political science book summary part 2, Appunti di Storia Politica

Scarica political science book summary part 2 e più Appunti in PDF di Storia Politica solo su Docsity! CHAPTER 7: CONSTITUTIONS AND COURTS CONSTITUTIONS AND COURTS: AN OVERVIEW THE CHARACTER OF CONSTITUTIONS THE DURABILITY OF CONSTITUTIONS THE ROLE OF COURTS JUDICIAL ACTIVISM JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE AND RECRUITMENT SYSTEMS OF LAWS CONSTITUTIONS AND COURTS IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: • WHICH IS BEST: A CONSTITUTION THAT IS SHORT AND AMBIGOUS, LEAVING ROOM FOR INTERPRETATION, OR ONE THAT IS LONG AND DETAILED, LEAVING LESS ROOM FOR MISUNDERSTANDING? • WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF CODIFIED AND UNCODIFIED CONSTITUTIONS? • WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SUPREME COURTS AGAINST CONSTITUTIONAL COURTS? • JUDICIAL RESTRAINT OR JUDICIAL ACTIVISM – WHICH IS BEST FOR THE CONSTITUTIONAL WEEL-BEING OF A STATE? • WHAT IS THE BEST WAY OF RECRUITING JUDGES, AND WHAT ARE THE MOST DESIRABLE LIMITS ON THEIR TERMS UIN OFFICE, IF ANY? KEY TERMS: abstract review – appellate – civil law – codified constitution – common law – concrete review – constitution – entrenchment – flexible constitution – internal independence – judicial activism – judicial restraint – judicial review – original jurisdiction – rigid constitution – rule of law – sharia law – statute law – uncodified constitution. DEFINITIONS: Constitution: a document or a set of documents that outlines the powers, institutions and structure of government, as well as expressing the rights of citizens and the limits on government. Codified constitution: one that is set out in a single document. Uncodified constitution: one that is spread among a range of documents and is influenced by tradition and practice. Entrenchment: the existence of special legal procedures for amending a constitution. Rigid constitution: one that is entrenched, requiring more demanding amendment procedures. Flexible constitution: one that can be amended more easily, often in the same way that ordinary legislation is passed. Judicial review: the power of courts to nullify any laws or actions by government officials that contravene the constitution. Concrete review: judgments made on the constitutional validity of law in the context of a specific case. Original jurisdiction: this entitles a court to try a case at its first instance. Appellate: the power of a court to review decisions reached by lower courts. Judicial restraint: the view that judges should apply the letter of the law, leaving politics to elected bodies. Judicial activism: the willingness of judges to venture beyond narrow legal reasoning so as to influence public policy. Internal independence: refers to the autonomy of junior judges from their senior colleagues, who often determine career advancement. Where this autonomy is limited, judicial initiative may be stifled. Common law: judicial rulings on matters not explicitly treated in legislation, based on precedents created by decisions in specific cases. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 1 of 65 Statute law: laws enacted by a legislature. Civil law: judicial rulings founded on written legal codes which seek to provide a single overarching frameworks for the conduct of public affairs. Sharia law: the system of Islamic law – based on the Quran and on the teachings and actions of Muhammad – which functions alongside Western law in most Islamic states. INTRODUCTION: Constitutions tell us much about the goals and purposes go government, as well as the rights of citizens, while courts strive to make sure that these rules are respected and equally applied. Just as humans are imperfect, so are the political institutions they create and manage; there are significant gaps, in other words, between constitutional ideas and practice. Key arguments: • Constitutions are critical to achieving an understanding of government, providing – as they do – a power map containing key political principles and rules. • Understanding governments requires an appreciation of the content of constitutions, as well as their durability and how they are amended. • Awareness of the structure and role of courts is also critical, as is the distinction between supreme courts and constitutional courts. • Judicial activism has become an increasingly important concept, as judges have become more willing to enter political arenas. In turn, the rules on judicial recruitment – and their impact on judicial independence – must be taken into consideration. • In comparing constitutions and courts, the distinction between common and civil law has long been important, and more attention needs to be paid to the political significance of religious law. • In authoritarian regimes, constitutions and courts are weak, with governments either using them as a façade or entirely bypassing them. 7.1 CONSTITUTIONS AND COURTS: AN OVERVIEW: A constitution is a power map containing a set of principles and rules outlining the structure and powers of a system, of government, describing its institutions and the manner in which they work and relate t one another, and typically describing both the limits on governmental power and the rights of citizens. A system of government without a constitution is not a system at all, but rather an unorganised collection of habits that can be changed at the whim of the leaders or the people. A constitution helps provide predictability and security. Constitutions also offer benchmarks against which the performance of government can be measured. Growth of interest in the study of constitutions, for fur main reasons: • Explosion of constitution-making, with 99 countries adopting new constitutions between 1990 and 2012. • Judges and courts in many liberal democracies have become more willing to step into the political arena, not least in investigating corrupt politicians. • The growing interest in human rights lends itself to judicial engagement. • The expanding body of international law increasingly impinges on domestic politics. A key link between constitutions, law and government is found in the idea of the rule of law. Dicey - the purpose of the rule of law is to substitute a government of laws for a government of men. When rule is by law, political leaders cannot exercise arbitrary power and the powerful are subject to the same laws as everyone else. The rule of law implies that laws are general, public, prospective, clear, consistent, practical, and stable. The most important distinction between liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes: in the case of the latter, the adoption and application of laws is more arbitrary, and based less on tried and tested principles than on the political goals and objectives of top leaders. 7.2 THE CHARACTER OF CONSTITUTIONS: Most constitutions are structured similarly in the sense that they include four elements. They start out with a set of https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 2 of 65 as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights provide a base on which judges can construct what would once her been viewed as excessively political statements. • The continuing prestige of the judiciary encouraged some transfer of authority to its domain. Of course, judicial activism has gone further in some democracies than in others. The US is founded on a constitutional contract and an army of lawyers forever quibbles over the terms. Armed with a written constitution, federalism, judicial independence, no system of separate administrative courts, a legal system based on judge-made law, and high esteem for judges, the US has moved ever further into a culture of judicial activism. The influence of the US Supreme Court on American public policy has led one critic of government by judges to dismiss it as a nine-man, black-robed junta. Fewer conditions of judicial autonomy are met in Britain, where parliamentary sovereignty long reigned supreme. Lacking the authority to annul legislation, judicial review in the British context normally refers to the capacity of judges to review executive decisions against the template provided by administrative law. Formal statements of rights have also encouraged judicial expansion in other English-speaking countries. In Canada, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms was appended to the constitution in 1982, giving judges a more prominent role in defending individual rights. 7.6 JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE AND RECRUITMENT: Liberal democracies accept judicial autonomy as fundamental to the rule of law. Security of tenure is important, which is why it is hard to remove them during their terms in office. But judicial autonomy also depends on how they are recruited. Were the selection of judges on the highest court to be controlled by politicians, the judiciary would simply reinforce partisan authority, providing an integration of powers. This danger is particularly acute when judicial tenure is short, limiting the period in which judges can develop their own perspectives on the cases before them. As a result, governments have developed multiple solutions to the issue of judicial selection, ranging from democratic election to co-option by judges already in post. In between these extremes come the more conventional methods: appointment by the legislature, by the executive, and by independent panels. Alternatively, and more traditionally, some judges on the senior court can be selected by one method, while others are chosen by a different method. For most courts charged with judicial review, selection still involves a clear political dimension. The stature of the US Supreme Court combines with the unusual rule of lifetime appointments to make sure that nominations are key decisions. The judicial experience and legal ability of the nominee may matter less than ideology, partisanship, and a clean personal history. A political dimension is also apparent in selection to constitutional courts. Typically, members are selected by the legislature in a procedure that can involve party horse-trading. For instance, 8 out of the 12 members of Spain’s Constitutional Court are appointed by the party-dominated parliament. Below the level of the highest court, judicial autonomy raises the issue of internal independence. Guarnieri emphasises the importance of internal independence. Noting that judicial organisations in continental Europe traditionally operate within a pyramid-like organisational structure, he argues that the role played by organisational hierarchies is crucial in order to highlight the actual dynamics of the judicial corps. This issue arose in acute form in some continental European countries after 1945, when judges appointed under right- wing regimes continued in post, discouraging initiatives by new recruits lower in the pyramid. 7.7 SYSTEMS OF LAWS: The two most important of these are common law and civil law, whose contrasting principles are essential to an appreciation of the differences in the political role of judiciaries everywhere outside the Middle East. The third is sharia law, found in most Muslim countries, and even coexisting with common or civil law in countries with large Muslim populations, such as Nigeria, or in countries with a colonial history, such as Egypt. 7.7.1 Common law: The key feature of common law systems is that the decisions made by judges on specific cases form an overall legal framework which remains distinct from the authority of the state. Mainly found in Britain and British colonies. Originally based on custom and tradition, such decisions were first published as a way of standardising legal judgments across the territory of a state. Because judges abided by the principle of the stare decisis (stand on decided cases), their verdicts created precedents and established a predictable legal framework, contributing thereby to economic exchange and nation-building. Where common law is judge-made law, statute law is passed by the legislature in specific areas but these statutes usually build on case law and are themselves refined through judicial interpretation. Judges constitute an independent source of authority. They form part of the governance, but not the government, of society. In this way, common law systems contribute to political pluralism. 7.7.2 Civil law: Civil law springs from written legal codes rather than cases, the goal being to provide a single framework for the conduct of public affairs, including public administration and business contracts. The original codes were developed under Justinian, Roman Emperor between 527 and 565. This system of Roman Law has evolved into distinct civil codes, which are then elaborated through laws passed by the national legislatures. Civil law is found throughout Latin https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 5 of 65 America, in all of the continental Europe, in China and Russia, and in most African countries that were once colonies of continental European powers. Judges (rather than juries) identify the facts of the case, and often even direct the investigation. Then they apply the relevant section of the code to the matter at hand. Judges are viewed as impartial officers of state, engaged in an administrative task; they are merely la bouche de la loi. Judge made law would be viewed as a threat to legislative supremacy. The underlying codes in civil law systems often emphasise social stability as much as individual rights. In addition, judges have inevitably found themselves filling gaps in the codes, providing decisions which function as case law, even though they are not acknowledged as such. 7.7.3 Religious law: ​ Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and the Catholic Church all have their own distinctive bodies of law, some mod which remain important in regulating the societies in which they are found. Some states such as Bangladesh, also have polycentric legal systems that include separate provisions for different religions. The one that is most widely misunderstood is the sharia law of Muslim states. In the west, Islamic law tends to come to attention only when someone has been sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery, or in the context of the unequal treatment of women in many Muslim societies. The result is a misleading conception of how it works, and an unfortunate failure to understand that Islamic law is deep and sophisticated, with its own courts, legal experts, and judges and its own tradition of jurisprudence. It is widely used in Iran, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, but most Islamic states use a mix of common or civil law and Islamic religious law, turning to the former for serious crime and to the latter for family issues. Also unlike Western law, the sharia outlines not only what is forbidden for Muslims but also what is discouraged, recommended, and obligatory. When Muslims have doubts about whether something they are considering doing is acceptable, they are encouraged to speak to a Muslim judge, called a mufti, who will issue a legal judgment known as fatwa. 7.8 CONSTITUTIONS AND COURTS IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES: The nature of authoritarian regimes is such that restraints on rule go unacknowledged, and power, not law, is the political currency. Constitutions are weak, and the formal status of the judiciary is similarly reduced. Non-democratic rules follow two broad strategies in limiting judicial authority. One is to retain a framework of law and a facade of judicial independence, but to influence the judges indirectly through recruitment, training, evaluation, promotion, and disciplinary procedures. A second more subtle strategy is to bypass the judicial process. For instance, many non- democratic regimes use Declaration of Emergency as a cover to make decisions which are exempt from judicial scrutiny. In effect, a law is passed saying there is no law. Once introduced, such temporary emergencies can drag on for decades. Military rulers have frequently extended the scope of secret military courts to include civilian troublemakers. Under the circumstances, it is little surprise that authoritarian regimes have a poor record on human rights. Comparative data in this area lack the established record of the indices we have reviewed for democracy and corruption. In states with a ruling party courts are viewed not as a constraint upon political authority but as an aid to the party in its policy goals. China is currently on its fourth and most recent constitution, and even though it begins by affirming the country’s socialist status, and warning against sabotage of the socialist system it is the least radical of the four. Today’s China also gives greater emphasis to law in general, laws did become more numerous, precise, and significant after the hiatus of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). In 1979, the country passed its first criminal laws. Despite such changes, Chinese politics remains authoritarian. Rule by law still means exerting political control through law, rather than limiting the exercise of power. Iran offers a further case of a legal system operating in the context of an authoritarian regime. The constitutional document makes noble statements about an Islamic Republic endorsed by the people of Iran on the basis of their long-standing belief in the sovereignty of truth and Quranic justice, and about eh exalted dignity and value of man and the independence of the judiciary. In hybrid or competitive authoritarian regimes, too, constitutions and the law are subsidiary to political authority. The leader may be elected within a constitutional framework, but that environment has been shaped by the leader, and the exercise of power is rarely constrained by an independent judiciary. The Russian experience shows that law can gain ground - if only slowly and with difficulty - in art least some authoritarian regimes. Russia’s post-communist constitution of 1993 set out an array of individual rights; proclaimed that the individual and his rights and freedoms and the supreme value; and established a tripartite system of general, commercial, and constitutional courts. Since 1993 the government has established detailed and lengthy codes appropriate for a civil law system. But in Russia remains a considerable gap between individual rights on paper and their realisation in practice. For instance: • The conviction rate in criminal cases remains suspiciously high. • Expertise and pay within the legal system are low, sustaining a culture of corruption. • Violence by the police is common. • Legal judgments, especially against the state, can be difficult to enforce. • The public still shows little faith in the legal system. CHAPTER 8: LEGISLATURES LEGISLATURES: AN OVERVIEW https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 6 of 65 FUNCTIONS STRUCTURE MEMBERS LEGISLATURES IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: • WE HAVE SUGGESTED THAT EFFECTIVE CONTROL OVER LEGISLATION IN MOST LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES RESTS WITH THE GOVERNMENT. IS THIS A STATE OF AFFAIRS SATISFACTORY? • COULD A LEGISLATURE MADE UP ENTIRELY OF HETEROSEXUAL WHITE MIDDLE-CLASS MEN EFFECTIVELY REPRESENT A COUNTRY? IF NOT, WHY NOT? • SHOULD MEMBERS OF AN UPPER CHAMBER BE APPOINTED FOR THEIR EXPERIENCE AND WISDOM, OR ELECTED FOR THEIR POPULAR APPEAL? • OTHER THAN IN FEDERAL SYSTEMS, DO BICAMERAL LEGISLATURES SERVE ANY REAL PURPOSE? • IS THERE ANYTHING PARTICULARLY WRONG WITH THE RISE OF CAREER POLITICIANS AND A POLITICAL CLASS? • SHOULD LEGISLATORS BE SUBJECT TO TERM LIMITS? KEY TERMS: bicameral – committee – committee-based legislature – debating legislature – legislature – plenary session – political class – strong bicameralism – term limits – unicameral – vote of confidence – weak bicameralism. DEFINITIONS: Legislature: a multi-member representative body which considers public issues and either accepts, amends or rejects proposals for new laws and policies. Debating legislature: one where floor debate is the central activity; through which major issues are addressed and parties gain or lose ground. Committee-based legislature: one where most work takes place in committees, where members transform bills into laws, conducting hearings, and scrutinizing the executive. Plenary session: a meeting of the entire legislature, as distinct from committee meetings. Vote of confidence: a vote in a legislature on the question of its confidence in the government to lead. If lost, it normally requires the resignation of the government. Unicameral and bicameral: terms referring to the number of chambers in a legislature. Weak bicameralism: this arises when the lower chamber dominates the upper, providing the primary focus for government accountability. Strong bicameralism: this occurs when the two chambers are more balanced, as in federations with presidential executives. Committee: a group of legislators assigned to examine new bills, monitor executive departments or hold hearings on matters of public concern. Political class: a group of professional politicians that possesses, and can act on, its shared interests. Term limits: rules that restrict elected politicians to a maximum number of periods in office, or ban re-election without a break. INTRODUCTION: Legislatures are the institutions of government that are closest to the citizens, since they are typically directly elected and are often responsible for representing local districts, rather than – as is the case with executives – the entire country. They are thus a key part of representative democracy. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 7 of 65 8.3 STRUCTURE: Almost every legislature has either one or two chambers, the number being determined by a combination of history and political need. Second, most legislatures operate through specialist committees where much of the work of law-making is actually done, with plenary sessions playing only a formal role in the legislative process. 8.3.1 Chambers: For most countries, a single-chambered (or unicameral) legislature is enough to represent the interests of the population and to manage its responsibilities. For reasons of history, politics, or practical need, the rest have bicameral (double- chambered) legislatures. In this case, one is usually known as the first, or lower chamber and the other as the second, or upper chamber. The lower is almost always the originator of new proposals for legislation (bills), with the second chamber playing the role of taking a second look, and the lower chamber often has sole or dominating control over budgetary matters. The choice between one and two chambers reflects contrasting visions of democracy. Unicameral legislatures are justified by a majoritarian reading of popular control, the idea being that an assembly based on direct popular election reflects the popular will and should not be obstructed. Bicameralisms stress the liberal element of democracy, arguing that the upper chamber offers checks and balances, provides more considered debate because its members usually have longer terms in office, it can be more collegial because it is usually smaller, and it can defend individual and group interests against a potentially oppressive majority in the lower house. In short, it can be a second chamber for second thoughts. As such, it can offer a modern approximation to the traditional idea of council of elders, often debating in a less partisan style than the lower house. Where legislatures consist of two chambers, the questions arises of the relationship between them. Usually, the lower chamber dominates in an arrangement known as weak bicameralism. The task of sustaining or voting down the government falls naturally to the lower house, with its popular mandate. The dominance of the lower chamber can also be seen in other ways: - It is usually the larger house, averaging 254 members, compared with 95 in the upper house. - It often has a special responsibility for the budget. - It is the forum where major proposals are introduced. - It is entitled to override vetoes or amendments proffered by the second chamber. Strong bicameralism can emerge in these conditions, especially when combined with federalism. The US Congress is the best illustration of this more balanced arrangement. 