Preface

About OpenStax

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About OpenStax Resources

About *Introduction to Political Science*

*Introduction to Political Science* introduces the broad scope of the political science discipline in a holistic manner via logically connected conceptual building blocks. Rather than discussing theory, comparative politics, and international relations in a purely siloed manner, *Introduction to Political Science* incorporates major themes from the various subfields of the discipline in a more inclusive fashion. The text focuses on actors, beginning with an examination of individual political actors and then moving on to discuss the actions and interactions of political groups, institutions, and states and international relations. *Introduction to Political Science* focuses on *how* and *why* political realities unfold, from the beliefs and behaviors of individuals to the policies and practices of states.

Pedagogical Foundation

About the Authors

The authors wish to express their deep gratitude to Terri Wise for her skillful editing and gracious shepherding of this manuscript.

Answers to Questions in the Book

The end-of-chapter Review Questions are intended for homework assignments or classroom discussion; thus, student-facing answers are not provided. The Instructor Manual includes answers to the Review Questions, questions within activities and for classroom discussion, which instructors may use with students at their discretion. The answers to these questions are typically open-ended and depend upon how the activities are used; for these questions, standard responses are not available.

Additional Resources

Introduction to Political Science

What Is Politics and What Is Political Science?

Introduction

Defining Politics: Who Gets What, When, Where, How, and Why?

Rules

The importance of rules in politics or in life cannot be overstated. In virtually every human endeavor, the most successful individuals are likely to have a keen knowledge of the rules and how to use (or break) the rules to the advantage of their cause. Ignorance of the rules makes accomplishing your goals more difficult.

Reality

Rules guide and constrain behavior, but the reality on the ground at any specific time also impacts political outcomes. Reality—facts—is not a matter of opinion, although people can dispute the nature of reality. Something is a fact, for example, when there is compelling evidence that an event has happened or a condition exists. The sun rises in the East: reality. The United Nations is an international organization: fact (reality).

“About Us,” United Nations, accessed September 8, 2021, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/. Has the United Nations made the world a better place? That is a matter of opinion, although those who say “yes” or “no” can provide facts that support their views about reality.“Twelve Times the UN Has Failed the World,” *TRT World*, November 28, 2018, https://www.trtworld.com/americas/twelve-times-the-un-has-failed-the-world-21666; Kathy Calvin, “10 Ways the UN Made the World a Better Place in 2017,” United Nations Foundation blog, December 20, 2017, https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/10-ways-un-made-world-better-place-2017/.

Choices

Rules provide constraints and opportunities. Reality presents resources and challenges. The choices participants make in the face of rules and reality determine political outcomes. Choice exists whenever political actors face options, which they always do. If there are two candidates in an election for a single position, the voter has to choose between them, not being able to vote for both. Even if there is only one candidate, the voter still has an option: to vote for the candidate or to abstain.

Public Policy, Public Interest, and Power

Government and the Legitimate Use of Power

The government is the most important institution in any discussion of politics because it is the only one with legal, legitimate authority to use coercive power to compel behavior within a defined geographic area.

Conflict and Bargaining

Disagreement—that is, conflict—is fundamental to politics for two primary reasons. As long as there is desire and people want things they do not have, there will be conflict. Millions of people lack clean air, access to potable water, and even basic necessities such as food and shelter. Scarcity is not limited to human needs. Even if every family in the world was wealthy enough to buy as big a mansion as (they thought) they wanted, differences would still exist that would make some people want what others have—say a better view, a bigger lot, or proximity to certain amenities.

Political Science: The Systematic Study of Politics

Normative Political Science

Empirical Political Science

Individuals, Groups, Institutions, and International Relations

Individuals

Political Behavior Is Human Behavior

Introduction

What Goals Should We Seek in Politics?

What Are Human Rights?

Which rights should be called human rights is a core question in political theory. Human rights can be thought of in three main ways. One is that human rights exist; although unobservable, they are real, just as gravity is real. It may not be possible to know their source, but various philosophers have contended that they exist through God, nature, or human reason. From this perspective, people do not create human rights, nor must they earn them. Human rights are inalienable: they cannot be denied, taken away, or transferred to anyone else.

This word is sometimes spelled unalienable; either way, the meaning is the same.

What Is Social Justice?

As with human rights, it is worth asking whether such a thing as social justice actually exists, or whether, in the words of the philosopher Friedrich Hayek, social justice is a “mirage.”

F. A. Hayek, *Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice* (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Rather than engaging in the debate as to whether social justice is a human invention or an eternal verity, this chapter instead explores the most important, often competing, definitions of social justice that have been proposed.

What Is the Purpose of Government?

There is no unanimity on the question of the proper purpose of government, as different individuals have proposed different answers at different times. In the mid-1600s, the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that if governments didn’t exist—that is, if individuals lived in a “state of nature”—then the lives of humans would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Thomas Hobbes, *Leviathan* (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, [1651] 2006). For Hobbes, then, the principal purpose of government would be to remove the people from the state of nature and to promote their security.

Who Should Rule?

If governments exist to protect their citizens and those citizens’ rights, who should rule the government?

Jonathan Wolff, *An Introduction to Political Philosophy* (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016). The possibilities range from a single person with sole and supreme power, to all citizens, with each participating with equal importance in making decisions. In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs ruled for thousands of years under the accepted belief that they were gods. To early Greek philosophers, the rulers should be those best fit to rule: the virtuous philosopher-kings. Today, those countries ruled by a single person—countries such as North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkmenistan—justify this on the basis of divinity, virtue, or both.

Why Do Humans Make the Political Choices That They Do?

Humans Make Decisions in Two Main Ways

Empirical political science tries to understand two main elements of human political behavior: the directly observable and the indirectly observable. Behaviors themselves are directly observable. Understanding why individuals act as they do when they engage in political action or when they refrain from participating requires an inquiry into mental and psychological processes, which, in the absence of brain scans, are not directly observable. In the real world of politics, it may not be possible to say why individuals do what they do, but it is usually possible to see what they do.

Humans Behave in Two Main Ways: Strategic and Expressive

People often do things to get things. They go to the store to buy food. They study in order to learn or to get higher grades. In other words, they take action in order to achieve their goals. In an ideal world, people would act in ways best suited to obtaining their objectives. If their goal is to earn a high grade, they would devise an approach to studying—or perhaps something else, like cheating—that is most likely to produce the grade they want. If their goal is to win an election, they would presumably make decisions that they deem most likely to win votes. Note that acting strategically does not necessarily imply acting morally. Acting strategically is quite simply choosing the most effective means to achieve a specific end.

Humans Seek Two Different Interests: Self-Interest and the Interests of Others

In simple terms, humans apply intuitive and cognitive thinking and strategic and expressive actions to seek two different types of interests: self-interests and public-spirited or altruistic interests.

We use “public spirit” rather than “altruism” because altruism indicates an unselfish concern for the welfare of others, while public spirit simply states that the person considers the interests of others in making a decision, not that self-interest is sacrificed to benefit others. See Mark C. Rom, *Public Spirit in the Thrift Tragedy* (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996).

Human Behavior Is Partially Predictable

What Does It Mean to Be Predictable?

Predictability means that it is possible to guess, with some accuracy, how people will behave in certain situations. In the commercial world, this predictability is what allows, say, Netflix to recommend movies. In short, every time you watch a show, Netflix collects data about what you like and then combines that data with information collected from everyone else using Netflix. If you like the same dozen films as a large number of other people and those people have seen and liked a 13th movie, Netflix predicts that there’s a pretty good chance you’ll enjoy the 13th movie as well.

Which Human Behavior Is Predictable, and Which Is Unpredictable?

The more information political scientists have about how people have behaved in the past, the better they are able to predict how people will behave in the future—but only within limits, a few of which bear mentioning. When making predictions about what people will do, the typical prediction is usually in the form of “individuals with characteristics like these are likely to do a certain thing,” which is quite different from saying “this individual will do that.” One might predict, for instance, that young, environmentally motivated activists around the world are likely to affiliate with the Green Party of their country. This does not mean that it is possible to accurately predict that Greta Thunberg, perhaps the most famous environmental advocate, is a member of Sweden’s Green Party.

Maggie McGrath, “Why Greta Thunberg Is One of the World’s Most Powerful Women,” *Forbes,* December 12, 2019.

The Importance of Context for Political Decisions

Rules

Political scientists often use games to interpret and predict human behavior. A game is a set of rules, a set of choices, and a set of decisions. The rules establish what a player is allowed to do. The choices are what the player can do at any turn. The decisions are what the player actually chooses to do. Political scientists examine both hypothetical games, seeking to understand what are the best moves given a set of rules and a specific situation, and real games in which they can observe the decisions that players actually make under various circumstances.

Situations

What do you think Player A and Player B are likely to do? How would you play the ultimatum game? You may have a quick-thinking intuitive sense of how much you would offer if you were Player A or of the smallest amount you would demand if you were Player B. Further slow reasoning might lead you to change your mind.

Political Ideology

Introduction

The Classical Origins of Western Political Ideologies

Socrates and Plato

In the fifth century BCE, Athenian philosopher Socrates maintained that people should seek the answers to the most fundamental of life’s questions through reason, accepting as true only ideas that have withstood criticism and can be stated clearly and precisely.

Aristotle

Plato’s student Aristotle (384–322 BCE) agreed that either rule by a supremely wise and virtuous ruler who attends to the good of the community, which he called a monarchy, or rule by a group of such virtuous rulers, which he called an aristocracy, would be the ideal political condition. However, both Aristotle and Plato worried that a system in which rule was given to one man might turn into a tyranny, with one person ruling only for their own good. Similarly, if rule was vested in a small group, that group may become an oligarchy, defined as rule by a few in service of their own advantage. Given these possibilities, Aristotle asked if political rule could safely be lodged in the majority of citizens in the form of a democracy. Aristotle suspected that this, again, might result in a form of rule that would neglect the good of the whole in favor of the interests of the majority.

Aristotle, *The Politics of Aristotle*, trans. Peter L. Phillips Simpson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), bks. 3–4. Even today, monarchs and authoritarian rulers often justify their rule based on skepticism about the ability of the majority to pursue the interests of the whole of society.

Thomas Hobbes

Most of the systems that emerged across Europe after the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE were monarchies that promoted and defended Christianity to justify their rule. In the mid-1600s, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) argued that political systems should be judged based not on their adherence to and glorification of a particular religion but only on their role in securing social peace.

John Locke

English philosopher and physician John Locke (1632–1704) seized on Hobbes’s concepts of the state of nature and a social contract among people, but his conception of natural laws was very different. Locke saw natural laws as a set of moral rules, discoverable by reason and based ultimately on the rationally provable existence of God, that are equally applicable to all. Unlike Hobbes, Locke saw the natural laws, and related natural rights, as placing obligations on everyone, whether or not a government imposes uniform penalties for breaking them. The natural law establishes natural rights and associated duties to others and to oneself. For Locke, one has, for example, a natural right to life, and as a result, all others have a natural duty to respect this natural right. Individuals have a duty to themselves not to commit suicide or let their own natural talents go to waste. Each individual has a duty to respect the natural rights of all other humans.

Applying Locke’s Ideas to Global Trade

Locke’s writings exerted a profound influence on the emergence of the Enlightenment (1690s–1790s), a period in Western history that emphasized the ordering of social, political, and religious life solely on the basis of reason. Before the 18th century, most political regimes enacted protectionist or mercantilist policies—that is, policies that discriminated against other countries’ imports and subsidized exports. In *The Wealth of Nations* (1776), Adam Smith (1723–1790) applies to international trade Locke’s principle that the free exchange of goods and services leads to prosperity for all. Smith argues that countries should lower their tariffs on imports, reduce subsidies for exports, and allow a free market to emerge among all nations. This, he argues, enables nations to specialize in those exports for which they have a comparative advantage, or a competitive edge over other countries in producing and selling particular goods, while affording their citizens lower prices on imports from countries that have a comparative advantage in other areas of production. As counterintuitive as that struck many at the time, reason, Smith maintains, shows that the wealth of a nation grows in proportion to its freedom of trade.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Prolific philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau adopted Locke’s state of nature, less as a thought experiment and more as an actual anthropological account of human history. Rousseau argued that “man was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, *On the Social Contract: With Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy*, ed. Roger D. Masters, trans. Judith R. Masters (London: Bedford, 1978), 46. All humans have a natural right to be free and a natural compassion toward others. However, humans are enslaved by the desire for wealth and social status, and that has resulted in the creation of oppressive political regimes.

The Development of Varieties of Liberalism

Classical Liberalism

Classical liberalism is a system of thought that combines elements of natural rights, limited government, and capitalism. Capitalism is an economic arrangement based on private property and the freedom to invest one’s wealth or talent in pursuit of profit. Classical liberalism endorses capitalism both within a country and in free trade among nations, as long as free trade is conducted within the moral limits of the natural law. Locke would say that classical liberalism endorses *liberty*, but it does not endorse moral *license*, or the freedom to act in ways that are destructive of the rights of others, the self, or the foundations of social peace and prosperity.

Locke, *Second Treatise*, ch. 2.

John Stuart Mill and the Expansion of Personal Liberty

In his work *The Subjection of Women* (1869), English writer John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) argues for the full inclusion of women in the rights that were emerging in societies based on classical liberalism. In 1859, Mill published *On Liberty*, advancing the argument that modern societies should expand their commitment to the value of individual freedom. In it, Mill argues that because even great leaders supported by a broad social consensus can make terrible mistakes, it is to society’s advantage to encourage open debate and discussion of all views, however unpopular. Liberty, he argues, should be broadened not only in matters of speech and the press but also so that the law does not restrict the freedom of adults—even if individual adults exercise their freedom in ways that cause them personal harm, as long as that exercise does not harm another person. In this degree of commitment to personal liberty, Mill endorses views that classical liberals such as Locke would reject. According to Locke, the purpose of government is to enforce the natural law, and one of the principles of the natural law is the preservation of one’s life and natural talents. For Mill, both legal measures and pro-liberty cultural norms must protect personal liberty, even when the exercise of that liberty presents a risk to the acting individual, as long as it does not harm anyone else. Mill grounds this standard, which he calls the harm principle, on two assumptions: that freedom encourages an experimentation and open dialogue that allows people to reject dangerous ideas, and that the high value of personal liberty demands nothing less.

John Stuart Mill, *On Liberty*, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (New York; Penguin, 1988), chs. 2, 4.

FDR and the New Deal

The Great Depression (1929–1941) had a significant impact on the classical liberal tradition. At the low point of the Great Depression, more than 25 percent of American workers were unemployed, and a massive contraction in economic activity led producers into waves of bankruptcy. Between 1933 and 1939, the federal government of the United States under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) launched the New Deal, a set of substantial economic regulations and social welfare programs designed to protect consumers, expand the economy, improve the condition of workers, and ease the financial strain on retirees. These programs included the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Social Security Board (now the Social Security Administration).

F. A. Hayek

Several thinkers, including economist F. A. Hayek (1899–1992), were skeptical of the breadth of governmental expansion under the New Deal. Although Hayek accepted the need to expand the role of the state in regulating economic activity, he contended that only a sizable government with substantial and invasive enforcement powers could regulate a large nation’s economy. In *The Road to Serfdom*, Hayek argues that extensive state planning of the economy empowers the government in a way that limits freedom and could eventually lead to government regulation of the whole of people’s lives. According to Hayek, expanded government creates entrenched bureaucrats who avoid democratic accountability. Once established, he argues, state regulations and large-scale programs are very difficult to roll back, and expanded economic regulations ultimately lead to reduced prosperity for all. The net result, according to Hayek, would be a new form of serfdom—a condition of limited freedom, entrenched hierarchies, and generalized poverty.

F. A. Hayek, *The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents*, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

Nationalism, Communism, Fascism, and Authoritarianism

The Development of Marxism in the West

In the 19th century, German writer Karl Marx (1818–1883) and his collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) condemned nationalism for its power to distract people from the economic struggles within and across nations and from how some individuals economically exploit members of the same “nation.”

20th-Century Fascists

Soviet communism was not the only form of totalitarianism that marked the 20th century. In the early 1920s, fascism, an ideology that combines reverence for the state with nationalism, anti-communism, and skepticism of the parliamentary form of government, first emerged in Italy and Spain. Under a parliamentary form of government, parties are elected to a legislative chamber, and the chamber, by a majority vote, selects members of the executive branch. By the 1900s in Italy, Spain, and other European nations, an array of different parties had emerged and been elected to parliament, making it very hard to form parliamentary majorities and select an executive branch capable of achieving results that would satisfy large sections of the population. In part in response to the challenges of governing under such fragmented parliaments, fascism sought to inspire nationalist loyalty to a single leader who would forcefully get “positive” results.

Stanley G. Payne, *A History of Fascism, 1914–1945* (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).

Mid-20th-Century Western Authoritarianism

Several European countries in the 20th century sought to avoid fascism and communism, yet resisted adopting the liberal tradition. During the 20th century, Portugal came to be governed by the principles of authoritarianism, an ideology that may allow freedoms in nonpolitical life but does not permit any political challenge to the ruler. From 1932 to 1968, the authoritarian prime minister of Portugal, António Salazar, attempted to create a state ruled exclusively by his own party that would permit a substantial (though incomplete) measure of economic and personal freedoms and respect for human rights. Portugal was considered a safe haven from Nazi oppression, and the government undertook efforts to grant false visas and asylum for Jews, especially those from eastern Europe. Portugal tolerated religious dissent, and it had a relatively free and open economy.

Gilbert, *Holocaust*. Defenders justified the principle of authoritarian rule on the basis that the democratic selection of rulers was just too dangerous. Would the people be consumed by the passions aroused by the Nazis as they sought to defeat communism and protect what they called the higher race? Or would they be captivated by the call for equality, spearheaded by the working class, and embrace Soviet-style communism? To avoid either, Portugal instituted an undemocratic authoritarian system governed by a leader who, it was hoped, would rule with moderation and sensitivity to basic rights.

Contemporary Authoritarianism: Egypt

In recent years, authoritarianism has expanded in parts of the world. In 2011 and 2012, the Arab Spring emerged in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia to remove authoritarian leaders and transform these states into representative democracies. In Egypt, uprisings led to the removal from office of longtime authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011. In the elections that followed, Mohamed Morsi, a member of an Islamic extremist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected president. Amid protests following his election, former military general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seized power. Sisi has since consolidated his power to ensure his unopposed rule, having justified this assumption of unchecked power with the same argument advanced by the authoritarian ruler António Salazar: the people cannot be trusted to select appropriate leaders. This judgment is advanced as a serious ideological position in large parts of the world.

