INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT POLITICS

ICOMGP1
Introduction to
Comparative Government and Politics
Course Lesson

The Rationale of the discipline
1. To widen our understanding of politics in other countries / regions.
2. To increase our appreciation of the advantages and disadvantages
of our own political system and to enable us to learn from other
countries/ regions.
3. To develop a more sophisticated understanding of politics in
general, including the nature of democracy and non-democratic
governments and people, and other concepts and processes.
4. To help us to understand the linkages between domestic affairs and
international affairs.

The Rationale of the discipline
5. To help us see the relationship between politics and such fields as
science, technology, the environment, public health, law, business,
religion, ethnicity, culture and others.
6. To enable us to become more informed citizens, so that we can more
effectively develop our own political opinions, participate in political
life, evaluate the actions and proposals of political leaders and make
our own political decisions and electoral choices.
7. To sharpen our critical-thinking skills by applying scientific logic and
coherent argumentations tour understanding of political phenomena.

Introduction: Comparative Politics—
DEFINITION
• Comparative Politics is a field in political science that examines the
political realities in countries all over the world.
• It looks at the many ways governments operate and the ways people
behave in political life.

Introduction: Comparative Politics vs
International Politics—basic distinction.
• International Politics—concerns relations between countries.
• Focus is on the external relations between individual countries.
• Spotlight is on DIPLOMACY, INTERNATIONAL LAW, INTERNATIONAL
ECON RELATIONS, WAR AND PEACEMAKING.
• How these relationships between countries work; provide the
theoretical understanding of international politics in general.

Introduction: Comparative Politics vs
International Politics—basic distinction.
• Comparative Politics—examines political activities within individual
countries.
• It looks at politics inside countries; compares the domestic experiences
of particular countries with the domestic experiences of others.
• The focus—is on each country’s internal politics with the view to make
generalizations about politics in a variety of domestic settings.
• For example—comparing democracies with one another to learn more
about democracy. Comparing non-democratic government to learn how
they work (such as communist countries or military dictatorship).

Comparative Politics vs International Politics
—distinction is razor thin.
• Comparative and International politics are increasingly intertwined within
almost every country in the world today.
• We cannot really understand the domestic politics of most nations without
some references to their international relationships. What goes on internally
is often affected by events occurring externally, beyond the country’s borders.
• Conversely, we cannot fully comprehend international affairs without a good
look inside the domestic political systems of individual countries.
• The actions of individual governments frequently have a powerful impact on
other countries or on the world as a whole.
• Example: the politics of energy relationships—Ukraine-Russia Case.

The Essence of Comparative Politics is:
• Studying the institutions, character and the performance of
government and the political processes in different countries to:
a. Better understand how politics works; and
b. Draw up rules about politics.
• For example—party systems of countries. Single, bi-party and multi-
party system.

Major Topics in Comparative Politics
1. Politics—what is it?
2. Political Systems—Democracy, Authoritarianism and Mixed
Regimes.
3. Political Processes—Bargaining and Coercion.
4. Sources of Political Conflicts—Power, Resources and Identity.

Politics—what is it?
1. Politics is the process by which people pursue collective goals and
deal with their conflicts authoritatively by means of government.
(Sodaro)
2. Politics is the process by which two or more people make decision
on issues of mutual interest. (McCormick)
3. Politics is the activity by which groups reach binding collective
decisions through attempting to reconcile differences among their
members. (Hague and Harrop)

• From this definitions, we derive the following principles:
1. Politics is a collective activity involving people who accept a
common membership or at least acknowledge a shared fate.
2. Politics presumes an initial diversity of views, about goals or means
or both.
3. Politics involves reconciling such differences through discussion and
persuasion.
4. Political decisions become authoritative policy for a group, binding
members to agreements that are implemented by force if necessary.

• Conversely, politics is not only seen among government people,
leaders and politicians, but present in any power relationship
wherever they exist.
• Types:
1. Micropolitics—the exercise of power in everyday life.
2. Macropolitcs—the largescale exercise of power over a large group.

• The necessity of politics arises from the collective nature of human
life. We live in groups that must reach collective decision about
sharing resources, about relating to other groups and about planning
for the future.
-examples: family going on vacation; country going to war or not; the world
trying to limit the damage caused by pollution.
• As social creatures, politics is part of our fate: we have no choice but
to practice it.
• Aristotle (the Greek philosopher, 384-322 BC) argued that “man is by
nature a political animal”.

the State—the Unit of comparison.
• Definition:
1. the State is a political community formed by a territorial population which
is subject to one government.
2. the State is the totality of a country’s governmental institutions and
officials together with the laws and procedures that structure their
activities.
• The State’s institutions are governmental organization such as Cabinets,
Legislatures, Courts, Bureaucracy, the Military, the Police, Public Schools
and Colleges; and our City garbage collectors. They are parts of the State
and act as its agents. They typically perform specified functions based on
laws, rules, directives and other authoritative procedures and practices.

