Chapter 1

Legitimacy, political culture and political institutions

Crisis of democratic legitimacy?

In his “Legitimation crisis” (1973), German (Neo-Marxist)

philosopher Habermas argues that there is a conflict
between the logic of capitalism (accumulation of profit) and
democracy (public pressure for equality, social welfare and so
on).

Example: people are pressuring for higher public

spending, but that would require higher taxation. Higher
taxation constraints accumulation of profit.
Crisis of democratic legitimacy?

Although not everyone is blaming capitalism, an opinion that

representative democracy is suffering from a legitimacy crisis
does exist (since around 1960s).

What is used as evidence?

● Political disaffection of citizens

● Low turnout levels
● Declining role of political parties (on which
representative democracy is actually based)
Crisis of democratic legitimacy?

Van Ham et al. (2017) argue that before trying to explain why
democratic legitimacy is declining one should find evidence
that it actually is declining. They fail to find consistent
empirical evidence of that decline.
When things are complicated

Legitimacy by itself is a complex term, but sometimes things

are even more complicated.

● Competing groups are claiming statehood (secessions,

civil wars).
● The bearer of legitimacy is the state, but not in all
situations it is clear who the state is/who represents the
state.
Historical example: American civil
war (1861-1865)
● American civil war was fought between the United
States of America (the American North) and the
Confederate States of America (the American South),
which tried to secede from the US.
● The United States of America won.
Contemporary example: Venezuela

● In 2018, Nicolas Maduro was re-elected as president,

but the results of the elections were widely disputed.
● Venezuela’s National Assembly deemed the results
invalid >>> According to the Constitution, when the
president’s post is vacant, the president of the National
Assembly becomes the acting president until the next
elections >> The president of the National Assembly
Juan Guaido became the acting president.
Contemporary example: Venezuela

And what is the situation with international legitimacy?

● Russia, China, Cuba ----- Maduro

● US, Canada, Europe ---- Guaido
● the UN ---- Maduro
Internal / external legitimacy

● This chapter mostly focuses on internal (domestic)

legitimacy (whether the people find the state legitimate),
but there is also external (international) legitimacy --
mostly dealt with in IR rather than Comparative Politics
External (international) legitimacy

● Recognition of states
○ Is Abkhazia a state or not?
● Recognition of governments / leaders
○ Who’s the legitimate president of Venezuela?
● Legitimacy of international institutions/organisations
○ International law is rules. To impose rules you need coercion and
legitimacy.
○ Can the WHO tell us to wear masks?
○ Responsibility to protect (R2P)? // The right to intervene
Interventions

● NATO 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia

○ Unilateral action by NATO (without UNSC’s approval) - legitimate
or not?
● 2011 NATO’s military intervention in Libya
○ United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973
Obama shakes hands with Gaddafi / REUTERS
Blair shakes hands with Gaddafi / CNN
Brown shakes hands with Gaddafi / The Daily Mail
Sarkozi shakes hands with Gaddafi / CGTN
Internal / external legitimacy

● Internal and external legitimacy may have consequences

for each other: if citizens find the regime illegitimate,
that can contribute to the international community also
finding the regime illegitimate, and vice versa. Note that
situations where the citizens and the international
community diverge in their opinions on legitimacy are
also possible.
Comparing political systems

● Comparative politics is about comparing political

systems (usually across different states)
○ Why are some states democratic and others not?
○ How do the democratic ones differ from authoritarian states?
○ Why do some states have presidents and other only parliaments?
○ And many other questions
● We have already discussed legitimacy as a dimension of
analysis, so now we are interested in political culture
and political institutions.
Political culture

The SG defines political culture as “the way in which people

think about politics”.

Political culture is a genuinely comparative concept:

● countries differ in terms of their political culture

● that has consequences for other dimensions of politics
○ We are interested in legitimacy, political institutions and stability
Political culture AND institutions

Whether people find their state legitimate depends on their shared

beliefs, norms and values = political culture!

The choice of political institutions (how the political system is

organised) also depends on political culture. Based on their political
culture, people will find some choices appropriate and others not.

The choice of institutions, in its turn, will affect political life by

constraining further options (once introduced, institutions may be
difficult to change).
Political institutions

Political institutions are defined as “enforced rules”.

They can be

● formal
● informal

Institutions provide order and structure to a political system.

They enable or constrain political actors.
Political institutions

We’ll be mostly interested in

- electoral system
- type of regime (presidentialism/parliamentarianism)
- decentralisation (federal/unitary)
Institutionalism, old and new

● Old institutionalism: formal-legal, descriptive approach

to the study of institutions
● Then behavioural revolution (political outcomes are a
sum of individual behaviours; individual behavior is
based on self-interest)
● March and Olsen, The New Institutionalism:
Organisational Factors in Political Life (1984)
○ Re-discovery of institutions.
Political culture AND institutions

Whether people obey the rules may depend on whether

people accept them (think of legitimacy and political culture).