Contemporary Chinese Communism

Although the Soviet Union, which based its government on ideas inspired by Marx, collapsed in 1991, communism persists as a political ideology. In fact, the most populous country on Earth, the People’s Republic of China, is currently governed by a regime committed to a version of communist ideology. In China, no individual who is not a member of the Chinese Communist Party may hold political office.

Contemporary Democratic Liberalism

Democratic Liberalism and the Center Right

The center right constitutes the ideological core of what, in a US context, is the contemporary Republican Party.

See Noam Gidron and Daniel Ziblatt, “Center-Right Political Parties in Advanced Democracies,” *Annual Review of Political Science* 22 (2019): 17–35, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-090717-092750. It largely sees itself as providing an updated form of the political thought of classical liberalism. This connection with classical liberalism is evident in center-right parties outside the United States. In Australia, for example, the center-right party is called the Liberal Party. The core of the center right is what is called political fusionism, a combination of moderate economic libertarianism and moderate social conservatism.See Joseph Bottum, “Social Conservatism and the New Fusionism,” in *Varieties of Conservatism in America*, ed. Peter Berkowitz (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2004), 31–47.

Democratic Liberalism and the Center Left

The ideological core of the contemporary Democratic Party in the United States can be thought of as embodying center-left democratic liberalism.

See Paul Starr, “Center-Left Liberalism,” in *The Oxford Companion to American Politics*, ed. David Coates, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Like the center right, this view traces back to the political thought that emerged with Locke and developed through the 19th and 20th centuries. This lineage can be seen in Canada, for example, where the center-left party is called the Liberal Party.

Contemporary Ideologies Further to the Political Left

Multiculturalism

One of the earliest New Left movements was multiculturalism. Multiculturalists argue that all or almost all of the cultures of the world are deserving of respect and that many individuals derive a great sense of their identity and self-worth through their membership in a particular culture. On these two bases, multiculturalists argue that contemporary governments should not seek to impose any society-wide cultural norms beyond the minimal norms to which all or almost all cultures already subscribe. A corollary of multiculturalist thought is that contemporary states do not need a common underlying culture in order to function effectively. Instead, multiculturalists tend to argue that a diversity of cultures enriches a society.

Andrew Heywood, *Political Ideologies: An Introduction* (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Environmentalism

Environmentalism, a movement that aims to preserve and protect the natural environment, gained prominence in the 1970s due in part to concerns about overpopulation and shrinking world food supplies. The environmentalism movement built on earlier conservation movements, and after the Green Revolution of the 1970s, which saw agricultural production grow exponentially due to pesticide control and new farming techniques, environmentalists turned their attention to global warming. Environmentalists point to the now widely accepted research findings of a broad array of scientists that show the world’s climate is in a crisis condition that imperils not only animal biodiversity but also the well-being of human populations around the world. The environmentalist movement argues that the center-left focus on maintaining private property and limiting government prevents it from adequately addressing this climate crisis.

Feminism

Another major aspect of the New Left is its commitment to feminism, and here the lines between the center left and the New Left once again become blurry—as do the lines between the New Left, the center right, and classical liberalism.

Critical Race and Gender Theory

Advocates of critical race and gender theory seek to expand not only rights but also equity by compensating past victims of injustice through law and public policy in order to achieve a current condition that is judged to be fairer. For example, because Black Americans experienced discrimination in public services in the past, the Biden administration proposed in 2021 that the federal government issue special equity grants to Black Americans and other racial minorities in certain sectors, such as farming.

See April Simpson, “Will Biden’s Relief Package Break Black Farmers’ ‘Cycle of Debt’?,” The Center for Public Integrity, March 19, 2021, https://publicintegrity.org/health/coronavirus-and-inequality/biden-relief-package-black-farmers-cycle-of-debt/.

Contemporary Socialism

Adherents of socialism promote transitioning to a socialist economy, arguing that any changes ushered in by the center left will be inadequate in a capitalist economic system. The goal of socialism is to remake society to ensure more or less equal material wealth, especially the equal possession of the goods that individuals need to reach their full potential. Socialist thinkers argue that a cooperative and communal social existence is achievable and that, given this achievability, there is little reason not to pursue it. Canadian philosopher G. A. Cohen argued that to realize a society based on cooperative sharing would require the slow but persistent building of well-established political structures in which people can channel natural instincts and aspirations for cooperative living. Although they are critical of the center left, contemporary socialists generally reject the communist ideology advanced in China and other communist nations such as Cuba and Vietnam.

Globalism and Indigenous Federalism

Both economic libertarianism and democratic socialism de-emphasize national borders. As an ideology, globalism focuses on this more international emphasis, calling for either enhancing the power of existing global institutions, such as the United Nations, or creating new international bodies with effective governing authority. Such international institutions have both concrete and symbolic importance. Concretely, they can mobilize forces around the world to address global issues such as climate change, economic inequalities among nations, and the repression of minorities within particular regimes. Symbolically, global governmental entities highlight a moral aspiration among globalists toward cosmopolitanism, the idea that one should define oneself primarily as a citizen of the world and not of any particular nation. One scholar, Université de Montréal professor Jean-Philippe Thérien, has identified an ideology centering on the United Nations itself.

Jean-Philippe Thérien, “The United Nations Ideology: From Ideas to Global Policies,” *Journal of Political Ideologies* 20, no. 3 (2015): 221–243, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2015.1075262.  This ideology posits that because the United Nations represents the best in human endeavor, it should be the primary vehicle through which international problems are addressed. The United Nations ideology liberates its supporters from any narrow viewpoint tied to a particular country, region, or religious belief. Because neither the West nor any one group or section of the world determines truly global responses to global problems, the United Nations ideology eliminates the concern that foreign aid and development initiatives will surface old colonial tropes of the West such as the “White savior.”

Contemporary Ideologies Further to the Political Right

Concerns about Culture

The New Right sees what it calls cultural Marxism—that is, Gramsci’s theory that culture must be weaponized against the upper classes—as one major danger. Many in the New Right feel that the culture has been weaponized against all they hold dear, just as many in the New Left feel that society has suppressed their values and principles.

Concerns over Equity

Increasingly, conservatives see calls for equity—a view that sees it as fair to extend more services or benefits to individuals who are members of marginalized groups—as an assault on the principle of equal treatment under the law. Many among the New Right see calls for equity, understood as calls to extend greater legal and political emphasis to historically marginalized groups, as an attack directed primarily against the social influence of Christianity, which, in demographic terms, has constituted the majority religion in the United States since the country’s founding and in many other parts of the world. Critics contend that this is problematic because they see Judeo-Christian values as providing important support for such things as individual rights, democracy, and the rule of law.

Conservative Populism

In response to these perceived threats, the New Right has adopted a variation of populism, a political view that emphasizes the need to win elections in order to install a government that will respond to the demands of “ordinary people,” who, according to populists, should be given a much greater role in how governmental policy is set to ensure that their interests are adequately served. This New Right ideology is known as conservative populism.

Political Ideologies That Reject Political Ideology: Scientific Socialism, Burkeanism, and Religious Extremism

Marxism and the Priority of Science

In his 1845 work *The German Ideology*, Marx argues that the dominant economic forces in a society can shape human reason. Marx held that the ruling class would concoct views about the world to perpetuate their rule. In Marx’s thinking, careful empirical observation and rigorous study are needed to break the spell of these ideas. Marxists, including the members of the Chinese Communist Party, label as “ideology” any views that are not confirmed by hard-nosed social science. For this reason, Marxists and Maoists often call their vision scientific socialism and repudiate “ideological” thinking, which they view as the product of abstract thinking not grounded in scientific reality.

Burkeanism and the Priority of Prudence

Followers of the political thought of British writer Edmund Burke (1729–1797), such as English philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990), reject a wide swath of political visions, including Marxism. They use Burke’s writings to argue that political ideologies based on reason risk dismissing all that does not meet with the approval of their rational vision’s assessment of reality. Oakeshott contended that because ideologies overestimate the powers of human reason, they dangerously repudiate traditions and customs that have stood the test of time and disregard the complexity of political life.

Religious Extremism and the Priority of Revelation

Having questioned what reason and science can reveal about how politics should operate in the future, why should one rest content with reliance on the lessons of history? Are the lessons of history really unambiguous? If not, then they require interpretation. But if reason and science provide no guide, by what means can one interpret the historical record?

Civil Liberties

Introduction

The Freedom of the Individual

Constitutions and Individual Liberties

What Are the Characteristics of Individualist Systems?

In an individualist system, individuals take precedence over the government. Society rests on the principle that individuals inherently possess rights that the government should preserve and promote. Two major styles of individualism are common today: libertarianism (also called classical liberalism) and modern liberalism. Libertarianism emphasizes restraints on government. Liberalism emphasizes the government’s obligation to enforce laws that protect personal autonomy and rights. Let’s review some of the different philosophies discussed in Chapter 3 in terms of how they impact civil liberties.

What Are the Characteristics of Communitarian Systems?

A communitarian system emphasizes the role the government plays in the lives of citizens. Communitarian systems are grounded in the belief that people need the community and its values to create a cohesive society. Government exists not only to protect rights but also to form a political community to solve public problems. There is a public good, and it is the government’s job to protect it, even if that means restricting individual behaviors. Communitarians oppose excessive individualism, arguing that it leads people to be selfish or egocentric, which is harmful to a community. Individuals do not stand apart from society in discrete autonomy; they are part of society and have a role to play in protecting society.

What Is Constitutionalism?

The three main elements of constitutionalism are adherence to the rule of law, limited government, and guarantees of individual rights. The rule of law has four principles:

The Right to Privacy, Self-Determination, and the Freedom of Ideas

The Right to Privacy

*Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law* defines the right to privacy as “the right of a person to be free from intrusion into or publicity concerning matters of a personal nature.”

*Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law*, s.v. “right of privacy,” accessed June 28, 2021, https://www.merriam-webster.com/legal/right%20of%20privacy. Another way to define the right to privacy is “the right to be left alone.”Wex, s.v. “right to privacy,” accessed January 27, 2022, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/right_to_privacy. In a liberal democratic system, privacy is a space separate from public life, allowing individual personal autonomy. Privacy is the ability to think, speak, and behave without being monitored or surveilled by another person or the government. Are you permitted to decide whether to have children and how many? To choose whom you marry? Decisions concerning what to wear, what to study in school, what career to pursue, and what religious beliefs to instill in one’s children are all privacy issues. They are all personal decisions or decisions about which there is debate on whether governments can restrict or require certain conduct.

Freedom of Expression of Ideas

Another area of ongoing tension between individuals and the government is the freedom of expression of ideas. This freedom includes the right to free speech and the right to the free exercise of religion. Article 19 of the UDHR states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

A/RES/217(III), art. 19. Article 18 provides that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”Ibid., art. 18.

Freedom of Movement

International Travel

While the UDHR applies the same standard to travel within a country that it applies to international travel, the latter is more strictly regulated around the world. In the United States before World War II, passport requirements came and went, and immigration controls targeted particular racial or ethnic groups. Beginning with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, all US citizens have been required to obtain a government-issued passport to leave or enter the country.

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 8 U.S.C. § 1185, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1185. A citizen is entitled to due process via a hearing if the government refuses to provide the requested passport. In *Kent v. Dulles*, the Supreme Court held:

Migration and Immigration Law

Migration differs from international travel because the traveler does not intend to return to their starting point. Migration involves a number of legal issues, including general immigration laws, refugee status, and a political concept called open borders. The UDHR states:

The Rights of the Accused

Rights upon Arrest

In rule-of-law countries, police must advise individuals of certain rights at the time of their arrest. These include the right to have an attorney assist them with their case and the right to be cautioned that anything they say can be used against them in court. A 2016 report by the Law Library of Congress found that 108 countries require these warnings,

Kelly Buchanan, “You Have the Right to Remain Silent . . . ,” *In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress*, Library of Congress, July 18, 2016, https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2016/07/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent/. and the European Convention on Human Rights and the UDHR both contain similar provisions.Council of Europe, *European Convention on Human Rights*, amend. and supp. (Strasbourg: European Court of Human Rights, 2021), https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf; A/RES/217(III), art. 10–11. These rights include:

Search and Seizure

Another way rule-of-law systems defend the rights of individuals is through protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. This means that law enforcement may perform reasonable searches and seizures, and much of the litigation in this area deals with the reasonableness of the search and seizure. The UN has created recommendations for best policing practices for all countries, including limiting the police’s right to search individuals, their homes, or their belongings to this standard. However, many countries do not adhere to these limitations. In those countries, the police can search an individual’s home or belongings or interrogate them at any time.

Writ of Habeas Corpus and the Right to Appear before the Court

In all rule-of-law countries, a person held in jail has the right to demand to be brought into court and told why they are being jailed. In some countries, this process is referred to as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In countries where this right is not recognized, a person can be held indefinitely incommunicado without any right to seek their freedom or to demand that the government prove the charges against them.

The Right to a Healthy Environment

Political Participation and Public Opinion

Introduction

What Is Political Participation?

Political Participation and Self-Government

Political participation is defined as action that expresses an individual’s political will. Throughout this chapter, we will discuss the many forms these actions can take. However, it is first important to discuss the idea of self-government. Self-government is when the people of a given country are the ones who grant the power to govern that country, through either direct or indirect representation. Without self-government, there can be no political participation on the part of the individual. The notion of self-government has been apparent since the founding of our country, as evident in *Federalist*, no. 39, where James Madison writes that it is necessary that the country’s government “derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is *essential* to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it.”

James Madison, *Federalist*, no. 39, in *The Federalist Papers*, by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Madison (Project Gutenberg, 2009), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1404/1404-h/1404-h.htm#link2H_4_0039. As James Madison and his colleagues wrote the Constitution that provides the framework of the American government, Madison felt that public officials must come from society itself, not from a particular class, as they had for years in Britain.

Why Is Voting Such an Important Form of Political Participation?

Self-government also means that the people are considered sovereign, meaning there is no power above the people. In self-governing states, the people elect public officials to government positions so those officials can represent the people’s beliefs and craft policies to express their will. In this way, voting is an important manifestation of both self-government and political participation—the most important, some argue, because it is the primary mechanism by which the people ensure that their government represents them. Another way to put it is to say that voting is what makes government *fair*, despite the many forces that prevent it from being fully representative. As Supreme Court justice Earl Warren wrote in his decision regarding *Reynolds v. Sims (1964)*, the right to direct representation is a bedrock of our democracy.

Reynolds v. Sims, 377 US 533 (1964), https://www.oyez.org/cases/1963/23. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled in an 8–1 majority decision that electoral districts have to be of equal population to ensure equal representation, reinforcing the idea of *one man, one vote* (or rather, one person, one vote). The ideas that each person has a vote in American democracy, that their vote is equal in power to another person’s vote, and that each person should exercise their vote are considered not only normal but normative (desirable.)

Voter Turnout in the United States

Considering how important it is to vote, why don’t more Americans vote? Voter turnout refers to the percentage of eligible voters, or voters who meet the requirements of their localities or states, who cast a ballot in an election. Many consider voter turnout to be low in the United States compared to other industrialized nations (see chart below), though the 66 percent of eligible voters who cast a ballot in the recent 2020 election represented the highest recorded voter turnout in a US election since the 1980s.

Drew DeSilver, “Turnout Soared in 2020 as Nearly Two-Thirds of Eligible US Voters Cast Ballots for President,” Pew Research Center, January 28, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/28/turnout-soared-in-2020-as-nearly-two-thirds-of-eligible-u-s-voters-cast-ballots-for-president/.

Voter Turnout in Other Countries

How does US voter turnout compare to turnout in other countries? In 2016, out of 35 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the United States ranked 30th out of 35 in terms of turnout.

Drew DeSilver, “In Past Elections, US Trailed Most Developed Countries in Voter Turnout,” Pew Research Center, November 3, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/03/in-past-elections-u-s-trailed-most-developed-countries-in-voter-turnout/. Why do other countries tend to have higher levels of participation? European University Institute and Trinity College Professor Mark N. Franklin, in his analysis of European and American voters, found that political salience, or the ability of voters to connect their actions (voting) with a political outcome, affected voter turnout and that both the United States and those European countries with lower voter turnout, such as Switzerland, exhibited low political salience.Mark N. Franklin, “Electoral Engineering and Cross-National Turnout Differences: What Role for Compulsory Voting?,” *British Journal of Political Science* 29, no. 1 (January 1999): 205–216, https://www.jstor.org/stable/194302. In other words, people do not vote if they don’t feel like their vote will have any effect. Conversely, when voters feel that their vote does have power, they are more likely to vote. In his study of voter turnout in industrial democracies, University of California Professor Robert W. Jackman provides a multiplicity of reasons for higher turnout in countries other than the United States, including unicameralism (a government with a single legislative body) and compulsory voting, in which citizens face penalties for not voting.Robert W. Jackman, “Political Institutions and Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies,” *American Political Science Review* 81, no. 2 (June 1987): 405–423, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1961959. Other scholars have suggested that proportional representation, a system in which parties gain seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them, also raises voter turnout because voters feel as though they have a better chance of being represented within government.Jeffrey A. Karp and Susan A. Banducci, “Political Efficacy and Participation in Twenty-Seven Democracies: How Electoral Systems Shape Political Behaviour,” *British Journal of Political Science* 38, no. 2 (April 2008): 311–334, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27568347. Scholars have likewise identified a correlation between higher levels of social capital and political participation in South KoreaAie-Rie Lee, “The Quality of Social Capital and Political Participation in South Korea,” *Journal of East Asian Studies* 10, no. 3 (September–December 2010): 483–505, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23418868. as well as in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Peru.Joseph L. Klesner, “Social Capital and Political Participation in Latin America: Evidence from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Peru,” *Latin American Research Review* 42, no. 2 (2007): 1–32, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4499368. Social capital, or the social networks that optimally connect people and work with one another, has been dropping since the 1950s in the United States, and this trend has correlated steadily with, among other things, lower voter turnout.Robert D. Putnam, *Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community* (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

What Limits Voter Participation in the United States?

How Do Individuals Participate Other Than Voting?

What Is Public Opinion and Where Does It Come From?

How Do We Measure Public Opinion?

Why Is Public Opinion Important?

Groups

The Fundamentals of Group Political Activity

Introduction

Political Socialization: The Ways People Become Political

The Role of the Family

The family is usually considered the most important influence on both a person’s overall socialization and their political socialization. Families profoundly affect people’s views about religion, work, and education.

