢ Cleavages can be either reinforcing (categories fully overlap)
■ e.g. all employers are rich, all works are protestant
➢ Or cleavages can be cross-cutting (categories intersect)
■ e.g. employers can be white AND male And catholic AND…
➢ Among roles of a party is to represent social cleavages
❖ 2. From cleavages to parties
➢ People with similar interests, tend to clump together to form an association
and lobby with decision-makers to get things in their favour.
■ → Channelling up of preferences
❖ Cleavages: explaining party formation in Europe
➢ Across Europe, party families (e.g. liberals/socialists) formed through groups
who mobilised around big issues of their time (social change)
➢ Political identities often date back to formative periods (critical junctures)
during which battles have been waged over major issues: cleavages
➢ The prominence of cleavages diverged across countries, explaining varying
strength of party families across countries.
❖ Cleave theory in 3 steps
➢ Two major processes shaped the European political landscape: the dual
revolution
■ French revolution
■ Industrial revolution
➢ National revolutions (1789-1880), expansionist state willing to standardise
(bureaucracy, education, railways)
confronted clergy+nobility (ancien regime), in major cities and countryside
■ Two types of cleavages:
● state vs church
● centre vs periphery
➢ Industrial revolution
■ The landscape took further shape, then stabilised (‘frozen’ hypothesis)
■ Period pitted agrarian/landed vs industrial elites, later this changed to
the proletariat vs bourgeoisie.
■ Two new cleavages:
● capital vs labour
● urban vs rural
❖ 3. From parties to parliament
❖ How do states solve fragmentation?
➢ For representative democracies…
■ Electoral system is key
❖ From votes to seats
➢ Majoritarian system:
■ One representative per constituency
➢ Proportional system:
■ Multiple representatives per constituency
❖ How do democracies solve fragmentation?
 5

➢ The short answer (Duverger’s Law):

➢ The majoritarian system acts as a brake on cleavages leading to parties
(rewards large parties, punishes small parties)
➢ Proportional systems encourage the formation of parties (absence of
‘strategic voting’)
❖ 4. From parliaments to change?
❖ The myth of parliamentary democracy
➢ Representative democracies are imperfect
➢ The executive is by far the most powerful branch

❖ Learning objectives
❖ 1. From fragmentation to cleavages
➢ Fragmentation is inevitable in society, cleavages can be mapped
❖ 2. From cleavages to parties
➢ How do citizens solve fragmentation? Party formation
❖ 3. From parties to parliaments
➢ How do states solve fragmentation, electoral systems
❖ 4. From Parliaments to change?
➢ How do parliaments solve fragmentation? limits of representative democracy

Week 2

Samuels on UK institutions
❖ The history of the Poll Tax illustrates the interplay in UK government between
limited and effective government:
➢ The relative speed and ease of passing this important reform reflects
the freedom that the UK's political institutions provide to the ruling
party to act as an effective government.
 6

➢ However, there are also enough factors that limit the authority of the
government. Things such as the opposition party encouraging public
protest, which was fed by strong popular opposition to the new tax.
People in the Conservative Party also had their doubts.

Institutions promoting effective government

❖ Instead of a set of formal rules (constitution), procedures, and rights written in a
single document the informal constitution of the UK really amounts to a set of
ancient documents, legal precedents, and informal traditions.
➢ Even if these certain rights would be written into UK law, they still remain
formally vulnerable to change.
❖ The absence of a formal written constitution suggests that the government is able to
act with few legal restrictions-a hallmark of effective government. Institutions that
support effective government in the UK:

Parliamentary Sovereignty
❏ Britain’s informal traditions and constitutional law have evolved to focus political
authority in Parliament.
❏ Parliamentary sovereignty: principle that all power in the UK comes from
Parliament. In actuality, this means that the majority party in Parliament can
legislate and execute policies at will.
❏ The evolution of British democracy meant that each change empowering
Parliament took away power from the monarchy. The monarch now has a
more symbolic role.
❏ Parliament consists of the House of Commons and the House of Lords - the central
policy making role.
❏ The House of Commons is a directly elected legislature, composed of 650
Members of Parliament (MP’s) who represent geographic constituencies
throughout the UK
❏ The House of Lords is an unelected body, consisting of appointed members
or hereditary ones. In case of disagreement, the Commons can overrule the
Lords. So the Lords can only slow down legislation but not stop it.
❏ The UK has a very centralised government:
❏ Regional parliaments have control over health, education and judicial policies
❏ The central government has maintained control over internal and external
security and most public spending on taxation.
❏ The traditions of the British constitution do not provide for a strong judicial check on
parliamentary power.
❏ UK’s laws used to only be curtailed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ),
not anymore.

Prime Ministerial Government

❏ The leader of the largest party in the House of Commons becomes prime
minister (PM). So the chief of the executive branch is elected indirectly.
❏ If the PM is elected, he selects a Cabinet: the ministers of the government, that take
collective responsibility for all decisions of government.
 7

❏ Members of the Cabinet can still propose legislation. This means that the executive
branch has a big informal concentration of power that is not checked much, which
could open the path to a highly effective government.
❏ Backbenchers: MP’s that do not hold office in government or have a big role in
opposition parties.
❏ Both major parties have parliamentary whips, legislators whom the PM
appoints to convince and twist arms to ensure that MP’S from the government
party vote with the PM’s proposals. In the end, the governing party is usually
guaranteed to pass its proposed legislation.
❏ The House of Lords could veto legislation before, but since 1911 that is not possible
anymore.
❏ One key check on prime ministerial government exists: the requirement that the
Cabinet and prime minister maintain parliamentary confidence, which means that the
government of the day (coalition party) must always be able to win a majority of
votes of all MP’S. If an important bill is defeated in Parliament, the government will
call a vote of confidence, explicitly asking Parliament whether it retains confidence
in the government.
❏ If this vote fails, the government must resign and call new elections.

Majoritarian Electoral System

❏ The concentration of power in a single political party further enhances effective
government in the UK.
❏ Unlike other European countries, it is normal for there to be single-party majority
governments
❏ The country is divided into 650 electoral constituencies, each sends one MP as its
representative to Parliament. (Districtenstelsel stemmen)
❏ Two consequences of this system:
❏ The largest party tends to win a higher percentage of all the seats than of the
popular vote. Parties are greatly disadvantaged by the disproportional way
the votes are translated into seats.
❏ The system encourages a strong two-party system, maintaining the
dominance of the Labour and Conservative parties. People think their vote
will be wasted if they do not vote on the major parties.

