Political Behavior 3333 PDF

Preview

Summary

Many Class Lecture notes, study materials, coursework and key concepts....

Description

Political Science 3333: Political Behavior 1-25-2021 Politics is often controversial. Science is defined as knowledge what is fact and relatively what is truth. The word Science comes from the Latin word Scientia. There are two characteristics of science. 1. Process. We use as observation and inference in order to generate knowledge. 2. Outcome. The knowledge that actually produce the facts. Political Science: An area of study that involves the use of theory and collection of data process in order to address interesting and important questions and to generate knowledge about citizenship governance and politics. Theory: Can be defined as a set of logically related generalizations of casual relationships of two or more concepts. Casual Inference: If x Ceterus Peribus then y. 2 Characteristics of Theory: Normative: A set of generalizations involving casual relation. In other words, the world that it Should Be. Empirical Theory A set of logically related generalizations as the world AS IT IS. Data: Bits of information dater or datum from Latin. 2 Characteristics of Data: Quantitative: Numerical Data typically collected by governmental statistics and/or public services. Qualitative: Non-Numerical Data gathered by various procedures of operation Document analysis, focus group research.

Property of Empirical Theory – Important. It has broad coverage. It applies to as many cases as possible. Predictability Accurate Theory: can an outcome much better than by simply or random guessing. 3 Approaches in Political Science Policy, Institution and Behavior Policy -- Plan that is formulated and/or an action that is implemented by an actor or a group of actors, (such as governments, executives, legislatures, political parties, other public officials) that is intended to address a public issue or problem; and that also affects other people’s wellbeing. Policy Approach -- Involves the use of explanatory modules, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative data, in order to understand how policy is formulated, and implemented. Formulation generally includes having cost-benefit analysis. Political Considerations: Why we often don’t get beneficial Policies. Time Horizon: What time horizons they use for benefit and cause. Big benefits now, Big Costs Later. Ignorance: Moral and Ethical Considerations: What kind of issue or problem is being addressed? Valence issue an issue where there is a wide spread agreement.

2/1/2021 Institution -- An established pattern of behavior that, in turn, influences subsequent behaviors. (Behavior becomes institution, institutions model behaviors, behaviors then model institutions again). Institutional Approach -- Area of inquiry that uses theories, models, or explanations, and the collection of data to address what institutions do in terms of rulemaking; what institutions are charged with formulating and delivering rules, rule adjudication, and rule enforcement; the

similarities and differences between institutions; the persistence, change, or lack thereof for institutions over time. (Probably) What is a good citizen? Obligations or its citizens? Exogenous Institutions -- Form first and then developments occur. Endogenous -- Development happens first, and then institutions form. Intransitivity Problem -- Any relatively large group of people will have a different mix of policy preferences when compared to any other large group. (Basically, hard to get unanimous agreement in any large group or between large groups) Political Behavior -- A set of activities engaged in by individuals or groups that expresses their attitudes, beliefs, preferences, and values; and that attempts to influence government, politics, and policymaking. Three Characteristics -- Can be electoral, communal, and protest. Electoral Behavior -- Set of activities that includes voting, discussing, attending or working, during an election to select a candidate or party for public office, and thereby to influence government, politics, and policymaking. Communal Behavior -- Set of activities that involves working with others to contact a public official to solve a public problem; or working with others to solve a public problem when public officials are unwilling or unable to do so, thereby expressing their attitudes/beliefs to influence politics and policymaking. Protest Behavior -- Set of activities that involves signing petitions, joining boycotts, participating in lawful demonstrations, refusing to pay rent or taxes, occupying buildings, damaging property, or harming/injuring others; to express attitudes, beliefs, preferences, values, typically occurring through a social movement and designed to influence government, politics, and policymaking. Particular focus is to change people in government and standing policies. Behavioral Approach -- Use of theory, explanations, or models, and the collection of data in order to explain “all the phenomena of government” in terms of the observable behaviors of individuals (characteristics: Electoral Behavior, Communal Behavior and Protest Behavior) Electoral Behavior: A set of activities that includes voting, discussing politics during elections, attending a candidate or parties meeting or rally, or working for a candidate or party during an election. Engaged in by a group of individuals to express attitudes, beliefs, interests, preferences and values and select a public candidate for office and thereby to influence, government, politics and policymaking. Communal Behavior: A set of activities that involves working with others to contact a public official to solve a public problem or working with others to solve a public problem when public officials are unwilling or unable to do so. Express attitudes, beliefs, interests, preferences and values particularly try to influence politics and policymaking.

