➜ 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 describe 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.
States are inherently shaped by the people, social orders, values, and traditions that have characterized their people over the course of history. A full understanding of the political functioning of the state requires an understanding of the linkage between a society and the state.
Ethnicity is a concept commonly misunderstood by many students, often inappropriately conflated with related concepts such as race, national identity, or citizenship. It is important that you begin with an understanding of the distinctions between all of these terms. Race, to begin with, will not be a concept addressed in the AP Comparative Government and Politics curriculum. It refers to a classification of people based on visible physical traits, such as skin color. Race is not self-attributed, meaning the people of a particular race were not the ones who determined they would be grouped together to define their identity by a particular race.
Ethnicity is largely cultural and ascribed by the group.
Nationality requires a belief in a shared political goal for one’s people.
Citizenship requires specific benefits or privileges given by the state.
Ethnicity is a much more important concept in this course. It refers to the attributes identified by a group of people that make them distinct from others. These can include cultural heritage, ancestry, history, language, homeland, religion, ideology, or symbolic identifiers such as dress. The key difference is that members of the group embrace and identify themselves as a distinct group based on these attributes. Ethnicity is acquired by attribution; the other existing members of the group ascribe or attribute the identity to new members, usually children of existing members. They essentially say, “You’re one of us.” Unlike the concepts of national identity and citizenship, ethnicity is not inherently political. An ethnic group can share these cultural attributes and identity without necessarily demanding their own sovereign self-rule, or desiring to unify in one large nation-state. For example, Russia is largely occupied by people of the Russian ethnicity, but there are also ethnic Russians in the nation-states of Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, and many others. Arab people comprise a majority in almost every state in the Middle East, yet there has not been much of a desire expressed by Arabs to unify their disparate states. Pakistanis living in the United Kingdom have no expressed desire to break away and form a new state on the island of Great Britain. There is no real unifying political theme contained in the concept of ethnicity, but it can serve as either a unifying rallying point, or a source of political conflict within a state.
| Country | Largest Ethnic Group (% of population) | Significant Minority Groups |
|---|---|---|
| Britain | White British (82%) | Indian, Pakistani, Black British |
| Russia | Russian (81%) | Tartar, Ukrainian, Bashkir |
| China | Han (92%) | Zhuang, Uighur, Tibetan |
| Mexico | Mestizo (60–80%) | Amerindian, White Mexican of European descent |
| Iran | Persian (61%) | Azeri, Kurdish, Arab |
| Nigeria | Hausa-Fulani (30%) | Igbo, Yoruba |
Nations, which you will have read about in the previous chapter on states, do share one or more common political aspirations, and may or may not be unified based on a shared ethnicity. Many times, this common political aspiration is the desire for sovereign self-rule, though not necessarily. Along the same lines, nationalism refers to a sense of pride in the nation of people and a belief that they can achieve their political destiny.
Citizenship refers specifically to the formal relationship between the state and an individual. With citizenship comes specific rights or privileges granted by the state to which other individuals may not be entitled, such as voting in national elections or receiving special legal protections. The citizen, in return, swears allegiance to that state. (Many states, however, do allow their citizens to hold multiple citizenships.) While nationality and citizenship often cross very similar lines, citizenship is distinct from nationality and ethnicity in that it is purely political, and has, in many cases, absolutely nothing to do with distinguishing features such as an individual’s descent, language, culture, religion, etc. In the United Kingdom, for example, British subjects from all over what remains of the British Empire receive varying classes of British citizenship, some including rights of travel and relocating to any part of Britain, and others restricting this “right of abode.” These people come from very diverse ethnic backgrounds, including peoples of oceanic islands, Central and South America, Africa, and Asia. There is practically nothing that would unify these people, but they each possess a legal relationship with the United Kingdom. Citizenship is the basis of patriotism, which is pride in the state (as opposed to the people group).
Cleavages act as the basis for political conflict. They separate people into supporters and opponents of political issues based on the attributes or interests of those people. Professors Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan identified what they believed to be the four most consistent cleavages in political conflicts across states in the modern European political system.
Cleavages divide groups in society against one another because of conflicting political goals.
More contemporary political scientists have also argued to consider a segmentation of the owner/worker cleavage, to recognize the difference between talented, employable professionals, skilled and unskilled laborers, and those who are not employable as additional political cleavages. Gender has also emerged as a dividing line on political issues, particularly with regard to relevant matters on fairness in employment and wages. As we consider the world outside of Europe, it will also be important to understand how ethnicity and nation, different religions, and different ideologies can also shape the basis of political cleavages.