The term *families* is used in the broadest sense to include those who sheltered you and raised you as a child. This includes caregivers in institutional settings, extended biological and nonbiological relatives, and other possibilities. People gradually develop these preferences, attitudes, and behaviors as they grow from infants to adolescents to adults. The impact families have on people’s lives does not vanish when they become adults. It is likely to persist over their lifetimes. The influence need not always flow from the parents to the child. Greta Thunberg’s activism led her parents to reconsider their own environmental attitudes, and research suggests that children often affect their parents’ views on the environment.Lydia Denworth, “Children Change Their Parents’ Minds about Climate Change,” *Scientific American*, May 6, 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/children-change-their-parents-minds-about-climate-change/.

Political Culture: How People Express Their Political Identity

Collective Dilemmas: Making Group Decisions

Causes of Collective Dilemmas

Collective dilemmas exist when members of a group try to make decisions that all must agree to or comply with. If you are trying to decide where to go to dinner by yourself, there is no collective dilemma, but if you and a friend are deciding whether to go to dinner and where, there is at least the potential for a collective problem. Maybe you want to go out, and your friend simply does not: one of you will be disappointed by whatever decision you make. Or maybe you want to go one place, and they want to go a different place. They want to go now, and you want to go later. They have more money than you do, but you have more time. Have you had the experience of eating out with friends and, after the bill arrives and you all pitch in your “fair share,” you discover that there is not enough money to pay the bill?

Solutions to Collective Dilemmas When Participants Disagree

When a collective dilemma involves participants simply disagreeing on an appropriate course of action (e.g., whether to allow or ban capital punishment), the rules for making a decision can have an important influence on which side will prevail.

Solutions to Collective Dilemmas When There Is General Agreement

If you have tried to coordinate the actions of a group—family, school, church, community, or any other gathering—then you have directly experienced coordination problems. Coordination problems occur whenever a group seeks to make a decision on a common course of action, the group members generally agree on what they are seeking, and everyone in the group will need to live with the results, but it’s not possible to give every group member exactly what they want. Coordination problems become more complex the greater the size of the group. Deciding what movie to watch in a group of two? Depending on the personalities of the two, this may be a pretty easy coordination problem. If the group has 20, or 20,000, or a million, or a billion members, the coordination challenges become increasingly complex.

Collective Action Problems: The Problem of Incentives

The Tragedy of the CommonsGarrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” *Science* 162, no. 3859 (December 1968): 1243–48, doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243. https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.

The world’s resources are finite. In southern Africa in the 20th century, overhunting nearly led to the extinction of the black rhino.

World Wildlife Fund, “Black Rhino,” accessed July 30, 2021, https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/black-rhino. Many types of fish—including tuna, cod, and halibut, among others—are being pulled out of the ocean at commercially unsustainable levels.World Wildlife Fund, “Overfishing,” accessed July 30, 2021, https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/overfishing. The climate is changing because humans are in effect using up the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases.Jouni Paavola, “Climate Change: The Ultimate Tragedy of the Commons?” in *Property in Land and Other Resources*, eds. Daniel H. Cole and Elinor Ostrom (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012) 417–33. https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/climate-change_0.pdf

The Free Rider Problem

At some point you have probably been asked to work on group assignments. You might have asked yourself how much effort you wanted to devote to this team activity. Whether you worked like crazy or did nothing at all, you would get the same grade as everyone else in the group (though of course doing nothing would mean you’d have no control over what that grade might be).

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

Imagine this scenario. The police apprehend two individuals they suspect of committing an armed robbery. They have evidence that both suspects are guilty of carrying an unlawful weapon, and though they strongly suspect at least one of the two individuals has committed the more serious crime of armed robbery, they have no direct evidence to back up their suspicions.

Resolving Collective Action Problems

Resolving Tragedies of the Commons

Two remedies for the tragedies of the commons require governmental power. One remedy gives a central institution (the government) the authority to protect the commons through force. If the government has a long-term interest in maintaining the commons and the de facto power to do so, it can prevent individuals from depleting the resource. Alternatively, the government can put a price on (privatize) the resource so that anyone who wants to use the resource must pay for it. In this case, the resource is no longer a “commons” open to all.

Resolving Free Riding Problems

The best way to resolve the free rider problem is to disincentivize free riders. One powerful tool to discourage free riding is to keep groups small. Because in politics groups are usually large, they must develop other mechanisms to identify free riders and to deter their behavior. These mechanisms come with a cost: the group must devote resources to monitoring and punishing unwanted behavior, and group members need to subject themselves to some form of surveillance.

Resolving Prisoner’s Dilemmas

Prisoner’s dilemmas create risks that can lead to more immediate but no less catastrophic outcomes. When two countries are at the brink of war, each might believe that it is more beneficial to attack than to wait—that is, to defect rather than to cooperate.

Civil Rights

Introduction

Civil Rights and Constitutionalism

Voting as a Civil Right

As discussed in more detail later in the chapter, voting is a civil rights issue in the United States. Throughout its history, the United States has restricted voting access to certain groups, culminating in several historic movements and protests to expand and protect voting rights. The vote is one of the most powerful ways the people can use their voice to effect change and be heard. When a government denies a group the right to vote, it effectively takes away their political voice. The less power the members of a group have to make their voices heard, the more help they will need—if not from the government, then from the political action of other groups. As Boston College professor Kay Lehman Schlozman, Harvard University professor Sidney Verba, and University of California professor Henry E. Brady put it, “Public officials cannot consider voices they do not hear.”

Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, *The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 6.

Constitutionalism and Civil Rights

The US Constitution first guaranteed a right to vote for some citizens with the ratification of the 14th Amendment, which declares that any state denying eligible citizens the right to vote will lose representation in Congress. In Chapter 4: Civil Liberties, you read about constitutionalism, which is “the doctrine that governs the legitimacy of government action.”

Maru Bazezew, “Constitutionalism,” *Mizan Law Review* 3, no. 2 (September 2009): 358–369. In other words, constitutionalism reminds us that governments must respect the rule of law and the limits placed on government power.

Political Culture and Majority-Minority Relations

Majority and Minority Political Cultures

As discussed in Chapter 6: The Fundamentals of Group Political Activity, each country, along with the subnational states within it, has its own unique political culture—the ways in which traditions and cultural values create that country’s specific political system. A country’s particular combination of history, geography, religious practices, conflict, and other identities contributes to creating its specific political culture. Political culture plays an important role in determining which civil rights the country protects and how well it protects them, and those with the most power are most able to influence the culture.

Political Culture and Civil Rights Change

One of the biggest changes in civil rights policy in the United States came in 2015 when, in *Obergefell v. Hodges*, the Supreme Court struck down state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage. The ruling came after decades of hard work to change the political culture of the United States to one that would recognize and protect the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals. For most of American history, same-sex couples were denied the right to marry. The Supreme Court ruling that effectively secured the right to marry for same-sex couples was the culmination of over 50 years of organizing, protests, and lobbying.

Civil Rights Abuses

LGBTQ+ Discrimination

People who identify as LGBTQ+ experience discrimination and degradation from majorities who see them as not fitting into traditional conceptions of heterosexual gender roles. As discussed above, political culture can change, but despite historic achievements, many countries continue to deny LGBTQ+ couples the same rights afforded to heterosexual “straight” couples. For example, same-sex couples are not permitted to adopt children (or no law allows for this) in most countries.

“Chart: Where Adoption Is Illegal for LGBT+ Couples,” Statista, March 8, 2018, https://www.statista.com/chart/13179/where-adoption-is-illegal-for-lgbt-couples/. The United States Supreme Court did not affirm the right of same-sex couples to adopt until 2017.Pavan v. Smith, 582 U.S. __ (2017), https://www.oyez.org/cases/2016/16-992. Most European countries have legalized same-sex adoption, but it is considered legal in few other countries around the world. In 2002, South Africa became the first country in Africa to allow same-sex couples to adopt,“Lesbians, Gays, Can Adopt Children,” *News 24*, September 10, 2002, https://www.news24.com/News24/Lesbians-gays-can-adopt-children-20020910. but LGBTQ+ activists in the country still feel unsafe due to widespread discrimination.Kimon de Greef, “The Unfulfilled Promise of LGBTQ Rights in South Africa,” *The Atlantic*, July 2, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/southafrica-lgbtq-rights/593050/.

Voter Suppression

One of the ways those in power can seek to remain in power is by controlling whose voices can be heard and counted in elections. The failure of federal and state governments to enforce voting rights protections in the United States provides another troubling example of majoritarianism. Despite the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865 and the 19th Amendment in 1920, many American states continued to limit suffrage on the basis of sex and race. Policy makers justified denying voting and other political rights to Black Americans and women on the grounds that their participation would diminish the overall quality of the electorate because women

Marina Koren, “Why Men Thought Women Weren’t Made to Vote,” *The Atlantic*, July 11, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/womens-suffrage-nineteenth-amendment-pseudoscience/593710/. and Black AmericansDanyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell, and Abril Castro, “Systematic Inequality and American Democracy,” Center for American Progress, August 7, 2019, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473003/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/. were not deemed qualified to engage in the political process. Though constitutional amendments protected the right to vote for Black Americans,John G. Stewart, “Why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Really Mattered,” *Washingtonian*, June 4, 2014, https://www.washingtonian.com/2014/06/04/why-the-civil-rights-act-of-1964-really-mattered/. American states and their White-majority (often all-White) legislatures found ways to limit Black political participation including literacy tests, poll taxes, and White-only primaries. These efforts are referred to as Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow era, a period during which laws perpetuating institutional racism and the denial of Black Americans’ constitutional rights were enforced across the southeastern United States, lasted from 1877 to about 1965.

Ethnic and Religious Discrimination

Participation and full inclusion in a society may take different forms. Sri Lanka’s constitution references the right of all its citizens to practice the religion of their choice, but the constitution does emphasize Buddhism as the majority religion. This creates a situation effectively enabling a religious majority to maintain its power through the constitution. According to Chapter 2 of its constitution, “The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana.”

*Sri Lanka’s Constitution of 1978 with Amendments through 2015* (Getzville, NY: William S. Hein & Co.), https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Sri_Lanka_2015.pdf?lang=en. Every Sri Lankan president and prime minister has been Buddhist, despite the presence of strong and vocal Muslim and Hindu minorities.“Sri Lanka Says Buddhism Will Remain Paramount in New Charter,” *Reuters*, July 12, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-politics/sri-lanka-says-buddhism-will-remain-paramount-in-new-charter-idUSKBN19X1TR. It is important to note here that religion and religious freedom, particularly in the American context, are civil liberties because they are protected by the Free Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment. However, when a government policy favors one religious community over another or limits the collective religious freedom of an entire group, it becomes a civil rights issue too.

Civil Rights Abuses toward Native Americans

The centuries-long denial of civil rights to the original Indigenous people in the United States is a prime example of how a government can act in the interests of protecting a majority while simultaneously failing to protect and violating the civil rights of a particular group. Even the term “Native American” is a blanket category that contains hundreds of tribes, many with their own distinct languages. Between 1776 and 1887, the United States federal government seized over 1.5 billion acres of Indigenous land, which covered over three-fourths of what is now called the continental United States.

Rebecca Onion and Claudio Saunt, “Interactive Time-Lapse Map Shows How the US Took More Than 1.5 Billion Acres from Native Americans,” *Slate* (The Vault), June 17, 2014, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/06/17/interactive_map_loss_of_indian_land.html.

Japanese American Internment

On December 7, 1941, Japanese armed forces attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in the US territory of Hawaii. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war the next day, and on December 8, 1941, the US entered World War II. Two months later, the president signed Executive Order 9066, which gave the Secretary of War the power to “prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion.”

Exec. Order No. 9066, 7 Fed. Reg. 38 (Feb. 25, 1942). https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/?dod-date=219. What transpired was the forced internment of Japanese Americans, one of the most profound and consequential episodes of civil rights infringement in US history.

Slavery

When the subject of slavery comes up in the United States, it is almost always in the context of what happened in the 19th century or in relation to President Lincoln. What many people do not realize is how pervasive slavery continues to be around the world. The International Labour Organization estimated that in 2016, 40.3 million people globally were bound in modern slavery, including 15.4 million in forced marriages.

“Forced Labour, Modern Slavery, and Human Trafficking,” International Labor Organization, https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang—en/index.htm.

Civil Rights Movements

From Individual to Group Action

In 1848, Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay titled *Civil Disobedience* inspired by his public refusal to pay a poll tax, which landed him in jail. Liberal political philosopher John Rawls defines civil disobedience as a “public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.”

Candice Delmas and Kimberley Brownlee, “Civil Disobedience,” in *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy*, ed. Edward N. Zalta, revised June 2, 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/; John Rawls, *A Theory of Justice* (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 320.

Movements to Achieve African American Equality

Most people associate the civil rights movement in the United States with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1963 March on Washington, but the movement first began with a 1953 bus boycott aimed at desegregating public transportation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Aldon Morris, *The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change* (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986). This protest occurred two years before the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till for allegedly offending a White woman in a grocery store and the arrest of Rosa Parks that instigated the more famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, both of which occurred in 1955.

Me Too

One of the most remarkable social movements of the 21st century has been Me Too, a global effort that encourages people to speak out about their experiences of sexual harassment and assault and to publicly name their attackers. American activist Tarana Burke originally coined the phrase in 2006 in response to working with children of color who were victims of molestation and childhood sexual abuse.

Tarana Burke, “History & Inception,” Me Too, https://metoomvmt.org/get-to-know-us/history-inception/. As she heard story after story of the horrors Black girls experienced, Burke was reminded of her own experience of rape at the age of seven and the shame she subsequently felt. She came up with the expression “Me Too” as a form of solidarity with the victims, particularly girls of color.Tonya Mosley, “‘Me Too’ Founder Tarana Burke Says Black Girls’ Trauma Shouldn’t Be Ignored,” *NPR,* September 29, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/09/29/1041362145/me-too-founder-tarana-burke-says-black-girls-trauma-shouldnt-be-ignored. Ten years later, in 2017, the movement exploded, primarily through the Twitter hashtag #MeToo, building an online community of millions of people, mostly women, who push not only for recognition of the generational trauma of sexual harassment, but also for immediate civil rights change.Sophia Gilbert, “The Movement of #MeToo,” *The Atlantic,* October 16, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/the-movement-of-metoo/542979/.

How Do Governments Bring About Civil Rights Change?

Institutional Racism and Intersectionality

When examining civil rights issues around the world as they pertain to race and ethnicity, it becomes apparent that the way many formal political institutions and branches of government—judicial, executive, legislative, and bureaucratic—are composed and the laws they create and enforce establish and advance institutional racism. *Institutional racism* refers to the racist laws and practices that are deeply embedded in a country’s institutions and that, because they are so embedded, have established norms that may make their racist nature harder for those in the majority to recognize.

Sam Richards, “Institutional Racism in the Criminal Justice System,” SOC 119, Penn State University, September 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UESzUBPoTRA. According to Vanderbilt University, “Institutional racism is racism perpetrated by social and political institutions that have the power to affect large groups of people that belong to a racial group. It shows up in both formal and informal ways and in the systematic distribution of resources, power, and opportunity in our society.”“Day 8: Addressing the Four Levels of Racism—Institutional Racism (within and between Institutions and Systems of Power),” Diversity Recruitment Vanderbilt University, https://www.vanderbilt.edu/work-at-vanderbilt/diversitytraining/day8.php. Another way to think about this is that political institutions are responsible for making resources available to everyone fairly, and when that does not happen, these institutions operate in a way that is inequitable. Similarly, when a government does not do enough to make sure everyone in a society, country, or community has the same opportunities to succeed, that government is operating in a way that is inequitable.

Legislative and Judicial Action

In representative democracies or republics, where the people have the power to choose officials to represent their needs and wants, legislatures represent the national mood and the dominant political culture of the participating public. Around the world, legislatures and legislators are key to creating and passing legislation that either enshrines the marginalization of certain groups and the violations of their rights or that protects those groups.

Equal Protection and Japanese American Redress

Among other protections, the 14th Amendment includes the Equal Protection Clause: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

U.S. Const. amend. 14, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv. The 14th Amendment focuses solely on state governments, and the Equal Protection Clause is intended to ensure that state governments do not deny equal protection to individuals because they are part of a group. The government passed the Equal Protection Clause to prevent the kind of race-based discrimination that shaped the US Constitution as it was being framed, to affirm that the US Constitution bans slavery, to ensure newly emancipated persons the protections of citizenship, and to limit southern state powers.

Executive Action

A country’s executive, who might be a president, prime minister, or chancellor, is the head of the branch of government most often tasked with policy enforcement and implementation. As the face/voice of a country, a country’s political leader often has multiple tools of control and influence that are particularly effective in the arena of civil rights. When the executive acts outside their official capacity as the head of government or head of state but their actions are still seen as important and symbolic, they exercise informal executive power. On the other hand, formal executive power is power that may be codified by executive orders, statements to accompany the signing of legislation, speeches, or other official announcements.

Interest Groups, Political Parties, and Elections

Introduction

What Is an Interest Group?

Types of Interest Groups

Interest groups can be organized into two general categories: economic groups and public interest or noneconomic groups. Economic groups focus on issues such as wages, industry protections, job creation, and profit maximization, to name a few, and can be further sorted into subcategories such as business, labor, agricultural, and professional. For example, the United States Chamber of Commerce is a business group that describes itself as the world’s largest business organization, representing companies of all sizes and advocating for policies that help create jobs and grow the economy.

“About the US Chamber of Commerce,” US Chamber of Commerce, accessed March 1, 2021, https://www.uschamber.com/about/about-the-us-chamber-of-commerce. In Canada, the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses lobbies for lower tax rates on small businesses and credit card rate reductions, among other issues.“Latest News,” Advocacy, Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, accessed June 10, 2021, https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/en/advocacy. Other types of economic groups include labor groups like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU),Service Employees International Union (website), accessed March 1, 2021, https://www.seiu.org. which represents the interests of workers in health care, public services, and property services. In Germany, which has a long history of labor groups in politics, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB - Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) acts as an umbrella organization for eight labor groups and represents the interests of close to six million German workers. It is the largest labor group in Germany and one of the largest trade organizations in the world.DGB—German Trade Union Confederation (website), accessed June 10, 2021, https://en.dgb.de.

