DPI415: COMPARATIVE POLITICS IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE. Class 3: Comparative methods: Contrasts between case studies v. large N. approaches.

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1 DPI415: COMPARATIVE POLITICS IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE Class 3: Comparative methods: Contrasts between case studies v. large N. approaches.

2 STRUCTURE 1. Recap on previous class discussion: Comparing the causes for the lack of democratization in the Middle East. Shopping list of propositions: Methods and approaches for each? 2. Pros and cons about alternative comparative politics research designs King, Keohane, and Verba Logic of scientific research design Brady and Collier, Mahoney, Munck and Snyder 3. Applied illustration: testing consociational theory Area studies/regional studies/ case studies. Illustration: contrasting pathways in Benin v. Togo Pros and Cons? Large N quantitative econometric models: Illustration: democratization patternsworldwide Pros and Cons?

3 1. RECAP Democratization in the Middle East

4 1. RECAP: COMPARATIVE APPROACHES High 3. Many units of analysis Level of abstraction 2.A few units of analysis Low 1.Single unit cases One Scope Many

5 RECAP: DISCUSSION EXERCISE You are asked to act as an independent consultant to explain the failure of electoral democracy to develop in the Middle East. Your client could be: An international organization eg the UNDP, the World Bank, A government department eg the UK Foreign Office, US State dept. The non profit NGO eg the Soros foundation or Amnesty International The private sector seeking a risk assessment for investment eg Mobil oil What alternative factors would you consider to be important when analyzing this issue and why? Brainstorm and write down a list of factors, ranked from most to least important, working in pairs for 10 minutes. We will then compare explanations across the class and consider how we would analyze the issue. What method and approach would you use to analyze the evidence?

6 Note: The historical index of democracy is the combined Freedom House civil liberties and political rights score, , standardized to 100 pts

7 RECAP: THE CAUSES FOR THE LACK OF DEMOCRATIZATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Type Rival propositions Research methods, comparative framework, case selection Cultural Cultural traditions Economic Colonial legacies Role of religion and religiosity Weak civil society Impact of oil resources, resource curse thesis, state capture and rent seeking Sociological Institutional IR Impact of socio economic inequality, lack of a middle class, role of education, and gender inequality Role of state structures, traditional monarchies, constitutional arrangements Regional hegemonic powers/ international pressures. Role of international conflict

8 2. COMPARATIVERESEARCH DESIGNS Debate about the pros and cons of alternative strategies

9 2. DEBATE Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry 1994 (Princeton) Logic of inference is same for qualitative and quantitative approaches, but styles of analysis are different Qualitative research uses thick description of a small number of cases, particular events, decision, institutions, location, regime, nation. Quantitative research usesnumerical measurement, abstracting from particular to testable generalizations, systematic patterns, emphasizes replicability and regularities in classes/categories Yet both use same logic designed to make descriptive or explanatory inferences about unobserved phenomenon on the basis of empirical information about the world. Ideally research topics should be (i) important in the real world and also (ii) make a contributiontoto scientificexplanationexplanation

10 POTENTIAL PROBLEMS OF CASE STUDY APPROACHES King, Keohane and Verba (1994) Selection and omitted variable bias Selecting on the dependent variable E.g. Lijphart Patterns of Democracy 30 long standing democracies E.g. Skocpol social revolution in France, Russia and China Too few cases reduces scientific testing Lack of capacity to make scientific inferences and estimate error

11 CRITIQUE OFKING, KEOHANE AND VERBA Henry Brady and David Collier Rethinking Social Inquiry 2004 (Rowman and Littlefield) Quantitative approaches, through maximizing diverse cases, loses contextual knowledge, relies upon statistical techniques unsuited to much data in political science, and underestimates statistical uncertainty and error. Value of within case causal chains, process tracing, and path dependent relationships Fruitful for generating theories, hypotheses, and concepts Distinct approach not reduced to statistical methods

12 3. ILLUSTRATING THE APPROACHES Explaining the puzzle of democratization through case studies and large N analysis

13 CONSOCIATIONAL THEORY Figure 5.1: The core sequential steps in consociational theory Plural societies contain distinct ethnic communities Proportional electoral systems with low thresholds Positive action mechanisms for minorities: boundary delimination, communal rolls, and reserved seats Facilitates the election of representatives and parties drawn from minority communities Community leaders have incentives to cooperate within legislatures and coalition governments, building trust at elite level Generates support for democracy among community members Strengthens democratic consolidation and reduced ethnic conflict Arend Lijphart Patterns of Democracy. Yale University Press

