Category: AP Introductory Materials

Nationalize Facebook

If neither users nor investors can be confident in the company, it’s time we start discussing an idea that might seem crazy: nationalizing Facebook.

By “nationalizing Facebook,” I mean public ownership and at least a majority share at first. When nationalizing the company restores the public trust, that controlling interest could be reduced. There are three very good reasons for this drastic step: It could fix the company’s woeful privacy practices, allow the social network to fulfill its true potential for providing social good, and force it to put its valuable data to work on significant social problems.
Interesting argument from Phillip Howard at Slate

Islam and democracy: Uneasy companions

Islamist spokesmen and leaders of the revived Islamist mainstream are bending over backwards to give reassurances that they will promote a peaceful, pluralistic and tolerant version of Islam. The rights of women and religious and ethnic minorities will be respected, they say, and the people’s democratic verdict will be accepted if they lose elections.

Whatever their doubts, most democrats in the Arab world reckon that Islamists who say they will abide peacefully by the rules of the game must be allowed—indeed encouraged—to participate in mainstream politics: far better than forcing them into a violent, conspiratorial underground. All the same, the well of mistrust on both sides runs deep.

Many liberals still think the Islamists, however mild they sound today, are bent on taking over in the long run, would abandon democracy once they got into power and would use every sort of chicanery and violence to achieve their goal.

Two articles on the relationship between Islam and democracy in light of the 2011 “Arab Spring”

Survey: The Political Compass

There’s abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of ‘right’ and ‘left’, established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today’s complex political landscape. For example, who are the ‘conservatives’ in today’s Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ?
On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It’s not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can’t explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as ‘right-wingers’, yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.

The fashion to be federal

According to Rupak Chattopadhyay, a Canadian scholar, federations (and the constitutional anomalies that go with them) are desirable in countries that are large or ethnically mixed or both. He thinks that Egypt, despite its history of strong state power, may now need to become decentralised to cope with the needs of around 84m people; even a small country like Libya may need a federal arrangement to accommodate its mixture of tribes and local interests. He is shortly to become president of the Forum of Federations, a body that is based in Canada and backed by nine governments.

Why is the tie between federalism and democracy so awkward? In most federations the units have formally equal status, regardless of population, so voters in small units fare better. Thus the 544,270 residents of Wyoming have two senators—the same as the 37m people of California

Are countries poor because they are violent or violent because they are poor?

Violence, it seems, is always with us, like poverty. And that might seem all there is to be said: violence is bad, it is worse in poor countries and it makes them poorer.

But this year’s World Development Report, the flagship publication of the World Bank, suggests there is a lot more to say. Violence, the authors argue, is not just one cause of poverty among many: it is becoming the primary cause. Countries that are prey to violence are often trapped in it. Those that are not are escaping poverty. This has profound implications both for poor countries trying to pull themselves together and for rich ones trying to help.

Tools to Measure an Economy

There are various tools that Economists use to measure the economy. No one tool offers a full or clear picture of economic health. Rather, these tools must be used in concert. Here is a basic definition and description of GDP, GNP, PPP and The Big Mac Index (all you need for APCG).

Of course, there are more creative and holistic means to measure the health of the economy. For example, statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation’s success by its productivity — instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use (because a happy life doesn’t have to cost the earth). Which countries rank highest in the HPI? You might be surprised.

The Case for Small Government

The return of big government means that policymakers must grapple again with some basic questions. They are now even harder to answer…

Fifteen years ago it seemed that the great debate about the proper size and role of the state had been resolved. In Britain and America alike, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton pronounced the last rites of “the era of big government”. Privatising state-run companies was all the rage. The Washington consensus reigned supreme: persuade governments to put on “the golden straitjacket”, in Tom Friedman’s phrase, and prosperity would follow.

Today big government is back with a vengeance: not just as a brute fact, but as a vigorous ideology…

Read this comparative perspective arguing for smaller government. And respond to these questions.

The World is Bumpy: Deglobalization and its dangers

In the 1990s and early 2000s, nations around the world witnessed the sweep of globalization–the growing integration of economies, societies, and political systems–and the democratization of trade, migration, technology, and information. In many developing nations, governments threw their countries’ agriculture, resources, and services open to global competition and slashed subsidies for their domestic producers to force them to compete in global markets. Many countries provided incentives for the poor to migrate from farms to cities, where they began to manufacture goods for export to the West.

