Political Science 2 – Comparative Politics - Power Point #7

Dr. Tabakian’s Political Science 2 Modern World Governments – Fall 2012

Power Point Presentation – October 9th & October 11th

COURSE LECTURE TOPICS

This Week’s Lecture Covers: •Germany Current Policy Changes Historical Legacy Following Two Paths Social Forces Institutions And Structure Of Government Remaking Political Cultures Political Learning Political Communication Citizen Participation Politics At The Elite Level Interest Groups The Party System

COURSE LECTURE: WEEK #7 (2)

The Role Of Elections Party Government The Policy Process Policy Performance Addressing The Policy Challenges After The Revolution

•Japan Current Policy Challenges Historical Origins Of The Modern Japanese State The Occupation Political Institutions Electoral Systems And Electoral Competition The Japanese Party System Political Participation And Voting Behavior

COURSE LECTURE: WEEK #7 (3)

Political Participation And Voting Behavior Interest Groups Political Culture And Issue Cleavages Political Socialization The Policymaking Process Policy Performance

COUNTRY BIO: GERMANY (1)

COUNTRY BIO: GERMANY (2) • Population:

– 82.5 million • Territory:

– 137,803 sq. miles • Year of Independence:

– 1871 • Year of Current Constitution:

– 1949 • Head of State:

– President Horst Kohler • Head of Government:

– Chancellor Angela Merkel

• Language: – German

• Religion: – Protestant 34% – Roman Catholic 34% – Muslim 4% – Unaffiliated or other 28%

• Scheduled Castes – 16.2% of population

• Scheduled Tribes – 8.2% of population

BACKGROUND: GERMANY

• Merkel’s election in 2005 – Testimony to change in Germany – Communism distant past – Two halves of the nation acting as one

• Major achievement of contemporary German politics – Creation of a unified, free, and democratic nation in a

short period of time – Unification occurred in 1990 – Contributed to a stable Europe

CURRENT POLICY CHALLENGES • Unification related issues

– Eastern Germany: struggled to compete in the globalized economic system

– EU has invested more than 1,000 billion Euros in the East since unification

• Taxes increased for all Germans in the process

• General socioeconomic course of the nation – What direction for economic reform? – German labor costs and benefits high by international standards

without comparable productivity – Social welfare costs spiraled upward

CURRENT POLICY CHALLENGES

• Multicultural nation – New source of political tension

• Foreign policy challenges – Role in the EU – Role in the post-Cold War world

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY

• The Second German Empire – Bismarck, 1871 – Authoritarian state – Power flowed from the Kaiser – Suppression of opposition – World War I

• Devastated the nation – 3 million German soldiers and civilians lost their lives – Economy strained to the breaking point – Government collapsed

PATHS OF POSTWAR GERMANY

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY

• The Weimar Republic – 1919 – popularly elected constitutional assembly

established the new democratic system of the Weimer Republic

– Constitution granted all citizens the right to vote and guaranteed basic human rights

– Directly elected parliament and president – Hopeful beginning – disastrous end

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY (1) • Severe problems

– Versailles Peace Treaty: lost all overseas colonies and large amount of European territory

– Burdened with moral guilt and reparations: economic problems

– Great Depression of 1929 • Hurt Germany harder than it hurt other countries including the U.S. • One third of the labor force became unemployed • Parliamentary democracy began to fail • Emergence of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German

Workers’ Party (the Nazis)

• Failure due to a mix of factors – Lack of support from political

elites and the public • They seemed to long for the

old authoritarian system • Many Germans were not

committed to democratic principles

– Economic and political crises • Eroded public support and

opened the door to Hitler – Most Germans drastically

underestimated Hitler’s ambitions, intentions, and political abilities.

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY (2)

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY (3) • The Third Reich

– Hitler: election 1933 – Used domination of the parliament to enact legislation granting Hitler

dictatorial powers – New authoritarian “leader state” – Hitler pursued extremist policies

• Destroyed opposition • Attacked Jews and other minorities • Massive public works projects lessened unemployment • Expansion of the army • Expansionist foreign policy led to WWII

– Initial victories, but followed by a series of military defeats beginning in 1942 • 60 million lives lost worldwide in the war, including 6 million European Jews

who were murdered via systematic genocide • At the end of the war, Germany in ruins

• The Occupation Period – At the end of the war, the

Western Allies (U.S., Britain, and France) controlled Germany’s Western zone and the Soviet Union occupied the Eastern zone.

