Comparative Political Analysis I: Approaches, Colonialism and Decolonization, Nationalism, State Theory and Political Regimes
2. Colonialism, decolonization and nationalism
- Forms of colonialism — settler colonialism (large-scale permanent settlement displacing or eliminating the indigenous population, as in the Americas or Australia) versus exploitation/extractive colonialism (a smaller administrative-commercial presence extracting resources and labour without mass settlement, the more common pattern in British India and much of Africa); the distinction matters because it shapes the kind of post-colonial state and society that follows.
- Anti-colonial struggles and decolonization — ranged from constitutional/gradualist paths (negotiated transfers of power, as in much of British decolonization after WWII) to armed anti-colonial struggle (Algeria, Vietnam); the post-1945 wave was accelerated by the weakening of European powers after two world wars, the rise of anti-colonial nationalism itself, and the UN's own normative commitment to self-determination.
| Thinker | Argument |
|---|---|
| Ernest Gellner | Nationalism is a functional requirement of industrial society — industrialisation needs a mobile, standardised, literate workforce sharing one 'high culture'/language, which nationalism supplies; nations are a modern invention created by nationalism, not the reverse. |
| Benedict Anderson | 'Imagined Communities' (1983) — a nation is an 'imagined political community', imagined because most members will never meet yet feel a horizontal comradeship; print capitalism (mass-produced vernacular-language newspapers and novels) is what made this shared imagining technically possible. |
| Partha Chatterjee | Non-European/anticolonial nationalism cannot be read as a mere 'derivative discourse' copying European nationalism; it divides social life into a material (outer, Western-modelled: economy, statecraft, science) and a spiritual (inner, indigenous: culture, family, religion, language) domain, asserting sovereignty over the inner domain even before political independence is won. |
3. State theory
The Marxist debate over the capitalist state's nature divides Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas. Miliband's instrumentalist view holds that the state serves capitalist class interests chiefly because the state elite is itself drawn from, socialised with, and personally connected to the capitalist class — an instrumental, personnel-based capture. Poulantzas's structuralist view instead argues the state serves capital's interests regardless of who staffs it, because of the state's own structural position within the capitalist mode of production — it must maintain the conditions for capital accumulation and social cohesion whatever the individual bureaucrats' personal ties or beliefs. The post-colonial state (Hamza Alavi, on Pakistan and Bangladesh) is theorised as 'overdeveloped' relative to the weakly-developed local bourgeoisie it inherited from the colonial power, with a bureaucratic-military apparatus disproportionately powerful compared to society. The welfare state (T.H. Marshall's social citizenship, met in Unit 1) uses taxation and social insurance to decommodify basic needs (health, unemployment support, pensions) that a pure market would otherwise leave to purchasing power alone.
4. Political regimes — democratic and non-democratic
| Type | Character |
|---|---|
| Electoral democracy | The minimal criterion — regular, competitive, reasonably free elections determine who holds office, without a fuller guarantee of civil liberties or the rule of law. |
| Liberal democracy | Adds, beyond elections, constitutionally protected civil liberties, the rule of law, an independent judiciary and horizontal accountability among branches of government. |
| Majoritarian democracy | Concentrates power in the winning majority (Westminster-style single-party government, first-past-the-post) rather than dispersing it — Arend Lijphart's own contrast to consensus democracy. |
| Participatory democracy | Prizes direct, active citizen involvement in decision-making beyond periodic voting — referenda, citizen assemblies, deliberative forums, participatory budgeting — as a corrective to purely representative/procedural democracy's thin citizen role. |
| Type | Character |
|---|---|
| Patrimonialism (Weber) | Rule is a personal extension of the ruler's household — office, loyalty and resources are distributed as personal favours, with no real separation between public office and the ruler's private domain. |
| Bureaucratic authoritarianism (Guillermo O'Donnell) | A military-technocratic alliance rules through the state bureaucracy to impose economic 'modernisation' and suppress popular/labour mobilisation seen as a threat to that project — O'Donnell's account of 1960s-70s South American military regimes (Brazil, Argentina). |
| Military dictatorship | Armed forces directly hold state power, typically after a coup, ruling through military command structures rather than civilian institutions or a mass party. |
| Totalitarianism (Arendt, Carl Friedrich) | Total state control penetrating and mobilising every sphere of life — not merely political repression but an all-encompassing ideology, a single mass party, terror/secret police, and monopoly control of media, the economy and armed force (Nazi Germany, Stalinist USSR). |
| Fascism | An ultra-nationalist, often militarist and anti-liberal, anti-communist ideology and regime-type prizing a mythic national/racial rebirth, a charismatic leader-cult, and the total subordination of the individual to the nation-state. |
Key takeaways
- The institutional, political-culture (Almond & Verba), political-economy and new-institutionalism approaches, plus Mill's most-similar/most-different comparative method, are comparative politics' own toolkit.
