Michael McGinnis

Email: mcginnis@indiana.edu

Office: Woodburn Hall, Room 366

Hours: Mon. & Wed. 2:30-4:00 p.m.

and by appointment

Tel (812) 855-8784/Fax (812) 855-3150

and

Vincent Ostrom

Email: ghiggins@indiana.edu

Office: 513 North Park, Room 201

Hours: Wed. 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

By appointment only

Tel (812) 855-0441/Fax (812) 855-3150

Can democracies be established in the context of any of the major world civilizations? What are the essential foundations of democratic governance? If all governments became liberal democracies, would this imply a fundamental transformation in the nature of international politics? These are the basic questions we will begin to investigate in this seminar. Our discussions will address topics of general concern to political scientists and scholars from other disciplines who are concerned with democracy in any of its many forms. For example, although the democratic peace and democratic transitions literatures typically conceptualize liberal democracy as a set of institutions and procedures, our analysis will focus instead on whether these institutions and procedures support community capabilities for self-governance. This is the key factor that determines (1) whether new institutions will take root and prosper in emerging democracies and (2) the nature of international interactions between democratic governments.

This seminar is part of a two-semester sequence on Institutional Analysis and Development. (Either course can be taken independently of the other.) The fall semester version focuses on micro and intermediate levels of analysis and the spring semester on more macro-level processes. Processes at the micro and macro levels are, ultimately, connected in fundamental ways, but there remain important differences in the modes of analysis that are most appropriate for each level. This seminar focuses on historical analyses and conceptual frameworks that complement the models and theories developed in the fall semester seminar. The spring semester focuses on macro levels of analysis with due recognition that macro level analyses need to take account of micro and intermediate levels of analysis in more general configurations of relationships. For example, ongoing theoretical disputes over the unitary character of the "state" seem always to require attention to the plurality of relationships in constituting order in the general structure of societies.

The focus on Democracy, Civilization, and World Order reflects an effort to take a global perspective on the evolutionary development of human civilization and to consider the role of scholarship in the political sciences and professions. In recent years, many countries have established or reestablished institutions of representative democracy. Meanwhile, the international community of research scholars studying international relations rediscovered the importance of democracy by demonstrating that democratic governments have rarely, if ever, fought wars with other democracies. Scholarly consensus on this empirical regularity has been used to justify practical efforts to expand this "democratic zone of peace." National and international aid agencies have come to insist on the establishment of democratic institutions as a precondition for continued support. Still, the Western understanding of democracy remains under challenge, particularly by governments and peoples from the Islamic and Confucian civilizations. Unfortunately, in most policy or scholarly discussions, the term "democracy" has been equated with a limited range of electoral, legislative, bureaucratic, and judicial institutions found in the advanced industrial areas of North America and Western Europe. A more global perspective is necessary if we are to understand the ways in which impulses towards better governance will manifest themselves in diverse cultural settings.

In this seminar, we explore the ramifications of conceptualizing democracy as a process of self-governance within the context of polycentric orders. As Tocqueville emphasized, democratic societies are vulnerable because an originally self-reliant people may come to rely too heavily on central governments to resolve their collective problems. The advantages of multiple authorities serving overlapping jurisdictions can be undermined by pressures towards consolidation and centralization of power. As scholars, we need to be sensitive to the extent to which our own conceptualizations and analyses enhance or undermine these two essential components of a viable and sustainable democracy.

This seminar uses the international relations literature on democratic peace to illustrate how scholarship and policy interact. Those who assert that a peaceful world order requires general establishment of a particular set of institutions may fall victim to two crucial misunderstandings. First, it may be inappropriate (as well as ineffective) to expect peoples from other cultural traditions to implement institutions developed by peoples living within other cultural contexts. Instead, effective institutions need to be more closely attuned to the contingencies of physical settings and cultural contexts. Second, these institutions themselves may have unintended and undesirable consequences in some circumstances. For example, if politicians come to emphasize winning elections over implementing effective public policies, then competitions to win votes and reward supporters can escalate into overt forms of intergroup violence. It is important to remember that "ethnic cleansing" emerged as a response to problems experienced by peoples attempting to construct a democratic order out of the ruins of a failed autocracy. Both of these misunderstandings undermine the prospects of extending to a global scale the "democratic zone of peace" as it is currently constituted. Even the establishment of self-governing societies throughout the world might not guarantee perpetual peace, not if, as Tocqueville asserted, self-governing societies are potentially unstable.