Factors supporting limited government

Institutional Longevity
❖ Since the 1700s already, the UK already started exercising informal checks on
government power. While these are not written down in a constitution, they still serve
to constrain the expansion of central-government authority. People do not dare to
violate these transitions.

Oppositionalism
❖ Parliament provides a public forum for both the government and for opposition to
express their policies and views. This debate limits the government’s power in two
ways:
➢ Debate forces the government to publicly defend its positions against the
opposition’s most difficult inquiries.
 8

■ Prime minister’s questions (PMQs): the PM answers questions from

other MP’s on any issue (is usually more a spectacle than informative)
➢ The adversarial dynamic of public debate concentrates accountability for
policy with the government and gives voters a clear alternative.

Britain’s regions
The process of devolution (the transfer or delegation of power to a lower level) has served
to grant regions a certain degree of autonomy, thereby serving to limit the central
government’s power.

European Union
Moreover, the EU has laws governing economic and, increasingly, civil, political, and social
rights across all European countries. With these laws, the EU limits the power of all member
states to legislate in important areas. While this process increasingly provides UK citizens
with rights under the EU.

Patterns of Democracy
❖ Democracy: people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and
answerable to the people
❖ Two different ways to do actual governing:
➢ Majoritarian model: the majority is right
➢ Consensus model: need to get as many people on board
❖ The Westminster model and Majoritarian model are interchangeable.

Ten majoritarian characteristics in the United Kingdom

1. Concentration of executive power in one-party and bare-majority cabinets
a. Both majority and minority are about the same size
2. Cabinet Dominance
a. It is expected that the House of Commons could keep the cabinet in check, in
reality this relationship of control is reversed. The cabinet is composed of the
leaders of the majority party, so voting them out is not easy.
b. Coalition cabinets tend to much less dominant than the cabinets in
the two-party system→ “elective dictatorship”
3. Two-party system
a. Politics is dominated by two large parties: Conservative and the Labour party
b. Liberal democrats is the biggest party after that and other minor parties do not
get a lot of seats.
4. Majoritarian and disproportional system of elections
a. Plurality system/first past the post system: candidate with majority vote wins.
b. Creates disproportionate outcomes: Labour party got 355 out of 646
with just 35% of the votes. → “manufactured majorities”
c. Maybe call the UK a pluralitarian democracy instead of a majoritarian one.
d. Liberal democrats suffer from a pluralistic system, want proportional
representation just like a lot of institutions (EU and Northern-Ireland) now
5. Interest group pluralism
a. This system causes conflict and clashes
 9

b. Concertation: interest group corporatism in which regular meetings take

place between the representatives of the government, labor unions, and
employers’ organizations to seek agreement on socio economic policies.
agreements are called tripartite pacts.
6. Unitary and centralised government
a. Local governments are financially dependent on the central government.
7. Concentration of legislative power in a unicameral legislature
a. The bicameral system can be called a near unicameralism
8. Constitutional flexibility
9. Absence of judicial review
a. Although Parliaments normally accepts and feels bound by the rules of the
unwritten constitution, it is not formally bound by them. They can make and
unmake any law.
b. European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg was given the right to review
and invalidate any state action, including legislation, that violates human
rights.
10. A central bank controlled by the executive
a. The central bank of England is under the control of the Cabinet.
b. The Central Bank, since 1997, could set interest rates.

The Washington Post:

If Britain had Germany’s electoral system, Boris Johnson may have lost the election.
A coalition between the smaller parties could have been formed if it was a different electoral
system.
New Zealand chose to switch to other electoral system in 1992.
 10

Lecture 3

Statecraft and warfare

● From personal (king) to formal (centralised) authority
● From chief-based to territory-based rule
○ New urban centres of trade
○ Capitalism + gunpowder, capitalism made it easy to have ties.
○ Capacity to govern society
○ Recognition of territorial sovereignty
■ Recognition of domestic sovereignty (Augsburg 1555)
■ Judicial equivalence of states (Westphalia)
● Smaller states started to band together and form larger ones.

● Features of the modern state

○ 1. Sovereignty
■ State has absolute power, stands above all associations in society
○ 2. Public
■ Institutions are public (not private), independent in making decisions,
including impartial bureaucracy
○ 3. Legitimacy
■ Decisions are accepted as binding on citizens who grant it (minimal)
support
○ 4. Domination
■ State is an instrument of domination: it has formal monopoly of
legitimate violence
○ 5. Territory
■ State has boundaries: its jurisdiction is geographically defined

● Statehood: the case in favour

○ Entire international system is based on states (Westphalia 1648)
○ 1 state= 1 vote is perfectly equal, however dysfunctional
○ Montevideo Convention (1933) require 4 elements to be a state
■ A defined territory
■ A permanent population
■ An effective government
■ Capacity to establish relations with other states
○ State as agents of social justice
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Comparing states
❖ Comparing states: clarifying terms
➢ Unitary versus federal states

Week 3

The perils of presidentialism

Parliamentary vs. Presidential systems
❖ In parliamentary systems, everything is dependent on parliament and parliamentary
confidence.
❖ Presidential systems: a president is elected directly by the people, generally has full
control of the composition of the cabinet and administration and is independent of
parliamentary votes of confidence.
❖ Presidents have both the ‘ceremonial’ functions of the head of state and the
‘effective’ functions of a chief executive.
❖ 1st outstanding feature of presidential systems:
Both the president and the legislators have a claim on democratic legitimacy. This is
difficult when they are not in line with each other, they both represent the votes.
➢ Legitimacy: the right and acceptance of an authority
➢ Democratic: that the government will abide by democratic principle and thus
is accountable to its people.
❖ 2nd feature: the president’s relatively fixed term in office.
➢ It is rigid and leaves no room for continuous changes that events may
demand
 12

➢ If a new president is selected in the same term, it can lead to the rise of
someone whom the ordinary electoral process would never have made the
chief of state.
➢ Advantage: the people can vote directly on the president.