Protest Behavior: A set of activities that involves singing petitions, joining boycotts, participating in lawful demonstrations, refunding to pay rent or taxes, occupying buildings, damaging property, injuring others. Express attitudes, beliefs, interests, preferences and values. Typically occur through a social movement of some kind. Designed to influence government politics and policymaking, particularly to change people in government (get them out) and policies (replace them).

Trust in the Political Sphere as far as American Politics goes has been steeply declining since the 1960s. “By the 2016 election, the level of trust had dropped to the lowest level ever recorded by the ANES surveys. Only 13 percent of Americans said they could trust the government always or most of the time to do what was right.” An important component of political trust is perceived competence. If people do not believe the government can get the job done, they will not be willing to put their trust in the government. Given the steep decline in political trust, the natural question is why do so few Americans trust the U.S. government? Political scientists have expended considerable effort answering this question and have pointed to such things as the state of the economy (people have a much more positive view of the world, including the government, when times are good. We briefly explore three possible explanations that have received varying levels of attention: direct experience, media coverage, and negative attacks on the government. Decreased trust in government leads to less support for redistributive policies but not distributive policies

2/3/2021 Our Scientific Methods tries to close the knowledge gap between what theories say and what the real world produces as evidence. Normative theories can never be fully assessed through observational methods. Is there any way to assess a Normative Theory? It is very difficult; you rely the on the one tool that we have which tends to be values and beliefs. Black Swan: Karl Popper Non-Democratic Alternative Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism David Collier and Ruth Collier catalogued democracies. There were 200 Definitions of democracy.

A democracy: A set of arrangements in which power is alternated, diffused and constrained by constitutions, elections and by public opinion. Set of Arrangements is varying in encompasses. Power: is the ability of an actor to produce an expected effect on another actor- (Individual, group, government and an international organizations). Power is alternated, changes hands frequently, infrequently and so forth. Power is diffused, spread out among business owners, social people, politicians, parties etc. Power is constrained by constitutions, elections public officials. Constitutions work to constrain when they are tools of other actors in effective ways. But constitutions by themselves do not constrain. 2 Theories in the Form of Diagram Elite Theory Institutions - Attitudes - Behaviors – Policies – Institutions and so forth. What these arrows mean, Institutions Influence Attitudes, Attitudes to Behaviors, Behaviors to Policies and Policies to Institutions. (When people participate more, policy responsiveness is lower, according to the theory) Institutions Competitive Elections as institutions for selecting candidates for public office that are open to alternative organizations with alternative viewpoints conducted fairly and freely (one person one vote, honest vote counting and vote reporting.) In contrast to uncompetitive elections Legislative control legislators formulate, influence policies and laws under guidance or control of party leaders. If a legislative goes rouge he/she will be expelled from the caucus. Strong Executive, the executive often proposes, or initiates policy maintains party discipline by providing incentive behavior. Can govern by emergency decree. There are constitutional limits by which the executive, legislators or beaurocracies limit the range of people’s decision arrangements in government and politics.