8.3.2 Selection of the upper chamber: There is not much point in a bicameral legislature unless the two chambers represent public interests differently; if they are the same size, are elected in the same way, and have the same powers, they will simply replicate one another. One means of avoiding this duplication is to select the chambers in different ways, to which end there are three main options: direct or indirect election, or appointment. An example of indirect election can be found in France, where the members of the Senate are elected by members of electoral colleges in each of France’s départements (counties). An example of appointment can be found in Canada, where all 105 members of the Senate are appointed by the governor- general (representative of the British monarch) on the recommendation of the prime minister. Even when upper chambers are directly elected, a contrast with the lower house is still normally achieved by offering members of the upper house a longer tenure: typically, five or six years compared with four or five in the lower chamber. A federal structure also produces a natural divergence between chambers. This contrast arises because elections to federal upper chambers are arranged by state, with smaller states deliberately over-represented. For instance, the US Senate contains two members for each of 50 states, meaning that California has the same representation as Wyoming. 8.3.3 Committees: Committees are the workhorses of effective legislatures, offering detailed examination of matters of national interest, including executive and legislative proposals. They come in three different forms: - Standing committees are permanent and grouped by policy specialties; so there will usually be separate committees dealing with foreign affairs, economic affairs, budgets, health, education, the environment and so on. - Select committees monitor the main executive departments or are set up temporarily to hold hearings on matters of public concern. - Conference committees reconcile differences in bicameral legislatures in the wording of bills. The US Congress is the classic example of a committee-based legislature. Although to mentioned in the constitution, committees rapidly became vital to the work of Congress. Their most important role is in deciding the shape and fate of bills. Committee hearings allow interest groups to express their views, while committee members take care not only of https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 10 of 65 the interests of their constituents, but also of those groups offering support including campaign contributions to the legislator. Scandinavia provides cases of influential committees operating in the context of both strong parties and parliamentary government. Scandinavia’s main governing style, sometimes known as committee parliamentarianism, is one in which influential standing committees negotiate the policies and bills on which the whole parliament later votes. 8.4 MEMBERS: The most important development in liberal democracies has been the rise of the career politician: the degree-educated legislator with limited experience outside politics who expects politics to provide a full-time, fulfilling profession. In many democracies the rise of the professional politician has led to speculation about the growth of a political class with a background and interests removed from the broad electorate, and quite often captured by particular interests. The rise of a professional class could also be interpreted as a threat to representative democracy, particularly if that class does not reflect the backgrounds and attitudes of the general population. More importantly, incumbent members from all parties typically seek re-election. To achieve this goal, they arm themselves with campaign resources unavailable to their challengers, thus creating a powerful cartel against newcomers. Politics as a profession implies a distinct view not only of representations, but also of politics. It rejects the notion that governance is a task which Athenian-Style citizen- legislators can undertake. It implies dissatisfaction with the idea that an assembly should draw together a representative sample of citizens different in language. Rather, politics as a profession implies an emphasis on elitism, training, knowledge, experience, and skill. Politics becomes a job, in the same way as law, medicine, and teaching. In most other liberal democracies, strong parties at both parliamentary and electoral level leave less room for independent action, resulting in loyal legislators rather than political entrepreneurs. Just as we sometimes find people following the same career paths as their parents, so one of the outcomes of the rise of the career politician has been the emergence of political dynasties. The phenomena of second-generation legislators may also reflect socialisation: children growing up in a family where politics is viewed as an achievable career are more likely to enter the profession themselves. In the US, meanwhile, the Kennedy family is less prominent than it once was, but the Bushes and the Clinton have developed some of the trappings of political dynasties. 8.5 LEGISLATURES IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES: Since assemblies are symbols of popular political representation, their significance in authoritarian regimes has long been regarded as inherently limited. Such legislatures have generally functioned only as shadow institutions: sessions are often shot and members are occasionally appointed by the government. Legislators concentrate on raising grievances, pressing constituency interests, and sometimes lining their own pockets. Yes, legislatures are difficult to extinguish, and the braver members of assemblies in authoritarian states can sometimes emerge as the only substantial voices of opposition. Except for a few traditional and dictatorial systems, most authoritarian regimes continue to possess an assembly of some description, their value being fivefold: - A legislature provides a fig leaf of legitimacy, both domestic and international, for the regime. - The legislature can be used to incorporate moderate opponents into the political system, providing a forum for negotiating matters that do not threaten the key interests of rulers. - Raising the grievances of constituents and lobbying for local interests provide a measure of integration between centre and periphery, and between state and society. Such activity oils the political wheels without threatening those who control the machine. - Assemblies provide a convenient pool of potential recruits to the elite. Behaviour in the legislature provides a useful initial test of reliability. For dictators, legislatures serve as controlled institutional channels through which outside groups can make their demands and leaders can make concessions without appearing to cave in to popular protest. At the heart of the role of legislatures in authoritarian regimes is the idea of co-option: authoritarian leaders may not have to worry about public opinion, but they always face the prospect of challenges from within the elite, or at least of demands for a share of the spoils of control. In hybrid regimes, legislatures are an essential part of the political furniture. Their position can be significant in areas that do not threaten the realities of presidential leadership: in representing local district, for example, and in passing routine legislation. The political environment of hybrid regimes is particularly hostile to the idea that assemblies can hold the government to account through detailed oversight. On the contrary, national leaders consider themselves responsible to the whole nation, not too what they see as corrupt, partisan, and parochial representatives in the assembly. The case of the Egyptian legislature illustrates some of the problems found in hybrid regimes. Egypt has had a legislature since 1923, but first the king and then - following the revolution of 1952 - the presidents have always had the capacity to override its votes or to manipulate elections to ensure a majority of friendly legislators. A new House of Representatives was created in 2014, but the tradition of strong executives and relatively weak legislatures seems destined to continue, but for different reasons. Where the old People’s Assembly had been dominated by the governing National Democratic Party, which was in turn manipulated by the president, the new legislature is likely to suffer from too many parties, creating divisions that will make it ineffective either as a support for government or as a site of opposition. China exemplifies the trend in one-party states for assemblies to acquire modest significance as such regimes become a little more pluralistic. A growing emphasis on the rule of law raised the status of the National People’s Congress (NCP), which has also more often expressed popular hostility to corruption. However, the NCP, still the world’s largest legislature with members indirectly elected through https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 11 of 65 subnational governments and the military, remains strongly hierarchical. It meets only once a year for a session lasting about two weeks. The NCP’s influence operates through smaller sub-groups. The most important of these is the Standing Committee, a group of about 150 members which meets regularly throughout the year; most also belong to the party, giving the leadership an additional mechanism of control. In Russia, the Federal Assembly occupies a secondary position to the executive. Russia’s constitution makes allowance for a bicameral legislature whose powers helped make sure that laws take precedence over presidential decrees. But the ambitions of Vladimir Putin have combined with the Russian preference for strong government to tilt the balance of power towards the presidency. The constitution states that Russia’s president is not only guarantor of the constitution, but is also required to ensure the coordinated functioning and collaboration of bodies of state power. The most blatant instance of Putin’s manipulation of the legislature can be found in the upper house, the Federation Council. Given the sheer size and diversity of Russia, and its federal structure, the Council might logically function as a Russian Senate, providing a form of representation that could complement that provided by the Duma. In reality, it has been openly exploited by Putin to extend his power, encouraged by the lack of detail in the Russian constitution about how its members must be chosen. CHAPTER 9: EXECUTIVES EXECUTIVES: AN OVERVIEW PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVES PARLIAMENTARY EXECUTIVES SEMI-PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVES EXECUTIVES IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: • WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGED AND DISADVANTAGES OF DIVIDING THE ROLES OF HEAD OF STATE AND HEAD OF GOVERNMENT? • SEPARATION OF POWERS: A GOOD IDEA OR NOT? • IS PRESIDENTIAL OR PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT THE MOST APPROPRIATE SYSTEM FOR (A) NEW DEMOCRACIES, (B) DIVIDED SOCIETIES? • HAVE PRIME MINISTERS BECOME PRESIDENTIAL AND, IF SO, WHY? • UNEASY LIES THE HEAD THAT WEARS A CROWN. DISCUSS IN THE CONTEXT OF DEMOCRACIES AND OF AUTHORITARIAN STATES. KEY TERMS: cabinet – coalition government – constitutional monarchy – head of government – head of state – parliamentary government – personal rule – presidential government – semi-presidential government – separation of powers. DEFINITIONS: Head of state: the figurehead leader of a state, who may be elected or appointed, or – in the case of monarchs – may inherit the position. The role is non-political and has many functions but few substantive powers. Head of government: the elected leader of a government, who comes to office because of the support of voters who identify with their party and platform. Presidential government: an arrangement in which power is divided between a president and a legislature. This distinction is achieved by separate elections and also by separate survival; the president cannot dissolve the legislature and the legislature can only remove the president through impeachment. Separation of powers: an arrangement in which executive and legislature are given distinct but complementary sets of powers, such that neither can govern alone and that both should, ideally, govern together. Cabinet: a body consisting of the heads of the major government departments. Sometimes known as council of ministers. More important in parliamentary than in presidential systems. Parliamentary government: an arrangement in which the executive emerges from the legislature (most often in the form of a coalition), remains accountable to it, and must resign if it loses a legislative vote of no confidence. Coalition government: an arrangement in which the government is formed through an agreement involving two or more parties which divide government posts between them. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 12 of 65 so. 9.3.1 Majority, coalition, and minority governments: In presidential and semi-presidential systems of government, executives and legislatures are elected separately and have distinct powers. The reach and authority of presidents is impacted by party numbers in the legislature, but there is much that the president can do regardless. In parliamentary systems, by contrast, the executive and the legislature are fused, and the power of the executive depends greatly upon the party balance in the legislature. Majority government. Britain is the classic example of parliamentary government based on a single ruling party with a secure majority. The plurality method of election usually delivers a working majority in the House of Commons to a single party, the leader of that party normally becomes prime minister, and the cabinet is made up of 20 or so parliamentary colleagues from the same party. Coalition and minority governments. It is quite usual in parliamentary systems for no single party to win a majority after an election. In this situation, the tight link between the election result and government formations weakens, and governments takes one of three main forms: - A majority coalition government in which two or more parties with a majority of seats join together. - A minority coalition or alliance in which parties, even working together, still lack a parliamentary majority. - A single-party minority government formed by the largest party. Party composition of West European governments in the second half of the of the twentieth century; majority coalition was the most frequent, followed by single-party minority governments, minority coalitions, and single-party majority governments. Some demand that the legislature shows majority support for a new government through a formal vote of investiture, a requirement that encourages the formation of a majority coalition with an agreed programme. Others, however, do not require a majority vote for a new administration. In Sweden, for example, the proposed prime minister can form a government as long as no more than half the members of the Riksdag object. Where constitutions say nothing on the procedure for approving a new government, as in Denmark, the new administration takes office - and continues in power - until and unless it is voted down by the legislature. Most often though, the coalitions are arranged after the election, with the outgoing government remaining as caretaker while negotiations are under way. Agreements can be reached in a matter of days, but the more complex negotiations take longer. It would be logical to suggest that coalitions will form between the largest parties in the legislature, but this is rarely the case, and coalitions come in several different types. Most contain the smallest number of parties needed to make a viable government, which is typically, two to four. In addition, coalitions are usually based on parties with adjacent positions on the ideological spectrum. These connected coalitions particularly benefit centre parties, which can jump either way. Occasionally, oversized coalitions emerge, containing more parties than are needed for a majority. These arrangements typically emerge when the partners are uncertain about the stability of their pact, or there is need to address policy problems of a kind where it makes strategic sense to win the support of as many parties as possible. 9.4 SEMI-PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVES: The third major form of executive is a combination of the presidential and the parliamentary. In semi-presidential government, we can find both an elected president and a prime minister and cabinet accountable to the legislature. The president is separately elected and shares power with a prime minister who heads a cabinet accountable to the legislature. The prime minister is usually appointed by the president, but must have the support of a majority in the legislature. The president is head of the state, and shares the duties of being head of government with the prime minister; the president has an oversight role and responsibility for foreign affairs, and can usually take emergency powers, while the prime minister is responsible for day-to-day domestic government. Maurice Duverger “a political regime is considered semi-presidential if the constitution which established it combines three elements: (1) the president of the republic is elected by universal suffrage; (2) he possesses quite considerable powers; (3) he has opposite him, however, a prime minister who possesses executive and governmental power and can stay in office if the parliament does not show its opposition to them. In cases where the president’s party has a majority in the legislature, the power advantage lies with the president; the prime minister and the cabinet both follow the president’s lead, and the prime minister promotes the president’s programme in the legislature. But when voters give an opposition party a majority in the legislature, the president has no choice but to work with a prime minister and cabinet form that party in an arrangement known as cohabitation. Shugart and Carey (1992) distinguish between two kinds of semi-presidential government: president-parliamentary and premier-presidential. In the former (found in Peru and Russia), the prime minister and the cabinet are collectively responsible to both the president and the legislature, meaning that they can be dismissed by one or the other. In the latter (found in France, Portugal, Romania and Ukraine), the prime minister and cabinet are collectively responsible only to the legislature, meaning that while the president can appoint the prime minister and the cabinet, they can only be removed from office through a vote of no confidence in the legislature. If the US exemplifies the presidential system, France provides the archetype of the semi-presidential executive. De Gaulle (president, 1959-69) saw himself as a national saviour, arguing that the head of state, elected by the nation, is the source and holder of that power. In 2000, the presidential term was reduced from seven to five years, with a two-term limit following in 2008. Occasionally France has gone through a period of cohabitation. Between 1986 and 1988, the socialist president François Mitterrand had to share power with the conservative prime minister Jacques Chirac. The latter won the presidency in 1995, and was obliged in turn to share power with socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin between 1997 and 2002. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 15 of 65 9.5 EXECUTIVES IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES: Understanding executives in authoritarian states is more about political realities; there are constitutions and rules, to be sure, but there is less constraint on their capacity to execute policy, and there are fewer formal protections on the officeholders. Dictators lack the support of independent political authorities that would help them enforce agreements, as well as the rules that govern the work of formal government institutions. Authoritarian leaders seek to concentrate power on themselves and their supporters, not to distribute it among institutions; it is this lack of institutionalisation that is the central feature of the authoritarian executive. Although developed in the context of African politics, the idea of personal rule developed by Jackson and Rosberg (1982) travels widely through the authoritarian world. Politics takes precedence over government, and personalities matter more than institutions: there is, in other words, a feast of presidents but a famine of presidencies. The result of personal rule is often a struggle over succession, insufficient emphasis on policy, and poor governance. In particular, the lack of a succession procedure (expecting hereditary monarchies) can create a conflict among potential successors not only after the leader’s exit, but also in the run-up to it. Politics cones before policy. Particularly in its most authoritarian phase before the 1990’s, post-colonial Africa illustrated the importance of personal leadership in non-democratic settings. Leaders were adept at using the coercive and financial resources of the regime to reward their friends and punish their enemies. However, in post-colonial Africa, as in other authoritarian settings, personal rule has been far from absolute. Inadequately accountable in a constitutional sense, many personal rulers have found themselves constrained by other political actors, including the military, leaders of ethnic groups, landowners, the business class, the bureaucracy, multinational companies, and even factions in the leader’s own court. To survive, leaders have to distribute the perks of office so as to maintain a viable coalition of support. In the Middle East, personal rule remains central to those authoritarian regimes that survived the Arab Spring of 2011. The absolute monarch continues to rue oil-rich kingdoms in traditional patriarchal style. Ruling rather than governing is the appropriate term. