PS2082 Vle

Comparative politics
B. Kissane, G. Philip
PS2082, 2790082
2011
Undergraduate study in
Economics, Management,
Finance and the Social Sciences
This subject guide is for a 200 course offered as part of the University of London
International Programmes in Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences.
This is equivalent to Level 5 within the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications in
England, Wales and Northern Ireland (FHEQ).
For more information about the University of London International Programmes
undergraduate study in Economics, Management, Finance and the Social Sciences, see:
www.londoninternational.ac.uk
This guide was prepared for the University of London International Programmes by:
B. Kissane, Senior Lecturer in Politics, London School of Economics and Political Science and
G. Philip, Professor of Comparative and Latin American Politics, London School of Economics
and Political Science.
This is one of a series of subject guides published by the University. We regret that due to
pressure of work the authors are unable to enter into any correspondence relating to, or arising from, the guide. If you have any comments on this subject guide, favourable or unfavourable, please use the form at the back of this guide.
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Contents
Contents
Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1
Aims ............................................................................................................................. 2
Learning outcomes ........................................................................................................ 2
How to use this subject guide ........................................................................................ 2
Recommended time required ......................................................................................... 3
Essential reading ........................................................................................................... 3
Further reading.............................................................................................................. 4
Online study resources .................................................................................................. 6
The examination ........................................................................................................... 7
Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems ............................................ 9
Learning outcomes ........................................................................................................ 9
Essential reading ........................................................................................................... 9
Further reading.............................................................................................................. 9
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 9
Legitimacy, institutionalism and political culture: the argument in outline...................... 10
Democratic legitimacy.................................................................................................. 13
Institutions as a basis for comparison .......................................................................... 15
The survival of institutions over time ............................................................................ 16
Comparative politics and political culture ..................................................................... 18
Theorising political culture ........................................................................................... 20
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 23
A reminder of your learning outcomes.......................................................................... 24
Sample examination questions ..................................................................................... 24
Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism and political culture .................... 25
Learning outcomes ...................................................................................................... 25
Essential reading ........................................................................................................ 25
Further reading............................................................................................................ 25
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 26
Legitimacy and constitutionalism ................................................................................. 26
Changes in the European tradition ............................................................................... 29
The breakdown of pure majoritarianism ....................................................................... 30
Constitutionalism in practice: limitations on democracy? .............................................. 32
Constitutionalism, political culture and cultural conflict................................................. 34
Consociational politics ................................................................................................. 38
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 39
Chapter 3: Comparing executives: presidential and parliamentary
systems ............................................................................................................... 41
Essential reading ........................................................................................................ 41
Further reading............................................................................................................ 41
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 41
The concept of presidentialism ..................................................................................... 42
i
82 Comparative politics
The concept of parliamentarianism............................................................................... 43

Comparing presidential and parliamentary systems ...................................................... 45
The advantages and disadvantages of each system....................................................... 45
Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 49
Chapter 4: Electoral systems and party systems ............................................. 51
Essential reading ......................................................................................................... 51
Further reading............................................................................................................ 51
Introduction: organising political representation ........................................................... 51
Referendums and their critics ....................................................................................... 52
Why all representative systems are imperfect ............................................................... 53
Parties and electoral systems ....................................................................................... 53
Majoritarian (first-past-the-post) .................................................................................. 54
Democracy within parties and between parties ............................................................. 57
The decline of parties? ................................................................................................. 59
Political parties in new democracies ............................................................................. 60
Chapter 5: Levels of government: local, federal and transnational .............. 63
Further reading............................................................................................................ 63
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 63
Local and central government ...................................................................................... 63
Federalism ................................................................................................................... 65
Treaties, unions and relations between governments .................................................... 67
Chapter 6: Bureaucracy and the democratic state .......................................... 69
Further reading............................................................................................................ 69
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 69
Bureaucratic organisation within democratic states: a brief history ................................ 70
Clientelism and semi-clientelism .................................................................................. 73
Good governance and its problems .............................................................................. 74
Politics and the bureaucracy: a conclusion .................................................................... 74
Appendix: Sample examination paper ............................................................. 77
ii
Introduction
Introduction
82 Comparative politics is a 200 course offered on the Economics,
Management, Finance and the Social Sciences (EMFSS) suite of
programmes. It is a subject which is concerned with why political
institutions are desirable, how they work in practice and how they vary
from country to country. To understand these issues, it is helpful to start by
understanding cultural and legitimatory factors that lie behind institutions
as well as focusing on the institutions themselves.
Most students at the end of the course are capable of understanding
in principle how institutional structures are often underpinned by
legitimatory factors and cultural norms, and they can also describe the
working of particular institutions in particular countries. What is harder
is to understand how these factors interrelate in particular cases, and
students capable of doing this convincingly in particular cases tend to be
marked highly.
By the same token, students are expected to show analytical and empirical
ability. A common mistake is for students to approach the subject too
ideologically, looking out for ideal forms of government rather than
understanding the inevitable imperfections of political life.
The course is not specifically orientated toward a political career.
However, most adults will benefit at some stage in their lives from some
understanding of how political institutions work, and there are professions
such as law, journalism and the civil service where an understanding of
political institutions is probably necessary.
This course is not generally suitable for beginners, and students taking it
are expected to have studied 114 Democratic politics and the State
or 130 Introduction to modern political thought. Students with
some background in political theory tend to do well in this course so long
as they show sufficient intellectual flexibility to apply it appropriately to
the different subject matter.
Information about the authors

Professor Philip taught for many years at the London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE) on a course offered in the
Government department entitled Comparative political institutions.
This Comparative politics course is a direct successor of that course,
although it is significantly updated in some areas. Professor Philip is a
professor of Latin American politics and has done his best to make sure
that the reading covers Latin America as well as the more widely known
regions of Western Europe and North America.
Bill Kissane taught the Introduction to comparative politics course at
LSE for many years. The aim of the course was to give MSc students
a grounding in comparative politics. He has also taught introductory
courses on British politics, Irish politics, and political analysis in several
British and American universities. He has published on different aspects
of comparative institutional analysis, including on Arend Lijphart,
constitutions and the referendum.
Aims
This course encompasses how we form or develop concepts of democratic
political institutions and some of the different ways in which democracies
can be organised. The main aim of the course is to enable you to address
questions such as the following.
What are political institutions and how should we study them?
Why does democracy require institutions?
How do institutions relate to legitimate political authority?
How does political culture relate to institutions?
What is the relationship between democratic government and
legitimate authority?
How are democracies with presidential systems different from
democracies with parliamentary ones?
How do different electoral systems influence differences in party
systems?
How do different types of legal system influence the working of
political institutions?
How does political culture influence bureaucratic behaviour?
How do democracies decentralise power to regional or local
governments?
Learning outcomes
At the end of this course, and having completed the Essential reading and
activities, you should have a good understanding of the way in which
different democratic institutional systems work.
Specifically, you should be able to explain:
why institutional analysis is a key aspect of comparative politics
how institutional stability and political legitimation interact
what is meant by political culture and how it influences institutional
behaviour
how presidential systems differ in key respects from parliamentary ones
the relationship between elective and non-elective dimensions of the
democratic state
the concept of federalism and how it differs from local government.
How to use this subject guide

This subject guide is intended to provide a reasonably comprehensive, but
by no means complete, discussion of the main issues listed in the syllabus.
The guide is a complement to, and not a substitute for, the Essential
readings. You need to read widely around the topics discussed here if you
are to do well in the examination.
The guide explains:
why the working of institutions is central to the study of comparative
politics
how different kinds of democratic institutions work in practice
how they vary between countries.
2
Introduction
This focus on institutions aims to link what might otherwise seem to be

very different topics in a coherent way. It should help you link your reading
to the general theme of the subject. There is not the space in this guide for
dealing with any particular topic in real depth. To achieve this depth, you
need to do the assigned reading in the lists at the beginning of each chapter.
You will also find a list of learning outcomes and sample examination
questions at the end of each chapter. It is a very good idea to try to answer
some of the examination questions within a fixed time. This will help you to
discover how much you have learned about the topic.
Recommended time required

If English is your first language, or if you read it fluently, and if you can get
hold of the relevant reading without too much difficulty, then you should
be able to answer at least four questions after about 25 full days reading.
It will take longer if you read more slowly or with difficulty, or if you need
more time to get the necessary material. Familiarity with current events and
the main characteristics of your own countrys political system will be an
advantage and reduce the time needed for study.
Essential reading
The following is a short list of books and articles that you need to read for
this subject. You should read as much of Dahl (1991) as you can, and also
Max Webers work either in Connolly (1984) or in Lassman and Speirs
(1994). If necessary, you should purchase these works. Also essential are:
Ackerman, B. The rise of world constitutionalism, Virginia Law Review 83(4)
1997, pp.771802.
Booth, J. and M. Seligson The legitimacy puzzle in Latin America: political support
and democracy in eight nations. (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2009) [ISBN 97801521734202].
Bowen, J. Why the French dont like headscarves: Islam, the state and the
public space. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008)
[ISBN 9780691138398].
Connolly, W. (ed.) Legitimacy and the state. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984) Especially
the chapter by Weber, Politics as a vocation and the chapter
by Lipset entitled Social conflict, legitimacy and democracy
[ISBN 9780855206468].
Dahl, R.A. Democracy and its critics. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1991) [ISBN 9780300049381].
Dahl, R.A. On democracy. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000)
[ISBN 9780300084559].
Elgie, R. The perils of semi-presidentialism. Are they exaggerated?,
Democratization 15(1) 2008, pp.4966.
Lassman, P. and R. Speirs (eds) Weber: political writings. (Cambridge texts in the
history of political thought) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
To be used as an alternative to Connolly (1984) [ISBN 9780521397193].
Linz, J. The perils of presidentialism, Journal of Democracy 1(1) 1990,
pp.5169.
March, J.G. and J.P. Olson The new institutionalism: organizational factors
in political life, The American Political Science Review 78(3) 1984, pp.73449.
Roberts, A. The quality of democracy in eastern Europe: public preference and
policy reforms. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
[ISBN 9780521110334].
Please note, for Chapter 4 of this subject guide, you are expected to read:
Lijphart, A. Patterns of democracy: government forms and performance in thirtysix countries. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999)
[ISBN 9780300078930].
For Chapter 6 of this subject guide, you are expected to read:
Emmanuel, N. Undermining co-operation: donor-patrons and the failure of
political conditionality, Democratization 17(5) 2010, pp.85677.
Hood, C. The art of the state: culture, rhetoric, and public management. (Oxford:
Clarendon, 2000) new edition [ISBN 9780198297659].
This is just the beginning. The topics in this subject guide are the subject
of their own specialist literature. Therefore, you cannot cover the course
using just one or two textbooks. You will need to make use of at least
some of the Further reading, which is listed below and referenced again in
particular chapters. The chapter listings provide clear information about
which of these titles relate to which topics. Provided that you have some
idea of the key concepts, you can enhance your work by showing detailed
knowledge of particular political systems and events. For that reason, it is
helpful to keep up to date with developments in the world of politics.
You are not expected to read all of the works listed below. It should be
enough to be familiar with around one-third of them, provided that
you choose a coherent set of readings based around the topics you
want to study. The booklists in the individual chapters should help you
identify these. The list is long in order to make it easier to find at least
a reasonable proportion of the works listed. You may find it useful to
read the subject guide first and then decide on a set of topics for Further
reading.
Detailed reading references in this subject guide refer to the editions of the
set textbooks listed above. New editions of one or more of these textbooks
may have been published by the time you study this course. You can use
a more recent edition of any of the books; use the detailed chapter and
section headings and the index to identify relevant readings. Also check
the virtual learning environment (VLE) regularly for updated guidance on
readings.
Further reading
Please note that as long as you read the Essential reading you are then free
to read around the subject area in any text, paper or online resource. You
will need to support your learning by reading as widely as possible and by
thinking about how these principles apply in the real world. To help you
read extensively, you have free access to the VLE and University of London
Online Library (see below).
Other useful texts for this course include:
Books
Albrow, M. Bureaucracy: key concepts in political science. (London: Pall Mall,
1970) [ISBN 0269026231].
Almond, G. and S. Verba The civic culture: political attitudes and democracy in
five nations. (London: Sage, 1989) [ISBN 0803935587].
Almond, G. and S. Verba The civic culture revisited: an analytic study.
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1980) [ISBN 0316034908].
Beetham, D. The legitimation of power. (London: Macmillan, 1991)
[ISBN 0333375386].
Downs, A. An economic theory of democracy. (New York: Princeton Hall, 1997)
[ISBN 9780060417505.]
4
Introduction
Duverger, M. Political parties: their organizational activity in the modern state.
Translated by B. and N. North. (London: Methuen, 1978) third edition
[ISBN 0416683207].
Elgie, R. and S. Moestrup (eds) Semi-presidentialism outside Europe: a
comparative study. (London, Routledge, 2007) [ISBN 0415380478].
Elazar, D. American federalism: a view from the States. (New York: Harper and
Row, 1984) third edition [ISBN 0060418842].
Evans, P. Embedded autonomy: states and industrial transformation.
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995) [ISBN 0691037361].
Fishkin, J. Democracy and deliberation: new directions for democratic reform.
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993) [ISBN 9780300051636].
Haggard, S. and M. McCubbins (eds) Presidents, parliaments and policy.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) [ISBN 0521774853].
Hood, C. The art of the state: culture, rhetoric and public management. (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1998) [ISBN 0198297653].
Inglehart, R. Culture shift in advanced industrial society. (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1990) [ISBN 0691022968].
Klingemann, H.D., D. Fuchs and J. Zielonka (eds) Democracy and political
culture in eastern Europe. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006)
[ISBN 0415479622].
Lijphart, A. Democracy in plural societies: a comparative explanation.
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980) new edition
[ISBN 9780300024944].
Lijphart, A. Democracies: patterns of majoritarian and consensus government
in twenty-one countries. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984)
[ISBN 030031157 or 0300031823].
Lijphart, A. Electoral systems and party systems: a study of twenty-seven
democracies, 19451990. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
[ISBN 0198273479].
Lijphart, A. Patterns of democracy: government forms and performance in
thirty-six countries. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999)
[ISBN 0300078935].
Linz, J. and A. Stepan Problems of democratic transition and consolidation:
southern Europe, South America and post-communist Europe. (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) [ISBN 0801851580].
Linz, J. and A. Valenzuela (eds) The failure of presidential democracy.
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) (2 volumes)
[ISBN 0801846404].
Lipset, S.M. Political man: the social bases of politics. (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1983) third edition [ISBN 0801825229].
McGarry, J. and B. O Leary Introduction: the macro-political regulation of
ethnic conflict in McGarry, J. and B. O Leary (eds) The politics of ethnic
conflict regulation: case studies of protracted ethnic conflict. (London:
Routledge, 1993) pp.141.
Mainwaring, S. and M. Shugart (eds) Presidentialism and democracy in Latin
America. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
[ISBN 0521576148].
OBrien, D. Storm center: the Supreme Court in American politics. (New York;
London: W.W. Norton, 1999) fifth revised edition [ISBN 0393974928].
Page, E.C. and M.J. Goldsmith (eds) Centre and local government relations.
(London: Sage, 1987) [ISBN 080348071X].
Panebanco, A. Political parties. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
[ISBN 0521314011].
Peters, B.G. Institutional theory in political science: the new institutionalism.
(London: Continuum, 2005) [ISBN 0826479839].
Putnam, R. Making democracy work: civic traditions in modern Italy. (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) [ISBN 0691078890].
Sartori, G. Parties and party systems: a framework for analysis. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976) [ISBN 0521291062].
Articles
Curtice, J., B. Seyd and K. Thomson Do mayoral elections work? Evidence
from London, Political Studies 56(3) 2008, pp.65378.
Elgie, R. From Linz to Tsebelis: three waves of presidential/parliamentary
studies?, Democratization 12(1) 2005, pp.10622.
Lagos, M. Latin Americas smiling mask, Journal of Democracy 8(3) 1997,
pp.12538.
Laegaard, S The cartoon controversy; offence, identity, oppression?, Political
Studies 55(3) 2007, pp.48198.
Lerner, H. Constitution making in deeply-divided societies, Nations and
Nationalism 16(1) 2010, pp.6889.
O Donnell, G. Horizontal accountability in new democracies, Journal of
Democracy 9(3) 1998, pp.112126.
Webb, P. Political parties and democracy: the ambiguous crisis, Democratization
12(5) 2005, pp.633665.
Zakaria, F. The rise of illiberal democracy, Foreign Affairs 76 (November
December) 1997, pp.2243.
The academic articles listed here should be read carefully and in full.
However, it is often possible to get a sense of what a book says by reading
the introduction and conclusion, using the index and focusing on the
specific points that clearly interest you. The objective is to get a general
sense of the arguments being presented.
Finally, this guide discusses the work of some historically important
political theorists, notably Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Keen
students, or students already studying political theory, could usefully try
to read one or more of these in the original. However, unless you have
a particular interest in one or more of these theorists, it is not really
necessary to do this. There are many secondary texts in which the ideas of
these authors are set out, explained and criticised.
Machiavelli, N. The prince. Edited by Skinner, Q. and K. Price (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988) [ISBN 0521342406 or
0521349931 (pbk)].
Hobbes, T. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1688.
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994) [ISBN 0872201775
(pbk) or 0872201783 (hbk)].
Online study resources

In addition to the subject guide and the Essential reading, it is crucial that
you take advantage of the study resources that are available online for this
course, including the VLE and the Online Library.
You can access the VLE, the Online Library and your University of London
email account via the Student Portal at:
http://my.londoninternational.ac.uk
You should have received your login details for the Student Portal with
your official offer, which was emailed to the address that you gave
on your application form. You have probably already logged in to the
Student Portal in order to register! As soon as you registered, you will
automatically have been granted access to the VLE, Online Library and
your fully functional University of London email account.
Introduction
If you forget your login details at any point, please email uolia.support@
london.ac.uk quoting your student number.
The VLE
The VLE, which complements this subject guide, has been designed to
enhance your learning experience, providing additional support and a sense
of community. It forms an important part of your study experience with the
University of London and you should access it regularly.
The VLE provides a range of resources for EMFSS courses:
Self-testing activities: Doing these allows you to test your own
understanding of subject material.
Electronic study materials: The printed materials that you receive from
the University of London are available to download, including updated
reading lists and references.
Past examination papers and Examiners commentaries: These provide
advice on how each examination question might best be answered.
A student discussion forum: This is an open space for you to discuss
interests and experiences, seek support from your peers, work
collaboratively to solve problems and discuss subject material.
Videos: There are recorded academic introductions to the subject,
interviews and debates and, for some courses, audio-visual tutorials and
conclusions.
Recorded lectures: For some courses, where appropriate, the sessions from
previous years Study Weekends have been recorded and made available.
Study skills: Expert advice on preparing for examinations and developing
your digital literacy skills.
Feedback forms.
Some of these resources are available for certain courses only, but we are
expanding our provision all the time and you should check the VLE regularly
for updates.
Making use of the Online Library

The Online Library contains a huge array of journal articles and other
resources to help you read widely and extensively.
To access the majority of resources via the Online Library you will either need
to use your University of London Student Portal login details, or you will be
required to register and use an Athens login: http://tinyurl.com/ollathens
The easiest way to locate relevant content and journal articles in the Online
Library is to use the Summon search engine.
If you are having trouble finding an article listed in a reading list, try
removing any punctuation from the title, such as single quotation marks,
question marks and colons.
For further advice, please see the online help pages:
www.external.shl.lon.ac.uk/summon/about.php
The examination
Important: the information and advice given here are based on the
examination structure used at the time this guide was written. Please
note that subject guides may be used for several years. Because of this we
strongly advise you to always check both the current Regulations for relevant
information about the examination, and the VLE where you should be advised
7
of any forthcoming changes. You should also carefully check the rubric/
instructions on the paper you actually sit and follow those instructions.
The purpose of the examination will be to test breadth of knowledge. For
this reason, you are required to answer four questions out of 12 that will
be set. The examination lasts for three hours. That means that you will
have 45 minutes per question, since all four questions will be given equal
weight and you will need to have enough time for your fourth question.
Since you have to answer four examination questions, it is a good policy to
prepare at least six or seven topics just in case you do not get the precise
wording that you want from some of the questions.
It is a good idea to spend at least 10 minutes preparing your answer to
each question, and using 30 or 35 minutes to make three or four key
points in your answer. It is most important that your answer is well
organised and not just a flow of words. A good answer will refer to the
literature and show some understanding of concepts as well as facts. You
should refer to authors quoted by name, but detailed page numbers or
references are not necessary.
Examiners base the questions on the syllabus, but the wording of
questions varies from year to year. For this reason, you will have to
prepare perhaps at least six or seven topics for an examination paper
which will be somewhat similar to the one given as an example in the
Appendix (although different in detail). Simple regurgitation in the
examination of the illustrative material in this subject guide
will be regarded as plagiarism and heavily penalised. You
must adapt such materials in ways appropriate to your chosen
syllabus of study. Examiners will always look unfavourably at
answers that draw solely on the illustrative material provided
in this subject guide.
Remember, it is important to check the VLE for:
up-to-date information on examination and assessment arrangements
for this course
where available, past examination papers and Examiners commentaries
for the course which give advice on how each question might best be
answered.
Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems
Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political

systems
Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter and having completed the Essential reading and
activities, you should be able to:
discuss, illustrate, and critically evaluate the relationship between
political stability, legitimacy and political institutions
state the different definitions of legitimacy, and critically evaluate them
explain the relationship of legitimacy to law and political culture, and
illustrate your explanation with specific examples
deliver a critical evaluation of the ways in which we try to understand
how to operate these concepts in practice.
Essential reading
Connolly, W. (ed.) Legitimacy and the state. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)
Especially the chapter by Weber Politics as a vocation and the chapter by
Lipset Social conflict, legitimacy and democracy [ISBN 9780855206468].
Further reading
Almond, G. and S. Verba The civic culture: political attitudes and democracy in
five nations. (London: Sage, 1989) [ISBN 0803935587].
Almond, G. and S. Verba The civic culture revisited: an analytic study.
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1980) [ISBN 0316034908].
Beetham, D. The legitimation of power. (London: Macmillan, 1991)
[ISBN 0333375386].
Inglehart, R. Culture shift in advanced industrial society. (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1990) [ISBN 0691022968].
Lagos, M. Latin Americas smiling mask, Journal of Democracy 8(3) 1997,
pp.12538.
Linz, J. and A. Stepan Problems of democratic transition and consolidation:
southern Europe, South America and post-communist Europe. (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) [ISBN 0801851580].
Lipset, S.M. Political man: the social bases of politics. (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1983) third edition [ISBN 0801825229].
March, J.G. and J.P. Olson The new institutionalism, American Political Science
Review 73(3) 1984, pp.73450.
Peters, B.G. Institutional theory in political science. (London: Pinter, 1999)
[ISBN 0826452760].
Putnam, R. Making democracy work: civic traditions in modern Italy. (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) [ISBN 0691078890].
Zakaria, F. The rise of illiberal democracy, Foreign Affairs 76 (November
December) 1997, pp.2243.
Introduction
This first chapter is essential to what follows in the guide, and may well
form the basis of the first two questions in the examination. For this
reason, the chapter is more general than the others, and introduces some
necessary comparative concepts, the three most important of which are:
9
democratic legitimacy, institutionalism and political culture.