Theories of Interest Group Formation

How and why do interest groups such as the NAACP or La Quadrature du Net form? Three major theories about interest group formation allow us to better understand how interest groups form and how they function within the political sphere. The first of these, pluralist theory, posits that multiple and diverse interests compete for attention and resources and that political power is distributed amongst these various interests. Competition among interests allows for the representation of a diversity of views rather than solely those of elite interests, and it prevents single issues from dominating public discourse. In other words, individual interests can be advanced through collective action

This concept is also covered in Chapter 6: The Fundamentals of Group Political Activity. (e.g., “You and I both want more open spaces in the city; let’s get together and advocate.”), and multiple groups compete for attention to promote change. Thus, according to pluralist theory, interest groups form as a means for individuals to engage in collective action in support of common goals.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Interest Groups?

Pros of Interest Groups

Interest group participation in politics has its benefits. In *Federalist Paper* No. 10, James Madison argued that while the threat of factions exists, a healthy representative government will ensure that no single interest monopolizes the government’s attention and that competition among interests (pluralism) will ultimately enhance democracy. From this perspective, the model of interest group activity can be seen as an ideal way to serve the common good because it allows more voices to engage in the political process, which is part and parcel of self-governance.

Cons of Interest Groups

Theoretically, pluralism should work to protect the interests of the many: when multiple interests strive to be heard by governmental actors, multiple interests are also addressed. However, this can bring about problems of factionalism, where small groups of people with shared interests work to have their wishes represented in government despite majority interests. In other words, as Madison addressed in *Federalist Paper* No. 10, while a multitude of interests may be represented, not all are heard or responded to equally, and a narrow interest may hijack political attention at the expense of the majority’s needs. Further, the more socially, monetarily, or institutionally resourced an interest, the more influence it enjoys, regardless of how narrow or seemingly obscure it might be.

How Do Interest Groups Influence Government, and How Are They Regulated?

The formal work of interest groups is referred to as lobbying, the attempt by a group to influence a political outcome. Lobbying can take on different forms, and groups often lobby different branches and types of government. Lobbying itself can be further divided into two categories, inside lobbying and outside lobbying.

Political Parties

What Are Political Parties?

How do political parties work? Political parties are groups that organize around a shared political ideology, with the primary goal of electing party members to positions in government. Political parties have a lot in common with interest groups. Like interest groups, political parties operate to influence policy makers. However, political parties differ from interest groups in one crucial way. While PACs donate to certain candidates, interest groups ultimately work with any elected official if they feel doing so will meet their policy ends. In contrast, political parties seek to control the government from within by getting as many of their party members elected as possible.

Central Party Activities

In addition to working to choose and elect candidates, parties serve other practical functions. Political parties, like interest groups and their PACs, raise money for campaigns. By electing members of their parties to government, parties work to garner a majority coalition in order to direct policy outcomes, and in the United States, money in elections continues to grow. In the 2020 election cycle, both parties raised close to \$2 billion to distribute to various candidates and their campaigns.

“Political Parties,” Politicians and Elections, Open Secrets, accessed March 2, 2021, https://www.opensecrets.org/parties/. In 2018, the aforementioned Liberal Democratic Party raised ¥2.46 billion (or roughly \$22 million) to fund campaigns in Japan despite the assumption that the party would continue to dominate the political system.“Japanese Industry Donations to Liberal Democratic Party in 2018 Hit ¥2.46 Billion, Up for Seventh Straight Year,” *The Japan Times*, November 29, 2019, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/11/29/national/politics-diplomacy/japanese-industry-donations-liberal-democratic-party-2018-hit-¥2-46-billion-seventh-straight-year/.

Contemporary Party Systems

Throughout its political history, the United States has had what is considered a two-party system. Over time the two parties have taken on different forms and names, starting with the Federalists and the Democratic Republican parties, then the Whigs and the Democrats, and now the Democrats and Republicans. While third parties like the Green Party and Democratic Socialists certainly exist, the United States is considered a two-party system since only two parties have a realistic chance of wielding political control. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party (Tories) and the Labour Party enjoyed long-standing dominance throughout the 20th century. However, the emergence of the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK (or the “Brexit Party”), and smaller influential parties at the local and regional level has altered the United Kingdom’s traditional two-party system, making it look more like a multiparty system.

Philip Lynch, “Party System Change in Britain: Multi-Party Politics in a Multi-Level Polity,” *British Politics* 2 (October 2007): 323–46, https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.bp.4200071. Germany provides another interesting example of a multiparty system. Prior to Adolf Hitler’s rise, over a dozen political parties held seats in the German government. After the rise of Nazi Germany, the country became a single-party government (Third Reich), and this single party structure remained in place from 1933 to 1945, until the end of the Second World War.Gerhard Loewenberg, “The Remaking of the German Party System: Political & Socio-economic Factors” *Polity* 1, no. 1 (1968): 86–113, www.jstor.org/stable/3233977. Germany subsequently broke into two separate countries, East and West Germany. A single party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, ruled East Germany. During this era, several parties grew in West Germany, including the Christian Democratic Union, and after the reunification of Germany in 1990, Christian Democratic Union majority party leader Helmut Kohl led the government. Then, in 2016, the outcome of the German election led to a “six-party government,”Isabelle Rousel and Biodun Iginla, “German politics is turning into a six-party system,” *The Economist*, September 19, 2016, https://www.economist.com/europe/2016/09/19/german-politics-is-turning-into-a-six-party-system. with power sharing between the Social Democrats, Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Christian Democrats, the Left, the Green, and the Free Democrats. Single-party systems still exist today; though China has multiple registered minority parties, it is considered a single-party system where the Communist Party has controlled all levers of government since its rise to power in 1949.“China Anniversary: How the Communist Party Runs the Country,” *BBC*, September 30, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49631120. Similarly, Cuba has been a single-party Communist state since 1959.US Department of State, *Foreign Relations of the United States*, 1958-1960, Cuba, Volume VI, eds. John P. Glennon and Ronald D. Landa (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1991) Document 278, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06. Eritrea, in Northeast Africa, has also been ruled by a single party, The People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, and a single leader, President Isaias Afwerki, since 1993.US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Executive Summary, 2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Eritrea, (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), https://www.state.gov/reports/2018-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/eritrea/.

What Are the Limits of Parties?

The Decline of Parties and the Rise of Candidate-Centered Campaigns in the United States

What is the current state of political parties? University of California professor Martin Wattenburg and Harvard University professor Thomas E. Patterson argue that since the late 1980s, the United States has seen a rise in what is called the candidate-centered campaign. This is the idea that the declining influence of political parties and their decreased ability to mobilize voters’ opinions and actions has set voters politically adrift, and that candidates themselves have stepped in to fill the power vacuum.

Martin P. Wattenburg, *The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics: Presidential Elections of the 1980s* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). These types of “entrepreneurial” candidates further weaken party influence in that they do not need to depend on the party for resources in order to launch a campaign or reach voters.Thomas E. Patterson, *We the People* (New York: McGraw Hill, 2014), 258. There is no better example of a candidate-centered campaign than that of Ross Perot, a self-made billionaire who funded his own run for president as a third-party candidate against George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton in 1992.Gerald Seib and James Hagarty, “H. Ross Perot, Texas Billionaire Who Twice Ran for President, Dies at 89,” *The Wall Street Journal*, July 9, 2019. Perot did not win the election, but he managed to take 20 percent of the popular vote. Yale University professor Ian Shapiro bemoans this trend in candidate-centered campaigns and the weakening party system. According to *Yale News* reporter Mike Cummings, “the transfer of political power to the grassroots has eroded trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating in the rise of divisive, populist politics in the United States and abroad.”Mike Cummings, “Polarization in US Politics Starts with Weak Political Parties,” *Yale News*, November 17, 2020. Former President Donald J. Trump is also an example of a candidate who ran outside of the traditional Republican Party platform, who was able to garner media attention despite his inexperience with politics, and who very much manifested this idea of the candidate-centered campaign.

The Decline of Political Parties Around the World

Political parties have weakened not just in the United States, but across the globe. European University Institute professor Peter Mair and Leiden University professor Ingrid van Biezen found both that levels of party membership have declined as a proportion of the electorate and that there has been a major decline in the absolute numbers of party members across all the long-established European democracies.

Peter Mair and Ingrid van Biezen, “Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980–2000,” *Party Politics* 7, no. 1 (January 2001): 5–21. University of Essex professor Paul Whiteley likewise describes a well-documented, long-term decline in party activism across Europe and attributes this trend to parties being too close to the state and no longer working to recruit and rely on membership for their work.Paul Whiteley, “Is the Party Over? The Decline of Party Activism and Membership across the Democratic World,” *Party Politics* 17, no. 1 (June 2010): 21–44. Other reasons for the global decline of parties include the rise of candidate-centered campaigns (as in the United States), economic factors like deindustrialization, and the rise of communications technologies as an alternative to traditional groups.Patrick Liddiard, *Are Political Parties in Trouble?* (Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 2018), https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/are-political-parties-trouble. The declining salience of class as an identity in political mobilization is also a factor in the decline in party identification, as seen in the United States and in countries like France and Britain, where left-wing parties have seen a decline in working-class voters. In all three countries, voters with low incomes and lower levels of education had tended to support left-of-center parties, while high-income, highly educated voters had aligned with those of the right; however, as London School of Economics and School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences professor Thomas Piketty has pointed out, this is no longer the case. Party alliance has flipped: those with higher education and income levels tend to be more liberal and support candidates on the left while working-class and less educated voters support conservative policies.Thomas Piketty, “Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right: Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict,” World Inequality Database, March 2018, http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Piketty2018.pdf. The outgrowth of this trend has, according to Piketty, also led to a rise in populism, or the appeal on the part of public leaders to the belief by ordinary people that established elite groups disregard their concerns.Ibid., 2.

What Are Elections and Who Participates?

Why Are Elections Important to Representative Democracy?

Frequent elections are a hallmark of any representative democracy because they allow elected members of government to understand the will of the people and they give people the opportunity to select these representatives and policies based on their preferences. From an American perspective, as Madison writes in *Federalist Paper* No. 52, “Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured.”

James Madison, “Federalist No. 52,” in *The Federalist Papers* (New Haven, CT: The Avalon Project), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed52.asp, first published 1788 by the *New York Packet*. In other words, if voters are expected to depend upon and trust their representatives, frequent elections are necessary to ensure the government understands the electorate’s needs. Elections can also be seen as competitions where interest groups and political parties use their resources to convince groups of voters to vote for certain candidates over others.Theodore J. Lowi, Benjamin Ginsberg, Kenneth A. Shepsle, and Stephen Ansolabehere, *American Government: Power and Purpose* (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017), 428. The competitive nature of elections allows voters to “comparison shop” and forces candidates to be open about their objectives and plans. Competitive elections encourage voters to make electoral decisions, and these collective decisions should work to move elected officials in one direction over another in order to maintain their roles.

What Are Some Problems with Elections?

Elections are not without their problems. In economics, the theory of adverse selection refers to the idea that sellers, not buyers, have the upper hand when it comes to information, especially when it comes to product quality. For example, when a family goes to a shelter to select a puppy, they tend to know relatively little about the puppy’s lineage, what kind of environment it was born or raised in, and what the puppy is like day to day. The family has only limited information to help them decide which puppy to select, much as limited information impairs voters’ ability to make choices about policies and candidates. For example, a recent ballot initiative in California asked voters to decide if drivers of rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft are employees or contractors. The two companies spent \$205 million dollars to persuade voters to exempt them from treating their drivers as workers.

Michael Hiltzik, “With Prop 22, Uber and Lyft Used Their Wealth to Reshape Labor Law in Their Sole Interest,” *Los Angeles Times*, November 4, 2020. Since voters cannot fully educate themselves on everything they must vote on, the information asymmetry can often benefit the candidate or, in this case, the companies that can spend the most on communicating with potential voters. This example also sheds light on the problematic costs of elections. As mentioned, the last presidential election cost \$14 billion, all to persuade voters to cast a ballot a certain way. As we will discuss later in the chapter, how and when elections occur varies around the world, but the high cost of elections is a uniquely American problem.

Who Participates in Elections?

The number of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election is referred to as voter turnout. Note that there is a difference between eligible voters and registered voters. In the United States, the voting eligible population (VEP) is all citizens who have reached the minimum age to vote, regardless of registration status, excluding people who are not eligible to vote, such as noncitizens and, in certain states, convicted felons. Registered voters, on the other hand, are voters who have reached the legal voting age, have their names on a voter registration list, and meet the requirements set by their state or jurisdiction in order to vote. The number of registered voters in the United States is lower than the number of eligible voters, and the number of registered voters who actually vote is lower still. The number of adults who participated in elections in the United States in the last 20 years hovered between a low of 52 percent and a high of 66 percent in the 2020 presidential election.

Drew Desilver, “Turnout Soared in 2020 as Nearly Two-Thirds of Eligible U.S. Voters Cast Ballots for President,” Pew Research Center, January 28, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/28/turnout-soared-in-2020-as-nearly-two-thirds-of-eligible-u-s-voters-cast-ballots-for-president/. America has low voter turnout relative to other democratic countries, ranking 30th out of 35 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries.Drew Desilver, “In Past Elections, U.S. Trailed Most Developed Countries in Voter Turnout,” Pew Research Center, November 3, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/03/in-past-elections-u-s-trailed-most-developed-countries-in-voter-turnout/.

How Do People Participate in Elections?

Electoral Districts and Plurality and Proportional Representation

In the United States, Americans vote in what are called electoral districts, which are all roughly equal in size in terms of population. The United States House of Representatives, state legislatures, and local governments all have their own districts from which a single representative is elected, though this was not always the case. At the writing of the Constitution, Article I, Section 4 simply stated that both Congress and state legislatures would determine how elections for members of Congress would occur. Congress first passed the law dictating that House members be elected by district in 1842, and by 1872 they had expanded its scope, articulating the need for equal districts.

U.S. Const. art. I, § 4, cl. 1. In the case of the United States Senate, each state is the equivalent of a district, though each state obviously has a different number of residents. When the Constitution was drafted, state legislatures elected Senators, but by 1913 the 17th Amendment was passed and ratified in order to allow the election of Senators by direct popular vote.“Landmark Legislation: The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution,” United States Senate, accessed March 3, 2021, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/SeventeenthAmendment.htm.

Direct Democracy: Ballot Initiatives and Referendums

Ballot initiatives and referendums are examples of a different type of election, often referred to as direct democracy, where instead of elected representatives deliberating upon policies, citizens vote on those policies directly. A ballot initiative introduces a new piece of legislation or a law (e.g., whether Maryland should allow gambling in all counties), while a referendum asks voters to support or terminate an already-existing law or policy. A recall is a type of direct democracy that provides voters with the opportunity to end the term of an already-elected member of government.

Election Regulations in the United States

In the United States, the federal government plays only a limited role in regulating campaigns and elections. This is due in part to the idea behind the federal system of American government, which balances power between the federal government and the states. As such, states are free to oversee their own election processes so long as they do not violate existing federal laws or state statutes. For example, since 1998 Oregon has used mail-in ballots, where all registered voters receive ballots three weeks before Election Day.

Priscilla Southwell, “Mail-In Voting Lessons from Oregon, the State with the Longest History of Voting by Mail,” *The Conversation*, September 30, 2020, https://theconversation.com/mail-in-voting-lessons-from-oregon-the-state-with-the-longest-history-of-voting-by-mail-145155. In Maine, voters are allowed to use a ranked-choice method to select candidates, with the lowest-ranked candidates eliminated in each round until there are only two candidates left. The candidate who wins more than 50 percent of the vote in the final round is declared the winner.Gabrielle Manino, “What Is Maine Ranked-Choice Voting and How Does Ranked-Choice Voting Work?” *News Center Maine*, updated November 3, 2020, https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/politics/elections/what-is-and-how-does-maine-ranked-choice-voting-work/97-e7964e06-a087-4b79-97cc-7f053c294248. States also differ in other methods and regulations around voting. For example, recent proposed changes in the Georgia legislature would make Sunday voting more difficult for Georgians wishing to cast early votes. This type of regulation is decided at the state level, though opponents allege that this measure is aimed squarely at minimizing Black turnout since, historically, southern churches have encouraged their congregants to vote on Sundays.Eugene Scott, “New Georgia Legislation Would Curb ‘Souls to the Polls,’” *Washington Post*, February 21, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/24/new-georgia-legislation-would-curb-souls-polls/.

Election Regulations around the World

Election rules differ around the globe. In comparison to the United States, France imposes very strict regulations on how elections are run. In France, elections themselves are very brief (two weeks leading up to the casting of ballots and one week in between two separate ballots), and all media involving campaigns can only be aired during a three-month run up to an election. In addition, starting from the night before polls open, it is illegal to publish or in any way broadcast any type of communication that can be categorized as electoral propaganda. However, television stations can show candidates voting (along with other citizens) as long as all candidates in the election are included and provided no candidate transmits any sort of campaign message on camera. French law also prohibits the media from publishing, broadcasting, or commenting on any kind of electoral poll. Finally, election results, even partial ones, cannot be published or broadcast before the last polling place closes on Sunday.

“French Media Rules Prohibit Election Coverage over Weekend,” *France 24*, May 7, 2017, https://www.france24.com/en/20170506-france-media-rules-prohibit-election-coverage-over-weekend-presidential-poll. The state also caps both campaign donations and expenditures, a special commission monitors campaign expenditures, and the state can reimburse up to 50 percent of certified elections.“Campaign Finance: France,” Law Library, Research and Reports, Legal Topics, United States Library of Congress, accessed March 3, 2021, https://www.loc.gov/item/2018298980.

Institutions

Legislatures

Introduction

What Do Legislatures Do?

Passing Laws: Who Comes Up with Ideas?

One of the legislature’s main jobs is to pass laws in order to solve policy problems. Ideas for these laws come from many places. Constituents might go to members of legislatures for help solving a problem in their community, such as a need for more school funding. A newspaper might publish an investigation that brings attention to an important issue. Often, organizations that work on a particular issue reach out to legislators. A president or prime minister, or another member of the executive branch, routinely offers policy proposals to the legislature for their consideration. Finally, ideas can come from the legislators themselves. It is quite common for a member of a legislature to develop a passion for and expertise in a particular policy area.

Organizing the Legislature’s Work

The work of legislatures requires a large number of people to collaborate. Every legislator has their own goals, things they want to take credit for, and blame they are trying to avoid—and everyone thinks they are right. Even when individuals agree that a particular policy is worth working on, they may disagree on the exact solution. Legislatures must create structures to keep their members moving productively in roughly the same direction.

Representation of Constituents

Every member of a legislature has constituents, the people they are elected to represent. The connection between legislator and constituent can take many forms, and the particular form can have a substantive impact on the relationship.