Monopoly of Legal Authority—State’s most
important feature.
• Distinguishes it from social groups or private firms.
• It means that only the State has the legal authority to make and coercively
enforce laws that are binding on the population.
• This legal authority makes the state’s decision “authoritative”.
• By coercively enforce means that the state has the legal authority to use
physical force, if necessary, in order to compel the population to obey the
laws.
That includes the monopoly of the main means of coercive power—the police, the
courts, the penal system and the military.
• A failed state—results when the State loses its monopoly of coercive power.

States in Critical Condition
The Failed State Index ranks countries in order of their vulnerability based on 12 sets of indicators that
include demographic pressures, refugees and human flight, economic problems, the delegitimization of the
state, factionalized elites, the degradation of public services, human rights violations, security problems, and
external intervention. The rankings presented here were based on 2005 data. The Index was prepared by the
Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. Part of the 2005 list was published in the Foreign Policy , May-
June 2006. For updates and further information, consult www.fundforpeace.org and www.foreignPolicy.com. Three
states that share the same rank on the list below have identical scores.
1. Sudan
2. Democratic Republic of Congo
3. Ivory Coast
4. Iraq
5. Zimbabwe
6. Chad
7. Somalia
8. Haiti
9. Pakistan
10.Afghanistan
11. Guinea
12. Liberia
13. Central African Republic
14. North Korea
15. Burundi
16. Yemen
17. Sierra Leone
18. Burma
19. Bangladesh
20. Nepal

Nature and Purpose of the State
• Characteristics—a State has the following characteristics.
1. Sovereignty
2. Territory
3. Population
4. Diplomatic Recognition
5. Internal Organization
6. Domestic Support

Sovereignty
• Sovereignty means having supreme legal authority.
• Applied to States, it means that they have the exclusive legal right to
govern the territory and people within their borders.
• Takes its roots in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648—where state system
came its birth.
• It recognizes no legal legitimacy from any outside authority.
• Sovereignty also denotes legal equality among states.
• Sovereignty not the same as Independence; the former being more of a
theoretical-legal term, the latter a more political and applied term.

Sovereignty
• Sovereignty, not a timeless concept that never changes. It contracts or
expands depending on domestic and international realities that affect
individual countries at different periods in time.
• E.g 1. Europe—nations forged the “pooled sovereignty” leading to the
formation of the EU.
• E.g 2. Pulse of ICT—the internet, mass media, social media, etc.
• E.g 3. Pressures from other neighboring nations.

Autonomy of the State
• Refers to the relative independence of state authorities from the population.
• If state enjoys a high degree of autonomy—the state officials are free to do
what please when it comes to governing the populace.
• Low degree—means that state officials have very little room to create laws
or make decision independently, esp of its politically most powerful groups.
• Both extremes have dangers.
Maximum state autonomy means dictatorship. The people have little or no say in
what their rulers do.
Minimum state autonomy implies that state officials have few opportunities to use
their expertise and concerns for the country’s common good to formulate and
implement the policies they think best.

Territory
• The expanse over which the state exercises sovereign authority.
• International dispute over territories: boundaries can expand,
contract, or shift dramatically. In fact, it is possible to have State
without territory.
• E.g.—Palestine, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

Population
• People are an obvious requirement for any state, although for its size
vary.
• Issue—shifting loyalties of the evolving international system that it’s
difficult to mark where population (or citizenship) of a country begins and
ends.
• Examples:
1. the case of EU—voting and getting elected in any member country not
one’s country of origin.
2. The dual citizenship controversy.
3. Blood and birthplace issue: Jus Sanguinis vs Jus Soli/Loci

Diplomatic Recognition
• Statehood rests on the claim to that status and recognition by other
existing states.
• Just how many countries must grant recognition before statehood is
achieved is a question remains difficult to answer.
• E.g.
1. Israel when it became independent in 1948.
2. The question of Palestine.

Internal Organization
• States must have a level of political and economic structure.
• Statehood continues even during periods of severe turmoil, even
anarchy—like the case of Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leon, Somalia.
• The case of Somalia—has not had a functioning government since the
early 1990s. For most of the time Transitional Federal Government
(TFG) was located in Kenya as it lacked the power to meet in safety in
Mogadishu.

Domestic Support
• Popular support to the State grants it its Legitimacy—the willing
acceptance of the authority to govern it.
• For all the coercive power of the State, it is difficult for any state to
survive without at least the passive agreement/support of its people.
• The case of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are
illustrations of multinational states collapsing in the face of the
separatist impulses of disaffected nationalities.