A basic question that needs critical attention is the place of scholarship and the professions in the ways of life that are constitutive of societies and the emergence of civilization. This is a question that we are required to resolve for ourselves and one that we can consider with regard to each of the authors to whom we turn. In Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology ([1970] 1982: xxvii), Mary Douglas, a well-known anthropologist, asserted:

The privilege and challenge of the Western type of civilization has always been to acquire self-consciousness through skepticism about authority and questioning about the natural world. But we conspicuously fail to use the privilege [opportunity] when we set up our social sciences so they can only block the comparative study of cultures.

Our problem, then, is to consider the nature of cultural/social/economic/epistemic/moral/legal/political orders in ways that facilitate the comparative study of human experience in a manner that might be cumulative across generations reaching through millennia. As asserted by Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist ([1787-88] 1994), this problem could also be posed as a question, "whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force" (Federalist 1).

Human artisanship involves the transformation of elements in a state of nature into an artifactual state of affairs. Appropriate levels of knowledge are required for both achieving a successful transformation and making appropriate use of the artifactual creation. An automobile requires a great variety of knowledge and skill to produce that artifact, to make appropriate use of it, and to keep it in good repair. All of these sets of relationships are implied by the terms culture and economy. The way that rules are used to order relationships are generally what we mean by "law," "politics," and "society." When addressing the "truth" value of knowledge and its uses, we are addressing epistemological considerations.

Inquiries may move from one to another level of analysis and to different levels of abstraction. Constitutional choice may, for example, be concerned with setting the terms and conditions of governance. Collective choice may then apply to taking decisions within the rules specifying the terms and conditions of governance. Collective choice may, in turn, set the authority relationships that apply to the ordinary exigencies of life. Operational choice occurs by the way that people choose to act in the ordinary exigencies of life.

Distinguishing various levels and contexts of choice in human societies implies different levels of abstraction. The study of law yields to both analytical and comparative jurisprudence that is often difficult to distinguish from political theory and political philosophy. The study of religion can no longer be ignored. Religion shapes the ways peoples see themselves and their relationships with each other and with the physical world; and churches and other religious organizations have demonstrable political consequences, especially in the delivery of welfare services. Institutional analysts must become accustomed to shifting levels of generalization and to the use of multiple methods of analysis. Rational choice models are essential tools that can help us understand particular situations, but consideration of preferences may move to ethics and standards of moral judgment as applying to metapreferences.

It is easy to shift levels of discourse without a clear understanding of the complex considerations that enter into discussions of human affairs. The more fully we appreciate how abstract discourse applies to the exigencies of everyday life, the more likely we are to come to a general appreciation of the place of democracies in the development of human civilizations and the overall pattern of world order. In democracies, those who occupy positions of persons and citizens are themselves sovereign representatives coping with the constitution of order as they address the daily exigencies of life.

Students are expected to complete the reading assignments listed in the Schedule of Topics before class and to participate fully in class discussions. The seminar meets from 8:30-10:30 a.m. on Wednesdays. Each student will be expected to submit a memorandum on the reading assignments at two-week intervals. (The one exception is week 12, for which each student is expected to complete a memo on the book they choose to read for that week's discussion.) One half of those registered for the seminar will respond in alternate weeks. These memoranda will not be graded. Instead, the instructor will respond with comments intended to sustain a dialogue about problems highlighted in the student's memoranda. This is a way of learning to participate in intellectual discussions. These memoranda are due in the instructors' mailboxes at the Workshop, 513 North Park, by 4:00 p.m. each Monday or are to be transmitted by email to ghiggins@indiana.edu and mcginnis@indiana.edu. Those using email may want to transmit their memoranda to other email users. We may set up an email distribution list for the entire class.