The point here is to help you to understand the relationship between basic
ideas about the nature of comparative politics and how we should study it
and the more detailed issues discussed in the later chapters of this guide
(such as presidentialism, federalism and electoral systems).
Comparative politics, as discussed here, is generally taken up with the
study of political behaviour within states. It is a neighbouring discipline
to international relations, which deals mainly with relations between
states, although there is often a degree of overlap between the two.
Comparative politics is also, self-evidently, a comparative discipline.
Although by no means all of comparative politics is taken up with the
study of democracies, this subject guide does deal mainly with politics
within democratic systems. Broader issues to do with the process of
democratisation and the threat of democratic breakdown are considered
more fully in 86 Democracy and democratisation.
This course seeks to cover and give examples from some new democracies,
such as those in Latin America, eastern Europe and some Asian and
African countries, as well as from older democracies such as the USA,
Britain and France. There are certainly variations between democracies,
but all democracies have certain things in common. All democracies have:
some form of electoral system and choose their leaders by popular vote
some kind of legislative assembly, although there is an important
secondary distinction between presidential systems (where the
executive is formally separate from the legislature) and parliamentary
ones (where they are closely connected)
some system of decentralisation, giving distinct territories within
the state some powers of self-government, although these can vary
considerably in terms of what they do and whether their powers are
constitutionally guaranteed.
Today, most established democracies are significantly constrained in what
their leaders can do as a result of restrictions imposed by the courts. This
has not always been the case, but it is becoming increasingly true.
Later chapters of this guide will look empirically at how different sets
of institutions work in practice. This chapter looks at some theoretical
justifications for taking an empirical view. It also discusses the limits
of this purely descriptive approach to institutions, and argues that
it needs to be supplemented by theoretical ideas about politics. The
theoretical ideas considered in this chapter have to do with legitimacy,
institutionalism and political culture. These ideas are all relevant
to how we study the actual workings of institutions.
Legitimacy, institutionalism and political culture: the

argument in outline
This section summarises the arguments that will be put in more detail in the
other sections of this chapter.
Legitimacy
The German sociologist Max Weber (18641920) and more modern authors
such as Lipset and Beetham have defined legitimacy in different ways.
However, all authors agree that the basic idea of legitimation is that the
exercise of political authority should be seen as right by those required to
obey it. All states need to be minimally legitimate in the sense of being
supported by some people on the basis of some notion of rightfulness.
10
However, democracies need to be actively supported as well as just passively

accepted, which raises the question of whether there is something called
democratic legitimacy. To say that a dictatorship has a legitimacy problem
is to say that it may be unstable. To say that a democracy has a legitimacy
problem is to say that it is facing a deep political crisis. Can the difference
be explained by the concept of democratic legitimacy? In the contemporary
world order, where superpowers like the United States promote the
expansion of democratic government, democracy may claim to be the only
globally legitimate form of government. However, as we shall see below, the
nature of democratic legitimacy varies from country to country.
Institutionalism
Practitioners of different academic disciplines have understood institutions
in different ways. Most people accept the minimum definition, which is
that institutions have to be understood as enforced rules, as opposed to
rules that exist in principle but are not obeyed. They also accept that rules
can be informal rather than formal; in other words that custom and
practice may be institutionalised even if not written down. An example
of formal rules would be the system of law; examples of informal
rules might be social etiquette. An informal rule, though, is more than
ordinary human behaviour. For example, it may be an informal rule to
remove ones hat in certain places of worship; but to remove ones coat in
a restaurant is simply behaviour (assuming that this is done in order not to
feel hot). Some authors are mainly interested in the more limited question
of how the rules are enforced; others believe that institutions must be
valued (or accepted) as well as enforced, and are interested in the process
by which rule changes come to be seen by people as rightful or alternatively
in the process by which some forms of rule-breaking come to attract
significant support. Here there is a close connection between the value
attached to rules and democratic legitimacy. Are people in democracies
more likely to follow rules because they have given their active consent to
the rule-makers?
Political culture
This is the third general dimension of analysis. Political culture can be
defined as the way in which people think about politics. It is reasonable to
suppose that this is a genuinely comparative concept. People in different
societies think about their political system in quite different ways. Political
culture can be understood, in part, as the outcome of particular historical
processes that translate into different life experiences. For example, why
does Britain have a monarchical democracy and the USA have a
republican system of presidential democracy? One answer to that
question is that most British people want to have a monarchy and most
Americans want to have a presidential system. This is certainly true enough.
However, a fuller answer would come from an appreciation of American
and British history the American War of Independence from Britain, the
discussion over the US Constitution, and so on. Historically, most British
people were able to achieve their rights under the Crown, which was
not true for the Americans. Political culture also allows us to understand
regional variations in politics. For example, in the Nordic region, democracy
has been understood to have a strong element of social equality and this
allows us to contrast Nordic social democracy with more market-orientated
democratic systems.
In stable democratic systems, institutionalisation, enforcement, legitimacy
and political culture tend to reinforce each other. Stable systems do
generally need quite a lot of self-reinforcement. Politics is inherently a
11
competitive activity and there is always some possibility that an ambitious

politician, general or even judge will try to assert their authority beyond
its proper limits. In the absence of reliable law enforcement, political law
breaking or at least the violation of institutional norms might become
common. There is an irony here. Law enforcement agencies exist to
protect the system of laws, but they themselves need to be controlled and
disciplined by other parts of the state. Ultimately, public opinion has to
discipline the law enforcement agencies which, in turn, have to discipline
law-breakers. This virtuous cycle is hard to establish when law enforcement
agencies see themselves as guardians of the overall system, and resist
parliamentary or judicial oversight.
In a stable democracy, the people are both subject to the law and authors
of its enforcement. However, if public opinion is not convinced of the value
of the political system in other words if there is a legitimacy problem
then it may not care whether the institutional norms are violated or not or
may even support some forms of violation. For example, when Peruvian
President Fujimori quite illegally used the army to close the National
Congress in 1992, his popularity went up. Any such lack of concern may
well come from a cultural alienation from the established rules. There are
many examples of political systems which failed to generate democratic
legitimacy. For example, this was the case when the Catholic population
of Northern Ireland came to regard that state as being run by Protestants
for Protestants. However, there is also a problem about how to reform
poorly-functioning democracies. Deliberation, the thought gone into
policy, is essential to every political system. No matter how democratic the
processes by which government are elected, the absence of deliberation
will eventually discredit the system because of its poor performance. Just as
the enforcement of laws requires courts and judges, deliberation requires a
professional civil service and the employment of expertise in the making of
political decisions.
In summary, then, in an ideal world, political culture underpins the
legitimacy of a political system and encourages citizens to both accept
and, where necessary, demand the enforcement of the law as well as such
changes to it as may seem appropriate.
By no means every democratic system runs as smoothly as this suggests.
However, there are a large number of democracies in which it is reasonable
to suppose that the most important political rules of the game are generally
enforced. We can therefore concentrate on what these rules are, how they
work in practice and what their political consequences are likely to be.
For this reason, institutional rules form the main basis for comparison
within this subject guide. While this is a limited approach leaving out
situations where informal rules are more important it is one that still
leaves us plenty to discuss. For example, the rules of presidential and
parliamentary government are quite different. Over time different
electoral systems will produce different types of executive government.
A country that decentralises power to federal units will normally require
a constitution to define the balance of power between the federal
government and those units, and also a constitutional or Supreme Court to
adjudicate conflicts. In other words, the choice of institutions will shape the
nature of politics in any country. Politicians and political activists usually
form themselves into organisations such as political parties or interest
groups to promote their interests. They calculate their best course of action
from the rules, and then pursue their objectives in ways that are predictable
to some extent. For this reason institutional analysis is central
to comparative politics.
12
Activities
1. How should we define political institutions?
2. There is no point in analysing political systems by the formal rules that apply unless
these rules actually mean something to people. Discuss, with examples.
3. What potential advantages are there in studying political institutions from a cultural
perspective?
Democratic legitimacy
The argument above was that political culture underpins the legitimacy
of a political system and encourages citizens to both accept and, where
necessary, demand the enforcement of the law as well as changes when
required. This section explores what kind of legitimacy democratic
states possess. The first point is that it is the state itself, not a monarch,
a president, or a prime minister, that possesses this legitimacy. People
should retain the belief in the worth of the political system regardless of
who happens to be in power. Yet what is the state? Its first attribute is that
it has a legitimate monopoly on the exercise of physical force within its
borders: the German sociologist Max Webers famous dictum was that:
A state is a human community that claims the monopoly of
the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.
(Connolly (ed.), 1984).
Democracy can only exist if a recognisable sovereign authority can, if

necessary, impose itself by force. There would be no point in having a
system of contested elections unless the winners eventually had something
to govern. This monopoly of force is the backbone of state-ness. Where
it is absent, such as in weak states like Afghanistan or Somalia, no system
can be stable. Yet this aspect of state-ness is only a starting point. The
state also has a monopoly on the making of laws and develops special
institutions, such as parliaments, for that purpose. Since the legitimacy
of laws is closely bound up with peoples acceptance of the authority
of the law-making body, there must also be a general perception of the
states presence in society. This may be reinforced by symbolic expressions
of the states existence, such as flags, monuments, or the presence of
rulers on stamps. Finally, a crucial part of a state is its recognition by the
international community. Where states generally refuse to recognise a
political unit, such as with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, we
cannot talk of a legitimate state.There are thus different aspects to the
states legitimacy.
Weber did not reduce legitimacy to any particular form of government.
He was prepared to define monarchies and communist systems as
legitimate, as well as constitutional democracies. Legitimate power in this
context simply means official, rightful power as opposed to the power
of bandits, warlords or insurgents. Thus, Weber would not have agreed
with the French pirate who, early in the nineteenth century, was arrested
and brought before Napoleon. Napoleon asked him what he was doing.
The pirate replied that he was doing exactly what Napoleon was doing,
but on a smaller scale. Weber, and later political scientists, generally
accept that the official, public, power of the state should be considered in
a different way to that of the power of a particular individual or private
group. If democracies and authoritarian forms of government can
be legitimate, the question is whether democracy possesses a special
type of legitimacy. It is generally agreed that a system of government is
legitimate if the majority of people in the country consider it to be the
13
best available form of government. Democratic government requires

legitimacy because it relies much more on self-policing than authoritarian
government does. Competitive elections provide one source of legitimacy
since the public gets the final say on who governs them and can ideally
remove unpopular leaders, so they should be more inclined to support the
system. Beethem (1991) thinks that what differentiates democracies from
non-democracies is that when faced with crises, it is much easier to get rid
of ineffective rulers in democracies. Thus the election of President Obama
in the United States helped renew the legitimacy of the system during an
era of economic crisis. Nevertheless, people can accept the existing system
for negative reasons: fear or apathy, for instrumental reasons (they may
for the moment benefit from the system), or for principled reasons (they
may think it the most appropriate system for them). Democracy could be
accepted in all three ways. Seymour Martin Lipset (1983) thought the
most stable democracies were systems that performed well economically
and had traditional sources of loyalty. Thus Britain has a traditional
monarch and a reasonably successful economy. Democratic legitimacy may
also come from a sense that people have a stronger sense of ownership of
the state. States like Switzerland, which uses the referendum frequently,
allow for a high degree of popular involvement in decision-making. This
brings people closer to the state. The way in which specific institutions
reinforce legitimacy is an important area for study. For example, French
democracy had been very unstable before the 1950s, when President de
Gaulle used presidential powers to resolve a deep crisis over Algerian
decolonisation.
Legitimacy as a comparative concept

Weber believed that different types of states in history depended on
different types of legitimacy. This raises the question of whether the notion
of legitimacy allows us to compare democracies. Some authors believe
that it can. They use figures for electoral turnout or survey results showing
differing degrees of political satisfaction with different democratic political
systems. It has been hypothesised that some kinds of political system
were inherently more likely to suffer legitimacy crises. The collapse of
the Weimar Republic was attributed to the fact that the strong form of
proportional representation produced too many rival parties for a stable
governing centre to emerge. Fascism emerged because democracy lost
legitimacy. As we shall see in more detail in Chapter 3, Linz (1990) has
claimed that presidential government is likely to prove less legitimate
than parliamentary government because of its so-called dual legitimation
problem. Whereas parliamentary systems are generally based on the
doctrine of the sovereignty of parliament, presidential ones cannot be
based on the doctrine of presidential sovereignty. This is because the
congressional representatives are also directly elected. Thus, they have as
great a claim to be considered democratically empowered as the president.
So different institutional arrangements may generate specific notions of
what is legitimate. In the Republic of Ireland, where the constitution was
approved in a referendum in 1937, later amendments to the constitution
have also had to be put to the referendum in order to be as legitimate as
the constitution in its original form. This requirement makes change more
difficult, but gives the people a veto on many important decisions.
In this sense, the referendum reinforces the legitimacy of the system.
14
Activity
For each definition of legitimacy you come across in your reading:
1. Write a short paragraph outlining who has put it forward.
2. State the key element of the definition.
3. Note down any objections that could be made to it.
Institutions as a basis for comparison

Political scientists originally approached comparative politics through
the study of political institutions. Until the 1950s, most political science
was rather legalistic and descriptive and general models were considered
important: American presidentialism or the Westminster system, for
example. However, from the late 1950s some academics abandoned
institutional analyses altogether in search of fresh insights into political
behaviour from disciplines such as sociology, psychology and economics.
Others tended to look at the politics of (somehow defined) groups or
communities rather than focusing more directly on the role of government.
Many of these new departures proved fruitful, but the recent trend has
been to return to institutional studies of politics in a far more sophisticated
way. There are many reasons for this return. Comparative politics is
essentially about comparing patterns of politics in different countries and
is valid once we can show that institutions (their design and operation)
do follow patterns. Some models, the US, for example, have shaped the
institutions of other countries and comparative politics can be the study of
how this system operates in different contexts. Secondly, Lijphart (1999)
has shown that the institutions of modern democracies may be classified
according to whether they accept the majority rule principle or not.
Institutions can thus be compared in terms of how they institutionalise two
versions of popular sovereignty (one based on majority rule and one based
on consensus). Finally, although modern democracies have been produced
by many different processes in some slow gradual evolution, in others
revolutions and wars the range of institutions they can adopt is limited.
Thus, at critical turning-points, societies must choose whether to adopt
parliamentary or presidential democracy, proportional or non-proportional
electoral systems, centralised or non-centralised government. With this
limited range of outcomes we can identify patterns.
One other reason why some political scientists have returned to what
J.G. March and J.P. Olson (1984) have called the new institutionalism
has been the realisation that the character of political society cannot be
explained without taking into consideration how government institutions
work. Group politics, social forces and economic changes may all have
an impact upon what governments do, but the rules of government itself
cannot be reduced to social forces or economic interests. For example,
when the American Civil Rights Movement emerged in the 1960s it was
able to bypass local legislatures in the South and appeal to the Supreme
Court in terms of rights under the US Constitution. When a civil rights
movement emerged in Northern Ireland in a state without a written
constitution, it was unable to make such an appeal and the result was a
direct challenge to the legitimacy of Northern Ireland whose parliament
was then abolished in 1972 in order to defuse the situation.
So the legal and institutional structure of any society will be independently
influential in determining the character of its power relationships.
These power relationships will, in turn, have a considerable impact on
peoples political, social and economic behaviour. Any government of
15
any kind needs to be able to rely on some degree of compulsion, and the
form and nature of the rules that are being enforced will be significant.
There are many circumstances in which free riding may not much
matter in practice. Some formal rules and some government will always
be necessary even in legitimate democratic systems where the laws
themselves are reasonable. For example, a person may try to avoid paying
taxes and hope that others will pay instead, or may drive dangerously in
the hope that others will get out of the way. The basic point is that, if any
form of order is to be maintained in an individualist world, there have to
be rules, backed if necessary by effective enforcement. Legitimacy may
reduce the need for enforcement, and possibly make it easier to achieve,
but enforcement cannot be eliminated altogether. At times governments
seek to pass and enforce laws in order to change peoples behaviour.
Institutions can therefore change culture. In Britain during the 1980s,
for example, the government seriously reduced the power of trade union
leaders by requiring them to hold strike ballots before calling strikes and
by making certain kinds of picketing illegal. This happened despite the fact
that, as many authors believed, Britain had an entrenched and powerful
trade union culture. It is no longer clear that this trade union culture
exists. It was, in the event, successfully weakened by institutional changes
that were deliberately introduced with that end in mind.
The survival of institutions over time

It is a characteristic of enforced rules that they tend to change rather
slowly. There are many reasons why democracies do not often legislate
quickly to change matters of direct political significance, except perhaps at
times of crisis. Ackerman (1997) (see the next chapter of the subject guide
for reference) writes of constitutional moments in American history, when
radical episodes of popular involvement in constitutional politics changed
the nature of the American Constitution in fundamental ways. The postCivil War Reconstruction amendments, which abolished slavery, are an
example. Yet such moments are rare. The American constitution is actually
hard to change, and recognisably the same constitution that was passed
more than 200 years ago. Rules that seemed fair in the eighteenth century,
such as the rule that each state elect two Senators to the Senate, are now
outmoded, but cannot be easily changed to reflect new demographics.
Changing the law takes time, not everything can be changed at once and
it can sometimes be dangerous to legislate in advance of a consensus.
Meanwhile, leaving things unchanged has the advantage that people
are more likely to know what is expected of them than they would if
everything were in constant flux. Another reason for the survival of
institutions is that most people who enjoy the ability to exert power
through institutions will, in general terms, probably be content with the
institutions themselves. It is notorious that political leaders who achieve
power through a particular system are likely to think that this system is
the best available. In Britain, electoral reform has been on the agenda
since the early 1900s. Since the first-past-the-post system has benefited
the two largest parties, and since, up to 2010, these parties dominated
government, it has not been in their interest to change the system. When
reform from above is not impossible, pressures for change are more likely
to come from below or from outside the system altogether. For this reason,
there is a bias against rapid change in most political systems. Indeed
dramatic change, such as the re-democratisation of eastern Europe after
1989 may come about mainly because of international pressure.
16
This does not mean that all institutions can simply be regarded as a
form of political monopoly, where elites manipulate them to preserve
their interests. As noted earlier, a key dimension to our understanding
of political institutions, at least in democratic systems, has to do with
their general social acceptability. Unpopular laws are hard to enforce
and governments sometimes give up the attempt. A good example of
how a democracy can fail to impose an unpopular law was the British
governments disastrous experiment with the so-called poll tax during
the period 19891991. On this occasion the government introduced a
tax change that was very unpopular and widely resisted. Many people
simply refused to pay, and it cost much more to take them to Court than
could be collected in taxes. The unpopularity of this tax was an important
factor explaining why, in 1990, Conservative MPs took the drastic step of
removing Margaret Thatcher from office, despite the fact that she had won
three national elections and still enjoyed a large parliamentary majority.
Soon after Mrs Thatcher resigned, the poll tax was abolished. The fate
of the poll tax brings in again the question of legitimacy and the cultural
values that often dictate how acceptable rules are.
The problem of non-enforced rules

The poll tax example shows that laws can be ignored or flouted to
the point where they become unenforceable. Conversely, informal
understandings can be very significant constraints on peoples actual
behaviour and can certainly be said to be institutionalised when these
understandings determine how people actually behave and what
they believe to be right. It is therefore clear that there is far more to
understanding politics than merely describing how political institutions
work from a formal legal viewpoint. Culture is a critical variable. Most
Latin American countries have presidential systems, but in none does
presidentialism work as in the United States. Institutions differ between
countries, and understanding how institutions work in practice is a core
aspect of comparative politics that requires paying attention to the cultural
and social context. In this next section we will look at the strengths and
weaknesses of the concept of political culture in this regard.
There is, however a fundamental question, which is asked mainly in
countries where democracy is not so well established: Can we compare
countries according to their degree of institutionalisation? As we saw,
Weber believed the legitimate monopoly of physical force over a territory
was an attribute of state-ness, but some states, Afghanistan, Colombia, or
the Sudan, for example, lack this quality.
Rather than saying the states rule is more or less institutionalised, should
we conclude that there are simply different types of state which should
not be compared with normal states? This is a difficult question, and it
is producing a growing amount of research into politics in Latin America
and eastern Europe. In some countries in these areas of the world, the law
is routinely disrespected. For example, people may avoid paying taxes. In
some Latin American countries it is not uncommon for up to 50 per cent of
all tax liabilities to be ignored. Or the legal system may be unable to deal
with common criminals, with the result that vigilante groups or private
law-enforcement systems operate in their place. As noted earlier, in an
extreme case, such as Peru in 1992, a president may simply call in troops
to close the national congress. These examples illustrate the important
connection between state-ness and legitimacy already mentioned.
Democratic institutions need to be powerful enough to get people to
comply, but not so powerful that they themselves can violate the rules of
17
the game. They must be able to exercise the kind of power that gets people
to achieve common objectives with the government, but any government
which requires mainly coercion can lose general legitimacy.
One way scholars have dealt with this area is to use an adjective to
qualify the word democracy in places where there are problems with
institutional enforcement of rules. Examples are Zakarias (1997) concept
of illiberal democracy the idea of a hybrid regime that combines
democratic and authoritarian elements and the concept of weak states.
Weber believed states can enjoy different types of legitimacy and no doubt
hybrid or illiberal democracies combine authoritarian with democratic
types of legitimacy. Another approach has been to develop the notion of
democratic consolidation (Linz and Stepan, 1996). The point here is
that a consolidated democracy requires (among other things) that there be
reliable law enforcement backed by a spirit of constitutional government.
This allows the development of a kind of stability in which the people are
enforcers of the law in certain respects and obedient to the law in others.
Some democracies, namely those where these criteria are not met, can
be classified as non-consolidated. Indeed, some democracies have, if
anything, become less consolidated with the passage of time. However,
we need to know more about the process of democratic consolidation and
de-consolidation. How should we study a situation in which the elected
government of the day cannot govern or one in which governments
routinely break the law without consequences? An answer to this question
will need to address the nature of its legitimacy, the design of institutions,
but also political culture.
Activity
Give some examples of consolidated democracies and non-consolidated democracies.
Show how they differ.
Comparative politics and political culture

