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POLITICAL SCIENCE 324 NOTES
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- Stellenbosch University (SUN)
All you need to get a distinction for the political science 324 A1
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Comparative politics 324Week1 lecture 1
Lectures: prof. N. De Jager
Minimum honers program : 3rd year modules average 68%— close end of
September — 30
Writing in 3001 krotoa
• The overarching question/ problem ?
THE DECREASE OF DEMOCRACY : TOPICS THIS TERM
• The fall of the Berlin Wall/ the racism will usher in new political economic
freedom
- Ideologically liberalism was coming in
• The three ways of democratisation — Samuel Huntington
- The three bulges to turn to democracy
- 1st after world war 1
- 2nd decolonisation
- 3rd fall of communism
• The end of history used the three waves of democracy
• Why democracy
- The future of democracy is closely associated with freedom in the world
- There is a decline in freedom
• There is a global decline in liberal democracy
- There is a trend in decrease in global freedom
- 8 out of 10 people live in countries ranked as not free or partly free
- Lethoto moved from partly free to free
• Question :
- What has happened to democracy
- Why is there a decline
, - And is democracy the ideal
THE NATURE OF COMPARATIVE POLITICAL ANALYSIS
• Example of comparing legislature
- They are not physically the same
‣ Some have 100 seats others 75
‣ Some 2 building other 100
• The study of Comparative politics ?
- People want to show how and why comparative analysis is undertaken
• ‘The most similar system’ and ‘most di erent’ design
- Proposed by Teune and worski
- They are two general approaches to the comparative method
• It is a sub eld of political science
- Systematic study of the worlds systems explaining di erences between as
well as similarities among countries
- Interested in exploring patterns processes and regularity among political
systems
( more on this later in notes)
THE MOST SIMILAR SYSTEMS DESIGN
• Argued to be the most used model of comparative
• Also known as : Mills method
• It is explained as :
- Investigators take two systems that are mostly similar and then study the
di erence that exist between the to similar systems
- They then investigate the impact that these di erences have on particular
aspects such as social or political phenomenons
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, - Case is similar but Dependant variables ( the thing were trying to gure out
what caused the change in two countries ) di er
• Example of Canada and Australia
- Similar political histories, structures and culture ( all political)
- In Australia, public policy made easily and e ciently however panda it is
the opposite
- Then we can conclude that the cause is not the structures ie the political
system histories culture etc but rather something else that must account for
the di erences
- Additionally it is typically a small list of possibilities that can explain the
di erences due to the fact that the list if similar structures is long while the
dissimilar things are short
THE MOST DIFFERENT SYSTEMS DESIGN/APPROACH
• This is when :
- Two or more countries that are not similar are chosen for investigation
- The investigators will then look at similarities between the di erent nations
- Very di erent cases but same dependent variables
- Whe are trying to explain why they have dominant party systems
‣ Eg: SA look at Botswana south africa — two very di erent countries but
both have dominant party systems
• Example: Britain and UAE
- Di erent nations in terms of
‣ Political structure/ political behaviour
- We investigate the similarities
‣ If similarities found — due to the vast di erences in political and
historical political structure we can assume that the similarities are not
due to the stated but rather must be from some other aspect
THE POINT OF COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ?
• It is important that consideration is given during the comparative method to :
theoretical rationale
- Why are we undertaking the comparison that we are undertaking
- What objects do we want to study
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