Political Advocacy: An individual’s attitude about her/his ability to influence government in politics. Political Knowledge: An individual’s attitude about how much accurate information he/she has about government and politics. Emotional Reactions: Involve individuals’ attitude of dislike or likes and positive (confidence), or negative (fear) feelings about an object in politics and government. If democracies have legislative control, strong elections, well trained beaurocracies and constitutional limits then people should think of themselves as being ethicatious, they should be knowledgeable and should have low emotional reaction to politics and government, but when democracies have competitive elections, legislative control, well trained beaurocracies people often feel no ethicatious. If people participate frequently in elections, then policy responsiveness should decline. The demands would be too much for government. When people do not participate frequently then government responsiveness increases. They will have the possibility to influence policies that they think are of people’s interest. The willingness to give disliked groups their basic constitutional rights is referred to as political tolerance. In most societies, the process of socialization is focused primarily on the largest group of new members: children. Genetics also influence people’s bedrock principles of how society should work.

2/8/2021 Party Systems Public Theory -- Institutions (Party Systems, Communication Systems, Participatory Organizations, Bureaucracy, Poverty, Childcare)-&get; Attitudes (Political Efficacy, Political Knowledge, Emotional Responses (All Above))-&get; Behaviors (Electoral, Communal, Protest

Behaviors (All Above))-&get; Policy (Policy/Government Responsiveness to public needs/demands) -&get; Repeat (Assuming all portions of Institutions are met, people should have/do have high political efficacy, more political knowledge, and less emotional reactivity to what happens in politics, leading to more electoral/communal/protest behaviors of a positive sort. When these behaviors are participated in properly; the government produces policy that causes public dissatisfaction in the short-term.) Communication Systems -- Interactions between people and public officials/government institutions, communications become more open and informative. Public has better/more access to good quality information (from both government and non-government sources). Party Systems -- Parties must be reorganized to reduce party discipline, candidate recruitment and selection should be made more open (selected not just by party leaders, but participants and the public also), party organizations should be made more accountable through primaries or caucuses. Participatory Organizations -- Economic/Political/Social organizations that are more available to people’s input. Bureaucracy: has power for example discretionary on how to implement policy that’s made by the policy deciders and is unaccountable to the general public and must be minimized.

Poverty: must be reduced and must be alleviated because people how are poor do not have the money or time to participate in politics and government. They are often unemployed and if they are, they may work in more than one job. And it must be done through redistribution of income. Child Care: provisions must be reformulated because women as mothers are disproportionally responsible for childcare and household management. Food preparation are disproportionally excluded from participating in politics. When policy reorganize their party systems and open their communication systems when they minimize accountable power, when they alleviate what is reduced poverty and when these democracies reformulate childcare provision then people should be efficacious, they should be knowledgeable about government and politics and they should be less emotionally reactive. When people’s participation increases their satisfaction decreases.

2/10/2021 Opening Rant -- Political surveys are too long and not focused enough. People rely too much on cues and heuristic shortcuts to make decisions about politics, due to a lack of full and complete knowledge. The more knowledgeable are more likely to que use. Emotional Reactions at surveying questionnaires. The words they get are happy, angry, hopeful, confidence, proud, disguised, uneasy, afraid. In a 2020 Survey on feelings about the economy, people mentioned these feelings -> 31% Angry, 8% Happy, 31% Disgusted, 40% Hopeful, 58% Uneasy, 19% Confident, 39% Afraid, 9% Proud.

Britain’s political efficacy scores are about as shit as the US’s 3.4 rating across the board (out of 10). Same survey was done in Britain on feelings about the economy -> 20% Angry, 7% Happy, 18% Disgusted, 25% Hopeful, 47% Uneasy, 13% Confident, 27% Afraid, 6% Proud