Each student, visiting scholar, and participating faculty member will also submit an original research paper for presentation in a "Mini-Conference" format at the end of the semester. The final paper is due April 20. Copies of each paper will be distributed to all Mini-Conference participants. Approximately 35 minutes will be devoted to presentation and discussion of each paper. Someone other than the author will be assigned the responsibility to present and comment on each paper, the author will have an opportunity to respond to these comments, and the remainder of the time will be available for general discussion of that paper and the more general issues it may raise. This is a way of learning to participate in an intellectual community and coming to appreciate the general coherence of intellectual discourse.

The general quality of discourse achieved in the exchange of memoranda, general participation in the intellectual discussions in seminar sessions, and the quality of the paper for the Mini-Conference will enter into the judgment in assigning grades. That judgment will be exercised so that an "A" indicates a quality of work that promises successful completion of a Ph.D. program, a "B" reflects work not clearly at that level of achievement, a "C" represents a judgment that successful pursuit of a Ph.D. program cannot be achieved with that level of performance.

Copies of individual articles or book chapters will be distributed to members of the seminar during the semester. The following books should be available for purchase at the IU and T.I.S. Bookstores.

Vincent Ostrom, The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies.

Robert H. Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry R. Weingast, Analytic Narratives.

Arie M. Kacowicz, Zones of Peace in the Third World: South America and West Africa in Comparative Perspective.

There are a large number of other books and articles that students may find useful in their pursuit of topics covered in this course. Copies of a Workshop publications list will be distributed in class; lists are also available at website http://www.indiana.edu/~workshop. Students are encouraged to peruse the Workshop library and reprint and working paper collections.

Searle, John. 1969. "The Distinction Between Brute Facts and Institutional Facts." In Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, 50-53. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ostrom, Vincent. 1980. "Artisanship and Artifact." Public Administration Review 40(4) (July/August): 309-17.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. [1835, 1840]1988. "Author's Introduction." Democracy in America. Harper & Row.

Ostrom, Vincent. 1997. The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Preface and Part 1 (chapter 1).

Are there important distinctions to be made between the "natural sciences" and the "artifactual sciences"? If by "natural" we have reference to something called nature, strong differences are likely to exist. If "scientists" are viewed as being a part of nature and scientific generalizations are put to use by human beings, then the relationship of knowledge to actions and what gets created becomes more ambiguous. The relationship of reflection to choice, to action, and to what is created may involve multiple levels of consideration. The readings are intended to indicate that a natural science approach is inadequate for understanding the place of knowledge in human conduct and experience.

Hobbes, Thomas. [1651] 1994. Leviathan. Hackett Publishers. [Minimal readings: Introduction, Author's Introduction, chapters 1-7, 10-16.]

Hobbes' "Introduction" and his treatment "Of Man" are important both in identifying fundamental attributes associated with Homo sapiens and a method of normative inquiry in which each of us uses our own resources as a human being to understand other human beings. A critical question with Hobbes is how chapter 13 is to be construed as that relates to what follows in chapters 14 and 15. Chapter 16 in dealing with the rudiments of authority relationships and the critical question about the constitution of commonwealths turns on the concept of representation and how that is resolved in the paragraph entitled "A multitude of men, how one person." A question to be resolved is whether Hobbes' "Introduction" and "Of Man" might serve as a theoretical foundation for diverse types of political regimes.

Hobbes, Thomas. [1651] 1994. Leviathan. [Minimal readings: chapters 17-19, 24, 29-31, 39, 43, Review and Conclusion.]

Ostrom, Vincent. 1991. The Meaning of American Federalism. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press. Chapters 1-3.