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, advancement within the ruling family depends less on merit than on proximity to the family’s network of advisers, friends, and guards. Public and private are interwoven, each forming part of the ruler’s sphere. Government posts are occupied on the basis of good behaviour, as demonstrated by answering loyalty to the ruler’s personal interests. In the case of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak was ousted from office in 2011 in the wake of demonstrations against his 30-year regime, and win 2012 the country’s first ever truly competitive elections resulted in the victory of Mohamed Morsi. When he started showing signs of authoritarianism, he was removed in a July 2013 military coup. Military leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi then reinvented himself as a civilian, won elections held in May 2014, and quickly showed an unwillingness to tolerate opposition. After a brief and hopeful flirtation with democracy, Egypt was soon back to its old ways. The theme of the president operating without the constitutional restraints found in democracies is illustrated by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Formally, Russia is a semi-presidential system arranged along French lines, with a directly elected president coexisting with a chairman of the government who is nominated by the president and approved by the Duma (the lower chamber of the legislature). Russian presidents can grasp the levers of power more easily than their American or French equivalents. Under the 1993 constitution, the president acts as head of state, commander-in-chief, and guarantor of the constitution. In the latter capacity, presidents can suspend the decisions of other state bodies. They can also issue decrees, though these can be overridden by legislation. In contrast to most semi-presidential systems, the president can remove ministers without the consent of the Duma, and does so. As president, Medvedev’s influence seemed to be marginal compared with his predecessor, and he was little more than a place-holder awaiting Putin’s return in 2012. And with the term of a president increased from four to six years, Putin could reasonably look forward to running Russia until 2024. China is the most important example of the supremacy of politics over government in an authoritarian setting. It combines some formal features of a semi-presidential system with political dominance by the Chinese Communist Party. In spite of China’s intricate governmental structure (which includes a cabinet, a legislature, and a network of supporting agencies), these bodies do little more than legitimise the decisions already taken by the party leadership. Second, identifying who holds power is less a question of formal titles and offices than of understanding links across institutions, personal networks, and the standing of key figures in the system. For instance, Deng Xiaoping was paramount leader of China from 1978 until his death in 1997. As China’s politics has stabilised, so recent changes have given a government that looks more like sone of its democratic counterparts. At the apex is the president, who is nominated by the leadership of the Chinese legislature, the National People’s Congress, and then elected (or confirmed) by the NPC for a maximum of two five-year terms. The officeholder is also conventionally head of the CCP and the Central Military Commission, posts that provide enormous political power. The president must also work with a premier, who is the de facto head of government, is always a senior member of the party, and is nominated by the president and confirmed by the NPC. Military leaders are perhaps the ultimate form of authoritarian executive, combining as they do control over civilian and military institutions. The story of Nigeria’s leaders is illustrative. Since independence in 1960, it has had 15 leaders: six civilian presidents and nine military leaders. Of the 15, three were removed from office through military coups in which the leaders were killed, and four were removed from office but survived. ​ CHAPTER 10: BUREAUCRACIES BUREAUCRACIES: AN OVERVIEW EVOLUTION ORGANIZATION RECRUITMENT NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT E-GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACIES IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 16 of 65 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: • WHAT IMAGES MOST IMMEDIATELY COME TO MIND WHEN YOU THINK OF BUREAUCRATS, AND TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU THINK THOSE IMAGES REFLECT REALITY? • OUTSOURSING: GOOD IDEA OR BAD? ARE THERE SOME SERVICES THAT CANNOT OR SHOULD NOT BE CARRIED OUT BY PRIVATE CONTRACTORS? IF SO, WHICH ONES AND WHY? • WHAT IS THE BEST STRATEGY FOR REDUCING THE UNDER-REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN AND MINORITIES IN THE BUREAUCRATIC WORKFORCE? • TO WHAT EXTENT ARE OUTSOURCING AND E-GOVERNMENT REVOLUTIONIZING THE IDEA OF BUREAUCRACY? ARE THE CHANGES GOOD OR BAD? • THINK OF SOME EXAMPLES OF REGULATORY AGENCIES IN YOUR COUNTRY. ARE THEY, AND SHOULD THEY BE, POLITICALLY ACCOUNTABLE? • HAVE YOU PERSONALLY EXPERIENCED E-GOVERNMENT, AND HOW HAS IT ALTERED YOUR VIEW OF BUREAUCRACY? KEY TERMS: administrative capacity – affirmative action – bureaucracy – bureaucratic authoritarianism – crony capitalism – department – departmental recruitment – developmental state – division – e-government – meritocracy – new public management – non-departmental public body – ombudsman – outsourcing – red tape – regulatory agency – spoils system – unified recruitment. DEFINITIONS: Bureaucracy: literally, rule by officials. Used more precisely to describe the organizations employing appointed public officials and forming the public administration. Red tape: the classic image of bureaucracies tied up in procedure and rules, deriving from the habit in some sixteenth- century European countries of binding administrative documents in red tape. Reducing red tape is a common election promise. Meritocracy: a system in which career advancement and leadership are based upon talent, qualifications and achievement. Spoils systems: a patronage-based arrangement in which elected politicians distribute government jobs to those with the foresight to support the winning candidate. Department (or ministry): an administrative unit over which a secretary or minister exercises direct management control. Usually structured as a formal hierarchy, often established by statute, and usually having cabinet-level status. Division: An operating unit of a department, responsible to the secretary but often with considerable independence. Also known as sections or bureaus, or (confusingly) as departments in countries where the larger unit is a ministry. Non-departmental public body: operated at one or more removes from the government, thereby providing management flexibility and political independence. Regulatory agency: an independent government body created to set and impose standards in a focused area of activity. Outsourcing: the practice of contracting private contractors to provide services previously under the control of the public bureaucracy. Unified recruitment: an approach based on recruitment to the civil service as a whole, not to a specific job within it, and in which administrative work is conceived as requiring intelligence and education, rather than technical knowledge. Department recruitment: an approach based on recruiting people with technical backgrounds to a specific department or job. Affirmative action: policies designed to overcome the legacy of past discrimination by emphasizing the recruitment of women, ethnic minorities, and other groups under-represented in the bureaucracy. New public management: a new approach to bureaucracy that emerged in the 1980s, and was based on the idea that a market-oriented approach would make it more efficient. Ombudsman: a public official appointed by a legislature to investigate allegations of maladministration in the public sector. E-government (or digital era governance): the use of information and communication technology to provide public services. Bureaucratic authoritarianism: regimes in which technocrats in the bureaucracy impose economic stability within a capitalist framework under the protection of a military government. Developmental state: one in which the state makes active and deliberate efforts to modernize and industrialize a society. Administrative capacity: the ability of a bureaucracy to address social problems through effective management and implementation of public policy. Crony capitalism: a phenomenon in which economic development is based on a close relationship between government officials and business leaders, reflected in special tax breaks and favoritism in issuing contracts, permit, or grants. INTRODUCTION: https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 17 of 65 • To acknowledge the professional status and autonomy of their staff. • As a response to short-term pressures to do something about a problem. • To allow departments focus on policy-making. • To provide protection from political interference in day-to-day operations. The most important type of the species is a regulatory agency. These are bodies set up to oversee the implementation of government regulations, in areas that include natural monopolies, communication, elections, food standards, and environmental quality standards. Britain has embraced regulatory agencies with particular enthusiasm; over 140 agencies, from the Food Standards Agency, to Ofcom, now provide a central device through which the state seeks to oversee society. The idea behind these bodies is that they should operate in a technical and non-political fashion. Despite their power to make, implement, and settle disputes about regulations in their sector, commissioners do not report to the president and can only be dismissed by the president for specific reasons set out in the law creating the agency. The European Union has also been active on the regulatory front; indeed, regulation of its primary mode of governance. Along the way, it has created an expanding body of regulatory agencies that are charged with overseeing policy implementations in areas ranging from drugs and drug addiction to health and safety at work, etc… in general terms, charting non-departmental public bodies in any liberal democracy confirms the complexity of governance. 10.4 RECRUITMENT: Recruitment is a key theme is the debate about bureaucracies; the means by which bureaucrats are selected, and the kinds of people employed, are studied more carefully than is the case with the private sector. Here the difference is between unified and departmental recruitment; the former is based on recruitment to the bureaucracy as a whole, and the latter on recruitment to specific departments based on technical skills. An alternative method of pursuing the unified approach is to recruit to a corps (body) of civil servants, rather than to a specific job in a ministry. France is an example of this approach. ir recruits civil servants through competitive examination. Even within the civil service, more than one-third of corps members are working away from their homes corps at any one time. She unified bureaucracies stress one particular form of technical expertise: law in many European countries with a codified law tradition, legal training is common among higher bureaucrats. Germany is a leading case; there, most top bureaucrats are lawyers. In the Netherlands, for instance, each department sets its own recruitment standards, usually requiring prior training and expertise in its own area. The notion of recruiting talented young graduates to an elite, unified civil service, or even to a corps, is weak or non-existent. One exception to the general rule of selection on merit is affirmative action, found in countries that have worked to address the dominating position in the higher levels of the bureaucracy of men from the major ethnic group and from middle- or upper-class families with a background in public affairs. In logic related to the idea of descriptive representation in legislatures, there are various arguments in favour: • Bureaucrats whose work involves direct contact with a specific group will perform better at the job if they themselves belong to that group. • A public sector drawn from a range of religions and regions will encourage stability in divided societies. • Adverse and representative bureaucracy, involving participation by all major social groups, will enhance the acceptability of decisions among the public at large. • Employment of minorities in the public sector will ripple through the labour market, including private companies. In the 1960s and 1970s, considerable efforts were made in the US to ensure that staff profiles matched those of the wider population. President Johnson, 1965. Something similar happened in Canada - improve recruitment from French speakers. The Weberian philosophy of recruitment on merit was preserved. At least in democracies, women today make up a larger percentage of the workforce in government than in the general labour force. 10.5 NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: “Government is not the solution to the problem”, Ronald Reagan once famously declared, “government is the problem”. This sentiment was one of the inspirations behind a revised and merit orientated approach to bureaucracy that came to be known as new public management (NPM). PM remains interesting a s a critique of Webber’s ideas. It attracted even those who did not share Reagan’s conservative perspective, and was spoken of warmly by international bodies such as the OECD. It is summarised neatly by Osborne and Gaebler - where Weber’s model as based on ideas of efficiency drawn from the Prussian army, Osborne and Gaebler were inspired by the more freewheeling world of American business, and they outlined then principles that government agencies were advised to adopt in order to enhance their effectiveness. The role model for NPM was the entrepreneur rather than the judge. For its supporters, NPM was the public management for a new century; Weber’s model was dismissed as history. Public administration, it was alleged, had been displaced by public management. New Zealand stands out as the pioneer. In the 1980s and the 1990s, it undertook what was probably “the most comprehensive and radical set of reforms of any Western democracy”. A coalition of business leaders, government economists, and senior politicians from both major parties came together to force through unpopular but far from inconsequential reforms. One particular feature of the new model was its massive use of contracts, going far beyond the standards fare of using private firms to supply local services, such as refuse https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 20 of 65 collection. It led to “greater clarity of government functions and to increased efficiencies in the provision of certain services to the public”. Overall, its biggest contributions were probably a change in thinking, and promotion of “visions of privatisation, marketization, participation, deregulation, and flexibility”. 10.6 E-GOVERNMENT: E-government, or the use of the internet to provide public services. The idea is that the internet has created new channels for communication among and between governments, departments and citizens. Some caution is needed: the overselling of NPM suggests that we need to be careful about making too many claims about the possibilities of e- government, and that we need to recognise that anticipated efficiency gains often disappear as new channels supplement old ones without replacing them. While e-government can ease citizen access to government departments and to public information, it also carries the increased risk of cyberattacks on governments, and can make it easier for governments to keep an eye on citizens. It is clear that e-government is most advanced in wealthier countries with the bet telecommunications infrastructure. The other side of the coins is e-participation, or the extent to which citizens use online services. E-government is no longer new, but it is constantly evolving, and its implications are not yet fully understood. At least for citizen-faint departments, there is something in the proposition that the government department has become its website. Technology has created unprecedented opportunities for states to store, integrate, and analyse information about their populations. Four stages have been identified in the development of e-government. The first is the provision of information, perhaps with a website outlining the details of a public service. The second stage involves interaction, perhaps by downloading a form or sending an email, while the third stage involves a transaction, such a paying a bill online or submitting an application. The final stage is integration, the most demanding and significant for the bureaucracy. Integration means that, in principle, all government services - from applying for a driving licence to registering a business - via be accessed from on site, with a single registration and digital signature. Integration creates opportunities for public services to be more proactive. The biggest conceders with e-government relate to the loss of privacy, the new opportunities for political misuse such as nth unauthorised transfer of data to third parties, and the heightened danger posed by hacking and the new targets offered to terrorists to interfere with government services. Privacy and data protection codes, such as the European union’s comprehensive Directive on Data Protection (1998), offer only limited reassurance. Access to one’s own personal records allows accuracy to be checked but does not prevent misuse. 10.7 BUREAUCRACIES IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES: Most of the institutions that form the basis of power and government in democracies are weaker or more marginalised in authoritarian systems. Two key exception: the military and the bureaucracy. By definition, institutions or f representation - elections, competitive parties, and freely organised interest groups - are weak in authoritarian systems, because control is top-down rather than bottom-up; but while dictators can manipulate or even dispense with elections or legislatures they cannot rule without officials to give effect to their will. The bureaucracy can be more than a dictator’s service agency; often in conjunction with the military, it can itself become a leading political force, claiming that its technical expertise and ability to resist popular pressure is the only route to long-term economic development. In the long run, bureaucratic regimes, as with military governments, become part of the problem rather than the solution. Certainly, the bureaucracy has played a positive role I most authoritarian regimes experiencing rapid economic growth. In the 1950s and the 1960s, it helped to foster economic modernisation in several regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. The term bureaucratic authoritarianism was even coined to describe the phenomenon by which the bureaucracy in Latin American countries such as Argentina and Brazil ruthlessly pursued economic reform, with cover provided by repressive military leadership. The concept overlaps with that if the developmental state, which describes a state in which government intervenes heavily in the economy though regulation and planning, relying soon an efficient bureaucracy. First used to describe Japan, and situations in which a country that was late to industrialise was pushed by active government intervention, describe countries where economic policy is guided and overseen by powerful bureaucratic elites. Following the Japanese and South Korean model, most of these developmental states have seen rapid economic progress as well as democratisation, and hence this list includes a mix of democratic and authoritarian systems. The contrast here is with so-called predatory states, which extract resources and provide little of value in return to their people. The twentieth-century experience of sub-Saharan Africa provides a more sobering example: authoritarian leaders often used their control over public appointments as a political reward, denying the delicate distinction between politics and administration. The outcome was uncontrolled growth of the bureaucracy. By the early 1990s, public employment accounted for most non-agricultural employment in much of Africa. With the main source of national wealth, under state control, public employment became the highway to riches, creating a bureaucratic bourgeoisie. The positions of the bureaucracy in communist systems is some ways echoed its role in authoritarian regimes more generally. However, one key difference was the sheer scale of the bureaucracy under communist rule. To achieve its theoretical mission of building a new society, the ruling party had to control all aspects pf development, both economic and social, through the state. In discussion of authoritarian regimes, the bureaucracy receives less attention that it deserved. The reason is understandable: such regimes are typically founded on a personal relationship between president and people. The implicit contract works against the strengthening of rule-governed institutions, including a bureaucracy. Authoritarian regimes are political in nature, rather than bureaucratic. In Venezuela, for instance, Hugo Chavez introduced a new Constitution in 1999 which defined the country’s political system as “democratic, participatory, elective, decentralised, responsible to the people, pluralist, based on term limits for elected officials and revocable mandates”. His own local committees could distribute resources to his based in the shanty towns, securing a greater political gain than if the same resources were made available through a rule-based bureaucracy. Russia’s https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 21 of 65 presidents have drawn on - rather than defined themselves in opposition to - the country’s long tradition of state power. But in the post-communist era, securing control over the bureaucratic agencies has not been easy. In contrast to most liberal democracies, Russia never developed an integrated public bureaucracy with standard rules and merit-based appointments. The Civil Service Act (1995) did introduce more uniform provisions across the public sector, including for example a rigid grading structure, but the operation of Russia’s bureaucracy still falls short of Weber’s standards. By 2009, the president’s Executive Office contained 15 separate units, staffed mainly by loyal, competent and reliable supporters. These offices include the Presidential Control Directorate which “oversees and checks that federal laws, decrees, orders and tiger presidential decisions are enforced by the federal executive bodies of power, the regional authorities, and organisations”. CHAPTER 11: SUBNATIONAL GOVERNMENT SUB-NATIONAL GOVERNMENT: AN OVERVIEW MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE UNITARY SYSTEMS FEDERAL SYSTEMS COMPARING UNITARY AND FEDERAL SYSTEMS LOCAL GOVERNMENT SUB-NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: - IN WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES IS A UNITARY SYSTEM A MORE APPROPRIATE FORM OF GOVERNMENT, AND IN WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES IS A FEDERAL SYSTEM MORE APPROPRIATE? - WHY IS THERE NO EXACT TEMPLATE FOR A UNITARY OR A FEDERAL SYSTEM, AND DOES IT MATTER? - SHOULD LOCAL GOVERNMENTS REPLICATE NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS AND BE HEADED BY ELECTED LEGISLATURES AND EXECUTIVE MAYORS? - HOW MANY GLOBAL CITIES DOES YOUR COUNTRY HAVE? IF IT HAS NONE, DOES IT MATTER TO NATIONAL OR LOCAL POLITICS? - WHY IS LOCAL GOVERNMENT STUDIED SO MUCH LESS THAN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT? - ARE SUB-NATIONAL GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS MORE IMPORTANT IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES THAN IN DEMOCRACIES? KEY TERMS: asymmetric federalism – confederation – cooperative federalism – dual federalism – federal system – federation – global city – multilevel governance – regional governance – subsidiary – quasi-federation – unitary system – warlord. DEFINITIONS: Unitary system: one in which sovereignty rests with the national government, and regional or local units have no independent powers. Federal system: one in which sovereignty is shared between two or more levels of government, each with independent powers and responsibilities. Multilevel governance: an administrative system in which power is distributed and shared horizontally and vertically among different levels of government, from the supranational to the local, with considerable interaction among the parts. Regional government: middle-level government in unitary states that takes place below the national level and above the local and county levels. Federation: a political system that puts federalism into practice. Asymmetric federalism: the phenomenon of states within a federation having unequal levels of power and influence due to size, wealth, and other factors. Dual federalism: national and local levels of government function independently from one another, with separate responsibilities. Cooperative federalism: the layers are intermingled and it is difficult always to see who has ultimate responsibility. Subsidiarity: the principle that no task should be performed by a larger and more complex organization if it can be executed as well by a smaller, simpler body. Quasi-federation: a system of administration that is formally unitary but has some of the features of a federation. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 22 of 65 relations. As well as key domestic functions, such as the national currency. In nearly all federations, the states have a guaranteed voice in national policy-making through an upper chamber of the national legislature, in which each state normally receives equal or nearly equal representation. There are two routes to a federation: the first - and most common - involves creating a new central authority for previously separate political units and the second involves transferring sovereignty from an existing national government to lower levels. 11.4.1 Variations on the theme of federalism: Just as there is no fixed template for a unitary system of government, so federations differ inn terms of their internal dynamics. The reality is an asymmetric federalism which arises when some states are more powerful than others or are given more autonomy than others, typically in response to cultural differences. It was usual in most federations during the twentieth century for national governments to steadily gain power, helped by three main factors: - The flow of money was more favourable to the centre as tax revenues grew with the expansion of economies and workforces. - National government benefited from the emergence of national economies demanding overall coordination. - Wars and depressions empowered some national governments, while the post-1945 expansion of the welfare state enhanced European governments still further. Since the 1980s, however, the trends have become less clear-cut. On the one hand, big projects run by the centre have gone out of fashion, partly because national governments have found themselves financially stretched in eras of lower taxation and financial crises. On the other hand, the centre has still sought to provide overall direction. Where dual federalism provided the original inspiration for the US, Europe has found more appeal in the contrasting notion of cooperative federalism. The European form rests on the idea of cooperation between levels, with a shared commitment to a united nation binding the participants together. Subsidiarity: the idea that decisions should be taken at the lowest feasible level. The national government offers overall leadership but implementation is the duty of lower levels: a division, rather than a separation of tasks. Since its inception in 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany has been based on interdependence, not independence. The waters of federalism have been muddied by developments in several countries that have never legally declared themselves to be federations, but where the transfer to powers to regional units of government has resulted in a process of federalisation. In Argentina, Spain, and South Africa, too, powers have devolved to provinces and local communities without the formal creation of a federation, creating de facto federations or quasi-federations. South Africa is an interesting case of a quasi-federation. When the Union of South Africa was created in 1910, it brought together four British colonies that had different and distinctive histories, and that might have followed the Australian and Canadian lead and formed a federation. Today the country has nine provinces, several of which have close historical and cultural links with important minorities. The final variation on the theme of federalism is a looser form of political cooperation known as a confederation. Where a federation is a unified state, within which power is divided between national and sub-national levels of government, and where there is a direct link between government and citizens, a confederation is a group of sovereign states with a central authority deriving its authority from those states, and citizens linked to the central authority through the states in with they live. The only political association that might today be described as a confederation is the European Union. It is not a federal United States of Europe, but neither has it formally declared itself to be a confederation, leaving it literally nameless as a political form. 11.5 COMPARING UNITARY AND FEDERAL SYSTEMS: The case for unitary government is that it normally provides enough government and regulation for smaller societies, encourages a sense of national unity where citizens feel that they are all involved in the key public issues of the day, and makes sure that there are common standards and regulations. The case for federalism is that it offers a natural and practical arrangement for organising late or divided states, providing checks and balances on a territorial basis, keeping some government functions closer to the people, and allowing for the representation of cultural, economic, and ethnic differences. Federalism can also place the political interests of rival governments above the resolution of shared problems. Fiscal discipline becomes harder to enforce, which is why several Nation American federations have struggled to control their free-spending (and free-riding) provinces. 11.6 LOCAL GOVERNMENT: Local government is universal, found in unitary and federal states alike. It may be the lowest level of elected territorial organisation, but it is where the dat-to-day activity of politics and government gets done. Given its role in service delivery, local government should not be what it tends to be: the forgotten tier. So we should not forget the quip of American political Tip O’Neill that “all politics is local”, implying as it does that the success of politicians is closely tied to their ability to meet the demands of local voters. The balance struck between intimacy and efficiency varies over time. In the second half of the twentieth century, local governments were encouraged to become more efficient, leading to larger units. Towards the end of the twentieth century, signs emerged of a rebirth of interest in citizen involvement, stimulated by the need to respond to declining turnout at local elections. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 25 of 65 11.6.1 Functions and structure: The brad task of local governments are twofold. First, they provide an extensive and often significant range of local public services, including public libraries, local planning, primary education provision for the elderly, refuse collections and water supply. Second, they implement national welfare policies. Outsourcing represents an evolution from providing to enabling. The enabling authority does not so much provide services as ensure that they are supplied. In theory, the authority becomes a smaller, coordinating body, more concerned with governance than government. In addition to outsourcing, a greater number of organisations can become involved in local policy-making, many of them functional rather than territorial. There are two broad ways of organising local government. The first and most traditional method is the council system. This arrangement concentrates authority in a college of elected councillors which is formally responsible for overseeing the organisation’s work. The council often operates through powerful committees covering the main local services. Whatever virtues this formal may have, its collegiate character presents an opaque picture to residents and the wider world. The second method of organisation is the mayor council system. More presidential than parliamentary, it is based on a separation of powers between an elected mayor and an elected council. The mayor is chief executive; the council possesses legislative and budget-approving powers. The powers given to the mayor and council vary considerably. In the strong mayor version, the mayor is the focus of authority and accountability, with the power to appoint and dismiss department heads without council approval. In the weak mayor format, the council retains both legislative and executive authority, keeping the mayor on a closer leash. In an era of falling voter turnout, new efforts have been made in recent years to make local decision-making more visible to voters. 11.7 SUB-NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES: Studying the relationship between centre and periphery in authoritarian states confirms the relative significance of institutions in non-democracies. Sub-national government is weak, authority flows down from the top, and bottom-up institutions of representation are subordinate. But it would be wrong to dismiss local governed altogether. In truth, central rulers - just like medieval monarchs - often depend on established provincial leaders to sustain their own, sometimes tenuous, grip on power. centre-local relations therefore tend to be more personal and less structured than in a liberal democracy. Central and local rulers are integrated by patronage: the national ruler effectively buys the support of local bigwigs who, in turn, maintain their position by selectively distributing state resources to their own supporters. Patronage, not institutions, is the rope that binds. The weakness of modern institutions of subnational government in many authoritarian regimes is reflected in, and perhaps even balanced by, the continued significance of traditional rulers. By contrast, elected legislatures and competing political parties are alien and experience difficulty in establishing firm foundations. In some of the least stable estates, the institutions of sub-national government are supplanted by opportunistic and/or informal control in the form of warlords. While much has been made of warlords’ recent role in Afghanistan and Somalia, they are far form a new phenomenon, and in some ways are perhaps the oldest form of political domination. Basing their control on military power, they are found sprinkled through the history of China, Japan, and Mongolia, and have been a more recent phenomenon in several parts of Africa and Asia. In larger authoritarian sates, such as China and Russia, sub-national government is more developed. Personal links remain important but institutional arrangements cannot be dismissed. Rather, sub-national government is actively exploited to ensure the continued power of the centre. China, for example, is a massive unitary state whose regions, with exceptions such as Hong Kong and Tibet, are ruled in imperial fashion from Beijing. Sub-national government takes the form of 22 provinces, 6 of which (Guangdong, Shandong, Henan, Sichuan, Jiangsu, and Hebei) each contain more than 70 million people, making them bigger than most countries. There are further subdivisions into either counties and townships, or cities and districts. However, recent research suggests that the balance between the centre and the parts has changed. Zhong (2015) shows that after more than a decade of administrative and economic reform, central government has become increasingly remote and less important for may localities, and that the centre’s mobilisation capacity has weakened. This effective decentralisation allows provinces to become laboratories for new policies but simultaneously accentuates inequalities between them, leading to occasional expressions of concern about the possibility of the country disintegrating. Although Russia saw a remarkable decentralisation of power under Boris Yeltsin (president, 1991-9), Vladimir Putin has since overseen a decentralisation of power, providing a contrast to the decline of central control in China. Putin’s success is based on four main developments: - Establishing a uniform system designed to eliminate special deals established by Yeltsin with many regions. - Acquiring the power of appointment and dismissal over regional governors. - Creating seven extra-constitutional federal okrugs (districts) to oversee lower-level units. Each is responsible for between 6 and 15 regions. - Reducing the powers of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the national legislature, but giving the president the authority to appoint its members. Putin has increases the capacity of the central state to govern the Russian people. ​ CHAPTER 12: POLITICAL CULTURE POLITICAL CULTURE: AN OVERVIEW THE CIVIC CULTURE POLITICAL TRUST AND THE SOCIAL CAPITAL ELITE POLITICAL CULTURE POST-MATERIALISM https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 26 of 65 HUNTINGTON’S CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS POLITICAL CULTURE IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: - WHAT ARE THE MAJOR FEATURES OF POLITICAL CULTURE IN YOUR COUNTRY? - HOW HEALTHY IS THE CIVIC CULTURE IN TODAY’S DEMOCRACIES? - WHAT CAN BE DONE TO RESERVE THE DECLINE IN POLITICAL TRUST? - DOES POST-MATERIALISM STILL MAKE SENSE AS A WAY OF UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE WEST? - IS THERE A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS BETWEEN THE MUSLIM AND THE WESTERN WORLDS? KEY TERMS: civic culture – elite political culture – political culture – political generation – political trust – post- materialism – social capital. DEFINITIONS: Political culture: the sum of individual values and norms regarding politics and the political system, or the culture of a group which gives shared meaning to political action. Civic culture: a moderate political culture in which most people accept the obligation to participate in politics while still acknowledging the authority of the state and its right to take decisions. Political trust: the belief that rulers are generally well intentioned and effective in serving the interests of the governed. Elite political culture: the values and norms regarding politics and the political power, including elected officials, bureaucrats, and business leaders. Post-materialism: a set of values emphasizing self-expression and the quality of life over materialist values such as economic growth and physical security. They include a commitment to self-expression, human diversity, individual liberty and autonomy. Political generation: an age cohort sharing distinctive experiences and values which shape its perspective through its life course. Generational turnover can gradually transform a political culture without individuals changing their views. INTRODUCTION: Political culture is essential to an understanding of government and politics in its many varieties. In order to compare effectively, we need also to understand the personalities of different political systems, as reflected in the beliefs, values, attitudes, and norms that characterize those systems. Key arguments: - The concept of political culture is attractive, but can be misused: cultures do not always coincide with states, and we should avoid the pitfalls of stereotypes about national culture. - The classic concern of research in political culture has been to identify the political attitudes most supportive of state liberal democracy. Ideas such as the civic culture, political trust, social capital, and post-materialism have all been used, and in some cases developed, with this goal in mind. - While most studies concentrate on mass culture, elite values possess direct political significance. Elites can exploit culture to further their political goals. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 27 of 65 expansion of education. liberal values acquired or reinforced at college are then sustained through careers in expanding professions where knowledge, rather than wealth or management authority, is the key to success. As post-materialists moved into positions of power, so they secured a platform from which their values could directly affect government decisions. Culture may influence the agenda but it certainly does not drive it. Not only have many conservative parties continued to prosper in the post-material age, but also extreme right-wing parties have emerged in several European democracies, partly as a reaction against self-expression values. More broadly, the distinctive challenges of the twenty- first century include issues such as terrorism, energy supply, climate change, youth unemployment, and social security. Such issues force themselves onto the political agenda with an energy that can, in the short run, overwhelm cultural change emerging gradually through the march of the generations. 12.6 HUNTINGTON’S CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS: Political culture is not only a national or a local phenomenon, but can also be understood at the global level. Political scientist Samuel Huntington entitled the Clash of Civilisations, 1996. Writing before the September 2001, Huntington suggested that cultures, rather than countries, would become the leading source of political conflict in the twenty-first century. The conclusion of the Cold War did not mean the end of the cultural divisions. Instead, the focus would shift from a battle of ideologies to a clash of civilisations. Political culture has escaped its national moorings to embrace wider identities: civilisations were the broadest cultural entities in the world, he argued, or cultures writ large. As globalisation proceeded, friction and conflict would intensify, reversing the standard McWorld thesis of a world converging on American norms. Huntington noted, how cultural kinship influenced the choice of sides in the wars of the 1990s: 9n the conflicts in Yugoslavia, Russia provided diplomatic support to the Serbs, not for reasons of ideology or power politics or economic interest but because of cultural kinship. It was the excuse for takeover of the Crimean peninsula by Russia’s Vladimir Putin in 2014 and his subsequent efforts to destabilise eastern Ukraine, a country long torn between Europe and Russia. How do states relate to Huntington’s civilisations? A core state leads a civilisation; a member state is identified with a single civilisation; a lone state either forms its own civilisation or stands in a league of its own. In a similar way, Turkey’s application to join the European Union may stall because of a cultural chasm. There has always been a question of whether the country is primarily European or Asian, and how an Islamic state can integrate with Christian states. The thesis has been particularly criticised for its assessment of the relationship between Islam and the West, which Huntington had portrayed as a permanent conflict of civilisation: “the underlying problem of the West is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is the West, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and who believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extent that culture throughout the world.” The reaction to 9/11 confirms Islam’s multi-vocal character: the hijakers undoubtedly drew on one anti-Western dialect within Islam but most Muslims, as most Christians, regarded the attacks as morally unjustified. It is also important not to forget the political source of tensions between Islam and the West. Western states - beginning with Britain and France, and moving more recently to the US - have a history of interference in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern states that dates back more than a century, and is driven by a combination of strategic concerns and the need to control and assure supplies of oil. In their efforts to champion their political priorities, Western states have caused considerable offence, not least in their failure to push Israel and the Palestinians into a peace agreement and in their stationing of troops in the Muslim holy land of Saudi Arabia. Inglehart concluded that there were no significant differences between the publics living in the West and in Muslim religious cultures in approval of how democracy works in practice, in support for democratic ideals, and in approval of strong leadership. The overall conclusions is that neither cultural differences nor the historical record justify the thesis of an inherent clash of civilisations between the Islamic world and the West. Political culture can only take us so far. As Roy observes, culture is never directly explanatory and in fact conceals all that is rupture and history: the importation of new types of states, the birth of new social classes and the advent of contemporary ideologies. 12.7 POLITICAL CULTURE IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES: Welzel and Inglehart suggest that many authoritarian regimes are sustained by a cultural emphasis among their populations on security. Authoritarian regimes can be as legitimate as democracies; it is only the basis of their authority that differs. Democracy is fragile when it is a democracy without democrats. Western analysts who interpret all dissent in dictatorship as a plea for democracy may simply be seeing what they wish for. Furthermore, people living under non- democratic governments who favour democracy may interpret the term as referring not so much to self-rule as to social order, national autonomy and a strong economy. Many in the West wanted to believe that they were witnessing a transition to liberal democracy in Russia throughout the 1990s, and were then surprised to see a return to authoritarianism during the Putin years. But Russian political culture includes only limited support for democratic principles. Elsewhere, many non-democratic Islamic countries are led by authoritarian rulers who seek to drawn from the well of Islamic culture in a way that supports their hold on power. They present democracy as an alien Western concept which in practice leads to licence rather than freedom, to an emphasis on material rather than spiritual values, and to the pursuit of individual self-interest rather than social harmony. Over the longer term political culture reflects the nature of the regime, rather than vice versa. Political culture is an independent force, in rejecting the view that it is merely a mirror of the current political system, they suggest that high levels of intrinsic support for democracy emerged in many authoritarian societies before they made the transition to democracy. A critical complication in trying to understand political culture in post-colonial societies rests in distinguishing indigenous political values from those created by the colonial experience. The problems can be contrasted with pre-colonial times, when ethnic groups had worked out a balance among themselves that protected then from too much external interference. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 30 of 65 CHAPTER 13: POLITICAL PARTICIPATION POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: AN OVERVIEW WHO PARTICIPATES, AND WHY? PUBLIC OPINION WOMEN AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION PARTICIPATION IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: - IS PARTICIPATION IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS A CIVIC OBLIGATION? - WHICH GROUPS UNDER-PARTICIPATE IN POLITICS IN YOUR COUNTRY AND WHAT CAN BE DONE TO ENGAGE THOSE WHO BELONG TO THEM? - WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE ARGUMENT THAT PEOPLE CAN USE INFORMATION SHORT CUTS TO HELP THEM MAKE INTELLIGENT DECISIONS? - HAVE SOCIAL MEDIA MADE ANY DIFFERENCE TO THE WAY YOU OR THOSE YOU KNOW ENGAGE WITH POLITICS? - GIVEN HUMAN NATURE, IS CLIENTELISM AVOIDABLE? KEY TERMS: assassination – clientelism – consumer politics – conventional participation – deliberative opinion poll – focus group – gendered institution – mobilized participation – opinion poll – political exclusion – political participation – public opinion – sample survey – terrorism – unconventional participation. DEFINITIONS: Political participation: activity by individuals formally intended to influence who governs or the decisions taken by those who do. Conventional participation: takes place within formal politics and the law. Unconventional participation: takes place outside formal politics or even the law. Political exclusion: the phenomenon by which some are discouraged from taking part in collective decision making because of their marginal position in society. Examples of excluded groups include the poor and the unemployed. Consumer politics: buying or boycotting goods or services for political or ethical reasons. Assassination: the murder of a prominent public figure for political reasons. Terrorism: the use of violence against civilian targets in order to install fear with the goal of achieving political change. Public opinion: the range of views held on an issue of public concern by the members of an affected community. Opinion poll: a series of questions asked in a standard way of a systematic sample of the population in order to gauge public opinion. Sample survey: similar to an opinion poll but involving a more detailed questionnaire. Such surveys are often commissioned by governments or academic researchers. Focus group: a moderated discussion among a small group of respondents on a particular topic, used to explore the thinking and emotions behind people’s attitudes. Deliberative opinion poll or citizens’ jury: an arrangement by which people are briefed by, and can question, experts and politicians on a given topic before their own opinions are measured. Gendered institution: a body that operates with formal rules and informal conventions which often unintentionally, advantage men over women. Mobilized participation: elite-controlled involvement in politics designed to express popular support for the regime. Clientelism: politics substantially based on patron-client relationships. A powerful figure (the patron) provides protection to a number of lower-status clients who, in exchange, offer their unqualified allegiance and support. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 31 of 65 INTRODUCTION: For any democrat, the quality of governance must depend – in large part – on the extent to which citizens participate (or are allowed to participate) in the process of governing. First, the quantity and the quality of participation vary not only between regime types but also within individual countries over time and between its social groups. Even in democracies, participation is far from equal. Second, opinion polls reveal that large numbers of people are either poorly informed about the issues at stake, or choose not to express themselves. And in authoritarian systems, of course, their views and opinions are not usually entertained to begin with. Key arguments: - Participation might seem to be wholly beneficial for democracy, but heavy participation can indicate strain on a political system. - Approaches to participation vary, ranging the civic duty school of thought to the idea that people are not naturally political animals. - Studies of participation in liberal democracies focus on who takes part, to what extent and through what channels. The resulting bias is towards privileged social groups, reflecting inequalities of resources and interest. - Participation is intimately tied to levels of public knowledge about government and politics, with one driving the other. Some authors suggest that public opinion has become the central mechanism of representation in liberal democracy. - While female participation has increased substantially, especially in democracies, gender inequalities in participation continue to pose troubling questions. - It is often argued that political participation in authoritarian regimes is an empty concept, and yet mobilized participation and clientelism are important phenomena, social movements have occasionally been a significant feature, and gauging public opinion is more important than it might at first seem. 13.1 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: AN OVERVIEW: Political participation describes any of the ways in which people seek to influence the composition or policies of government. Conventional forms of participation include citizens contacting their representative and activists campaigning for their favoured candidate. But participation can also take unconventional forms - such as signing a petition, or taking part in a demonstration - and may even involve breaking the law or turning to violence, as in the case of terrorist acts against the state. In a liberal democracy, people can choose whether to be involved in politics, to what extent, and through what channels. Participation of a sort is also found in authoritarian regimes. The forms and the costs of participation are somewhat different. Dating back to the ancient Greeks - involvement in collective decision-making is both an obligation owed to the community and an exercise in personal development, broadening individual horizons and providing political education. People are not naturally political animals, and we should interpret extensive participation as a sign of unresolved tensions within a political system. In normal times, limited participation may indicate the system’s success in meeting popular demands, freeing citizens to pursue more fulfilling activities. A third perspective argues that many of those who fail to participate do so because they feel marginalised or alienated, or think that their involvement will make no difference, or see government as a set of institutions dominated by elites. 13.2 WHO PARTICIPATES, AND WHY?: In an influential comparative analysis of participation in the US that drew an analogy from ancient Rome, Milbrath and Goel divided the population into a small group of active gladiators, a large group of spectators, and a mid-sized group of disengaged apathetic. This classification has since been applied to other liberal democracies. In another influential study, Verba et al. found that there was a tendency for people to specialise, such that participation is, to some degree, a matter of how as well as of how much. This study identified four types of participation: - Voters, who participate in local as well as national elections. - Campaigners, such as those who engage in canvassing. - Communal activists, such as those who participate in organisations concerned with a particular issue. - Contactors, or those who communicate with officials about an individual problem. In most democracies, participation is greatest among well-educated, upper-income, white men. In addition, for all but https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 32 of 65 regimes, participation is both more extensive and more regimented than in liberal democracies: ordinary people sit on comradely courts, administer elections, join para-police organisations, and serve on people’s committees covering local matters. But the quality of participation does not match its quantity. Communication flows only from top to bottom. So, people behave as they are treated: as passive, rather than active. Because no real channels exist for airing grievances, people are left with two choices: to shut up and continue with life, or to air their complaints outside the system. The Chinese Communist Party has opened some social space in which sponsored groups can operate with relative freedom. But explicit opposition to the party remains forbidden. The topic may go unmentioned but memories remain of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, when the army’s tanks turned on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing. Elsewhere, a common technique for channelling but also controlling, participation in authoritarian states is clientelism, or patron-client relationships. These are traditional, informal hierarchies fuelled by exchanges between a high-status patron and clients of lower status. Although patron-client relationships are found to some extent in all political systems, including liberal democracies, they are of the greatest political significance in authoritarian regimes. Particularly in low-income countries, and unequal societies with weak governing institutions, personal networks of patrons and clients can be the main instrument for bringing ordinary people into contact with formal politics, and are often the central organising structure of politics itself. Participation by clients is controlled and mobilised, but the patron-client relationship is based on personal exchange rather than a political party or a shared political outlook. Participation through patronage appeals in authoritarian settings because it links elite and mass, centre and periphery, in a context of inequality. Although inequality provides the soil in which patronage networks flourish, these relationships still act as political glue, binding the highest of the high with the lowest of the low. The day of such hierarchical networks of dependence can be an indication of a transition to a more modern society in which people have acquired sufficient resources to be able to participate in an autonomous fashion. While democratic leaders want to bring together large groups of citizens in order to win elections or succeed with policy goals, authoritarian leaders will want information on those groups in order to monitor threats to their own survival in office. ​ CHAPTER 14 : POLITICAL COMMUNICATION POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: AN OVERVIEW MEDIA DEVELOPMENT MEDIA INFLUENCE RECENT TRENDS IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION COMPARING MEDIA OUTLETS POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: - HOW DOES THE MEDIUM IMPACT THE POLITICAL MESSAGE? - WHICH EXERTS MORE INFLUENCE ON PEOPLE’S POLITICAL VALUES: (A) THE INTERNET, (B) BROADCAST TELEVISION, OR (C) FRIENDS AND FAMILY? - TO WHAT EXTENT DO SOCIAL MEDIA ADD TO OR DETRACT FROM THE IDEA OF OPINION REINFORCEMENT? - DO THE MEDIA SHAPE OR REFLECT PUBLIC OPINION? - WHAT ARE THE LIKELY IMPLICATIONS OF THE DECLINE OF NEWSPAPERS AND BROADCAST TELEVISION, AND THE GROWTH OF THE INTERNET, AS A SOURCE OF POLITICAL NEWS? - IS THE PROBLEM OF PROPAGANDA NOTABLY WORSE IN AUTHORITARIAN THAN IN DEMOCRATIC SYSTEMS, OR ARE THE ATTEMPTS TO INFLUENCE PUBLIC THINKING SIMPLY COUCHED DIFFERENTLY? KEY TERMS: fourth estate – mass media – media structure – political communication – propaganda – self-selection – social media – transmission model. DEFINITIONS: Political communication: the means by which political information is produced and disseminated, and the effects of this information flow on the political process. Fourth estate: a term used to describe the political role of journalists. Mass media: channels of communication that reach a large number of people. Television, radio, and websites are https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 35 of 65 examples. Until the advent of social media, mass media were one-to-many and non-interactive. Social media: interactive online platforms with designated recipients, which facilitate collective or individual communication for the exchange of user-generated content. Social media bridge mass and personal communication. Transmission model: a model that interprets any communication as consisting of a sender sending a message through one or more channels to a receiver with potential effects. Self-selection: the biased choice of media sources made by an individual. For example, people who are already racist may choose to visit racist websites, complicating the task of estimating the impact of those sites. Media structure: refers to historically stable patterns of media use and, in particular, to the relationships between media, the state, and the economy. Components include the extent of newspaper circulation, the scope of public broadcasting, the partisanship of the press, and internet access. Propaganda: information used to promote a particular political cause or ideology with a view to changing public opinion. INTRODUCTION: Miss communication lies at the heart of political discourse. It informs governments and citizens, it defines the limits of expression, and it provides us with mental maps of the political word outside our direct experience. The technology of mass political communication has changed dramatically over the past century, taking us from a time when newspapers dominated to the era of broadcasting, and bringing us to the age of the internet, with instant information in unparalleled quantities from numerous sources, at least for the half of the world’s households that currently have access. As technology as changed, so have the dynamics of political communication; conveying and receiving new in increasingly interactive, with consumers playing a critical role in defining what constitutes the news. Key arguments: - communication is a core political activity and its study forms an important part of political analysis. In particular, a free flow of communication provides one test for distinguishing between liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes. - the technology of mass media has undergone rapid change over the last century, most importantly with the rise of the internet. But the political impact of the internet remains a matter of much speculation, particularly given that levels of access vary, and that half the households in the world are still unconnected. - Researchers identify four classes of media effects: reinforcement agenda-setting, framing, and priming. But much of our understanding of these effects is based on single-country studies, and comparative data on political media effects are scarce. - Too often, mass media coverage is assumed to be influential without there being any evidence cited in support. A boarder perceptive suggest that the media provide a structure for our worldview, rather than simply an influence on it. - Current trends - including the shift to more commercial, fragmented, global, and interactive media - are reshaping the environment of political communication. These developments impact politicians, voters, and the relationship between them. - In authoritarian regimes, leaders have varied and often subtle means for limiting independent journalism, though in the internet age censorship is rarely complete. 14.1 POLITICAL COMMUNICATION: AN OVERVIEW: Society - and, with it, government and politics - is created, sustained, and modified through mass communication. Efficient and responsive government depends on such an exchange, without which leaders would not know what citizens needed, and citizens would not know what government was doing. Mass communication is also a technique of control. Assessments of the quality of political communication are key to the process classifying political systems. Democracies are characterised by a free flow of information through open and multiple channels. In a hybrid regime, by contrast, dominance of major media outlets is a tool through which leaders maintain their ascendancy over potential challengers. The danger of focusing solely on content is that we learn nothing about the receivers and even less about the political effect of the message. Blaming media bias for why other fail to see the world as we do can be tempting, but is usually superficial and unenlightening. Media are our primary point of access to politics - the space in which politics now chiefly happens for most people, and the place for political encounters that precede, shape and at times determine further bodily participation. Politics and government is only partly about creating efficient institutions and developing effective policies; it is also about persuasion and information, whether this takes place in the free market of ideas or water it is manipulated for political ends. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 36 of 65 14.2 MEDIA DEVELOPMENT: Noting the existence of three political ‘estates’, Burke or Macaulay referred to the reporters sitting in the gallery of the House of Commons as the fourth estate, a term that has since been used to denote the political significance of journalists. Although we take access to a variety of mass media for granted, their rise has been a relatively recent development, dating back no more than two centuries. But most of what we now consider mass media came with the development of new technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, allowing true mass communication. For the first time, political communication meant a shared experience for dispersed populations, providing a glue to connect the citizens of large political units. 14.2.1 Newspapers: By growing away from their party roots, newspapers became not only more popular but also, paradoxically, more important to politics. 14.2.2 Broadcasting: Cinema newsreels, radio, and then television enabled communication with the mass pubic to take place in a new form: spoken rather then written, personal rather than abstract, and - increasingly - live rather than reported. Communication also went international, beginning in the 1920s with the development of shortwave radio, used by Britain and the Netherlands to broadcast their empires. Domestically, broadcasting’s impact in the Western liberal democracies was relatively benign. A small number of national television channels initially dominated the airwaves in most countries after the Second World War, providing a shared experience of national events and popular entertainment. Even more dramatic was the impact of broadcasting on politicians themselves. The task was to converse with the unseen listener and viewer, rather than to deliver a speech to a visible audience gathered together in one place. The art was to talk to the millions as though they were individuals. Broadcasting has also made a substantial contribution to political communication in most low-income countries, albeit for different reasons. In the developing world, broadcasting has two major advantages over print media. First, it does not require physical distribution to each user; second, it is accessible to the one in five of the world’s population who cannot read. Just as some lower-income countries have moved directly to mobile phones, eliminating the need for an expensive fixed-wire infrastructure, so also have they developed broadcasting networks without passing through the stage of mass circulation newspapers. 14.2.3 Social Media: The rise of the Internet and the growing use of social media has brought perhaps the fastest and most widespread changes ever seen in mass communication. The internet connects people who would not otherwise be able to communicate with one another, potentially encouraging political communication and debate across a wide variety of sectors. It is also important to note that access to the internet is far from equal. Many people have no access at all. Authoritarian regimes such as China and Iran continue to censor the internet, even in wealthy countries there are still many older citizens who decline to go online, and there are many people who do not use the internet for news, or use it only in a selective manner. The regime also discourages research into political communication; the technology is advanced but understanding of its impact lags substantially. It might also be suggested that the historic Western dominance of platforms such as social media and search engines created a new form of information imperialism, even if that pre-eminence is now being countered by their Chinese equivalents. 