CPO-2002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Malawi Congress Party, Chewa People, Party System
16 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Poliical compeiion and insituions focuses voters" and elites" atenion on some cleavages rather than others. Poliical leaders will choose divisions that deine the most usefully-sized building blocs, and emphasize cultural or ethnic divisions when it is poliically expedient to do so. Not all cultural and ethnic divisions will become poliicized. Seeks to explain the emergence of proporional representaion systems in western. Europe as a funcion of both sociological change and strategic elite behavior. Two changes to society (rokkan"s hypothesis: emergence of a working class and rise of socialism (pressures from below, extension of the franchise, universal sufrage. Ruling elites value: poliical stability, maintaining poliical power, maximizing future poliical inluence. Boix explains the transiion to pr as a funcion of two things: strength of the emergent socialist party- appeals to working class, coordinaing capacity of the ruling paries. The emergence of pr isn"t a fait acompli (don"t ix what isn"t broken) but the result of strategic elite behavior.
