The three authors, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly begin their paper by stating that most of the field work in regard to Contentious Politics was focused on social movements of the North, revolutions, civil wars and terrorism, and politics of post authoritarian revolutions. Before they begin to state their position on the matter of Contentious Politics, they clearly state that the field has been tremendous paradigms. Many in the field have turned “culturalist” from structuralist and others have turned to rational-choice. But the authors clearly state that they encourage crossing different disciplines and using many different variables like history, geography, culture, structure of institutions, etc… The authors define the different properties of Contentious Politics. These properties are interactions, claims, and governments. Different persons or groups of persons (organizations) are connected together by their claims for different resources, values, powers, etc… in society. These claimants are non-state actors. Contentious Politics usually interacts with other non contentious political processes such as routine public administration, organization of elections, military conscription, tax collection, etc… Governments are supposed to provide balance between the competing persons in society. Governments use the power of coercion to intervene in contention among non-state actors.
The authors continue the paper by stating that different forms of government will create environments for different levels of contentious politics. Regime strength and stability, its openness to new actors, and the different centers of power in the regime will affect the creation of claim-making actors (organizations) and their ability to make their claim be realized. This analysis of the differences of the regime can explain why democratic regimes with similar cultures, economic structures, etc… can have totally different political settings. A regime’s power structure also affects the different strategies different organizations will use to force their agenda to be adopted. Depending on the amount of democratic rights a regime allows its people, organizations may choose to hold public meetings or demonstrations to rally support for their cause. In other political situations, organizations may feel that the only way to get their cause recognized is to create civil war, or pursue terrorist strategies, and maybe even guerrilla warfare. The authors state that the variations of structure of a government will affect the different types of performances and repertories pursued by organizations. They agree that organizations must be able to improvise on situations where old performances fail and new ones must be employed to produce results for their causes.
Three approaches to Contentious Politics are then introduced. The first, the Political Process Approach, is an intersection between the European new social movement approach and the American political process approach. It is otherwise called Protest Event Analysis. The Problem with this approach is that it significantly will be very hard to use it in analyses of developing countries of the modern world. Current social movements of developing countries include many more variables and full of many more causes than the specific movements in the twentieth century of Western Countries. The second approach was the Rational Choice and Resource Mobilization Approach. It states that all forms of collection action based loosely on the central theorem of marginal utility. The authors state that the political scientist Olson has a couple problems in his theory because he limits the motivations for collection action to material incentives and ignores the thousands of people who were striking for their own interests. The last approach is a Constructivist Approach. This approach concludes that all movements construct meanings and the movements primary function is to achieve their cause. In this approach it’s easy to frame the cause of a movement or an organization but it is hard to identify how a movement or organization used their cause to create contentious politics.
The point of the chapter is to prove the authors claims that contentious politics cannot be studied through one paradigm. Multiple theories must be used to produce the best analytical results. They claim that the three approaches need to be synthesized. A study of contentious politics, or any type of politics, should not be done through only one method that believes it is superior to rest. One method or one theory studies are at fault because they usually are not able to include much relevant information that is vital to the explanation of a political event, a political institution, etc… The rest of the chapter is used to define the different types of performances organizations use to achieve their causes. It is also used to identify different research models that can be used to analyze contentious politics. A comparative study of contentious politics must include the study of all types of phenomena such as revolutions, social movements, civil wars, democratization, etc... But it also must include the connections between contentious politics and non-contentious politics.
Chapter 12 begins by introducing two central ideas, according to the author, that underlie the comparative study of behavioral politics. The first part of the study attempts to understand the connection among social structures, voters, and political parties. Anderson identifies this as an older study originally named political psychology. The second part of the study, which is also the new approach, is study of psychological concepts as principal explanations for citizen behavior. The author introduces the Michigan approach as the primary method used in the study of behavioral politics. The Michigan approach focused attention on the actions of citizens as autonomous individuals whose group memberships and social contexts were identified as being experienced individually instead of structurally. This structure flawed the research on behavioral politics. It didn't pay attention to neighborhoods, communities, and countries that individuals develop their experiences in. These three stated environments are very unique and different throughout the world. Without a study of an individual’s environment, an acceptable analysis of why a citizen behaves a certain way is impossible.
Anderson does acknowledge that the Michigan Approach has its downsides. He suggests that a new approach for analysis needs to be adopted. The new approach must pay more attention to the impact of the structure of institutions and how the rules of these institutions produce systematically different election outcomes. These new multi-level models combine different levels of analysis. The first is the macro level across countries and the second is micro level of citizen's attitudes and actions. These models connect the individual-level experiences people have as participants in the political process and how these experiences interact with the constraints an particular political system provides structurally, institutionally and/or culturally. The author goes on to give examples with the new approach. He states that depending on the political arena, some voters will switch their vote for a new government depending if the economic performance of the country was bad during their time in power. But he states that the ability for a citizen to switch their vote only relies on the information a citizen can obtain. For example, in a multi-party system where the citizen cannot identify which party had the decision-making power to control the economy, then the citizen may not switch their vote for a new party because they clearly cannot identify which party is at fault. Brockington (2004) and Shively (2005) agree that in a political system with limited political information, an increase of parties in a party system will depress voter turnout. Limited political information also limits the ability of voters to change their preference for different political parties.
