Complete the following questions. 1. (36 points)
In Commitment Problems in Emerging Democracies: The Case of Religious Parties, Stathis Kalyvas (2000) examines whether religious parties are compatible with secular and liberal democratic institutions. He concludes that religious parties may be compatible with democracy as long as they can credibly commit not to impose a theocratic dictatorship when they come to power. He goes on to argue that some religions are better able to provide these credible commitments than others. We now provide a Religious Party Game that throws light on the credible commitment problem facing religious parties that Kalyvas describes. The two players in our game are a dictatorial regime (Regime) that has recently introduced a process of democratization and a religious party (Religious Party) that seeks to gain power through the newly proposed democratic elections. The Religious Party is expected to win the elections, and many fear that it will turn the country into a theocracy rather than continuing the process of democratic consolidation. The Regime has to decide whether to hold the elections as scheduled or to cancel them and retain power as a dictatorship. If elections are held and the Religious Party wins (which we are assuming will happen), then the Religious Party has to decide whether to pursue a moderate political agenda and support democratic consolidation or to subvert the democratization process and create a religious regime. The Religious Party comes in two types-moderate and radical. One way to think about these types is that religious parties have both moderate and radical factions, and that whichever faction is dominant determines the Religious Party’s type. Moderate religious parties prefer democratic consolidation to establishing a theocracy, whereas radical religious parties prefer the opposite. There are three possible outcomes in this game: Continued dictatorship, Religious dictatorship, and Democratic consolidation. The gure below illustrates an incomplete information version of this game with cardinal payos in which the Regime does not know whether it is interacting with a moderate Religious Party or a radical Religious Party.
(a) Based on the cardinal payos shown in the figure above, write down Winter 2019 Comparative Politics Problem Set III the preference ordering for the Regime,
(b) the moderate Religious Party, and (c) the radical Religious Party over the three possible outcomes. (b) Solve the subgame on the left, where the Religious Party is moderate, as if there were no uncertainty. What is the subgame perfect equilibrium? What is the expected outcome? What are the payos that each player receives?
(c) Solve the subgame on the right, where the Religious Party is radical, as if there were no uncertainty. What is the subgame perfect equilibrium? What is the expected outcome? What are the payos that each player receives?
(d) What is the expected payo for the Regime from Cancel elections?
(e) What is the expected payo for the Regime from Hold elections?
(f) Use the expected payos from the two previous questions to calculate the critical probability at which the Regime will choose to hold elections rather than cancel them.
(g) If the Regime believes that the Religious Party is moderate with a probability of 0.75, will it choose to hold elections, will it cancel elections, or will it be indierent between these two actions? Explain.
(h) If the Regime believes that the Religious Party is moderate with a probability of 0.8, will it choose to hold elections, will it cancel elections, or will it be indierent between these two actions? Explain.
(i) If the Regime believes that the Religious Party is moderate with a probability of 0.5, will it choose to hold elections, will it cancel elections, or will it be indierent between these two actions? Explain.
(j) If you represented a moderate religious party poised to win the elections, would you want the Regime to believe that your party was moderate or radical?
(k) If you represented a radical religious party poised to win the elections, would you want the Regime to believe that your party was moderate or radical?
(l) If you solved the game correctly, you will nd that the Regime will hold elections as long as it believes that the Religious Party is moderate with a high enough probability. If there is some uncertainty on the part of the Regime and you are representing a moderate religious party that wants the elections to go ahead, why might it not be enough for you to simply announce to the Regime that your party is a moderate religious party and not a radical one? 2. (5 points) On September 17, 2011, protesters occupied Zuccotti Park in the nancial district of New York as part of a movement that became known as Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Many of the protesters had been inspired by the popular uprisings that had occurred in Egypt and Tunisia in early 2011. The OWS protesters were opposed to what they perceived Winter 2019 Comparative Politics Problem Set III to be the undue inuence of banks and multinational corporations on the political system. They believed that the wealthiest 1 percent of society had a disproportionate share of capital and political inuence, and they used the slogan We are the 99% to highlight the problem of social and economic inequality. The OWS led to the creation of the international Occupy Movement, which has organized protests in dozens of countries around the world. The occupation of Zuccotti Park ended on November 15, 2011, when the protesters were forcibly removed by the police. Imagine that you are discussing issues of inequality and the power of the nancial sector with some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters in the fall of 2011. How would you explain the implications of the structural dependence of the state on capital to someone who doesn’t understand why left-wing parties do not always expropriate the rich when they come to power? 3. (24 points) Rather than classify regimes as either democratic or dictatorial, selectorate theory characterizes all regimes in regard to their location in a two-dimensional institutional space. One dimension is the size of the selectorate (S), and the second dimension is the size of the winning coalition (W). These two dimensions are graphically shown in Figure 10.9 along with the types of regimes that fall into each cell. Use Internet and other resources to determine into which cell of the two-dimensional space in the gure below each of the following regimes should be placed. Explain your answers. (a) Guinea Bissau (b) Iraq under Saddam Hussein (pre-2003) (c) The United States in 1776 (d) The United Arab Emirates (e) Chile under Augusto Pinochet (f) Argentina Winter 2019 Comparative Politics Problem Set III 4. (21 points) Suppose that a political leader raises $1 billion in tax revenue. Assume that the leader can supply public goods worth $2,000 to each individual in society if he spends all of this tax revenue on providing public goods. Assume also that the size of the winning coalition is 250,000. With all of this in mind, answer the following questions.