"Of Commonwealth," part 2 of Leviathan, will be the focus of attention. Hobbes' distinction of types of regimes and the liberty of subjects and of the various aspects of commonwealth are the fundamentals of his political theory. "Of the Kingdom of God by Nature" is deserving of careful attention. "A Review, and Conclusion" needs to be read as the complement to his introduction. A challenge, then, is to take Hobbes seriously and address oneself to alternative possibilities. Vincent Ostrom does so in "Hobbes' Leviathan and the Logic of American Federalism," chapter 2 in The Meaning of American Federalism.

Hamilton, Jay, and Madison. [1788] 1994. The Federalist. Charles E. Tuttle. [Minimal readings 1-11, 14-17, 24-26, 39-40, 51, 53, 55, 58, 70-73, 78].

Montesquieu advanced the concept of confederation, quoted at length in Federalist 9, as offering a resolution to the paradox of size associated with republican systems of governance. An aspect of the paradox of size is addressed in Federalist 55 and 58. Another aspect is addressed in Federalist 6, 24, and 25. The failure of confederation is addressed in Federalist 14, 15, 16, 17, and 26. Basic principles of order in a federal system are discussed in Federalist 10 and 51. The place of constitutional choice, deliberation at the constitutional level, and contestability are addressed in Federalist 39, 40, 53, 70, 71, 73, 78, and numerous other places.

The arguments being offered in The Federalist provide the theoretical background for Tocqueville's analysis in Democracy in America. The place of constitutional choice establishing the "logical foundations of constitutional democracy" is the subject of James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock's The Calculus of Consent. The reasoning used to inform Alexander Hamilton's reference to reflection and choice is expounded in Vincent Ostrom's The Political Theory of a Compound Republic and The Meaning of American Federalism. There are basic conceptions that allow for the emergence of variants that reach beyond initial formulations. In covering these materials, it will be necessary to divide the task among the several participants in the seminar.

Contestability in open public deliberations is a way of addressing conflict and achieving conflict resolution by seeking out grounds in common knowledge, shared communities of understanding in reciprocal relationships emphasizing patterns of accountability, and mutual trust. It is by such means that the people as those represented might achieve the coherence necessary for the unity and prosperity of commonwealths while continuing to form and reform the provisions of law, taking account of changing conditions. It is by such means that polycentric systems of order in self-governing societies can be conceived as providing the foundations for systems of order in which states wither away and societies become self-governing. Mediating processes of conflict and achieving conflict resolution that is oriented to "conceptual unanimity" are, then, ways of building common knowledge, shared communities of understanding, patterns of accountability, and mutual trust. Human relationships get built on patterns of reciprocity in which individuals become capable of being self-governing.

Ostrom, Vincent. [1973] 1989. The Intellectual Crisis in Public Administration. 2d ed. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Ostrom, Vincent. 1997. The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies. Part 2 (chapters 2-4).

In these works, Vincent Ostrom critiques the conceptualization of unitary sovereignty that has shaped the terms of discourse for much of the political science, public policy, and public administration research on problems of governance. He encourages adoption of an alternative conceptualization that remains open to the possibilities of multiple forms of organization. He shows that "polycentric order" is more consistent with the political theory laid out in The Federalist and that provided the foundation for the American experiment in self-governance that Tocqueville so aptly describes.

Week 6. February 17. Tocqueville and the Foundations of Democracy in America

Why did Tocqueville undertake the study of democracy in America? Why did he consider it to be a great experiment worthy of study by citizens of France? How and why did he proceed as he did in the conduct of his inquiry? Why would the study of democracies proceed in a different way than the study of other types of political regimes? Try to resolve these questions as you read the first volume of Democracy in America.

Michael McGinnis and Vincent Ostrom. 1999. "Democratic Transformations: From the Struggle for Democracy to Self-Governance?," paper prepared for the second Workshop on the Workshop to be held in June 1999.

The critical issue addressed by Tocqueville is whether democracy in America can reproduce itself across successive generations indefinitely into the future. If it cannot, then democratic societies are of doubtful viability. We confront the problem of whether the "natural" characteristics of the human animal yield sentiments and ways of thinking that are contrary to the requirements of the long-term viability of democracies. In other words, the levels of reflection run the risk of being too superficial and not moving to sufficiently critical levels of consideration to meet the requirements of self-governance. It is important to understand why this may be the case and what implications this has for the place of the social and cultural sciences and the humanities.