14 PAIRED CASES STUDIES

15 Figure 1.1: West Africa by type of regime, Freedom House, 2004 MAURITANIA Nouakchott MALI NIGER SENEGAL GAMBIA GUINEA BISSAU Bamako BURKINA FASO Niamey CHAD N'djamena GUINEA SIERRA LEONE LIBERIA BENIN TOGO GHANA IVORY COAST Abidjan Accra Lagos NIGERIA CAMEROON Malabo Yaounde CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC Bangui EQUATORIAL GUINEA SAO TOME & PRINCIPE GABON CONGO Brazzaville ZAIRE Key Free Partly free Not free Source: Calculated from Freedom Around the World.

16 PAIRED CASES: BENIN AND TOGO Low << Libe eral Democracy 2005 >> High Benin Niger Mozambique Cape Verde South Africa Ghana Mauritius Mali Sao Tome & Principe Senegal Madagascar Tanzania Lesotho Kenya Botswana Seychelles Burundi Sierra Leone Nigeria Zambia Burkina Faso Malawi Uganda Liberia Comoros Congo, Republic of Central African Republic Djibouti Mauritania Angola Gabon Guinea Cote D'Ivoire Togo Rwanda Chad Swaziland Somalia Congo, Democratic Republic of Gambia 1.0 Equatorial Guinea Sudan Zimbabwe Low <<Liberal Democracy 1970s >> High Note: The figures are the mean score of each country on the 7 point Liberal Democracy scale by Freedom House. Source: Calculated from Freedom Around the World. Figure 1.2: Liberal democracy in Sub Saharan Africa, 1970s and 2005

17 WHY THE CONTRASTS BETWEEN BENIN AND TOGO? Individual leaders? Economic development? Natural resources? Ethnic divisions? i i Radical movements? International pressures? Regional diffusion?

18 Table 1.1: Key indicators in Benin and Togo Social and economic indicators Benin Area 116, 622 Sq km 56, 785 sq. km Pop., m 5.8m GDP, 2002 $7.7bn $1.4bn GDP per capita (PPP US$), 2003 $1,115 $1,696 Life expectancy at birth, years 54 years Human Development Index, Adult literacy (% of pop. 15+), % 53.0% Eh Ethnic fractionalization, i 2002(Al (Alesina) Political indicators Togo Year of independence 1960 (from France) 1960 (from France) Liberal Democracy Freedom House Index, PR/5 CL 7 PR/6 CL 7-point scale (where 1=high,7=low) (Not free) (Not free) Liberal Democracy Freedom House Index, PR/ 2CL 6 PR/ 5 CL Freedom House classification Free Not free Control of Corruption (Kaufmann) Rank (0-100) Government effectiveness (Kaufmann) Rank (0-100) Political stability (Kaufmann) Rank (0-100) Rule of Law (Kaufmann) Rank (0-100) Voice and accountability (Kaufmann) Rank (0-100) Regulatory quality (Kaufmann) Rank (0-100) Note: See the appendix for details of these indices and sources of data.

19 PAIRED CASES BENIN V. TOGO Benin adopted power sharing arrangements in early 1990s Check and balances Protection ti of human rights iht PR elections to national parliament Multiparty politics Independent judiciary established Local and municipal government Independent media Togo Repressive one party regime and limitary backed dictatorship No progress in human rights

20 LARGE N ANALYSIS

21 DATA Classify institutions Electoral systems: PR, Combined/mixed, majoritarian Federalism v. unitary states Type of executive (pres v. parl) Types of media systems Measure democracy: Four indicators Freedom House: Liberal democracy Polity IV: Constitutional democracy Cheibub: Contested democracy Vanhanen: Participatory democracy Test cross national time series evidence in 191 nations Paired historical case studies illustrate underlying process e.g. Togo v. Benin Singapore v. South Korea economic development India v Bangladesh decentralization and local governance Ukraine v. Uzbekistan role of the media UK v. New Zealand electoral reform

22 CONTROLS FOR CS TS MODELS? Log per capita GDP Colonial heritage (British) Region (Middle East) Regional ldiffusioni Ethnic fractionalization Population size Area size