Paradoxes of Presidentialism
❖ One the one hand, you have an effective president that has plebiscitarian
(democratically elected) legitimacy and looks out for particular interests represented
in the legislature.
❖ On the other hand, presidential constitutions also reflect suspicions of presidential
power.
➢ It would be interesting to see how this contradiction influences decision
making, leadership style and the political practices.
❖ To summarise the basic differences between presidential and parliamentary systems:
➢ Parliamentarism bestows flexibility to the political process, presidentialism
makes it rather rigid.
➢ Some would argue that this rigidity is an advantage, it guards against
instability.
➢ But unexpected events can happen, such as the death of the president and
serious errors in judgment committed under pressure of unruly
circumstances, that make presidential rule less predictable and often weaker.
➢ Parliaments can also raise votes of confidence and replace the PM easier.

Zero-sum Elections (One gains, other loses)

❖ Presidentialism usually turns into a winner takes all, while parliamentarism can result
in that but usually has a representation of a number of parties (coalition forming)
❖ The president would see himself sooner as someone with a mission and power than
a prime minister, who knows himself to be but the spokesman for a temporary
governing coalition.
❖ The goals of consociationalism: are governmental stability, the survival of the
power-sharing arrangements, the survival of democracy, and the avoidance of
violence.
❖ Parliamentarism includes more elements of consociationalism than presidential
systems. Partially because it softens the harsh, winner-take-all implications of
presidential elections.
❖ The rigidity also does not help with this zero-sum outcome, the ‘losers’ must wait at
least four years for another shot.
❖

The style of presidential politics

❖ It is a challenge for presidents to combine being the representative for everyone and
at the same time be a partisan leader fighting to promote his party and its program.
➢ Could be dangerous if the president would combine his supporters and ‘the
people’ into one.
 13

❖ The advantage of parliamentary systems is that the Prime Minister still remains part
of the larger body.

The problem of Dual Legitimacy

❖ In a presidential cabinet, cabinet officers have more of a subordinate role to the
president. In Parliamentary cabinets, ministers are the PM’s colleagues. If they are
dismissed of their role they go back into parliament.
➢ A president can protect its members better than parliamentary ministers,
those cabinet members are regularly hauled before parliament.
❖ No democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive and the
legislature about which actually represents the will of the people (Dual legitimacy)

The issue of stability

❖ It is a lot more difficult to get rid of a PM than a president
❖ The idea of giving the presidency to the Vice-President, in case of impeachment or
death of the current president, is not such a good idea. In countries where you can
have split tickets (so the president is from one party and the VP from the other), if the
VP takes over there’s a good chance that the prior supporters of the president won’t
agree.

The time factor

❖ The fixed term in office and the limit on reelection are institutions of big value in
presidential constitutions, and also that whatever "political capital" the outgoing
president may have accumulated cannot endure beyond the end of his term. PM’s
however can be re-elected multiple times.
❖ A presidential regime leaves much less room for consensus-building, coalition-
shifting, and the making of compromises which, though prudent (acting or showing
care about the future), are hard to defend in public.

Parliamentarism and Political Stability

❖ The unpromising implications of a presidential democracy are not meant to imply
they aren’t always stable, but the chance that presidency will preserve democracy is
smaller.

Beyond Parliamentarism and Presidentialism

❖ Semi presidentialism: ‘a popularly elected fixed-term president exists alongside a
prime minister and cabinet who are responsible to parliament’
❖ The classical typology implies a set of core defining attributes. The question is now
how do these classical attributes hold up against each other.
❖ Typical to parliamentarism is that the executive is chosen by the legislative and
typical to presidentialism is the direct election and fixed time.
➢ Or: in parliamentarism the executive controls the agenda and the legislature
decides while in presidential systems the legislature makes the proposal and
the executive signs or vetoes them.
❖ Rule by decree power: in cases of emergency, laws may be changed (constitutions
too)
 14

➢ Concerns about the danger of it are mostly focused on Presidential systems

where the executive usurps the legislative powers.

Summary of defining attributes

The Operationalization of Presidentialism, Parliamentarism and Semi-presidentialism

Six elective attributes of executive-legislative relations have been analysed:
❖ (1) Executive veto: although they originated in a presidential constitution, veto
provisions are hardly absent in parliamentary and semi-presidential documents. As a
matter of fact, they were incorporated into parliamentary constitutions in the 1920s
and existed even in the first semi presidential constitutions.
❖ (2) Executive decree: the empirical evidence contradicts the perception that recent
constitutions, particularly pure presidential ones, are more likely to contain decree
provisions.
❖ (3) Emergency: In short, one sees no real correlation with government type
❖ (4) Legislative initiation: Thus, executives in presidential constitutions are far from
being powerless when it comes to initiating legislation
❖ (5) Legislative oversight (legislative makes sure that the executive is responsive and
accountable): Presidential constitutions tend to contain such oversight provisions
more frequently than either parliamentary or semi-presidential constitutions.
❖ (6) Cabinet appointment: One might think of this power as an executive prerogative
common to nearly all constitutions.

Congruence of Constitutional Provisions within and across Classes

❖ While presidentialism (and especially semi-presidentialism) shows some degree of
within-class homogeneity, parliamentarism does not.
 15

➢ From these data at least, it appears that the classic conceptualization has, at
best, only modest power to predict the package of legislative and executive
powers.
❖ The data suggests that, although parliamentary constitutions have become more
homogeneous in the post-war period, they are still quite dissimilar:
➢ When it comes to executive-legislative properties, two modern parliamentary
constitutions are still more dissimilar than two constitutions belonging to two
different types
❖ The best predictors of how a constitution regulates executive-legislative relations are
the other constitutions written in that country.
❖ Two key insights from the findings:
➢ 1. The classical conceptualization scheme exhibits relatively little institutional
cohesion.
➢ 2. This lack of cohesion appears to have declined over time among
presidential constitutions but increased among parliamentary ones.
❖ Knowing the century or the region in which the constitutions were written allows one
to predict the similarity of their institutional attributes better than one could by
knowing only that they are of the same system type.

Conclusion
❖ Many countries, it seems, are veritable hybrids, showing absolutely no resemblance
to the classic types. The three classical types differ in their internal cohesion:
➢ semi-presidential constitutions – a class defined by its hybrid nature –
constitute the only class of constitutions that exhibit anything approaching
internal coherence.
❖ Finally, as suggested above, it seems advisable to seriously consider alternative
conceptualizations of executive-legislative relations.
➢ Arraying cases along dimensions such as executive or legislative
‘independence’ and ‘power’ are obvious alternatives to the classic types.
➢ These cases are all related to classical typology but each also identifies an
important theoretical dimension.

