Comparative Politics and Religion

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Comparative Politicsand Religion

• POLITICAL PROBLEMS OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD
• PS 597n.02
• MR DOUG PERKINS

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TODAYS AGENDA

• Administrivia
• Concepts of the Day
• Websites of the Day
• Introduction to Afghanistan
• Talk about the News
• Comparative Political Science
• Comparative Method
• Mechanisms/Rational Choice
• Case Studies
• Science and Religion
• Clash of Civilizations

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ADMINISTRIVIA

• Take Roll
• By the way pick a good seat!!!
• Exam Next Thursday
• Study Guide on Tuesday
• Research design (use handout)
• Iannaccones defense of religious rationality
• Huntington hypotheses, civilizations, data,
  problems
• Concepts and Websites of the Day
• Lecture (1130am, 122 Oxley Hall, 1712 Neil
  Avenue, OSU Campus)
• "Russian-speakers in Central Asia The Current
  Situation" by Natalya
• Kosmarskaya, Senior Researcher, Dept. of the CIS,
  Institute or Oriental
• Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. Free and
  open to the public.
• Sponsored by the OSU Center for Slavic and East
  European Studies. For more
• information, call 292-8770.

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POLITICAL CLEAVAGES

• Why is politics about one thing and not another?
• Why do we identify with one group and not
  another?
• A Couple of Cool Concepts
• Reinforcing Cleavages
• Cross-Cutting Cleavages

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WORLD NEWS CONNECTION
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CIA WORLD FACTBOOK
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INTRO TO AFGHANISTAN

• Afghanistan was invaded and occupied by the
  Soviet Union in 1979. The USSR was forced to
  withdraw 10 years later by anti-communist
  mujahidin forces supplied and trained by the US,
  Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others. Fighting
  subsequently continued among the various
  mujahidin factions, but the fundamentalist
  Islamic Taliban movement has been able to seize
  most of the country. In addition to the
  continuing civil strife, the country suffers from
  enormous poverty, a crumbling infrastructure, and
  widespread land mines.

Ethnic groups Pashtun 38, Tajik 25, Hazara
19, minor ethnic groups (Aimaks, Turkmen,
Baloch, and others) 12, Uzbek 6 Religions
Sunni Muslim 84, Shi'a Muslim 15, other 1
Languages Pashtu 35, Afghan Persian (Dari)
50, Turkic languages (primarily Uzbek and
Turkmen) 11, 30 minor languages (primarily
Balochi and Pashai) 4, much bilingualism
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POLITICAL NEWS
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AN IDEAL RESEARCH DESIGN (from King, Keohane,
and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry)

• Research Question
• Criteria? Should be important, interesting
• The Theory
• Hypothesis/es
• Rely on existing literature
• The Data
• Predict some results using your hypothesis
• So called observable implications
• If my explanation is correctwhat should I
  expect in the real world?
• Find Positive AND Negative Examples
• The More Data, the Better!
• Where does it come from? Bias?
• Use of the Data
• Uncover and explain variation (comparative
  method)
• Explain mechanism (stylized description/rational
  choice?)
• Tell how it happened in the real world (case
  studies)
• We Can (and will) Judge Research by the Above

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USING THE DATA COMPARATIVE METHOD

• Ideographic vs. Nomothetic
• Science Find and Explain Patterns/Variation
• Test hypotheses
• Experiments gt Statistics gt C.M.
• Assumption of unit homogeneity
• Units are interchangeable
• Compare to a real experiment
• John Stuart Mill
• Method of Agreement
• select similar outcomes
• vary the potential causes
• Indirect Method of Difference (ideal)
• vary the outcomes
• vary the potential causes
• Uncover patterns of correlations between ivs and
  dv

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KKVs RULES FOR CONDUCTING SCIENCE

• 1) Construct Falsifiable Theories
• How can we disprove it?
• Find limits of theory (when it is true)
• 2) Build Internally Consistent Theories
• Formal Modelling Helps
• 3) Select Dep. Variables Carefully
• Dont select on dep. variable!
• Make sure the Dep. variable varies!
• 4) Maximize Concreteness
• Observable operationalizations
• 5) Be Encompassing w/ Theories
• Increases the possible n
• Allows us to explain more

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POTENTIAL PROBLEMS

• Indeterminacy
• More Inferences than Observations
• One Observation gt One Inference
• Multicollinearity
• Two ivs are Highly Correlated
• Cannot discriminate between the two