● Empirical example: poll tax miscalculation

Poll tax miscalculation

● Community charge (“poll tax”) was introduced in Scotland in

1989 and in England and Wales in 1990
● Instead of a rates system (tax based on the value of
property), a fixed charge per adult (set by the local council)
○ Millionaires with huge houses paying the same charge as ordinary
people? >> the British public perceived that as deeply unfair.
● Mass (violent) protests in London, non-payment in Scotland
● Thatcher resigned as prime minister in November 1990
● The poll tax was replaced by the Council Tax (property tax)
Photograph: Richard Baker
Political institutions AND culture

Political culture >> Institutions >> Political culture

● Political culture affects which institutions are chosen and

accepted
● Institutions provide a framework (“rules of the game”) and
thus affect political behaviour
Political institutions and culture

● Once established, institutions may be difficult to change

(think of constitutions).
● Changes to culture are usually even more slow than
changes to institutions (important: political culture is not
static!).
○ BUT: It may be changes to culture that made people
demand changes to institutions in the first place.
■ Irish abortion referendum 2018
Irish abortion referendum 2018

● The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution Act 1983

recognised the right to life of the unborn >> abortions
prohibited
○ 1983 referendum: 66.9% to ban abortions
● In 2018, the Irish people voted to remove the Eighth
Amendment (66.4% voted for allowing abortions).
Political culture

Political culture is a generally useful concept for comparing states, but it

does not always neatly coincide with states. It may also differ within
states (between different regions or ethnic groups) or in some other way.

● Huntington (1996) argues that there is a cultural divide between

civilisations.
● Putnam (1993) analyses differences in political culture between
regions in Italy.

To consider: does it make sense to speak about “national” culture?

Classics

We’ll need some classics

● Almond and Verba’s The Civic Culture (1963)

● Inglehart’s The Silent Revolution (1977)
● Putnam’s Making Democracy Work (1993)
● Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations (1993, 1996)
Almond and Verba’s The Civic
Culture (1963)
Almond and Verba’s The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and
Democracy in Five Nations is the first systematic study of political
culture.

In their research, Almond and Verba attempted to investigate

what type of political culture is more conducive to democracy.
Almond and Verba (1963)

Almond and Verba claimed that there are three types (ideal-
types!) of political culture:

● Parochial
○ Alienated from politics
● Subject
○ Passive to the political system
● Participant
○ Active citizens, who participate in the political process
Almond and Verba

Almond and Verba found that the ideal culture for democracy
is civic culture.

Civic culture is a mix of the three ideal-types: people accept

authority (as in “parochial” and “subject”), but also actively
participate in the political process.

You need that mix (participation plus passivity) rather than

just participation for stability. Citizens may act if they want
to, but also be passive and rely on politicians to make
decisions.
Almond and Verba

After examining survey results from Britain, US, Germany,

Italy and Mexico, Almond and Verba conclude that two
countries come closest to the civic culture ideal:

● Britain
● United States

---- they also happen to be “old democracies”

Almond and Verba: sum up

Beside being an example of how you can study political

culture empirically and cross-country, Almond and Verba’s
research gave rise to an interesting suggestion (that remains
controversial!):

For democracy to emerge and survive, one needs a

specific type of political culture…?
Almond and Verba (1963)

Almond and Verba’s study demonstrated that

● You can link political outcomes to cultural variables

● You can use surveys for data collection ====>>
comparable and quantifiable
Almond and Verba: criticism

● Critics pointed out that Almond and Verba treated

political culture as a given and failed to explain why it is
different in different countries.
● Some suggested that the relationship maybe the other
way around: what if democracy produces a specific
(civic) culture (see Barry 1978)?
Opinion research

Almond and Verba used cross-national surveys for their

research, but how reliable are they?

● The problem of truthfulness

● Asking the right questions
○ Do the respondent understand the question correctly?
○ Can the question be translated to other languages?

For more, see Berinsky 2017

+ Lagos 1997, Linz and Stepan 1996

Cross-country or within-country?

● In Comparative Politics, researchers often compare

states to other states.
● But when it comes to political culture, cultural variation
WITHIN (for example, across different regions or ethnic
groups) states may also be considerable.
Putnam’s Making Democracy Work
(1993)
In his 1993 work, Putnam demonstrates how cultural
variations WITHIN Italy affect government effectiveness.

