Comparing Liberal Democracies

Preface

Before retiring from the University of Richmond in 2005 as Professor of Political Science, I taught a variety of courses in the field of comparative politics, including introductory courses in comparative politics; courses on the politics and governments of the major European states; and courses on European politics with emphasis on the European Union.

For each of these courses I usually assigned a core text, for example, in the introductory course a paperback text dealing with the general subject of comparative politics and one or two supplementary books on other subjects such as selected democracies, less developed countries, or politics in certain regions. For my course on Great Britain, France, and Germany, I selected separate paperbacks for each country; however, I was always on the lookout for a book that would cover these democracies as well as the United States and the European Union, so that there would be time also to assign supplementary books on other topics, such as a brief history of twentieth century Europe. And for my course on European politics, I assigned one book on the EU and one or more books on other subjects dealing with European politics or current history. In each case I was usually unsuccessful in finding a book that I could use in any of the three courses that would introduce students to the institutional frameworks of the countries I wanted to cover, compare these in a systematic way with the United States–the country most students knew best (if not as well as they thought)–and include the EU as the most state-like international organization with 27 member states that exercises a strong and growing influence not only in Europe but also worldwide. Indeed, I was not able to find such a book that was also relatively brief and relatively inexpensive and yet offered the instructor great flexibility in adding supplementary reading for a variety of comparative politics courses. A main purpose of this book is to fill that void.

In addition to searching without success for a relatively inexpensive paperback that covered the major European democracies as well as the United States and the EU, I was also looking for a text with a thematic approach rather than the more common country-by-country approach. That is, I wanted a book that would compare the countries in a systematic manner, in this case organized around concepts generally familiar to American students such as separation of powers, checks and balances, and terms of office as well as the different political systems such as presidential and semi-presidential democracies vs parliamentary democracies; unitary states vs federal states; very different electoral systems; states with the British and American common law traditions vs the continental civil or Roman law traditions; and, finally, the more individualistic free enterprise-oriented United States vs the more collectivist social welfare states of continental Europe, with Britain somewhere in between.

The major purpose of this book, then, is to provide the reader with the background knowledge necessary to be better able to make comparisons among the major Western or “liberal” democracies on the basis of a number of common concepts and variables and also to see the major similarities and differences among four democratic states and the EU, which is not a state but is the most state-like international organization today and a model in many ways for similar organizations in other regions of the world.