Some political scientists (Almond and Verba, 1963, 1980; Inglehart,
1990) have developed the concept of political culture as a basis for
comparative analysis. A countrys political culture can be defined in broad
terms as the way in which its people think about politics. Moreover,
since the way people see their state reflects the nature of legitimacy, the
connection with Webers work is clear. In order to find this out, political
scientists have asked general questions about the attitude of ordinary
people toward politics. However, for the concept of political culture to
be useful, it is necessary to find out in practice what peoples attitudes
toward their political systems actually are. Students of political culture
are interested in discovering the ways in which peoples cultural values
influence their political behaviour and outlook. Can it be said that the
likely stability of a political system can be produced by finding out what
peoples general orientations towards politics are? Here we encounter
some opportunities, but also some methodological difficulties and
frustrations.
Opinion research: empirical problems and methods

Social scientists no longer take seriously sweeping generalisations about
national culture that are not based on clearly demonstrated fact. Good
examples of the kind of work that is taken seriously is the discussion
in Marta Lagos (1997) of the political culture in Latin America and the
wealth of data in Linz and Stepan (1996) on democratic transition and
consolidation. Both are based on a good deal of carefully assembled data.
18
The simplest way of conducting research into peoples attitudes is to ask

them. In order to research social attitudes one needs:
a representative sample of people
some relevant and penetrating questions
some assurance that those questioned are reliable, that is, reasonably
consistent and truthful in their answers.
Once these conditions have been met, modern techniques of data analysis
should enable researchers to produce some reasonably clear findings. In
principle, it should not be too difficult to find a reasonably large crosssection of the population for the sample. Finding the right questions to ask
is more difficult. This is particularly likely to be the case when surveys are
conducted across a range of countries, because subtle linguistic differences
may influence the answers received. In some countries the term nation is
distinct from that of people: in others, like Finland, it is virtually the same.
It is also sometimes difficult to find a question that will accurately capture
an attitude. Nevertheless, this is an area in which researchers have learned
from experience, and the kinds of questions asked today are subtler than
the sometimes rather biased questions which were asked in the 1950s.
The problem of truthfulness

The question of truthfulness is also difficult. Undoubtedly some people
do lie to researchers. They may do so for many reasons. Sometimes the
motive is fear. Under authoritarian systems, people who are allegedly
conducting research and asking questions about politics may be
treated with suspicion. Might these not be police agents in disguise?
The uprisings in North Africa early in 2011 were not expected at least
because the people of those countries could not be relied on to tell the
truth to independent pollsters for fear of official retribution. Furthermore
there was a famous (although perhaps mythical) story of an American
researcher in a Chilean shanty town during the period of the Pinochet
dictatorship. He was shocked to find that 80 per cent of his questionnaire
sample declared that they sympathised with the Communists. However,
it transpired that they were not pro-Communist. They simply wanted
more US aid, and believed that the best way to get this was to threaten to
support the Communists. However, the 20 per cent who said that they did
not support the Communists were the real Communists. They thought that
the researcher might be working for the CIA and did not want to reveal
their true position!
Another motive for deception may be embarrassment. It may be that fewer
men will admit in an interview to beating their wives than actually do so.
A survey carried out in Mexico in the early 1990s found that some 6 per
cent of all husbands told researchers that they did not know whether they
beat their wives or not. Similarly, opinion polls in Northern Ireland have
consistently shown more support for moderate centre parties and less
support for extreme political parties than actual ballot results suggest. It
does seem clear that some people in the region vote for hardline parties
but are ashamed to admit that they do so. Sometimes people may resent
the questioning and give misleading answers out of resentment, or
because they consider it humorous.
These difficulties have not prevented opinion pollsters and others from
accumulating a considerable amount of more-or-less reliable information.
But what questions can usefully be answered with this information? We
can learn a great deal about the nuances of public opinion within existing
democracies. It is not too difficult to break down this information in order
19
to learn more about particular sub-groups within a given society. We can

learn about the political orientations of working class people, middle class
people, Catholics, Protestants, the old, the young, women, people with
different levels of education, and so on. This kind of information is now
considered invaluable to professional politicians and the news media are
likely to be interested as well. Focus groups are just the latest examples of
how politicians use marketing methods to find out about public opinion.
Unfortunately, however, those countries that are not democracies are
also the countries in which public opinion is hardest to measure. Even
when the authoritarianism is relatively benign, it is still sometimes
difficult to persuade people to articulate opinions to strangers if this is not
considered customary behaviour. It is an attribute of liberal democracy,
not of humanity, that adults are expected to have a ready-made opinion on
virtually everything.
Theorising political culture

When we move from methodological to conceptual issues, then a different
set of questions arises. Some theorists of the 1960s did believe that, if
one considered mainly democracies, it would be relatively easy to find
valid connections between peoples orientations toward politics and
the stability of political institutions. However, it has in practice proved
surprisingly difficult to do this. One reason for this has to do with the
nature of comparative politics itself. For comparison to be meaningful, we
need concepts as well as examples. It is not enough to say that in France,
the survey showed X, in Germany it showed Y and in Italy it showed Z.
It is also necessary to give some meaning to these findings. Important
concepts have different meanings in different cultures. Thus if we asked
British and French people were they proud of their state, the answers
might not tell us much, because although there is a recognisable state in
Britain, the concept is not used as much in popular discourse. In France it
is. This brings out Webers point: different states combine different forms
of legitimacy in different ways.
Identifying the kind of political culture in which democracy thrives is a
difficult task. Almond and Verba (1963) originally sought to categorise
different countries political cultures as parochial, subject and
participatory. In principle, this is a good idea. We have already seen
that political institutions work well if societies contain people who are
willing both to participate and obey.
A society where nobody is interested in political ideas (a parochial one),
or a society where people want only to obey and not participate (subject)
or to participate and not obey, is likely to work less well. However, it is not
difficult to show that in virtually any democratic society there is likely to
be some degree of participation and some degree of obedience. However,
what proportion of each is necessary for the political culture
to work successfully?
Almond and Verba may have believed that the optimal proportions of
obedience and participation would become clearer over time, as political
institutions in some countries flourished and others did not. However,
no country that was a developed liberal democracy in 1950 has ceased
to become a democracy since then. We do not know whether this has
to do with culture or their successful economic performance. We simply
do not know what popular orientations, if any, are likely to bring about
the collapse of democratic institutions in developed countries because
there has not been such a collapse since survey work began in the 1950s.
20
Furthermore, the direction of peoples attitudes towards politics has not

been the one which Almond and Verba originally expected. A follow-up
survey (Almond and Verba, 1980) showed that, in the late 1980s, many
people in wealthy democracies were far more cynical and dissatisfied with
their political leaders than they had been at the beginning of the 1960s.
Yet the political institutions themselves remain largely intact.
Variety and change in political cultures

Changes over time, and also differences within societies, make attempts
to theorise on the basis of cultural differences between countries quite
difficult. One question is whether there are greater variations within
cultures than there are between them? For example, Putnam tried to
explain the superior performance of political institutions in northern Italy
compared to southern Italy over time in terms of cultural differences
within Italy. Research in European countries shows that there is far more
variation in political attitudes within each European state than between
the different ones. Almond and Verba were heavily criticised by some
authors, particularly feminists, for failing to point out that most of the
active participants in politics were middle class, middle aged and male,
while those who did not fall into these categories were more likely to be
subjects than participators. Nor is the degree of participation the only
issue. The unit of analysis is itself a problem. One study of how British
people protested against the poll tax in the 1980s, showed that while
people in the south of England generally took to the streets, the Scottish
contested the legislation through the courts. This suggests the existence of
different conceptions of legitimacy even within one protest movement.
A different factor complicating the analysis of political cultures is that global
changes in communications make cultures far more open to each other
than they were a century ago. There can be no doubt that Hollywood films,
American-style fast food, professional sport and various kinds of popular
music have crossed boundaries which would once have been thought of
as fairly stable. In the days of laptop computers, the internet and cable
television, the extent of cultural interpenetration is clearly increasing.
Mass immigration inevitably complicates the notion that there is a national
political culture in each country, and makes shared meanings for concepts
such as community, identity and rights unlikely. It may be that some kinds
of political behaviour that could be explained by the concept of political
culture are now only of historical interest. For example, it has been argued
that the rise of Hitler in Germany can be explained, in part, by the greater
degree of authoritarianism in the political outlook of many Germans.
However, we have no statistically convincing survey evidence that this was
so. Indeed historians have stressed how resistance to Hitler varied according
to social class and religion, and how attitudes were fundamentally shaped
not by culture but by the atmosphere of fear created by the Nazis. Even if
the case against German culture could be proved, it now belongs more to
history than to contemporary politics. A half-century of peace, prosperity
and growing international trade and communication may simply have
undermined the most distinctive features of some European societies,
including that of Germany. It is probable that analyses of political culture
have more to tell us about changes in the public mood in new and emerging
democracies than about old and established democracies.
21
Activity
What have been the major trends in peoples orientations toward politics in the largest
developed democracies since 1960?
Political culture in the new democracies

The past decade has seen the spread of democratisation to countries
that were previously under authoritarian government. This has allowed
public opinion polling companies to operate where they could not reliably
operate before. Empirically the results are quite interesting. Electorates
in southern Europe have adapted quite quickly to the norms of liberal
democracy. Those in most of Latin America have a clear preference
for democracy, but combine this with a pronounced scepticism about
the working of their actual democratic institutions. Voters in East Asia
generally like the idea of democracy but are sometimes unsure about
how democracy is actually supposed to work. In some post-communist
countries support for democracy is weak. One critical factor seems to be
the absence of effective institutions.
Another approach is to use the broad concepts of modernity and tradition
in order to capture the nature of democratic systems outside the west.
Japan represents a case where outside intervention seemed sufficient
to implant democracy in a culture traditionally anti-democratic. So the
question is how western institutions were indigenised in societies outside
the west. So for example, Turkish democracy is both promoted and limited
by its strong state tradition. The legitimacy of monarchy in a democratic
Thailand was closely bound up with the fact that Thailand has never
been colonised. Indian secularism has combined a role for the state in
the overcoming of deep religious divisions, with laws aimed at finding
co-existence between them. Israel has to balance its commitment to being
a Jewish and a democratic state. In Webers terms these states may be
democratic, but they also rely on a traditional source of legitimacy. The
question of how modern and traditional components of a political culture
prove congruent is, of course, not confined to such regions. Lijpharts study
of consociational democracy showed how their central institutions had to
accommodate pre-existing cultural divisions in order to work.
Political culture and history

Any attempt to understand major political transitions probably requires
sensitivity to history and an ability to analyse politics across a range of
dimensions. There is no simple golden key. An analysis of political culture
can help supplement the insights gained from what are called historical
institutional modes of analysis. Evidence from current surveys of
political attitudes combined with evidence of the recurrence of certain
historical patterns might add to the credibility of any theory. This does
not mean that any society has immutable national characteristics which
can be clearly understood from analysing its history. National cultures do
change and history does not necessarily repeat itself. Catastrophic events
such as the Nazi experience in Germany may lead to quite rapid changes
in political culture.
Yet there are also less catastrophic, but nonetheless decisive, historical
moments in any society, when institutions are created or dismantled.
Most states can look back to formative events which set their countries
on a particular path of political development: for example the American
War of Independence, the decolonisation of India, the Swiss Civil War.
These events are often called critical junctures. One example is the Costa
22
Rican Civil War of 1948, which was followed by crucial decisions, such as
that to abolish the army, which established the country as the only stable
democracy in Central America. In the absence of such decisive moments,
some forms of institutional behaviour can continue to exist through pure
inertia. Countries such as India or Ireland, which had once been under
British rule, continue to possess some types of Westminster institutions
despite their success in breaking away from British rule. Continuities can
sometimes be detected where you least expect to find them. The role of
law and legal systems for example, can be very long lasting indeed. The
English crown has been forced to respect individual property rights since
the days of Magna Carta (1215); by contrast, the Spanish crown has not.
As a result, property rights have been institutionalised very differently in
the USA and in Latin America. A good deal of the difference in economic
performance between the two cultures can perhaps be explained by this
fact.
On the one hand, history tells us that every society experiences a critical
juncture. On the other, Lijphart (1984) argues that cultural influences
place a strong limit on states ability to dramatically change institutions.
Despite massive economic growth since 1945 Scandinavian social
democracy continues to be rooted in compromises first made in the
1930s. Devolution, which saw new parliaments established in Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland, has changed the British political landscape,
but the Westminster Parliament has not changed much. Any analysis of
institutional change must acknowledge the power of continuity. Even
where there is a radical break with the past, old patterns persist. Thus
for example, the concept of repugnancy, where a law could be found
inconsistent with a constitution, became a key part of the American
constitution after independence. Yet this concept was also key in colonial
America. The difference was then that the higher law to which ordinary
legislation passed by the individual colonial states had to conform was
British not American.
In summary, the study of political culture can help us explain variances
and adaptations in the way that formal institutions work. The most
successful political institutions are formal sets of rules adapted to the
needs and expectations of a particular culture. If they do adapt we can
expect them to be enduring. For this reason there cannot be one model
of democratic government, or one way of achieving consolidation. Yet
variances in political culture alone cannot explain political institutional
structures because the formal rules do matter. When elites internalise
those rules and profit from them they are unlikely to change them.
However, cultural approaches can help us to understand politics better
than we could by analysing the formal rules alone. Thus, by combining
data on the current state of public opinion
ideas derived from historical study, and
the main institutional rules governing the formal political system
we can learn much more about a countrys politics than we can from
looking at any one of those three things on its own.
Conclusion
The study of comparative politics cannot be divorced from a study of
institutions. This is particularly the case with democracies, because these
operate through institutions whose workings need to be explained and,
having been explained, help us understand outcomes. If the institutional
rules are not clear, or if they are widely resented, then democracy has
23
problems. Not all democratic systems are successful, and not all forms
of politics are conducted according to the rules. There will always be
some degree of rule breaking in any kind of political system. However, in
practice, and with a little bit of simplification, we can combine the notions
of democratic legitimacy, institutions and political culture to form an
intellectual basis for the study of comparative democratic politics. Yet if
we approach the subject mainly by studying rules alone, then there is a
danger that our knowledge can become obsolete. Rules too have to adapt
to a changing environment. Thus a key part of European democracy is
how traditional parliaments have been able to take on board the large
amount of legislation resulting from European integration. However,
political culture and institutional constraints will usually slow down
any rule changes. Political institutions in developed democracies change
more slowly than we might expect, and when they do change they often
retain some surprising continuities. Nevertheless, rule changes can
still be an effective instrument of real political change. When political
scientists can show that particular institutional changes are likely to have
beneficial effects, then they may be able to exert some positive influence
over real politics. For example, there was once a belief that coalition
government was incompatible with strong government. Comparing how
a large number of systems have performed over time has disproved that
assertion, which in turn has practical consequences when it comes to
voting, economic predictions, risk analysis, and indeed choosing what type
of democracy people will live under.
A reminder of your learning outcomes

discuss, illustrate, and critically evaluate the relationship between
political stability, legitimacy and political institutions
state the different definitions of legitimacy, and critically evaluate them
explain the relationship of legitimacy to law and political culture, and
illustrate your explanation with specific examples
deliver a critical evaluation of the ways in which we try to understand
how to operate these concepts in practice.
Sample examination questions

Note: You should use what you have learnt from this chapter and the
readings listed, and what you have learnt from the other chapters, to
answer these questions.
1. There are no such things as immutable national characteristics. There
is therefore little point in studying political culture. Discuss.
2. Under what circumstances, if any, is legitimate democratic government
possible?
3. What are political institutions? Why is it important to study them?
4. How can Webers concept of legitimacy be used in the study of modern
democracies?
24
Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism and political culture
Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism

and political culture
Learning outcomes
explain critically how law and human rights are linked with each other
explain how political culture has been used as a concept in order to
understand politics, and critically assess the relevance of this concept in
different historical and geographical contexts
explain the differences of emphasis between theories which emphasise
individual rights as an explanation for democracy and those which
emphasise collective cultures
explain what judicial review is and how it works in practice
explain how consociationalism works, why the concept has been
developed and in which contexts, and show specific strengths and
weaknesses of this system.
Essential reading
Ackerman, B. The rise of world constitutionalism, Virginia Law Review 83(4)
1997, pp.771797.
Further reading
Booth J. and M. Seligson The legitimacy puzzle in Latin America: political
support and democracy in eight nations. (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2009) [ISBN 97801521734202].
Bowen, J. Why the French dont like headscarves: Islam, the state and the
public sphere. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008)
[ISBN 9780691138398].
1991) [ISBN 9780300049381].
Dahl, R.A. On democracy. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000)
[ISBN 9780300084559].
Fishkin, J. Democracy and deliberation: new directions for democratic reform.
[ISBN 9780300051636].
Lijphart, A. Democracy in plural societies: a comparative exploration.
[ISBN 0780300024944].
OBrien, D. Storm center: the supreme court in American politics. (New York;
London: W.W. Norton, 1999) fifth revised edition [ISBN 0393974928].
McGarry, J. and B. O Leary Introduction: the macro-political regulation of
ethnic conflict in McGarry, J. and B. O Leary (eds) The politics of ethnic
conflict regulation: case studies of protracted ethnic conflict. (London:
Routledge, 1993) pp.141.
Roberts, A. The quality of democracy in eastern Europe; public preference
and policy reforms. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
[ISBN 9780521110334].
25
Introduction
This chapter shows how some of the concepts discussed in the last chapter,
such as democratic legitimacy and institutionalised rule enforcement,
came to be crystallised in the specific arrangements of certain kinds of
democratic system. It also shows how differences in political culture
can cause problems for democratic political institutions and how these
differences need to be managed. Common to both areas is the doctrine
of constitutionalism, and this chapter highlights the important role
constitutions play both in limiting government and managing conflicts.
This chapter starts out by discussing the political values embedded in
democratic institutions. It then goes on to discuss the ways in which
some of these values involve limitations to the political process. It is
important to note that democratic systems embody values apart from
those of majority rule. Without doubt, an element of majoritarianism is
essential to democracy. The principle of voting to establish what the will
of the majority is, must be indispensable to institutionalising democracy.
However, there are occasions in which this principle needs to be modified
in order to prevent negative or even self-destructive consequences. This is
why constitutionalism has become so important.
The successful institutionalisation of democracy requires the acceptance of
three ideas:
Political equality. This means that democracy must involve universal
adult suffrage and regular elections.
Deliberation. This means that decisions taken by governments must
be carefully considered, at a sufficient level of expertise to address
policy issues, and consistent with law. Although those taking these
decisions may be unelected, without deliberated decision making no
democracy can survive.
Fundamental rights should be central to democracy. The
concept of constitutionalism that has gained most ground is originally
American. One of its fundamental principles is that people have
inalienable rights and that it is the duty of the Courts to uphold them.
Minority rights have also increasingly become central to democracy.
This means that cultural differences must somehow be managed so as
to avoid acute or violent political conflict between different linguistic,
racial or religious groups.
The principle of voting does not need much elaboration, although more
will be said about electoral systems and forms of organising the vote in
later chapters of this guide. The need for deliberation, and how it is met
by parliamentary and presidential systems, is also discussed later on.
Hence the rest of this chapter is taken up with a discussion of the role of
constitutions in democracies.
Legitimacy and constitutionalism

Not all states have formal written constitutions, but the vast majority
of stable democracies do. Constitutionalism is an ancient concept,
discussed, for example, by Aristotle in Classical Greece. The modern
doctrine of constitutionalism however promotes the idea that legal limits
of government power are essential to legitimate government. Ackerman
(1997) shows why constitutionalism has become such an important force
in world politics.
26
Constitutionalism has been defined variously; as a technique for limiting

power, as a way of organising power, and as a theory of legitimacy
requiring that all legitimate governments operate under a higher
law. Elements of all three approaches are found in most democratic
constitutions. Some constitutions are easier to amend than others, and
their average life span is no more than two decades. There is the wellknown story of a man who went to a bookshop in Latin America to ask for
a copy of the national constitution: he was told that the bookshop did not
stock periodicals. Other constitutions, like the US constitution, are very
difficult to amend. However, all stable democracies must rely on a body of
law which, whether or not it is formally enshrined in the constitution, both
legitimises the exercise of state power and also limits it. It is the role of
the judiciary to interpret and pronounce upon this law hence the judiciary
has an increasingly important role in democracies. Adopting a new
constitution has also become common in transitions to democracy. Here
constitutions adopt a symbolic role in legitimising fundamental transitions.
Ackerman calls these constitutions New Beginnings.
Liberal constitutionalism
Most modern democracies have constitutions which reflect the influence of
essentially liberal theories of limited government. The idea that democracy
requires generally agreed and independently enforced rights comes out
of a particular political tradition. It is worth discussing this tradition
briefly in order to understand how and why this came about. Historically,
political theorists paid more attention to the question of why people
should willingly obey authority, rather than why they actually do. For our
purposes, the most important formulations of the question of political
obligation came during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
During this period, key European thinkers stopped conceptualising
political authority in religious terms and began to put their theories of
politics upon a secular basis. Machiavelli (14671527) and Hobbes (1588
1679) both, in their different ways, raised the key issue. They both pointed
out that human societies, as collectivities, need government. They need
it in order to protect themselves from the external threat of conquest and
domination by outsiders (Machiavelli), and also from the internal threat of
civil war, chaos and anarchy (Hobbes). Government is therefore necessary
in order to achieve objectives which human beings, acting individually or
in purely voluntary associations, cannot achieve. This is why we should
obey it.
Individual rights and majority rule