The author welcomes the new wave of multi-level comparative behavioral research. I think that instead of focusing on one theoretical perspective, the new multi-level model gives a researcher a broader outlook on a political situation. This allows a researcher to perform more analysis and try to obtain more results. The new model can identify how different cultures placed in different institutions create different voting patterns. For example, why do citizens evaluations of a failing economy often do not translate into changing their vote for a different party during the next election. Why does a citizen attribute problem-solving competency and responsibility for good performance to the party they support and blame opposite parties for inferior economic performance? To try to answer this question with a research model with one theoretical perspective would be a disaster. These type of behaviors need to be examined through many different scopes of analysis. I welcome the idea of a multi-level comparative behavioral research approach. This new multi-level approach is inspiring because it maybe possibly used in analysis of political institutions and citizen behavior in developing countries.
Chapter 14 is very interesting because the author, Isabela Mares, attempts to identify a multi-level theory that uses the structuralist, rationalist, and culturalist perspective to make understanding of how the "welfare state" was created. The new theory which blends elements from all three perspectives is also supposed to be used to identify why the original policies of the welfare state have shifted in some areas of support by the state. New research has identified different social policy preferences of wage-earners or employers taking into account the level of inequality, the distribution of skills and risks affect individual preferences for insurance and distribution, etc... The research also identifies that the process of bargaining for social policy involves a lot of compromise and usually all the parties involved have to settle on "second-best" alternatives.
Political analysts Cameron (1978) and Rodrik (1997, 1998) both suggest that the amount of openness of a state’s economy contributes to governments creating social programs. Rodrik states that the more open a country's economy is, the greater it is affected by turbulence in the world markets. He states the main function of social policy is to reduce the risk of fluctuating incomes of households in the tradable sectors. Cameron also hypothesized that governments create social insurance schemes to compensate workers whose income and employment are threatened by external competition. I can understand why both authors are making these points. I am not sure if subsidies are qualifications of being identified as part of the policy of the welfare state, but I do know that the U.S. government provides for huge subsidies for U.S. farmers so they can continue to operate in the world market. The subsides are a type of insurance just in case a farmer’s crop fail in a specific year. Subsidies also allow farmers to sell their product at a relatively low price so they can compete in world markets.
What I found very interesting in this chapter is that studies of social welfare policy have identified social policy legislation has been and is continued to be supported by cross-class alliances among capitalists and workers. Without study of the subject, I believed that social welfare policy was the result of a tremendously skilled working class threatening to stop work unless they received a type of insurance policy from the government just in case they risked losing their job to outside forces, or to injury, etc... These studies have identified that the process of bargaining over new social policies is very important for both workers and employers. I know understand why it is important for employers to be part of the bargaining process. Employers may not accept all the demands of the workers, but they do identify that they will be forced to create some type of social welfare policy so they can have a type of an insurance that the workers will continue to do their jobs and their businesses will flourish.
The author then introduces welfare regimes in developing countries. She identifies two development models that will create different types of social policy. The first is the "import-substitution industrialization" (ISI) model. In this model, social policies play a critical role in affecting workers' decisions to participate in the labor market and what type of education and skills they need to acquire to participate. The other model, the "export-led industrialization" (ELI) model was also created. In this model, employers (producers) required a low-wage workforce with a general education so they can compete in international markets. In the ISI model, Capitalists wanted to create a labor force capable of domestic industrial production and as well as a big consumer base. They had to create a social policy that retained workers by insuring them against the risk of injury or sickness. In the ELI model, employers favored a social policy that emphasized tax-financed education and health care but relatively low spending on insurance programs. Wibbels and Ahlqist, the authors of this study, also identify a third "mixed" social spending regime that "combines modest levels of insurance and human capital spending." These theories only partially explain the social policy in developing countries. There needs to be more analysis placed on the different variables in the political and economic institutions in the various developing countries. There also has to be analysis placed on external forces that may have forced a developing country to incorporate a different model of economic growth, either the ISI, ELI, or the "mixed" model.
The chapter continues by analyzing the different industrialized economies social policies and how they were changed and why did the governments of those countries change their social policy. The author states that a single-theory on why governments changed their social policies cannot be used as an explanation. Different welfare regimes that employed the same policies experienced different outcomes of their policies. Research studies have shown that the design of different programs affected the recipient’s attitudes toward the government and the difference of political participation in the programs. In many countries, the pension programs have experienced the most dramatic change while the smaller programs proved to be more resilient. There has been a switch by many industrialized states from public government pension programs to private pension programs. One explanation can be aging populations that seem to be growing older and older because of the advances in science. Aging populations with relatively low birth rates means that the pension programs will not be able to support the retirees of the future. The export of jobs to other countries also create an environment where the younger population cannot support the pension programs because they have no money to be taxed on that will be allocated to the pension program. The author concludes that regional-dummies or country-specific variables cannot account for the observed empirical variation in social policy trajectories in the developing world. The development of a multi-level research theory in the comparative political economy of a welfare state has been very vital to the field of study. But clearly the different histories of a country and the many different variables employed in a creation of a social welfare policy clearly undermine the ability of a multi-level research theory to produce the same research results across different states. I believe that the multi-level theory should still be used instead of single theory perspectives but a researcher must definitely take into account all the different variables in different areas of study.
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