Comparative political economics

1. Comparative political economics Paolo Graziano

2. Brief introduction • Politics: power struggle for the distribution of resources • Policies: specific instruments of regulation and resource distribution from the political to the economic and civil society • Political regimes: systems where politics and policies take place, and specific power relations are established

3. Political regimes: typological criteria • Pluralism: presence of several political actors in competition for power • Ideology: cognitive and normative framework of the political regime • Mobilization: mode of political participation • Leadership: modes of selection of governmental bodies

4. Authoritarian regimes I • Pluralism: political system with limited, not responsible political pluralism. Often quite extensive social and economic pluralism. • Ideology: political system without elaborate and guiding ideology but with distinctive mentalities.

5. Authoritarian regimes II • Mobilization: political system without extensive or intensive political mobilization except at some points in their development • Leadership: political system in which a leader or occasionally a small group exercises power without formally ill-defined but actually quite predictable norms • Example: Spain between the ‘50s and the ‘70s

6. Totalitarian regimes I • Pluralism: no significant economic, social, or political pluralism. Office party has de jure and de facto monopolyof power • Ideology: elaborate and guiding ideology that articulates a reachable utopia. Commitment to some holistic conception of humanity and society.

7. Totalitarian regimes II • Mobilization: extensive mobilization into a vast array of regime-created obligatory organizations. Private life is decried. • Leadership: totalitarian leadership rules with undefined limits and great unpredictability for members and nonmembers. Often charismatic. • Example: USSR before 1953

8. Post-totalitarian regimes I • Pluralism: limited, but not responsible social, economic and institutional pluralism. Almost no political pluralism because party still has monopoly of power. • Ideology: guiding ideology still officially exists and is part of the social reality. But weakened commitment to or faith in utopia.

9. Post-totalitarian regimes II • Mobilization: progressive loss of interest by leaders and nonleaders involved in organizing mobilization. Routine mobilization of population within state-sponsored organizations. • Leadership: growing emphasis by post-totalitarian political elite on personal security. Checks on top leadership via party structures, procedure, internal democracy. • Example: Hungary, 1982-1988

10. Sultanistic regimes I • Pluralism: economic and social pluralism exists but is subject to unpredictable and despotic intervention. • Ideology: highly arbitrary manipulation of symbols. Extreme glorification of ruler. No elaborate or guiding ideology or even distinctive mentalities outside of despotic personalism.

11. Sultanistic regimes II • Mobilization: low but occasional manipulative mobilization of a ceremonial type by coercive or clientelistic methods without permament organization. • Leadership: highly personalistic and arbitrary. No rational-legal constraints. Strong dynastic tendency. No autonomy in state careers. • Example: Romania under Ceausescu

12. Democratic regimes I • Pluralism: responsible political pluralism reinforced by extensive areas of pluralist autonomy in economy, society, and internal life of organizations. • Ideology: extensive intellectual commitment to citizenship rights and procedural rules of contestation.

13. Democratic regimes II • Mobilization: participation via autonomously generated organization of civil society and competing parties of political society guaranteed by a system of law. • Leadership: top leadership produced by free elections and must be exercised within constitutional limits and state of law. Periodical free elections. • Example: several existing political regimes

14. Democracy: preliminary remarks • Democracy is a form of governance of a state • Democratic consolidation (democratization) entails liberalization but is a wider and more specifically political concept. - Ex. Gorbachev in USSR during the ‘80s • Democratic transition vs. democratic consolidation

15. Transition and democratic consolidation • Democratic transition is complete (consolidation) when: • agreement about policial procedures to produce an elected government is reached • government in power is a direct result of a free and popular vote • government has de facto the authority to generate new policies • division of powers (executive, legislative, judiciary)

16. Democracy and its arenas • civil society • political society • economic society • rule of law • state apparatus

17. Civil society • arena of the polity where self-organizing groups, movements (women’s groups, associations, etc.) and individuals, relatively autonomous from the state, are free to … • ...articulate values, create solidarities and associations and advance their interests. • collective and private groups (individuals)

18. Political society • arena in which the polity specifically arranges itself to contest the legitimate right to exercise control over public power and the state apparatus • parties, elections, electoral rules, political leadership, interparty alliances, and legislatures are the instruments by which society selects and monitors democratic government

19. Economic society • arena where a set of socio-politically crafted and socio-politically accepted norms, institutions, and regulations are present • no democracy in a command economy • no democracy in a pure market economy

20. Rule of law • need for strong consensus over the constitution and a commitment fo ‘self-binding’ procedures of governance that require exceptional majorities to change • clear hierarchy of laws, interpreted by an independent judicial system and supported by a strong legal culture in civil society • all actors must respect and uphold the rule of law

21. State apparatus (bureaucracy) • since citizens have rights that have to be guaranteed and protected… • …the democratic government needs to be able to exercise effectively its claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of force in the territory through… • … a functioning state bureaucracy considered usable (by democratic governments)

22. Patterns of democracy I • Who decides? - majority - “as many people as possible” • Majority: majoritarian model of democracy • “As many people as possible”: consensus model of democracy

23. Analytical dimensions • Executive-parties: arrangement of executive power, party and electoral systems, interests groups • Federal-unitary: territorial organisation of the state

24. Executive-parties • concentration vs. power-sharing • executive predominance vs. executive-legislative balance of power • two-party vs. multiparty systems • majoritarian and disproportional electoral systems vs. proportional representation • pluralist vs. ‘corporatist’ interest group systems

25. Federal vs. unitary state organisation • unitary and centralized vs. federal and decentralized government • concentration of legislative power in a unicameral legislature vs. division between two equally strong houses • flexible vs. rigid constitutions • reduced vs. extensive role of constitutional courts • dependent vs. independent central banks