Many economists believed this global integration had become so deeply rooted it could never be undone. They were wrong. As the global financial crisis deepens, the world is undergoing exactly the reverse of the 1990s–a wrenching period of deglobalization in which governments throw up new walls and the ties binding nations together rapidly unravel. Nations like the United States, Japan, and Germany may suffer, but they will survive, as will powerful developing nations like China or Brazil that have large cash reserves, diversified economies, and enough political clout to protect their industries. On the other hand, poor and trade-dependent countries that remade their whole economies to take advantage of globalization will be devastated. Having opened up, these nations are now highly vulnerable to global financial currents, without the cash on hand to weather the storm. Perhaps even worse, these financial shifts are likely to spark massive social unrest and could take down one government after the next. If you thought globalization was destabilizing, just wait to see what deglobalization will do.

More from the New Republic

Why Parties and Elections in Authoritarian Regimes?

Although parties and elections are thought of as defining features of democracy, most authoritarian governments also rely on political parties and hold elections.Theories of democratic politics see elections as the means by which citizens hold politicians accountable for the quality of governance.Citizens may have insufficient information to monitor politicians closely and, in any event, must choose on infrequent occasions among packages of policy promises (parties) that may not reflect their own views or interests very well, but they can at a minimum oust incompetent, unsuccessful, or simply unpopular leaders in routine low-cost ways.Citizens in authoritarian regimes only rarely have this option.Authoritarian elections do not choose government leaders or the set of policies that the government will follow.Generally speaking, citizens cannot throw the bums out.Changes in leadership and policy choices are decided upon by elite actors such as military officers and high-level party officials, not citizens.Nevertheless, a substantial majority of authoritarian governments holds elections, devotes substantial resources to its support party, and spends heavily on pre-election political campaigns.

These observations raise several questions. If party formation is not motivated by the need to compete effectively in order to win elections, as standard democratic theories of parties claim, why are they created and maintainedIf elections do not choose leaders and, indirectly, policies, what function do they perform?

Read more

Since I cannot rightfully ask you to read all 30 pages of this analysis, your task is to read the first five pages, carefully skim the rest and analyze the tables at the end. Then you must type a one page essay, single-spaced essay which responds to Geddes’ research question (in bold above). Bring your essay to class.

Readings on the Functions and Dysfunctions of Political Parties

Richard Hofstadter (1916 – 1970) was an American historian and public intellectual. Hofstadter, the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University, became the “iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus”, largely because of his emphasis on ideas and political culture rather than the day-to-day doings of politicians. Among his most important works is The American Political Tradition (1948). Below is Chapter One of this critically acclaimed work.

Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr.(1917 –  2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. Much of Schlesinger’s work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. Schlesinger served as special assistant and “court historian” to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy Administration, from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president’s state funeral, titled A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

Three Readings on the Functions and Dysfunctions of Political Parties

Response Sheet

Political Culture

Consider the following news headlines from across the globe:

  • The Russian president proclaims that he will appoint hundreds of political officials who until then had been elected by the people, and no one in the country seems to object.
  • The Chinese government sends troops to arrest farmers who refuse to give up their land to state-sponsored developers as China continues to bolster its market economy.
  • The citizens of Mexico vote the one-party system out of its 75-year rule by selecting a president from a party on the right in 2000, but now seem to be leaning toward a leftist president candidate for 2006.
  • Almost every week, the British prime minister faces the opposition party leader toe to toe in a “question hour” that encourages even members of his own party to hurl insults at him.

How do we make sense of the actions that we read about in the news? Start by reading this

Gender & Comparative Politics

We know that although women don’t come from Venus, and men aren’t from Mars, men and women do experience and participate in politics in very different ways. If we could line up all the leaders of the nations around the world, we would see few women. If we could put all the world’s legislators in the same auditorium, we would see more women, but it certainly would not be half (or rather 52%) of the legislative population. And if we counted up all the references to women, girls and females in comparative politics textbooks, we wouldn’t need many fingers to do the counting either.

So why study how gender operates in politics? One reason is that more women are to be found at various levels of governance, and more and more women are participating in politics through voting and political action at local and regional levels. We might also want to know whether an increase in women’s participation has any effect on policies. Or we might want to discover the relation between political and social change and greater gender equality in a society.

Print, read, respond, bring to class

Comparative Essay on Democratization and Revolutions

The field of comparative politics starts with the assumption that knowledge in the social sciences must proceed by way of the search for comparisons, or what has been called “suggestive contrasts.” Scholars of comparative politics compare in order to discover similarities and explain differences. As infrequent and highly complex events, revolutions have attracted a great deal of attention from comparativists.

In this article we will address the following topics:

  • The Concept of Revolution
  • Why Revolutions Happen?
  • Can Revolutions be Predicted?
  • What Do Revolutions Accomplish?
  • What Are some of the Failures of Revolutions?
  • Comparing Characteristics and Outcomes of Some Revolutions
  • Questions