In the paper co-authored by the co-instructors of this seminar, we use the IAD framework to provide an analytical basis for updating and extending Tocqueville's concern with the many ways in which democracies are vulnerable to dissolution. We conceptualize a "stable" democracy as a continuing process of adjustment of institutions and conceptualizations that can enhance the capacity of communities to govern their own affairs. The peoples' attitude of self-governance can be undermined in many ways, and the institutions of polycentric governance are perpetually challenged by tendencies to centralize power and authority. Much has been said about the process of "transition" to democratic rule, but it is equally important to understand democracy as a dynamic pattern of readjustment to changing environmental and cultural conditions.

Week 8. March 3. Religion, Politics, and Civilizations: Diverse Combinations

Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, "Of the Expense of the Institutions for the Instruction of People of All Ages," Volume Two, Book V, Chapter 1, Article 3. Modern Library Edition, pp. 740-66; U. Chicago Press edition, ii, 309-38.

Iannaccone, Laurence R. 1998. "The Economics of Religion" Journal of Economic Literature (Sept.).

Huntington, Samuel. 1993. "The Clash of Civilizations." Foreign Affairs (Summer): 22-49.

Ostrom, Vincent. 1997. The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies. Part 3 (chapters 5-8).

Tocqueville describes religion as the first of democratic institutions in the United States. Church-related organizations continue to play important roles in the delivery of social and welfare services, often in "partnership" with government agencies. On the global scene, the resurgence of Islam and other forms of political activism related to religious movements and ethnic divisions has become a focus of concern. Indeed, religions are often taken to define the distinct civilizations that, at least according to Huntington, are locked in an intractable conflict. In short, religion can no longer be ignored by social scientists concerned with democracy, development, and world politics.

But how are we to understand religion? Two aspects of religion are particularly pertinent to the subject of this seminar. First, religious organizations are institutions. Religious leaders must find some way to inspire individuals to participate and contribute, and recent work in the economics of the sociology of religion has investigated different conceptualizations of the "nature of the good" that religion constitutes to its adherents. This work raises deep issues about the limitations of extending the analytical techniques of rational choice theory to religious and cultural phenomena.

The second, and more common, approach is to consider the effect of religion on society as a whole. Each of the major civilizations (as defined in Huntington's influential but deeply flawed account) is based on distinct religious traditions. In a frequently overlooked section of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith provides us with an excellent departure point for the analysis of these issues. Smith argues that since religion can be a public good (by providing a moral foundation for market exchange and social order), then perhaps the government should consider supporting it, either directly or indirectly. But this leads directly to concern that leaders of religious institutions may attempt to extract rents from their privileged positions.

In works covered previously in this semester, Vincent Ostrom has pointed to the crucial importance of the essentially religious notion of a covenant as being a crucial foundation for democracy. In general, religion contributes to the basic ways in which peoples conceptualize themselves and their relations with each other, the natural world, and the spiritual leanings of humanity. These conceptualizations are crucial to the success or failure of experiments in self-governance.

Berman, Harold J. 1983. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Preface, Introduction (pp. 1-10, 33-45), "Mercantile Law" (Chapter 11, pp. 333-56), "Beyond Marx, beyond Weber" (pp. 538-58).

Goldberg, Ellis. 1993. "Private Goods, Public Wrongs, and Civil Society in Some Medieval Arab Theory and Practice." In Rules and Rights in the Middle East: Democracy, Law, and Society, eds. Ellis Goldberg, Reat Kasabe, and Joel Migdal, 248-71. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Esposito, John L., and John O. Voll. 1996. Islam and Democracy. Oxford University Press. Chapter 1 ("Islam and Democracy: Heritage and Global Context") and Chapter 2 ("State and Opposition in Islamic History"), pp. 11-51.