The Legislature’s Oversight Role

The process of regularly monitoring and reviewing the actions of agencies or other political actors, oversight, is important in democracies where a system of checks and balances between the different branches of government is designed to ensure that power is shared across the system. In these democracies, legislative oversight of the bureaucracy provides an important check on the power of the executive branch.

“Separation of Powers: Legislative Oversight,” National Conference of State Legislatures, last modified May 6, 2019, https://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/separation-of-powers-legislative-oversight.aspx.

What Is the Difference between Parliamentary and Presidential Systems?

How Members Get Selected

Who has the power to pick the people who make the laws? Does the public elect the members of the legislature, or do other directly elected legislators appoint them? Are legislators selected via executive appointment? The answers to these questions matter because the method of selection can indicate whose interests a legislator will represent, as the person or people who put someone in power can have a decided impact on whose values and preferences shape law.

Legislative–Executive Branch Relations

While the power of a legislature is greatly shaped by the method used to select its members, that power is also strongly influenced by the relationship between the executive and legislative branches. Remember, most systems have some sort of legislative, executive, and judicial branch structure, but the relationships among the branches and the powers they have can vary widely. Perhaps the most important of these relationships is that between the legislative and the executive. In democratic systems, the key differences between presidential and parliamentary systems relate to the degree of independence of the legislative and executive branches and how much power each has to oversee the actions of the other.

What Is the Difference between Unicameral and Bicameral Systems?

Strengths and Weaknesses of a Unicameral Legislature

One of the main strengths of unicameral legislatures is that they create a more efficient legislative process. In a unicameral legislature, bills only need to go before and be debated by one set of decision makers, whereas in a bicameral legislature, both chambers must debate and approve bills in order for them to have a chance of becoming laws. This legislative efficiency is particularly valued in more homogenous societies, where having venues for different voices and perspectives is not seen as particularly important. In these societies, political parties are considered sufficient to protect diverse interests.

Strengths and Weaknesses of a Bicameral Legislature

Bicameral systems make up approximately one-half of legislatures around the world. Bicameralism is largely thought to allow the structures of a political system to reflect different voices and priorities. In bicameral systems, there is often a lower chamber, more closely associated with the perspective of the people, and an upper chamber, which might reflect different territories or classes.

Paolo Passaglia, “Unicameralism, Bicameralism, Multicameralism: Evolution and Trends in Europe,” *Perspectives on Federalism* 10, no. 2 (2018): 1–29, http://www.on-federalism.eu/index.php/articles/291-unicameralism-bicameralism-multicameralism-evolution-and-trends-in-europe. For example, in the German parliamentary system, the lower chamber, the Bundestag, is directly elected by the public, while the upper chamber, the Bundesrat, is supposed to represent the 16 Länder, or states. While each state has between three and six votes on legislation, all of a state’s votes in the Bundesrat must be cast as a bloc, either for or against a piece of legislation.“Voting,” Plenary Sessions, Bundesrat, accessed October 15, 2021, https://www.bundesrat.de/EN/funktionen-en/plenarsitzung-en/abstimmung-en/abstimmung-en-node.html The idea is that the vote should represent the state’s interests, not the interests of the individuals representing the state. The two chambers create a system of checks and balances within the legislative branch so that any legislation that can survive the legislative branch process is much more likely to succeed.

The Decline of Legislative Influence

Growth in Executive Dominance

Executive dominance is the phenomenon in which leaders, particularly in systems with an executive that is separate from the legislature, expand their powers and justify those expanded powers so that many see them as legitimate and acceptable. Episodes of executive dominance may occur incrementally, with executives taking actions over time that individually represent small expansions of power but ultimately result in large changes. In other cases, executives radically expand their authority, sometimes but not exclusively in times of crisis, and have sufficient support from others in the government, the media, or the public to prevent any effective reprisals for their actions. Regardless of the method of expansion, the act of executive dominance is gradually normalized, forming a new basis for understanding that executive’s powers.

Growth in Legislative Deference

Legislatures also face internal threats in the form of legislative deference. Legislative deference occurs when legislatures give power to another branch of government, either by refusing to take action or by approving anything the other branch wants. A legislature may refuse to take action because the executive wants to handle an issue themselves or because the legislature fears being blamed for an unpopular policy. Or the legislature may simply approve, or “rubber stamp,” any proposal put forward, usually by the executive. Legislative approval that comes when the legislature has no option other than to approve the measure reflects the weakness of the legislature and poses a clear threat to legislative independence.

Growth in Polarization

One of the biggest challenges threatening legislatures is the rise in polarization. Polarization occurs when people or groups are divided between two extremes on an issue or position. Polarization is a systemic threat that can affect politics all across a political system. Often, polarization starts with political actors taking more partisan and ideological positions,

Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, *Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006). but over time, voters tend to become more polarized as well, identifying more strongly with a political party or ideology.Morris P. Fiorina and Samuel J. Abrams, “Political Polarization in the American Public,” *Annual Review of Political Science* 11 (2008): 563–588, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.053106.153836. Party polarization in legislatures can threaten the ability of a legislature to be effective. Many legislatures around the world have seen a rise in the number of seats held by far-right and far-left parties, including the European Parliament following the 2019 elections, which you can learn about in the video below. Polarization has also occurred when parties in the legislature have stayed the same, but the positions those parties hold have become more extreme. In legislatures with either slim majorities or coalition governments, polarization can lead to gridlock, as support will only come from co-partisans; if a party attempts to pass a piece of legislation and faces any internal opposition, the proposal is dead on arrival, as members of minority or opposition parties will often refuse to support the majority’s legislation. For much of the 20th century in the United States, members of the Democratic and Republican Parties worked together across party lines on legislation. However, since the early 1980s, that has become less and less common, with members increasingly only supporting legislation if it comes from their own party.Sean M. Theriault, *The Gingrich Senators* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Parties have had to rely more heavily on parliamentary maneuvers to pass any significant legislation, as bipartisan cooperation is anywhere from difficult to near impossible to secure.

Executives, Cabinets, and Bureaucracies

Introduction

Democracies: Parliamentary, Presidential, and Semi-Presidential Regimes

The Roles of Chief Executives within Democratic Regimes: Head of State

Chief executives play two general roles: head of state and head of government. Head of state is a ceremonial role, while head of government is a political one that confers real power. Within a presidential regime, the president is both head of state and head of government. In a parliamentary regime, however, the roles are separate, with a president (as in Germany or India) or emperor (as in Japan) serving as head of state and the prime minister (or, in Germany, the chancellor) serving as head of government.

The Roles of Chief Executives within Democratic Regimes: Head of Government

As head of government, the chief executive has both the power and the authority to take action. Both presidents and prime ministers serve as heads of their governments as they take the lead in setting policy agendas, crafting legislation, and responding to crises. As previously noted, they are the ones people look to for solutions to a nation’s problems and the ones citizens hold accountable. An April 2020 Al Jazeera headline puts it bluntly: “COVID-19 pandemic is testing world leaders. Who’s stepping up?”

Zaheena Rasheed, “COVID-19 Pandemic Is Testing World Leaders. Who’s Stepping Up?” *Al Jazeera*, April 3, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/3/covid-19-pandemic-is-testing-world-leaders-whos-stepping-up.

The Executive in Presidential Regimes

Presidential Regimes and Elections

As Univeristy of California professor Arend Lijphart notes, the distinctiveness of presidential regimes is that the head of government is a single individual who is popularly elected.

Ibid., 2. The election is either direct (for example, in Brazil and the Philippines) or indirect through an electoral college (for example, in the United States). Presidents serve fixed year terms and are typically term-limited. For example, Argentina, Brazil, Kenya, and the United States allow two terms. Some countries, like Colombia and the Philippines, only allow presidents to serve a single term. After serving their terms, presidents are usually ineligible to be reelected. Even so, some countries, like Argentina, simply require the individual to “take a break,” and then the person is reeligible to run for president. In Argentina, the president can serve two four-year terms, sit out for a four-year term, and then be eligible for another two four-year terms.Argentina Constitution, section 90, http://www.biblioteca.jus.gov.ar/Argentina-Constitution.pdf.

Presidential Regimes and Populism

Targeting the masses with emotional appeals, populism promises individuals a political voice in a system perceived to be ruled by elites. In the early part of the 21st century, the rise of populism and leaders who border on the definition of demagogues pose an increasing threat, with some scholars contending that democracy is in crisis.

William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe, *Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of* *Democracy* (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000). Indeed, democracy provides the opportunity for demagogues and populism. As University of Chicago professor William G. Howell and Stanford University professor Terry M. Moe note: “In ancient Athens, thinkers of the age recognized that their novel system of democratic self-governance lived in constant danger—because by its very nature, in allowing the masses to freely choose their own leaders, it contained the seeds of its own destruction.”Ibid., 7. The Goebbels quote that opens this section alludes to this same point. The essence of populism is “a suspicion of and hostility toward elites, mainstream politics, and established institutions.”Fareed Zarkaria, “Populism on the March: Why the West Is in Trouble,” *Foreign Affairs* 95, no. 6 (November/December 2016), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-10-17/populism-march. To what extent do democratic systems—presidential and parliamentary—encourage the rise of populist movements and allow populists to remain in power? Do presidential regimes provide greater opportunities for populist leaders to emerge than do parliamentary ones? Which regime type provides greater safeguards against the potential harm that demagogues can inflict once in office?

Executive Power in Presidential Regimes: Formal and Informal Powers

Presidents have both formal and informal powers. Veto power, the power to nominate Supreme Court justices (as in the United States), or the power to convene the National Assembly and specify issues the assembly needs to address (as in Ecuador) are all examples of formal powers. Formal powers vary greatly from country to country. Presidents also have informal powers. Informal powers are those that emerge through tradition or custom or that are inherent in the office. It is often said that presidents have a “bully pulpit,” which means that, by virtue of their position, presidents have opportunities to speak on issues with the assurance that their voices will be heard. In doing so, presidents can offer direct appeals to citizens to persuade those citizens (and legislatures) that the chief executive’s approach is the correct one. Along these lines, presidential scholar Richard Neustadt states that a president’s greatest power may be his power to persuade.

Richard Neustadt, *Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership from FDR to Carter* (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1980), 10.

The Executive in Parliamentary Regimes

Parliamentary Regimes and the Electoral Connection

While parties matter in a presidential regime, they matter more in a parliamentary regime. In a presidential regime, where votes for president do not affect the partisan composition of the legislature, candidates appeal to a broad spectrum of voters in an attempt to get voters to cross party lines. Within a parliamentary regime, the calculus is much different because the chief executive emerges from the party that wins the majority. Even if a coalition government is required, it is likely that the prime minister will be a member of the party that won the most seats. When voters choose whom to vote for, they understand that calculus and vote accordingly.

Executive Power in Parliamentary Regimes

Because the prime minister is a member of the legislature, his or her power base differs from that of a presidential regime. Even though parliamentary regimes hold periodic elections, the elections are not necessarily for fixed terms (for example, every four years) as they are with presidential regimes. In fact, over the last 20 years, Italy has held elections 10 times, with the prime minister’s average length of office being about 845 days (author’s calculation). In a parliamentary regime, any failure of policy could trigger either a confidence vote or new elections, which could result in the removal of the prime minister. Some parliamentary regimes do have fixed-term elections, and others have maximum-term elections, preventing any government from being in power indefinitely.

Advantages, Disadvantages, and Challenges of Presidential and Parliamentary Regimes

Governmental Stability versus Policy Stability

Any discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of presidentialism and parliamentarianism begins with the hypothesis, first posited by Yale University professor Juan Linz, that parliamentary regimes are more stable than presidential regimes and that “the only presidential democracy with a long history of constitutional continuity is the United States.”

Juan Linz, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” *Journal of Democracy* 1, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 51. To Americans, the claim that parliamentary regimes are more stable may appear strange. As already noted, while parliamentary regimes have regular elections, they are not necessarily fixed-term elections. This means an election can happen at any time, opening up the possibility for multiple elections within a relatively short period of time. From 2018 to 2021, there were four separate elections in Israel.Patrick Kingsley, “Israel’s Election Ends in a Stalemate, Final Results Show.” *The New York Times*, updated May 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/world/middleeast/israel-election-results.html. In April 2020, Benjamin Netanyahu again was given the opportunity to form a new coalition government.Isabel Kershner, “Netanyahu Gets First Crack at Forming a New Government in Israel,” *The New York Times*, updated May 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/world/middleeast/netanyahu-israel-new-government.html. Ultimately, however, he was unable to do so and was ousted as prime minister.Patrick Kingsley and Richard Pérez-Peña, “Netanyahu Ousted as Israeli Parliament Votes in New Government,” *The New York Times*, June 13, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/world/middleeast/netanyahu-naftali-bennett-israel-vote.html.

Coalition Governments

Generally, coalition governments are shorter-lived than majority governments.

Jaap Woldendorp, Hans Keman, and Ian Budge, *Party Government in 48 Democracies* *(1945–1998)* (Dordrecht, NL: Springer, 2000). The sheer duration of a government provides no indication as to its efficiency or its effectiveness in enacting public policy. The stability of a system can also be interpreted as policy change because the electorate may interpret the system as responsive and adaptable. Georgetown University visiting researcher Josep Colomer found that governments with more parties experienced greater stability with respect to policy change.Josep M. Colomer, “The More Parties, the Greater Policy Stability,” *European Political Science* 11, no. 2 (June 2012): 231.

Gridlock

One of the primary disadvantages of presidentialism is the possibility of gridlock. Political gridlock is when governments are unable to pass major legislation and stalemates between competing parties take place. Certainly, gridlock can occur within parliamentary regimes, but because presidential regimes have separate institutions, they often result in divided government and are biased against coalition building. Generally speaking, neither of those conditions is typical of a parliamentary regime. These conditions in presidential regimes appear to make them more conducive to gridlock.

Viable Third Parties

In any democracy, third parties or minority parties play important roles. Presidential regimes tend to encourage the formation of a two-party system, resulting in a weaker role for third parties than in most parliamentary regimes that have proportional representation. The reasons presidential regimes are more prone to result in a two-party system are twofold. The first is due to voting procedures. While there is considerable variation in how elections are held across countries, a common approach is plurality voting (also known as “first-past-the-post”). With plurality voting and single-member districts (one person being elected per geographic area), a two-party system is likely to emerge (this is known as Duverger’s law and was covered in Chapter 9: Legislatures). The presidency is “the most visible single-member district.”

Marjorie Randon Hershey, *Party Politics in America* (New York: Routledge, 2021): 39. While Duverger’s law is not determinative because it does not guarantee a two-party system, it encourages its development. In addition to voting procedures, presidents have to appeal to voters across groups and form a coalition. Political parties are simply coalitions of varied groups. In order to appeal to as many voters as possible, political parties are more likely to broaden their scope of appeal rather than to define themselves more narrowly.

Semi-Presidential Regimes

Defining Semi-Presidential Regimes

Semi-presidential regimes can be viewed as a hybrid, sitting between parliamentary and presidential regimes. Even though they are ill defined, it is possible to can make some general observations. Basically, in semi-presidential regimes power is divided between the prime minister and the president, with both executives having political power. Typically, each executive’s respective powers are clearly defined, but that is not always the case. As in presidential regimes, in semi-presidential regimes the people directly elect the president. Unlike in parliamentary regimes, however, the president usually appoints the prime minister. Once appointed, the prime minister must gain a majority in the parliament. If there is already a majority present, the president must simply select the leader of the majority party, regardless of whether the individual is of the same party as the president. That means the president could be of one party and the prime minister of a different party. This has happened in France. They referred to it as “cohabitation.”

Semi-Presidential Regimes and the Connection to Freedom

Semi-presidential regimes appear to be less free than parliamentary or presidential regimes. Correspondingly, they appear to give greater opportunity for authoritarian rule to emerge. Russia and Vladimir Putin is the best contemporary example of authoritarian rule in a semi-presidential regime. Nevertheless, there is considerable variation among semi-presidential countries. Freedom House gives France, which also has a semi-presidential regime, a high global freedom score of 90. It is interesting to see the association between regime type and countries’ Freedom House scores.

Freedom House’s home page is https://freedomhouse.org. For a list of countries and their global freedom scores, see https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores. For an overview of their methodology, see https://freedomhouse.org/reports/freedom-world/freedom-world-research-methodology. The global freedom score goes from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating greater freedom. See [link].

How Do Cabinets Function in Presidential and Parliamentary Regimes?

The Scope of Executive Cabinets

In the United States, the president’s cabinet is comprised of the vice president and the heads of the 15 executive departments. The leaders of each department, with the exception of the Department of Justice, are called secretaries. The scope of their power, however, is much more related to their role within the bureaucracy than it is to their role as advisors to the president. Indeed, President Barack Obama didn’t hold his first full cabinet meeting until three months into his presidency, and President Trump was six months into his presidency when he met his cabinet for the first time. Cabinet meetings take place more for optics than as meetings to formulate policy. That is not to suggest cabinet members do not influence the president. On an individual level, they may have tremendous access and influence. But the access and influence they enjoy is due to the personal relationship they have with the president and not necessarily due to the inherent power in the cabinet position they hold. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, individual actors matter.

How Cabinets Function in Their Political Environments

Cabinet function in presidential regimes is idiosyncratic. Because cabinet members are appointed and Senate approval assumed,

It is rare for cabinet appointments to fail Senate confirmation. In the last 100 years, less than a handful have failed. cabinets reflect each president rather than the system itself. In other words, the president is largely able to select individual cabinet members and define their roles. Any generalities about cabinet function in the United States are easily undercut by specific examples of how a president did not conform to that generality. In essence, each cabinet is unique. Moreover, various presidents as well as prime ministers have had two cabinets, an official one and an unofficial one (the so-called “kitchen cabinet”). The origin of the term can be traced to President Andrew Jackson, who relied upon a small circle of trusted associates that included some official cabinet members as well as friends. Prime ministers have also utilized kitchen cabinets. For example, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s (2007–2010, 2013) kitchen cabinet was also known as the “Gang of Four.” Critics typically view these groups as attempts to bypass traditional institutions and processes.

What Are the Purpose and Function of Bureaucracies?

The Importance of Bureaucracies

Before the 1900s, especially in Europe and the Americas, government employees were small in number, and their impact was minimal. In China, however, bureaucracy has a long history, stretching back to the Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE). Many of the characteristics of modern day bureaucracy were present then.

H. G. Creel, “The Beginnings of Bureaucracy in China: The Origin of Nsein,” *The Journal of Asian Studies* 23, no. 2 (February 1964): 155–156. Today, in all parts of the world, government employees are significant in number, and bureaucracy affects people’s daily lives. For example, bureaucrats in Brazil number over nine million. There are even individuals known as *despachantes*, or “expediters,” who help individuals navigate the maze of Brazilian bureaucracy. Indeed, in Brazil the government is the largest employer.