Purposes of the State
• The Social Contract
1. Thomas Hobbes—from The Leviathan (the all-powerful state), Hobbes believes
that State’s main purpose is to leave humanity free to pursue science, art,
exploration, and other aspects of civilization without the pressures of “continual
fear, and danger of violent death”.
2. John Locke—from his Second Treatise of Government, Locke argues that State’s
end is preservation of men’s property—that is, their life, liberty and ‘estate’ (their
possession). Any state that fails to safeguard these natural rights is illegitimate.
3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau—state’s purpose is to enable the sovereign people to
express and carry out their general will, that is to say, the common good.
Stressed the collective rights and freedoms of the community over the individual. The
people, not the state, are the sovereign.
Prefers that the goal could be accomplished by a small elite making day-to-day decisions for
the people; provided that citizens exercised supervisory authority by meeting periodically in
popular assemblies.

Purposes of the State
• The Laissez Faire Tradition
1. Adam Smith—from The Wealth of Nations, Smith argues that the
chief end of state is to promote private enterprise and allow the
forces of the market economy to work without excessive
government interference.
--in Smith’s view, the state should limit its function to providing a legal system
designed to enable commerce to flow smoothly.

STATE INSTITUTIONS
1. The Executive
2. The Legislature
3. The Judiciary
4. The Bureaucracy
5. The Military

STATE INSTITUTIONS—The Executive
The Executive Branch of Government
Head of State Head of Government
• A ceremonial position that carries little of no real
decision-making power.
• HOS stands as symbolic heads—from Absolute
Monarchy to Constitutional monarchy.
• Retained in democracies to preserve their historical
traditions—while radically diminishing the actual
power of the crown.
• Their duties—making speeches on ceremonial
occasions, represents the state at nonpolitical
functions, and greeting foreign dignitaries.
• HOG is usually the country’s chief political officers
who are responsible for presenting and conducting
its principal policies.
• The real decision-making authorities.
• He/she normally supervises the entire executive
branch of the state—including its Cabinets and
Ministers.
• In Parliamentary governments, the PM and his
ministers are usually referred to as the
government; in Presidentialism, administration.

STATE INSTITUTIONS—The Legislature
• Chief functions in democracies are to makes laws (shares with the
Executive) and represent the people in the law-making process.
• Check the executive branch and its bureaucratic departments by
holding inquiries and investigations into their activities—this is called
legislative oversight.
• In parliamentary govts—the legislature elects its head of government
and hold him/her accountable (together its cabinets/ministers).
Not so in presidentialism where legislatures are constitutionally separate
from the executive unlike its parliamentary counterpart.

STATE INSTITUTIONS—The Legislature
The Legislative Branch of Government—a check on the Executive and Judiciary in
democratic regimes.
Unicameral Legislature Bicameral Legislature
• Consists only of one house or chamber.
• Its advantage: one house/chamber does not share
power with another house, avoiding the
unreasonable, excessive delays, wranglings and
gridlock.
• Two-chamber legislature.
• The upper house—the senate; the lower house—
the house of representatives.
• Its advantage: greater representation; and a check
against hasty decision making by the other house.

STATE INSTITUTIONS—The Judiciary
• Its main functions:
1. Adjudication of civil and criminal case.
2. Power of Judicial review—the right to invalidate laws passed by
lawmakers and executive bodies as unconstitutional.
• In democracies, the Judiciary enjoys a considerable independence
compared to its authoritarian counterpart.
• The judicial activism in democracies.

STATE INSTITUTIONS—The Bureaucracy
• Refers to the civil service—the different departments, agencies,
bureaus and other official titled institutions.
• Without bureaucracy, the government cannot govern.

STATE INSTITUTIONS—The Military
• Military Organizations means organizations, departments, or
individuals authorized by a Governmental Entity to defend or
engage in combat for a country or who otherwise engage in
activities of a military nature. (from:
lawinsider.com/dictionary/military-organizations)
• Junta—refers to the leaders of military government.
• Coup d’etat– a forceful takeover of state power by the military.
• The question of professionalization of the military.

ORGANIZING THE STATE
1. Unitary State—decision-making authority and disposition over
revenues tend to be concentrated in the central institutions.
2. Federation—seeks to combine a relative strong central government
with real authority for various administrative units below national
level. These sub-unites may be regions, states, countries,
municipalities, etc.
3. Confederations—a looser arrangement characterized by a weak
central government and a group of constituent subnational
elements that enjoy a significant local autonomy or even
independence as sovereign states.

INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT POLITICS

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