Muhlberger, Steven, and Phil Paine. 1993. "Democracy's Place in World History," Journal of World History 4: 23-45.

Ostrom, Vincent. 1997. The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies. Parts 4 and 5 (chapters 9-11).

One concrete way in which religion has a direct effect on the collective organization of society is through the legal system. Berman demonstrates that the multifaceted Western legal tradition was fundamentally shaped by attitudes toward and institutions of religion in the early medieval period of Europe. His discussion of the rise of self-enforced law among widely-dispersed merchant communities highlights an important component of European civilization. Goldberg shows that many similar rules and procedures were developed by merchant communities in the Islamic world. Yet in many ways the paths subsequently taken in these two civilizations could hardly be different. Democracy has a natural affiliation with Western civilization, while most observers assert that democracy is inimical to the ideals of Islam. But it's not that easy to dismiss the potential for democracy and self-governance within the context of Islamic civilization. In his review of historical interactions between Islam and democracy, Esposito makes the important point that, in the contemporary Islamic world, mosques are a prominent center of various social welfare activities. Religion and politics are mixed together in a different way in Islamic and Western cultures, but neither can completely ignore the others.

Muhlberger and Paine provide a succinct overview of democracy's role in each of the major historical civilizations, and Vincent Ostrom concludes his consideration of the prospects of sustaining a democratic future.

Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Chapters 1 and 3, pp. 1-22, 53-76.

Follett, Mary Parker. 1940. "Constructive Conflict." In Dynamic Administration, eds. H. C. Metcalf and L. Urwick, 30-49. New York: Harper & Row Publishers.

Boulding, Kenneth. 1963. "Toward a Pure Theory of Threat Systems." American Economic Review 53 (May): 424-34.

Olson, Mancur. 1993. "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development." American Political Science Review 87: 567-76.

Ostrom, Vincent. 1988. "Cryptoimperialism, Predatory States, and Self-Governance." In Rethinking Institutional Analysis and Development: Issues, Alternatives, and Choices, ed. Vincent Ostrom, David Feeny, and Hartmut Picht, 43-68. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press.

With this week's readings, we move to the realm of international politics, which at first glance seems to have no relationship whatsoever with democracy or self-governance. Yet Hedley Bull's classic book can be read as a description of an international society with rules made and enforced by a self-governing community of "sovereign states," or more precisely, the rulers or foreign policy makers of those national governments taken to be Great Powers. At one level, it seems very orderly, but the frequent resort to war as a means to maintain the system of jealous sovereignties also has some obvious deficiencies on moral grounds. Kenneth Boulding lays out a model of the exchange of threat and war as an alternative way of ordering relations between actors at any level of aggregation. This "threat system" has its own dynamics, particularly a tendency towards escalation to ever higher levels of destructiveness. Mary Parker Follett presents an alternative conceptualization of conflict, which emphasizes its potentially positive contribution towards the solution of practical problems.

Olson's article lays out contrasting models of the implications of democratic and autocratic systems for development and for the capacity to wage war. Vincent Ostrom's paper on cryptoimperialism lays out a logic of domination under which relations between ruler and ruled become fixated on antagonism and exploitation rather than constructive cooperation. He focuses on the subtle ways in which the mind-set of unitary sovereignty (which dominates discussions of international relations as relations between sovereign states) can be transformed from clear patterns of overt domination into more subtle and disguised forms of imperialism. This perspective helps explain the prominence of "predatory states" in the contemporary world.

Russett, Bruce. 1993. "Why Democratic Peace?" In Grasping the Democratic Peace. Princeton University Press. Chapter 3.

Mansfield, Edward D., and Jack Snyder. 1995. "Democratization and the Danger of War." International Security 20.

Owen, John M. 1994. "How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace." International Security (Fall).

Bates, Greif, Levi, Rosenthal, Weingast. 1998. "Political Stability and Civil War: Institutions, Commitment, and American Democracy." In Analytic Narratives. Princeton University Press. Chapter 4 (Barry Weingast).

