Professor John Higley
Seminar meetings: Mondays, 7-10 p.m., BUR 436A
Unique # 35540 (Consent of grad. adviser required)
Office Hours: Fridays, 2.15-4.00 p.m., or by appointment, BUR 416
E-mail : jhigley@mail.la.utexas.edu
Description:
This is the core seminar in comparative politics, intended primarily for graduate students entering the comparative field. It involves extensive reading across a range of theories, subfields, regional and country studies. The seminar also considers methodological problems and trends in the study of comparative politics. The fall 2000 edition is divided into three parts: (1) regimes and democratization; (2) aspects of stable democracies; (3) outlooks on 21st century politics.
Requirements:
Ten essays, each 750-1000 words, which critically assess the assigned readings. Each essay is due by e-mail to Prof. Higley not later than 1 p.m. on Monday and then in hard copy at that evening’s meeting. Essays will be graded and returned to students in two clusters, the first on 16 October and the second on 13 November. The final set of essays will be graded and returned, along with a written assessment of each member’s performance in the seminar, about 8 December. Each essay will constitute 10 percent of the final grade, although I reserve the right to add or subtract from the aggregated essay grade where I think contributions to seminar discussions have been especially strong or weak.
Assigned reading:
Assigned books are available through the Co-op and other stores (also from dotcom outlets where they may be cheaper), and they are on overnight reserve in the PCL. A compendium of a dozen articles that are also assigned readings can be purchased at the Co-op Custom Publishing sales location. In addition, I strongly encourage a student-discounted subscription to The Financial Times or, as a fallback, The Economist. Daily reading of the New York Times is assumed. The assigned books are:
Valerie Bunce. 1999. Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and
the State. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Ruth Berins Collier, 1999. Paths Toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western
Europe and South America. New York: Cambridge Univ.Press.
Larry Diamond. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press.
Samuel P. Huntington. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New
York: Simon & Shuster.
Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman, eds. 1997. Comparative Politics:Rationality,
Culture, and Structure. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Arend Lijphart. 1999. Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six
Countries. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
Juan J. Linz. 2000. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes: With a Major New Introduction.
Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
John Mueller. 1999. Capitalism, Democracy and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery. Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press.
Giovanni Sartori. 1997. Comparative Constitutional Engineering. New York: New York Univ.
Press, 2nd ed.
Articles & papers in Co-op Publishing compilation (in order of appearance):
David Collier and Robert Adock. 1999. “Democracy and Dichotomies: A Pragmatic Approach to
Choices about Concepts.” Annual Review of Political Science 2: 537-65.
Barbara Geddes. 1999. “What Do We Know About Democratization After TwentyYears?”
Annual Review of Political Science 2: 115-44.
David Collier and Steven Levitsky. 1997. "Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in
Comparative Research." World Politics 49 (April): 430-51.
John Higley and Michael Burton. 2000. “Elite Transformations in Democratization’s Three
Waves.” Paper presented to IPSA World Congress, Québec.
Carol Skalnik Leff. 1999. “Democratization and Disintegration in Multinational States.” World
Politics 51 (January): 205-35.
Ian S. Lustick. 1997. “Lijphart, Lakatos, and Consociationalism.” World Politics 50 (October):
88-117.
Ronald L. Watts. 1998. “Federalism, Federal Political Systems, and Federations.” Annual Review
of Political Science 1: 117-37.
Atul Kohli et al. 1995. “The Role of Theory in Comparative Politics: A Symposium.” World
Politics 48 (October): 1-49.
Recommended texts:
Robert A. Dahl. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
____________. 1998. On Democracy. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments inAfrica: Regime
Transitions in Comparative Perspective. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Rogers Brubaker. 1996. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New
Europe. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds. 1999.
Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, 2nd ed.
Mattei Dogan and John Higley, eds. Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes. Boulder CO:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Thomas Blom Hansen. 1999. The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern
India. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.
John Higley and Richard Gunther, eds. 1992. Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin
America and Southern Europe. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
John Higley and Gyorgy Lengyel. 2000. Elites after State Socialism: Theories and Analysis.
Boulder CO: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Eric Hobsbawm. 1994. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991. New York:
Pantheon Books.
____________. 2000. On the Edge of the New Century. New York: The New Press.
Samuel P. Huntington. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the LateTwentieth Century.
Norman, Okla.: Univ. of Oklahoma Press.
Ronald Inglehart. 1997. Modernization and Postmodernization. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.
Robert D. Kaplan. 2000. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of thePost Cold War. New
York: Random House.
David S. Landes. 1998. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. New York: Norton.
