Chapter 3: Nations and Society

• tldr

  • people in a society can be united by ethnicity, nation, and citizenship, and the degree to which they are united can shape the legitimacy of the state
  • people in a society can be divided by cleavages and these cleavages can become the basis for political divisions and conflicts over policymaking in the state
  • political attitudes describes how people will call for and respond to changes in the political system
  • political ideology describes what policy goals people want the political system to accomplish
  • major trends of democratization, modernization, and globalization, are shaping the politics and economics of the modern world

• ethnicity: "you're one of us"

  • ethnicity is not race
  • ethnicity refers to attributes that distinguish you from others

• nationalism: sense of pride in the nation of people and a belief that they can achieve their political destiny

• citizenship: formal relationship between the estate and an individual

  • trade of rights for allegiance
  • citizenship is the basis of patriotism
  • patriotism: pride in the state as opposed to the people group

Social Cleavages#

• cleavages are the basis for political conflict
• Lipset and Rokkan identified 4 most consistent cleavages:
  • owner vs worker
    • more pronounced in a "rich vs poor" divide
  • church vs state
    • for individuals that don't like religion to influence policymaking
  • urban vs rural
    • aka "center vs periphery"
    • refers to when people in the periphery don't like changes in the city and people in the city progressively shape changes in culture
  • land vs industry
    • one side is the state's exercise of control over trade and tariffs in order to protect domestic business and workers
    • other side is ruled by large corporations that desire private control and open access to trade
• cleavages can be cross-cutting or coinciding
  • cross-cutting cleavages: two cleavages don't align in a way that reinforces the divide between
    • lets say owner vs workers, what if the workers have a church vs state cleavage between them? that's cross-cutting
    • this type allows politics to continue to function with civility and without breaking the society apart
  • coinciding cleavages: two cleavages go in completely different directions, whichever side has power changes the policy agenda completely
    • also called reinforcing cleavages which can serve as an example of a centrifugal force that divides and polarizes the people of the state or a centripetal force that unifies the people of the state
    • these can completely break a society and threaten the unity of a state
• political attitude: how people feel about the pace at which political change should occur
  • radicals: rapid, dramatic, and revolutionary change; completely dissatisfied with the status quo and believe existing institutions are not suited to make necessary changes and need to be replaced with a new regime
  • liberals: want to make progressive changes through evolutionary reforms rather than through rapid revolution; enacts changes using the current regime instead of creating a new one
  • conservatives: more satisfied with the status quo than no and view proposed changes to institutions with skepticism and caution; they defend the current regime and feat that changed could be for the worse
• political ideology: refers to goals and not pace and methods of change
  • liberalism: prioritize economic and personal freedom
  • communism: true freedom comes in the form of economic equality
  • social democracy: (aka socialists) believe in basic economic equality but without central control (distributive tax and benefit policies)
  • fascism: rejects equality and freedom; people can be classified as "superior" or "inferior"
  • anarchism: state is bad, abolish the state; cooperation of people in communities is true freedom and equality
• political culture: basic norms for political activity in a country
  • globalization: movement of tech, information, trade, and environmental concerns
  • modernization: transition away from religious and culture tradition and moving toward a set of values based on secular or rational principles that emphasize scientific progress, economic development, and individual rights
  • democratization: explosion in the number of democratic political regimes that emerged in the world after the fall of communism