But should we obey all governments under all circumstances? Or, if not,
what should we do when a particular government makes itself intolerable?
These questions were not really answered by either Machiavelli or Hobbes,
and they were seen as being of key importance by the next generation of
political theorists. The notion of natural rights was the most influential
idea introduced by those who wished to contain or limit state power. For
example, the right to own private property was seen as a natural right.
Theorists such as Locke (16321704) and Rousseau (171278) sought to
limit the area within which state power could be considered acceptable.
They stipulated that it should not be used to violate individual rights
(as the theory of natural rights was sometimes expressed), or in defiance
of the general will of the people (as it was expressed at other
times). This is an important difference of emphasis, because democratic
institutions do involve some tension between ideas of personal freedom
and ideas of majority rule.
27
The issues raised by these theorists are extremely complex and in many
ways they remain controversial to this day. Natural rights were strongly
championed by the Catholic Church which has led some to believe that the
tradition is outmoded. Most people now accept that individuals are not
automatically born with rights in the same sense that they are born with
a nose or a mouth. The rights that individual people have are those rights
that their societies (in their institutional expression) believe that they
should have. As such, rights can vary considerably between democracies.
For example, the right of parents to choose their childrens education
varies from country to country. Additionally, in most of Europe, murderers
have the right not to be put to death, no matter how heinous their crimes.
There is no such right in the United States where some murderers are
executed.
Nevertheless, the doctrine of natural rights has played an important part
in the institutional development of a number of countries, even though
today people use the term human rights. Both approaches assume the
universality of rights. If a persons human or natural rights are being
infringed, this constitutes oppression, regardless of the nature of each
political system and the cultural values of each society. It also allows
people to appeal to international courts to make judgments against their
governments. Now, most countries follow the US Constitution, which
contains a clear statement of the doctrine that individuals have rights,
which it is the duty of government to protect and not to violate. The
British system, by contrast, did not until recently explicitly contain a
theory of rights, but it certainly includes the notion that the government
must obey the law. However, since the Human Rights Act came into
force in 2000 and the Supreme Court was created in 2009, the British
government has followed most European governments in accepting the
principle that government should be carried out within a framework of
human rights. The change in the British approach reflects the popularity
of constitutionalism as a doctrine in world politics but also the long-term
influence of the American model.
Law and the state in the US Constitution

The American constitutional tradition has been hugely influential in three
respects. First, the US Constitution requires that the government itself
must keep within the law and the Constitution, which set out certain
inalienable individual rights. The law and the Constitution were to be
independently safeguarded by a judicial power. The government was
therefore only a part of the state, and one that had ultimately to accept
legal authority. This remained just as true of popularly elected government
as of the previous monarchical system. For this reason the courts, notably
the Supreme Court, have become central political institutions, with
elections to the Supreme Court now commanding much public attention,
just as those to the other branches of government. Secondly, the notion
of judicial review became crucial. This was developed decisively in
the Marbury v Madison case heard by the Supreme Court in 1801. The
principle of judicial review allows the Supreme Court to hear and decide
upon arguments that a particular law or official policy is unconstitutional
even if the law was passed or policy carried out under procedures that
were entirely correct. The Court can do so on the basis that the law or
policy violates the rights of individuals as set out in the Constitution.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court is not bound by precedent. If a majority
of the justices so decide, they can overturn the Courts own previous
decision about what is and what is not constitutional. This gives the
judiciary enormous power. The third way in which the American example
28
has mattered is in its insistence that all democratic government must

take place within the concept of a fundamental law to which all parts
of the state, states like California or Nevada for example, are subject.
Americans pledge allegiance to their flag and constitution, giving their
constitution a deeply symbolic role in their countrys history. The concept
of a fundamental law has found its way into many European states. Its
translation into basic law in Germany or grundlaw in Scandinavia suggests
its importance in Europe.
The US Constitution has not always lived up to the highest hopes of
those who took the idea of human rights seriously. Slavery was only
abolished in the USA in 1865, after a long and bitter war. Subsequently,
racial discrimination was inherent in the political practice of much of the
country until (at least) the 1960s. Furthermore, there have been times,
notably in the 1930s, when the Supreme Court appeared identified
with social reaction, since it invalidated certain measures that the
Roosevelt administration believed were necessary to cope with the Great
Depression. Nevertheless, the idea that civil rights for individuals exist
independently of the will of society at any one time is generally accepted
today. Indeed, it is probably more widely and genuinely accepted today
than it was when the US Constitution was originally drawn up.
Changes in the European tradition

At the time that the US Constitution was drawn up, the idea that the
law was above government was not universally accepted. There was a
clear divergence between American ideas and practice and that of most
of Europe. Nineteenth-century parliamentary government developed in
Europe under the influence of entirely different concepts. There was much
more emphasis on majoritarian forms of government. The essential
principle here is that government should be disciplined by its need to
adhere to the will of the people as expressed in elections, rather than by
adhering to certain independently specified, legally enforceable rights. In
Britain, parliamentary sovereignty, which ruled out a law-making power
higher than Parliament, was the central doctrine. In France, democracy
was associated with the general will a republican concept. Neither
tradition conceived of democracy as a system of checks and balances.
The European tendency after 1800 was for constitutions to place more
emphasis on giving power to the legislature than to the executive.
Democratic parliamentarianism was designed as a means of giving
government popular backing, not as a means of limiting it, by introducing
checks-and-balances. Government should express the will of the people
and its power should be both legitimated and limited by some kind of
mandate from the people. The crucial links between citizens and the
government were political parties, which should seek general popular
approval for a coherent and ideologically based set of policy proposals.
This was definitely the Lefts conception of democracy but appealed also to
other parties, Liberal, Catholic and Conservative, who were competing for
the popular vote. The Courts and the permanent state bureaucracy had to
accept that political power came from the ballot box and only secondarily
from the Constitution. The mandate received through elections should not
be frustrated by unelected courts.
Activity
List the checks-and-balances features of the American system that were not generally
present in European democracies, prior to 1945.
29
The breakdown of pure majoritarianism

There is a lot of discussion about the relative merits of parliamentary
and presidential systems of government. Many parliamentary systems
in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s were overthrown by forms of nondemocracy. This is not to say that presidentialism would necessarily
have been more resilient presidential democracies in Latin America
broke down even more often. The problem in Europe may not have been
parliamentarianism so much as some of the pressures to which it was
subject. In 1914 virtually every national parliament voted to support
its countrys involvement in the First World War (191418). This was a
major blow to confidence in democracy. In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution
in Russia radicalised much of the European Left and led it to reject
the parliamentary process. After 1919, conservatives across much of
continental Europe rejected democracy in favour of so-called modernising
systems of authoritarianism. By 1939, most of the new states created
after 1918 were under authoritarian rule. Finally, the rise of Hitler led
to an even more disastrous European conflagration than there had been
between 1914 and 1918. The Second World War (193945) saw egregious
abuses of individual and minority rights which led to a shift in emphasis
towards the judicial protection of rights when Europe was reconstructed
after 1945. This was exemplified by the Basic Law of the Federal Republic
of Germany with its strong commitment to democracy and human rights.
Ackerman would see this constitution as a classic example of a new
beginning.
The inter-war period (191839) thus saw a massive crisis of
democracy and one consequence was a renewed interest in Americanstyle constitutionalism. Following the end of the war, parliamentary
democracy was restored in much of continental Europe. However,
this time the victorious Allied powers (notably the USA) insisted that
Western European countries accepted a much more powerful concept of
independent law enforcement. West Germany and Italy set up powerful
constitutional courts, and virtually all European countries accepted the
European Court of Justice. The American conception of the constitution
as a fundamental law was already present in the different languages of
European constitutions. The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany
establishes democracy and federalism as two cornerstones of the system
that cannot be legally changed. The post-1945 system of parliamentary
democracy, underpinned and (where appropriate) disciplined by an
effective judicial power, seems to have worked. As a result, virtually all
European governments can now be ordered to take, or to desist from,
particular courses of action as a result of judicial decisions that limit
parliamentary sovereignty. The idea, first officially expressed in the US
Constitution that government should operate under law, has therefore
spread beyond the USA presidential system into parliamentary systems.
This reflects the political prestige of the United States, and its desire after
1945 to impose political arrangements upon Western Europe that would
avoid the risk of a repetition of Fascism or war.
The constitutional movement Ackerman describes can be attributed to
the need for such documents to symbolise dramatic moments in history.
Yet the constitutional era he describes also reflects slower processes
of international integration. Since the 1950s, the development of the
European Common Market and then the European Union has also
put limits on national, and therefore parliamentary, sovereignty. Such
international political cooperation has also limited the role of purely
30
national legislatures. While the European Parliament was designed to

enhance European democracy, it has not really done so. Instead, policy
has been made through a set of internationally agreed institutional
arrangements that are remote from popular sovereignty. This has had both
positive and negative consequences. On the positive side, human rights
are much better protected from the excesses of state power than they
were before 1939. Those aspiring to membership of the European Union,
such as Turkey, have to reform their political standards to meet European
standards of human rights. The European principle that there should be
a strong independent judiciary facilitated the transition from dictatorship
to democracy in southern European countries such as Spain, Greece and
Portugal. The post-communist democracies of east and Central Europe
adopted new constitutions that satisfied the minority rights standards of
the Council of Europe and other international bodies. Constitutions do
not so much express hopes for the future as being motivated by fear of the
previous regime. Whereas the democratic constitutions adopted after the
First World War generally wanted popular self-government, judicial review
and the legal protection of rights have become much more mainstream
since 1945.
The consequence is that constitutionalism has become one of the most
popular doctrines in world politics. On the one hand, this reflects the
need for states to integrate into international institutions and satisfy
international legal norms. Thus, as Ackerman (1997) notes, the connection
between constitutions and treaties has become central. In Europe the post1945 period has seen a considerable increase in international economic
integration through trade, capital movement and the exchange of
ideas and these all need to be governed by some system of law. Clearly,
countries that wish to participate in globalisation and most do wish to
do so have to accept treaties and agreements that limit their sovereignty.
Constitutionalism has become a functional requirement of contemporary
global capitalism. If trade, investment and commerce generally are
to flourish internationally, they require international understandings,
otherwise traders and investors will not commit themselves. These
understandings, in turn, require enforcement via international institutions.
If individual parliaments were able to over-ride international agreements
on the ground of popular sovereignty, the global economic order would
soon come under threat.
Ackerman (1997) attributes the rise of world constitutionalism to
international integration, and to the fact that, with the dramatic moments
in recent world history decolonisation, the ends of wars and the
transition to democracy the symbolic role of constitutions has become
more important. Constitutions have come to mark new beginnings
symbolising fundamental transitions in the life of nations, as did the
American Constitution after independence. As a result, the ways in
which they shape the development of political systems have multiplied.
The American Constitution did not just provide a way for the different
American states to cooperate further, it also played a role in the shaping
of national identity, by expressing principles which were to guide the
development of the American state over the next centuries. As a result,
the connection between the constitution and national identity remained
strong. The importance of preambles, giving expression, as in America, to
the purposes for which states are founded, is an example. Recent history
also gives us many examples of the symbolic role of constitutions in
renouncing the past and committing states to new values. The constitution
represents a new beginning in several ways.
31
1. After decolonisation, constitutions like that of India marked the

achievement of Indian independence and gave the courts great authority
over its interpretation. For example, within the context of a religiously
mixed society, the Indian Supreme Court plays a major role in interpreting
the meaning of secularism in India.
2. After the experience of totalitarian rule and war in Germany, the Basic
Law of 1949 establishes the principle of democracy as essential to the new
states identity and prevents any party or movement using democratic
processes to undermine the system, as did Hitler in the 1930s.
3. After the collapse of Communism, practically all the countries in east
and central Europe passed constitutions symbolising the achievement
or restoration of national sovereignty after the experience of Soviet
domination.
4. After the collapse of Francos regime in Spain, the Spanish adopted
a constitution in 1978 which symbolised the determination of all the
different cultural and linguistic peoples in Spain to live together on the
basis of consensus and pluralism.
5. As part of the peace process in Northern Ireland, the 1998 Belfast peace
agreement represented a departure from the tradition of seeing democracy
in terms of majority rule, as has been the case when the Northern Irish
Troubles began, and established rather a power-sharing government
between nationalists and unionists subject to strong judicial review.
Activity
Find other examples of constitutions which mark new beginnings.
Constitutionalism in practice: limitations on democracy?

A consequence of the worldwide popularity of constitutionalism is that courts
have become more important in democratic systems. Since judges are not
elected this raises certain problems, but first lets consider the ways in which
the judiciary acts. The role of the judiciary varies between countries, but two
very different kinds of judicial role can be identified.
The first of these roles is to make sure that the law is actually obeyed.
1. Members of a democratically elected government are normally, although
not invariably, subject to the due process of law. Even in South America,
where the role of the judiciary has not been particularly well developed
until recently, there have been several presidential impeachments for
corruption since 1990. In European countries such as Italy and France,
the punishment of senior political figures for corruption or other offences
is seen as scandalous but nevertheless it sometimes happens. In France,
however, the president cannot be investigated for personal misconduct
while they are still in office.
2. The second role, which (as we have seen) does not apply in all countries,
is that of judicial review. As we have already noted, judicial review is the
process by which judges may declare laws themselves unconstitutional. We
also saw above that, after the Second World War, the Americans used their
influence in countries that they occupied to impose this process. Japan,
Germany, Austria and Italy all have systems that provide some scope for
judicial review. The European Court of Justice also has the right to review
legislation.
Judicial review normally allows aggrieved citizens to petition for redress
if they believe that their rights have been violated. Judges have to base
their decisions on what comes before them, but eventually find themselves
32
making binding decisions on the key issues of the day. One of the finest
hours of the US Supreme Court came in 1954 when it ruled racial
segregation in schools unlawful. The US Supreme Court has had to rule
since then on issues such as abortion (which was approved under certain
circumstances), capital punishment (also approved) and on the rights of
American-born children of undocumented immigrants.
The character of judicial review is different from that of simply upholding
the law in another respect. It is very important for everybody that the
law is relatively predictable. In some countries, with a tradition of civil
rather than common law, judges are not formally given a law-making
role at all. In common law countries such as Britain, there is an area
of legal interpretation that is left to the judiciary. However, precedents,
once set, are binding. By contrast, the US Supreme Court is not bound by
existing precedents and can quite legitimately change its mind on issues
brought before it. As a result, controversial issues tend to remain live
and constantly debated. Nevertheless, judges in both systems are aware
that the law has to be predictable. Even where judges are free to reverse
previous decisions, they are also aware that too much judicial activism
can damage the reputation of the whole system.
This is because of what people call the counter-majoritarian nature of
judicial review. In providing checks and balances there may be something
to be said for unelected judges reversing the decisions of popularly elected
legislatures. In practice if this happens frequently it can lead to accusations
of bias or political interference. Judges, like voters and political leaders,
have personal opinions and are also influenced by the culture in which
they live. They are normally male and drawn from elites. In many
countries, such as in Britain, the left in the 1970s was very suspicious
about giving power to so many unrepresentative men. These men could
continuously block progressive legislation passed by a democratically
elected parliament. This would amount to a form of minority rule.
The concept of human rights backed by a powerful and independent
judiciary was one answer given to the question raised by theorists
such as Locke and Rousseau (discussed earlier in this section):
How can we protect ourselves from arbitrary or inappropriate authority?
For this reason, the concept has great appeal. Because human rights are
generally conceived of as universal, this leads to pressure within countries
for states to protect such rights, and to pressure among states to develop
international instruments for the protection of rights. Yet the countermajoritarian dilemma of judicial review speaks to a wider problem in
the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy which must
be addressed. The relationship between the two is not always a mutual
one. The great theorist of American democracy Robert Dahl reflected
that in its history up to 1956 the American Supreme Court had struck
down legislation designed to expand rights far more often than it struck
down legislation restricting rights. Constitutions obviously place limits
on majority rule and can prevent progressive legislation being passed.
They can also be notoriously difficult to change, and can result in the
values of one generation being forced on subsequent generations. So for
example, it was once thought democratic that each state in the United
States elected two senators to the Senate. Now small states like Utah have
the same representation in the Senate as a huge state like California, but
this anomaly cannot be legally changed. In other societies, constitutions
can have the effect of removing certain issues from public debate. In
the Republic of Ireland, abortion cannot be fully legalised because it
requires the constitution to be amended by referendum, but successive
governments would rather avoid the issue rather than take a stand on it.
33
Activity
Find other examples of how constitutions can be incompatible with democracy.
Constitutionalism, political culture and cultural conflict

Ackerman (1997) writes of two dominant forms of constitutionalism.
Another source is the need for a Constitution to provide for co-existence in
societies that are divided in terms of ethnicity and nationalism. In classic
western political theory the individual is the citizen and the constitutions
main role was to protect individual rights. An alternative intellectual
tradition identifies nations political communities with a common
culture as equally important actors in politics. Theories of nationalism
differ from liberal theories because they start from the premise that the
community (that is, the collective) rather than the individual, should be
the starting point of practical analysis. Political authority is inappropriate if
it is culturally inappropriate rather than universally inappropriate. For
example, according to this view it is quite reasonable for the sale of alcohol
to be allowed in Britain, but forbidden in Saudi Arabia, because that is
what the culture requires. Indeed, provided that it is not taken to extremes,
some notion of cultural appropriateness seems entirely reasonable.
The intellectual roots of politicalcultural analysis can be traced to the
eighteenth and nineteenth-century theorists of nationalism who identified
cultures, rather than individuals, as their central unit of analysis. As
discussed in Chapter 1 of this subject guide, people have different
orientations towards politics, and these orientations are generally defined
as political culture. Many manifestations of particular cultures can enrich
political life or are, at worst, harmless to it. However, there are some
circumstances in which serious problems can arise. This can happen
particularly when religious, linguistic or ethnic orientations become
divisive factors. The danger is that a unified society will break down into
two or more antagonistic camps and that everything will be judged in
political terms by its relationship to this underlying conflict. At worst the
result can be civil war and political breakdown. A distinction must be
made between majority and minority conflicts where the minority merely
wants more influence within the state and those where the minority wants
to secede and form its own state. Many believe that there is no democratic
solution to the latter type of conflict.
Cultural differences do not necessarily have direct political consequences.
Yet when combined with nationalism, culture can be an explosive force.
In the twentieth century the ideal of self-determination has had a strong
appeal in world politics and forms part of international law. Yet states are
reluctant to interpret this law as meaning that self-determination gives a
right to secession and there are few examples of successful secession. This
means that most states have to manage cultural conflicts within their own
states and raises the question of what self-determination can mean for
minorities within this context. Minority rights can be thought of as a long
continuum ranging from some form of cultural autonomy to power sharing
between different groups. It may be helpful to begin this discussion
about political culture and cultural conflict by looking at the more benign
aspects of political culture before moving on to consider conflicting ones.
The discussion will conclude by looking at a possible way of resolving
such conflicts, and at the way in which this can be done, by limiting the
principle of majority governance.
34
Culture and politics

Without doubt there are many aspects of any culture that need not be
directly related to politics. Many of these are moral or social issues.
For example, the culture helps to determine how children are brought
up and educated. Marriage ceremonies, or the lack of them, will be
important. Some cultures tolerate adultery, or homosexuality, or both;
other cultures fiercely disapprove of them. Cultures also differ in their
attitude to women: are they considered subordinate to men or as equal
and independent members of the community? Funerals and the burial of
the dead is another area in which the shared values of a given culture are
expressed. There are also leisure pursuits that may differ between cultures.
We have already noted that some cultures are tolerant of alcoholic drink,
whereas others are not.
At least some of the items in the above list will be seen by some people
as political. Certainly the law will determine whether and under what
circumstances adultery, drunkenness or homosexual behaviour are
permissible and to that extent these issues are indeed potentially
political. However, people may nonetheless wish to get married, have
affairs, divorce, or consume alcohol without intending to make political
statements of any kind. It would be an extreme view to say that such
activities are necessarily political.
Just as politics may intrude into some peoples private lives, so there may
be pressures in some cultures to turn what might be considered voluntary
activities into forms of political statement. Sometimes these kinds of
statement can be designed to build or reinforce a consensus. For example,
intellectuals and others may try to reinforce a societys cultural identity by
writing history in a particular way, or by presenting folkish myths about
the societys distant past. Sporting pursuits such as international football
matches are another way in which people can be persuaded to express
their identification with a particular national culture.
It is not only in the context of major decisions that cultures and subcultures influence the way in which people act. People meet regularly
to exchange gossip, friendly conversation and their evaluations of the
world. This process tends to induce conformity, since some kinds of
social behaviour will be approved of and emulated, while others will be
disapproved of and, in extreme cases, punished. Psychological research
has shown that people are very responsive to barely noticeable cues that
they receive from other people. Once some kinds of cultural values have
been established, therefore, there are likely to be strong social pressures
designed to keep them in place.
Activity
Give some examples of how the laws of particular countries reflect the culture of
their citizens.
Political culture and conflict