– West • Denazification • New political parties and

democratic political institutions

• Basic Law (Grundgesetz) – East

• Socialist Unity Party • Draft constitution for the

German Democratic Republic-East Germany

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY (4)

FOLLOWING TWO PATHS • Faced similar challenges • West Germany

– Economic challenge – Free enterprise system

• Christian Democratic Union • Economic Miracle

• East Germany – Economic miracle almost as impressive – Collectivized agriculture, nationalized industry, and centralized planning

• Process of reconciliation – Helmut Kohl – Gorbachev – Opening of the Berlin Wall – Western Germany dominated the process and the outcome

SOCIAL FORCES (1)

• Economics – Largest state in the EU – Merger of two different economies

• Religion – Unification has unsettled the delicate religious

balance

SOCIAL FORCES (2) • Gender

– Basic Law guarantees the equality of the sexes, but the specific legislation to support this guarantee often lacking

– Merkel’s selection as Chancellor may have an impact • Minorities

– Guest workers – Isolated from mainstream society – Lower end of economic ladder – Some opposition to further immigration

• Regionalism – Potential source of social and political division

THE INSTITUTIONS AND STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT (1)

• Basic law – specific goals: – To develop a stable and democratic political system – To maintain some historical continuity in political

institutions (parliamentary system) – To recreate a federal structure of government – To avoid the institutional weakness that contributed to

the collapse of Weimar democracy – To establish institutional limits on extremist and anti-

system forces


• A federal system (Bund) – State governments have a unicameral legislature, normally called a Landtag, which is

directly elected by popular vote. – Sixteen states (Lander) – Political power divided between federal and state governments.

• Parliamentary government – The Bundestag (Federal Diet)- 598 deputies; elections every four years

• Enact legislation • Forum for public debate • Oversight- “question hour”

– The Bundestrat (Federal Council)- 69 members • Role is to represent state interests

• The Federal Chancellor and Cabinet – Strengthened formal powers (Basic Law) – Elected by the Bundestag – Control over the Cabinet


• Federal government functions based on three principles based on Basic Law – Chancellor principle – Ministerial autonomy – Cabinet principle

• The Federal President – Basic Law transformed this office into a mostly

ceremonial one

• The Judicial System – Ordinary courts – Administrative courts – Constitutional Court

• The Separation of Powers – Basic Law – avoiding

concentration of power – Constructive no-confidence vote – Role of Constitutional Court as a

check


REMAKING POLITICAL CULTURES

• Orientations – Toward the system and nation – Toward the democratic process

• Social values and the new politics • Two peoples in one nation?

INCREASE OF SUPPORT

POLITICAL LEARNING AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

• Family influences • Education • Social stratification • Mass media

CITIZEN PARTICIPATION

• 1950s almost two-thirds of the West German public never discussed politics

• Today about three-quarters claim they talk about politics regularly.

• Rising participation levels – Growth of citizen action groups – Voting levels highest of any European democracy – Sign petitions, boycott – Both sides of the country actively involved

PARTICIPATION LEVELS

POLITICS AT THE ELITE LEVEL

• Few thousand political elite manage the actual workings of the political system – Party elites – Leaders of interest groups and political associations

• Recruitment – Long apprenticeship period

• Varied political preferences among elites

INTEREST GROUPS • Interest groups are connected to the government more

closely in Germany than in the U.S. – Formally involved in the policy process – Neocorporatism

• Social interests are organized into virtually compulsory organizations. • A single association represents each social sector. • These associations are hierarchically structured. • Associations may participate directly in the policy process.

– Business – Labor – Religious interests – New politics movement

THE PARTY SYSTEM

• Christian Democrats • Free Democratic Party • The Greens • The Party of Democratic Socialism

SHARES OF THE PARTY VOTE

COMPOSITION OF COALITION GOVERNMENTS

ELECTORAL COALITIONS

THE ROLE OF ELECTIONS • Goals of Basic Laws for the electoral system:

– Create a proportional representation system (PR) – Also, use single-member system to avoid fragmentation of the Weimar party

system and ensure some accountability between electoral district and its representative

– Mixed electoral system • Ballot: vote for a candidate to represent district; second part of the ballot they

select a party • Half of Bundestag members are elected a district representatives and half as

party representatives. • 5 percent clause • Party leaders have influence on who will be elected due to their ability to place

candidates on the list • PR system also ensures fair representation for minor parties • Affects campaign strategies

• The electoral connection

PARTY GOVERNMENT • Parties are important political actors in German politics. • Basic Law

– Specifically refers to political parties – Guarantees their legitimacy and their right to exist- if they accept the

principles of democratic government – Primary institutions of representative democracy – Educational function of parties – No direct primaries – Candidates are merely “representatives” of the party – Parties form government and are central actors within the Bundestag

• Structured around parties • Cohesion high

THE POLICY PROCESS

• Policy initiation – Most issues reach the policy agenda through

the executive branch.