How Bureaucracies Function within the Political Framework

Essentially, there are three policy stages: policy formation, policy implementation, and policy enforcement. It would be natural to view the policy formation stage as belonging only to legislative bodies, with bureaucracies charged with the tasks of implementing and enforcing policies, and to be sure, bureaucracies do carry out those responsibilities. But it would be a mistake to assume bureaucracies do not form policy.

Bureaucracies and the Rulemaking Process

When legislatures pass legislation, they often do so in broad strokes, with the process of filling in the details delegated to administrative agencies. At times, legislation may be vague. Through their rulemaking authority, agencies issue regulations following set procedures that include opportunity for public input. In the United States, the process is fairly straightforward and systematized. Once the president signs legislation into law, that law is assigned to an administrative agency. Agencies then propose rules providing specificity to the legislation. The proposed rules appear in the *Federal Register*, which is the “official journal of the United States Government” and is “published every Federal working day.”

“The *Federal Register*,” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/the-federal-register. See [link].

Courts and Law

Introduction

What Is the Judiciary?

How the Judicial Branch Differs from the Other Branches of Government

Judicial branches differ from the executive and legislative branches because, unlike in those branches, the judicial system restricts how the courts may act and how the people may express their opinions to the courts. A good description of this restriction appears in *Federalist* no. 78, wherein Alexander Hamilton wrote about the judicial branch as it is described in the US Constitution:

Selecting Judicial Officers

There are as many ways to select judicial officers as there are countries in the world. The particulars of the selection process vary widely by country. The selection process can also differ for different levels or types of courts within a country. All of the selection processes can be sorted into four broad categories:

How Does the Judiciary Take Action?

Implementation and Impact of Judicial Decisions

Judicial implementation is the process by which a court’s decision, or judgment, is put into practice and enforced. However, in almost all countries, the courts rely on the executive branch to implement their decisions. A court can issue a judgment, or legal order, but it does not have the power to compel government personnel to carry out or enforce its orders. The executive branch, which carries out daily government operations, is the branch tasked with implementing judgments. Thus, unless other parts of the government recognize the force of the court’s decision, the court is powerless to put its orders into practice. The implementation of desegregation orders in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s is an excellent example of the executive enforcing the court’s judgment. In these cases, the federal government, including the president, vigorously enforced the Supreme Court’s orders for school desegregation, calling out National Guard troops to escort students to school.

“This Day in History: September 24,” Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed May 25, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/on-this-day/September-24.

Can Courts Make Public Policy?

There is no one answer to the question of whether and how courts make public policy. Courts do not openly make public policy, as they only answer questions presented to them in a specific case by interpreting written laws. They cannot look at global events and decide to take action as the legislative and executive branches can. However, by the impact of their decisions, courts can impact law and society, thus nudging social and political policies in a particular direction. Once again, consider the *Brown* decision. In *Brown*, the Supreme Court held that in K–12 education, separate is inherently unequal, and ordered the integration of K–12 public schools. That was as far as the *Brown* decision went, as that was the only question before the court. However, the decision influenced many people to begin questioning segregation in other areas of society, and public officials started to question their role in enforcing segregation laws.

Types of Legal Systems around the World

Common Law Systems

The US legal system, and other legal systems that emanate from British rule, is a common law system.

Albert Roland Kiralfy et al., “Common Law,” Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, last updated October 30, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/common-law. Originally, common law meant judge-made law that filled in gaps when there was no written law. Judges looked to prior decisions to determine the unwritten judge-made law and apply it to new cases. However, today, almost all law is in writing and enacted by a legislature as statutes. Many statutes codify established common law, change it, or abolish it altogether, depending on the topic of the law. There are instances in which some unwritten common law is still enforced, but these are rare.

Civil Law Systems

Most of Europe and South America use a civil law system.

Ibid. A civil law system relies on comprehensive legal codes that contain all laws for the country. Case law—that is, judicial decisions—is secondary to these codes. Decisions are binding only on the parties to the case, not as a precedent for later cases on the same issues. While attorneys will consult prior decisions when advising clients, judges are rarely bound to follow precedent. For this reason, codes of statutes are usually more extensive and detailed than in common law systems.

Religious Systems

In a religious law system, the law relies on religious texts as its primary basis, and the courts interpret the present facts and statutes in light of those religious texts. Many Middle Eastern countries use religious law systems for all or part of their laws.

“Sharia Law Countries 2021,” World Population Review, accessed December 21, 2021, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/sharia-law-countries.  For example, in Saudi Arabia, the legal system is based on sharia law, derived from the Koran, the Islamic religious text, as well as from the Sunnah and the Hadith.“Legal and Judicial Structure,” The Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, accessed December 21, 2021, https://www.saudiembassy.net/legal-and-judicial-structure-0. The legislature enacts statutes, but all are tested against Islamic tenets. Certain religious leaders can overrule any government act, including court decisions, on religious grounds. The legal system includes general and summary sharia courts, with some administrative tribunals for specific topics. Religious law systems do not use juries, and criminal trials do not present defensive evidence to the same extent as in other legal systems. Each judge, a specialist in the religious sharia text, makes their interpretation of the law and is not bound by any precedent.

Customary Systems

A customary law system is a system based on long-standing traditions in a particular community. The traditions have become so ingrained in society that the courts recognize them as enforceable rules. However, it is rare for customary laws to be interpreted and enforced by the government. Instead, select leaders of the group usually implement the customary laws. As a result, customary laws are typically unwritten and revealed only to group members. Today, customary laws are found in closed, isolated communities combined with common or civil law systems, allowing them to exist alongside government systems in a hybrid system.

Hybrid or Mixed Systems

A hybrid legal system combines parts of more than one approach to create a system unique to the country. Many countries have mixed legal systems incorporating common, civil, religious, and customary law systems.

“Mixed Legal Systems,” JuriGlobe, University of Ottawa, last updated April 1, 2021, https://www.juriglobe.ca/eng/sys-juri/class-poli/sys-mixtes.php. For example, the US state of Louisiana has a hybrid system. Louisiana uses some common law, but it also utilizes a civil law system for much of its state law and procedures because of its origins as a French territory. Also, on recognized tribal lands, customary laws of the tribe may be used rather than state or federal laws. Another example is the Philippine system, which includes French civil law, US-style common law, sharia law, and Indigenous customary law due to its history.Milagros Santos-Ong, “Update: Philippine Legal Research,” GlobaLex, Hauser Global Law School Program, New York University School of Law, January/February 2020, https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Philippines1.html#_Legal_System.  Many African countries include a parallel tribal or ethnic legal system to adjudicate family law matters.Muna Ndulo, “African Customary Law, Customs, and Women’s Rights,” *Cornell Law Faculty Publications* 187 (Winter 2011), http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/187.

Criminal versus Civil Laws

Rights upon Arrest

In rule-of-law countries, police must advise you at the time of arrest of certain rights. These include the right to have an attorney assist you with your case and the right to be cautioned that anything you say can be used against you in court—what are referred to in the United States as Miranda rights. A Library of Congress report found that 108 countries, including civil law and common law legal systems, require something similar to the US Miranda rights.

“Miranda Warning Equivalents Abroad,” Law Library of Congress, Library of Congress, last updated December 30, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20210318051525/https://www.loc.gov/law/help/miranda-warning-equivalents-abroad/index.php. The European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights both contain similar provisions.

Search and Seizure

Another way rule-of-law systems defend the rights of individuals is through protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. This means that law enforcement may perform reasonable searches and seizures, and much of the litigation in this area deals with the reasonableness of the search and seizure. The UN has created recommendations for best policing practices for all countries, including limiting the police’s right to search an arrested individual’s person, home, or belongings to this standard.

United Nations, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. Human Rights Standards and Practice for the Police. New York, NY and Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations, 2004, https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/training5Add3en.pdf  The recommended level of proof to warrant a search is probable cause that evidence of a crime will be found in the place to be searched. Probable cause is more than suspicion but a lot less than guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. There is no exact definition of the term *probable cause*, and review is on a case-by-case basis. This protection in rule-of-law countries rests on recognizing a right to privacy and to be left alone by the police.See Christopher Slobogin, “An Empirically Based Comparison of American and European Regulatory Approaches to Police Investigation,” Michigan Journal of International Law 22, issue 3 (2001), https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1377&context=mjil for an example of countries with right to privacy protections.  However, many countries do not follow these limitations. In those countries, the police can search a person’s home and belongings or interrogate a person whenever they want to do so.For an example of a country with low protections, see David Tate Cicotte, “Saudi Search and Seizure Law Compared with the Fourth Amendment” (2014). Law School Student Scholarship. 453, https://scholarship.shu.edu/student_scholarship/453. This is particularly true in rule-by-law countries.

Writ of Habeas Corpus and the Right to Appear Before the Court

In all rule-of-law countries, a person held in jail has a right to demand to be brought before the court and told why they are being jailed.

UN General Assembly, Resolution 43/173, Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, A/RES/43/173 (Dec. 9, 1988), https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/detentionorimprisonment.aspx. In some countries, this process is referred to as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In rule-by-law countries, this right is not recognized. In those countries, a person can be held indefinitely, incommunicado, without any right to seek their freedom or to demand that the government prove the charges against them.

Capital Punishment

The death penalty is a form of capital punishment. Capital crimes are those for which a person who is found guilty can be sentenced to the death penalty or to automatic life in prison without parole, depending on the laws in a specific country. A person can be found guilty of a capital crime even if the country does not have a death penalty. Some countries that still impose the death penalty can impose it for crimes other than murder and are permitted to impose it on juveniles.

“Executions of Juveniles Outside of the US,” Juveniles, Policy Issues, Death Penalty Information Center, accessed January 11, 2022, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/juveniles/execution-of-juveniles-outside-of-the-u-s; “Juveniles and the Death Penalty,” ACLU, accessed January 11, 2022, https://www.aclu.org/other/juveniles-and-death-penalty; “TalkAboutIt: Capital punishment around the world,” ABC News Australia, last updated April 7, 2015, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-06/explainer-capital-punishment-around-the-world/6371238. These countries primarily include China and countries in the Middle East and Africa.

Civil Law

Civil law is everything that is not criminal law. Thus, it is wide-ranging and complex, covering everything from family matters (marriage, divorce, adoption, guardianship, probate, etc.) to personal injury, workers’ compensation, medical malpractice, and business disputes. Civil law differs from criminal law in that individuals or groups file cases rather than the state. The legislature enacts laws that establish standards of conduct and recognizes relationships. The legislature will establish the duty owed and rights between individuals, what constitutes a breach, and what damages may be recovered for that breach. Because civil law topics are so wide-ranging, the burden of proof for the complaining party similarly varies. It can range from merely a preponderance of evidence to clear and convincing evidence.

Due Process and Judicial Fairness

Trial Courts

Trial courts are the first level of courts in any system. The common characteristic of trial courts worldwide is that they are courts of original jurisdiction, the first courts with authority to hear a case. The exact process for a trial varies widely by country. In the United States, trial courts are bound by strict procedures and evidence designed to ensure due process.

“Your Day in Court,” Judicial Learning Center, accessed January 11, 2022, https://judiciallearningcenter.org/your-day-in-court/; “How Courts Work,” Division for Public Education, September 9, 2019, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources/law_related_education_network/how_courts_work/cases/. After judgment in a US trial court, the final decision of the case is written down in a document called an order or judgment that an aggrieved party might use to appeal a case to a higher court.

Appellate Courts

An appeal is a higher court’s review of a lower court’s decision. The workings of the appeals process vary widely around the world. In the United States, an appeal serves only to determine if an error of law occurred in the lower court that may have resulted in the rendition of an improper judgment. An appeal is not a do-over of the original trial. There are strict standards for reviewing the lower court’s action, which vary by type of case.

Katherine A. Currier, Thomas E. Eimermann, and Marisa S. Campbell, “The Court System and the Role of Judges,” in *The Study of Law: A Critical Thinking Approach*, 5th ed. (New York: Wolters Kluwer, 2020).

Judicial Review versus Executive Sovereignty

The Media

Introduction

The Media as a Political Institution: Why Does It Matter?

The Fourth Estate and Freedom of the Press

The importance of a free press can be boiled down to a sentence from esteemed University of Illinois at Chicago lecturer Doris Graber’s seminal work *Mass Media and American Politics*: “The mass media . . . serve as powerful guardians of political norms because the American people believe that a free press should keep them informed about the wrongdoings of government.”

Doris A. Graber, *Mass Media and American Politics*, 6th ed. (Washington, DC (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2002), 2. Another common way of defining the media’s role is to say that it acts as the fourth estate, or the unofficial fourth branch of government that checks the others. The term *fourth estate* is credited to Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle, who wrote, “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter’s Gallery yonder, there sat a *Fourth Estate* more important far than they all.”Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as a Man of Letters: Johnson, Rousseau, Burns,” in *On Heroes, and Hero- Worship, and the Heroic in History* (London: James Fraser, Regent Street, 1841), 265 (italics in original). In other words, people look to the media—the fourth estate—to keep the government in check. The role of the media must be protected if it is to carry out that task.

The Mediated Nature of Political Information

The political information most people receive is mediated information. What does this mean? Unless they work directly in government, most citizen’s understanding of politics comes completely from the media, whether via television news, podcasts, or social media feeds. The media may be a gatekeeper, but it is also a storyteller. As such, it is important to realize that what people see in the media is actually a manufactured view of the political world. Journalists and others who create the news follow routines and are influenced by institutional values that manifest themselves in media content. As Columbia University professor Herbert Gans writes in his study of the American media, “The news does not limit itself to reality judgments; it also contains values, or preference statements. This in turn makes it possible to suggest that there is, underlying the news, a picture of nation and society as it ought to be.”

Herbert J. Gans, *Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time* (New York: Vintage Books, 19801979), 39. Gans acknowledges that professional journalists try to be objective, yet the news does in fact make judgments and value statements. For example, crime news alerts viewers to the idea that there are undesirable actors within society and that criminals should be punished. Judgments and value statements such as these are different from political bias; while some news outlets are overtly liberal or conservative, Gans’s study shows that the media produces stories with cultural values that people may not detect because they are so used to seeing stories presented this way. For example, according to Gans, ethnocentrism and altruistic democracy are two of the key enduring values in the news. Ethnocentrism in the news refers to the idea that the American media values the United States above all other nations. This manifests most obviously in war coverage, where the press rarely questions American involvement—and to do so would be unpatriotic. In a similar vein, Gans explains that the American news media emphasize an altruistic democracy, the ideal held up by the media that politics should be based on public service and for the public interest.Ibid., 43. In these ways, the news makes statements about what is right and what is wrong and presents political news through these lenses.

Types of Media and the Changing Media Landscape

Types of Media and Their History

The media can be categorized into four broad groups: print, radio, television, and the Internet. Print media includes newspapers, magazines, and books. This section will briefly discuss the history and current state of each medium as well as how ownership of these industries affects the political world.

Ownership of the Media

Between print media, radio, television, and streaming services, it feels like people have a lot of choice when it comes to media. However, the United States and Europe have what is called media concentration, where a few firms own the majority of channels and content. In fact, five companies own and produce 90 percent of what Americans watch today.

Nickie Louise, “These 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media Outlets in America. The Illusion of Choice and Objectivity,” Tech Startups, September 18, 2020, https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/. (Viacom and CBS completed a merger in December 2019.) Another word to describe this type of media ownership pattern, in which a small number of corporations dominate the market, is an oligopoly.

How Do Media and Elections Interact?

Media Coverage of Elections and Elected Officials

As Stanford University professor Shanto Iyengar writes, “For most Americans, the media are their only contact with the world of public affairs.”

Shanto Iyengar, *Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide*, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016), 2. Iyengar explains that one of the media’s critical functions is to provide a forum for candidates and parties to discuss their platforms and qualifications. Earlier parts of this chapter have detailed the media’s roles as watchdog and storyteller; when it comes to elections, they also act as information provider. Without the media, it would be very difficult for voters to assess which candidates to vote for and whether or not to keep incumbent legislators in office. This means, however, that elected officials can try to manipulate the media to make themselves seem more appealing, and the media also must be careful in how they portray candidates and the electoral process—all topics that will be covered in more detail in the following sections.

How Do Candidates Use the Media?

The media is an important tool for voters, one that allows them to learn more about candidates and the election process. For candidates, the media also serves as a tool to reach those very same voters, and this section will discuss how candidates use the media in the hopes of winning elections. There are two avenues for candidates to use the media: free media and paid media. Free media is when a candidate gets press coverage, while paid media refers to media that the candidate and campaign pay for in the form of political ads. (Paid media will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter.) When former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto spent nearly \$2 billion of government money on media advertising, his actions were particularly nefarious because he used government funds to purchase paid media in order to influence free media coverage.

Ibid.. In the United States, for example, presidents can only use money raised through separate campaign entities to fund paid media. Using government funds would be considered not only corrupt but also illegal. In Peña Nieto’s case, his flagrant abuse of power was met with defeat at the polls.

The Internet and Social Media

Declining Global Trust in the Media

Do People Trust the Media?

In order for the media to fulfill its goals as a gatekeeper and purveyor of information, there needs to be trust in the institution. So why do some countries trust the media more than others? A study of 44 countries found that factors such as higher levels of political interest, interpersonal trust, and exposure to television news and newspapers are positively correlated with trust in media, while education and exposure to news on the Internet are negatively associated with levels of trust in the media. The same study showed that ownership also affects levels of trust: state ownership of television is positively associated with trust in media in democratic societies and negatively associated with trust in media in nondemocratic societies.

Yariv Tsfati and Gal Ariely, “Individual and Contextual Correlates of Trust in Media across 44 Countries,” *Communication Research* 41, no. 6 (August 2014): 760–782, https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650213485972. Other reports have found that levels of democracy and media freedom are not necessarily correlated with trust in the media. Evaluations of the economy also have been suggested as a factor in people’s trust in the media.Tien-Tsung Lee, “Why They Don’t Trust the Media: An Examination of Factors Predicting Trust,” *American Behavioral Scientist* 54, no. 1 (September 2010): 8–21, https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764210376308.

Why Should We Care about Trust in the Media, and How Can We Increase It?

An informed citizenry is a precondition for democracy, and in order for citizens to act collectively and cast votes in their best interests, people should be able to rely on the media as a source of unbiased information. Without a foundation of trust in the media, people will find their information elsewhere. While one cannot assume that all voters will make an effort to make educated choices, the ability to develop informed decisions makes trust in the media a crucial first step. As former United States congressman Lee H. Hamilton writes, “The truth is that for our democracy to work, it needs not just an engaged citizenry, but an informed one.”