In politics, conflict between cleavages is inevitable. Most of the time these cleavages play out without ever creating a doubt about the ability of the state to continue functioning, though in some countries, the way the divide is drawn out may threaten the very unity of the state. This largely depends on whether the cleavages are consistently cross-cutting, or coinciding.
Cross-cutting cleavages occur when two cleavages do not align with each other in a way that reinforces the divide between the two sides. The group of members on one side of a particular cleavage can be divided to identify with both sides of a different cleavage. For example, “workers” in Mexico may all have certain common political interests, but many in the workers cleavage are religious “church”-minded voters, and others are secular “state”-minded voters. In addition, workers in Mexico come from both urban and rural environments and backgrounds. This tends to promote stability in modern Mexican politics because there is not a large enough single set of people grouped together on the same side of each cleavage. The lines among cleavages are “cross-cutting,” and divide people into many smaller interests.
Cross-cutting cleavages allow politics to continue functioning with civility and without breaking the society apart.
Coinciding cleavages deeply divide society and threaten its continued unity.
Coinciding cleavages, also called reinforcing cleavages, meanwhile, can deeply divide a society to the point where it can no longer remain stable and unified. Imagine all of the lines of cleavages running in the same direction. The workers are largely all urban, secular, and in favor of domestic job protection, while the owners are from an old landed elite, are more religiously minded, and all demand more industry freedom. The result would be that whichever side held the majority would consistently shape the policy agenda, and the other side would lose consistently on every political issue. Even more potentially troublesome would be a similar scenario where the minority side held ultimate political power, and the majority was consistently experiencing political losses. Both instances would likely lead to a rise in separatist movements or revolutionary activity to bring about political change due to frustration with the system. Since its independence, Nigeria has experienced great difficulty in building a unified national identity, and this is partly because of a series of coinciding regional cleavages. Northern Nigeria is populated predominantly by people who are Muslim. The north is also more rural in nature and much poorer than the south, which is the source of most of Nigeria’s oil. The largest tribe in northern Nigeria is the Hausa-Fulani, who speak a different language than southern Nigerians. Meanwhile, southern Nigeria, which has a much larger share of the nation’s wealth, is dominated by Christians who are more likely to dwell in cities, belong to either the Igbo, Yoruba, or another smaller tribe, and tend to be better educated and English speaking. The result is a deeply divisive “North versus South” mentality in much of Nigerian political conflicts; this threatens the very existence of a unified Nigeria.
Cleavages can serve as one example of a state’s centrifugal forces, which are the forces that divide and polarize the people of a state. The examples above of divides based on religion, ethnicity, language, and economic interest can all be centrifugal forces. These same issues, which often divide, could conversely serve to unify the people of other states. A centripetal force unifies, or brings people of the state together to enhance stability and legitimacy of the state. If, for example, the people have a shared common religion, language, or culture, or even a shared commitment to religious and ethnic toleration, it can reduce the potential for political conflicts to result in destabilizing the state.
Political change will be a fundamental topic of study throughout the Comparative Government course. We will consider the mechanisms by which political change occurs, and the history of political and economic change on a more individualized basis in the country chapters. First, we will address the preferences of people with regard to political change.
Political attitude refers to how people feel about the pace with which political change should occur. There are four generalized groups in terms of political attitude. Be aware that the terminology used to describe political attitudes and ideologies is similar to those used in American politics, though the meanings are often very different.
| Political Attitude | Approach to Political Change | Willing to Use Violence? |
|---|---|---|
| Conservative | Oppose most changes, desire to maintain status quo | No |
| Liberal | Support progressive change through major reform | No |
| Radical | Desire to abolish existing social order and institutions and create new ones | Yes |
Political ideology, by contrast, refers to a person’s preference for the goals of politics, rather than for the pace and methods of change. Ideology can be classified along a very extensive continuum of political preferences, but large themes have developed that can be used to produce five distinct general groups. (Note: Much of the economic terminology used below is explained in Chapter 4, “The Political Economy.”)