Kenneth Lieberthal. 1995. Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform. New York:
Norton.
Martin Malia. 1994. The Soviet Tragedy. A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991. New
York: The Free Press.
Pippa Norris, ed. 2000. Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance. New
York: Oxford Univ. Press.
John Peeler. 1998. Building Democracy in Latin America. Boulder CO: Lynne Reinner
Publishers.
Robert D. Putnam. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press.
Tatu Vanhanen. 1997. Prospects of Democracy: A Study of 172 Countries. New York: Routledge.
Hugo Young. 1998. This Blessed Plot. Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair. Woodstock
NY: The Overlook Press.
General Comparative Politics Journals and Reference Sources:
Comparative Politics, edited at Columbia University ($30/annum).
Comparative Political Studies, edited at Univ. of Washington ($74/annum).
Current History, edited at 4225 Main St., Philadelphia PA 19127 ($31/annum).
Foreign Affairs, edited at Council of Foreign Relations, New York ($44/annum).
Government and Opposition, edited at Univ. of Manchester, UK ($80/annum).
Journal of Democracy, edited at 1101 15th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20005 ($30/annum).
This is probably the most important comparative politics journal at present. Its coverage
of elections worldwide is alone worth the price.
The National Interest, edited at 1112 Sixteenth St., N.W. Suite 540, Washington DC 20036
($30/annum).
World Politics, edited at Princeton Univ. ($30/annum).
Encyclopedia of Democracy, edited by S.M. Lipset and published during 1995 in four volumes
by Congressional Quarterly Publishers. This is a mine of authoritative articles on
comparative concepts and countries.
Encyclopedia of Political Revolutions, edited by Jack A. Goldstone and published in 1998 in one
volume by Congressional Quarterly Publishers.
Encyclopedia of Nationalism, edited by Alexander J. Motyl and published in September 2000 in
two volumes by Academic Press.
Political Handbook of the World 1999 (CSA Publications, SUNY Binghamton, Binghamton NY
13902-6000). Provides baseline summaries of all countries' political backgrounds, and
recent developments, plus their main institutions, parties, media, constitutions, foreign
relations, etc. An indispensable source for any wide-ranging comparative work.
The National Endowment for Democracy (www.ned.org) maintains a Democracy Projects
Baseline, an Online Catalogue of 10,000 holdings, and a Democracy Experts Database. In
addition, it produces an online Democracy News containing information about NED
grants, activities, and weekly citations of news analysis and opinion pieces re: democratic
developments worldwide. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to:
majordomo@free.ned.org and then type in the body of the message “subscribe
democracy_news” plus your e-mail address.
Keesing's Record of Current World Events. A monthly publication updating main political
developments in all countries, located in PCL's reference room.
Seminar Schedule and Readings
4 Sept Labor Day holiday; no seminar meeting
11 Sept Introduction: Trends in the Comparative Field
Seminar organization. Comparative politics: science or art? Competing paradigms,
competing methods. The tussle over area studies. Reflections on studying
comparative politics as a graduate student.
Part I: Regimes and Democratization
18 Sept Types of Regimes
Are regimes and regime change the main dependent variables in comparative
politics? If not, what is or are? What do we mean by regimes? What problems do
the indicators of democratic, authoritarian, sultanistic, and totalitarian regimes
pose? Are the subtypes of democratic and totalitarian regimes too elaborate? What
about the principal determinants of regimes in the treatments of Linz and Linz &
Stepan? Too diverse?
Assigned readings:
(1) Juan J. Linz, Authoritarian & Totalitarian Regimes (2000 ed.)
(2) Linz & Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition & Consolidation,
Part I.
(3) Collier and Adcock: “Democracy and Dichtomies” (in Co-op compend.)
25 Sept Democratization Processes and Variables
Is Diamond’s sweeping treatment akin to a “kitchen sink” approach? Granted
that elites are “not the whole story,” but how much of it are they? Is “civil
society” mostly wishful thinking? Is “political culture” circular? If we climb the
“mountain of unanalyzed data” that Diamond sees what view will we have from
its summit? What does Diamond’s work illustrate about the place of norms in
comparative political analysis?
Assigned readings:
(1) Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy, Chaps 1-3, 5-7
(2) Barbara Geddes, “What Do We Know After 20 Years?” (in compend.)
2 Oct Democratization in Western Europe and Latin America
Does the distinction between early elite-driven and late class-driven democratizations hold? Is it significant that half of the early cases broke
down and that several of the late ones are breaking down? What, exactly, is “democracy” in Collier’s treatment and how does her concept accord with the analysis by her husband and Levitsky?
