Greener Grass
An undergraduate seminar in comparative social sciences in the making.
The Grass, its Green, and the Other Side – Comparative Social Sciences of Democracy, Welfare, Media, Administration, Political Culture and Economy
An (undergraduate) seminar in planning.
by Stefan Tan under CC BY-NC-SA
Course Description
"The most dangerous outlook on the world is the outlook of those people, who have not looked at the world." -- Alexander von Humboldt
Liberal democracy, market economies and their institutional correlates, it turns out, come in different varieties. Even within the OECD-world of rich, developed nation states, democratic rule (Lijphart), welfare states (Esping-Andersen), media landscapes (Hallin & Mancini), administration (Hood), political culture (Inglehart & Welzel) and economic systems (Hall & Soskice) vary widely. Using both empirical data (a posteriori) and deductive reasoning (a priori), positive comparative research in political science and beyond has distilled these differences into patterns, that often track deep ideological divides (e.g. liberal vs. conservative) and roughly map geography (e.g. continental vs. anglo-american). This seminar surveys some of the recently prominent comparative work ("the other side", figuratively speaking), provides a preliminary understanding of the nature and genesis of the institutions ("the grass") under investigation, and ultimately subjects these varieties to a selective normative critique (concerning their "greenness").
As we will see, the differences across these institutions complement and contradict one another, both within and between their constituent systems, and together, explain much of the difficulty of economic and political integration.
These differences also reveal seemingly intractable trade-offs between goals that are often cited in conjunction, as, for example, between majority rule and broad participation or between general training and niche market leaders. Beneath these trade-offs may lurk some of the inevitable choices in modern institutional design, but also, perhaps, some common challenges or idiosyncratic diversity, and with it, the limits of comparative analyses.
Literature
| Institution | Genesis | Comparison | Normative Theory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Democracy | Tilly 1985? | Lijphart 1999/2012 | Dahl 1989, Cohen 1989 |
| Welfare State | Rimlinger 1971 | Esping-Andersen 1990 | Rawls 1971 |
| Media Systems | ? | Hallin/Mancini 2004 | Habermas 2012 |
| Administration | Weber 1920? | Hood 1998? | Schwarz & Sharpe 2010 |
| Political Culture | Putnam et al. 1983 | Inglehart/Welzel 2005 | de Tocqueville? |
| Economic System | Mankiw | Hall/Soskice 2001 | Hayek 1944, Krugman 2008? |
- Cohen, J. (1989). Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy. In A. Hamlin & P. Pettit (Eds.), The Good Polity - Normative Analysis of the State. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
- Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its Critics. Book. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
- Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Book. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
- Habermas, J. (2012). The Crisis of the European Union in the Light of a Constitutionalization of International Law. European Journal of International Law, 23(2), 335–348. doi:10.1093/ejil/chs019
- Hall, P. A., & Soskice, D. (2001). Varieties of Capitalism. Book. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing media systems : three models of media and politics. Book.
- Hayek, F. A. (1944). The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge.
- Hood, C. C. (1998). The Art of The State. Book.
- Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy - The Human Development Sequence. Book. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Krugman, P. R. (2008). The Conscience of a Liberal. New York, NY: Norton.
- Lijphart, A. (1999). Patterns of Democracy - Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-six Countries. Book. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
- Putnam, R. D., Leonardi, R., Nanetti, R., & Pavoncello, F. (1983). Explaining Institutional Success - The Case of Italian Regional Government. American Political Science Review, 77, 55–74.
- Rimlinger, G. V. (1971). Welfare Policy and Industrialization in Europe, America, and Russia. Book.
- Schwartz, B., & Sharpe, K. E. (2010). Practical Wisdom - The Right Way to Do the Right Thing. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
- Tilly, C. (1985). War Making and State Making as Organized Crime. In P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, & T. Skocpol (Eds.), Bringing the State Back in. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Tilly, C. (2006). Extraction and Democracy. In I. W. Martin, A. K. Mehrotra, & M. Prasad (Eds.), The New Fiscal Sociology - Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
- Weber, M. (1920). Economy and Society. Book.