30317 - POLITICAL SCIENCE AND COMPARATIVE POLITICS

This course provides an introduction to the political science subfield of comparative politics. Students of comparative politics, broadly speaking, seek to understand political outcomes by comparing political processes and institutions across countries. In this course, students are introduced to a number of important themes in comparative politics (such as state-building, civil war, democratization, and representation) as well as select topics in international relations (which concerns interactions between nation-states in a global economic and political system). The course provides the building blocks for topics that are explored in more depth in later stages of the degree program.

• Formation and failure of the nation-state.
• Ethnicity and ethnic conflict.
• Determinants of democracy.
• Democratic transition and consolidation.
• Regime type and economic performance.
• Social cleavages and party systems.
• Political ideologies.
• Democratic electoral systems.
• Presidential and parliamentary systems.
• International conflict and cooperation.

• Summarize major theories and/or empirical findings from political science research concerning:
  • The origins of nation-states. 
  • The major differences between authoritarian and democratic regimes.
  • The causes of, and problems associated with, transitions to democracy. 
  • The major forms of constitutional design in modern democracies.
  • The impact of social cleavages and ideological conflict on voting and party competition.
  • The relationship between electoral systems and election outcomes.
  • The lawmaking process across different types of regimes in advanced industrial democracies. 
  • The causes of conflictual and cooperative behavior of nation-states.

• Discuss and critically evaluate major theoretical and empirical research in political science on a variety of important themes in comparative politics and international relations.

• Face-to-face lectures

• A partial exam, in an open-ended short answer format, is given (woth 50% of the course grade) to evaluate student knowledge of political science research covered in the first part of the course.
• An end-term partial exam, in an open-ended short answer format, is given (woth 50% of the course grade) to evaluate student knowledge of political science research covered in the second part of the course.

A final exam, in an open-ended short answer format, is given (woth 100% of the course grade) to evaluate student knowledge of political science research covered in both the first and second parts of the course.

The list of course readings is available in the course syllabus, which is made available by the end of July 2018.