Assigned readings:
(1) Ruth Berins Collier, Paths Toward Democracy
(2) David Collier and Steven Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives” (in compend.)
(3) John Higley and Michael Burton, “Elite Transformations and
Democratization’s Three Waves” (in compend.)
9 Oct Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe
Do institutions really trap elites, or do elites for other reasons fail to make
institutions work? Did the multiethnic composition of nearly all Central and
East European countries doom the state socialist regimes from the start? Or was
state socialism itself the culprit? What are the implications for todays
putatively “democratic” regimes in the region? What is the range of variation
among these regimes at present?
Assigned readings:
(1) Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions
(2) Carol S. Leff, “Democratization and Disintegration…” (in compend.)
16 Oct PAUSE (no essay due): Methodological Considerations and Stocktaking
Assigned readings:
Robert Lichbach and Alan Zuckerman, Comparative Politics, Chaps. 1-4
Part II: Comparative Study of Democratic Regimes
23 Oct Consensus and Majoritarian Democracies
Is this a distinction without much of a difference? What about the indicators, i.e.,
would you know one or the other type if you saw it? How large a problem are
mixed types? What about causation: can countries just choose one or the
other type, and does the type then become a principal independent variable that
shapes political outcomes? What outcomes? Does the Lakatos thesis detonate
most of the comparative politics (and political/social science) enterprise?
Assigned readings:
(1) Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy
(2) Ian Lustick, “Lijphart, Lakatos, and Consociationalism” (in compend.)
30 Oct Presidential and Parliamentary Democracies
How to reconcile Sartori’s focus on electoral systems and forms of government
with his claim that, at day’s end, it is party systems that determine? Where,
pray, do party systems come from? Note the treatment of Australia as a singular
instance of “misguided constitutionalism”. Yet it is one of the most stable
systems. What does this say about constitutional engineering’s importance? Is
federalism the bane or the salvation of multi-ethnic countries like Belgium, Canada,
India, Switzerland, and for that matter Australia, Germany, and the United States?
Assigned readings:
(1) Giovanni Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering
(2) Ronald Watts, “Federalism…”(in compend.)
6 Nov Democracies, Social Capital, and Citizen Trust
Right, the trilateral democracies are “troubled” but when have they not been?
Are the leading scholars in this volume as “troubled” as the editors? Could it
be that these senior figures, most of who began their careers in the 60’s and 70’s
still bear the hopes and disappointments of that exceptional interlude? Or should
we in fact be concerned about today’s widespread tendency to “bowl alone” when
not secluded in front of our screens? Is Tarrow’s “virtual” social movement
society an apparition we need to worry about? In short, what’s the trajectory?
Assigned reading:
Susan Pharr and Robert Putnam , Disaffected Democracies
13 Nov PAUSE (no essay due): Methological Considerations and Stocktaking
Assigned readings:
Lichtbach & Zuckerman, Chaps. 5-8
Part III: Outlooks on 21st Century Politics
20 Nov Civilizations and Nationalism
Are national states and inter-state conflicts diminishing in importance?
National states versus civilizations: economics, culture, politics – which?
Further secularization or increasing fundamentalism? How does the thesis
look post-Kosovo, post-Timor, under Khatami and Wahid, amid proliferating
diasporas?
Assigned reading:
Samuel P. Huntington, Clash of Civs. and Remaking of World Order
27 Nov Pulling Back on Democracy?
Time for a conceptual retreat in our analyses of democracy? Is “pretty
good” all there is? Is Mueller more right than wrong about the role of
elections are overblown? How can “routine responsiveness” be ensured
through extra-electoral means?
Assigned reading:
John Mueller, Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery
3 Dec Theory and Explanation in Comparative Politics
Science or art?, competing paradigms, and the area studies question revisited. Can
middle-range theories work in the absence of a general theory? Are we too
wrapped around the meta-theoretical axle, spinning on it but never progressing?
In conclusion, on what theoretical-conceptual or area studies horse will you probably place your bet?
Assigned readings:
(1) Lichbach and Zuckerman, Chaps 9-10
(2) World Politics symposium on “Role of Theory in Comparative Politics”
A Short Annotated Comparative Politics Reading List
The Twentieth Century Political Record
At the turn of the millennium, works taking stock of the 20th century were abundant. In my limited reading, the best was Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes (New York: Pantheon , 1994) . Also deserving mention were Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (London, Fontana, 1996) and Paul Johnson’s quarrelsome Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Eighties (New York: Harper & Row, 1983; rev. ed. 1993). A scholar who has chronicled 20th-century follies with more asperity than most is John Lukacs; see, for example, his The Hitler of History (New York: Knopf, 1997). Another entrant in the stocktaking sweepstakes was Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Knopf, 1999). An important, still oft-cited collection by comparativists on interwar calamities in Europe and Latin America are the four volumes edited by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978).
