the state
What's the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship?
"In the world today, some states are organized as a democracy, a system of government wherein power theoretically lies with the people, and therefore citizens are allowed to vote in elections, speak freely, and participate as legal equals in social life. Other states are a dictatorship, a form of government that restricts the right to political participation to a small group or even to a single individual. Such states may limit suffrage, censor information to the public, and arrange the brutal "disappearances" of nonsubmissive subordinates To Weber, the differences between democracy and dictatorship are irrelevant to statehood; these bona fide states and forms of domination differ only by the types of ideas the regimes produce about their own legitimacy. They are merely different breeds of the same underlying animal."
Describe the difference between routinization and rationalization under the context of legal-rational authority. Related: What is a bureaucracy?
"Legal-rational authority is highly routinized, based on a standard, regular procedure" routinization refers to the clear, rule-governed procedures used repeatedly for decision making. For example, the police officer writes down an offender's violations of the law, handcuffs the offender, and then transports the offender to the police station. Legal authority is also highly rationalized, or subject to ever-expanding modes of organization. A bureaucracy is a legal-rational organization or mode of administration that governs with reference to formal rules and roles and emphasizes meritocracy.
What are social rights
"Social rights to public assistance may be of two broad types. The first type is the right to contributory programs, such as Social Security benefits in the United States. To be eligible for these programs, "citizens earn their rights through tax contributions" (Hasenfeld et al., 1987). Rights to means-tested programs, such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and food stamps, are contingent on proof of insufficient financial resources. Rights to means-tested programs are subject to changes in how states define the concept of the "deserving poor." For example, in 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which drastically shortened the maximum allowable time during which citizens could claim welfare benefits and introduced multiple compliance requirements, such as mandatory employment searches and job training. Because of these changes, the "deserving poor" no longer included those who weren't disabled yet were chronically unemployed."
• What is authority
Authority is the justifiable right to exercise power.
• Compare and contrast hard power and soft power, using examples.
Hard power is the use of military or economic force to influence behavior. §Soft power is the use of cultural or ideological means to influence behavior. "Joseph Nye, a scholar at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (as well as a former assistant secretary of defense), has proposed that the exclusive use of hard power in international politics is out of date. For one thing, states are now increasingly economically dependent on one another thanks to globalization, and this means that the use of force to influence the behavior of other states has become more costly." "Violent urban warfare during World War II (left) is an example of a hard power strategy. The cultural influence of soft power resources is seen in a billboard advertising Kentucky Fried Chicken in Damascus (right)."
With a focus on political participation, explain why some states end up as democracies and others become dictatorships.
Moore hypothesizes that the fate of each nation is determined by the struggle between social classes. Specifically, for democracy to emerge, the bourgeoisie (those who own businesses) must be strong enough to attenuate the control of the land-owning feudal lords. If the bourgeoisie, in the form of traders and merchants, is strong enough, a revolution takes place. The bourgeois revolution "attacks obstacles to a democratic version of capitalism that have been inherited from the past" (Moore, 1966/1993). Moore thus believes that the emergence of modern capitalism is important to the development of political democracy." Acemoglu and Robinson use game theory to understand how some states wind up more democratic than other states. Pretend that each state is the site of an ongoing game between two players: the elite player and the mass citizenship player. The elites are, of course, the rulers, the oppressors, the pillagers of small and unarmed villages. The mass citizenship player is the conglomeration of ordinary people who want, for instance, greater representation within their respective governments and the right to vote on specific social policies. One day, all the ordinary people join together and revolt against the elite. The elites, fearing for their lives and, more pressingly, desiring to protect their privileged social positions, need to respond. Do they give in to the demands of the rabble-rousers?" There are two basic outcomes, or solutions, to the game. The elites may promise to lower the ordinary people's taxes and give each of them a free car. However, in a few years the elites are back to exploiting the poor and oppressed population as tax rates creep up again. Alternatively, if the mass citizenship resists the temptations of a temporary concession, it may use the threat of a revolution to demand change to the political institutions of the state, such as the right to vote or the establishment of a parliament. If the citizens can use their temporary opportunity—their credible threat of revolution—to induce a change in the existing political institutions, then the country is on the path to democratization, according to Acemoglu and Robinson. The ordinary people have used their fleeting advantage to change the underlying distribution of political power. Democracy is just one possible outcome of a strategic game played by competing social groups."
• What is the paradox of authority? What's an example of this phenomenon?