- Settler and exploitation colonialism produced different post-colonial trajectories; Gellner ties nationalism to industrial society's needs, Anderson to print capitalism's imagined community, and Chatterjee argues non-European nationalism is not a mere derivative discourse.
- Miliband's instrumentalist and Poulantzas's structuralist accounts both hold the capitalist state serves capital's interests, disagreeing only over the mechanism; Alavi's post-colonial state is 'overdeveloped' relative to a weak local bourgeoisie.
- Electoral, liberal, majoritarian and participatory democracy are the syllabus's four democratic types; patrimonialism, bureaucratic authoritarianism, military dictatorship, totalitarianism and fascism are its five non-democratic types.
- Totalitarianism (Arendt) is distinguished from ordinary authoritarianism by seeking active ideological mobilisation and eliminating the public-private distinction, not merely depoliticised obedience.
Practice questions (10)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba's 'The Civic Culture' (1963) explains regime stability chiefly through:
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Answer: A — Citizens' political attitudes and orientations toward the system
This is the political-culture approach's own claim; the others belong to Poulantzas, Anderson and O'Donnell.New institutionalism, as a corrective to earlier approaches, argues that institutions:
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Answer: A — Actively shape actor preferences and outcomes rather than being neutral rules
New institutionalism corrects both behaviouralism (which neglected institutions) and old institutionalism (mere description) by showing institutions actively shape outcomes; the last option describes patrimonialism.Settler colonialism is distinguished from exploitation/extractive colonialism chiefly by:
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Answer: A — Large-scale permanent settlement displacing the indigenous population
Settler colonialism is defined by large-scale permanent settlement; extraction with minimal settlement is the exploitation/extractive form, more common in British India.Benedict Anderson's 'Imagined Communities' (1983) argues that a nation becomes imaginable chiefly through:
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Answer: A — Print capitalism — mass-produced vernacular newspapers and novels
Print capitalism is Anderson's own mechanism; the industrial-society claim is Gellner's, and the material/spiritual split is Chatterjee's.Partha Chatterjee argues that non-European anticolonial nationalism asserted sovereignty, even before independence, over a distinct:
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Answer: A — Spiritual/inner domain of culture, family and religion
Chatterjee's specific claim is about the inner/spiritual domain, precisely because the material/outer domain remained Western-modelled; this is what makes his account more than a 'derivative discourse' thesis.Ralph Miliband's instrumentalist account of the capitalist state explains its class bias chiefly through:
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Answer: A — The state elite's own social origin and personal ties to the capitalist class
Miliband's is the personnel/instrument-based account; the structural, personnel-independent account is Poulantzas's own rival position.Hamza Alavi's theory of the post-colonial state describes it as 'overdeveloped' relative to:
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Answer: A — A weakly-developed local bourgeoisie inherited from the colonial power
Alavi's specific claim, developed on Pakistan and Bangladesh, is about a bureaucratic-military apparatus disproportionately powerful relative to a weak local bourgeoisie.Majoritarian democracy, in Arend Lijphart's own contrast, is distinguished from consensus/participatory forms by:
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Answer: A — Concentrating power in the winning majority rather than dispersing it
Majoritarian democracy concentrates power (Westminster-style); direct citizen involvement is participatory democracy's own feature, and the other two options describe totalitarianism and patrimonialism.Guillermo O'Donnell's 'bureaucratic authoritarianism', developed on 1960s-70s South American regimes, describes rule by:
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Answer: A — A military-technocratic alliance imposing economic modernisation and suppressing popular mobilisation
O'Donnell's specific regime-type combines a military-technocratic alliance with bureaucratic rule and suppression of labour/popular mobilisation; the fascist leader-cult and patrimonialism describe different regime-types.Totalitarianism, as Hannah Arendt and Carl Friedrich define it, is distinguished from ordinary authoritarianism chiefly by:
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Answer: A — Seeking active ideological mobilisation and eliminating the public-private distinction
Ordinary authoritarian regimes typically want passive obedience and leave much of private life alone; totalitarianism, by this definition, wants active conviction and total penetration of life, which is the sharper, exam-tested distinction.