This importance of culture raises the question of how the classic tradition
of western constitutionalism can be applied to a world where relationships
between different cultural groups have become more and more important.
It is largely the western constitutional tradition that Ackerman and Sartori
were writing about. This issue follows first of all from the process of
decolonisation, which in the single case of the British Empire, created
over 60 new states, most with culturally mixed populations. Just as
constitutionalism has popularised notions of human rights, concepts of
35
self-determination, group autonomy, and minority rights have also become

popular. So much so that in western Europe since 1945 there is increasing
pressure on states to recognise minority cultures in various ways. This has
meant that constitutionalism, as in the liberal tradition, may no longer
be concerned primarily with the relationship between the individual and
the state. Individuals may want to make claims for rights on the basis of
their membership of specific cultures. This results in different demands for
constitutional recognition. The UK now has separate although not equal
parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Immigration has
also changed the cultural makeup of the European states. Germany, whose
citizenship laws were very restrictive, has had difficulty integrating its
large Muslim minority. France has banned women from being fully covered
in public. Britain allows faith schools which have a religious mission
and selection criteria but which receive public funding. The problem of
integration is compounded by the fact that the ease of foreign travel and
internet communication make it possible for people to continue to live
(mentally not physically) in their culture of origin.
The revival of cultural forms of politics posed a challenge for mainstream
western thinking about politics. The first problem is that western
conceptions of rights and obligations privilege the individual as the unit of
analysis. Yet there are cultures where the family or the community is more
important. A person from an Asian culture arriving at a British airport
may be shocked to find that their individual right of entry to Britain does
not apply to their whole family. Secondly, western states differ greatly in
the public role they accord to religions, while outside the West, religion
still provides a stronger basis for political affiliation. Not all western states
separate Church and State, but most western societies have become more
secular. The problem now is that non-Christian minorities may regard their
religious identity as central to their value system. Thus, when Switzerland
voted by referendum to limit the amount of mosques that could be built,
this was interpreted as an infringement of minority rights by Muslims. In
this context, states struggle to find a balance between the accommodation
of cultural difference and the goal of political integration. Very specific
issues, such as whether to require immigrants to acquire competence in
the states language pose clear practical challenges, but are also political.
The issue of political integration has become especially salient since
the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. It is no surprise that the pre2010 Labour Governments interest in promoting Britishness through its
citizenship laws and educational policies followed the realisation that
many actual and potential suicide bombers in the UK were actually Britishborn. In this context it is fair to say that the ideal of multiculturalism, that
the state should be even-handed towards all cultures and support their
flourishing, is beginning to decline.
The problem with not accommodating cultural differences is that
minorities may become alienated. In many circumstances, differences
in political culture can be quite limited and minor in their effect. Many
Spanish migrants to France, Polish migrants to Germany, and Jewish
migrants to Britain had little difficulty being integrated. However, where
there are conflicting loyalties within societies, such conflicts can be
quite serious and possibly a threat to democracy. Not all minorities want
secession but, nevertheless, cultural differences within a democratic state
can create political problems. Inequality among ethnic groups is also
a significant factor in many civil wars in the developing world from
Guatemala, to the Philippines and the Sudan. A successful social order
requires some sharing of values among the majority of members of the
36
society in question. Otherwise the legal and participatory dimensions of

even the most scrupulously liberal democracy may come to be seen as
largely meaningless by those excluded from the dominant culture. Many
French-speaking Quebecois in Canada, Catholics in Northern Ireland and
Basques in Spain are seriously disaffected with political systems that are
widely considered to be at least reasonably law enforcing and democratic.
The conflicts that have followed are now decades old. The political
situation of Northern Ireland has been greatly complicated by the desire
of many members of the Catholic minority to unify Northern Ireland with
the Irish Republic. Similar issues arise in the Basque region in Spain where
a minority of the citizens wishes to be part of an independent Basque
republic. Another example of similar problems lies with the desire of some
of the citizens of Quebec to leave Canada and set up an independent state.
There have been a whole series of severe conflicts that arose from the
break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Similar problems exist with the Tamil
conflict in Sri Lanka, the Kurdish minority in Turkey, and the north/south
divide in the Sudan.
Nations and nationalism

It is therefore clear that ethnic and religious conflicts have at times created
difficulties for democratic, and indeed non-democratic, governments.
Individuals may live in harmony under laws, but it is a more difficult
question as to whether quite different communities can live in harmony
under the same laws. If a territory contains people of different religious
principles, different linguistic groups or different ethnic backgrounds,
democratic institutions may polarise attitudes and result in the imposition
of the will of the majority upon the minority. For some, democratic
government requires consensus on the political unity which is to be
governed democratically. For the people to rule, one must first decide who
the people are. The easiest answer to this is to see that the majority are
the people. This answer confers on the majority a sense of ownership of
the state. Thus the Irish state is the property of the Irish. Malaysia is the
property of the Muslim Malay population and so on. Not all minorities
will accept this situation. Some states, like the Sudan, were deeply divided
before becoming independent. In others, like India, the Muslim minority
did not want to be part of one political community. Even where there
is consensus between communities during the founding of a state, as in
many African states, differences between communities eventually grow.
Cultural differences have existed for centuries but it is only in the modern
era that they have been given their decisive quality by the ideology of
nationalism. Before the French Revolution, people thought it natural
that they belonged to a specific culture, but the idea that each culture
should be self-governing is indisputably modern. While cultural groups
may have had autonomy in empires such as the Ottoman Empire, they
had no right to self-determination, and it was only after the First World
War that this concept became accepted. The result has been to change
international politics beyond recognition. States are less likely to want to
protect minority culture if they feel the minority wants self-determination.
Minorities for their part have the option of pressing for independence if
they feel their state mistreats them. As a result, the majorityminority
dynamics that are present in all democracies, express themselves in the
form of ethnic politics.
The problems posed by ethnic conflicts are huge. When society is divided
by divisible resources, such as money, there can be compromise because
what is valued can be divided. It is harder for groups to compromise over
37
territorial integrity, national sovereignty, and symbols of state identity.

In Turkey the state reserves for itself the right to celebrate the Kurdish
New Year Nevroz, but denies this right to some groups. How then can
such conflicts be resolved? Ideas of natural rights and constitutional
government, if institutionally effective, may help to prevent polarisation,
but the pure majoritarian theory of democracy does not give sufficient
weight to the problem of disaffected minorities. Nor does the doctrine
of majority government help much if the majority chooses to behave
badly. Where the divisions are moderate, and the minority feels part
of the nation, the majority may feel in a sufficiently strong position to
make concessions. Thus since 1919 Swedish-speakers have had extensive
rights and autonomy within Finland, with their language recognised as
a national language. When communism collapsed in eastern Europe,
the Finnish experience of two language groups within one nation was
regarded as a model for the new states that emerged.
Outside of Europe there are many political problems today that result from
the frustrated desire on the part of some citizens to be part of a different
territorial state. Modern civil wars tend to occur where inequalities
between ethnic groups are pronounced, and where insurgents can have de
facto control of territory. The international community generally accepts
the right of secession, provided that the secessionists can claim majority
support from their own region. The division of Czechoslovakia into the
Czech Republic and Slovakia is a case in point. However, it is not always
the case that a given territory can be neatly divided into a series of subunits in such a way as to create a neat opportunity for division. Were
Catalonia and the Basque country to secede from Spain it is not clear
where the new borders would lie, especially as there is no map image of
Spain that leaves out these regions. Any system of partition may leave
vulnerable minorities on both sides of the line and the record in Palestine,
India and Ireland has been one of continued conflict.
Federalism, a less drastic solution than secession, is also sometimes a
potential way of managing cultural division but is also open to the same
objection. There is not generally a neat fit between people and territorial
boundaries. It is therefore necessary to try to find a means of managing
cultural conflict in a single territorial unit.
Consociational politics
Attempts have been made to find ways of managing and limiting political
differences. The best known of these is consociationalism. The central
idea is that members of particular sub-groups are treated separately for the
purposes of representation. The central government becomes an automatic
coalition involving representatives from both (or all) sides of a cultural
gap. In Northern Ireland, for example, Unionist politicians (who are
mainly Protestants) and Nationalist politicians (who are mainly Catholics)
are regarded as representatives of separate communities and are required
to share power if the regions executive government is to function.
Coalition, in other words, is inevitable. Such a consociational system has
also worked in Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Consociationalism can be an asset to conflict resolution. It does sometimes
work well but not inevitably. However, there is a price for success. This
is that every voter has to accept that the government has to be made up
in part of people (on the wrong side of the political divide) whom that
voter did not support and for whom they would not willingly have voted.
Furthermore, in consociational systems, political parties are likely to be
38
seen as representatives of a particular community or group. This makes it

much less likely that they will face electoral rejection as a result of poor
policy performance. If all communities are represented in such coalitions
it is hard to see where a strong opposition can come from. The assumption
that political stability requires power sharing between the communities
that are most divided, may result in the solidification of the divide that
led to conflict in the first place. Under such circumstances, some of the
potential advantages of democratic competition cannot easily be realised.
Historically, when faced with culturally divided territories, states have had
to decide whether to eliminate these cultural divisions, through forcible
assimilation or population transfers for example; or manage them, by
employing constitutional ideas and institutional forms that depart from
the idea of majority rule. The evidence suggests that only in immigrant
societies can a strategy of assimilation be compatible with democracy.
Where minorities are concentrated in territories with distinct histories,
it is harder to change peoples loyalties. Under such circumstances, the
nature of democracy must change: from a system where one united
community rules itself, to one placing a higher value on co-existence. Since
1978, Spain has been a good example of the latter, since its constitution
allows for high degrees of self-governments to many regions, and three
distinct identities; the Basques, the Catalans, and the Galicians. Three
decades later, however, the constant need to adjudicate between the
claims of different groups and regions, can lead to polarisation and can
be frustrating to people who hoped that the constitution adopted after
General Francos death symbolised a desire to move on.
Managing rather than ending cultural divisions requires superconstitutionalism. Even in homogenous societies a workable balance
between democracy, constitutionalism and culture is hard to achieve. In
ethnically divided societies the balance often requires long negotiation
and complex agreements. Thus, in states like Canada many would prefer
French Canada to go its own way, rather than have such a tortuous
process. Yet the connection between constitutionalism and identity points
to the symbolic aspect of politics in all states. Only societies that have
reached high levels of maturity can be unaware of this aspect, which
speaks to the essential aspect of democratic politics, the link between
people and their state. When societies adopt a constitution the decisions
they make on such issues have fundamental consequences. When Turkey
became a republic it was only as a secular republic that it could mark its
break with the Ottoman past. It was then decided to make secularism part
of the constitution in such a way that it could not be legally abolished.
More than seventy years later, in what is a de facto Muslim country, this
decision shows more than anything else the importance of symbolic
politics in the life of democratic politics.
Conclusion
This chapter has considered two different kinds of limitation on pure
democracy. They are mirror images of each other, since both doctrines
of law and rights and consociationalism are potentially means of
resolving problems to which a simple doctrine of majoritarianism has
no effective answer. There are good reasons for both, but each one
undermines notions of democracy as majoritarian rule. Constitutions,
courts and coalitions limit the rights of majorities. Ethnic or linguistic
divisions make majoritarianism dangerous but systems of judicial
review and consociationalism do reduce popular choice. Nevertheless,
39
constitutionalism has become a popular doctrine in world politics as the

ideas Ackerman describes are being extended all over the world.
This is a good place to reflect on some of the complexities of political
institution building. Democracies should reflect the will of the people.
However, it is not enough that they should do so. They have to pose some
limits on the will of the people in order to contain certain kinds of conflict
and also to protect individual rights against excessive majoritarianism.
Constitutions in particular have to both empower the people and find
ways of limiting peoples power. There are no hard-and-fast rules here,
and different systems try to resolve these complexities in different ways.
This is a reflection of the different histories of different societies. It also
reflects the fact that democracy is best understood as an amalgam of
various elements, in which popular sovereignty is only one. In the next
four chapters we consider different ways of organising democracies.
When assessing these, it is not just a matter of deciding which systems
are better than others at reflecting the popular will. We have to assess the
performance of institutions against a variety of considerations, some of
which may indeed be in conflict.

explain critically how law and human rights are linked with each other
explain how political culture has been used as a concept in order to
understand politics, and critically assess the relevance of this concept in
different historical and geographical contexts
explain the differences of emphasis between theories which emphasise
individual rights as an explanation for democracy and those which
emphasise collective cultures
explain what judicial review is and how it works in practice
explain how consociationalism works, why the concept has been
developed and in which contexts, and show specific strengths and
weaknesses of this system.

Note: You should use what you have learnt from this chapter (and the
readings listed), and what you have learnt from previous chapters, when
answering these questions.
1. What are the main strengths and weaknesses of basing Constitutions on
doctrines of individual rights?
2. In what ways has the constitution of the United States influenced
constitutions in general?
3. Why has constitutionalism become such a popular doctrine in world
politics?
4. The answer to problems posed by conflicting political sub-cultures lies
in a strong conception of individual rights. Discuss with reference to
two countries.
5. What are the advantages and drawbacks of consociational
arrangements in countries where there are deep cultural conflicts?
40
Chapter 3: Comparing executives: presidential and parliamentary systems
Chapter 3: Comparing executives:

presidential and parliamentary systems
Learning outcomes
distinguish between presidential and parliamentary political systems of
democracy, and list the basic principles that underlie each system
explain how presidential and parliamentary systems work in different
countries, including the relationship between executive and legislature
show some of the variations that may occur between (a) different
presidential systems, and (b) different parliamentary systems of
government, and illustrate these variations with practical examples.
Essential reading
Linz, J. The perils of presidentialism, Journal of Democracy 1 1990, pp.5169.
Elgie, R. From Linz to Tsebelis: three waves of presidential/parliamentary
studies?, Democratization 12(1) 2005, pp.10622.
Elgie, R. The perils of semi-presidentialism: are they exaggerated?,
Democratization 15(1) 2008, pp.4966.
Further reading
Lijphart, A. Parliamentary vs presidential government. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991) [ISBN 0198780443].
Linz, J. and A. Valenzuela (eds) The failure of presidential democracy.
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) (2 volumes)
[ISBN 0801846404].
Mainwaring, S. and M. Shugart (eds) Presidentialism and democracy in Latin
America. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
[ISBN 0521576148].
Introduction
So far, we have been concerned mainly with defining and discussing
institutional constraints and conditions that are common to most
democracies. We now need to consider some of the different ways in
which democracies are organised. One of the most fundamental ways
of contrasting different kinds of democratic system is by dividing them
into presidential and parliamentary systems. The presidential system
of government was essentially invented in the USA at the end of the
eighteenth century. This guide therefore takes the US system as
the main example although there is also significant material on
Latin America. Presidentialism was then imported by the Latin American
republics in the 1820s and after and also proved attractive to some
although not many of those countries which democratised after 1980.
Parliamentary democracy was invented in Europe in the nineteenth century.
41
The concept of presidentialism

The origins of presidentialism
US-style presidentialism was an adaptation of the British monarchical
system of the late eighteenth century. At the time when the USA
successfully fought for its independence, the British monarch effectively
controlled the executive, in practice as well as theory. The purpose of
Parliament at that time was not to choose the executive the monarch
was the executive but to exert some influence over it, principally
through control of the budget. The British judicial system had also come to
represent some restriction on the power of the monarchy by the end of the
eighteenth century, although judges were only empowered to interpret the
law as it stood, not define it according to abstract principles. By the early
nineteenth-century, the role of parliament was also to reflect the state of
educated public opinion.
Basic principles of presidentialism

The US Constitution replaced the monarch with a president elected
by the people. At the same time presidential power was limited by
increasing the powers of both local government and the Supreme Court.
The fundamental idea was that there should be a system of checks and
balances. Both the President and Congress would be elected directly
but according to different systems, so that each could provide a check
on the other. The two houses of Congress (that is, the House of
Representatives and the Senate) would also be elected via different
systems and have different electoral terms. The House of Representatives
has elections every two years, while a US senator has a six-year term,
with one-third of the intake subject to re-election (should they seek it)
every two years. Disputes between President and Congress would be sent
to the judicial branch for resolution. Meanwhile there would be a strong
system of decentralised government in order to limit the power of central
authorities. The US system has changed only to a limited extent since it
was set up at the end of the eighteenth century, and is generally regarded
as a pure presidentialism. The President, once elected, operates on a
different level from the Congress. You need to be aware that different
presidential constitutions give the Presidency different degrees of power
over Congress. In some systems, the president may have the means of
coercing congress for example, by decreeing legislation directly or by
refusing to spend the congressionally approved budget. By comparative
standards, the power of the US President is rather limited in these ways.
Under pure presidentialism the cabinet is composed of people who do not
sit in the legislature. It is entirely normal for independently influential
figures to be given positions in the cabinet. However, the president is not
generally expected to bring senior members of their own party into the
cabinet. (This does happen in parliamentary systems.)
The congress has its own leadership and may have a majority made up
of the presidents political opponents. There may be rare occasions on
which it is possible for a congress to impeach a president (in other words,
order their removal from office). However, this is generally hard to do
and normally requires evidence of misconduct rather than just policy
failure. The presumption is that the presidency is one thing and congress
something different. A president can continue to operate without a
majority in congress on the basis that there is enough party indiscipline or
room for negotiation to prevent the emergence of two hostile blocks. In
the US system, when there is irreconcilable conflict between President and
42
Congress, this is likely to be resolved by an appeal to the judiciary. The US

Supreme Court is, among other things, the highest constitutional court.
Presidentialism in Latin America

The newly independent Latin American republics adopted presidentialism
as a system during and after the 1820s. However, Latin American
presidentialism lacks the same strong constitutional foundations as
existed in the United States and has so far proved somewhat unstable.
The problem is that Latin American presidentialism relied more on the
conception of strong leadership than on checks-and-balances democracy.
Because Latin American presidents often do see themselves as leader
figures, conflict often arises between president and congress. In the USA
this can be handled by the court system, but the Latin American courts
are not generally respected enough to be able to do this. Instead, conflict
can sometimes bring in the military, as happened in Peru in 1992 when
President Fujimori closed the national congress by force. Presidential
impeachment has also been much more common in Latin America than
in the USA. The re-emergence of presidential democracy in Latin
America in the 1980s has given rise to a significant scholarly literature
about the advantages and disadvantages of presidentialism that will be
discussed in the next section.
Presidentialism in Europe: the case of France

A different form of presidentialism was adopted in France after 1958.
Despite some initial scepticism on the part of observers, the French system
has turned out to be very effective. France is now generally regarded as
having a semi-presidential system. It is presidential in two important
senses. One is that the head of state and the parliament are both elected
directly by universal suffrage. The other is that the elected president has
real powers of government. (As a contrasting example, Ireland has a
directly elected president with few governing powers, and the Irish system
is generally seen as being parliamentary.) However, the French system
is only semi-presidential because the president and parliament, despite
being elected separately, have overlapping roles. There is an interactive
rather than a separate relationship between President and Parliament.
The French president is more powerful when they enjoy a parliamentary
majority because the president can then select the prime minister, who
is largely responsible for the day-to-day management of the country.
However, when the presidents party does not enjoy a parliamentary
majority, then the president has to work with a prime minister who is
selected by the parliament. If relations between the two break down,
then the president can call for new parliamentary elections although
this would not help the presidents position if the opposition parties won.
In fact, there have been cases in which the president has represented one
party and the prime minister a different party, and co-government has
taken place without undue difficulties.
Presidentialism did not adapt to take account of the development of
full-scale parliamentarianism in several European countries in the
nineteenth century.
The concept of parliamentarianism

Modern parliamentarianism was only created when the monarch lost
effective power over government. This allowed the executive to be chosen
by the people. In Britain, it is still the case that government takes place
in the name of the monarch. However, it is entirely possible to have a
43
parliamentary system in a republic. All that is required for democratic

parliamentarianism is for the government to emerge from, and be
responsible to, an elected parliament. Democratic parliamentarianism
requires universal suffrage. Parliamentarianism of itself does not require
universal suffrage, but the restricted franchises typical of the early
nineteenth century gradually gave way to universal suffrage.
A parliamentary system depends for its success on the development of
some kind of party system. This means that individuals elected to
parliament, although capable of showing independence in various ways,
can be relied upon to support a particular prime minister. This makes
it possible for elections to produce a government that can command
a parliamentary majority. When a government loses the confidence of
parliament, there is always the possibility of new elections. Parliamentary
systems have evolved in different ways in different countries; however, the
role of political parties is key.
For stable government to be possible, the executive (the government)
must be able to control the legislature (parliament). If it cannot do so,
then either the government changes or else parliament is dissolved and
new elections held. Political parties have to act in a disciplined way in
order to allow the system to work. They have to act as key intermediaries
between the ordinary voter and the government. If a prime minister is
very unpopular, it is the governing party that is likely to suffer in the
elections. By the same token, if a political party wishes to change its
leader within the lifetime of a parliament, then there are likely to be
means by which this can be accomplished. This is not so clearly the case
in presidential systems where presidential impeachment is generally
possible but generally requires evidence of wrongdoing rather than
merely unpopularity or policy failure. The British Conservative Party in
parliament removed Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1990 because of
policy failure, although there was no suggestion of wrongdoing.
By way of summary, the basic linking system of parliamentarianism is that
electors vote for parties, parties are represented in the legislature, and
the legislature selects the government. In pure parliamentary systems, the
prime minister is also a member of the legislative body as is the rest of
their cabinet. There may be some provision for non-parliamentarians to
join the cabinet, but this is relatively rare. Pro-government members of the
legislature are expected to support the government through good times and
bad, sometimes hoping in return to be promoted into the government itself.
While independent representation is not generally forbidden,
parliamentary systems do rely mainly on strong and disciplined political
parties as a means of connecting voters to government. The existence of a
few independent members of the legislature does not threaten the system,
although it may occasionally cause headaches for particular governments.
However, it is hard to see how parliamentary government could work well
if there were at any time a large number of independent parliamentarians
whose voting behaviour was completely unpredictable.
When a legislature cannot produce a majority for a government, then
the legislature can be dissolved and fresh elections held. Because of the
importance of party structures, opposition parties are likely to constitute
themselves as an alternative government, with their own policies, internal
promotion procedures and expectations of loyalty from their supporters.
Where there have been party factions capable of changing their minds
almost every week, the result has been quite negative for parliamentary
systems. Weak parties have resulted in legislative paralysis and frequent
changes of government, as happened in Italy for many years.
44
Comparing presidential and parliamentary systems

We saw above that presidential systems, in contrast to parliamentary ones,
are characterised by separation between the executive and the legislature.
For this reason, party systems are much more critical to the working
of parliamentary systems than they are to presidentialism. Members
of congress are not expected to have a unified view to the same extent
expected of parliamentarians, since they are not directly responsible for
the election or survival of the government.
While there is a party system in the United States, no candidate has
successfully won election as an independent. In Latin America, by contrast,
the relationship between the president and party politics has been highly
problematic. In the relatively recent past, independent candidates have
indeed won presidential elections in Latin America, famously including
Alberto Fujimori in Peru in 1990 and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1998.
Semi-presidentialism, too, makes it possible to create political parties
around powerful individuals.
Presidents and congress are elected for fixed terms, unlike parliaments,
which are normally elected for a maximum term but can be dissolved
before the end. Presidential systems sometimes have president and
congress elected at the same time for the same fixed period although this
need not be the case. In Peru, the complete Congress and the President
are elected for five-year terms at the same time. In other cases, there is
some degree of overlap including, as we have seen, in the United States.
In a presidential system, parties can be weaker without damaging the way
in which the system works. Whether they are actually weaker or stronger
depends upon contingent factors. These include, but are not limited to,
electoral systems. It is common in Latin America for congress to be elected
according to systems of proportional representation and for the president
to be elected on a first-past-the-post basis. This can create complications.
Moreover, strong and disciplined parties can pose problems for
congressional systems because of difficulties that can arise if a president
faces the determined opposition of a congressional majority. The idea
of presidentialism is that policies can always be negotiated individually.
To turn everything into a show of strength between government and
opposition something quite normal in parliamentary systems may be
bad for presidential ones. An individual member of congress may perform
better service by keeping in touch with their constituency and acting as
a representative. If enough congressional representatives do this, then
this can prevent the out of touchness that sometimes results from the
over-deference of legislators to a strong party machine. Moreover, the key
political relationship is much more likely to be between the president and
the people (in other words, the popularity of the president of the day)
than between the presidential and the opposition parties.
Broadly speaking, a parliamentary system is designed mainly to determine
what the government is, while a congressional system is designed mainly
to influence what the government does.
The advantages and disadvantages of each system

