PSC 3304 Lecture 8: 9/27 - Political Regimes
17 Feb 2017
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What is the difference between them and states. State is an actor; a coercive enforcer. Political regime is the structure of a state: laws, policies, power (acquired, exercised, enforced) Ruling elites (their roles, how they interact, hierarchy) N = # of people in the electorate. Electorate: in contemporary democracy, all citizens who have been granted voting rights. Winning coalition: in the u. s. half of the electorate plus 1 vote (( ) s + 1), so a majority. In soviet authoritarian system, only the votes from w count. Loyalty norm: (w/s) when the winning coalition (w) is close enough to winning, your risk of defecting are very low. The smaller w is, the more valuable your vote is. Everyone willing to defect at some point. Wrote book, formulated minimalistic, cynical view of democracy. Democracy, according to schumpeter, is a set of institutional arrangements (elections) for arriving at political decisions. Votes matter our only role is participating in elections.