14.3 MEDIA INFLUENCE: In seeking to understand the political influence of the mass media, we can use the transmission model as a guide. This distinguishes five components in any act of political communication: who says what to whom, through which medium and with what effects. In turn, there are four potential mechanisms of influence: reinforcement, agenda-setting, framing, and priming. In the 1950s, before television became pre-eminent, the reinforcement thesis - also known as the minimal effects model - held sway. People saw what they wanted to see and remembered what they wanted to recall. The https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 37 of 65 in China as taking place in two separate discourse universes. The first is the official universe, which occupies the public space, while the second is rather private universe, which consists mainly of oral and person-to-person communication. He argues that applying Western theories of political communication to the Chinese content is difficult, because these models assume free and democratic elections. In hybrid regimes, control over the media is less extensive than in authoritarian states. The press and the internet are often left substantially alone, offering a forum for debate which perhaps offers some value, as well as danger, to the rulers. Latin America provides a good example. In many countries on the continent, a tradition of personal and populist rule lends itself well to the expression through broadcasting media which reach many poor and illiterate people seeking salvation through their leader. In Russia, pressures on the media - from powerful business people, as well as politicians - remain intense, an influence deriving from the centrality of television to political communication. The television audience in Russia for nightly news programmes is substantial. In the size and interest of its audience, Russia’s television news is the equivalent of soap operas elsewhere. Because editors know on which side their bread is buttered, there is no need for politicians to take the political risk involved in explicit interaction. The internal censor allows the president to maintain deniability. Censorship? What censorship? He can ask, with a smile. CHAPTER 15 : POLITICAL PARTIES POLITICAL PARTIES: AN OVERVIEW ORIGINS AND ROLES PARTY SYSTEMS PARTY ORGANIZATION PARTY MEMBERSHIP PARTY FINANCE POLITICAL PARTIES IN AUTHORITARIAN SYSTEMS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: - DO WE NEED POLITICAL PARTIES? IF SO, WHAT ARE THE MOST VALUABLE FUNCTIONS THEY PERFORM? - WHICH IS BEST: A MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM, OR A TWO-PARTY SYSTEM? - WHICH TYPE OF PARTY SYSTEM EXISTS IN YOUR COUNTRY? DOES IT REFLECT SOCIAL DIVISIONS, VOTER PREFERENCES, THE STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT, OR SOMETHING ELSE? - IS IT MORE DEMOCRATIC AND EFFECTIVE FOR PARTIES TO CHOOSE LEADERS AND CANDIDATES THEMSELVES, OR FOR THE CHOICE TO BE PUT IN THE HANDS OF THE VOTERS? - WHAT IS THE FAIREST AND MOST DEMOCRATIC MEANS OF FINANCING POLITICAL PARTIES AND ELECTION CAMPAIGNS? - ARE POLITICAL PARTIES DEAD, DYING, OR SIMPLY REFORMING? KEY TERMS: cartel party – Duverger’s law – iron law of oligarchy – niche party – party system – political party – primary election – safe district – selectorate. DEFINITIONS: Political party: a group identified by name and ideology that fields candidates at elections in order to win public office and control government. Party system: the overall configuration of political parties, based on their number, their relative importance, the interactions among them, and the laws that regulate them. Duverger’s law: more of a hypothesis than a universal law, this holds that the simple majority single ballot system favours the two-party system. Niche party: a political party that appeals to a narrow section of the electorate. They are positioned away from the established centre and highlight one particular issue. Iron law of oligarchy: as developed by Robert Michels, this states that the organisation of political parties - even those formally committed to democracy - becomes dominated by a ruling elite. Safe district: an electoral district in which a political party has such strong support that its candidates are all but assured of victory. Selectorate: the people who nominate a party’s candidates for an election. Primary election: a contest in which a party’s supporters select its candidate for a subsequent election (a direct https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 40 of 65 primary), or choose delegates to the presidential nominating convention (a presidential primary). A closed primary is limited to a party’s registered supporters. Cartel party: leading parties t+hat exploit their combined dominance of the political market to establish rules of the game, such as public funding, which reinforces its own strong position. INTRODUCTION: For most residents of democracies, political parties are the channel through which they most often relate to government and politics. Parties offer them competing sets of policies, encourage then to the part in the political process, and are the key determinant of who governs. It is all the more ironic, then, that while parties are so central to politics, they are often not well regarded by citizens. They are increasingly seen less as a means for engaging citizens and more as self-serving channels for the promotion of the interests of politicians; as a result, support for parties is declining as people move towards other channels for political expression. In authoritarian regimes, the story is even less palatable: parties have routinely been the means through which elites manipulate public opinion, and have been both the shields and the instruments of power. Key arguments: - The key dilemma facing parties is that they are poorly rated by the public yet they remain an essential device of liberal democracy. - Major political parties began as agents of society (representing a particular group or class) and have since become agents of the state (so much so that the public funding of parties is quite manorial). The implications of this change are important. - Understanding the role of parties involves looking at party systems, not simply individual parties. The major theme here is the decline of dominant party and two-party systems, and the rise of multi-party systems. - The election process for party leaders and candidates has been changing, but its causes, and the effects on candidate quality, are less clear. - The combination of falling party membership and growing public funding has changed the base of parties. - Parties in authoritarian regimes play a different role from their democratic counterparts. Rather than providing a foundation for the creation of governments, they are a means for controlling citizens, disguising the power of elites and distributing patronage. 15.1 POLITICAL PARTIES: AN OVERVIEW: It would be hard to imagine political systems functioning without political parties, and yet their history is far shorter than most people might imagine. Nineteenth-century - Ostrogorski - in Western Europe, mass parties were founded to battle for the votes of enlarged electorates; in communist and fascist states, ruling parties monopolised power in an attempt to reconstruct society; in the developing world, nationalist parties became the vehicle for driving colonial rulers back to their imperial homeland. With many parties now seen as self-serving and corrupt. Mair could speculate, in contrast to Ostrogorski, that parties are in danger of ceasing to be a political driving force. In authoritarian states, parties tend to be either non-existent (in a few cases) or else one official party dominates. The knot of competitive parties does notify with the notion of centralised control, and parties are not so, much the representatives of groups or interests as tools by which authoritarian leaders can exert power. In countries that are poor and ethnically divided, parties typically lack the ideological contrasts that provided a base of party systems in most liberal democracies. 15.2 ORIGINS AND ROLES: Cadre (or elite) parties were formed by members within a legislature joining together around common concerns and fighting campaigns in an enlarged electorate. The earliest nineteenth-century parties were of this type; they include the conservative parties of Britain, Canada, and Scandinavia, and the first American parties. Such parties remain heavily committed to their leader’s authority, with ordinary members playing a supporting role. By contrast, mass parties - which emerged later - originated outside legislatures, in social groups seeking representation as a way of achieving their https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 41 of 65 policy objectives. The working-class socialist parties that spread across Western Europe around the turn of the twentieth century epitomised these externally created parties. As cadre and mass parties matured, so they tended to evolve into catch-all parties. These respond to a mobilised political system in which electoral communication takes place through mass media, bypassing the membership. Such parties seek to govern in the national interest, rather than as representatives of a social group, the reality being that a party large enough to get a majority has to be so catch-all that it cannot have a unique ideological program. Modern democratic parties fulfil several functions that are critical to the formation of governments and the engagement of voters. Prime among these is the formation of governments. They also offer voters guidance by helping them make choices among different sets of policies, help voters make themselves heard by pulling together like-minded segments of the electorate, encourage voters to participate in politics, and feed government by recruiting candidates for public office. 15.3 PARTY SYSTEMS: The tern describes the overall pattern formed by the component parties, the interactions between them, and the rules governing their conduct. By focusing on the relationship between parties, a party system means more than just the parties themselves, and helps us understand how they interact with one another, and the impact of that interaction on the countries they govern. 15.3.1 No-party systems: There are a small number of authoritarian states - mainly in the Middle East - that either do not allow political parties to form and operate, or where no parties have been formed. In the cases of Oman and Saudi Arabia, there is no legislature and the formation of parties is banned. There is no formal legal framework for parties in Bahrain, but there are active political associations that compete in elections and are the functional equivalent of parties. 15.3.2 Single-party systems: These were once common, being found throughout the communist world as well as in most African and Arab countries. The argument made by most communists parties is that communism is the answer to all needs, alternative ideologies are moot, and democracies exists within communist parties in a phenomenon dubbed democratic centralism by Lenin. In truth, the party is anything but democratic, and is instead highly elitist, based on alleged democracy within a party rather than among competing parties. In China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the source of all meaningful political power, controls all other political organisations, plays a key role in deciding the outcome of elections, and dominates both state and government. Policy changes come not through a change of party at an election or a substantial public debate, but rather through changes in the balance of power within the leadership of the party. 15.3.3 Dominant party systems: In a dominant party system, one party outdistances all the others and becomes the natural party of government, even if it sometimes governs in coalition with junior partners. The Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has governed the country since 1955, except for breaks in 1993-6 and 2009-12. The LDP is made up of several factions, each with its own leader, and these factions provide a form of intra-party competition, the prime minister is nit necessarily the leader of the LDP, but rather the person who wins enough support among the competing factions to form a government. A classic example of diminished dominance is offered by the Indian National Congress, most often known simply as Congress. Under Mahatma Gandhi it provided the focus of resistance to British colonial rule, and rose to leadership with India’s independence in 1947. 15.3.4 Two-party systems: In a two-party system, two major parties of comparable size compete for electoral support, providing the framework for political competition while the other parties exert little, if any, influence on the formation and policies of governments. The US is one of the last hold-outs, dominated since 1860 by the Democrats and the Republicans. These two parties have been able to hold their positions in part because of the arithmetic of plurality electoral systems, and in part because - in most US states - the parties decide the borders of electoral districts and can design them to maximise their chances of winning seats. Australia is another example of a two-party system, again reinforced by a non-proportional electoral system. Liberals and Labor have consistently been the two biggest parties since WWII, winning 80-90 per cent of the seats in Parliament between them. 15.3.5 Multi-party systems: In multi-party systems, several parties - typically, at least five or six - each win a significant bloc of seats in the legislature, becoming serious contenders for a place in a governing coalition. The underlying philosophy is that political parties represent specific social groups in divided societies. The legislature then serves as an arena of conciliation, with https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 42 of 65 party competition, and one-party systems were established; the official party was often justified in terms of the need to build national unity, even if it only served as the leader’s personal vehicle. But these single parties proved to be weak, they lacked autonomy from the national leader, and rather than building unity they merely entrenched the control of the elites. Despite recent economic growth, many African states still experience poverty, cultural heterogeneity, and centralised political systems that would seem to pose severe handicaps to democracy. The nature of the democratic transition shapes its success. In a counter-intuitive conclusion, where authoritarian incumbents are strong, they tightly control the democratic transition, leading to a stronger party system subsequently. Singapore case: the People’s Action Party (PAP) maintains a close grip despite permitting a modest, and perhaps increasing, level of opposition. Lee Kuan Yew, the island’s prime minister from 1959 to 1990, acknowledged that his party post, rather his executive office, was the real source of his authority: all I have to do is to stay Secretary-General of the PAP. I don’t have to be a president. Russia Case: at first glance it appears to have a wide range of political parties from which its voters can choose but few of these have been able to develop either permanence or real influence. Clearly, when parties cease to exist from one election to the next, it is impossible for them to be held to account. Not surprisingly, they are the least trusted public organisations in a suspicious society. The party is a vehicle rather than driver. The biggest party in Russia today is United Russia, but Vladimir Putin was only informally allied with the party in the 2000 and 2004 elections. As prime minister in 2008-12 he became leader of the party, and was its candidate in the 2012 election, after which leadership moved to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. United Russia is what Russians term a party of power, meaning that the Kremlin uses threats and bribes to ensure it is supported by powerful ministers, regional governors and larger companies. Minor parties are trapped: they cannot grow until they become more significant but their importance cannot increase until they are larger. ​ CHAPTER 16: ELECTIONS ELECTIONS: AN OVERVIW ELECTING LEGISLATURES ELECTING PRESIDENTS ELECTION CAMPAIGNS REFERENDUMS, INITIAVITES, AND RECALLS ELECTIONS IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: - CONSIDERING THE NUMBER OF ELECTED OFFICES AT VARIOUS LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT, CAN THERE BE SUCH A THING AS TOO MUCH DEMOCRACY? - WHAT IS THE BEST ELECTORAL SYSTEM FOR CHOOSING (A) A LEGISLATURE, (B) A PRESIDENT, AND WHY? - WHICH, IF ANY, OF THESE GROUPS SHOULD BE ENTITLED TO VOTE IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS: (A) NON-CITIZEN LEGAL RESIDENTS, (B) PRISONERS, (C) 16-17-YEAR-OLDS? - WHAT FUNCTIONS DO ELECTION CAMPAIGNS PERFORM? - REFERENDUMS – GOOD IDEA OR BAD? - WHY DO AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES HOLD ELECTIONS? KEY TERMS: distribution requirements – electoral formula – electoral system – first-order elections – initiative – mandate – proportional representation – recall – referendum – second-order elections – short campaign – single- member plurality. DEFINITIONS: First-order elections: elections at which the stakes are highest, usually involving the prospect of a change of national leadership or government. Second-order elections: elections at which the stakes are lower, such as local or mid-term elections, and which are used by many voters to express a judgement on the national government. Electoral system: a general term for the rules governing an election, including the structure of the ballot, the electoral formula, and districting. Single-member plurality: an electoral system based on districts that each have one representative, and in which the winner is the candidate with the most votes, but not necessarily a majority of those votes. Proportional representation: an electoral system in which the number of seats won by each of the competing parties is proportional to the number of votes they each win. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 45 of 65 Distribution requirements: rules specifying how a winning candidate’s votes must be arranged across different regions or social groups. Short campaign: a term used in countries with variable election dates to describe the period between the announcement of an election and election day. Referendum: a vote of the electorate on a limited issue of public policy such as a constitutional amendment. Initiative: a procedure which allows citizens either to initiate a popular vote on a given proposal (a referendum initiative) or to place it on the legislature’s agenda (an agenda initiative). Recall: a popular vote on whether an elected official should be removed from office during normal tenure. INTRODUCTION: Elections lie at the heart of representative democracy. They are the primary means by which most voters connect with government, and they provide the brief moment during which politicians and parties are supplicants rather than supervisors. The key function of elections is to serve as a competition for office and a means of holding the government to account. But election campaigns also permit a dialogue between voters and parties, and so between society and state. In arranging elections, governments have many different opinions for converting votes into seats. These systems reflect contrasting ideas of representation and of democracy itself, not least because the results differ according to the methods used. Key arguments: - Election lies at the heart of the democratic process, and understanding the wide range of electoral systems used to translate votes into seats helps in appreciating contrasting ideas of representation. - Although the issue of who can vote is usually regarded as settled, some interesting questions remain. Sixteen and seventeen year olds? Non-citizen residents? Prisoners? - Legislative and executive elections differ in both their mechanics and their implications; voting for a multi- member legislature requires different rules and electing a one-person chief executive. - For all the fuss devoted to election campaigns, they make less difference to the result than we might think, because party efforts often cancel out and even today many voters have made up their minds before campaigns enter their final phase. Campaigns are less important for the result they produce than for their role as learning opportunities for voters, candidates, and parties. - The political impact of an election depends on the narrative established about it after the results are in, with exaggeration often being the order of the day. - Numerous controls are imposed on elections in authoritarian regimes, but the effect is usually to constrain rather than to formally eliminate political choice. 16.1 ELECTIONS: AN OVERVIW: Elections are fundamental to the idea of representative democracy. The quality of representation is directly related to the quality, regularity, and arithmetic of elections, and one of the key distinctions between democracies and authoritarian systems is that elections in the former are generally free and fair, while in the latter they are not. The democratic purpose of elections is to ensure that the wishes and preferences of voters are reflected in the make-up of legislatures and governments. In terms of the mechanics of elections, the manner in which votes are turned into seats in a legislature varies: the major alternatives are plurality, majority, proportional and mixed systems. Whatever the system, voter preferences are rarely exactly reflected in the makeup of legislatures, but the extent of this bias varies greatly and is far from the only test we can use to judge electoral systems. Elections also vary in their significance and effects; where first-order elections include national elections that involve the prospect of a change of leader or government, second-order elections include less significant mid-term and local elections. The outcomes of second-order elections tend to reflect the popularity of national parties, even though they do not result in a change of national government. In understanding elections, we also need to consider their scope: while American government includes more than 500,000 elected posts, European voters have traditionally been limited to voting for their national assemblies and local government, with regional and European elections added more recently. There are dangers in too many elections, not least of which is voter fatigue, leading to a fall in interest, turnout, and quality of choice. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 46 of 65 16.2 ELECTING LEGISLATURES: At the heart of any discussion about electoral systems is the question of how best to convert votes into seats. The key characteristic of an electoral formula is whether the legislative seats obtained by a party are directly proportional to the votes it receives. In proportional representation (PR) systems, a mechanism to achieve this global is built into the allocation of seats. In non-proportional systems, by contrast, parties are not rewarded in proportion to the share of the vote they obtain, which usually results in skewed representation. 16.2.1 Plurality system: In the single-member plurality (SMP) format, territories are divided into districts that are each represented by a single member of the legislature. Each district is contested by multiple candidates, and the winner is the one receiving the greatest number of votes, whether this is a plurality (more than anyone else) or a majority (more than 50 per cent). SMP is a simple system that can deliver unbalanced results. Consider, the following practical examples: • In 17 of the 19 general elections held in Britain between 1945 and 2015, a single party won a majority in the House of Commons, even though no party ever won a majority of votes. • A similar pattern holds for some, but not all, federal elections in Canada. In 2011, for instance, the Conservatives won a majority of seats with less than 40 per cent of votes, while the other parties combined won nearly 60 per cent of votes but only 45 per cent of seats. • Much the same happened in India in 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party won only 31 percent of votes but nearly 52 per cent of seats in national Parliament. The system favours dominant parties with widespread support throughout the country, but tends to work against weaker parties with geographically even support. In short, the plurality system is less likely to deliver a single-party majority, a point rarely recognised by the system’s defenders. 