Comparative Politics

Units

1. 1

   The comparative method

   4 lessons

   1. What comparative politics studiesExplain what comparative politics asks, separate describing a country from explaining a difference between countries, and name the dependent variable, an independent variable and the unit of analysis in a study of democracy.
   2. Most similar and most different designsApply Mill's methods of agreement and difference to a table of cases, and choose between a most similar and a most different systems design for a comparative question.
   3. Small-N and large-N comparisonCompare single case studies, small-N comparison and large-N statistical analysis by what each gains and loses, and explain the many variables, few cases problem and selection on the dependent variable.
   4. Concepts and the ladder of abstractionExplain Sartori's ladder of abstraction, the trade between a concept's intension and its extension, show how conceptual stretching goes wrong, and contrast classical with family resemblance concepts.
2. 2

   The state and state formation

   4 lessons

   1. Defining the stateState Weber's definition of the state, distinguish the state from the nation, the government and the regime, and explain Westphalian sovereignty and its limits.
   2. Contract and predatory theories of the stateContrast contract theories of the state's origin, Hobbes and Locke, with predatory theories, and explain Olson's stationary and roving bandits and why a ruler with a long horizon taxes less.
   3. War made the stateExplain Tilly's argument that war made the state and the state made war in early modern Europe, through extraction, taxation and bureaucracy, and Herbst's argument that low population density in Africa led to weaker states.
   4. State capacity and fragile statesDistinguish fiscal, coercive and administrative state capacity, contrast Mann's despotic and infrastructural power, and explain how the Fragile States Index measures fragility, using Somalia as a case.
3. 3

   Nations and nationalism

   3 lessons

   1. What is a nationDistinguish primordialist, instrumentalist and constructivist views of national and ethnic identity, and explain Anderson's argument that nations are imagined communities spread by print capitalism, using the hardening of Hutu and Tutsi identities in Rwanda as a test case.
   2. Modernist theories of nationalismExplain Gellner's theory that industrialization and mass education produced nationalism, Hobsbawm and Ranger's invented traditions, and the contrast between civic nationalism in France and ethnic nationalism in Germany.
   3. Ethnic diversity and politicsMeasure ethnic fractionalization, explain why only some cleavages become politically salient using Posner's Chewas and Tumbukas in Zambia and Malawi, and describe Lijphart's consociationalism and power sharing in Belgium and Lebanon.
4. 4

   Political economy and development

   4 lessons

   1. Modernization theoryState Lipset's 1959 modernization theory that wealth, education and urbanization bring democracy, read the scatterplot of income against democracy, and explain Przeworski and Limongi's finding that wealth sustains democracies more than it creates them.
   2. Dependency and world-systems theoryExplain dependency theory and Wallerstein's world-systems model of core, semi-periphery and periphery, and compare import substitution in Latin America with export-led growth and the developmental state in South Korea.
   3. Institutions and developmentDefine institutions as North's rules of the game, explain Acemoglu and Robinson's contrast of inclusive and extractive institutions and the colonial origins argument using settler mortality, and use the two Koreas as a natural comparison.
   4. The resource curseExplain why oil and mineral wealth correlate with slower growth and with autocracy, through Dutch disease and the rentier state that needs no taxation and so faces less demand for representation, using Ross's evidence and the contrast of Nigeria and Norway.
5. 5

   Democracy and its measurement

   3 lessons

   1. Defining democracyDistinguish minimalist definitions of democracy, Schumpeter's competitive elections and Przeworski's alternation rule, from substantive ones, and explain Dahl's polyarchy as a two-dimensional space of contestation and participation.
   2. Measuring democracyCompare Polity, Freedom House and V-Dem by what each codes, how it scales and where it sets thresholds, contrast dichotomous and continuous measures, and show how coding choices change which countries count as democracies.
   3. Political cultureExplain Almond and Verba's civic culture of parochial, subject and participant orientations, Putnam's social capital argument in Making Democracy Work using Italy's regions, and Inglehart's World Values Survey map, and weigh the objection that culture follows institutions.
6. 6

   Democratization and backsliding

   4 lessons

   1. Waves of democratizationDescribe Huntington's three waves of democratization and two reverse waves from the 1820s to today, read the counts of democracies across them, and explain the third wave that began in Portugal in 1974 and the causes Huntington gave.
   2. Transitions to democracyDistinguish top-down, pacted and bottom-up transitions, explain O'Donnell and Schmitter's hardliners, softliners, moderates and radicals as a strategic game, and apply it to Spain after Franco and Poland's round table.
   3. Democratic consolidationExplain Linz and Stepan's idea of a consolidated democracy as the only game in town, in its behavioral, attitudinal and constitutional senses, apply Huntington's two-turnover test, and say how income and economic performance affect democratic survival.
   4. Democratic backslidingExplain backsliding by executive aggrandizement rather than coups, using Bermeo's categories and Levitsky and Ziblatt's norms of mutual toleration and forbearance, and apply them to the capture of referees and changes of rules in Hungary, Venezuela and Turkey.
7. 7