23 Figure 5.3: Levels of democracy by type of electoral system, Low << Demo ocracy >> High FH Polity Vanhanen Cheibub Majoritarian Combined PR Note: The standardized 100-point scales of democracy are described in Table 3.1. The four scales measure Liberal Democracy (Freedom House 2000), Constitutional Democracy (Polity IV 2000), Participatory Democracy (Vanhanen 2000), and Contested Democracy (Cheibub and Gandhi 2000). When tested by ANOVA, the difference between mean scores are significant (at the p=.001 level). Contemporary electoral systems are classified in 191 nations worldwide based on Appendix A in Andrew Reynolds, Ben Reilly and Andrew Ellis Electoral System Design: The New International IDEA Handbook. Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. The type of electoral system was classified into three categories: Majoritarian/plurality (Single member plurality, 2 nd Ballot, Block Vote, Alternative Vote, and Single Non-Transferable Vote), Proportional Representation (Party List and STV) and Combined (using more than one type of ballot in simultaneous elections for the same body).

24 Table5.2: Electoralsystems and democracy, all societies worldwide Liberal democracy Freedom House Constitutional democracy Polity IV INSTITUTIONAL RULES b (pcse) p b (pcse) p Majoritarian (.454) *** (.949) *** Proportional representation.904 (.619) N/s 3.85 (.561) *** Positive action strategies (.466) *** (.777) *** CONTROLS Log GDP/Capita (.832) *** (1.01) *** Ex-British colony (.962) *** (1.36) *** Middle East (1.16) *** (1.40) *** Regional diffusion.632 (.036) ***.883 (.049) *** Ethnic fractionalization (.878) *** (1.56) N/s Population size.001 (.001) N/s.000 (.001) *** Area size.001 (.001) ***.001 (.001) *** Constant N. observations N. of countries Adjusted R Note: Entries for Liberal Democracy, Constitutional Democracy and Participatory Democracy 100- point scales are unstandardized OLS regression coefficients (with their panel corrected standard errors) and the significance (p) of the coefficients for the pooled time-series cross-national analysis obtained using Stata s xtpcse command. The entries for Contested Democracy are logistic i regression. For the measures of democracy, see Chapter 2. For the classification of the type of electoral system, see Figure 5.1. The default (comparison) is mixed electoral systems. For details of all the variables, see Technical Appendix A. Significant at * the 0.10 level, ** the 0.05 level, and *** the 0.01 level.

25 Table5 5.3: 3:Electoralsystems and democracy, pluralsocieties only Liberal democracy Constitutional democracy Freedom House Polity IV INSTITUTIONAL RULES b (pcse) p b (pcse) p Majoritarian (.625) *** (1.16) *** Proportional representation 4.81 (.966) *** (.915) *** Positive action strategies.424 (.676) N/s (1.52) *** CONTROLS Log GDP/Capita (.519) *** 7.26 (1.21) *** Ex-British colony 8.35 (.744) *** 8.20 (1.10) *** Middle East (.974) *** (3.13) *** Regional diffusion.739 (.027) *** 1.04 (.055) *** Ethnic fractionalization (3.18) *** (4.27) *** Population size (.000) *** (.001) *** Area size.001 (.001) ***.001 (.001) *** Constant t N. observations N. of countries Adjusted R Note: Entries for Liberal Democracy, Constitutional Democracy and Participatory Democracy 100- point scales are unstandardized OLS regression coefficients (with their panel corrected standard errors) and the significance (p) of the coefficients for the pooled time-series cross-national analysis obtained using Stata s xtpcse command. The entries for Contested Democracy are logistic regression. For the measures of democracy, see Chapter 2. For the classification of the type of electoral system, see Figure 5.1. The default (comparison) is mixed electoral systems. For details of all the variables, see Technical Appendix A. Significant at * the 0.10 level, ** the 0.05 level, and *** the 0.01 level.

26 CONCLUSIONS 1. Institutionalchoices matter Power sharing is associated with consolidation of democracy Robust for different types of institutions Robust for different measures of democracy Cases illustrate historical processes underlying relationship 2. Yet power sharing regimes relatively uncommon 3. How can these arrangements be promoted more widely? Policy implications for constitutional choices and reforms. Afghan electoral reform, Sudan constitutional settlement, Nepalese constitution, Sri Lanka peace talks, Iraq and federalism, Next research agenda: what causes countries to choose power sharing agreements? The politics of institutional change

27 PROS AND CONS OF EACH APPROACH?

28 NEXT CLASS Nation states Newton and Van Deth Ch 1 Caramani Ch 4