Each of the two systems has certain advantages. The most important
advantage of a parliamentary system is that a prime minister can be
removed without great upheaval. A prime minister can be forced out
of office if they become excessively unpopular or lose the support of
parliamentary colleagues. The removal of Mrs Thatcher as British Prime
45
Minister in 1990 could not have happened in a presidential system

unless there had been (which there was not) an issue of personal probity
involved. In parliamentary systems, either a vote of no-confidence within
the legislature or a successful challenge from within the ruling party can
bring about a change of prime minister. By the same token, parliamentary
systems normally give the government the right to dissolve parliament
and call new elections if problems of governability arise. The removal
(impeachment) of a president is sometimes only possible if there is some
accusation of criminal misconduct. The problem of having a head of
government who is unpopular politically, but cannot easily be removed, is
that they become a lame duck (that is, relatively powerless).
An important critique of the defects of presidentialism has been provided
by Linz (1990). Linz was extremely critical of presidentialism because
of what he calls the problem of dual legitimation. In parliamentary
systems, voters choose a single legislative/executive body namely
parliament. (There may be separate elections for local or regional
government but these need not concern us at this point.) In presidential
systems voters have to choose twice, once to elect the president and
once to elect the congress. Thus, if president and congress disagree, they
can both claim a democratic mandate. The only way of resolving any
problems that arise lies through the courts. As a result, there are few
political (as opposed to judicial) means of resolving conflicts. Where
judicial systems are traditionally weak and not much respected, as is
mostly the case in Latin America, the result is conflict and the potential
for polarisation. As we saw above, if intractable problems of governance
arise in a parliamentary system, then parliament can always be dissolved
and new elections held. However, presidential systems involve fixed-term
incumbencies. Should a crisis arise, it can cause legislative paralysis until
the end of a particular term.
Although Linz does not deal much with electoral systems as such, there is
a further point here that might strengthen his case. One of the problems
here is that, typically though not invariably, Latin American countries
choose their presidents by simple majority or by a French-style run-off
system in which the leading candidates after a first round of voting face
each other in the second round. This is not unlike the Electoral College
system in the USA (described in Chapter 4 of this guide), although it is less
likely to generate anomalies. However, in Latin America (though not in
the USA) congress is often chosen according to some form of proportional
representation. Unless the president enjoys strong party backing in the
legislature, this means that the president is often likely to find themselves
in a minority. This makes it much more difficult to legislate than would be
the case in a parliamentary system.
Activity
Evaluate the force of Linzs criticisms of presidentialism.
Advantages of the presidential system

Linzs argument has proved controversial. Defenders of presidential
systems such as Mainwaring and Shugart (1997) make several points
in their favour. One advantage is that it makes politics more personal.
It may have been the case in the past that voters responded primarily to
ideologies and political ideas, but today it seems evident that they are
more likely to be motivated by the prospect of voting for or against an
individual. Parliamentary systems, particularly those which have
46
first-past-the-post electoral systems, can produce personal styles of politics.

However, in parliamentary systems characterised mainly by coalitionbuilding, consensual figures are likely to emerge rather than charismatic
leaders. This is not inevitably a disadvantage in policy terms, but it might
have the effect of making those already less interested in politics even less
inclined to participate and vote.
Differences between presidential systems

However, the main direction taken by defenders of presidentialism has
been to focus on the detail of presidential systems. Presidential systems
can be sub-divided in a number of ways.
Is there a directly-elected vice-president? The United States has such a
figure, while in most Latin American countries it is the legislature that
decides who will succeed if a president dies suddenly or is removed
from office. If the legislative choose the successor, then the principle of
separate spheres is weakened.
Are there provisions for presidential impeachment? In the United
States, presidential impeachment is difficult and has been rare. Only
one US president has been forced to resign in the knowledge that he
could not avoid removal from office by Congress: this happened in the
case of Richard Nixon in 1974. The requirement that a president can
only be removed by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate makes removal
difficult, because the presidential party is almost certain to control
at least one-third of the Senate. If it votes solidly for the president,
then the president cannot be removed. However, in Latin America,
impeachment has happened more frequently, partly because party
systems are weaker. Moreover, the rules have sometimes been stretched
to allow for a presidential removal even when there are not quite
enough votes for impeachment. In 1997, the Ecuadorian Congress
removed the President on the ground of mental instability. This move
required only an absolute majority of the congress and not a two-thirds
majority. In 2002 the Argentine Congress forced President De La Rua to
resign due to his failed economic policy: there was no suggestion that
he had done anything criminally wrong. So it does seem fair to say that
Latin American presidentialism is a system that is still in the process
of evolution.
At a more detailed level, there are questions about presidential vetoes.
Can a president veto part of any law that they dislike, or do they have
an all-or-nothing choice between vetoing the whole of a law and
vetoing none of it? This has implications for presidential power.
Does a president have emergency power to legislate by decree? This
power is largely unknown in the United States but common in Latin
America. Argentinas President Menem used to wait until Congress
went on holiday and then declare that emergency situations allowed
him to legislate by decree. A great many laws were passed in this
way. The Brazilian President, too, has significant power to legislate
by decree. The right to decree legislation tends to reduce the danger
of legislative deadlock, but it also dilutes any principles of checks and
balances. A president who can just decree what they want is largely
immune to congressional criticism.
The same point, namely that a lot depends upon the detail, can be made
about parliamentary systems. There is a general point that, as we have
seen, strong political parties are obviously important to a parliamentary
system. We have also seen that this is not necessarily the case with
47
presidential systems. Parliamentary government may work better when

there are multiparty systems and a system of proportional representation,
although there are disadvantages here as well. However, there are
political scientists who recommend such a system because it is, for the
most part, consensual and inclusionary. However, many other points are
either disputed or else depend upon a particular set of circumstances. For
example, there is a lot that could be said about different kinds of electoral
system, a topic discussed in the next chapter.
Parliamentary systems tend also to reward parties that can maintain
internal discipline and unity and, depending upon the electoral system,
which are acceptable as coalition partners. It can perhaps be disputed
whether this is an advantage or not. On the positive side, a parliamentary
system can make it easier for international agreements to be made and
kept to. When an American president agrees to an important trade
agreement such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) or
North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), it is far from assured that this
will be ratified by the Senate. European heads of government rarely face
uncertainties of this kind.
Against this, however, the greater independence shown by congress
may make for more effective scrutiny of the administration. Members
of congress have their own budgets for research and can provide
well-informed criticism of particular government actions or policies.
Parliamentary systems are not usually as effective at scrutinising
governments due to the inhibiting effect of party discipline. The result
can sometimes be foolish legislation. Excessive party discipline can, more
generally, be the enemy of outspokenness or integrity. Parliamentarians
have often been required to do things which they knew were wrong, or to
keep quiet when they wanted to speak out, in order to keep in line with
their colleagues and to avoid losing their opportunity to win promotion.
On the other hand, political discipline is an enemy to political corruption,
as it is a waste of time trying to bribe somebody who has no real choice
about what to do.
It is interesting that pure presidential systems have not historically worked
as well outside the USA, whereas parliamentary or semi-parliamentary
systems have been exported more successfully to other countries. This is
probably because the American system relies heavily on an autonomous
and powerful judiciary to resolve such differences as may arise between
the branches of government. We have already considered the politics of
entrenched rights and system of judicial review in Chapter 2. As also noted
earlier, the US Supreme Court owes its existence to a doctrine of natural
(individual) rights, which was historically linked to the emergence of
presidentialism, but is not logically connected to it. It does seem clear that,
without a consistent judicial role, the tendency for congressional systems
to deadlock is difficult to prevent. Parliamentary systems are, by contrast,
more likely to work harmoniously within themselves provided that there is
a basic working consensus to keep them going.
Activity
Describe some of the variations that may occur between a) different presidential systems
and b) different parliamentary systems of government.
48
Conclusions
We can reach three conclusions about presidential and parliamentary
systems.
1. Most systems are deeply embedded in a countrys history. This
is not just true of Europe and the USA but also of Latin America
(which adopted presidentialism in the 1820s), and of countries
that were colonies of Britain after Britain adopted democratic
parliamentarianism. Virtually every British colony that became
independent after 1832 adopted some form of parliamentarianism.
Where systems are deeply embedded, then it is largely pointless
advocating major change. For example, nobody seriously supposes
that the USA will adopt a parliamentary system or a constitutional
monarchy, just as nobody supposes that Britain will soon adopt a
republican presidential system. Some new democracies have had to
make a choice. Russia is one of the few to have adopted a strong form
of presidential government, although it is still theoretically semipresidential. Poland and Taiwan have semi-presidential systems while
much of the rest of eastern Europe adopted parliamentarianism.
2. Not only do cultural preferences largely determine whether a
democracy is run on parliamentary or presidential lines, but they also
determine many details about how it is run.
3. It is possible to engineer the rules of a political system in ways that
can make quite a lot of difference. Changes to the electoral system are
likely to have major consequences. Quite small and seemingly obscure
rule changes to such matters as budgetary procedures have quite
considerable political consequences.
It is difficult, although not impossible, to codify the most important rules
of different political systems and engage systematically in trying to analyse
how they interact. Full understanding, however, requires us to bear in
mind that political systems are products of political cultures and not just
sets of formal rules. We could not understand a system if we knew all
the formal rules of the game and nothing else. It would be like trying
to understand football or cricket just by reading the rules rather than
watching or trying to play.

By the end of this chapter, and having completed the Essential reading and
distinguish between presidential and parliamentary political systems of
democracy, and list the basic principles that underlie each system
explain how presidential and parliamentary systems work in different
countries, including the relationship between executive and legislature
show some of the variations that may occur between (a) different
presidential systems, and (b) different parliamentary systems of
government, and illustrate these variations with practical examples.
49

1. Latin American presidencies tended to be unstable. Discuss with
examples from at least two countries.
2. Parliamentarian systems of government have been adopted with
greater success than presidential ones by other countries. Do you
agree? Support your argument with examples from at least two
countries that became democracies before the 1980s.
3. Why might parliamentary systems have a greater appeal than
presidential systems to the newly democratic countries of
eastern Europe?
50
Chapter 4: Electoral systems and party systems
Chapter 4: Electoral systems and party

systems
Learning outcomes
explain the relationship between referendums and representative
government, and assess the limits of this relationship
show the relationship between political parties and electoral systems,
show the advantages and drawbacks of specific electoral systems,
and discuss the argument that electoral systems produce specific
party structures
show the kinds of conflict that can occur between the idea of
democracy within political parties and competitive democracy within
the country as a whole
explain critically the relationship between popular participation and
political stability
discuss recent trends in the role of political parties in new democracies.
Essential reading
Lijphart, A. Patterns of democracy: government forms and performance in
thirty-six countries. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999)
[ISBN 9780300078930].
Further reading
Downs, A. An economic theory of democracy. (New York: Princeton Hall, 1997)
[ISBN 9780060417505].
Duverger, M. Political parties: their organizational activity in the modern state.
Translated by B. and N. North (London: Methuen, 1978) third edition
[ISBN 0416683207].
Panebanco, A. Political parties. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
[ISBN 0521314011].
Sartori, G. Parties and party systems: a framework for analysis. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976) [ISBN 0521291062].
Introduction: organising political representation

In this chapter we look at systems of representation. For many years,
political theorists did not regard this as a major issue. Early democratic
theory, whether based on the Athenian city-state or on the Swiss cantons,
was based on the idea of small-scale societies where relatively simple
decision-making was possible. Today all societies are complex and many
countries are very large. They also have to accept certain restraints
in the way they treat other societies, restraints which inevitably limit
what democratic electorates can do. These factors create organisational
restrictions on what can be done. Obviously, it would be quite impossible
for all the citizens of the USA to attend the same meeting, or even a
handful of different meetings. While any democracy requires freedom
of speech, it is in practice impossible for every citizen to exert an active
51
influence on politics. Nobody could listen to every fellow citizen, or even

to every fellow citizen who wanted to speak out.
Referendums and their critics

For this reason, and others as well, all democratic societies involve some
element of representation. For systems that do not want to rely excessively
on representation, there is an alternative mechanism, which is the
referendum or plebiscite. Under such a mechanism citizens are given a
direct vote on whether they want to support a particular policy measure
or not. The Swiss system, famously, is the one most based on referendum.
A number of American states have what is in effect a referendum system,
mostly notably in the case of California. In other countries, such as Britain
and France, referendums can take place under certain circumstances but
they tend to be relatively rare.
Arguments against referendums

There is, invariably, some element of conflict between referendums and
the concept of representative government. Opponents of referendums
say that they may reveal incoherent citizen preferences: for example,
voters may want low taxes and high state spending. They also say that
referendums can have a divisive effect within political parties that need
to remain united in order to govern effectively or to mount an effective
challenge to the government. Furthermore, it is hard to reconcile a
system of referendums with involvement in a complex set of international
agreements. In this context it is worth noting that the political systems
that have come closest to government by referendum are Switzerland and
some states of the United States. However, in the American case, both
foreign and economic policy are handled by the Federal government and
are not part of the referendum system. Switzerland is also well known for
having very limited foreign policy ambitions. It is not a member of NATO
or the European Union and state policy is one of strict non-intervention
and neutrality. Opponents of referendums are particularly concerned that
these might prejudice the ability of a country to carry out coherent foreign,
defence and economic policies. These are areas where a reputation for
policy inconsistency can be damaging, particularly if this is based on a lack
of expert knowledge.
In many democratic systems, there is also some degree of elite suspicion
of pure majoritarianism. It is believed that majorities are sometimes
narrow-minded and intolerant, and sometimes unwilling to accept
necessary change. Switzerland was slow to give women the vote, and has
consistently made it difficult for foreign-born inhabitants to enjoy the full
benefit of citizenship. It has little foreign policy, and has sometimes acted
with a lack of generosity when faced with international moral obligations.
In California, big business interests that can afford superior access to the
media often win referendums. It may be better, so the argument goes, for
professional politicians and administrators to have the power to introduce
necessary innovations. For example, the right of abortion was extremely
unpopular when first introduced into Britain in the 1960s and the USA
in the 1970s. Most people now accept, if somewhat reluctantly, that this
right is necessary to avoid worse outcomes. However, if innovations prove
unpopular after a period of trial, they can be modified or abandoned.
Arguments in favour of referendums

The danger of arguing against too much popular involvement in politics,
of course, is that democracy has obvious virtues as well as some potential
52
vices and by limiting the importance of popular franchise, there is a

loss of both. Moreover, some quite valuable political work is done by
referendums in matters that are significant to many people, but which
are not of first-rate national importance. Referendums can help reduce
the barriers to changing some laws as public opinion and popular
culture change.
Activity
Consider in detail any recent referendum campaign. How far has it borne out the
arguments of supporters and critics of referendums?
Why all representative systems are imperfect

There is not the space here for a discussion of democratic theory. However,
three points should be made. The first is that some democratic value
is inevitably lost in the organisation of democracy. This can be seen as
agency loss, meaning that there is an inherent tendency on the part of all
representatives to do what they themselves want, rather than what those
to whom they answer want. There are different ways of trying to get round
this problem, but none of them is ideal. The British political philosopher
Edmund Burke (17291797) once argued that it was not necessarily the
job of a parliamentary representative to do what his constituents wanted,
but rather what the representative believed to be right. However, this
argument does not get around the problem, which stems from the fact that
there are inevitably multiple influences upon any individual politician.
If parliamentary representatives were responsible to nobody at all, then
stable parliamentary government would become impossible. In fact,
parliamentary representatives respond to a mixture of public opinion,
personal preference and organisational discipline. It is probably both
inevitable and desirable that no single one of these influences should be
paramount all of the time.
Secondly, not everybody regards popular input into the political process
as an unmitigated good. Many people (although not all) who genuinely
prefer democracy, do so in the belief that some limits have to be set on
popular participation because experts sometimes genuinely do know best.
For this reason, it would be controversial to recommend that democracies
evolve in ways that make them more democratic for example, by
referendum. We have to deal with a genuine conflict of values.
Thirdly, the growing requirements of international cooperation and
international legal obligations put limits on the scope of any kind of
internal political process. There are many things that governments might
want to do but are unable to do because of their involvement in particular
international arrangements. For example, a number of European countries
no longer control their own currencies. They cannot have independent
monetary policies no matter how much they might want to do so.
Parties and electoral systems

As we saw in the previous chapter, in parliamentary systems, the key
instrument for linking voters with government is the political party. Parties
offer ideologies, images or less often specific policy proposals. Voters
decide whether or not to vote for them. In presidential systems, parties
are sometimes looser constructions, but most presidential systems are also
based on party systems. Successful parties either win presidential elections
or achieve a majority in the legislature and are therefore in a position to
form the government.
53
However, the relationship between parties and electoral systems is

extremely complex. One reason for this is that there is not necessarily an
easy fit between party strengths and the sustainability of a particular
government. There would be no problem if one party always received an
outright majority of the vote, or if two parties captured virtually the whole
vote between them. However, when a number of parties divide the vote in
varying proportions, then several kinds of difficulties arise. For example,
obtaining a definite result with a clear majority; giving each
party involved its proper weight in proportion to the votes
cast, and so on. The next section of this chapter looks at how
different electoral systems attempt to solve these problems.
Majoritarian (first-past-the-post)
Broadly speaking, there are two different ways in which these difficulties
can be dealt with. In Britain, some former British colonies (although not
Ireland or Australia) and the USA, the electoral system is deliberately kept
simple. The country is divided up into a number of constituencies and
each constituency sends one representative per election to the legislature.
Each voter votes once and the candidate with the most votes wins. (The
Electoral College system used in US presidential elections is a variation on
this theme.) This kind of system is known as first-past-the-post.
Advantages of majoritarian systems

One advantage of this system, which strongly favours the larger parties,
is that it usually produces a clear result. This enables voters to link a
particular party with an unpopular government and inflict a clear-cut
defeat on such a party. However, clarity is bought at the price of some
distortion. Smaller parties tend to lose out unless they have a strong
geographical basis and are rarely strong enough to make a major
impression upon government. The problem facing small parties without a
defined geographical base is that they tend to achieve a string of second
place or third place results without winning many constituencies. On the
other hand, small parties that do have a strong regional base may indeed
enjoy significant electoral success.
Another characteristic of the first-past-the-post system is that it ties
individual legislators to particular geographic areas. This means that
each constituency has one (or more) representatives. This can be helpful
because legislators are often asked to help constituents in a number of
ways that go beyond the remit of party politics. In Britain, a Member of
Parliament (MP) will normally hold a surgery, a set time during which
anyone with a problem is welcome to see them. They are not expected
to help only their own supporters. A good constituency MP may add to
their level of electoral support, since a small but potentially significant
number of voters may support them for personal reasons rather than out
of party loyalty. There are systems of proportional representation which,
at the price of some complexity, do seek to establish a link between a
representative and a constituency but the link is not generally so clear cut.
Disadvantages of majoritarian systems
54
One disadvantage of the first-past-the-post system is that it distorts

popular preferences and it allows the stronger of the (usually) two
dominant parties to win elections outright with only a minority of the vote.
Britain has a first-past-the-post system, and only two elections since 1945
have failed to produce a governing party with a working majority. On the
other hand, no party has at any time during this period achieved as much
as 50 per cent of the vote.
There is also an important anomaly in some first-past-the-post systems.