Unravelling semi-presidentialism: democracy and government performance in four

distinct regime types
❖ Semi-presidentialism can be defined as a system where the constitution includes
both a popularly elected president and a prime minister and cabinet accountable to
the parliament. Two subcategories:
➢ Premier-presidential regimes: the government can only be dismissed by
parliament, whereas;
➢ In president-parliamentary regimes both the president and the parliament
have the power of government dismissal.

Four distinct regime types

❖ Premier-presidentialism can be defined as:
➢ (1) the president is elected by a popular vote for a fixed term in office
➢ (2) the president selects the prime minister who heads the cabinet
➢ (3) but authority to dismiss the cabinet rests exclusively with the parliament
❖ President-parliamentary systems as being:
 16

➢ (1) the president is elected by a popular vote for a fixed term in office
➢ (2) the president appoints and dismisses the prime minister and other cabinet
ministers
➢ (3) the prime minister and cabinet ministers are subjected to parliamentary as
well as presidential confidence.

The assumed perils of semi-presidentialism: theoretical propositions

❖ Under president-parliamentarism the president and the legislature have an incentive

to act against each other (to maximise influence for themselves), which means there
is little incentive to maintain the status quo and which in turn generates instability that
is likely to undermine democratic performance
❖ A key argument in favour of premier-presidentialism over president-parliamentarism
is that the former provides the possibility of combining presidential leadership with a
government anchored in parliament. Since the president cannot dismiss the
government, it he or she will have to negotiate and work together with parliament.
❖ In general, parliamentary democracies show better records on democracy than
presidential ones, and that premier-presidential democracies outperform president-
parliamentary ones.

Cases, data and measurement

❖ President-parliamentary regimes are on a par or below the performance records of
presidential regimes, whereas premier-presidential regimes would be closer to the
parliamentary ones.
 17

Democratic performance
❖ Certain variables that are looked at include, but are not limited to:
➢ Electoral process and pluralism
➢ Functioning of government
➢ Political participation
➢ Political culture
➢ Civil liberties
❖ In general, parliamentary and premier-presidential regimes score higher on all four
variables than presidential and president-parliamentary regimes. Moreover, premier-
presidential regimes actually outrank parliamentary regimes on three indicators.
❖ Also, president-parliamentary regimes are outperformed by presidentialism.

Government performance
❖ Four indicators are used to show government performance:
➢ Government effectiveness
■ quality of public and civil services…
➢ Corruption perceptions index
➢ Empowerment rights index
■ freedom of speech
■ Freedom of assembly
➢ Human development index
■ Standard of living
❖ In general, parliamentary regimes outperform other regime types on all indicators.
❖ Premier-presidential regimes still score consistently higher than president-
parliamentary regimes but by a smaller margin.
❖ President-parliamentary have the worst performance on all of the indicators
➢ President regime is closest on corruption

Multivariate analysis of regime type and performance

 18

❖ In general, premier-presidential regimes perform similar to parliamentary regimes,

while president-parliamentary regimes display performance records more similar to
pure presidentialism, although slightly worse on most indicators.

Week 4

Diamond & Morlino: The quality of democracy

❖ Requirements to be a democracy:
➢ 1. Universal suffrage (right to vote)
➢ 2. Recurring competitive and fair elections
➢ 3. More than one serious political party
➢ 4. Alternative sources of information
❖ If these requirements are established, one can ask how well it achieves the three
main goals of an ideal democracy:
➢ Political and civil freedom
➢ Popular sovereignty (control over public policies and the officials who make
them)
➢ broader standards of good governance (transparency e.g.)

What is a quality democracy

*Three different meaning of quality*
There are eight dimensions of which democracies vary in quality identified. There are not
only dense linkages but also trade-offs and tensions among the various dimensions of
democratic quality, and democracies will differ in the weight that they place on these various
dimensions.

❖ The rule of law

➢ all citizens are equal before the law, which is fairly and consistently applied to
all by an independent judiciary,
➢ The laws themselves are clear, publicly known, universal and retroactive.
➢ Defends the procedures of democracy, upholds everyone’s civil rights
➢ The quality where all the other qualities rest on. A weak rule of law will mean
that individual freedoms are insecure, corruption and abuse of power is more
possible and voters have a hard time holding rulers accountable to their duty.

❖ Participation
➢ Democracies must ensure that everyone has the option to make use of the
formal rights of political participation to influence the decision making process:
■ Right to vote, to organise, to protest and to lobby for their interests.
➢ With regard to participation, democratic quality is high when we observe
extensive citizen participation not only through voting but in the life of political
parties and civil society organizations and in direct engagement with public
issues at the local level.
➢ a fundamental condition for widespread participation in a good democracy is
broad diffusion of basic education and literacy, and with it a modicum of
knowledge about government and public affairs.
 19

❖ Competition
➢ a political system must have regular, free, and fair electoral competition
between different political parties.
➢ Certain qualities of competitiveness:
■ openness of access to the electoral arena
■ ease at which incumbents can be defeated
■ equality of access to the mass media and campaign funding
➢ Proportional representation systems score well on ease of access but less on
how incumbents can be defeated. A trend can be observed where the
presence of multiple parties with relatively defined shares of the vote tends to
produce a succession of coalition governments with considerable continuity in
party composition over time.

❖ Vertical accountability
➢ Accountability:the obligation of elected political leaders to answer for their
political decisions when asked by voters or constitutional bodies.
➢ The vertical is because it runs ‘upwards’ from citizens to leaders.
➢ Competition and participation are crucial conditions for vertical accountability.
■ Requires political competition and power distributions that are fair
enough to allow for genuine electoral alternatives and that can
produce turnover.

❖ Horizontal accountability
➢ Democratic qualities also require officeholders to answer to other officials and
state institutions. E.g. the legislative oppositions, audit agencies, central bank.
➢ The vitality of horizontal accountability hinges most of all on a legal system
that provides for the exertion of checks and balances by other public entities
that are independent of the government, and not competing as an alternative
to it.

Freedom, Equality and Responsiveness

❖ Freedom, can be seen to consist of three types:
➢ Political: right to vote, campaign, and organise political parties. These make
possible political participation and competition, and hence vertical
accountability
➢ Civil: personal liberty, security and privacy: freedom of thought, freedom of
religion, freedom of assembly, right to legal defence and due process
➢ Socioeconomic: right to private property, employment, fair pay

❖ Equality
➢ A good democracy ensures that every citizen and group has the same rights
and legal protections, and also meaningful, reasonably prompt access to
justice and to power
➢ Very difficult for a state to be fully equal, there’s always an edge.
 20

➢ they key to promoting reasonable equality-enhancing measures has

historically been autonomous groups and parties committed to representing
lower class and status groups.