Once you have authority, you will need power, so you can carry out your will despite resistance. This state is an entity of power, or, in other words, is the institution that enjoys a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a given territory. In order to maintain its authority and power and exert domination, the state needs force--or more accurately, the threat of force. Because hidden under any other form of domination or authority is the implicit threat of violence.In a democracy at least, it is this tension that keeps the system of authority and perfect balance. But once force is actually used, that balance is threatened, if not lost altogether. After all, if you have to use coercion, people are clearly not respecting your authority. Once the balance is upset, you have to start from scratch, building a new bureaucratic pyramid. A new elite emerges and we are back to where we started. To understand the paradox of authority, one needs to understand the difference between coericien and authority: It is in the direct use of such threats that coercion differs from authority, in which the physical ability to back up one's power is implicitly understood" Authority doesn't need to directly threaten- otherwise loses its credibility Paradox of authority although the state's authority derives from the implicit threat of physical force, resorting to physical coercion strips the state of all legitimate authority." Power the ability to carry out one's own will despite resistance." Domination the probability that a command with specific content will be obeyed by a given group of people."
• What is the welfare state?
The welfare state is a system in which the state is responsible for the welfare of its citizens. "The state's role in developing social policies—policies developed to meet social needs—has prompted scholars to reconsider the definition of statehood." "After the period of rapid industrialization that began in the late eighteenth century and culminated in the beginning of the twentieth century, many states began adopting variants of social insurance and pension programs such as disability, old age, and unemployment benefit" "John Maynard Keynes, a prominent British economist, postulated that government intervention in the form of social expenditures could pull the economy out of a recession by stimulating demand for products and services.) Perhaps, then, starting with the postwar years, it is more accurate to think of states as "organizations that extract resources through taxation and attempt to extend coercive control and political authority over particular territories and the people residing in them" "Notice that this definition still includes a reference to coercion and political authority (that is, Weber's monopoly on legitimate force), but now states are concerned with another function—social provisions—and may rightly be called welfare states
What is the collective action problem?
To play the democratization game and make coherent demands of the elite, however, the ordinary people must first overcome a collective action problem. The theory of collective action, pioneered by Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective Action (1965), asserts that it is more difficult to organize larger groups than smaller ones."
What are TH Marshall's three forms of citizenship rights? How are they distinct?
citizen of a nation). 1. Civil rights guarantee personal freedom without state interference. 2. Political rights are rights to participate in politics, hold office, or vote. 3. Social rights guarantee protection by the state. "protection from the free market in the areas of housing, employment, health, and education" " "Marshall recognized that an inherent contradiction exists between civil rights, which guarantee freedom from state interference, and social rights, which make it the state's responsibility to interfere in the lives of citizens."
How did welfare states develop?
logic of industrialism thesis, holds that nations develop social welfare benefits to satisfy the social needs created by industrialization. In this view, the state intervenes to take care of people who are not needed in the labor market: children, people with disabilities, and the elderly. Simply, "economic growth is the ultimate cause of welfare state development neo-Marxist theory, starts with the question of how democracy and capitalism can coexist. This theory is concerned with explaining the contradictions between formal legal equality and social class inequality. Specifically, when private property is held by a small section of the population, the democratic impulse (that is, the wishes of the masses) might be to confiscate that property. To resolve this tension and maintain private property rights, the welfare state emerges. I" "Third, state-centered approaches emphasize the role of state bureaucrats in formulating welfare state policies. Statist theories tie the development of the welfare state not to economic or political factors but to government bureaucrats who design policies based on perceived social conditions, because bringing home the pork enhances their power in society. Theda Skocpol and Edwin Amenta (1986), two prominent exponents of the state-centered approach, argue that in some cases, the state may act autonomously to formulate social policy—meaning that state bureaucrats are solely or primarily responsible for creating or modifying social policy.
What are the varying types of legitimate authority that Conley outlines in the text?
§Charismatic authority is based on the personal appeal of an individual leader. "This "superhuman" aura and affective appeal are what Weber called charisma, specific qualities that inspire loyalty and obedience in others" §Traditional authority is based on appeals to the past or a long-established way of doing things. Typical for religion §Legal-rational authority is based on legal, impersonal rules that have been routinized and rationalized
Miligram Experiment
• Describe the Milgram experiment. What were the researchers trying to measure? What did this experiment help to explain? "to see how far ordinary people would go to obey an authority figure." "This experiment shed some light on how normal people could be complicit in war crimes like the Holocaust." "Milgram experiment an experiment devised in 1961 by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, to see how far ordinary people would go to obey a scientific authority figure."