McPhee, John. [1984] 1991. La Place de la Concorde Suisse. New York: The Noonday Press. [Special Assignment]

Scholars of international conflict have recently come to recognize that certain kinds of governments (namely, those found in liberal democracies) rarely if ever engage in wars with the same kind of governments. As more states become democracies, then, the very nature of world order may be transformed. Research on the democratic peace thus raises fundamental questions about the nature of international relations and the prospects for a peaceful world order.

Russett reviews the most prominent explanations of this widely-accepted phenomena, and the next two articles discuss ways in which either explanation can break down under certain circumstances. One set of explanations for the "democratic peace" stresses the restraints on executive authority that are inherent in the institutions of representative democracy, which suggests that we should strongly encourage all societies to establish similar institutions. However, Mansfield and Snyder caution that in the early stages of democratization, demagogues may be unable to resist incentives to incite the passions of the people to such a point that war may come as a relief. Alternatively, one can place hopes in the peaceful attitudes of the population as a whole, but Owen points out that public opinion can often be shaped in such a way as to support war. Still, there are reasons to be concerned about the conflict potential that remains in place, even after establishment of democratic institutions. Weingast shows how both institutions and attitudes helped push the United States towards its own Civil War not much more than a century ago. Similar dangers may face some of the emerging democracies in today's world.

There remains questions about how democracies can best organize their own defense. Switzerland has long relied on a militia. McPhee discusses the Swiss security arrangements. The Israeli defense force has some of the characteristics of a militia. A professional military corps creates potentials for coups d'�tat and military dictatorships. Brian Loveman's (1993) The Constitution of Tyranny: Regimes of Exception in Spanish America emphasizes the way that military professionals have conceptualized their role in society as the defenders of civilization in opposition to popular revolutionary movements.

Weart, Spencer R. 1998. Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another. Yale University Press.

Arie M. Kacowicz. 1998. Zones of Peace in the Third World: South America and West Africa in Comparative Perspective. State University of New York Press.

Explanations of the democratic peace continue to be introduced and critically examined. Weart has culled the historical record to discuss several wars and confrontations from diverse historical eras and world regions. From these examples, he concludes that the key to peaceful relations lies not in institutions but rather in the attitude of the rulers of the respective governments. If these rulers are accustomed to allowing contestation among domestic factions, then they are unlikely to wage war on rulers with a similar attitude towards their own people. Kacowicz concludes that a general acceptance of the territorial status quo is an essential prerequisite for peace, even among governments that are not "fully" democratic. The regions examined by Kacowicz do not exactly correspond to the civilizational divides used in Huntington's work, but his work does illustrate the importance of taking a regional approach to international relations. His conclusion that West Africa was a region of "negative peace" (that is, the absence of interstate war) while domestic unrest was rife in such places as Liberia is worth careful critique. Together these two books extend the democratic peace literature toward a more nuanced consideration of interactions between domestic and international politics, and how these interactions might differ in different regions (or civilizations). Their conclusions about the requisites for a stable peace are remarkably similar to the characteristics of polycentricity and self-governance.

McGinnis, Michael, 1999. "Policy Substitutability in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies: A Model of Individual Choice and International Response." Unpublished Working Paper.

Greif, Avner. 1998. "Self-Enforcing Political Systems and Economic Growth: Late Medieval Genoa." In Analytic Narratives. Princeton University Press. Chapter 1.

Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent. 1998. "The Political Economy of Absolutism Reconsidered." In Analytical Narratives. Chapter 2.

Levi, Margaret. 1998. "Conscription: The Price of Citizenship. In Analytic Narratives. Chapter 3.

Bates, Robert. 1998. "The International Coffee Organization: An International Institution." In Analytic Narratives. Chapter 5.