❖ Responsiveness
➢ democratic governments are responsive when the democratic process
induces them “to make and implement policies that the citizens want”
➢ 1. Choices are structured in a way that shows the will of the people, 2.
citizen;s electoral preferences into a government of policy makers, 3. policy
stances are created into policy outcomes.
➢ The conditions favoring responsiveness are similar to those that support
vertical accountability—that is, a robust civil society, a functional party
system, and the like.
➢ Three ways that responsiveness lacks:
■ Leaders seek to manipulate and maximise authority
■ Public resources may be too limited
■ Globalisation imposes its own constraints on popular sovereignty

Foa and Mounk: The signs of deconsolidation

❖ There is a rise of disaffection with democracy and a wider skepticism towards liberal
institutions. Citizens are growing more disaffected with established political parties,
representative institutions, and minority rights.
❖ Share of people who want a strong leader without having to bother with parliament or
elections have gone up.
❖ In recent years, parties and candidates that blame an allegedly corrupt political
establishment for most problems, seek to concentrate power in the executive, and
challenge key norms of democratic politics have achieved unprecedented successes
in a large number of liberal democracies across the globe

An early-warning system
❖ So far, democracy has not collapsed in any wealthy country that has experienced at
least two government turnovers as a result of free and fair elections.
➢ Large part of this is that it persuades its own advantages
❖ Democratic consolidation: the extent to which democracy is the “only game in
town.” The unlikeliness to revert
❖ They’re stable because democracies are seen to possess unique legitimacy and that
authoritarian alternatives are unacceptable.
❖ Democracies are de-consolidating when citizens lose their belief and become
attracted to authoritarian alternatives.
❖ The question of democratic consolidation or deconsolidation is concerned not with
the extent of democratic rule but rather with the durability of democratic rule.
Case studies in deconsolidation
❖ Democratic deconsolidation can signal a real danger for the stability of democratic
governance, even in countries that appear to be doing very well according to more
traditional measures.

The consequences of deconsolidation

 21

❖ It would be premature to exclude the possibility that, in countries where it is deeply

entrenched, democracy can weather a much larger degree of civic withdrawal and
discontent.
❖ Populists define the “real people” whom they seek to represent very narrowly.
Embracing only those who share the origins and values of the majority, populists
exclude minority ethnic and religious groups.
❖ The core of the populist appeal thus sets populists in opposition to a pluralist vision of
democracy in which groups holding disparate views and opinions must resolve their
differences through channels of democratic dialogue and compromise

Pippa Norris: Is western democracy backsliding, diagnosing the risks.

❖ Three characteristics of democratic consolidation
➢ 1. Culturally: the overwhelming majority of people believe that democracy is
the best form of government, so that any further reforms reflect these values
and principles.
➢ 2. Constitutionally, all the major actors and organs of the state reflect
democratic norms and practices.
➢ 3. Behaviorally, no significant groups actively seek to overthrow the regime
or secede from the state.
❖ Culturally: That millennials are believing less and less in democracy is not a trend.
➢ Northern Europe and Scandinavia are consistently more satisfied with how
democracy works.
❖ Constitutionally: trends from estimates by Freedom House provide no evidence that
the quality of institutions protecting political rights and civil liberties deteriorated
across Western democracies from 1972 to end-2016
❖ Behaviourally: two things that seek to undermine the regime:
➢ sporadic and random terrorist attacks on domestic soil, which damage
feelings of security,
➢ the rise of populist-authoritarian forces

Cultural trends
❖ It is not as clear-cut as Foa and Mounk make it seem.
❖ Countries vary widely in public perception of democratic performance and persistent
contrasts are observable
❖ Millennials are less happy with democracy, but that does not mean that they will vote
for authoritarian governments.
❖ Instead of different age categories having distinct views just because of their age:
➢ There is well-established evidence that age differences in political attitudes
and behavior, like voter turnout, are at least partially the product of lifecycle
effects.
➢ These are grounded in social and psychological experiences that affect all
people as they gain in years, e.g. school, entering the workforce, raising a
family.

Institutional trends:
❖ According to these estimates, important setbacks have indeed occurred among
several non-Western global regions, developing societies, and fragile states
 22

elsewhere in the world. This includes outbreaks of violence in countries with a long
history of civil wars, and actual or attempted military coups,
❖ Some of the worst backsliding during the last decade has happened in states
classified in 2005 as hybrid regimes. They are neither full democracies nor absolute
autocracies and are often the least stable politically. They are also at high risk of
social conflict, with competitive elections but weak institutionalised checks and
balances on executive power.
❖ Most importantly, however, according to these standard indices, since 2005 the core
institutions safeguarding political rights and civil liberties have not (yet) declined in
Western states.

Threats from terrorism and populist authoritarianism

❖ The dangers to public confidence are obvious, especially the apparent incapacity of
the security forces to prevent the random mass shootings, etc.
❖ To understand the risk of populism, it helps to see it as a governing style with three
defining features:
➢ 1. Populist rhetoric emphasizes that legitimate political authority is based on
popular sovereignty and majority rule.
➢ 2. Populism challenges the legitimacy of the establishment. It reflects
disapproval of the privileged classes, holding the reins of political, cultural and
economic power in society. (populism does not have to be authoritarian,
Bernie Sanders and being progressive e.g.)
➢ 3. Despite the rhetoric about popular sovereignty, populist forces claim to
speak for the vox populi (will of the people) and to serve/relate to ordinary
people.
❖ Authoritarian values emphasize the importance of protecting traditional
lifestyles against perceived threats from ‘outsiders’ → leads to
conventional values and norms.

Week 5

Golder & Clark: Democracy and Dictatorship

Democracy and dictatorship in historical perspective
❖ Until the middle of the nineteenth century, democracy was commonly viewed as an
obsolete and ancient political system that was both dangerous and unstable.

Classifying democracies and dictatorships

❖ Substantive view of democracy: classifies political regimes in regard to the
outcomes that they produce.
 23

❖ Minimalist/procedural view of democracy classifies political regimes in regard to

their institutions and procedures.
❖ Contestation: captures the extent to which citizens are free to organize themselves
into competing blocs in order to press for the policies and outcomes they desire.
❖ Inclusion: has to do with who gets to participate in the democratic process.
➢ Polyarchy: political system where the level of contestation afnd inclusion is
high.

