some conclusions: doing comparative politics reflections on regime change
TRANSCRIPT
Some Conclusions:
Doing comparative politics
Reflections on Regime Change
Final exam:
Saturday, December 8th
9:00-11:00
AA1043
Doing comparative politics
• Comparative politics as the study of differences and similarities among political systems
• Search for systematic explanations: A way of understanding why things happen the way that they do
• A device for understanding other countries• A way of getting perspective on your own country
What have you learned?
Role of societal factors:
• Civil society & social capital
• Political culture
• Political participation– forms that it takes– impact
Role of Linkage structures
• Political Parties
• Interest groups
• Other forms of linkage: patron-client relationships
• Media
Impact of constitutions & political institutions
• Parliaments
• Political Executives– How the two are linked together
• Role of bureaucracy
• Impact of interest groups
• Policy-processes & how they operate
What you should take from this?
A sense of how things operate:
• What is behind the news
• How political ‘situations are likely to play out, e.g. in – Pakistan– Russia– Middle East Peace Process
Case of Pakistan
• State of emergency declared• Supreme Court Justices removed and arrested• Civil society actors protest:
– Lawyers rounded up, detained
• Musharraff resigns from military, assumes presidency as a civilian
• Declares that state of emergency will end Dec. 16th
• Elections to be held
Problem: Can Musharraf succeed as a civilian president?
• Problem of legitimizing his actions
• Problem of channeling political forces– Political parties– The army & police
• Problem of getting agreement when you can’t command it
• And, the tribal lands…
Regime Change & How It Occurs
Broader problematique: • Transitions from authoritarianism to liberal
democraciessometimes
• Because of internal factors, e.g.– inability of regime to deliver what it has promised– Internal revolt, overthrow
• Sometimes because of invasion and total defeat– Postwar Germany– Postwar Italy– Postwar Japan
Imposing regime change:
Possible in Germany, Japan & Italy because• Occupier was in firm control• Regimes in question were definitively defeated• Political forces were strictly channeled
– Some prohibited or kept in opposition• Postwar Italy and Japan as one-party dominant states
• Reconstructed regimes integrated into – Broader alliances– Western economies
• No other alternatives available or politically possible
Building and consolidating liberal democracy
Requires• Some minimal agreement on institutions, form of
government – contingent consent– Recognition that the new regime is “the only game in town”– A political and economic situation in which key groups
support or tolerate the new regime
• A civil society and political culture in which– Citizens & groups feel that they can participate– Differences and oppositions are tolerated– The regime is regarded as legitimate
Does this fit post-invasion Iraq?
• Relatively educated population, but isolated• Likely resentment against the US, west in Iraq,
Arab countries, Muslim world• Problems of a plural society – artificial construct
– Kurds, in the north
– Shia majority, in the south
• Inexperience… but possible tutelage• Is there contingent consent. If so, among whom?
Problems:
• What incentives will there be to sustain democratic rule?
• What incentives or motives will make individuals or groups want to overturn
• Importance of context, especially what is happening in neighboring countries