In other words, he showed that

● Cultural variations within a country matter (not only

variations between countries)
● Performance of institutions may be influenced by culture
(rather than differences in institutional design as in
institutionalist approaches)
Putnam’s Making Democracy Work
(1993)
● In his 1993, Putnam tried to explain variation in
government performance across different regions of
Italy. Because regional governments shared the same
institutional structure, differences in performance could
not be explained by differences in institutional design.
○ But they could be explained by cultural differences.
○ Why cultural differences? Historical reasons.
Inglehart’s Silent Revolution

● Since the end of the WWII, the West had been

experiencing a period of economic growth, (relative) peace
and stability. Inglehart (1977, 1997) argues that once
materialist values (“survival” values -- food, security, etc.)
were satisfied, people started to develop post-materialist
values (“self-expression” values -- environmental
protection, gender equality, individual liberties and so on): a
“silent revolution”.
Inglehart

Empirical evidence: strong socio-economic component

● The higher socio-economic development in the

state is, the more postmaterialists there are.
○ Be it wealth, level of education or any other indicator of
socioeconomic development (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005)
Huntington (1993, 1996)

Huntington views cultural divisions as civilisational (between

civilisations, not nation-states)

● The battle of ideologies is over (with the demise of

USSR)
● The main conflict will be among civilisations
○ Western vs Islamic / China?
“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in
this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily
economic. The great divisions among humankind and the
dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states
will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the
principal conflicts of global politics will occur between
nations
and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations
will dominate global politics.”

Huntington 1993
Huntington

Criticism:

● Are there such civilisations?

○ And what are they? Huntington names different civilisations in
different works
● Is there evidence of a clash between them?
● Controversial claim that Confucian and Islamic
civilisations are incompatible with democracy.
○ Western vs non-Western values
“Western concepts differ fundamentally from those
prevalent in other civilizations. Western ideas of
individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human
rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free
markets, the separation of church and state, often have
little resonance in Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu,
Buddhist or Orthodox cultures”
Huntington, 1993
Asian culture and democracy

● Although some, like Huntington, believe that Asian

values are not supportive of democracy, some claim the
contrary.
○ To consider: is Western liberal democracy the only acceptable form
of democracy?
● For a review of different positions, see Spina et al.
(2011), “Confucianism and democracy”.
‘...there is no fundamental cultural obstacle to the
democratization of contemporary Confucian societies, and
there is some reason to believe that these societies will move in
the direction of greater political liberalization as they grow
wealthier. [...]

On the other hand, the particular form that Asian democracy

will ultimately take is unlikely to be identical to the model
represented by the United States.’
Fukuyama, 1995
Political culture in new democracies

● In new democracies, the political system lacks the

reservoir of “accumulated” support that old democracies
possess.
● Under such circumstances, performance may become
important (and people’s expectations may be high).
○ If a new democracy is functioning effectively, over time it will
accumulate support for democracy as a system of rule
Chu et al. 2008 Public opinion and
democratic legitimacy
● Decoupling of performance and support for democracy
in consolidated democracies
● “However, high-income East Asian countries register a glaring
exception to this global generalization, suggesting that their
distinctive trajectory of regime transition has imposed on
democratic regimes an additional burden of sustaining a record
of miraculous economic growth of the past.”
Political culture: criticism

● Political culture is sometimes criticised as an explanation

some researchers resort to when they cannot explain
some phenomenon:
○ “It’s just part of their culture”
● Predictive power?
(Possible) essay questions

● Under what circumstances is legitimacy likely to matter

in non-democratic contexts?
● ‘One must understand a country’s cultural context in
order to understand its politics.’ Discuss.
● ‘The character of political society cannot be explained
without taking into consideration how government
institutions work.’ Discuss.
● What, if anything, can we learn from Weber's work on
legitimacy?
○ Dogan - Weber’s ideas are outdated
(Possible) essay questions

● Which is more important for the political culture of a

democratic society: people who obey or people who
participate? -- Almond and Verba
● ‘Russia under Putin is best defined as an illiberal democracy.’
Discuss. -- Zakaria
● ‘Public opinion polls are an unreliable method for learning
more about particular sub-groups within a given society.’
Discuss. -- Berinsky; Lagos; Linz and Stepan
● ‘The greatest threat to democratic stability is economic
crisis.’ Discuss.
References

Almond, G. and Verba, S., The Civic Culture (1963)

Barry , B. 1978. Sociologists, Economists and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Berinsky, A.J. Measuring Public Opinion with Surveys, Annual Review of Political Science 2017 20:1, 309-329

Fukuyama, F. (1995) Confucianism and Democracy. The journal of democracy, 6(2)

Huntington, Samuel P. "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22-49.

Huntington, Samuel. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster

Inglehart, R. (1977). The Silent Revolution: Changing values and political styles among Western publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Inglehart, R. (1997) Modernization and Postmodernization

Ronald, Inglehart & Welzel, Christian. (2005). Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence.

March and Olsen, The New Institutionalism: Organisational Factors in Political Life (1984)

SPINA, N., SHIN, D., & CHA, D. (2011). Confucianism and Democracy: A Review of the Opposing Conceptualizations. Japanese Journal of Political
Science, 12(1), 143-160. doi:10.1017/S1468109910000265