Riassunto esame Comparative politics, Prof. Carlotti Benedetta, libro consigliato Comparative Politics, Daniele Caramani

SM: Old vs New

Key concern: Production Quality of life

Ideology: Marx, Engel, Luxemburg, Lenin

Less consistent social carrier: Workers

Well-educated sectors of society structure: Real distinction between leaders and followers

Issue time and space

Functions of SM:

• Promote new ideas
• Challenging the elite
• Promote change in society
• Riots/trouble in reaction to unsolved problems
• Attention: the existence of SM is not only justified by the achievement of goals affecting the policy agenda

LESSON 17 - 1.12.2021: THE POLICY MAKING

What is policy making:

• Policies are designed to achieve a specific goal and present solutions to a societal problem
• Public policy: more specific term that refers to the sequence of actions that are undertaken to solve specific societal problems
• They are the main outcome of the political system (Remember Easton)
• Problems are issued that are recognised as problems. Whenever I do understand that my intervention

As a government has an impact on an issue, I recognise that that issue can be solved à it is a problem. We recognise an issue as a problem whenever it can be solved by the human/governmental intervention.

2 typologies of public policies

How can we classify public policies? One typology:

The other typology: BENEFITS

The models of public policies:

• Institutional
• Formal institutions
• Informal institutions
• Pre-structure policy decisions
• Define both the strategic opportunities and

The constraints in which policy makers operate (resources, …)- Assumption: institutions are the only players of the game à players are the institutions àwe don’t see the influence of SM, citizens are excluded à it is limiting

The models of public policies: rational- Rational players: they make the optimal decision according to decision-makers’ preferences à strong assumption- Bayesian learning concept: we take the solution that prove to be the best from previous or other experience à dichotomy option: 0 = bad = don’t choose it // 1 = good = make that decision- Core Assumptions:61 Presence of perfect information ào Political actors behave rationally ào

The models of public policies: incremental- Realistic description of how decision-makers get to their answer- General stability and incremental change- Possible change deriving from shocks- “Bounded rationality” à limitation of knowledge and cognitive

Riskinesso - Attention: we are talking about political participation in democracies

The modes of participation

• Single shot participation vs more organized one
• 3 actors are of core importance
• Social movements
• Interest groups
• Political parties

What drives political participation

(family market).

Many types of participation and Political participation as a choice of last resort

Participation to bring about decision concerning public goods by participating people—increase both public and private good paradox of collective action (Olson 1965)

Which is the core "problem" with Olson's definition of collective action paradox?

The macro-level: from regime type to participation

Democracies wide range of participatory acts—

Authoritarian regimes executive beyond democratic accountability but tolerates some forms of participation

Repressive despotic regimes repressing political participation and imposing political participation (non-spontaneous)

The macro-level:

Participation within democracies

Participation varies within regime types

Participation increases with a higher economic welfare of the reference state

Participation relates also to the party system that we might find in a country

Main type of political participation in democracies

The macro-level: voting

Compulsory voting increases participation

The electoral system matters a lot

Registration methods

Timing of elections

The macro-level: labor union membership

Many factors shape participation to unions:

• Degree of transition of a country (agriculture to industry)
• Type of present political regime
• The Ghent system institutional incentive. Government delegates the management of unemployment insurance to labour unions

The micro-level: why people engage differently?

Individual traits:

• Resources
• Recruitment
• Social network
• Orientation
• Contextual cues

The micro-level: resources

• Socio-economic skills and endowments
• Availability of time
• Education
• Involvement in civic

activities likeminded effect

The micro-level: recruitment

• Association involvement
• Work connected issues:
• Availability of free time
• Work-space organization
• Class and group milieux as booster for organization

The micro-level: social network

• At the crossroad between association and socio-economic resources:
• Role of the family
• Role of the network outside of the family:
• Real
• Virtual

The micro-level: orientation and contextual cues

• Organization of more or less complex ideologies
• Some contextual cues

Micro-levels network pushes for participation

Meso level existence of large organization

Macro level democratic institutions

Macro level nature of party systems

Attention: these factors might interact pushing for higher degree of participation

LESSON 19 – 10.1.2022

SUPPORTING DEMOCRACY. WHAT DOES IT MEAN AND HOW IT WORKS

A brief intro into democratic support

• Democracies as feature of the world (80s 2005)

Since the 80s (end of the cold war, end of the Stalinism dictatorship,

(post-colonialism) → democracy's support and promotion- Democratic promotion as a paradox imposition of democracy (intervention of the →USA, imposition for France)- Limits to democratic promotion a democracy should be based on its own principles. If →we impose democracy, will it survive? What would happen?Active vs passive democratic support- Active support intentional and deliberate actions undertaken to support →democracy (social movements, interest groups, organizations like the EU, ONU)- Passive support understand how democracies evolve (trends) and how they are →influenced (internal and external)Non-intentional but can be influenced:o Spillover↓ Demonstration effect↓ Democratization by emulation↓ Contagion↓Direct vs indirect democratic support- International side (so the active one)- Direct support targets some core characteristics of democracies↓- Indirect support targets the conditions for democratization (what makes it possible →and how it happens)-