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Summary Reading notes of introduction to comparative politics: Comparative Government and Politics, ISBN: 9781352005059 Introduction To Comparative Politics$14.48
Summary Reading notes of introduction to comparative politics: Comparative Government and Politics, ISBN: 9781352005059 Introduction To Comparative Politics
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Course
Introduction To Comparative Politics
Institution
Universiteit Leiden (UL)
Book
Comparative Government and Politics
Extensive notes of all the required readings for the introduction to comparative politics (ICP) exam.
Introduction to Comparative Politics Potential/Practice Exam Questions - GRADE 7,0
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Introduction To Comparative Politics
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ICP READINGS
READING CHAPTER 1
OVERVIEW
- Democracy: a political system in which government is based on a fair and open mandate from all
qualifies citizens of a state
- Importance of compare societies, governments, places, period of time, …
GOVERNMENT AND GOVERNANCE
- GOVERNMENET: the institutions and structures through which societies are governed.
- Highest level of political offices in a society es. President, minister, mayor, governor, …
- Organization reaching a sense of community
- Entire community of institutions endowed with public authority
- Group of people who govern a specific administration, the form of the system of rule, character of
the administration of the community
- Influenced by forces, groups, parties, media, corporations, opinions, …
- INSTITUTIONS: a formal organization or practice with a political purpose or effect, marked by
durability and internal complexity
- POLITICAL SYSTEM: the interactions and organizations through which a society reaches and
successfully enforced collective decisions
- GOVERNANCE: process by which decisions, laws and policies are made, with or without the input of
formal institutions
- Highlight the process and quality of collective decision-making
- Emphasis on the activity of governing
- Activity of ruling
POLITICS AND POWER
- POLITICS: the process by which people negotiate and compete, the process of making and executing
shared or collective decisions
- Different opinions about what politics actually is
- Interpretation of politics as community – Aristotele → politics is unavoidable and the highest human
activity
- Competitive struggle for power and resources between people and groups seeking their own
advantage
- It is a competition, pursuit of the public interest
- Continuation of war by other means, without bloodshed
- POWER: the capacity to bring about intended effects. The term is often used a synonym for
influence, but is also used more narrowly to refer to more forceful modes of influence notable,
getting one’s way by threats
- 3 dimensions of power:
- 1. Decisions are made on issues over which there is an observable conflict of interests
- 2. Keep issues off the political agenda by preventing the emergence to topics which would threaten
the values of interests of decision-makers
- 3. Potential issues are kept out of politics, whether through social forces, institutional practices, or
the decision of individuals
- 1 + 2 → conflict preferences
- 3 -> manipulated consensus, not just preventing their expressions
,THE STATE, AUTHORITY, AND LEGITIMACY
- AUTHORITY: states need to be authoritarian in order to function effectively
- -concept broader than power
- The right to rule
- Creates its own power, so long as people accept that the person in authority has the right to make
decisions
- Fundamental concept to comparative politics
- Built on a range of foundations: tradition, charisma, legal-rational norms
- LEGITIMACY: political concept, referring whether people accept the authority of a state, without
which its very existence in is question
- Built up from its past success
- Stable foundation for rule
- Based on authority, and those subject to its rule recognize its right to make decisions
IDEOLOGY
- A system of connected beliefs, a shared view of the world, idea on how politics, economy, society
should be structured
- Any system of thought expressing a view of human nature
- Matter of judgement
- Spectrum between right and left
- Usually right and left are associated with different ideologies and ideas:
CONCEPTS IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS
- Analyse concept, after looking at the countries and see how concepts fit, and see why you need to
know about these countries
- Most controversies in political science are about concepts and their definitions
- Concepts: ideas or terms with clear definitional structure
- 1. Concepts give meaning to reality, they are tools through which we think, reason, argue and
analyse es. Presidential system
- State: Set of ideas about organization in political life
- 2. Use of concept sets us apart from the world of practical politics es. European integration, political
scientist asks what is really EU integration?
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
- Major field of political sciences
- How government and politics work across range of cases
- Broadening and understanding of the political world and predicting political outcomes
,- The systematic study of government and politics in different countries, designed to better
understand them by drawing out their contrasts and similarities
- Broadening understand: improves the understanding of government and politics
- Learn about places, interpret events outside our boarders grows in importance as globalization
continues to deepen and broaden the political, economic and social links
- Predicting political outcomes: better understand the possible outcomes of political decisions,
elections, …
- Problem in the way we compare, information, reliability of data, …
- Variety of forms in which government and politics can be found
CLASSYFING POLITICAL SYSTEMS
- TYPOLOGY: a system of classification by which states, institutions, processes, political cultures, and
so on are derived into groups or types with common sets of attributes
- Divides states into groups with common features
- Stability and effectiveness
- Aristotele → 2 dimensions: 1. Participation in a political system 2. Rules governed in the common
interest → political system would be more stable and effective when its rules governed in the long-
term interest of the community
- 3 types of system in The spirit of the Laws, treaty on political theory, Montesquieu and de Secondat:
republican system→ people had supreme power, monarchical system → one person rules on the
basis of field and established laws, despotic systems → a single person ruled on the basis of their
own properties and perspectives
- Three world system: a political typology that divided the world along ideological lines, with states
labelled according to the side that took into the cold war
- First world: Wealthy, democratic, industrialized, states, patterns in the western alliance against
communism
- Second world: communist systems, most of states against Western alliance
- Third world: poorer, less democratic, less developed states, some took side in the cold war
- System provides labels
- End of the cold war = end of this typology
- Important relationship between politics and economics
- GDP to compare economic size
READING CHAPTER 3
- Many options for conducting comparative political research with advantages and disadvantages
- Comparative research makes choice that include the unit and level of analysis, and the variables to
be studies
- Research methods include the case of study, the qualitative, quantitative methods and the historical
method
- Comparative research has difference approaches and results according to whether it is empirical,
normative, or quantitative, qualitative
- Comparative research can benefit from taking the historical approach, comparing current cases with
the past examples, or development over time across countries
OVERVIEW
- COMPARATIVE METHOD: the process by which different cases are compared in order to better
understand their qualities and to develop hypothesis, theories and concepts
, - METHODOLOGY: the systematic analysis of the methods used in a given field of enurit. Also used to
describe the body of methods used, or the eans used to reach a particular set of conclusions
- UNIT OF ANALYSIS: the object of study in comparative politics, which could be the state, political
office institution ….
- LEVEL OF ANALAYSIS: the level of study in comparative politics, ranging from the macro political
system level to the micro individual level.
- 4 key methods: case studies, the qualitative, quantitative and historical method
THE CASE STUDY METHOD
- One of the most used strategies in research
- A research method involving detailed study of a particular object and the context within it exists
- Focus on policy, event, political institution process
- Case studies must be understood in terms of both their scope and their features
- Look in the depth of the phenomena within its actual context
- Intensive examination of one particular case and the context in which it exists
- Political science research methods:
- Techniques used by case studies:
- Reading the academic literature, examining primary and secondary sources, interview with
participant and other observers, direct observation
- Case analysis aims to identify how range of facts interact
HISTORICAL METHOD
- A research method based on studying cases from the past, often with a focus on their development
through time
- Help to examine across different periods
- Connect political sciences to history by process tracing (the study of the sequence of events linking
to cause and effect)
- Path dependence: the idea that the outcome of a political process depends on earlier decisions that
lead down a particular path
- Try to explain change in technology impacted the evolution in business
- Critical junctures: a turning point which establishes interests, structures, or institutions persisting
through time
- Sequencing: the idea that the order of events, not merely their occurrence, affects the outcome
- The order can help to account for dependent
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