It is possible to design either a presidential or a parliamentary system in
which the outcome of the election would depend purely on the number
of votes cast. The French presidential system works in this way. However,
the United States presidential system is based on the principle that the
victor of a presidential election must win a certain number of states the
precise number varies according to their population and electoral weight.
The technical mechanism is the so-called Electoral College, according
to which each state of the Union has a certain number of votes, which
are expected to be cast for the winning candidate. What determines the
election of the president is the majority in the Electoral College rather than
the relative or absolute majority of votes cast. It is technically possible for
a candidate to be elected to the US presidency with fewer votes than their
main opponent, provided that they win enough Electoral College votes.
This is exactly what happened in 2000 when George Bush defeated Al
Gore in the Electoral College despite having won fewer votes. The decisive
state, Florida, produced a wafer-thin majority for Bush and a suspicion
that he might not have won at all if it were not for the confusing layout of
some of the ballot papers. Bushs victory was upheld by the Supreme Court
with a 54 vote. The US system of presidential elections is an excellent
example of the way in which a democratic political culture can mitigate
most of the ill effects of poorly constructed rules. In a South American
republic, an electoral outcome as unclear as this might well have led to
military intervention.
In Britain, too, the wish to preserve a clear link between constituencies
and members of parliament biases the electoral system in the sense that
the number of seats won does not precisely represent votes cast. In rare
cases, the outcome of a close election has been distorted by this fact. In
1951 a Labour government was replaced by a Conservative government
after elections in which Labour received more votes than the Conservatives
but the Conservatives got more seats. However, bias of this kind rarely
leads to a completely paradoxical result. However, the British situation is
in the process of changing. In 2010, the outcome of the national election
was that no major party had an outright majority. The largest party (the
Conservatives) and the third largest party (the Liberal Democrats) formed
a coalition excluding the second-placed Labour party and a number of
minor parties. One of the conditions underlying the formation of the
coalition was that a referendum would be held on changing the voting
system away from first-past-the-post to the alternative vote system. This
shares some characteristics with full scale proportional representation.
Proportional representation (PR)

Opponents of the first-past-the-post system see it as administratively
convenient but very imperfectly democratic as compared with systems
of proportional representation. There are many possible forms of
proportional representation. The purpose of all of them is to bring
electoral outcomes into line with votes cast, without necessarily dispensing
with the principle of constituency representation. The effect of any
proportional representation system is to give greater weight to minority
parties. In a perfect system of proportional representation, there would be
a direct relationship between the percentage of votes cast and the share
of seats achieved by each party in the legislature. In practice, no electoral
system is perfectly proportional, as there is always some advantage to the
larger parties, but some systems are better than others in this respect.
55
Disadvantages of PR: coalition government

The main disadvantage of proportional representation is that it does not
necessarily succeed in establishing any direct relationship between the
votes themselves and the character of the government. The reason for this
is that proportional representation is associated with multi-party systems
and coalition building. There would be no problem in any election in
which any one party won 50 per cent or more of the popular vote, because
the party would then be clearly elected. However, if the largest party failed
to win an overall majority, then some form of coalition government or
minority administration would be necessary unless new elections were to
be held.
The question of whether or not coalition governments are good in
themselves is debatable (some people see them as potentially unstable or
indecisive). The problem is that the decision about which parties coalesce
and which do not is made by the party leaderships without any direct
reference to the electorate. In other words, if there were five parties that
all received exactly 20 per cent of the vote, then any three of them could
agree to form a coalition to create a majority. However, it would be the
party leaderships, and not the electorate, who would decide which of the
five moved into coalition to form the government and which moved into
opposition. Even if one discounted any possibility of a four- or five-party
coalition, there would be ten different possible coalition outcomes from
one single election. The voters would have no way of choosing which
of the ten they preferred. In Britain there is some evidence of popular
resentment against the Liberal Democrats among left-of-centre supporters
who objected to its entering into a coalition with the Conservatives.
Pivotal power of small parties

A related objection is that proportional representation can have the
effect of increasing the power of minority parties unless the larger parties
coalesce in order to prevent this. If two or three larger parties have an
approximately equal share of the vote, then a party with only a few
votes can have a decisive effect on the outcome of coalition formation,
because the switch of only a few votes can make a decisive difference.
Political scientists describe as pivotal power the situation in which a small
minority of the vote can be deployed to decisive effect. While there need
be no objection to minority parties as such, there has been concern that
extremist, eccentric or very narrowly focused parties may at times acquire
a disproportionate degree of influence.
Duvergers hypothesis
The French political scientist Duverger produced a famous hypothesis
about the relationship between parties and electoral systems (Duverger,
1964). His main assumption was that voters and parties would manoeuvre
themselves to maximise their chances of achieving power. Where there
was proportional representation, there would be a large number of parties.
When the first-past-the-post system applied, then voting would tend to
crystallise behind two parties with the other parties following on a long
way behind.
Duvergers hypothesis has been heavily researched. Scholars have found,
however, that it is not totally convincing. There is clearly a Duverger
effect, in that there is a definite tendency for larger parties to achieve a
higher share of the vote in first-past-the-post systems. However, this effect
is not entirely overwhelming. Countries such as Britain and Canada retain
third (and even fourth) parties that continue to enjoy a significant degree
56
of support despite their first-past-the-post electoral system. Furthermore,

sharp changes in voting behaviour can alter the character of a party system
even when the electoral rules do not change. In 1993, the Canadian
Conservative Party fell from having a governing majority to virtual
obliteration, having only two seats in the new Parliament. Canada today
does not really have a two-party system.
Duvergers work, originally published over a period of around two
decades during the post-war period, marked an important breakthrough
by attempting to relate the actual rules of political competition to voters
attitudes and preferences. Since then, many other writers have attempted
to do the same thing and other characteristics of party competition have
come under scrutiny.
Activity
Find some examples to illustrate Duvergers argument that the nature of a countrys
electoral system is a key influence on its party structure.
Democracy within parties and between parties

One important question about party politics concerns the relationship
between intra-party (internal) democracy and competition between
parties. Increasingly, it is believed that party members should be able to
choose party leaders. This enables ordinary citizens to exert some impact
on government via active participation in the political party of their choice.
There are several ways in which internal party democracy can be
organised. In Britain, the major parties choose their leaders by a national
ballot of the membership. Party leaders do not serve a fixed term, and
are expected to resign in the event of a poor electoral performance. A
partys members of parliament can remove a leader but not elect one. In
the United States there are primary elections, taking place over several
months and organised according to different rules according to the laws
of different states. In some Latin American countries there is a primary in
which all party members can vote.
Problems with internal party democracy

The goal of internal party democracy has been heavily criticised from at
least two different perspectives. One of them is that political parties need
some kind of elite direction and guidance if they are to succeed. This is
partly because a process which, as far as party members are concerned,
is an exercise in democracy, is likely to resemble disunity and indiscipline
to outsiders. There is empirical evidence that voters are less likely to vote
for a party if they see it as internally divided. Media scrutiny of parties is
likely to bring out and exaggerate party disunity. However, it is possible to
mitigate this problem by limiting internal party democracy to set occasions
when a formal leadership contest is underway. Internal party elections can
then be unifying because it can allow outstanding differences to be settled
by majority vote.
There is a more difficult problem, though, which has to do with the fact
that party activists may have very different preferences from the general
public as a whole. It is clear that party-political activism is generally, and
always has been, essentially a minority pursuit in democratic societies.
The majority of adult citizens can generally be relied upon to vote in
national elections. Even so, local elections in Britain and mid-term
congressional elections in the USA do not always persuade even half of the
adult population to turn up and vote. However, party membership almost
57
invariably involves a far smaller proportion of the population.

The proportion of active party members is fewer still. It is therefore
certain that party political activists are a relatively small minority of
the population. It is also possible that they may be an unrepresentative
minority. Political activists tend to have more extreme (or at least more
decided) views than most members of society. That is probably why they
became party members in the first place. It may therefore be the case that
party activists will want leaders committed to policies that ordinary voters
may not support. They may also choose leaders that the general public
may find unattractive.
Downs model
The American political scientist Anthony Downs presented an argument
along these lines in theoretical form (Downs, 1997). Let us imagine the
electorate of any country, governed by policy preferences that can be
identified on a continuum from left-wing to right-wing. If voting was
compulsory and there were only two parties, both of whom were primarily
interested in winning, then the two parties would position themselves to
capture as much of the vote as possible. It can easily be demonstrated that,
under those circumstances, the party closest to the centre ground would
win. Parties that listened too much to their activists would be likely to
move away from the centre ground and therefore risk defeat.
The model was recognised by Downs himself to be very abstract. Most
voters do not self-consciously think of themselves as left-wing or rightwing. Many voters have no real understanding of these terms. Moreover,
what is thought of as right-wing or left-wing can vary over time. These
may be no more than shorthand expressions that are not rigorously
grounded. Furthermore, individual voters are not completely independent
figures. They may well be subject to persuasion by others who are more
ideologically committed. Voting is not generally compulsory and there is a
danger that disillusioned activists will either themselves abstain or will at
any rate make less effort to persuade ordinary people to vote and thereby
damage their own party.
Critics of Downs model

Downs model has also been criticised by authors who doubt that many
voters in any election simply make up their minds on the basis of the
issues. An alternative approach has been to see parties as representing
sectional interests within a society, with Labour or social democratic parties
representing the interests of labour and Conservative or Christian Democrat
parties representing the interests of the middle classes. A Downsian might
reply, however, that elections are decided principally by voters capable of
changing their minds. Loyal supporters of political parties, who certainly
exist, cannot by definition determine the fluctuating outcomes of actual
elections. Furthermore, the tendency in advanced industrial societies
since 1945 has been for sectional cleavages to become less pronounced.
There are fewer workers without either some property or the aspiration to
achieve social mobility, and parties that reflect only sectional interests are
in decline. Parties therefore have to compete for the popular vote if they
want to be successful: mere identification with a clan or group is
becoming less and less adequate as a means of winning elections.
Despite the criticisms of Downs model, there is evidence that ordinary
voters in two-party systems will often reject anything which appears to
them to smack of extremism. Examples are: the heavy defeats suffered by
the Labour Party in Britain in 1983, the Conservative Party in Britain in
58
2001, the Republican Party in the USA in 1964 and the Democratic Party
in the USA in 1972. Parties that become too interested in the concerns of
their own activists sometimes lose touch with issues of greatest concern to
the ordinary voter. This can be electorally very costly. The cost of political
extremism may be less in multiparty systems because of the logic of
coalition politics. Even if political extremism may alienate some voters, a
small party with a rock-solid but minority base of support (for example,
a religious party) may enjoy considerable pivotal power. Furthermore, in
multiparty systems most parties have no realistic prospect of appealing to
more than a minority of the electorate, so there is less need to appeal to
the centre ground.
Party activists in countries with systems of proportional representation can
try to prevent the leaderships from making the necessary bargains to build
and maintain coalitions. A good example of what can go wrong happened
under the Allende presidency in Chile. Allende was elected president with
a minority share of the vote. By compromising on certain principles, he
would have had a chance to bring the Christian Democratic Party to his
side. This would have given him a congressional and possibly popular
majority. However, Socialist Party activists objected to any such coalition
being formed and they were able to stop Allende from reaching agreement
with the Christian Democrats. The result of this failure to agree was
disastrous. Politics became increasingly polarised between a minority that
wanted socialism and a majority that did not, and Allende was eventually
overthrown by the military.
It should not necessarily be inferred from this that party leaderships are
always right and party activists always wrong. The relationship between
the two can perhaps be seen in terms of Webers distinction between
charismatic and legal rational authority. There has to be a place for
beliefs and activism in any democratic system or else the whole system
will come to be seen as pointless. Without continuing contact with party
activists, party leaderships may be open to capture by the administrative
machinery of modern government, or by interest groups outside the formal
political system altogether.
The decline of parties?

In recent years, there has been a tendency for party activism to decline in
many democracies. The amount of popular enthusiasm for politics has also
tended to decline. As a result, parties in some countries have become more
like what Duverger (1964) described as cadre parties. That is to say, they
are defined more by their attitude to power than their identification with
principles. Those who participate actively in party politics are less likely
to be idealists and more likely to be ambitious individuals who want a
career in politics. Meanwhile, activists have either turned their attention to
specific interest groups, or to small and ideologically purer parties such as
the Greens. In some other countries, such as Italy and some Latin American
cases, the result of declining party organisation has meant that politics has
become much more personalist and based around support for or dislike of
prominent individuals. The general cult of media celebrity has reinforced
this tendency. Some personalists such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela are
highly ideological, while others represent chiefly themselves.
The danger of this decline in party loyalty is that parties themselves can
become vulnerable to challenges from outside politics. For example,
Chavez was a military officer who had led an unsuccessful coup in 1992
before his election to the presidency in 1998, and Berlusconi was a media
59
magnate. Both were very much outsider figures. People who are attached
to a party (or other organisation) because they genuinely believe in it, are
likely to remain when times are hard. Those who are mainly motivated by
self-interest are likely to defect more quickly. People who can see that a
party is no longer motivated seriously by its own professed principles are
also likely to desert in large numbers when they become discontented. In
recent years, the Italian electorate has voted heavily to reject the old party
system. On the Right, the old Christian Democratic Party has been replaced
by a combination of new parties (notably Berlusconis Forza Italia) and
former extremist parties, such as the Northern League and the Fascists. In
Canada an established Conservative Party was largely replaced in the 1994
election by the new Reform Party, which offers a more populist version of
conservatism. In the USA in 1992, Ross Perot achieved the highest share
of the vote received by a third party candidate since the 1920s. In France
Jean Marie le Pen reached the second round in the presidential elections
of 2002.
Activity
List the main third party movements in majoritarian democracies in recent years.
Compare and contrast what happened to them.
Political parties in new democracies

There has been a considerable spread of democratisation since around
1980. There is no simple model dealing with the role of political parties in
new democracies that fits all cases, but there have been some interesting
developments, and we will consider three. They all involve interesting
variants on what was regarded before 1980 as normal patterns of
democratic politics.
From authoritarianism to democracy

One has been the successful transformation of parties that were once
dominant in an authoritarian system to being competitive parties in a
democratic system. The Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)
won elections (for governorships, senate seats and the presidency) with
such regularity that for many years Mexico could not really be regarded
as a democracy at all. However, in 2000 the PRI lost a presidential
election and went into opposition. Despite this setback, it has been able
to maintain itself as a considerable force in Mexican politics. The same
is largely true of the former dominant party in Taiwan, the Kuomintang
(KMT). Former communist parties in eastern Europe, following varying
degrees of internal reform, continue to exist and sometimes win elections.
Where previous authoritarian governments had some popular support, but
not enough to win national elections, then formerly dominant parties have
helped to act as a bridge between authoritarianism and democracy by
allowing supporters of the former authoritarian regime to continue to play
a role in the political system.
Collapse of political parties

Secondly, there have been some circumstances in which political parties
have collapsed altogether. Peru and Venezuela during the 1990s both
saw the complete collapse of party systems that had been fairly well
established. It has sometimes happened that the formerly collapsed parties
have reconstituted themselves and returned to power. This happened in
Peru when Alan Garcia of the APRA party was elected to the presidency
for the second time in 2006, although the Peruvian party system as such
60
remains generally weak. Party collapse is more likely in a presidential

than in a parliamentary system, partly because presidentialisms can
survive virtually without political parties and parliamentarianisms and
partly because there is not usually a formal role for opposition parties in
presidential systems where the incumbent president commands a majority.
In some countries too, the increased penetration of the political system by
big money and the media has tended to weaken the link between voters
and parties. This has made it feasible for entirely new kinds of political
organisation to enter the scene, as happened with Berlusconis Forza Italia.
Clientele parties
Thirdly, there are parties used by powerful families or other interests
seeking to manufacture a set of supporters, via clientelism or media
appeals, in order to secure access to the patronage resources of the
state. These parties are the means of gaining and distributing selective
incentives to encourage loyalty. Such parties are generally anti-ideological.
They tend to be more common in countries with a significant rural
component for example, some countries in Latin America. Clientele parties
are harder to maintain in urban areas, although it is not impossible to do
this. Clientelism works best when both the bureaucratic ethic of the state
and the rule of law are relatively weak. These issues are discussed in later
chapters.

explain the relationship between referendums and representative
government, and assess the limits of this relationship
show the relationship between political parties and electoral systems,
show the advantages and drawbacks of specific electoral systems, and
discuss the argument that electoral systems produce specific party
structures
show the kinds of conflict that can occur between the idea of
democracy within political parties and competitive democracy within
the country as a whole
explain critically the relationship between popular participation and
political stability
discuss recent trends in the role of political parties in new democracies.

1. Compare and contrast first-past-the-post electoral systems with
systems of proportional representation. What are the main advantages
of each?
2. Party activists are potentially antagonistic to representative democracy.
Discuss.
3. Do referendums enhance or detract from the effectiveness of
representative democracy?
4. Does the success of personalist politicians in countries such as Peru and
Venezuela suggest that political parties are not necessary to democracy?
61
Notes
62
Chapter 5: Levels of government: local, federal and transnational
Chapter 5: Levels of government: local,

federal and transnational
Learning outcomes
explain the main strengths and weaknesses of strong systems of local
government
deliver different definitions of federalism and explain these differences
explain why some countries have adopted federal constitutions and
others have not
explain why it is so difficult for scholars to agree on whether, and at
what point, forms of international cooperation amount to federalism.
Essential reading
1991) [ISBN 9780300049381].
Further reading
Curtice, J., B. Seyd and K. Thomson Do mayoral elections work? Evidence
from London, Political Studies 56(3) 2008, pp.65378.
Elazar, D. American federalism: a view from the States. (New York: Harper and
Row, 1984) third edition [ISBN 0060418842].
Page, E.C. and M.J. Goldsmith (eds) Centre and local government relations.
(London: Sage, 1987) [ISBN 080348071X].
Introduction
We have already seen that the idea of democracy took root in some very
small communities and has been transposed with some difficulty to larger
ones. In the last chapter we considered the role of national institutions in
making this possible. In this chapter we are concerned with the different
levels of government, from the small scale to the very large scale indeed.
Can local government reproduce some aspects of the democratic ideal that
are inevitably lost in larger units?
Local and central government

Some political philosophers and historians have argued that participatory
local government is a foundation stone of democracy nationally. Whether
or not this claim can be validated, it is clear that every democracy has
some form of devolved or local government. It is generally accepted that
local politicians will know a locality and its needs better than central
government. It is also generally regarded as desirable in a democracy
for people to be able to vote more often than once in four or five years.
Although not everybody is interested in local participation, some people
will take advantage of opportunities to participate in local affairs in ways
that would be impossible for them nationally. Local politics is either
unpaid or badly paid, and the cost of administration is reduced by relying
to some extent on voluntary or semi-voluntary forms of activity.
63
Problems in local government

Local government is not always a satisfactory form of administration in
practice. Issues of decentralising (or even recentralising) power are not
as simple as they may appear, and there is a vast and complex academic
literature on the subject. One problem is defining what is local. There are
localities that attract genuine loyalty from the inhabitants, but the units
of attachment may be administratively inconvenient. By the same token,
superficially efficient administrative units may not be meaningful entities
to those who live in them. It may be that local attachments are in decline
in the contemporary globalised world. People are much more mobile than
they used to be, and may travel significant distances to and from work.
These factors may undermine the concept of locality.
There is a real problem with fiscal decentralisation. People may tend
to move from higher to lower-taxed areas. Localities are then forced to
compete with each other by lowering taxes until essential public services
can no longer be afforded. Another problem is that there are few significant
administrative tasks that can be conducted purely at one level. Local
government generally involves some degree of central government financing
and some forms of central regulation and control. Where this is not the
case, the political systems are likely to have some federal characteristics.
Federalism will be discussed in the next section of this chapter.
A further difficulty with localising power is that there are various forms
of expertise, which are not readily available on a local basis. There
are greater resources of professional expertise in central than in local
government. The more participatory structure of local government may
act as a counterweight to this. However, where local politics is not seen as
meaningful in its own terms, there is a danger that local participation may
become just another sphere of competition between the national political
parties. There is then a danger that the most talented local politicians
will move into national politics, leaving the less talented ones to run
local affairs.
Finally, there is the problem that relationships between central and
local government are potentially influenced by competitive political
relationships. This can result in central and local government blaming
each other when things go wrong. Or it can lead to central government
favouring some localities over others using criteria which are ostensibly
technical but actually political. A good example was the way in which
the Conservative government in Britain during the 1980s favoured local
districts of London controlled by their own party: these were consequently
able to levy the unpopular Community Charge (poll tax) at a lower level
than elsewhere.
Efforts have also been made to encourage stronger local government in
some developing countries as part of the World Banks good governance
initiative, which will be discussed again in the next chapter. It was believed
that stronger local government would help with good governance.
However, the attempts have not so far been an unqualified success. Local
government has proved expensive, and involved a lot of human resources
that might have been deployed elsewhere.
Furthermore, because local government generally does not have very
much power, the failure of central government institutions cannot
easily be put right at local level. Apart from being dependent on central
government, local politicians and officials are at least as vulnerable to
media criticism and judicial challenge as are national politicians and
officials. Local government, in other words, works well when national
64
political institutions work well and not usually otherwise. Finally, local
government tends to help the articulate middle classes more than the less
fortunate. It does little to empower the very poor. This tends to be a problem
with almost all democratic institutions that encourage participation.
Within the developed world, the extent and autonomy of local government
varies between political systems. Page and Goldsmith (1987) found that
there was far more local autonomy in northern Europe than in southern
Europe. Nevertheless, southern European localities were better able to
influence national government than were their northern counterparts. The
authors provide a number of possible explanations for this, but conclude
that the more bureaucratic forms of government in northern Europe led to
a different power structure than the more clientelist forms of government
in the south.
Federalism
Federal governments are those in which some significant degree of local
or regional autonomy is somehow entrenched within the national political
system through financial, legal or other effective means. Federalism is one
way of making local and regional politics more important. The essential
idea of federalism is not difficult to understand, although some of the
definitional and institutional points which it involves are complex.
The USA provides a very clear example of federal government.
Switzerland is also a federation as is Germany. Federalism is also to
be found in a number of ex-British colonies such as India, Canada and
Australia. Many Latin American republics are also federal. On the other
hand, there are a number of countries which describe themselves as
federal but in which the degree of local autonomy is very much less.
Countries can also undergo constitutional change that may have the effect
of establishing or dis-establishing federalism. The Brazilian case would be
a good example here. When Brazil was under military rule, it was run in a
very centralised way. The notorious Fifth Institutional Act of 1969 gave the
Brazilian president sweeping powers to involve themselves in local politics
across the whole country. However, the Constitution of 1988, adopted
under civilian rule, unquestionably establishes the principle of federalism.
Mexico, too, has become more genuinely federal than was once the case,
although it was until recently far more centralised than Brazil. Similarly
the United Kingdom is currently a unitary state, not a federation. However,
the introduction of an independent legislature for Scotland in 1999 has
involved a degree of devolution.
Definitions of federalism
Broadly speaking, two criteria have been used to decide whether a country is
federal or not. The first criterion is essentially legal, the second is financial.
1. Wheares (1963) famous definition of federalism states that there must
be a division of power such that regional and central governments are
independent of each other. Later critics have found this definition too
restrictive. In a world in which quite routine activities (such as trading)
are often bound by international treaty, it is difficult to see how any
regional government could retain independence in practice. The United
States is a federal system but it would not be possible for the state
of Texas, for example, to impose restrictions on imports from Mexico
in breach of the rules of NAFTA agreed between the American,
Mexican and Canadian governments. Later scholars, especially
American ones, have suggested that it is sufficient for the principle
65
of non-centralisation to be established, possibly through a written

constitution whose provisions are subject to interpretation by a
constitutional court. In fact, it is difficult to establish precise legal
principles that underlie federalism but these may be indicative of one
situation or the other.
2. In federal systems, local and regional governments have significant
revenue-raising powers that are under their own discretion. The
budgets of these governments should also be a significant proportion
of the national budget. The most financially decentralised country in
the contemporary world is Switzerland, followed by Brazil and then
the USA.
3. There is another way of seeking to understand federal forms of
government, which is to understand why federalist political forms were
chosen in the first place. In todays world, secession is a possibility for
regions in which separation is favoured by a majority. For example,
the Czech and Slovak republics separated in 1990. On the other hand,
there are also many unitary states. So why choose a half-way house?
Activity
List the main definitions of federalism, and how they differ.
Reasons for adopting federalism