16.2.2 Majority systems: As the name implies, majority electoral system require the winning candidate to obtain a majority of votes, the democratic argument being that no candidates should be elected without proving themselves acceptable to most voters. There are two usual ways of doing this: through a two-round election, or - more uncommonly - using a complicated alternative vote arrangement. In the case fo the former, all candidates run against each other in a district, and if someone wins more than 50 percent of the vote they are declared the winner. But if no one passes the 50 per cent mark, the top two candidates from the first round compete in a second round held soon afterwards. The alternative vote (AV) or instant-runoff arrangement takes matters to a higher level of complexity and demands more though from voters. All candidates must be ranked by voters, and if one wins a majority, the last-placed candidate is eliminated and their votes reassigned, a process which continues until one candidate has a majority. 16.2.3 Personal representation: The most common electoral system found in Europe and Latin America is proportional representation (PR), in which seats are assigned in the legislature in proportion to the number of votes that each of them wins, and voters make their choices more on the basis of parties than of individual candidates. In a perfectly proportional system, every party would receive the same share of seats as votes. In practice, though, most PR systems fall short, because they usually offer some bonus to the largest party and they cut out the smallest parties. There are two variations on the theme of PR: the party list system and the single transferable vote. The list system is the most common, and itself comes in several varieties. Constituencies are represented by multiple members, each of the parties contesting an election puts forward a list of candidates, and voters choose among the parties offering those lists. The number of votes won by a party determines how many candidates are elected from each party list, while the order in which candidates appear on the list usually determines who is elected. In this format, party officials exert enormous control over the writing of each list, including the ability to include women and minorities near the top. This option, known as preference voting, allows voters to select one or more candidates from the party list. The total of votes cast for a given list still determines the party’s overall representation, but a candidate’s preference votes influence which candidates on each list are elected. The second and less common variety of proportional representation is the single transferable vote (STV) system, which is easy neither to describe nor for voters to understand. It requires voters to rank the candidates running in their district, and when one of the candidates reaches a preset quota of first preferences, they are declared elected and their surplus first preferences distributed to other candidates according to second preferences. Candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated. This process continues until all the seats available have been filled. At the national level it is used only by Ireland and Malta, but it is also used for upper house elections in India and Pakistan, and for selected state or local elections in Australia, Britain, New Zealand, and the US. Most PR systems include a minimum threshold, so that if a party’s share of the vote falls below a given level it wins no seats. Explicit thresholds help to protect the legislature from fragmentation and extreme parties, or the problem of the tail wagging the dog. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 47 of 65 introduction of such elections to many of China’s one million or so villages since 1987 and, more recently and tentatively, to some townships. The aim of these elected committees is to limit corruption in the villages and to reduce what are often violent conflicts between leaders and peasants. Neither in the countryside nor in the towns are there many signs of elections threatening the party’s control. The remarkable free election in 2012 in the southern Chinese village of Wukan, agreed by the Communist Party after extensive local protest against corrupt land sales, is an exception. In the case of elections in non-communist authoritarian regimes, competition is usually constrained rather than eliminated. Independent candidates find themselves operating in a threatening environment. The secret police follow them around, breaking up some of their meetings. Control over the media, the electoral system, and the government is exploited to favour the ruling party. Through its conduct of campaigns, the regime projects both the illusion of choice and the reality of power. It usually secures its victory without needing to falsify the count - though this option remains, if all else fails. Until the Arab uprisings, Egypt provided an example of such manipulated elections. A similar case of manipulation hiding behind free choice is offered by Iran. It has an incomplete system of political representation in the sense that while it holds regular elections for its president and legislature, the Supreme leader of the country is exempt, political parties are controlled so closely as to be all bu non existent, and elections are manipulated by the Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council and Iran’s religious elite to reduce the prospects of regime opponents. In hybrid regimes, elections play a more important part in confirming the authority of the ruler; indeed, they are central to its democratic pretensions. The election outcome is mo0ore than just a routine acceptance by the people of the realities of power. Explicit vote rigging is avoided, some candidates from non governing parties gain election, and the possibility of a low turnout, and even defeat, cannot be entirely dismissed. The leading figure dominates media coverage, using television to trumpet what are often real achievements in office. In contrast to authoritarian regimes, the emphasis is as much on the carrot as on the stick. Income ents in hybrid regimes can exploit unique resources. They are well known to voters, draw on the state’s coffers for their campaign, implement a favourable electoral system, lead expensive patronage networks, give hand outs to their election districts and cal in political credits carefully acquired while in office. President Vladimir Putin has proved to be a skilled exponent of election management in an authoritarian regime. Indeed, Russians employ a special term for these dark arts: political technology. McFaul describes how Putin moved early in the 2004 election season to neutralise potential threats in the media, the region, and business. The absence of independence within media, regional elite and oligarchic ranks reduced the freedom of manoeuvre for opposition political parties and candidates. Such techniques presuppose weakness in the rule fo law, the market economy, and civil society in general. But by 2012, when Putin secured his return to the presidency after a term out of office, such deficits had become more visible. In the context of an increasingly sophisticated urban citizenry, and a decline in Putin’s own popularity and aura of invincibility, blatant manipulation of the count attracted considerable protest. The result stood but the climate changed. CHAPTER 17 : VOTERS VOTERS: AN OVERVIEW PARTY IDENTIFICATION HOW VOTERS CHOOSE VOTER TURNOUT VOTERS IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: - WHAT ROLE – IF ANY – DO SOCIAL CLASS AND RELIGION PLAY IN VOTER CHOICES IN YOUR COUNTRY? - IF IDENTIFICATION WITH PARTIES IS DECLINING, WHAT PREVENTS THEM FROM DISAPPEARING ALTOGETHER? - IS IT IRRATIONAL TO VOTE? - IS THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY UNDERRATED OR OVERRATED AS AN EXPLANATION FOR VOTER CHOICES? - DOES IT MATTER HOW MANY VOTERS TURN OUT AT ELECTIONS? - THIS CHAPTER HAS SUGGESTED THAT THE MOTIVES OF LEADERS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE MOTIVES OF VOTERES IN EXPLAINING VOTING BEHAVIOUR IN AUTHORITARIAN STATES. TO WHAT EXTENT CAN THE SAME LOGIC BE APPLIED TO DEMOCRACIES? KEY TERMS: electoral authoritarianism – electoral volatility – issue voting – partisan dealignment – party identification – secularization – vote buying. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 50 of 65 DEFINITIONS: Party identification: long-term attachment to a particular political party, which provides a filter for understanding political events. Partisan dealignment: the weakening bonds between voters and parties, reflected both in a fall of the proportion of voters identifying with any party and a decline in the strength of allegiance among those retaining a party loyalty. Secularisation: the declining space occupied by religion in political, social, and personal life. Issue voting: the phenomenon of voters making choices at elections based on the policies that most interest them, rather than solely on the basis of sociological or demographic factors. Vote buying: the process whereby parties and candidates provide material benefits to voters in return for their support at elections. Electoral authoritarianism: an arrangement in which a regime gives the appearance of being democratic, and offering voters choice, while maintaining its authoritarian qualities. Electoral volatility: a measure of the degree of change in support for political parties from one election to another. INTRODUCTION: Given that voters in democracies have a choice, how do they decide which party to support? This is the most intensively studied question in political science, and yet there is no agreed answer. Media coverage of election results tends to focus on often small and short-term shifts in party support, while academic studies are focused on broader and longer-term sociological and psychological questions such as social and economic change, electoral stability, and how voters decide. Key arguments: - Party identification lies at the heart of approaches to understanding voters, but there are questions about how much it applies outside its birthplace of the US. And while partisan dealignment is an important trend, it is not always clear when it began or to what extent it is still active. - The social bases of voting have weakened since the 1960s, although religion continues to play an important role in several countries. - The rational choice approach offers a different way of looking at voters and parties. It raises intriguing theoretical puzzles, such as the apparent irrationality of turning out to vote. - The evidence for more short-term explanations regarding this trend may now be weakening. Political science has generated clear findings about the features of both the individual voter and the electoral system that encourage turnout. - Voting in authoritarian states is less a matter of free choice (and thus of understanding voter motives) than a matter of the manipulation of choice (and thus of understanding the motives of ruling regime). 17.1 VOTERS: AN OVERVIEW: If elections lie at the heart of representative democracy, then voters are the lifeblood of those elections. Although the primary role of voters in a representative democracy is to decide between the choices offered by parties, the values, preferences, agendas, instincts, and understandings of voters all combine to influence what options parties place on the campaign table. Explanations can be broadly categorised into the sociological and psychological. The former include a focus on the social and economic background of voters. By contrast, psychological explanations focus on what goes on in the mind of voters, and what they think about parties, candidates, and issues. The argument here is that choices increasingly depend on dynamic factors such as changing public agendas and less on static factors such as social class. Increasingly short-term influences have supplemented long-term influences in explaining voter behaviour: not just which party to support, but also whether to vote at all. As the impact of social class and religion declines, so voters are more likely to be influenced by the particular issues they care about most, the state of the economy, and the personalities of party leaders and candidates. Voter behaviour in authoritarian regimes, meanwhile, is subject to quite different influences, driven primarily by the desire of leaders and elites to retain their hold on power using means which would not be acceptable in a democracy. In a democratic setting, voting is an autonomous endeavour; voters will have their opinions formed by multiple influences, but it is still ultimately up to them how to vote. Even in democracies, it is important to note, ruling politicians use their privileged position to tilt the playing field in their favour; they have more access to more funds, exploit their name recognition, offer what amounts to bribes to their constituents, and structure the electoral system in their favour. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 51 of 65 17.2 PARTY IDENTIFICATION: The starting point for any discussion of voting in liberal democracies is The American Voter. The central concept in The American Voter was party identification, meaning a commitment to a particular party which helps voters decide which party to vote for as well as providing them with a road map through the remote world of politics. Party identification is the engine of the voter’s political belief system; the best leaders are seen to cone from the voter’s favoured party, and the best policies must be those the party supports. Party identification means not so much enthusiastic support for party as an underlying disposition to support that party. In Europe, for example, voters historically identified with class and religion, and the labour unions and churches which expressed these affiliations. Parties formed part of such networks, rather than free-standing entities. There are few signs of strong party loyalties emerging in the more fluid party systems found in the newer democracies of Easter Europe and beyond. Europeans have a greater range of parties from which to choose, meaning more opportunity to move from one to another. 17.2.1 Partisan dealignment: The weakening of bonds between voters and their parties - otherwise known as partisan dealignment - is a clear and widespread trend in democracies. It may also be true of some emerging states, but survey research is often less sophisticated in these cases, making it difficult to find meaningful comparative data. Politically, the role of parties changed dramatically in the final third of the twentieth century. Their funding increasingly comes from the state rather than their own members; scandals and corruption tied to parties have reduced voter trust; election campaigning increasingly involves the media as well as, or in place of, local parties; party members have drifted towards single-issue groups; and major parties have become increasingly indistinct in their programmes and their social base. Sociologically, the weakening of historic social divisions and the expansion of education contributed to a thinning of political identities. Educated and politically interested voters can orient themselves to politics on their own, using the media for information and their own understanding to interpret it. The effects of dealignment have been substantial: issue voting has increased, electoral volatility has grown, turnout and active participation in campaigns has fallen, more voters wait until the last minute to decide which party to support, and new parties such as the Greens and parties on the far right have gained ground. 17.3 HOW VOTERS CHOOSE: Longer-term influences include social class and religion, the first of which has been weakening as an indicator, while the second remains a factor in a surprising number of supposedly secular liberal democracies. Shorter-term influences - which tend to draw most media attention during election campaigns - include issue voting, the state of the economy and the personality of political leaders. 17.3.1 Social class: Since the industrial revolution, social class has influenced electric choice in all liberal democracies: the working class has been inclined to support parties of the left, while the middle class has leaned towards parties of the right. The explanation for this change lies in a combination of political and sociological factors. At a political level, the collapse of socialism initiated a move to the centre by many left-wing parties, where traditional class themes were played down; thus Knutsen finds in a comparative analysis that the political strategies of the major leftist parties showed a consistent pattern where a decisive move towards the centre was accompanied by a decline in class voting. But familiar sociological processes are also at work. As the service sector displaces manufacturing in advanced economies, so large unionised factories have been replaced by smaller service companies offering more diverse work to qualified staff. Comparative evidence suggests that the smaller the size of the working class in a country, and the lower the proportion of its workforce employed in industry, the greater the decline in class voting. Growing income inequality in some liberal democracies, notably the US and Britain, many represent an offsetting trend. But individual income is not a dominant influence on how people vote, and this then of resentment against the highest earners lacked the same resonance in other liberal democracies. 17.3.2 Religion: Religion’s electoral influence remains widespread in liberal democracies, offering a contrast to the fall in class voting. Religion is not a single variable, however, and can be studied from three main angles: • We can distinguish broadly between religious and secular votes, the former tending to vote for the right and the latter for the left. • We can separate votes by religiosity. Typically, the distinction between the religiously committed and the rest produces the largest contrast in voting choice and also in electoral participation, with churchgoers more likely to turn out. • We can examine the impact of specific denominations. Catholics, for example, might be inclined to vote for the right https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 52 of 65 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: - ARE INTEREST GROUPS A PART OF, OR A THREAT TO, DEMOCRACY? - TO WHAT EXTENT DO SPECIAL INTERESTS LIMIT THE FUNCTIONING OF THE MARKET OF POLITICAL IDEAS? - TRUE OR FALSE: RATHER THAN VIEWING PROFESSIONAL LOBBYING IN A NEGATIVE LIGHT, WE SHOULD RECOGNIZE ITS CONTRIBUTION TO EFFECTIVE POLITICAL COMMUNICATION. - HOW IS THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA LIKELY TO IMPACT THE ORGANIZATION AND POLITICAL ROLE OF INTEREST GROUPS? - IDENTIFY ANY SIGNIFICANT SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, PAST OR PRESENT, IN YOUR COUNTRY. DO THEY POSE A CHALLENGE TO ESTABLISHMENT POLITICS? - HOW DOES CORPORATISM DIFFER IN DEMOCRATIC AND AUTHORITARIAN SETTINGS? KEY TERMS: civil society – corporatism – density – interest group – iron triangle – issue network – lobbying – peak association – pluralism – promotional group – protective group – social movement – think-tank. DEFINITIONS: Interest group: a body that works outside government to influence government policy. Civil society: the arena that exists outside the state or the market and within which individuals take collective action on shared interests. Protective group: an interest group that seeks selective benefits for its members and insider status with relevant government departments. Promotional group: an interest group that pro promotes wider issues and causes than is the case with protective groups focused on the tangible interests of their members. Think-tank: a private organisation that conducts research into a given area of policy with the goal of foresting public debate and political change. Pluralism: a political system in which competing interest groups exert influence over a responsible government. Iron triangle: a policy-influencing relationship involving (in the US) interest groups, the bureaucracy, and legislative committees, and a three-way trading of information, favours, and support. Corporatism: the theory and practice by which peak associations representing capital and labour negotiate with the government to achieve wide-ranging economic and social planning. Issue network: a loose flexible set of interest groups, government departments, legislative committees, and experts that work on policy proposals of mutual interest. Lobbying: efforts made on behalf o9f individuals groups o organisations to influence the decisions made by elected officials or bureaucrats. Density: the proportion of all those eligible to join a group who actually do so. The higher the density, the stronger a group’s authority and bargaining position with government. Social movement: a movement emerging from society to pursue non-establishment goals through unorthodox means. Its objectives are broad rather than sectional and its style involves a challenge by traditional outsiders to existing elites. INTRODUCTION: Where most institutions of government are formally outlined in the constitution, interest groups (like parties) are founded and operate largely outside these formal structures. Their goal - for those that are politically active - is to influence policy without becoming part of government. A vibrant interest group community is generally a sign of a healthy civil society but it can also become a barrier to the implementation of three popular will as expressed in elections. Key arguments: - Interest groups are central to the idea of a healthy civil society. Their ability to organize and lobby government is https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 55 of 65 a hallmark of liberal democracy and a condition of its effective functioning. - Interest groups exert a pervasive influence over the details of the public policies that affect them. But groups are far from omnipotent; understanding them also requires an awareness of their limits as political actors. - Pluralism, and the debate surrounding it, is a major academic interpretation of the political role of interest groups. But there are reasons to question whether the pluralist ideal is an accurate description of how groups operate in practice. - Interest groups use a combination of direct and indirect channels of influence. Where ties with government are particularly strong, the danger arises of the emergence of sub-government enjoying preferred access. - Interest groups are often complemented by wider social movements, whose activities challenge conventional channels of participation. - Where the governments of liberal democracies may be too heavily influenced by powerful groups, the problem can be reversed in authoritarian states. 18.1 INTEREST GROUPS: AN OVERVIEW: Interest groups - also known. As pressure groups - are bodies which seek to influence public policy from outside the formal structures of government. Traditionally, the term only covered bodies specifically created for lobbying purposes, and excluding businesses, churches, and sub-national or overseas governments. Even corporations can be seen as a form of interest group. Like political parties, interest groups are a crucial channel of communication between society and government, especially in liberal democracies. But they pursue specialised concerns seeking to influence government without becoming the government. They are not election-fighting organisations; instead, they typically adopt a pragmatic, low-key approach in dealing with whatever power structure confronts them, using whatever channels are legally available to them. Political cultures vary in how they define the relationship between interest groups and the state. Thus, groups can be seen as: • An essential component of a free society, separate from the state. • Partners with the state in achieving a well-regulated society. • Providers of information and watchdogs on the performance of government. • An additional channel through which citizens can be politically engaged. • Promoters of elitism, offering particular sectors privileged access to government. Interest groups are. Critical part of a healthy civil society. In a liberal democracy, the limited role fo government leaves space for groups and movements of all kinds to emerge and address shared problems, often without government intervention. But some interests have become too powerful, developing an insider status with government, and compromising the principle of equal access. 