Lec 2- Political Science and Institutions (Democratic Regimes)

Question 1

Democratic Regimes are

Answer 1

representative regimes

institutions are, in part, the mechanism through which polities achieve representation, translating preferences into votes into policies.

Question 2

the legislative

Answer 2

• branch charged with making and debating laws
• political parties are key
• they organize a mass of opinions, ideas, and policy options into coherent choices
• the stronger the parties/ the more coherent the party system, the less the legislature changes
• parties are the most important institution

Question 3

The executive

Answer 3

• carries out the laws of the state/ executes them
• is confusing and tension-ridden
• generally organized functionally: interior, foreign affairs, health, etc.
• overseen by Cabinet ministers either a purely appointed (U.S.) or appointed among the elected (most liberal democracies)
• the relationship between executive and legislature is complex and differs from country to country

Question 4

presidential system

Answer 4

• separate election of the president and the parliament

(U.S., Turkey, Brazil, and most Latin American countries, Afghanistan (2004-2021, Zimbabwe, Nigeria)

Question 5

semi-presidential system

Answer 5

• direct election of the president, but cabinet is governed by the PM
• france, poland, taiwan, sri lanka mali

Question 6

parliamentary system

Answer 6

• UK, Germany, and most European countries, Australia, New Zealand, India
• emerges from the legislature
• divide between constitutional monarchies (canada, sweden, australia) and parliamentary republics (germany, india)
• can tend toward what one observer called an “elected dictatorship”, but that depends on the party system.
• different electoral systems leads to different party systems with contrasting degrees of centralization

Question 7

referendum

Answer 7

• a general vote by the electorate on a single political question that has been referred to them for a direct decision
• leads to bad, sometimes disastrous, policy
• swiss reference on citizenship, immigration, and free movement have highly conservative results
• disaster of the 2016 referendum in the UK
• near-death experience for Canada in 1995

Question 8

Inductive Reasonings

Answer 8

• research that goes from case studies to form a hypothesis
• working with the “data” that is, learning about the details of the cases and drawing conclusions and even building theories from them.
• qualitative

Question 9

deductive reasonings

Answer 9

• research that starts from hypothesis and then tested against data/then seek out evidence
• coming up with arguments, theories, ‘hypotheses’ which are then applied to (or ‘tested against’) the evidence.
• greater advantage of guiding research
• quantitative

Question 10

6 problems of comparative work

Answer 10

1. the ease of confusing cause and effect (or independent and dependent variables)
   - low-skilled immigration leads to low wages, when in fact low-skilled immigration is the production of low wages
   - reverse causality (one variable causes/changes the other)
2. selection bias
   - if relying on deductive reasoning
   - cherry-picking the evidence (confirmation bias)
3. regional bias and excessive focus on Western Europe (and even Britain, France, and Germany)
4. limited information + few cases
   - 200 countries at most
5. multicausality
6. endogeneity
   - problem of identifying and distinguishing cause and effect
   - low levels of education lead to anti-science sentiment, and anti-science sentiment leads to low levels of education.
   - both variables cause/ affect each other

Question 11

traditional approach

Answer 11

• emphasis on describing political systems and their various institutions

Question 12

modernization theory

Answer 12

• as societies developed, they would become capitalist democracies

Question 13

behavioral revolution

Answer 13

• the shift from political institutions being the subject of investigation of political science toward individual political behaviour
• to generate theories/generalizations that explain and predict political activity
• hoped to lead to a “grand theory” of political behaviour and modernization
• promoted deductive, large scale research

Question 14

post behaviorism

Answer 14

• developed in late 1970s, against the field/school of behaviorism.
• more emphasis on seeking causality and institutions