Three measures of Democracy and Dictatorship

(1) The democracy-dictatorship (DD) measure
❖ Two primary components of democracy are governmental offices and contestation,
contestation can be divided into three elements:
➢ (a) ex ante uncertainty: outcome of the election is unknown beforehand
➢ (b) ex post irreversibility: the winner of the election actually takes office
➢ © repeatability: elections that meet the first two criteria must occur at regular
and known intervals
❖ A country is classified as a democracy if following conditions apply (if one does not
apply, it is considered as a dictatorship):
➢ 1. The chief executive is elected
➢ 2. The legislature is elected.
➢ 3. There is more than one party competing in the elections.
➢ 4. An alternation in power under identical electoral rules has taken place.
❖ This way of measuring closely resembles Dahl’s classification scheme of democracy
but it does not include inclusion.
➢ Another difference is that the DD measure concludes that a country is a
democracy or a dictatorship. Dahl poses it more as a continuum with strong
dictatorships at one end and strong democracies at the other end.
❖ A continuous measure can take on any intermediate value within a given range; (for
example, “height in centimeters”).
❖ A dichotomous measure has only two discrete categories or values (for example,
“tall” or “short”).

(2) Polity IV
❖ The Polity Score is calculated as the Democracy Score minus the Autocracy Score.
➢ Continuum based, scale of -10 (as dictatorial as possible) to 10 (as
democratic as possible)
❖ A country’s Polity Score is based on five different attributes or dimensions:
➢ (a) the competitiveness of executive recruitment
➢ (b) the openness of executive recruitment,
➢ (c) the constraints that exist on the executive
➢ (d) the regulation of political participation
➢ (e) the competitiveness of political participation
❖ If political participation is considered competitive in a country by those scholars
coding it, then that country will have 3 added to its Democracy Score and 0 to its
Autocracy Score.7 In contrast, if political participation is considered suppressed by
the coders, then 2 will be added to its autocracy score and 0 to its democracy score.

Freedom house
 24

❖ Measures the global freedom for countries so not actually democracy, still scholars
use it interchangeably. It is based on two dimensions capturing political rights and
civil rights.
❖ Political rights is measured by ten questions and include three categories:
➢ a) the electoral process
➢ b) political pluralism and participation
➢ c) the functioning of government
➢ A question example: Is there competitive opposition?
➢ The score out of those 40 points is converted to a 1-7 scale. So every country
is somewhere on that scale.
❖ Civil right is measured by a series of fifteen question, covering primary categories:
➢ (i) freedom of expression and belief
➢ (ii) associational and organisational rights
➢ (iii) rule of law
➢ (iv) Personal autonomy and individual rights
➢ Same as political rights, it is converted to a scale.

Comparing DD, Polity IV, and Freedom House scores

❖ It turns out that there is considerable agreement between clear cut cases.
❖ It turns out that there is considerable disagreement among the measures when it
comes to classifying the mixed regimes, that is, the countries that occupy the middle
of the distribution of the Polity IV and Freedom House measures
❖ Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that the results from empirical tests relating
to democracy and dictatorship do in fact depend on which particular measure is
employed
25
 26

Evaluating measures of democracy and dictatorship

Conceptualisation
❖ Conceptualization is the process of creating mental categories that capture the
meaning of objects, events, or ideas.
❖ All three measures differ in their conceptualisation of democracy and dictatorships.
This is mostly due to a minimalist and substantive view and a dichotomous and
continuous view of democracy.

❖ Differences in minimalist and substantive view:

➢ the DD measure and Polity IV provide a minimalist view of democracy,
whereas Freedom House employs a more substantive view
➢ minimal means that they have potential advantages when it comes to
isolating causal processes.
➢ In effect, minimalist views recognize that democracies can be organized in
many different ways. In contrast, Freedom House considers a country more
free (democratic) if there are certain qualities to it (e.g. equality of opportunity)
■ These are certainly important factors, but are they a part of what
makes something a democracy, or are they characteristics that vary
from democracy to democracy that we might want to explain?
❖ Differences between dichotomous and continuous views:
➢ DD employs a dichotomous conceptualization of democracy and dictatorship,
whereas both Polity IV and Freedom House employ a continuous
conceptualization.
➢ Much debate about what is more correct.
■ On the one hand, democracy is always a matter of degree and
treating it as dichotomous is flawed.
■ On the other hand, political regimes cannot be half-democratic. It
either is or is not.

Validity
❖ Validity refers to the extent to which our measures correspond to the concepts that
they are intended to reflect (does it measure what it is supposed to measure).
❖ Difficult to completely ensure validity, too few but also too many measures may lead
to less validity.
❖ Ask yourself if aggregation of scores is a good thing. In Polity IV and Freedom house,
there are more combinations to get a democracy, whereas in DD it must have certain
qualities.
❖ Nominal measure: classifies something into discrete categories and are mutually
exclusive.
❖ Ordinal measure: allows us to rank-order cases, but does not give meaning to
differences in ranks.
❖ Interval measures: rank-order and give meaning.

Reliability
 27

❖ Reliability refers to the extent to which the measurement process repeatedly and
consistently produces the same score for a given case.
❖ The reliability of a measure is likely to depend on the extent to which the measure
depends on observable facts or subjective judgments.
➢ DD would score well on reliability as it can take observable facts, such as if a
legislature is elected or not.
➢ Polity IV and Freedom house are likely to be less reliable because of
subjective judgments they have to take in, such as how free the media is.

Replicability
❖ Replicability refers to the ability of third-party scholars to reproduce the process
through which a measure is created.
❖ Any party should have the information required to replicate it.

Glasius: what authoritarianism is and is not

❖ Two definitions of authoritarianism in different fields:
➢ Comparative politics: a regime that does not organize periodic free and fair
elections
➢ In political psychology: authoritarianism is about the psychological profile of
people characterized by a desire for order and hierarchy and a fear of
outsiders.

Diagnosis of disciplinary blinkers

❖ Policy of rendition: the secret detention and interrogation of so-called enemy
combatants
➢ Nowadays seen as a violation of human rights
❖ Three things wrong with our current way of thinking that hinder political scientists to
answer questions about authoritarianism:
➢ Authoritarianism is a negative category without a definition of its own
➢ Our focus on elections
➢ A third blind spot in authoritarianism research has been its failure to notice the
impact of globalization on politics.