18.2 TYPES OF INTEREST GROUP: Interest groups come in many varieties, based on their size, geographical reach, objectives, methods, and influence. Their methods include fundraising awareness, generating information, mobilising their members, directly lobbying government, advising legislators and encouraging favourable media. To simplify the list somewhat, it is helpful to distinguish between protective and promotional groups. Protective groups are perhaps the most prominent and powerful. They articulate the material interests of their members: workers, employers, professionals, retirees, military veterans, and so on. They give priority to influencing government, and can invoke sanctions to help them achieve their goals. But protective groups can also be based on local, rather than functional, interests. A particular concern of protective groups is scrutinising government activity; for example, by monitoring proposed regulations. In contrast to the more material goals of protective bodies, promotional groups advocate ideas, identities, policies and values. Also known as public interest, advocacy, attitude, campaign, or cause group such organisations do not expect to profit directly from the causes they pursue, nor do they possess material stake in how it is resolved. These are public interests, as distinct from the narrower interests of single-issue groups. In liberal democracies, promotional groups have expanded in numbered significance, their growth since the 1960s constituting a major trend in interest politics. The boundary separating protective and promotional groups is poorly defined. For example, bodies such as the women’s and gay movements seek to influence public opinion and are often classified as promotional. However, their prime purpose remains to protect the interests of specific non-occupational groups. Protective interest groups representing a specific industry not only lobby government directly, but will often also join a peak association, or a body that consists of multiple like-minded interest groups. Their members are not individuals but other organisations such as businesses, trade associations, and labour unions. Despite the widespread decide in union membership and labour militancy, many labour peak associations still speak with an influential voice. In seeking to influence public policy, peak associations usually succeed, because they are attuned to national government, possess a strong research capacity and talk the language of policy. Throughout the democratic world, the rise of pro-market thinking, international markets, and smaller service companies has restrict4ed the standing of peak associations. Trade union membership has fallen, and the voice of business is now often expressed directly by leading companies. In addition, the task of influencing the government is increasingly delegated to specialist lobbying companies. Peak associations have tended to become policy-influencing and service-providing bodies, rather than organisations negotiating collectively with government on behalf of their members. Think-tank, or policy institute are private organisations set up to undertake research with a https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 56 of 65 view to influencing both the public and the political debate. They typically publish reports, organise conferences, and host seminars, all with the goal of sustaining a debate over the issues in which they are interested, and to influence government and legislators either directly or indirectly. Examples include the Fabian Society in Britain, the Institute for National Strategic Studies in the US, the European Policy Centre in Belgium. 18.3 THE DYNAMICS OF INTEREST GROUPS: Debate on the role of interest groups has long centred on the concept of pluralism, or competition for influence in the political market. This is a model that regards competition between freely organised interest groups as a form of democracy. Groups compete for influence over government, which acts as an arbiter rather than an initiator, an umpire rather than a player. The reality of interest groups dynamics is somewhat different from this ideal, and many political scientists accept the original pluralist portrayal of the relationship between groups and government was one-sided and superficial. Criticism focuses on four areas: • Interest groups do not compete on a level playing field. Groups form a hierarchy of influence, with their ranking reflecting their value to government. • Pluralism overlooks the bias off the political culture and political system in favour of some interests but against others. • The state is far more than a neutral umpire. I8n addition to deciding which groups to heed, it may regulate their operation and even encourage their formation in areas it considers important, thus shaping the interest group landscape itself. • Pluralist conflict diverts attention away from the interests shared by leaders of mainstream groups, such as their common membership of the same class and ethnic group. Olson argued, it is difficult for people with diffuse interests to find each other, to come together, to organise themselves, and to compete against narrower and better organised interests. Olson’s analysis overlapped with rational choice arguments that citizens did not have sufficient incentives to become informed about politics and to engage with other citizens. Trumbull suggests that weak interests often do prevail. His proposition is that organisation is less important than legitimation: in other words, alliances forged among activists and regulators can form legitimacy coalitions lining their agenda to the broader public interest. If iron triangles are an American exception to pluralism, corporatism is the equivalent in continental Europe. Corporatism engages the peak associations representing business and labour in wider social and economic planning. The groups become social partners with government, engaging in tripartite discussions to settle important political questions such as wage increases, tax rates and social security benefits. Once a social pact or social contract is agreed to ensure the compliance of their members, the avoiding labour unrest. Like iron triangles, corporatism has decided. Peak associations have weakened, unit membership has collapsed, smaller service companies have replaced large manufacturing industries and the ideological climate has shifted in favour of the market. Just as social corporatism has declined, so too have iron triangles. Factors involved include closer media scrutiny, new public interest groups that protest loudly when they spot the public being taken or a ride, and legislators who are more willing to speak out against closed and even corrupt policy-making. Issue networks refer to the relationships between the familiar set of organisations involved in policy-making: government departments, interest groups, and legislative committees, with the addition of expert outsiders. Where Olson argued that interests were handicapped by the difficulties that people had in finding each other and organising, the rise of social medial largely removed this problem from the equation. Anyone with access to the internet can now crate advocacy sites dealing with everything from local to international interests, and invite users to like them, post information, debate the issues, and network with like- minded users and engage the opposition. 18.4 CHANNELS OF INFLUENCE: Generally, there are three key changes through with groups do most of their work: the direct channel that takes them to policy-makers, and the indirect channels through which they see to influence political parties and public opinion. 18.4.1 Direct influence with policy-makers: Those who shape and apply policy are the ultimate target of most groups. Direct conversations with government ministers are the ideal. But such privileges are usually confined to a few well-connected individuals, and most interest group activity focuses in practice on the bureaucracy, the legislature and the courts. Of these, the bureaucracy is the main pressure point: interest groups follow power and it is in the offices too bureaucrats that detailed decisions are often formed. Even if access to top ministers is difficult, most democracies follow a convention of discussion over detail with organised opinion trough consultative councils and committees. Often, the law requires such deliberation. In any case, the real expertise frequently lies in the interest group rather than the bureaucracy, giving the government an incentive to seek out this knowledge. While the bureaucracy is invariably a crucial arena for groups, the significance of the legislature depends on its political weight. Lobbying is a core activity of most interest groups and is usually conduced directly by group leaders. Increasingly, however, such efforts can take the form of hiring a specialist lobbying firm to represent the group to key decision-makers. Professional lobbyists are inclined to exaggerate their own impact https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 57 of 65 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: - WHICH OF THE THREE MODELS OF THE POLICY PROCESS OFFERS THE MOST INSIGHT INTO THE POLICY PROCESS, AND HOW DOES THEIR UTILITY VARY BY POLICY ISSUE? - WHICH POLICY INSTRUMENTS ARE LIKELY TO BE MOST EFFECTIVE IN REDUCING (A) OBESITY, (B) DRUG ADDICTION, (C) TEXTING WHILE DRIVING, AND (D) CLIMATE CHANGE? - WHAT ADDITIONAL STEPS, IF ANY, WOULD YOU ADD TO THE POLICY CYCLE? - GIVEN THE UNCERTAINTIES OF POLICY-MAKING, WHY DO POLITICIANS KEEP MAKING UNREALISTIC PROMISES, AND WHY DO VOTERS KEEP ACCEPTING THEM? - WHY DOES POLICY OFTEN FAIL TO ACHIEVE ITS OBJECTIVES? - CAN YOU IDENTIFY ANY PUBLIC POLICIES IN YOUR COUNTRY WHICH WERE (A) ADAPTED FROM, (B) INFLUENCED BY, POLICIES IN OTHER COUNTRIES? KEY TERMS: bottom-up implementation – cost-benefit analysis – garbage-can model – policy analysis – policy convergence – policy diffusion – policy entrepreneurs – policy outcomes – policy outputs – public policy – rational model – rent-seeking – resource curse – top-down implementation. DEFINITIONS: Public policy: the positions adopted and the actions taken (or avoided) by governments as they address the needs of society. Policy analysis: the systematic study of the content and impact of public policy. Rational model: an approach to understanding policy that assumes the methodical identification of the most efficient means of achieving specific goals. Cost-benefit analysis: an effort to make decisions on the basis of a systematic review of the relative costs and benefits of available options. Garbage-can model: an approach to understanding policy-making that emphasises its partial, fluid, and disorganised qualities. Policy entrepreneurs: those who promote new policies or policy ideas, by raising the profile of an issue, framing how it is discussed, or demonstrating new ways of applying old ideas. Top-bottom implementation: conceives the task of policy implementation as ensuring that policy execution delivers the outputs and outcomes specified by the policy-makers. Bottom-up implementation: judges that those who execute policy should be encouraged to adapt to local and changing circumstances. Policy outputs: the actions of government, which are relatively easily identified and measured. Policy outcomes: the achievements of government, which are more difficult to confirm and measure. Policy diffusion: the tendency for policy programmes to spread across countries. Policy convergence: the tendency for policies in different countries to become more alike. Resource curse: a phenomenon by which a state that is well-endowed in a particular natural resource, or a limited selection of resources, nonetheless experiences low economic growth. Unbalanced policy, extensive corruption and internal conflict all contribute to the resource curse. Rent-seeking: seeking to make an income from selling a scarce resource without adding real value. INTRODUCTION: Public policy concerns the outcomes of the political process. The core purpose of government is to manage and address the needs of society. The approaches that government adopt and the actions they take (or avoid) to address those needs collectively constitute their policies, and are the product of the political processes. Where political science examines the organization and structure of the political factory, policy analysis looks at how policy is formed, at the influences on policy, and at the results of different policy options. Key arguments: - Studying public policy offers a distinctive perspective within the study of politics. It involves looking at what governments do, rather than the institutional framework within which they do it. https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 60 of 65 - Underlying much policy analysis is a concern with the quality and effectiveness of what government does. Policy analysis asks how well? rather than how? or why? - There is always a danger of imagining policy-making as a rational process with precise goals. The incremental and garbage-can models offer a hearty dose of realism. Policy, it is always worth remembering, is embedded in politics; a statement of policy can be a cover for inaction. - Breaking the policy process into its component stages, from initiation to evaluation, helps in analyzing and comparing policies. The later stages, implementation and evaluation, provide a different focus which is integral to policy analysis. - Policy diffusion and convergence studies help explain how policies evolve in similar directions in multiple countries. - Policy in authoritarian regimes plays a secondary role to politics, where the overriding requirement for survival in office often leads to corruption, uncertainty, and stagnation. 19.1 PUBLIC POLICY: AN OVERVIEW: Public policy is a collective term for the objectives and actions of government. It describes the approaches that elected officials adopt in dealing with the demands of their office, and the actions they take (or avoid taking) to address public problems and needs. The choices they make are driven by a variety of influences. Policies consist both of aims and means. When parties or candidates run for office, they wish to address, and the positions they take will be their policies. However, government and governance are also influenced by informal activities, opportunism, the ebb and flow of political and public interest, and simply responding to needs and problems as they present themselves. In understanding the policy process, it is important to avoid imposing rationality on a process that is often driven by political considerations: policies can be contradictory, they can be nothing more than window-dressing, and policy statements may be a cover for acting in the opposite way to the one stated. But whatever the course taken and the eventual outcome, the actions of government are understood as their policies. The particular task of policy analysis is to understand what governments do, how they do it, and what difference it makes. The emphasis is downstream as much as upstream. Because analysts are concerned with improving the quality and efficacy of public policy; the subject exudes a practical air. Policy analysts want to know whether and why a policy is working, and how else its objectives might be pursued. 19.2 MODELS OF THE POLICY PROCESS: In analysing the manner in which policy is made, scholars have developed three distinct models. In evaluating these different perspectives, and in looking at policy analysis generally, we must distinguish between accounts of how policy should be made and descriptions of how it actually is made. • The rational model seeks to elaborate what would be involved in rational policy-making without assuming that its conclusions are reflected in what actually happens. • The incremental model views policy as a compromise between actors with ill-defined or even contradictory goals, and can be seen either as an account of how politics ought to proceed, or as a description of how policy is made. • The garbage-can model is concerned with highlighting the many limitations of the policy-making process with many organisations, looking only at what is, not what ought to be. 19.2.1 The rational model: If you opt for the rational model, then you would first ensure that you had a complete and accurate set of data on performance levels, then set your goals, and then you would list and consider the most efficient means of achieving those goals. Your approach focuses on efficiency, and demands that policy-makers rank all their values, develop specific options, check all the results of choosing each option against each value, and select the option that achieves the most values. This is, of course, an unrealistic counsel of perfection, because it requires policy-makers to foresee the https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 61 of 65 unforeseeable and measure the unmeasurable. So, the rational model offers a theoretical yardstick, rather than a practical guide. Even so, techniques such as cost benefit analysis (CBA) have been developed in an attempt to implement aspects of the rational model, and the results of such analyses can at least discourage policy-making driven solely by political appeal. Seeking to analyse the costs and benefits associated with each possible decision does have strengths, particularly when a choice must be made from a small set of options. The cost-benefit principle here is to incur expenditure where it can deliver the greatest reduction in risk. However, CBA, and with it the rational model of policy formulation, also has weaknesses. It underplays soft factors such as fairness and the quality of life. It calculates the distribution of costs and benefits but ignores their distribution across social groups. There is often no agreement on what constitutes a cost and what constitutes a benefit. 19.2.2 The incremental model: When the rational model starts with goals, the incremental model starts with interests. It was developed by Lindblom (1979). Rather than viewing policy-making as a systematic trawl through all the options, and a focus on a single comprehensive plan, Lindblom argued that policy is the existing direction, in a process that he described as the science of muddling through. Those involved should agree on policies, not objectives. Agreement can be reached on the desirability of following a particular course, even when objectives differ. Hence, policy emerges from, rather than precedes, negotiation with interest groups. This approach may not lead to achieving grand objectives but, by taking one step at a time, it at least avoids making huge mistakes. It is politically safe, but unadventurous; remedial, rather than innovative. 19.2.3 The garbage-can model: It presents an unsettling image of decision-making. Where both the rational and incremental models offer some prescription, the garbage-can expresses the perspective of a jaundiced realist. As described by Cohen it is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision makers looking for work. Policy-making is seen as partial, fluid, chaotic, anarchic, and incomplete. Organisations are conceived as loose collections of ideas, rather than as holders of clear preferences; they take actions which reveal rather than reflect their preferences. Actions, typically reflect the requirement for an immediate response in a specific area, rather than the pursuit of a definite policy goal. This model can be difficult to grasp, a fact that shows how deeply our minds try to impose rationality on the policy process. Large, decentralised, pubic organisations such as universities perhaps provide the best illustrations. On most university campuses, decisions emerge from committees which operate largely independently. Even within a single group, the position adopted may depend on which people happen to attend a meeting. Government is of course a classic example of an entity that is both large and decentralised. It is not a single entity but, rather, an array of departments and agencies. Clearly the garbage-can model suggests that real policy-making is far removed from the rigours of rationality. Often, rationality is a gloss paint applied to policy after it is agreed. 19.3 THE POLICY CYCLE: One way of thinking about the public policy is to see it as a cyclical series of stages. There are various ways of outlining the cycle, one of which is to distinguish between initiation, formulation, implementation, evaluation, and review. Of course, these divisions are more analytical than chronological, because - in the real world - they often overlap. 19.3.1 Initiation and formulation: Policies must start from somewhere, but identifying the point of departure is not easy. What we can sat is that in liberal democracies much of the agenda bubbles up from below, delivered by bureaucrats in the form of issues demanding immediate attention. Rather like the development of law, public policy naturally tends to thicken over time; the world increases, and cases of withdrawal - such as abolishing government regulations - are uncommon. In addition, much political business, including the annual budget, occurs on a regular cycle, dictating attention at certain times. So, policy- makers find that routine business always presses; in large measure, they respond to an agenda that drives itself. In the pluralistic world of American politics, success for a proposal depends on the opening of policy windows, such as the opportunities created by the election of a new administration. Kingdon (2010) suggests that policy entrepreneurs help to seize the moment. From this perspective, interest group leaders succeed by looking their own preferred policies to a wider narrative; try to save the whale and you will be seen, rightly or wrongly, as concerned about environment generally. The cycle of attention to a particular issue is short, as political debate and the public mood moves on. Concepts such as policy entrepreneurs and policy opening carry less resonance in the more structured, party-based democracies of Europe. Here, the political agenda is under firmer, if still incomplete, control, and party manifestos and coalition agreements set out a more explicit agenda for government. The general point is that policy formulation is massively constrained by earlier decisions in a path dependent fashion. 19.3.2 Implementation: https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/sabatinigemma%40h…j0861O_QC9nqVpBd45t9S8yBAg&owa=outlook.live.com&isc=1 19/09/2019 00O00 Page 62 of 65