• Legislating policy – State and federal governments share legislative

power.

THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS

THE POLICY PROCESS

• Policy administration – Basic law assigned the administrative responsibility for

most domestic policies to the state governments – States employ more civil servants than the federal and

local governments combined. • Judicial review

– Constitutional Court can evaluate the constitutionality of legislation and void laws that violate the provisions of the Basic Law.

POLICY PERFORMANCE • The Federal Republic’s policy record

– Increases in total public spending and new policy responsibilities – Difficult to describe the activities in terms of revenue and budgets –

complex system • Extensive network of social services

– Social security programs are the largest part of public expenditures • Policy responsibility is divided among three levels of government

– Education – Defense and foreign policy – Economic policy – NATO

• Public expenditures show the policy efforts of the government, but the actual results of this spending are more difficult to assess.

TOTAL PUBLIC EXPENDITURES

POLICY PERFORMANCE

• Overall, many areas have seen improvement in both sections of the country: housing, living standards, work, income, social security, environmental security, and public security.

• Paying the Costs – Three different types of revenue provide the bulk of

resources for public policy programs: • Contributions to the social security system (self-financed by

employer and employee contributions) • Direct taxes • Indirect taxes

SATISFACTION WITH LIFE

PUBLIC REVENUE DISTRIBUTION

ADDRESSING THE POLICY CHALLENGES

• The problems of unification • Reforming the welfare state • A new world role

AFTER THE REVOLUTION

• Unification – Presented new social, political, and economic

challenges for the nation. – Mergers bring problems.

• Strains magnified by elites • Need for consensus both socially and politically

– Resolution of questions regarding national identity

COUNTRY BIO: JAPAN (1)

COUNTRY BIO: JAPAN (2) • Population:

– 127.7 million • Territory:

– 145,882 sq. miles • Year of Independence:

– 660 B.C. • Year of Current Constitution:

– 1947 • Head of State:

– Emperor Akihito • Head of Government:

– Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

• Language: – Japanese

• Religion(s): – Observe both Shinto and Buddhist

84%%, other 16% (including Christian 0.7%)

BACKGROUND (1)

• Japan is the only long-lived democracy in East Asia. • Rapid economic growth post WWII

– Fascinating to the world given Japan’s scarcity of natural resources and its overcrowded population.

• 7th most populous country in the world. • Only 20% of country is made up arable land. • How did it evolve into the 2nd largest economy in the world?

– Other countries want to figure out the “Japan model” of rapid development where government is seen as playing an important economic role.

• Prolonged recession in the 1990s – But still 2nd largest economy

BACKGROUND (2)

• Democracy but with atypical institutions – Constitution imposed on Japan by the U.S.-led occupation

authorities in 1946. – Never amended that constitution.

• Foreign origin and alien ideals • Undermined by actual political practices

– Corruption – Powerful bureaucrats – Political stability has vanished temporarily

» Party system has fragmented

CURRENT POLICY CHALLENGES (1)

• Recession – 1997 Japan’s first full year of negative economic growth since 1975

• Banking crisis from the bursting of the inflated land price bubble of the late 1980s

• Mountains of unrecoverable loans • Deflation, unemployment and bankruptcies • Shocked the national psyche

– Government slow to respond • Rapidly aging population • Closed domestic markets • Deregulation of economy needed

• Need modernization of immigration policy

• Security issues • Despite all these

challenges Japanese remain among the wealthiest and longest-lived people in the world

CURRENT POLICY CHALLENGES (2)

HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE MODERN JAPANESE STATE (1)

• First inhabitants – Hunter-gatherers from the Asian mainland

• Jomon - 11,000 B.C. – 300 B.C. shift from Jomon culture occurred

• New culture: Yayoi – Use of bronze and iron, including weaponry – Development of wet field rice agriculture – Spread over islands – Yamato, most powerful clan