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MECHANISMS

• Correlation versus Causation
• Spurious, Tautological, Coincidence
• How Do We Prove Causation?
• Must Identify the MECHANISMS
• How did it happen?
• These Three Methods Will Help
• Conduct an Experiment or...
• Use Psychology or Rational Choice

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RATIONAL CHOICEFILTER 2 DESIRE/UTILITY

• When faced with several courses of action,
  individuals usually do what they believe is
  likely to maximize their utility. Elster
  p. 22
• Decision Making under Certainty
• Preference Ordering
• Utility Function
• Decision Making Under Risk
• Lotteries
• Expected Utility

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WHAT ABOUT CONTEXT? THE ENVIRONMENT

• Context Matters!
• Both Constrains and Empowers
• Affects the Size of the Opportunity Set
• and the Payoffs of the Opportunities
• Positive Direction
• Negative Direction
• So Rational Choice REQUIRES History!

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DESIRES OPPORTUNITIES

• VERY Powerful Simplification
• What do People WANT?
• What Options are Available?
• Sometimes Desires are Irrelevant
• Do They Matter at All?
• Given the same opportunities, same choices?

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OPPORTUNITIES

• Easier to Measure
• How do we measure opportunities?
• How do we measure desires?
• Easier to Change/Manipulate
• How can we change opportunities?
• How have we?
• How are desires/preferences formed?
• Can we change them? How?
• Speaking of which
• RC beats Cultural Explanations

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REVIEWRational Choice

• Desires and Opportunities
• Cost-Benefit Calculation
• Utility
• Risk, Lotteries, and Expected Utility
• Uncertainty?

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INTERACTIONPRISONERS DILEMMA

• Dominant Strategy
• Equilibrium
• What would YOU do?
• Why might you cooperate?
• Iterated Game

NOTE THESE ARE IN UTILITY NOT YEARS IN PRISON!!!
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COLLECTIVE ACTION PROBLEM

• Examples of Regular Cooperation
• When it is better for all if some do it, but
  better for each not to do it (p.
  126)
• Lets Get a Feel For It
• Tragedy of the Commons
• Deforestation
• Others???
• n-person Prisoners Dilemma

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1,000 WORDS?
Cost of Cooperation
Great
Terrible
Many
Few
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TERMS

• Free Rider
• Sucker
• How Can We Solve These?
• Carrots (inducements) and Sticks (fines)
• Socialization? Iteration?

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THE GENERAL WILL???

• Unanimity? (Rousseau the Totalitarian?)
• Majority Rules?
• Control of the Agenda Matters

Questions on Mechanisms or Rational Choice?
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CASE STUDIES

• Already found variation
• Already provided a mechanism
• Now put the proper nouns back in
• Case studies describe how the result was actually
  obtained. Should be structured, focused, and
  guided by theory.

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DISCUSSION

• What are the special problems related to a
  scientific study of politics?
• What are the special problems related to a
  scientific study of religion?
• See especially the Iannaccone discussions!
• My thoughts The Flight of the Phoenix

Plot Outline After a plane crash in the Sahara,
one of the survivors says he's an airplane
designer and they can make a flyable plane from
the wreckage
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THE FUTURE

• 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 be the battle
  lines of the future. (Huntington 1993 22)

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BASES OF CONFLICT

• Rival Hypotheses
• Cold War
• First, Second, and Third Worlds
• Some kind of new power conflict
• Economic Divisions
• Modernization theory
• Developed, Developing, UD/Pre-modern
• What else might cause conflict?
• Why civilizations?

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WHAT IS A CIVILIZATION?

• Cultural Entity
• Broadest level of identification
• Language, history, religion, customs,
  institutions, self identification of people.
• The differences between them are basic,
  fundamental, and cannot be compromised.
• What is the Western Civilization?
• Do on board
• Be able to recognize each of them, their aspects,
  and their centers.

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WHY WILL THEY CLASH?

• There cannot be compromises
• Interactions increase as world gets smaller
• Economic modernization challenges old identities
  (is this new? Slv vs. W)
• Dual role of the west
• Foster McWorld, but encourages Jihad
• Economic regionalization cuts down on useful
  interaction and reinforces cultural identities

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WHERE WILL THEY CLASH?

• Fault lines
• Examples?
• Yugoslavia
• Middle East
• Horn of Africa
• Former Soviet Union?
• Others?
• Why not here?
• Tuesday Evaluate the Research Design

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QUESTIONS???