Unit I: Introduction to Comparative Politics

Key Assessments:

  • What is comparative politics?
  • What are the advantages of comparative analysis?
  • What are the necessary obstacles to comparing political systems that are very different in language, size, customs, organizations and policy?
  • How and to what extent can these be overcome?
  • What are the characteristics of a western democracy?
  • Is it still possible to talk of a communist model of politics?
  • What are the attractions of democratization?
  • What are the necessary criteria to determine the difference between a developed country and a developing country?

Objectives:

Political Culture and Political History--Historical Sources of Contemporary Politics

Key Assessments

  • What is the impact of history on contemporary politics? Can a country escape its past?
  • What are the consequences for the different pathways to democracy in Britain and France? What are the consequences of transition in Russia and China? What are the interactions between the colonial and traditional legacies in developing countries such as Mexico?
  • Distinguish between the internal and external sources of political change (political upheaval, industrialization, urbanization, economic crisis, international economy, foreign invasion, diffusion of new ideas and ideologies and revolutions)

Assess the nature of political change by:

  • Identifying the differences between regime continuity and change (revolutionary and evolutionary, violent and non-violent regime change)
    • Assess the historical evolution of national political traditions
  • Formulating ideas related to the changing basis of legitimacy
    • Evaluate the nature and sources of government’s legitimacy
      • Social Contract
      • Constitutionalism
      • Ideologies
      • Other claims to political legitimacy
  • Recognizing the scope of governmental activity
  • Analyzing the five revolutions that established the base for the five contemporary political systems
  • Evaluate the consequences of political change (redistribution of land, change in ownership of means of production, circulation of elites, changing nation of citizen participation, the acquisition and/or loss of citizen rights)
  • Determine the basis of social cleavages and analyze the depth and consequences of such cleavages
  • Describe the translation of social cleavages into political conflict.

Social Setting--Society and Politics
Key Assessments

How do social forces such as class, ethnicity, regionalism, and religion affect current politics? Why are we seeing a broad revival of small nationalisms around the world?

  • Determine the basis of social cleavages and analyze the depth and consequences of such cleavages
  • Describe the translation of social cleavages into political conflict.

Political Systems—The Framework of Politics
Key Assessments
How do parliamentary systems operate? Why are they more common than presidential systems? What is a centralized political system and can it be dramatic? What kinds of institutional changes are occurring in Russia, China and Mexico as these countries transition.

  • Differentiate between types of regimes (communist, authoritarian, totalitarian, democratic etc)
  • Evaluate the scope of government activity (social and economic policy, planning and control)
  • Identify and qualify the institutions of national governments (legislatures, executives, bureaucracies and courts)
    1. The major formal and informal institutional arrangements of powers
    2. Relations among these institutions
    3. Relations to subnational political units

Political Participation—The Citizen and Politics
Key Assessments
How do citizens take part in politics in different settings? How do electoral systems affect voting outcomes? What are the roles of political parties? Why do they often struggle in third world countries? What is the role and power of interest groups?

  • Explain the beliefs that citizens hold about their governments and its leaders
  • Evaluate the processes by which citizens learn about politics
  • Analyze the way in which citizens’ vote and otherwise participate in political life.
  • Differentiate between the variety of factors that influence citizens from one another in terms of their political beliefs and behavior.
  • Determine the impact of political culture on one’s current economic system.
  • Compare the strengths and weaknesses of political parties and interest groups
    1. Compare functions, organization an development
    2. Analyze the range of interests that are or are not represented
    3. Indicate the links to institutions of government and effects on political process

Elite Recruitment—Political Leadership
Key Assessments
What kinds of people are attracted to leadership positions? How are they recruited? What is the power of the bureaucracy? What kind of political power ins exercised by the military?

  • Analyze the different political leaderships, their recruitment and succession
  • Analyze the impact of the military on the political structure and legitimacy of the current administration
  • Compare and contrast the political participation of the various polities.

Policies and Political Performance
Key Assessments
On what basis should we evaluate other political systems? Why have social welfare systems been as popular as they are? What are the civil liberty challenges in each country? Can countries (at all levels of development) keep up with the rising expectations of their peoples?

Key Terms within the Introductory Chapters

Ethnocentrism Behavioralism Politics
Input Output State
System Functions Polity Demands/Supports
Environment GNP GDP
PPP Social Stratification Politicalization
Adjudication Interest Aggregation Interest Articulation
Process Functions Welfare State Developing Country
Collectivization Post-industrial Agrarian state
Decentralization Ideology Liberalization
Stability Charisma Legitimacy
Socialization Modernization Democratization
Monarchy Aristocracy Tyranny
Oligarchy Democracy Communism
Sovereignty Rule of Law Constitutionalism
Political Efficacy Political Culture Participation
Participants Subjects Parochials
Ethnicity/Culture/Tribe Electoralism Political System
Parliamentary and Presidential Systems Bureaucracy Transition of Power
Political elite Nomenklatura Cohabitation
Proportional Representation Homeostatic Interdependent
European Union NATO UN
NAFTA WTO