In some cases, notably the USA, Germany and some Latin American
countries, the main reason is distrust of a strong central administration.
Federalism is not necessarily the result of a plural society (although
American society is very plural) but rather a device to limit the power
of government. The USA became independent after breaking away
from the British crown, which was seen as overbearingly authoritarian.
The American Constitution was designed, in large part, to prevent any
president from becoming a king. Post-1945 West Germany was also
constitutionally designed to prevent the emergence of over-mighty central
government for fear that this would become a threat to democracy.
In other cases, notably Switzerland and Canada, federalism is intended to
permit people of different linguistic origin to live together by combining
local autonomy and an overall framework of unity. While there is an
important separatist movement in Quebec, it is likely that only federal
principles have kept Canada together in its present form. Switzerland is
also an example of a political union made up of different linguistic groups
to the great puzzlement of some theorists of nationalism who regard
language as the principal defining characteristic of a nation.
An important drawback to federalist systems of government is their
inevitable complexity. Relations between different levels of government
have to be intricate. This can lead both to frustration and to some
inefficiency. It can also be expensive. It also tends to mean that many
important governmental questions are decided by the courts rather than
by elected politicians.
Activity
List the main historical factors that might help explain why European and Latin American
countries which have adopted federal systems of government have done so.
66
Treaties, unions and relations between governments

This section ends with a brief discussion on whether the issue of
federalism is likely to be relevant to groupings of sovereign states such as
the European Union and (to a lesser extent) NAFTA. There seems to be a
general trend for issues of trade and economic policy to become matters
of international agreement. However, it is not clear that international
treaties such as GATT or new international organisations such as the World
Trade Organization (WTO) have new or significant implications for state
sovereignty. Treaties have always existed between autonomous powers,
although until recently they tended to be more concerned with military
and territorial matters than with trade issues. The national sovereignty
of some countries has always been limited by their need to ally with or
defend themselves against powerful neighbours.
Secession
A traditional view of sovereignty would start from the Weberian view of
the state as the monopoly possessor of the right to use legitimate force, as
discussed in Chapter 1 of this guide. From this viewpoint, one would have
to discuss issues of sovereignty from the military aspect. For example, the
southern states of the USA were prevented by force from seceding from
the Federal union during the period 186165. However, nobody seriously
supposes that any European government that wished to withdraw from the
European Union would face any prospect of armed invasion.
Attitudes towards secession have changed because of a different notion of
legitimation based on the notion of universal suffrage. Canada is a federal
government, but nobody seriously doubts that Quebec would be allowed
to become independent if it voted clearly to do so. Britain does not have
a federal government, but it is generally accepted that a majority of the
Scottish electorate could vote to become independent of Britain. Insofar
as there is, today, an implicit right of secession from federal or unitary
states subject to majority vote, force cannot be seen as a determining
characteristic where federation or independence is involved.
Federalism in Europe
In some other respects the European Union (much more than the NAFTA)
does have some quasi-federal characteristics. There is a centralised budget,
and the European Commission makes largely autonomous decisions on
how this is to be spent. Certain issues relating to the so-called social
chapter can be decided by the Union as a whole through qualified
majority voting majoritarianism subject to some limitations.
Furthermore, many of the leading political figures in Europe are federalists
who intend to create a United States of Europe.
Perhaps the debate over whether there should be (or already is) such
a thing as a federal Europe illustrates as much as anything else the
inevitably value-loaded character of political discourse. For many years
issues of federalism were seen by some academics as dry and legalistic,
perhaps of more interest to Constitutional lawyers than social scientists.
Today, however, they are so politically sensitive that the use of a term such
as federalism in the context of the European Union will be the subject
of debate.
67

explain the main strengths and weaknesses of strong systems of local
government
deliver different definitions of federalism and explain these differences
explain why some countries have adopted federal constitutions and
others have not
explain why it is so difficult for scholars to agree on whether, and at
what point, forms of international cooperation amount to federalism.

1. What are the difficulties faced by attempts to strengthen local
democracy by strengthening local government?
2. In what senses can the European Union be defined as federal?
68
Chapter 6: Bureaucracy and the democratic state
Chapter 6: Bureaucracy and the

democratic state
Learning outcomes
show the main problems which democratically elected governments
have in both using and controlling state bureaucracy
explain how there is a relationship between political culture and the
behaviour of bureaucracies
show the main differences between clientelist and professional systems
of bureaucracy, and their respective weaknesses and strengths
explain the idea behind good governance and discuss its limits.
Essential reading
Hood, C. The art of the State: culture, rhetoric, and public management. (Oxford:
Clarendon, 2000) [ISBN 9780198297659].
Further reading
Albrow, M. Bureaucracy: key concepts in political science. (London: Pall Mall,
1970) [ISBN 0269026231].
Evans, P. Embedded autonomy: states and industrial transformation.
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995) [ISBN 0691037361].
Introduction
In this chapter, we look at democratic political systems in the context
of state institutions rather than party politics. Although there are a
few exceptions, most democratic governments have a clear leader of
government. The head of government is sometimes the head of state, but
there are cases where this is not so. In some countries the head of state is
essentially an honorary figure that represents a country rather than ruling
it. The honorary head of state can be a hereditary monarch (as in Britain),
a directly elected figure (as in southern Ireland), or an indirectly elected
figure (as in Germany).
Every head of government has to operate on several different levels. They
are ultimately responsible for the ordinary work of government. Much of
the work of any state is routine and relatively humdrum, but efficiency
is important in any society and the failure of state institutions to work
efficiently can impinge seriously upon the lives of ordinary people. Nobody
wants to be wrongly imprisoned, wrongly bankrupted or otherwise
mistreated by government agencies. Moreover, where the press is free and
independent, scandalous issues of this kind tend to be heavily publicised
when they arise, and this kind of publicity can do great harm to the image
of any government.
In the developing world, a lot of the blame for relatively poor economic
performance is generally placed on low quality public administration.
69
The result can be corruption or simple inefficiency. In the 1990s, a lot of

weight was given by donors on the idea of good government and the idea of
administrative reform was very much in vogue. Although some progress was
made in some cases, the general outcome of good government agendas was
on the whole disappointing. The main reason for this was the highly political
nature of effective reform. Without a real political will to make changes, the
result was a continuation of traditional modes of governance.
Activity
Discuss the idea behind good governance and its limits.
Bureaucratic organisation within democratic states:

a brief history
It is necessary for all governments to have a bureaucracy at their disposal.
This is partly because all states simply have to do certain things in order to
guarantee their own survival. In the first chapter we saw that the modern
state normally enjoys a monopoly of organised force. However, in order to
maintain the most elementary internal police force and external defences,
some form of taxation is necessary. It is therefore necessary for even the most
minimalist state to decide who pays tax and how much they should pay,
and then make sure that they do pay. There needs to be a judicial system to
enforce compliance. All of this requires administration.
Clearly most contemporary states are far from minimalist. The development
of democratic forms of government in Europe was associated with an
extension of the role of the state. In most developed countries democracy was
accompanied by demands for the provision of improved public services and
for some redistribution of income. The result was a much more extensive set
of governmental responsibilities. This was clearly the will of the people, and
it was then necessary to find a means of ensuring that this will was enforced.
Over the last century the belief also took root, in developed and developing
countries alike, that the state should take at least some responsibility for
enhancing national prosperity. Some countries experimented with outright
Socialism, but this has been somewhat discredited due to the failures of the
Soviet Union. However, even capitalist countries look upon government to
set interest rates, regulate the banking system, either build or organise the
construction of infrastructure, organise and run a system of public education.
All in all, therefore, the state has much to do and not everything that it does
can be the subject of direct political attention.
Weberian bureaucracies
The reform of administration in the major European countries was actually
started seriously in Prussia at the end of the eighteenth century: the principal
reason for the administrative reform was military. It is perhaps appropriate
then, that the principal theorist of modern bureaucracy,
Max Weber, was also German. Webers theory of bureaucracy described a
system of rational administration, rule-bound and hierarchically organised.
Most literature on modern bureaucracy refers to Webers notion. The
Weberian bureaucrat was an official who was salaried, employed under
contract and involved in pursuing a career. He had no financial interest in
matters within his remit and no significant occupation outside his office.
Initial recruitment was determined largely by examination with an internal
system of promotions to determine who reached the top of the organisations.
70
The main alternative to a Weberian system is a patronage system in

which positions in the public administration are allocated by the head of
government. Many systems do have some scope for political appointment
to what might otherwise be regarded as essentially administrative
positions. However, some do so to a much greater extent than others. In
some Latin American countries, there are literally thousands of positions in
the gift of the president. As a result, in these countries few highly qualified
people seek posts in the career bureaucracy, except in a few ministries
or agencies where promotion on merit clearly exists. It is also a problem
that any time that a government minister moves, there is a considerable
turnover of senior personnel. This high rate of turnover can be damaging
to efficiency.
Webers theory of bureaucratisation has attracted the attention of many
scholars during the past century. The most important questions asked
about government bureaucracy have to do with democracy (or, in more
general terms, agency) and efficiency.
Bureaucracy and efficiency

It is important to note that Webers notion of bureaucratic rationality
is not the same thing as efficiency, although there are areas of official
life especially those connected with technical economic decision
making where Weberian systems do seem to work better in policy
terms than patronage systems. Weber was concerned with the internal
logic of bureaucracy and the way in which bureaucratic behaviour was
legitimated. These are important questions, but not the only ones that
should be asked.
Efficiency is an increasingly demanding objective in the case of
organisations that are entrusted to carry out complex and technically
difficult tasks. Organisations can only work if there are some rules
enforced by an element of coercion. However, organisations run purely
on a coercive basis are likely to be very bad at solving complex problems.
Excessive authoritarianism may be bad for staff morale. Furthermore,
situations will arise in almost any bureaucratic organisation that are not
precisely covered by the rules. These situations can be dealt with creatively
only if there is a willingness to improvise, and this requires accepting
certain kinds of power relationship within the organisation. However, the
nature and ability or inability of bureaucracies to improvise creatively
relates to the political culture of the society as a whole.
Democratic control of bureaucracy

It is largely because efficiency is an important criterion for governments
that the question of democratic control of bureaucracy is so difficult. At
its most abstract level, the question is one of agency. If B works for A,
how can A make sure that B does what A wants them to do rather than
what B wants to do? We encountered a similar problem when discussing
electoral systems in Chapter 4, so we in fact have a double agency
problem. We elect politicians in order to represent us, but they have minds
of their own; the politicians may try to control the state, but senior state
bureaucrats have minds of their own too. Control is largely dependent on
having knowledge, but sophisticated bureaucracies have far more detailed
knowledge of particular issues than professional politicians. This enables
experts within the bureaucracy to present policy issues to politicians, or
to interpret ministerial directives in particular ways, which are themselves
highly political and may not reflect what the elected government might
have wanted. Public device theorists have argued that bureaucrats tend to
71
want to increase their own powers and functions and will tend to advise
politicians to adopt policies that are in the organisational interest of the
bureaucracies themselves.
Bureaucrats in many democratic countries will also come into contact with
organised interests of various kinds and this may lead to other influences
being exerted on the system. The media and the law are both likely to be
important constraints. Nobody wants to be at the receiving end of a bad
press, while the law has become so demanding that it is now reasonably
common for a bureaucrat to find themselves at the wrong end of an
adverse legal judgment. Bureaucrats therefore have to be wary of people
with access to the media and of people capable of pursuing an interest
in Court.
Those who seek to influence the bureaucracy by such means may
include economic organisations (such as business corporations) or
groups motivated more by a set of values or ideas than interests as such
(the environmental lobby may be an example here). These external
organisations may be able to provide specialised information that is
not widely available. In some cases, outside interests will use more
controversial or disreputable means to influence the public bureaucracy.
Outright bribery is relatively rare in First World countries, but it is not
unknown.
Taking all of these factors together, critics of traditionally run government
bureaucracies accuse them of ending up representing those interests that
they theoretically exist to control, instead of representing the elected
government of the day or public opinion in general. A British satirical
programme discussed the role of several government agencies by saying
that, the Ministry of Agriculture represents farmers, the Ministry of
Education represents teachers, and the Foreign Ministry represents
foreigners.
New public management

In recent years, this pattern of centralised bureaucratic organisation has
been reformed in the light of contemporary theories of management. Hood
(1998) argues that patterns of bureaucracy need to be congruent to the
political culture of society as a whole. Hood regards Weberian patterns
of bureaucracy as hierarchist technically efficient, but also secretive,
remote and inclined to defend authority even when authority is wrong.
However, Hoods alternative patterns of organising the state egalitarian,
individualist and fatalist have problems of their own.
Some of the public administrative reforms introduced in Britain during
the 1980s could be categorised as individualist. They gave greater
weight to the efficient use of public money and less to the role of giving
policy advice. Executive agencies have been decentralised from the
civil service and staffed in ways that are more typical of private sector
organisations although political factors are also taken into account. The
word quango (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) has
been coined to cover some of these agencies in Britain. This kind of reform
can lead to financial savings but there are also dangers, including a lack
of bureaucratic coordination, an excessively narrow focus and at the
worst outright corruption. Meanwhile the role that a more traditionalist
bureaucracy would have been expected to play namely, keeping things
in some kind of balanced overall perspective tended to go by default.
A combination of a desire to save public money, interest group pressure
to pursue certain social objectives and a lack of central scrutiny led some
ministers to propose and get enacted some well-meaning but very
poorly thought-out legislation.
72
Clientelism and semi-clientelism

The American system of administration is designed very differently.
Although in theory there is a career bureaucracy in the United States,
large numbers of senior positions are allocated by the president on a
discretionary basis often as a reward for political loyalty that is, it is
semi-clientelist. It is interesting that the USA did, in the early years of
the republic, have a genuine state bureaucracy. However, this became less
and less bureaucratic and more clientelist as the nineteenth century wore
on and party organisations and business interests became increasingly
concerned to fill public offices. Today many of the important jobs within
the US administration are political rather than bureaucratic appointments.
Having said this, there are far fewer patronage appointments in the United
States (relative to the size of the public bureaucracy as a whole) than
in a number of countries in Latin America. Some parts of the American
bureaucracy can still be considered a career civil service. The military
is one clear example. There is also a professional diplomatic service,
although the top ambassadorships are often political appointments.
When the US government changes as a result of election (whether locally
or nationally) there is a considerable turnover of government jobs.
Those who enjoy government positions are political activists, financial
contributors to a political party or, sometimes, academic supporters. The
loyalty of such people is generally to their immediate boss rather than to
the civil service as such. Some will have political ambitions of their own,
but most will stay in government for a limited period before going back
into business or university life.
While this system may seem inefficient, it did prove to be a means of
allowing party politics to develop in a country that did not have the acute
class divisions or ideological forms of politics that developed in Europe.
In most of Western Europe, political parties developed either around the
Socialistnon/anti-Socialist axis, or around religious parties. In the USA,
Socialism was never strong as a political doctrine and the separation of
Church and state was required by the Constitution. The party system had
to develop in a different way, and might have been weakened decisively
without a clientelist system of public administration.
Disadvantages of clientelism
For the most part, political scientists have considered clientelism to be
less successful as a form of public administration than administrative
professionalism. In its more extreme variants, clientelism can be inefficient.
This is because a professional civil service is more likely to achieve
competence through the acquisition of collective wisdom over many years
and changes of government. A clientelist system will be composed of
political appointees who will have to re-learn their job at the outset. When
the minister leaves office, the entire ministerial team is likely to leave as
well. In the Mexican case, for example, incoming ministerial teams have
often started out with so little knowledge of their department that they did
not always know the proper way to order stationery. Even more serious,
outgoing teams often committed the state to contracts which had to be
honoured by incoming teams that had no knowledge of the conditions that
led them to be signed or even of the contracts themselves.
Advantages of clientelism
However, a system that allows a limited role for clientelism has some
advantages too. It does permit political leaders to bring in new people
to look at existing procedures in a different way. Moreover, professional
loyalty to the service can sometimes be damaging to the broader public
73
interest, if the civil servants come to think that they know best. Some sort
of mixture of bureaucratic and clientelistic principles may not be a bad
arrangement. Some Latin American countries mix an essentially clientelist
system of recruitment in some aspects of the state with a professional
bureaucracy in other aspects there can be islands of Weberianism in the
Central Bank, the Foreign Ministry, the statistical service, and some other
areas. However, the mix is at present rather too heavily weighted toward
clientelism and there is a lot of pressure for administrative reform in
the region.
Activity
List the main advantages and disadvantages of a Weberian state bureaucracy as opposed
to a clientelist bureaucratic system?
Good governance and its problems

In some developing countries, as we have noted, there has been
considerable international pressure for reform to the bureaucracy. The
World Bank developed a notion of good governance, which included
a measure of bureaucratic reform. The reason behind this is that
many loan programmes in developing countries, including economic
adjustment programmes, failed because they were poorly managed.
Better management, so it was argued, would translate into better policy
performance and better economic results. However, World Bank efforts to
produce good government have met with serious difficulties. While most
of us can identify bad government when we see it, it is much harder to
form a consensus around good government. In the end, government is the
product of political decisions taken in various parts of the political system.
Political institutions matter, but they only work well if they are compatible
with the political culture of the country concerned. If rules are not valued
they are not likely to be reliably enforced. As we saw in Chapter 1, if they
are not enforced, then we cannot speak of them as being institutionalised.
Therefore good government is only possible if the bureaucratic institutions
responsible for maintaining it are somehow embedded in the culture of its
own society. Governance cannot work well if the core assumptions behind
the organisation of the main state bureaucracies are different from the
assumptions governing public opinion in the society as a whole: this is
especially true if the country concerned is a democracy.
Politics and the bureaucracy: a conclusion

A pure Weberian might claim that hierarchist patterns of bureaucracy
are largely inevitable in complex modern societies. It certainly can be
claimed that Weberian patterns are often more efficient than other forms
of bureaucratic organisation. However, there may be political reasons
why alternative patterns of bureaucratic organisation might be preferred.
Governments that are concerned above all with careful budgeting may
prefer ideas of new public management. Politicians who need to build or
strengthen a party system in societies that do not naturally divide into
parties may prefer a clientelist system in order to create a reliable form of
partisan division.
However, as with presidentialism, it is pointless to try to devise a system
of public administration from scratch. Good bureaucratic practice is only
possible when the political (and broader) culture is compatible with the
mode of bureaucratic organisation selected. This is because bureaucratic
practice invariably involves unwritten rules. Not everything can be written
74
down or codified. If bureaucrats are forbidden to do what they consider

natural, then the effect will be to cause confusion and paralysis, since
nobody will take any action at all for fear of the consequences. This makes
it very hard to achieve effective bureaucratic reform.

show the main problems which democratically elected governments
have in both using and controlling state bureaucracy
explain how there is a relationship between political culture and the
behaviour of bureaucracies
show the main differences between clientelist and professional systems
of bureaucracy, and their respective weaknesses and strengths
explain the idea behind good governance and discuss its limits.

1. What relationships are there likely to be between a countrys political
culture and the behaviour of its bureaucracy?
2. What is embedded autonomy? What advantages does it have?
3. What are the main problems that an outside consultant might be likely
to encounter when trying to reform the bureaucracy of a developing
country? Give examples.
75
Notes
76
Appendix: Sample examination paper
Appendix: Sample examination paper

Important note: This Sample examination paper reflects the
examination and assessment arrangements for this course in the academic
year 20102011. The format and structure of the examination may have
changed since the publication of this subject guide. You can find the most
recent examination papers on the VLE where all changes to the format of
the examination are posted.
Time allowed: three hours.

Answer four of the following 12 questions.
1.
Comparative politics is the study of political institutions. Discuss.
2.
How can the concept of legitimacy best be understood?
3.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of relating definitions of

democracy to the issue of human rights?
4.
The notion of political culture helps us understand better the prospect

of consolidating new democracies. Discuss.
5.
Define semi-presidentialism. What are the advantages and

disadvantages of semi-presidential systems?
6.
What are the most important factors distinguishing different types of

presidential system?
7.
Discuss the view that parliamentary systems need strong parties if

they are to work well.
8.
To what extent do electoral systems determine the character of party

competition? Discuss with reference to at least two cases.
9.
Referendums divide parties and so make government more difficult.

Discuss.
10. Consider whether it is possible to reform a countrys governance

without also intervening decisively in its politics.
11. Discuss the view that federal systems tend to give the judicial system
too much of a role in politics.
12. The faults of local government are similar to those of central
government, only more so. Discuss.
END OF PAPER
77
Notes
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Comparative politics

University of London International Programmes

The concept of parliamentarianism............................................................................... 43

Information about the authors

How to use this subject guide

This focus on institutions aims to link what might otherwise seem to be

Recommended time required

Online study resources

Making use of the Online Library

Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems

Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political

democratic legitimacy, institutionalism and political culture.

Legitimacy, institutionalism and political culture: the

Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems

However, democracies need to be actively supported as well as just passively

competitive activity and there is always some possibility that an ambitious

Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems

Democracy can only exist if a recognisable sovereign authority can, if

best available form of government. Democratic government requires

Legitimacy as a comparative concept

Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems

Institutions as a basis for comparison

The survival of institutions over time

Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems

The problem of non-enforced rules

Comparative politics and political culture

Opinion research: empirical problems and methods

Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems

The simplest way of conducting research into peoples attitudes is to ask

The problem of truthfulness

to learn more about particular sub-groups within a given society. We can

Theorising political culture

Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems

Furthermore, the direction of peoples attitudes towards politics has not

Variety and change in political cultures

Political culture in the new democracies

Political culture and history

Chapter 1: Modes of comparing political systems

A reminder of your learning outcomes

Sample examination questions

Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism and political culture

Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism

Legitimacy and constitutionalism

Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism and political culture

Constitutionalism has been defined variously; as a technique for limiting

Individual rights and majority rule

Law and the state in the US Constitution

Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism and political culture

has mattered is in its insistence that all democratic government must

Changes in the European tradition

The breakdown of pure majoritarianism

Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism and political culture

national legislatures. While the European Parliament was designed to

1. After decolonisation, constitutions like that of India marked the

Constitutionalism in practice: limitations on democracy?

Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism and political culture

Constitutionalism, political culture and cultural conflict

Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism and political culture

Culture and politics

Political culture and conflict

self-determination, group autonomy, and minority rights have also become

Chapter 2: Legitimacy, constitutionalism and political culture

society in question. Otherwise the legal and participatory dimensions of