This week's readings explore related analytical perspectives on conflict. McGinnis uses basic microeconomic theory to develop a model of interactions among humanitarian assistance and the dynamics of conflict. In many contemporary conflicts, restrictions on access to food has become a weapon of war, and food aid can, in some circumstances, prolong the conflict that originally contributed to the humanitarian emergency to which the international community is responding. The four chapters from the Analytic Narratives develop rational choice models of different aspects of the conflict process. Rosenthal and Levi address the ways in which rulers extract economic resources and elicit participation in wars. Greif and Bates show how collusion by rent-seeking groups can be enhanced or restricted by domestic and international institutions. These readings will also give us an opportunity to discuss further the strengths and weaknesses of formal modeling as a means to study the consequences of alternative institutional arrangements. Conflicts have characteristic dynamics, as was suggested in Boulding's paper on threat systems, but a wide array of institutions can be designed that help control natural tendencies toward escalation.

Nadelmann, Ethan A. 1990. "Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society." International Organization 44: 479-526.

E. H. Carr's classic book was written under the shadow of the approaching conflagration that later came to be known as World War II. His book is typically cited as a devastating critique of the idealist or utopian approach to international politics prominent in the period between the two World Wars, in which Western leaders placed too much reliance on the ability of international norms and institutions to resolve intractable conflicts in a peaceful manner. However, any careful reading of Carr's book also reveals an equally devastating critique of the pretensions of "realism" to having discovered universal laws of political behavior. Overall, Carr provides a balanced perspective on the complex interactions among politics, war, economics, and what he calls "power over opinion." Carr's analysis of morality has been dismissed as "idiosyncratic," but he points to the practical basis of an "international morality" that is being increasingly expressed in contemporary developments in international law and politics. His examples are dated, but the contemporary examples in Nadelmann's article show the continuing relevance of Carr's framework for analysis. Nadelmann highlights mutual effects among markets, morality, and military power in his analysis of the conditions under which certain activities come to be prohibited throughout large portions of the world, while other equally heinous activities continue unabated. This article nicely complements Carr's insistence that conflict resolution is a process that must somehow match power and principles. At this point it is useful to review the contrasting perspectives on conflict systems laid out by Boulding and Follett.

Benson, Bruce L. 1989. "The Spontaneous Evolution of Commercial Law" Southern Economic Journal 55: 644-61.

Berman, Harold J. 1983. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. (Week 9.)

Carr concludes with a strong assertion that the international community desperately needs to develop more realistic mechanisms of conflict resolution. Since conflict cannot be avoided, the core problem of governance is the peaceful management of conflict. Law is one important form of conflict resolution, especially if the concept of law is expanded beyond the standard view of law as something created by governments. To understand how societies have organized themselves for collective action, it is essential to understand the operation of customary law. Self-governing communities have established long-lasting practices for the management of common-pool resources that teach us important lessons in institutional design. In the international arena, commercial law can be seen as a form of customary law. Benson misses the mark a bit by saying that international commercial law evolved "spontaneously," but it has, for the most part, emerged without the direct participation of government officials. These readings in customary law remind us that institutional analysts must look beyond the activities of governments if we are to truly understand patterns of governance, and to enhance community capacities for self-governance.

Week 1: January 13	General Orientation to Institutional Analysis
Week 2: January 20	Hobbes' Mode of Analysis
Week 3: January 27	Hobbes' Theory of Sovereignty
Week 4: February 3	An Alternative to Hobbesian Sovereignty
Week 5: February 10	Public Administration and the Language of Analysis
Week 6: February 17	Tocqueville and the Foundations of Democracy in America
Week 7: February 24	Tocqueville and the Future of Democracy
Week 8: March 3	Religion, Politics, and Civilizations: Diverse Combinations
Week 9: March 10	Law, Democracy, and Human Civilizations
Spring Break	March 13 (after last class)-March 22 (classes resume)
Week 10: March 24	Conflict and International Society
Week 11: March 31	The Democratic Peace and Its Limitations
Week 12: April 7	Extensions of the Democratic Peace
Week 13: April 14	Conflict Analysis
Week 14: April 21	Law, Morality, and Conflict Resolution
Week 15: April 28	Customary Law and Governance
May 1 and May 3	Mini-Conference