• Japanese court - sponsored Buddhism – Began to write histories,

legal codes • Samurai’s began to

assume more power and warred with each other

• Tokugawa clan: ruled from 1600 to 1868 – Feudal system – Confucian doctrine



• Isolation • Commodore Matthew C. Perry

– Open ports to trade • Meiji Restoration (1868) • Oligarchs

– Constitution – Established the Diet – Nascent political parties

• Taisho Democracy (1918-1932) – Cabinets dominated by political parties – Zaibatsu favoritism – Growth of military – Ultranationalism

THE OCCUPATION (1)

• Allied Occupation of Japan – Administered by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers

(SCAP) – U.S. General Douglas MacArthur

• Demilitarize and democratize Japan • Render Japan unable and unwilling to wage war ever again

– New constitution • Peace Clause, Article 9

– Land reform – Independent trade-union movement – Structural changes to the bureaucracy

THE OCCUPATION (2)

• Goals shifted from demilitarization to securing Japan as a reliable ally in the Cold War – 1951 general peace treaty in San Francisco

with all allied powers except the Soviet Union – U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty

POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS (1)

• Japan’s system of government – Parliamentary, bicameral, and nonfederal

• The National Diet: House of Representatives – House of Councillors

• Local government – 47 Prefectures

• Each elects its own governor and legislature • All local government authority is delegated and may be retracted

• The Judiciary – Judicial independence; guaranteed in the Constitution – Cabinet directly appoints the 15 members of the Supreme Court

• Helps to appoint all lower court appointments as well • LDP - only elderly judges; forced retirement • Secretariat • Malapportionment case

POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS (2)

ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND ELECTORAL COMPETITION (1)

• Two chambers of the National Diet use different electoral rules

• Old electoral rules –House of Representatives – Return to Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV) system – LDP allowed candidates to create decentralized campaign

organizations – Barriers to challengers – Lowered the electoral salience of issues – Restrictive rules for campaigning

• New electoral rules- House of Representatives – Size of the House of Representatives set at 500, later

reduced to 480 – 4 year terms

• 300 elected on the basis of equal-sized single-member districts • 180 are elected from 11 regional districts by proportional

representation • Each voter casts two votes: one for a candidate in the SMD and

one for a party in the PR district – Zombies

– Goal of new rules: eliminate intraparty competition


• Electoral Rules – House of Councillors – Fixed six year terms – Half elected every three years – Each voter has two votes:

• One cast in the prefectural SNTV district for an individual candidate • Second cast for a party in the national district (with each party receiving a

share of the 50 PR seats that matches the share of the vote it receives) • Not much intraparty competition • Focus is on parties, not individuals • More issue-based campaigning


THE JAPANESE PARTY SYSTEM • Japanese party system combined multipartisim with the sustained

dominance of one majority party. – The LDP

• The Party System, 1946-1955 – Somewhat chaotic – Socialist Party - force in the Diet – Japan Communist Party – Japan Socialist Party – Liberal Democratic Party

• The Party System, 1955-1993 – The 1960s – The 1970s – The 1980s

NATIONAL VOTE SHARE

THE JAPANESE PARTY SYSTEM: SINCE 1993 (1)

• Stability disappeared for a while – LDP tried to put together coalition party – Coalition was established

• Contained seven parties except the LDP and the Communists

• Goal: to complete the reform of the electoral system that the LDP had failed to accomplish

• Electoral reform passed – Next on the agenda: tax reform

• Conflict and the coalitional government collapsed • Who emerged? The LDP with the help of their once enemy, the

Japan Socialist Party and a smaller party. • Produced the first Socialist prime minister

• New party system has elements of single member district systems plus proportional systems – Effect: party consolidation, campaigns have changed,

intraparty organization, advent of coalition government


DISTRIBUTION OF LOWER HOUSE SEATS

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND VOTING BEHAVIOR

• By international standards, ordinary Japanese are not very politically involved. – Identify with political party through personal identification with

candidate or through an interest group affiliated with the party. – Koenkai

• Changing nature in modern Japan given the end of intraparty competition • Transformed themselves into district level party organizations

• Voter turnout declining steadily on a nationwide basis • Recently party identification has declined as well

– More independents

INTEREST GROUPS

• Big Business – keiretsu

• Small-and medium-sized businesses • Agriculture • Organized labor

– Enterprise unions

POLITICAL CULTURE AND ISSUE CLEAVAGES (1)