The vacuum at the core

❖ Hard to define, usually put against democracy and then it comes out that
authoritarianism has an absence of free and fair elections and freedom. It needs a
definition of its own.

Looking beyond elections

 28

❖ It is crucial to not only look if these elections are fair, but also to see if elections are
even effective at shaping public policy. Do the people actually have a good say in
that? Therefore, take a good look at accountability.
❖ The point here is not to identify what types or conditions of accountability might count
as sufficiently democratic, but instead to pinpoint what would count as definitely
authoritarian
❖ Instead, we should look for an active practice of disrupting or sabotaging
accountability as the core feature of authoritarianism.

From national regime types to political practices

❖ But the claim that state autonomy has been diffused, and that the international
system has moved towards multilevel, sometimes overlapping or competing,
governance arrangements, has been affirmed in many strands of contemporary
political science literature, including public policy, International Relations, political
economy and democratic theory.
❖ If we take this claim seriously, the question naturally arises whether and how new
forms of authoritarianism may manifest themselves at levels below, above or beyond
the state.

In sum, to understand contemporary politics we need a definition of authoritarianism that is

substantive and dynamic rather than negative and systemic; that focuses on sabotage of
accountability rather than the quality of elections alone; and that lends itself to assessing
political institutions within, below or beyond the state.

Authoritarian and illiberal practices: a practice perspective

Practices: patterned actions that are embedded in particular organized contexts
❖ Practice approaches can analyse:
➢ (i) communities, societies, and cultures
➢ (ii) governments, corporations, and armies
➢ (iii) domination and coercion as either features of, collections of, or
phenomena instituted and instantiated in practices
❖ A focus on practices allows a shift away from designating only ‘regimes’ as
authoritarian, recognizing that in contemporary politics, governance arrangements
can be more fluid
➢ Then we can also begin to imagine authoritarian practices occurring
everywhere.

Authoritarian practices
❖ The focus should be on our understanding of authoritarianism from failure to hold
elections to sabotaging accountability.
❖ Accountability: relationship between an actor and a forum, in which the actor has
an obligation to explain and justify his or her conduct.
➢ The forum can pose questions and pass judgment, and the actor may face
consequences
❖ Authoritarian practices enable domination: they entail substantive and procedural
rule-breaking, interfere with the preferences and inhibit the civic virtues of those to
whom accountability is owed, and strictly control information flows.
❖ A definition of authoritarian practices should:
 29

➢ a) be able to approach authoritarianism as a substantive phenomenon, rather

than just a shortfall and counter of democracy
➢ b) step away from elections as the primary touchstone
➢ c) capture the character of authoritarianism when no longer necessarily
embodied in and exercised by national governments of states alone
❖ Authoritarian practice: a pattern of actions, embedded in an organized context,
sabotaging accountability to people (‘the forum’) over whom a political actor exerts
control, or their representatives, by disabling their access to information and/or
disabling their voice

❖ Access to information is also obstructed when a forum is deliberately given

inaccurate information.
❖ The other form of accountability sabotage is disabling voice. This disrupts the
dialogic flow in the other direction, from the forum to the actor.
➢ Critical questions are discouraged , questioners intimidated.

Illiberal practices
❖ Illiberal practice: a pattern of actions, embedded in an organized context, infringing
on the autonomy and dignity of the person.
❖ Needless to say, illiberal practices are no more or less reprehensible or
consequential than authoritarian practices.
 30

❖ At times, there may be a causal connection: illiberal practices often provide an

incentive for authoritarian practices. E.g. the rendition programme, which went from a
illiberal practice (torturing people) to an authoritarian one (keeping it a secret)

An urgent agenda
❖ A practice-based definition allows us to observe that the Venezuelan government
engaged in extensive authoritarian and illiberal practices under Chavez, while at the
same time acknowledging that he was repeatedly brought into power by popular
vote.
➢ Meaning there is overlap between elections

Week 6
 31

De la Torre: Populism
Political theories
❖ Political theorists definition: a specific way of competing for and exercising political
power
➢ Different definition: strategy of political mobilisation and a political style that
uses persuasive language and speaks for ‘the people’, and conceives their
elite opponents as ‘self-serving and undemocratic.
➢ Populists do not hinge on an ideology/left-right distinction.
❖ Populism is a response to a crisis of political representation and unhappiness of how
it is going.
❖ Three scenarios in which it emerged:
➢ a) Excluded people (without partisan loyalty) that were given the right to vote,
voted on populist leaders.
➢ b) A political crisis where the government becomes unresponsive and
unaccountable, populism challenges that.
➢ c) In cases of representation, when politics become personalized (people vote
on the person and not the party), populist leaders become successful in
‘representing the people’.

Populism as an ideology
❖ Ideological definition of populism: ideology that sees society as two groups, “the
people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and that argues that politics should be about the
general will of the people.
❖ Populism usually combines with other ideologies to complete it:
➢ Nativism, more rightwing populism (also excludes minorities)
➢ Social populism, more leftwing populism (people versus elite)

Populism and Democracy

❖ Divide of what populism does to democracy
➢ (i) it is a threat to liberalism and the principles of democracy, in particular
minority rights, division of powers and party pluralism.
■ Populism leads to authoritarianism when democracies are weak.
➢ (ii) There are also promises of populism
■ It is the starting point for a new order and is also useful to combat
other types of populism.
➢ (iii) the relationship between the two is not predetermined.
❖ Normal democracy follows a representative way, populism argues that the people are
not heard enough and don’t have a say.
❖ Populists homogenise the population and say to speak for all of them

Fascism and Populism

❖ Populism can be seen as a small modern version of fascism, creating an
authoritarian form of democracy.
 32

❖ Fascism abolishes elections, Populism does not. Fascism has mass terror and
violence, Populism does not.

Populism: Between elections and the semi-embodiment of power in a leader

❖ Populism lies in between democracy and totalitarianism.
➢ Populism still tries to win using elections, and there is the possibility of still
losing. Whereas in totalitarian regimes, this is decided beforehand.

Populism and the media: populism and entertainment

❖ Populists were media innovators that politicized emotions to convey their anti-elite
messages.
❖ Media must cover the sensational stories provided by these flamboyant figures, while
populists use the media to build the widest possible audience and strengthen their
points.

Controlling the media

❖ Berlusconi showed that ownership of the media could lead populists to power. He
had a lot of television stations that he could use as a platform.
➢ After that, when he got into power, he censured a lot of news and bypassed
an independent news law.
➢ They also harassed many journalists and private media owners.