| Political Ideology | Goals of the Ideology | Perspective on Liberty | Perspective on Equality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberalism | Promote the freedom of individuals to pursue their own interests. | Individuals should be free to act in their own economic interests and express themselves freely. | Individuals possess guaranteed basic rights and should have relative equality of opportunity, but not economic equality. |
| Communism | Establish a society without social class or economic inequality to the benefit of all rather than the few. | Property ownership of the few elites enslaves the working class and the poor. Freedom can only come from ending this inequality. | Economic inequality is the root of most problems in society, so property must be commonly owned by all. |
| Social Democracy | Balance the extremes of economic inequality and economic liberty by limiting both. | Individuals should be free to express themselves politically, but the state should play a strong role in caring for the poor and middle classes. | Political equality can be furthered by using the wealth of the richest to provide basic services to the poor through the state. |
| Fascism | Empower the nation-state to achieve its full strength and potential. | Liberty of individuals is a false construct, and nations must be strong to defend themselves in order to be free as a people. | Some nations are supreme and stronger than others, and must fight to survive and prosper. |
| Anarchism | Abolish the state to empower individuals. | The state takes away the freedom of individuals, and full liberty only comes without the state. | The state is the source of inequality, and people can only have political equality without the state. |
The degree to which political culture shapes the functioning of a political system cannot be overstated. While much of this course will analyze and evaluate the manner in which institutions operate, and will compare their structures to predict how reforms might affect political outcomes, much of their functioning is already deeply embedded into the institutions by the political culture in which they operate. Political culture refers to the basic norms for political activity in a country. Every country has its own unique political culture that has been shaped by numerous factors, but the most important factors to consider include historical events, ethnic culture and religion of the people in the country, the level of economic development, and political tradition. As you study the brief historical overview of each country, what you should be paying careful attention to is how those events served to shape the political culture of the country. For example, The English Civil War in 1640 and the Glorious Revolution in 1688 are important not only as events in themselves, but also because they demonstrate the longstanding political culture of Britain in which rulers perceived as overstepping their powers are not tolerated, a characteristic that makes Britain a much more fertile ground for democratic institutions to prosper. Russia, meanwhile, has a longstanding tradition of authoritarian rule dating back to the beginnings of tsarist rule, and continuing through the communist era of the twentieth century. Attempts at democratization are still a relatively new phenomenon in Russia, so it should come as no surprise when they seem flawed in their democratic legitimacy.
Would Russia’s elections be more free, fair, and open if they simply mimicked or “copied” the institutional structure of other liberal democracies? Perhaps there would be some peripheral improvement in democratic legitimacy, but more than likely, Russia’s political culture would prove much more resistant to change than what could be altered through institutional reform.
The extent to which political culture can change over time is a subject of intense debate among political scientists, but generally, there are two overarching trends that can be identified as shaping the modern world. The first is a trend of a changing global political culture that is increasingly “coming together.” This trend is identifiable in three main areas.
Still, some political scientists remain skeptical of the degree to which political cultures can really be changed and shaped to conform to these new values under which the world is “coming together.” They argue that political culture is much more resistant to change than simply reforming political institutions, and that the movements pushing the world toward globalization, modernization, and democratization will eventually push people to retreat back into old identities rooted in ethnicity or religion as a source of constancy and certainty. Benjamin Barber explained the competition between these two trends in his essay “Jihad vs. McWorld,” using those terms as shorthand for retreat and “retribalization” (Jihad), and the “coming together” under modern values (McWorld). There is evidence in the modern world of the tensions that Barber identified and predicted in his essay. After the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, Russia implemented a new constitution and democratic regime, opened itself to trade and investment from the outside world, and attempted a rapid conversion to a market economy. A little more than a decade later, Vladimir Putin emerged as the new dominant force in Russian politics, and reversed many of these attempts at modernization and democratization to the general consent and delight of the Russian people. Russians increasingly view the Western world with suspicion and wariness, and Russian political dialogue often carries a decidedly anti-Western tone. The rise of Islamic terrorism around the planet could also be viewed as evidence of resistance to globalization, modernization, and democratization.
In the next chapter, we will examine how these ideologies are reflected in the economic systems created by each state.
*Note: Terms with an asterisk (*) are those that consistently appear on the AP Comparative Government and Politics exam as tested concepts.
Which of the following countries has no single ethnic group comprising a majority of the population?
Citizenship is distinct from ethnicity and nationality in that citizenship
Compared to cross-cutting cleavages, coinciding political cleavages
A shared national language, common religion, and shared political values can serve as _____________ within a state.
Globalization refers to
Political conflicts that occur between urban and rural citizens would be an example of
Which political attitudes would most likely endorse political violence as a viable strategy for achieving desired changes?
Which of the following policy agendas would best represent a liberal or neoliberal political ideology?
Modernization theory suggests that
In the late twentieth century, there was substantial growth in the number of