• Hierarchy, homogeneity, and conformity to group objectives – Key concepts in the discussion of Japanese

political culture – The feudal experience: hierarchy – Meiji attempt to Westernize culture may have

produced backlash of nationalism found in pre-War and wartime Japan

– Social hierarchy: family, workplace and in politics

POLITICAL CULTURE AND ISSUE CLEAVAGES (2)

• Women: At home and in the workplace – “good wives and wise mothers” – Equal Employment Opportunity Law

• Glass ceiling low and impenetrable • Little help from government; little social welfare • Japanese women marry later and bear fewer children • Impact of aging society

PERSISTENCE OF TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES

POLITICAL CULTURE AND ISSUE CLEAVAGES

• Ethnic homogeneity vs. immigration – Japan is not completely homogenous – A few minority groups

• High discrimination • Koreans- brought to Japan during the war as laborers

– Still treated poorly today; a few become naturalized citizens – Citizenship does not come with birth – Demands of Japanese citizenship and impact if one chooses not to

• Ainu • Burakumin

– Few strong issue cleavages – New immigrants

• Need for young workers • Conformity • Theory of Japaneseness

FEELINGS OF CONFIDENCE

POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION (1) • The family

– Urban society with nuclear families – Role of women

• Education – High achieving in math and science – “cram schools” – Good basic skills; university system in sad shape

• Extremely difficult entrance exams, but little challenging coursework

• Entry into workforce after four years unspoiled by liberal ideas • School refusal syndrome • Portrayal of war against China

POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION (2) • Mass media

– Play a highly visible role in public life – Television media – “press club”

• Transforming political culture – Role of issues/policy in politics – Koizumi

ATTITUDES TOWARD POLITICS (1)

ATTITUDES TOWARD POLITICS (2)

THE POLICYMAKING PROCESS

• Japan: parliamentary democracy with both houses of the Diet directly elected; with a prime minister and a cabinet chosen by the Lower House. – Tends to leave proposal of laws to the Cabinet and

the Diet reserves the right to accept or reject or amend the proposals.

– Cabinet delegates to bureaucracy the drafting of legislation

THE POLICYMAKING PROCESS: HOW A BILL BECOMES A LAW

• Members of either house may submit legislation – Member bills are almost always exercises in

grandstanding

THE POLICYMAKING PROCESS: HOW A BILL BECOMES A LAW- TYPICAL PATH (1)

• Ministry drafts legislation and submits it to Cabinet; Cabinet acts on it (accept, reject, or amend). If it is to go on, the Cabinet will send it to the Diet. Diet may do whatever it wishes to the bill.

• Normal legislation must be passed identically in both houses unless the Lower House can override(2/3’s vote) an Upper House objection. – Never happened

THE POLICYMAKING PROCESS: HOW A BILL BECOMES A LAW- TYPICAL PATH (2)

• If the bill is the annual budget, a treaty needing ratification, then only the Lower House need pass it. Upper House may delay it but not hold it up indefinitely.

• Any bill passed by the Diet becomes the law of the land.

• Final steps involve implementation: the bureaucracy • Elections allow the public to respond the

performance of the government in power.

THE POLICYMAKING PROCESS: THE BUREAUCRACY

• Very competent bureaucracy – Best and the brightest – Long hours; little pay – Prestige suffered in the 1990s

• Heavily involved in the policy-making process but not dominant given the parliamentary system

• Why do they do it? – Devotion to public service; prestige; potential for early retirement and

a second more lucrative career – Amakudari – Compensation loaded on the back end

• Bureaucrat bashing

THE POLICYMAKING PROCESS

• The Diet: Rubber Stamp or Sovereign? – Weak and ineffective? – Majority party, LDP, intraparty conflict

resolved – No need for conflict within Diet; not

necessarily weak

POLICY PERFORMANCE

• Industrial policy and the economic miracle • Trade policy • Security and foreign policy • Environmental pollution policy • Welfare policy: health care and pensions • Policy implications of political reform

JAPAN’S GENERAL ACCOUNT EXPENDITURES

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ABOUT JAPANESE POLITICS

• The most important lesson is that the Japanese policy process has been, and continues to be, supremely political – even if, on the surface, it seems that an insulated army of smart bureaucrats is calling the shots.

Political Science 2 – Comparative Politics - Power Point #7

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Transcript of Political Science 2 – Comparative Politics - Power Point #7