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