Some Conclusions:

1. Some Conclusions: Doing comparative politics Reflections on Regime Change

2. Final exam: Saturday, December 8th 9:00-11:00 AA1043

3. 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

4. What have you learned? Role of societal factors: • Civil society & social capital • Political culture • Political participation • forms that it takes • impact

5. Role of Linkage structures • Political Parties • Interest groups • Other forms of linkage: patron-client relationships • Media

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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…

10. Regime Change & How It Occurs Broader problematique: • Transitions from authoritarianism to liberal democracies sometimes • 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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?

14. 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