Social Science Methods
What is a variable?
A measurable entity that can vary or change
What is an example of a universal welfare state benefit in the US?
K-12 Education
What is an example of pushback against globalization from current events?
Brexit, MAGA
What is a command economy and what is a country example of it?
A command economy is an economy that is controlled and coordinated by the central government. Examples are North Korea and China.
What is an extractive institution and who prospers as a result of them?
This is an institution set up simply to extract resources, and does not provide any benefits to the general population. The elites prosper as a result of extractive institutions.
Why is it important to have control variables when conducting social science research?
Control variables help you to be increasingly more certain that the effect that is demonstrated by the IVs on the DV are actually a result of the IV, and not being caused by another variable
Present one argument for and one argument against a large welfare state
FOR: Provides public goods that would not otherwise exist due to various market failures (collective action problems, etc)
AGAINST: The government should not intervene in the economy, prioritization of the free market, higher taxes
What is a cultural effect of globalization?
Countries around the world are becoming more homogeneous in terms of their cultures, since culture (especially those cultures from more prosperous states) can be exported to countries world wide. Example: Popularity of McDonalds, Hollywood films, US singers, etc in many countries around the world
What is a market failure? What are 3 types of market failures?
A market failure is the inability of the market to produce or distribute wanted goods or services
Increasing returns to scale: it costs increasingly less to produce units of a product the more of it you produce. This can create monopolies.
Public goods: Public goods such as highways create a collective action problem
Externalities: Externalities, such as pollution, are unable to be fixed through the market
What is an inclusive institution? Who prospers as a result of it?
Inclusive institutions are created to give large amounts of people access to benefits of government. Non-elites benefit because of these, and nations are more stable.
What is a probabilistic relationship? Is it the same as a correlation? A causal mechanism?
Probabilistic relationships display tendencies, but are not hard and fast laws. You can infer a probabilistic relationship from a correlation, but this does not imply causation. (Nor does correlation!)
What are three hypotheses for differences in welfare state size and spending?
1. Left-Labor
2. Wagner's Law
3. State strength
4. Diversity
What is the race to the bottom?
Countries with lower amounts of capital will lower their taxes and human rights standards in order to compete for foreign investments with the countries around them
What is Jarod Diamond's thesis regarding development?
The different availabilities of animal and plant species created different farming outcomes, which led to different paths of technological change. The Spanish were able to dominate South America because of their longer history with farming, access to wheat and barley, use of horses
Guns, Germs and Steel
What is creative destruction and why do we care about it?
Creative destruction is when innovation is allowed to make non-innovative processes/institutions obsolete. It matters because all industries become obsolete in a global economy, so competition needs to be encouraged.
Ex: Dutch East India company has a monopoly on trade in the Indies, no one has any incentive to create more efficient cargo ships.
Identify the IV in the following hypothesis:
An increase in the number of years of school attended by girls in a certain country leads to an increase in the percentage of people living in urban areas
IV: number of years of school attended by girls
What is a christian democratic welfare system and what is an example of a country that uses this type of welfare system?
Emphasizes employment based welfare benefits. This type of system protects against disruptions from income (provides unemployment insurance)
Examples: Germany, France, Italy
25% of GDP devoted to welfare programs
According to the Samuels, does globalization cause poverty?
No. According to the evidence presented in Samuels, the more globalized a country is, the more its economy grows and the more poverty is reduced.
What are the 4 ways in which social underdevelopment presents itself?
Why do nations fail?
Extractive institutions cause low levels of innovation, impotence for citizens to work, low levels of trust in the government, and lead to consolidation of power by elites/dictators
Construct a hypothesis from the following information:
IV: Per capita GDP
DV: Democracy
The effect of an increase in per capita GDP is an increase in democracy score
What is one hypothesized impact of globalization on welfare state spending?
"Race to the bottom": Investors favor lower amounts of government spending on welfare programs, and since government policies are a result of market forces, countries with less capital adopt less welfare policies
Globalization has the largest effect in countries most exposed to the global market (i.e smaller countries like Sweden)
Globalization has no direct effect on welfare state size
What is one way that globalization weakens democracy? What is one way that it strengthens democracy?
WEAKENS: IGOs, which make most of the decisions on global economics, are comprised of unelected officials
STRENGTHENS: rise of human rights watch dog groups that ensure lower amounts of human rights abuses in various countries. Many IGOs work to defend democracy.
How does economic under development present itself?
Poor infrastructure
Large informal sector
Informal housing
Economy driven by intensive manufacturing
Compare and contrast North and South Korea in explaining why these similarly homogenous nations have reached such different fates using the ideas from Why Nations Fail
South Korea, despite not being a democracy in the 1950s, had an economy where private property was honored and the free market was able to prevail, with the state supporting economic ventures (inclusive). Education was highly valued, with incentives to excel in school.
North Korea had a command economy, where all benefits were given to the supreme leader (extractive institutions). Education in North Korea is almost exclusively propaganda.