Lee H. Hamilton, “We Need an Informed Citizenry,” *Journal of Civic Literacy* 2, no. 1 (2015): 2, https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/civiclit/article/view/19685. The public’s habits and their trust have moved in lockstep with one another, and as people have walled themselves off from news they do not believe in, their trust in institutional media has fallen, as has their ability to remain informed. The decline of trust in both governmental and media institutions has real consequences. The erosion of trust in public institutions damages the credibility of those institutions, further undermining their effectiveness and perpetuating a vicious circle.Mohamed A. El-Erian, “Why Retaining Trust in Institutions Matters,” World Economic Forum, October 9, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/why-retaining-trust-in-institutions-matters.

States and International Relations

Governing Regimes

Introduction

Contemporary Government Regimes: Power, Legitimacy, and Authority

Authority

Authority is the permission, conferred by the laws of a governing regime, to exercise power. Governments most often seek to authorize their power in the form of some decree or set of decrees—most often in the form of a legal constitution that sets out the scope of the government’s powers and the process by which laws will be made and enforced. The enactment of codes of criminal law, the creation of police forces, and the establishment of procedures surrounding criminal justice are clear examples of the development of authorized power. To some degree, the constitution of every government authorizes the government to impose a prohibition, applicable in principle to all people in its territory, on certain behaviors. Individuals engaging in those behaviors are subject to coercive enforcement by the state’s police force, which adheres to defined lines of authority and the rules police departments must follow.

Legitimacy

Most governments establish authority not only to exercise power, but also in the pursuit of legitimacy. Legitimacy can be seen from two different vantage points. Following Weber, the term is often used to mean the widespread belief that the government has the right to exercise its power. In this sense—which can be called broad legitimacy—the concept describes a government trait. Legitimacy can also be seen from the perspective of individuals or groups who make determinations about whether their government is or is not legitimate—that is, rightfully exercising power, or what can be called judgments about legitimacy. In either sense, legitimacy is measured in perceptions of the rightfulness of government actions—the sense that those actions are morally appropriate and consistent with basic justice and social welfare.

Failed and Fragile States

When a state’s ability to exercise control such that it can provide minimal conditions of law, order, and social stability deteriorates to a precariously low level, it is called a fragile state. Fragile states still assert the authority to rule but have serious difficulties actually ruling. The erosion of a state’s legitimacy can lead to state fragility. A fragile state can also occur when a broadly legitimate state has its capacity to provide order depleted as a result of an external force, such as an invading army.

Lothar Brock, Hans-Hendrik Holm, Georg Sorenon, and Michael Stohl, *Fragile States* (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2012).

Categorizing Contemporary Regimes

Authoritarianism

Authoritarian regimes authorize institutions, which in principle need not seek or secure the approval of the people, to use power. Authoritarian regimes can confer governmental power unchecked by popular elections in a wide variety of entities—including in the military, in religious leaders, in a monarchy, or in political parties espousing a particular political ideology.

Representative Democratic Governments

Unlike authoritarian regimes, representative governments only authorize governmental entities that are legally obligated to respond to and to be judged by the citizenry, through periodic elections, to make and enforce laws. These regimes therefore place most power in the hands of those who represent at least the majority of the people’s political preferences. The exception to this rule is the power of judges, which can include the power of judicial review, or the power to strike down statutes or regulations that the court determines violate the constitutional laws of the regime. In some representative regimes, judges are elected (as they are in several US states), but in other regimes the branches of the government that are electorally accountable to the people make judicial selections. The judiciary can wield its power to strike down laws as unconstitutional in a potentially counter-majoritarian way—that is, in a manner at odds with the preferences of the majority of the citizenry.

Recent Trends: Illiberal Representative Regimes

Hungary

Since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, Hungary has had a representative parliamentary system. Although Hungary has a representative regime, one party—the Fidesz, an ideologically conservative, nationalist party that currently enjoys popular support—has used its majority position in the Hungarian parliament to enact laws curbing a number of freedoms. The government has created a National Media and Communications Authority that can impose heavy fines for coverage that it considers “unbalanced or offensive to human dignity or common morals.”

Judy Dempsey, “Hungary Waves off Criticism over Media Law,” The New York Times, December 25, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/world/europe/26hungary.html. It has curbed religious freedom by requiring religious institutions to register with the state in order to receive the guarantee of religious liberty and by designating only 14 religious communities as entitled to religious freedom;Paul Krugman, “Hungary’s Constitutional Revolution,” The New York Times, December 19, 2011, https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/hungarys-constitutional-revolution/. it has failed to condemn certain outbursts of anti-Semitism in the country;Bernard Rorke, “Hungary’s Fidesz and Its ‘Jewish Question,’” Open Democracy, September 22, 2014, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/hungarys-fidesz-and-its-jewish-question/. and it has banned same-sex marriage and adoption by LGBTQ persons, gender reassignment surgery, and the “promotion” of homosexuality to individuals under 18, as well as any “portrayal” of homosexuality directed at those under 18.“EU Votes for Action over Hungary’s Anti-LGBT Laws,” BBC News, July 8, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57761216.

India

India, another parliamentary representative regime, recently has experienced a similar development. In 2014, a majority of the members of the Indian parliament elected Narendra Modi, and since then he has served as India’s prime minister. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has also won parliamentary majorities in a large number of India’s state-level parliaments. The BJP espouses an ideology of Hindu nationalism, seeing India as an inherently Hindu country. Pursuant to this ideology, as of 2021 eight state parliaments—each with a BJP parliamentary majority—have passed laws regulating religious conversion. Most observers view these measures as evidence of a fear that people will convert from Hinduism to other faiths.

Prabhash K Dutta, “‘Love Jihad’ Undefined, Yet States Rushing with Anti-Conversion Laws,” India Today, November 18, 2020, https://www.indiatoday.in/news-analysis/story/love-jihad-anti-conversion-laws-madhya-pradesh-uttar-pradesh-haryana-karnataka-1741872-2020-11-18; Ghazala Jamil, “India’s ‘Love Jihad’ Anti-Conversion Laws Aim to Further Oppress Minorities, and It’s Working,” The Conversation, September 3, 2021, https://theconversation.com/indias-love-jihad-anti-conversion-laws-aim-to-further-oppress-minorities-and-its-working-166746. According to these conversion laws, to change their religion, individuals must first have their conversion investigated by state officials who must be convinced that the conversion is free and fully informed. Otherwise, the conversion is illegal.Dutta, “‘Love Jihad’ Undefined.” Human rights groups have argued that these laws inherently violate religious liberty by allowing the state to judge one’s religious beliefs (to determine if they are “sincere,” “freely adopted,” and “fully informed”). Moreover, human rights groups have documented how these laws are sometimes unfairly enforced so as to curb religious conversion, further undermining the principle of individual religious liberty.William Stark and Matias Perttula, India’s Anti-Conversion Laws and Their Effects on the Christian Community (Silver Spring, MD: International Christian Concern, 2021), https://www.persecution.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2021-07-12-India-Report.pdf. These laws—if not the ways they are alleged to be unfairly enforced—have been adopted by a process that aligns with India’s parliamentary system.

Pakistan

In Pakistan—a country that, like India, has a representative government at both the national and regional levels—threats to religious freedom have also become pronounced. When the Indian subcontinent (a territory that included the modern-day states of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) achieved independence from British rule in 1947, Pakistan was partitioned from the rest of the subcontinent to allow for the creation of a government that would rule a majority-Muslim population in accordance with Islamic values. Those who defend the legitimacy of the 1956 constitution of the Pakistan Islamic Republic do so in large measure on the basis that it affords Muslims from the subcontinent a place in which to safely practice their Islamic faith in a social and community context reinforced by the social norms of a Muslim society. Since the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are Muslim, their elected representatives are as well. Working within the parliamentary system, in the 1980s Pakistani parliaments passed laws that expanded the earlier laws against blasphemy, insulting speech or publications about a religion or its tenets, that were in effect since Pakistan’s founding. Until the 1980s, these laws were general, mentioning no religion or religious text specifically and thus equally protecting all religions against blasphemy. In the 1980s, however, national and regional parliaments in Pakistan added to the blasphemy laws specific prohibitions on insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, and the Koran. The source of these laws appears to many observers to be a desire to shield Islam in particular from blasphemous speech.

“What are Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws?” BBC News, May 8, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48204815. Moreover, these laws define blasphemy broadly and require only a low level of proof to secure conviction in a Pakistani court. Human rights organizations have criticized these laws as being overly broad and unjustly enforced, and thus infringements on the freedom of speech and religion.Harrison Atkins, Policy Update: Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law (Washington, DC: United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2019), https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/2019%20Pakistan%20Blasphemy.pdf. These laws, however, appear to be popular, and nothing in the Pakistani Constitution prohibits the government from banning blasphemous speech.“Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws,” BBC.

International Relations

Introduction

What Is Power, and How Do We Measure It?

Military Power

States that function with a general sense of self-preservation and a broad mistrust of other members of the international community see the military as the most important means for the projection of their power. The application of military power can be active, in the form of an outright attack or an invasion, or it can be passive, as when a state illustrates its ability to prevail in a military confrontation without actually engaging in one.

Economic Power

A state can have both internal economic power, with a strong domestic economy marked by increasing gross domestic product (GDP) and/or a currency that allows the state to purchase goods and services at a relatively low cost, and external economic power, with leverage in international economic relationships. Externally, a state can project its economic power to the rest of the world in its international trade relationships and its participation in international economic organizations, such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

Political Power

States can try to manipulate the political institutions of other countries to enlarge their sphere of influence and to pressure other states to implement their preferred policy outcomes. A state can use both overt and subversive means to influence another state or a non-state actor in order to gain more power for itself. For example, a state can influence the outcome of an election, supporting the candidacy of a leader who is friendly to the state’s preferences. In 1911 and 1912, the United States did not hide its efforts to influence elections in Nicaragua.

“U.S. Intervention in Nicaragua, 1911/1912,” US Department of State, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/ip/108629.htm. In 1953 the United States played a role in the coup in Iran that removed that country’s prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who, in nationalizing the Iranian oil industry, had threatened Britain’s longstanding control over oil in the region. After the ouster of Mossadegh, the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with whom the United States believed it had a beneficial relationship, returned to power.Suzanne Maloney, “1979: Iran and America,” Brookings, January 24, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/1979-iran-and-america/. Some states have denied prominent accusations of interfering in other country’s elections, as Russia has in response to accusations that it interfered in the 2016 election in the United States.Gary Pruitt, “Putin Says Russia Didn’t Meddle in US Vote, despite Evidence,” *AP News*, April 20, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/vladimir-putin-donald-trump-ap-top-news-elections-st-petersburg-1f12eaf734014da6bcd0995ae89c6636. When states have a sense of power, within the system or within a region, they will do what they can to create an environment that safeguards and even expands that power.

Soft Power

Whereas hard power involves coercion, soft power involves more friendly interactions that seek to win over a state or states rather than force them to comply with the wishes of one or more other states. Diplomacy, in either a bilateral (engagement between two countries) or multilateral (engagement between more than two countries) setting, allows states to create mutually beneficial agreements to protect themselves and the international system at large. The idea that all recognized countries find themselves on equal relational footing and should be treated as such in any sort of engagement, a concept referred to as reciprocity, is the foundational element of any diplomatic relationship.

Understanding the Different Types of Actors in the International System

States

The term state is used interchangeably with the word *country*. All states have four characteristics:

René Grotenhuis, *Nation-Building as Necessary Effort in Fragile States* (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1gr7d8r.

Intergovernmental Organizations

Institutions made up of multiple state actors who work within a specific set of rules to enact solutions to problems common among multiple states are known as intergovernmental organizations. Intergovernmental organizations

Thomas J. Volgy, Elizabeth Fausett, Keith A. Grant, and Stuart Rodgers, “Identifying Formal Intergovernmental Organizations,” *Journal of Peace Research* 45, no. 6 (2008): 837–50. are the best way to understand the reach and impact of a state’s power to structure the environment in which it functions. States with more hard power—that is, with larger economies or militaries—are able to leverage their position among other states to put in place institutional norms that more closely align with their preferences; in short, intergovernmental institutions are a great way for powerful states to become even more powerful. Under the best of circumstances, as in the case of the United Nations, intergovernmental organizations can create a unified sense of pressure to prompt a state to make positive changes or to band states together to support a state that is under attack. In the worst case, international organizations can strong-arm weaker states to agree to the preferences of one state to the detriment of other states or of the system at large.

Nongovernmental Organizations

Non-state actors focused on solving problems or filling policy gaps states can’t or won’t handle themselves are known as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Traditionally speaking, a nongovernmental organization is a nonaligned, third-party group that does not have the same motivations that a state might have. Nongovernmental organizations are part of a system that works to benefit people rather than states. NGOs can propose solutions to a state or fill a need that a state might have, usually without being seen as attempting to attack the sovereignty of that state. For example, most states accept medical aid from NGOs like the Red Cross or the Red Crescent.

Sovereignty and Anarchy

Using Levels of Analysis to Understand Conflict

Individual Level

The individual level of analysis focuses on the decision makers within a state and how the constraints the state places on them affect their chosen courses of action. The rules associated with their positions limit what leaders can do; for example, the president of the United States has the ability to move troops but cannot formally enter a war with another country without the consent of Congress.

U.S. Const., art. 1, § 8, cl. 11. This limits the possible policy responses US presidents have to choose from should they feel that the United States is being threatened. Decision makers reliably support policies that solve problems in ways that allow them to claim credit for solutions when they are called to account for their actions. Leaders like to be able to tout their accomplishments in re-election campaigns. They tend to prefer policy solutions that help them gain and keep power. In the case of the individual level of analysis, power is defined as an individual’s ability to steer policy to create outcomes that align with that individual’s personal beliefs and preferences.

State Level

The state level of analysis focuses on the actions of states in relation to one another. State-to-state relations occur in the context of intergovernmental organizations and in treaties and alliances. A state’s policy choice menu is defined by where the state sees itself and where the state wants to go in relation to other states. When theories of state behavior are discussed later in the chapter, you’ll see how theory helps explain the policy choices states make.

Global Level

The global—or systemic—level of analysis considers how cooperation and conflict among states intersects with the environments in individual states to evoke change. The hallmark of this level of analysis is the number of variables that need to be considered when trying to understand the reasoning behind policy shifts and the ripple effect these shifts have on other countries. For example, though India and Pakistan are not permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and therefore, according to the terms of the United Nations Charter,

“United Nations Charter (Full Text),” United Nations, Accessed February 4, 2022, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text. are not permitted to possess nuclear weapons,“Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance,” Arms Control Association, Accessed February 4, 2022, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat. both countries have been developing and maintaining nuclear weapons stockpiles as a high-level deterrent against the possibility that the other country will take overtly aggressive actions. These growing stockpiles of nuclear weapons set the stage for a situation not unlike that between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War—one of mutually assured destruction. The usual expectation of the international community would be that states who are not supposed to be in possession of nuclear weapons would be secretive in their development and even more secretive in their use. Instead, India and Pakistan have chosen not to hide their nuclear stockpiles, and both countries are fully aware of the level of conflict they must avoid to ensure they do not provoke the other country to use its arsenal. The international community has reacted to the nuclear buildup in India and Pakistan in a way that is markedly different from the reaction to the nuclear buildup in North Korea.Arms Control Association, “Nuclear Weapons.” Because North Korea projects a general sense of distrust and aggression toward most of the members of the international community and because its tests of its nuclear stockpile are in express contravention to the wishes of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the countries of the world see North Korea’s actions as a blatant challenge to the international system’s fine line between anarchy and order. While India and Pakistan have made it clear that their nuclear arsenal is a tool of last resort, North Korea does not seem to have that same level of restraint. North Korea has promised to use its weapons whenever it feels threatened but has provided no guidelines regarding what it perceives as a threat.Reality Check, “North Korea: What We Know about Its Missile and Nuclear Programme,” *BBC News*, January 28, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41174689. Though India, Pakistan, and North Korea are all violating international law to varying degrees, in choosing to place sanctions on North Korea but not on India or Pakistan, the global community is choosing to punish a state that, in what the international community perceives to be an irrational manner, seeks to threaten any and all states.

The Link between Policy and the Levels of Analysis

Levels of analysis can be used to understand how institutions make decisions. Think about each level of analysis as a lens through which policy makers view the possible consequences of implementing a particular solution to a problem they face. Governments can also use levels of analysis to view how a particular situation might affect their country; each level of analysis represents a different group of people with different wants and needs. Governments have to work to balance the preferences and needs of each member of each level of analysis when they craft and implement a policy.

The Realist Worldview

Realism

In popular culture, international relations is usually presented through the filter of the basic tenets of realism. Whether it’s Jack Ryan working with the FBI, risking his life to rescue soldiers held by drug cartels, or Jason Bourne running from his past involvement with clandestine operations as a former CIA assassin, representatives of states are shown as engaging in actions focused on self-preservation, no matter the cost.

Neorealism

The lack of institutions in the international system that can hold states accountable for their actions or provide consistent, altruistic help to states in need perpetuates the mentality of states that see themselves as lone actors within the international system. In the contemporary international community, realists view states as having a go-it-alone attitude in order to best safeguard their own interests.

The Liberal and Social Worldview

Liberalism

In contrast to the realist school of thought, those who adhere to liberalism see investment in the system as a whole, by working within institutions and their constraints to carve out a secure space, as the best way for a state to ensure its protection. Like other theories, liberalism sees states as the primary actors in the international system,

Jervis, “Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation.” but liberalism contends that their domestic rules and institutions constrain their actions. As such, states must consider constantly changing factors, both internal and external, when deciding on a course of action. Above all, liberalism views states as motivated by what they see as being in the best interest of the international system.

Constructivism

The international system is both fragile and highly changeable. The anarchic nature of the system means that there is no centralized enforcement mechanism that can coerce states to act in a generally accepted manner. So, what keeps state actions within the boundaries of appropriate behavior? How do states even know what behavior is appropriate?