Nationalism and Federalism
A seminal book on nationalism is Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1983); another is Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1985). A good collection of influential articles by a leading specialist is Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994). For an argument that nationalism is mostly elite-driven, see Paul R. Brass, Ethnicty and Nationalism (Los Angeles: Sage, 1991); and for a demonstration that this was so in modern western history, see Liah Greenfield, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992). For an interesting look at how national identities formed in settler societies like the U.S. and Australia, see Lyn Spillman, Nation and Commemoration (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997). William Riker’s article on “Federalism” in the Handbook of Political Science, Vol. 5 (1975) was an important statement. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan are completing a new and doubtless important book interconnecting Democracy, Nationalism, and Federalism.
A seminal work is Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990). See also K. Thelen, S. Steinmo, F. Longstreth, eds. Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press), together with the overview articles by B. Rothstein, B. Weingast, G. Drewry, and Guy Peters in Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, eds., A New Handbook of Political Science (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996). At a more concrete level, see Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds. The Failure of Presidential Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994, 2 vols.), which has spurred numerous articles and much debate.
Democracy and Democratization
Like Robert Dahl’s 1971 book about Polyarchy, Samuel Huntington's 1991 The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late 20th Century (Norman OK: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1991) is a baseline for work in this area, and many would say the same about the four volumes edited by Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions From Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1986). Another noteworthy series, which examined 27 countries, was Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1990, 3 vols., compressed and updated into one volume, dealing with 11 countries, published in 1995 as the 2nd edition). Further updated editions in this series have started to appear: Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan Linz, and S.M. Lipset, eds. Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), which is an assessment of the Latin American record during the 1990’s. Guillermo O'Donnell has been an insistent foe of fashionability in studies of democratization; see his "Democratic Consolidation: Illusions and Conceptual Flaws" in Jrnl. of Democracy 7 (October 1996): 160-68. Adam Przeworski has been another important contributor; see his Democracy and the Market (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), together with more recent articles (e.g., Przeworski and Fernando Lomongi, "Modernization: Theories and Facts," World Politics 49 (January 1997): 155-83. A stocktaking is the special issue of Comparative Politics on "Transitions to Democracy," edited by Lisa Anderson and published in April 1997. The literature balloons out.
The literature on Southern Cone (re)democratizations is extensive. See for a starter the volume Richard Gunther and I edited in 1992, esp. the chapters on Argentina and Chile, Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay. A well-respected work (though awfully verbose) was D. Rueschemyer, E. Huber Stephens, and J. D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992), and a parallel mass-oriented treatment was R. Berins Collier and D. Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991). A prominent political economy approach is S. Haggard and R. F. Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1995), which looks at a dozen Latin American, Asian, and Middle Eastern cases.
On the proposition that fundamental elite settlements occurred in Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico, see the article by Michael Burton and myself, “Elite Settlements,” American Sociological Review (June 1987) and our more recent article “Elite Settlements and the Taming of Politics,” Government and Opposition 33 (Winter 1998). The unconventional thesis that Mexico’s stability (and now its apparently completed democratization) stemmed from an elite settlement in 1928-29 is treated at length by Alan Knight in his chapter “Mexico’s Elite Settlement: Conjuncture and Consequences” in the 1992 volume edited by Gunther and myself. See also Knight’s more recent article on “Mexico and Latin America in Comparative Perspective” in the 1998 volume on Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes, edited by Mattei Dogan and myself. A raft of articles discusses the current turbulence in Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela by specialists in periodicals such as Foreign Affairs, Current History, The National Interest, etc. See also John Peeler, Building Democracy in Latin America (Lynne Rienner, 1998) and Mitchell Seligson and John Booth, Elections and Democracy in Central America Revisited (Univ. of No. Carolina Press, 1995).
The literature on the postcommunist regimes pours out. The bulk of it focuses on elites; cf. the books I've edited with Pakulski and Wesolowski and with G. Lenyel (in recommended reading list); also see Graeme Gill, ed., Elites and Leadership in Russian Politics (London: Macmillan, 1998). On the Soviet trajectory and collapse, at least three books are musts: Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy (New York: Free Press, 1994); Jerry Hough, Democracy and Revolution in the U.S.S.R., 1985-1991 (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1997); Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996). On the Yugoslav collapse, see, inter alia, Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1995). The Journal of Democracy has published a wealth of articles on the Central and East European transitions and their aftermaths; see virtually every issue.