Mudde & Kaltwasser: Populism and Democracy

Populism and (liberal) democracy
❖ Liberal democracy: refers to the political regime of democracy, which not only
respects popular sovereignty and majority rule, but also establishes independent
institutions specialized in the protection of fundamental rights.
❖ Populism is essentially democratic but clashes with liberal democracy
➢ Populism puts forth: nothing should constrain the will of the (pure) people, this
clashes with pluralism, and in turn, excludes minorities.
❖ As it tends to distrust any unelected institution that limits the power of the demos,
populism can develop into a form of democratic extremism or, better said, of illiberal
democracy
❖ Populism is more negative in terms of public contestation but more positive for
political participation.
➢ On the one hand, populism tends to limit the scope of competition because it
often maintains that those actors who are depicted as evil should be allowed
to neither play the electoral game nor have access to the media.
➢ On the other hand, populism tends to favor political participation, since it
contributes to the mobilization of social groups who feel that their concerns
are not being considered by the political establishment.
 33

Populism and the process of (de-)democratisation

❖ Two different regimes within Democracy and Authoritarianism:
➢ 1. Full authoritarianism: no space for political opposition and there is
systematic oppression
➢ 2. Competitive authoritarianism: does allow for limited contestation but within
an uneven political playing field between incumbents and opposition.
■ They tolerate the presence of an opposition and promote elections,
but elections are usually tampered with by officeholders.
➢ 3. Electoral democracy: the periodic realization of elections in which the
opposition can potentially win.
■ Weaker form of democracy that has issues defending fundamental
rights and has a weaker rule of law.
■ In liberal democracies the governed have more opportunities to hold
the authorities accountable, ranging from a robust public sphere to
independent judicial oversight.
 34

The impact of populism on the democratisation process can be divided into three episodes:
liberalisation, democratic transition, and democratic deepening.
(1) Liberalisation
❖ Authoritarian regime loosens restrictions and expands some individual and group
rights.
❖ Populism tends to be a positive force for democracy
➢ It helps articulate demands of popular sovereignty and majority rule, which
challenges state oppression.
(2) Democratic transition
❖ Transition from competitive authoritarianism to an electoral democracy, populism
plays an ambiguous part, but overall fostering the idea that the people should elect
their leaders.
❖ Populists will support free and fair elections

(3) Democratic deepening

❖ Protection of rights and a full-fledged liberal democratic regime is completed.
❖ Populism does not completely support/agree with this due to two reasons
➢ (i) they support an interpretation of democracy based on unconstrained
popular will
➢ (ii) and they reject unelected bodies
■ Populists usually portray these as illegitimate institutions that only try
to get the minority to be a lot more powerful, and not all the people.
 35

In the same way, populism can also play a big role in the process of de-democratisation.
With three episodes again: democratic erosion, democratic breakdown, repressiveness.
(1) Democratic erosion
❖ Includes incremental changes to undermine the autonomy of those institutions that
specialize in the protection of fundamental rights
➢ such as diminishing judiciary independency, jettisoning the rule of law, and
weakening minority rights.
❖ Populism kind of supports this with their majoritarian model and exclusion of
minorities.

(2) Democratic breakdown

❖ Portrays a regime shift from electoral democracy to competitive authoritarianism (or
full authoritarianism in an extreme case)
❖ Populism can help with this, because they challenge the elite for not allowing the
expression of the general will.

(3) Repressiveness
❖ the movement from a competitive authoritarian to a full authoritarian regime, a
process that usually unfolds gradually and is related to the occurrence of crises
❖ Populists will generally oppose this process of repressiveness.

Intervening variables
Within each stage the nature and strength of the effect can vary too, depending on at least
three intervening variables: the political power of populist forces, the type of political system
in which populist actors operate, and the international context.
(1) Political power of the populist actor (arguably the most important factor)
❖ In general, populists-in-opposition tend to call for more transparency and the
implementation of more democracy to break the hold of the elite
➢ E.g. founding elections and referendums
❖ Populists-in-power have a more complicated relationship with the use of direct
democracy and respect of the rules of public contestation.
➢ Although it is true that populists defend majority rule, only some of them have
more or less consistently used plebiscitary instruments.

(2) Type of political system

❖ In democratic systems, populists are often constrained.
➢ In presidential systems, it is easier for outsiders to gain power but often do
lack enough support at other levels.
❖ In contrast, parliamentary systems tend to limit the power of populists-in-power
because they often lead to coalition governments, in which populist parties have to
work together with mostly stronger nonpopulist parties.
➢ Or populist parties do not get into government at all.

(3) The international context

 36

❖ If a country is integrated into a strong network of liberal democracies (e.g. EU), it is

more difficult for a populist actor to undermine key features of liberal democracy
without a major international backlash.

Rooduijn: Why is populism suddenly all the rage

❖ Many citizens take the view that ordinary, virtuous people have been betrayed,
neglected or exploited by a corrupt elite.
❖ Various circumstances that increase the likelihood of people voting for populists:
➢ (i) when a society is more individualised/independent and emancipated and
does not relate to mainstream parties.
➢ (ii) When ideologies merge, the claim can be put forth that all parties are the
same. Populism is very different and can also pick up radical people that do
not feel represented.
➢ (iii) crises can make the activation of populist attitudes more likely. A financial
crisis, for instance, makes mainstream parties highly vulnerable to the critique
that “the established elite” has messed things up.
➢ (iiii) widespread corruption plays straight into populist hands. If it turns out that
political parties are highly corrupt, the populist claim that people are exploited
by an inward-looking, condescending elite will find wide public support.
❖ Media also contributes to helping populists, they cover sensational news, increasing
the chance of coverage for populists.

Akkerman: Populism is overrated, authoritarian nationalism is THE threat to

democracy
❖ Populism is very overrated, like Mudde argues, populism is not anti-democratic but
against liberal democracy.
❖ Research indicates that populist parties have had little impact on democratic
institutional reform in Western Europe so far.
❖ Few arguments:
➢ 1. Populism is not a core ideology of political parties or movements in Europe.
➢ 2. Not all populist parties are against liberal democracy (e.g. SP)
➢ 3. Third, the pressure on liberal democracies is not restricted to populist
parties.
■ Policy proposals and legislative initiatives that are in tension with or
defy fundamental freedoms are also coming from mainstream parties.
■ So it is not only restricted to Populist parties.