2/21/2021 Lecture 2/22 - Institution Behavior Connections Elections -- An institution that consists of conditions, methods, and types that increase or decrease people’s interest in politics and government, that express their policy/issue preferences, that select candidates for public office, that build or provide a mandate for a party in government to formulate and implement policy, and that build or erode people’s support for public officials, government, and overall regime. (More competitive elections will increase people’s interest in politics/government. Two conditions - Administrative and Legal; Administrative conditions: Timing of the election, formatting of the ballot, what day of the week. What hours of the day? It is argued that the timing of the election matters the turnout. Some countries have fixed election days, some countries have relatively flexible election timing. The formatting of the ballot this refers to what the ballot looks like, is it single, double paged? Is it paper? Electronic? Early voting or day of election voting? The formatting can be controversial and legally problematic in the event that it is difficult to guarantee voter privacy. Lega Conditions of Elections: First condition involves voter eligibility, voter requirements which include age, residency, citizenship, Second: Elections must have even and open access. Qualified candidates provide alternative policies, they can debate policies and more generally no candidate or party can be intimidated during the election campaign. Third Elections must be free and fair. In terms of Free: Voters cannot be intimidated, bribed In terms of fairness: voters votes cannot be tampered with in terms of being altered, must be stored safely and securely and fundamentally one person one vote. Single Member plurality or majority An election in which voters in a geographically cast a ballot for a candidate who appear on the ballot. The candidate that gets the more votes wins the office the other candidate get nothing this type of election is used In the United States Canada and Britain Proportional Representation can be defined as an election in which the voters vote in a list of candidates and the party list of candidates that gets the most votes get a proportional share of public offices the second-place party gets a proportion shares of offices and so on.

There are several advantages and disadvantages of each type. Advantages Single Member Plurality. Incumbency. And in turn incumbency, is advantages because it promotes knowledge and expertise. In can promote Party responsibility together with public accountability. It has responsibility for policy. Opposition obstruction is not an issue. Disadvantage In encourages Incumbency. Thereby blocking out other possible candidates. It’s inequitable.

2/24/2021 Proportional Representation Election -- An election in which voters vote for a list of candidates (submitted by a party to the people) and the party list of candidates that receives the most votes get the largest portion of candidates. The second and third parties also receive proportionate numbers of candidates. (Imagine votes being split like a pie chart across the parties). (Advantages of PREs; they do not always produce “wasted vote” problems, even minority candidates can achieve positions in power. Generally, have higher turnout, due to more confidence in the voting systems.) (Disadvantages; PREs tend to dilute policy responsibility and accountability, due to so many different factions being in power. It is very unlikely for parties to achieve a majority on their own, which then requires them to ally with other parties, making it more difficult to push a single agenda. Parties can work ahead of elections to post members to offices, meaning campaigning does not necessarily reflect their true agenda or remain open to voter feedback.) (Exercise: Table discussing the allocation of seat shares in the house of representatives after the 2016 elections Republicans under an SMM/SMP: 238 PR: 214 Democrats SMM/SMP: 193 PR: 209 Libertarians SMM/SMP: 0 PR:) Political Parties: As an institution that is hierarchically organized. This institution recruits’ candidates into public office and it tries to implement and formulate policy or to prevent the implementation of other policies. Catch All-Mass Party: An institution that is very pyramidically organized with a very large membership, a very well-developed communication system and it’s an institution that has a lot of electoral support. Examples: Democrats, Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives in Canada. Narrow-Cadre Parties: Have a less pyramidical structure, they have smaller memberships, they traditionally have not had well communication systems and social media has been a major

contributing force in the advancement of these parties. They tend not to have much support in the electorate. The greens, alternative Germany. Can Narrow Cadre parties persist? Or do they become absorbed or decline. Deverige. Single member plurality produces two parties’ systems. Countries that have a Proportional Member plurality tend to have more than two political Parties. Dalton Ch1 Ch 2 Ch3 Ch7 Apendix A and B Political Behavior Ch1 Ch2 Describe how these intsitutios Discuss 2 reason based on a and b why you think the elite theory or the public theory is most relevant today.

3/8/2021 Civic Association -- An organization which could be local, regional, national, or increasingly international in scope, that consists of groups of...