Critical Worldviews

Marxism

Marxism

Miguel Reyes Hernández and Miguel Alejandro López, “Dependency Theory in Latin American History,” in *Oxford Bibliographies Online,* Updated January 15, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199766581-0205. emerged as a response to the rise of capitalism on the back of the imperial actions of the European powers. Karl Marx asserted that the individuals who controlled the factors of production in a country**—**the land and physical resources, the labor force, the capital needed for investment in the facilities and processes of an economy, and the entrepreneurship and creativity that drives economic growth and diversification—had too much power over its social norms. According to Marx, over the long term, those in power seek to create institutions that further entrench the stratification of the classes of a population, keeping wealth in the upper classes and leaving the lower classes with significant obstacles to their individual advancement. Marxist states seek to promote equality among all people so that each individual has the same opportunities to further their own wealth and success. These states seek to develop an international system in which societies invest internally to focus on the development of their own power and their own means of production so that the producing state gains the most from those products to the benefit of its own citizens.

Feminism

Feminist theory promotes equality among all people, regardless of biological sex or sociological gender. According to feminist theory, traditional views of international relations consider the state to be the main actor in the international system,

Alise Coen, “Can’t Be Held Responsible: Weak Norms and Refugee Protection Evasion,” *International Relations* 35, no. 2 (June 2021): 341–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117819884613. and the feminist tradition views the state as an inherently masculine institution in that it is and has been dominated by men and the male point of view since its inception. As such, according to feminist theory, international relations has traditionally focused on “hard policy” issues, such as conflict and security, and has concentrated primarily on the actions of men. It has relegated to second-class status issues related to development and access to social programs. The end of the Second World War saw a huge shift in the role of women in society in general, ushering in a corresponding shift in the priorities of state policies toward the inclusion of more social programs. Since that time, the number of women in positions of power within governments has steadily increased. Women such as Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, the first woman to be elected a prime minister, have introduced policies in their countries focusing on the health, safety, and welfare of women and children alongside issues of national security and military engagement, leading to an increased focus on these policies in the international arena.

International Law and International Organizations

Introduction

The Problem of Global Governance

International Law

How Does International Law Establish the Rights and Obligations of States?

The recognition of state sovereignty provides the foundation for international law. Typically, sovereign states willingly enter into agreements that they believe will benefit them in some way, with the understanding that by signing a treaty they agree to its terms, including obligations and constraints on their behavior. The United Nations (UN), a global organization bringing together nearly every state in the world to promote peace and stability, hosts a repository of more than 500 active treaties across every conceivable issue in international relations.

“United Nations Treaty Collection,” accessed January 25, 2022, https://treaties.un.org/. Signatory states may monitor or punish states that do not fulfill their treaty obligations. In this way, all individual, sovereign parties to a treaty ensure that they are treated fairly under the terms of the agreement and that they receive the benefits they are due.

Examples of International Law

Three particularly well-developed areas of international law are the law of the sea, the Geneva Conventions, and human rights law. They illustrate how functional needs and moral obligations have driven the development of international law and helped states acquire global goods.

How Is International Law Enforced?

Enforcing international law requires the will and power of states. This can be a challenge for a variety of reasons including the risk of hostile confrontation, the potential damage to valuable international relationships, and the reluctance to interfere with state sovereignty by intervening in domestic affairs. States are rarely punished for violations of international human rights law that happen within their borders.

How Does International Law Contribute to Global Governance?

As doctoral researcher Heath Pickering notes, “agreements to norms and treaties have . . . increased international institutions, given rise to non-state actors, and rapidly developed the contemporary customary and treaty based rules system.”

Heath Pickering, “Why Do States Mostly Obey International Law?” E-International Relations, February 4, 2014, https://www.e-ir.info/2014/02/04/why-do-states-mostly-obey-international-law/. Given the relative lack of enforcement mechanisms, state compliance with international law is surprisingly high. Most states comply with their obligations most of the time, and state leaders typically couch their actions in the language of international law, feeling compelled to justify their behavior according to accepted norms. The more states comply and feel the need to explain their behavior in common terms accepted by the international community, the more predictable international relations will be.

The United Nations and Global Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs)

The Founding and Mission of the UN

The United Nations was created after World War II to ensure international peace and stability. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, established a global IGO called the League of Nations. The purpose of the League was to facilitate good relations among countries of the world and to punish aggression. To deter aggression, the League used the principle of collective security, requiring member states to jointly retaliate against any aggressive action of another state. Because the United States Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, the United States did not join the League of Nations. Ultimately, the League was ineffective in punishing aggressive states, and expansionist powers Japan, Germany, and Italy all withdrew from the League prior to World War II.

How Is the UN Structured?

The UN is organized into six main bodies: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, the Trusteeship Council, and the International Court of Justice. In addition, dozens of related IGOs work on issues in conjunction with or under the auspices of the United Nations.

“The UN System Organizations,” United Nations Global Marketplace, accessed January 25, 2022, https://www.ungm.org/Shared/KnowledgeCenter/Pages/VBS_UNSystem. The International Court of Justice was discussed above. This section turns to the other five main UN bodies.

What Tools Does the UN Have to Help Keep Peace?

The main mission of the UN is to keep the peace by enhancing transparency, providing countries with a forum in which to peacefully resolve disputes, and engaging in projects aimed at alleviating the causes of conflict. The Security Council can send UN representatives—troops, police, observers, and civilians—to conflict zones. UN peacekeepers are deployed at the request of the warring parties and with the authorization of the Security Council. Three guiding principles undergird the UN deployment of peacekeepers: 1) consent of the parties, 2) impartiality, and 3) non-use of force except in self-defense or in defense of a Security Council mandate.

United Nations, *United Nations Peacekeeping Operations:* *Principles and Guidelines.* New York: United Nations, 2008, https://peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/capstone_eng_0.pdf

UN Specialized Agencies and Related IGOs

Numerous IGOs work to address specific global issues. Some, like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), operate independently but share information with the UN and help support the UN’s mission. Global IGOs such as the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are specialized agencies operating within the UN framework. These agencies act autonomously, with their own constitutions, leaders, headquarters, and bureaucratic organizations.

What Constrains the Effectiveness of the UN and Global IGOs?

In IGOs, sovereign states represent their own interests, bringing their own cultures and ideas to discussions of global governance, and IGOs are limited in their ability to intervene in the domestic affairs of member states. Although the purpose of IGOs is to help states work cooperatively, and though they strive to help states coordinate activities in pursuit of collective goods, in most circumstances, states place their own desires and interests above those of the broader international community. For example, ideally all states would work together to promote collective security by punishing aggressor states; in practice, states often cannot agree on what constitutes aggression or are unwilling to hold their allies accountable. Similarly, global poverty might be more easily eliminated if all countries worked together and pooled resources, but most countries are anxious to keep the gains of prosperity to themselves and dedicate only a small percentage of their wealth to help other countries. Countries that refused to lock down or promote vaccination might prolong the COVID-19 pandemic despite the actions of other states following WHO guidelines to control it.

How Do Regional IGOs Contribute to Global Governance?

NATO

The largest and oldest regional IGO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, NATO is the most powerful military alliance in the world, with 30 member states and combined forces of over two million troops. In 2019, NATO states accounted for 54 percent of global military spending.

“Global Military Expenditure Sees Largest Annual Increase in a Decade—Says SIPRI—Reaching \$1917 Billion in 2019,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, April 27, 2020, https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2020/global-military-expenditure-sees-largest-annual-increase-decade-says-sipri-reaching-1917-billion#:~:text=(Stockholm%2C%2027%20April%202020),growth%20in%20spending%20since%202010.

Regional Security IGOs Since the Forming of NATO

Many regional multipurpose IGOs, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the African Union, have a security function within a broader framework of regional cooperation and promotion of the common good.

Rodrigo Tavares, *Regional Security: The Capacity of International Organizations,* New York: Routledge, 2010. The United Nations has called upon regional organizations to support peacekeeping work both on their own and in cooperation with the UN. At an August 2015 summit, then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “The United Nations increasingly shares responsibility for peace and security with regional organizations. We should do everything possible to help them resolve regional problems and to include the states concerned in solutions. At the same time, regional organizations should continue contributing to United Nations peace and security efforts.”“United Nations Shares Responsibility for Peace with Regional Organizations, Says Secretary-General, Opening All-Day Security Council Debate,” UN Security Council, August 18, 2015, accessed January 25, 2022, https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc12011.doc.htm.

The European Union

Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, the European Union (EU) is the largest and most influential regional economic IGO. Since the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (a move referred to as “ Brexit”) in January of 2020, the EU includes 27 countries across the European continent. The EU began as a small-scale economic organization, but its mission has expanded to promote peace and solidarity among European countries.

Regional Economic Organizations

Encouraged by the success of the European Union, almost every region in the world has formed an economic IGO and a regional economic development bank. These regional economic organizations (REOs) aim to improve cooperation and facilitate economic development by increasing transparency, funding projects, encouraging free trade, and reducing economic conflict. A handful of regional IGOs, such as the African Union and the Arab League, are more general in nature, but almost all have a substantial focus on economic development.

Other Types of Regional IGOs

Some regional IGOs, like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League, are organized around a common identity. Others, like the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), are organized around shared economic interests. The 13 member countries of OPEC own approximately 75 to 80 percent of the world’s known oil reserves. OPEC is open to any oil-producing state, and only the most powerful oil-producing states, such as Russia, China, and the United States, have opted not to join the organization. OPEC seeks to “coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its member countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic, and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry.”

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/. The organization helps its members coordinate oil supply and pricing, which can (but does not always) provide relative stability and predictability in the petroleum market and avoid contentious trade wars.

From a realist perspective, which focuses on the primacy of states, IGOs are most important as tools states can use to their own advantage. No IGO can act independently of its member states, and the largest states typically have disproportionate influence over an organization’s actions.

Non-state Actors: Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)

What Do NGOs Do?

In most cases, NGOs are designed to address a transnational concern—like the environment, humanitarian issues, health care, economic development, or conflict cessation—that is important to all and necessitates cooperation across borders. Within these broad areas, the majority of NGOs focus on specific issues, such as saving endangered species, conducting anti-malaria programs in tropical zones, or providing small loans to local farmers in South Asia.

What Are Some Weaknesses of NGOs?

NGOs can only work where governments accept their presence. Governments in strict authoritarian states like North Korea allow virtually no NGO activity, whereas governments in many other countries place almost no restrictions on NGOs. In recent years, however, more governments have placed restrictions on NGO activities in their states.

“Global Assault on NGOs Reaches Crisis Point as New Laws Curb Vital Human Rights Work,” Amnesty International, February 21, 2019, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/02/global-assault-on-ngos-reaches-crisis-point/. In particular, human rights groups and religiously affiliated organizations meet with resistance in some countries that view them as undermining the government or “national unity.”

What Role Do NGOs Play in Providing Collective Goods?

NGOs have been a presence at the UN since its earliest days, when they successfully lobbied the UN to include the promotion of human rights as part of its mission in the UN Charter.

Peter Willetts, “The Role of NGOs in Global Governance,” *World Politics Review*, September 27, 2011, https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/insights/10147/the-growing-role-of-global-ngos-in-global-governance. Approximately 6,000 NGOs currently have “consultative status” with ECOSOC, which allows them to have input into policy discussions and to access UN documents.

How Do NGOs Contribute to Global Governance?

In addition to drafting and convincing states to sign international treaties, NGOs help IGOs and state-based development agencies. They engage in information sharing and advocacy efforts, assist in emergencies, and play a key role in reinforcing the legitimacy of global governance.

“NGOs and the United Nations: Comments for the Report of the Secretary General,” Global Policy Forum, June 1999, https://archive.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/176-general/31440-ngos-and-the-united-nations.html#:~:text=NGOs%20seek%20the%20greatest%20possible,documents%20in%20Resolution%201996%2F31.

Non-state Actors beyond NGOs

Multinational Corporations

Multinational corporations (MNCs), also known as multinational enterprises (MNEs), are companies with headquarters in one country that have operations in at least one additional country. These transnational actors influence state policy and international politics, especially in the areas of trade, workers’ rights, and the environment. Because countries rely on the money and jobs multinational corporations generate, and because MNCs possess vast resources, they exert tremendous influence on international affairs.

National Identity Groups

Members of national identity groups share a common ethnic, religious, or linguistic identity and object to the political or territorial status quo. Typically, these groups are struggling for greater autonomy or recognition. They may be clustered in a specific region of a country, and they often represent a minority in that region, with grievances stemming from real or perceived marginalization and oppression that has left the group at a disadvantage. Even when these groups are primarily located within one state (such as the Rohingya in Myanmar or Basques in Spain), migration and globalization have a way of internationalizing their concerns. These groups often demand more representation in government, the protection of linguistic or religious traditions, and the right to establish institutions distinct from those of the country in which they reside. National identity groups may seek regional autonomy (relative independence from a central government), secession (breaking away from a state), or irredentism (reclaiming land).

Religious Non-state Actors

According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 84 percent of the population in the world identifies with a religion. There are thousands of different religious groups in the world, but 77 percent of the world’s religious adherents are part of one of the five largest religions: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Judaism.

“The Global Religious Landscape,” Pew Research Center, December 18, 2012, https://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/. Religious organizations or groups of adherents to a faith are known as religious non-state actors (RNAs). RNAs include individuals motivated by religious beliefs, by specific churches, by religious-based NGOs, and even by the transnational nature of the religious beliefs themselves. The Catholic Church has historically played a prominent role in international relations, and the Holy See, the governing body of the Church, has observer status at the United Nations. Given that there are almost one billion Catholics worldwide, the Pope has tremendous global influence.“US Embassy Cables: Diplomat Reveals Vatican’s ‘Unhelpful’ Role in Middle East Peace Process,” *The Guardian*, July 3, 2001, https://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/1792.

Violent Non-state Actors

Transnational actors that flagrantly violate established laws and employ violence to achieve their goals are considered “illegitimate.” They endanger security, stability, and the rule of law and are condemned under international law as a threat to global governance.

Neal A. Pollard, “Globalization's Bastards: Illegitimate Non-State Actors in International Law,” Low Intensity Conflict and Law Enforcement 11, no. 2–3 (2002): 210–238, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966284042000279009?journalCode=flic20. Like RNAs, sometimes the lines between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” transnational actors are blurred. Some nationalist and religious groups may pose a threat to peace and stability only in particular regions or for particular groups. Sometimes whether a non-state actor is considered legitimate depends on who you ask—as a saying from the Cold War era goes, “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”

International Political Economy

Introduction

The Origins of International Political Economy

The Advent of the Liberal Economy

The Bretton Woods Institutions

The International Monetary Fund

At the time of the Bretton Woods conference, it was commonly believed that competitive devaluations among major international currencies had caused the 1929 financial crisis. Competitive devaluations happen when a country devalues its currency in relation to other countries to gain trade advantage, but other countries devalue their currencies in response. Though more recent evaluation has determined that other factors were responsible for the stock market crash,

Sidney E. Rolfe and James Burtle, *The Great Wheel: The World Monetary System, A Reinterpretation* (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975). the US delegation at Bretton Woods insisted on the creation of a strict international monetary system (as a way to prevent future economic crises) and a return to the gold standard, the monetary system in which the standard unit of account is a fixed quantity of gold.

The World Bank

The IMF was the apple of the United States’ eye, and its creation consumed a majority of the time at the Bretton Woods conference. The creation of the World Bank was only discussed in the last few days. Under John Maynard Keynes’s guidance, it was established that the Bank’s original role would be to help rebuild the economies of countries devastated by war and to promote the economic development of developing countries. The Bank’s first loan was to France, and loans to other European countries ensued.

The World Bank, “Explore History,” https://www.worldbank.org/en/archive/history#. However, in 1947, as the Marshall Plan ended up taking the lead in the reconstruction effort in Europe, the World Bank had to adapt, and it swiftly shifted to funding development projects around the world in sectors such as power, irrigation, and transportation. In 1948, Chile was the recipient of the Bank’s first loan to a non-European country in the amount of USD 13.5 million for hydroelectric power generation.The World Bank, “Explore History.”

From the GATT to the WTO

The Bretton Woods conference was expected to establish a third institution, the International Trade Organization (ITO), to promote international trade and economic cooperation. Even though the institution was not created during the conference, negotiations aimed at its creation continued.

The Post–Cold War Period and Modernization Theory

From the 1990s to the 2020s: Current Issues in IPE

Globalization and International Trade

The international system pressures states to act in ways that promote the dissemination of international norms. For instance, ideas encouraging globalization have motivated trade liberalization since the 1990s.

Beth A. Simmons, Frank Dobbin, and Geoffrey Garrett, eds., *The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy* (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Beth A. Simmons and Zachary Elkins, “The Globalization of Liberalization: Policy Diffusion in the International Political Economy,” *American Political Science Review* 98, no. 1 (February 2004): 171–89, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055404001078. Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells defines globalization in economic terms as:

Winners and Losers in International Trade

Several researchers have studied people’s preferences about international trade and have found that the key variables influencing preferences toward globalization and market liberalization are 1) material gains and 2) education levels.

International Finance and Crises

Financial crises are a regular feature of the international economy. Retraction, and sometimes recession, follow cycles of economic expansion and growth. When a crisis hits, it can have dire consequences including effects like capital flight, the large-scale exit of money from a country as a result of market uncertainty; decreased investments; unemployment; and economic contraction. In such situations, governments take actions to lessen the negative effects of the crisis and to reverse the downward trajectory of the economy.

Exchange Rate Regimes in a Globalized Economy

As discussed above, the Bretton Woods monetary system established a gold standard under which governments kept gold in their treasuries to back the value of their currencies. In 1971, the gold standard was extinguished, and since then the value of national currencies has been based on trust, or their perceived value. Whenever an individual buys something, they believe that good or service is worth a portion of their money.

Considering Poverty, Inequality, and the Environmental Crisis

Poverty and Inequality

Like Levine, several scholars have suggested that poverty is an inescapable feature of capitalism, or the market economy. Recall that, with the advent of the market economy, it became possible to create wealth. Ideas that circulated during the Enlightenment, such as laissez-faire economics, an emphasis on individual freedom, and the protection of property rights by a limited government, promoted wealth creation and capital accumulation. At the same time, these ideas have exacerbated poverty and inequality.

The Environmental Crisis

In the contemporary economy, almost any imagined good can be produced for mass consumption. These goods are frequently manufactured, processed, or assembled in distant countries using parts from several other countries, and once ready, they are shipped to stores around the world. This production process uses raw materials, labor (often cheap labor in developing countries), and energy, including the energy used for transportation. While this process creates affordable goods for mass consumption, it has undesirable consequences. In addition to contributing to poverty and inequality, this system also does harm to the environment. As factories burn fossil fuel to generate energy and power machinery, greenhouse gases (GHG) are emitted into the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers the cumulative release of GHG since the Industrial Revolution to be the main cause of climate change.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, *Climate Change and Land*, 2019, https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/. In short, the environmental crisis is another unintended negative consequence of the market economy.