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Comparative Political Systems
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THE ESSENCE OF COMPARATIVE POLITICSTOPIC 1: INTRODUCTION
Comparative politics: the study and comparison of domestic policies across countries
International relations: the study of relations between countries
Institutions: the organisations or activities that are self-perpetuated or valued for their own sake.
Culture plays a key role in institutions, as its their content, that helps de ne society. They can be
formal and informal institutions.
Politics: the struggle por power in any group, that will result in an individual or various persons
deciding for a larger group.
Power: the attempt to inform or in uence ones will on them
Politics and power: politics can be de ned as the competition for public power, and power is the
ability to extend of ones will.
Comparative method: compare to cases and draw conclusions
Inductive reasoning: with the evidence you look and try to form an hypothesis of for example the
posible correlation between nationalism and authoritarian regimes, namely, North Korea.
Deductive reasoning: you start with the hypothesis asn then seek out for the evidence. For
instance you start with the hypothesis in North Korea, and you try to nd similar cases.
By using these two methods, either deductive or inductive reasoning, you may be able to nd
possible correlations between the variables you are comparing, and in the end nd a possible
casual relationship: between cause and e ect.
However you may nd problems, when using the comparative method:
1. Controlling a large number of variables
2. Controlling the interactions between the variables, this is known as multicasuality
3. Limiting number of cases to do the research
4. Limited access to information from the cases
5. Uneven research with cases and areas
6. A possible selection bias: focusing on the e ect rather than the cause. This was exempli ed
with the antecedent of a possible revolution in a country. When performing the research we
are only going to focus in those countries that experienced those antecedents that led to a
revolution, leaving behind the countries that had the antecedents but not a revolution.
7. Di culty to distinguish between cause and e ect —> endogenity
Theory: the aggregated hypotheses, assumptions and facts
Modernisation theory: the mentality that societies as they develop they would transform into
capitalist democracies, converging around a set of shared values and characteristics.
Behavioural revolution: the theories and generalisations, that try to predict politics activity
Traditional approach: emphasises on describing the political systems and its institutions
Game theory: the rules and games in which politics is played, and how individuals can act on their
preferences: for instance voting
Quantitative method: gathering of statistical data across many countries to nd correlation
and test hypothesis about cause and e ect. Emphasises on breadth over depth.
Qualitative method: mastery of a few cases through the detailed study of history, language and
culture. Emphasises on depth over breadth.
Freedom: the individual’s ability to act independently, without the fear of punishment or restriction
from the state, a group, or other individual in society.
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