   Authoritarian regimes

   4 lessons

   1. Types of authoritarian regimesContrast Linz's totalitarian, authoritarian and sultanistic regimes, set out Geddes's typology of personalist, military, single-party and monarchic regimes, and explain how each type tends to break down, with durations from her data.
   2. Selectorate theoryDefine the selectorate and the winning coalition in Bueno de Mesquita's selectorate theory, show with arithmetic why leaders with small coalitions provide private goods while those with large coalitions provide public goods, and apply the logic to autocracies and democracies.
   3. How dictators surviveExplain Svolik's twin problems of authoritarian power sharing and authoritarian control, describe repression, co-optation and nominally democratic institutions such as parties and legislatures (Gandhi), and say why coups are the main threat to dictators.
   4. Competitive authoritarianismDefine Levitsky and Way's competitive authoritarianism and electoral autocracy as regimes with real but unfair elections, describe the tilted playing field and the arenas of contestation, and apply them to Russia under Putin.
8. 8

   Presidential and parliamentary systems

   4 lessons

   1. Classifying democratic regimesClassify democracies as parliamentary, presidential or semi-presidential with a decision tree based on whether the legislature can remove the government by a vote of no confidence and whether a president is popularly elected for a fixed term, and explain cohabitation in France.
   2. Government formation in parliamentsDefine minimal winning, minimum connected winning and surplus coalitions, work out the possible governments for a hypothetical parliament, explain minority governments and investiture votes, and say why cabinets fall.
   3. Perils of presidentialismExplain Linz's perils of presidentialism, dual legitimacy, rigid terms and winner-take-all, weigh the counterevidence from Cheibub, and describe Mainwaring's argument about the difficult combination of presidentialism and multiparty systems in Latin America.
   4. Veto playersExplain Tsebelis's veto players theory, in which more veto players with more distant ideal points shrink the winset of the status quo and produce policy stability, identify institutional and partisan veto players, and work out the winset in a one-dimensional policy space.
9. 9

   Electoral systems

   4 lessons

   1. Majoritarian electoral systemsDescribe single-member plurality, the two-round runoff and the alternative vote, define district magnitude, and work seat counts that show manufactured majorities, using the United Kingdom's elections of 2019 and 2024.
   2. Proportional representationAllocate seats in list proportional representation with the D'Hondt and Sainte-Lague divisor methods on a vote table, explain legal thresholds and open versus closed lists, and describe the single transferable vote in Ireland.
   3. Mixed systems and disproportionalityDistinguish mixed member proportional systems, as in Germany and New Zealand, from mixed member majoritarian systems, as in Japan, and measure vote-seat disproportionality with the Gallagher least squares index computed on examples.
   4. Duverger's lawState Duverger's law that plurality rule produces two-party systems and his hypothesis that proportional representation produces multipartism, explain the mechanical and psychological effects and strategic voting, and compute the Laakso and Taagepera effective number of parties.
10. 10

    Parties and party systems

    3 lessons

    1. What parties doList the functions of political parties, explain Aldrich's account of why ambitious politicians form parties, and distinguish cadre, mass, catch-all and cartel parties with the decline of party membership as evidence.
    2. Social cleavages and party systemsExplain Lipset and Rokkan's four cleavages and the freezing hypothesis, trace the party families each cleavage produced, and describe the newer postmaterialist and green-alternative-libertarian versus traditional-authoritarian-nationalist divide.
    3. Party systems and populismClassify party systems with Sartori's typology including polarized pluralism, define populism with Mudde as a thin ideology that pits the pure people against the corrupt elite, and describe the rise of the European radical right with recent vote shares.
11. 11

    Federalism and constitutional design

    3 lessons

    1. Federal and unitary statesDistinguish federal from unitary states, separate political, fiscal and administrative decentralization, contrast symmetric and asymmetric federalism, and apply Stepan's coming-together and holding-together types to the United States, India and Spain.
    2. Federalism and conflictWeigh whether federalism manages ethnic conflict or fuels secession, using ethnofederalism in Nigeria, Belgium and the former Yugoslavia, and explain market-preserving federalism and soft budget constraints.
    3. Majoritarian and consensus democracyExplain Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy, the executives-parties and federal-unitary dimensions with their ten variables, contrast the Westminster model with consensus democracy, include constitutional rigidity and judicial review, and place countries on a two-dimensional map.
12. 12

    Contention and political violence

    5 lessons

    1. The collective action problemExplain Olson's logic of collective action, including public goods, free riding, group size and selective incentives, and use a payoff table to show why a rational citizen may stay home from a protest even when she wants the protest to succeed.
    2. Social movementsExplain resource mobilization, political opportunity structure and framing in the work of McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, and Kuran's preference falsification and threshold cascades, and apply them to the revolutions of Eastern Europe in 1989.
    3. RevolutionsExplain Skocpol's structural theory of social revolution in France, Russia and China, state breakdown combined with peasant revolt, and Chenoweth and Stephan's finding that nonviolent campaigns succeed more often than violent ones.
    4. Civil warCompare the correlates of civil war onset, Fearon and Laitin's opportunity and weak state argument of poverty, rough terrain and large population against Collier and Hoeffler's greed versus grievance, and explain Kalyvas's account of violence within civil wars, using Colombia as a case.
    5. Ethnic conflict and genocideExplain Posen's ethnic security dilemma, elite manipulation and fear in ethnic violence, and the logic of genocide and mass killing in Straus and Valentino, with Rwanda in 1994 as the central case.