(a) If the leader were to spend all of the tax revenue on providing private goods, what would the maximum value of the private goods be for each member of the winning coalition if we assume that they all receive the same amount?
(b) Would the leader prefer to provide only public goods or only private goods in this situation? Why?
(c) Now suppose that the size of the winning coalition is 750,000. Keeping everything else the same, answer the following questions.
(d) If the leader were to spend all of the tax revenue on providing private goods, what would the maximum value of the private goods be for each member of the winning coalition if we assume that they all receive the same amount?
(e) Would the leader prefer to provide only public goods or only private goods in this new situation? Why?
(f) Based on the answers you have given and the description of selectorate theory in this chapter, why is providing public goods a more e‑cient way for leaders in democracies to stay in power?
(g) Based on the answers you have given and the description of selectorate theory in this chapter, why is providing private goods a more e‑cient way for leaders in dictatorships to stay in power? 5. (16 points)
In this chapter, we discussed the rules for classifying democracies as parliamentary, presidential, or semi-presidential. Look at the information from the following constitutions and decide whether these democracies are parliamentary, presidential, or semi-presidential. Explain your decision.
(a) 1991 Burkina Faso Constitution
The President shall, on the advice of the Taoiseach, accept the resignation or terminate the appointment of any member of the Government. Dáil Éireann shall be summoned and dissolved by the President on the advice of the Taoiseach. The President may in his absolute discretion refuse to dissolve Dáil Éireann on the advice of a Taoiseach who has ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann. . . The President shall not be answerable to either House of the Oireachtas or to any court for the exercise and performance of the powers and functions of his o‑ce or for any act done or purporting to be done by him in the exercise and performance of these powers and functions. iii. Article 15: The National Parliament shall be called and known, and is in this Constitution generally referred to, as the Oireachtas. The Oireachtas shall consist of the President and two Houses, viz.: a House of Representatives to be called Dáil Éireann and a Senate to be called Seanad Éireann. iv. Article 28: The Government shall consist of not less than seven and not more than fteen members who shall be appointed by the President in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution. . . The Government shall be responsible to the Dáil Éireann. The head of the government, or Prime Minister, shall be called, and is in this Constitution referred to as, the Taoiseach. (c) 1980 Chilean Constitution • Article 4: Chile is a democratic republic.
(d) 1947 Japanese Constitution
(a) Based on the results, from which party would you expect the formateur to come if South Korea were a parliamentary democracy?
(b) South Korea is in fact a presidential democracy. In the 2012 presidential elections, Park Geun-hye of the Saenuri Party (SP) was elected president, and following the 2016 legislative elections, she still had nearly two years left in her term. Based on this new information, from which party would you now expect the formateur to come? Why is this? Winter 2019 Comparative Politics Problem Set III 7. (8 points)
In all of these questions, you should ignore the others category.
(a) Copy the table. Imagine that the seventeen seats in Oslo are to be allocated according to the Hare quota with largest remainders. Fill in your table and indicate how Oslo’s seventeen seats are allocated among the parties. How many automatic, remainder, and total seats does each party obtain? (b) Now make another table and repeat the process using the Droop quota with largest remainders. Does the allocation of seats change? 13: Elections and Electoral Systems 581
(a) What is the eective number of electoral parties in the 2014 South African elections? What is the eective number of legislative parties? (You will probably want to use a calculator for this.)
(b) Compare the eective numbers of electoral and legislative parties in these elections with the actual number of parties winning votes and seats. Which measure-the actual or eective number of parties-does a better job, in your opinion, of capturing the size of the South African party system? Why? Are there circumstances in which you would be more likely to use the actual number of parties as the measure of party system size? Are there circumstances in which you would be more likely to use the eective number of parties?
(c) Based on your answers to the previous questions and the information in the table, what do you think is the most accurate classication of the South African party system: nonpartisan, single party, one-party dominant, two party, or multiparty?
(d) Based on the eective numbers of electoral and legislative parties that you calculated, does the mechanical eect of South Africa’s electoral system introduce much distortion in the way that votes are translated into seats? Based on your answer to this question, what type of electoral system do you think South Africa employs a permissive or nonpermissive one? Use Internet resources to nd out whether South Africa really does use a permissive or a nonpermissive electoral system. Winter 2019 Comparative Politics Problem Set III Make sure you explain how you arrive at your solution you won’t receive partial credit for incorrect answers unless we can see that you have done a part of the problem correctly. It is your responsibility to convey the answers in a clear and neat manner.
Your TA may give you more precise instructions and is permitted to penalize you for sloppy presentation.
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