5. How do countries vary?
Diversity leads to “Why?” questions
Why do countries choose to either allow or not
allow their citizens to freely participate in
elections?
Why do some countries have a presidential
system of government while others have a
parliamentary system of government?
6. Value in explaining differences
Qualitative Analysis
Historical or narrative accounts
Quantitative Analysis
Use of numbers, statistics, etc.
7. What is variance?
What are units of analysis?
8.
9. Usually looking at individual countries
Civil Conflict: Hutus andTutsis in Rwanda
These groups were arguing
over level of “Rwandan-ness”
or national identity.
14. What are concepts?
Examples: Freedom, Democracy, Development
Features of Good Concepts:
#1: Clarity and Coherence
#2: Consistency
#3: Usefulness
15.
16.
17. What causes what?
Variables – Change between cases
Two Methods to Understand Cases:
Most-Similar-Systems (MSS)
Most-Different-Systems (MDS)
18.
19.
20. What varies between the cases?
Your College Choice
21.
22.
23. Cases that are different in various respects yet
similar on particular outcome of interest
What explains similarity?
Variables that are not different (similar) are
interesting and important to us
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29. THEORY
General explanations of
how and why the world
works
HYPOTHESES
Proposed explanations for
why something occurs
30. CORRELATION
Association between two
variables
Example:
Stress Level
Time of Semester
How might these be related
or associated with one
another?
CAUSATION
One variable causes
another
Example:
Study Habits
Exam Grades in POL 252
Which variable causes the
other?
These are some prominent questions that scholars studying comparative politics (I will usually refer to these folks as “comparatists” from now on) study as part of the research agendas. Study these questions for a few minutes. How might you start answering them?
We will be discussing many of these topics, including democratization, institutions (e.g. executives, legislatures), and political revolutions throughout the course. My hope is that by the end of our semester together, you will have formed your own opinions on these and other critical issues.
As the introductory videos on Canvas remind us, our world is comprised of many countries. Countries are certainly not all the same—they vary in terms of size, ideology, culture, leadership, religious background, etc.
The inherent diversity amongst countries leads people to naturally question, “Why?”
Why do countries choose to either allow or not allow their citizens to freely participate in elections?
Why do some countries have a presidential system of government while others have a parliamentary system of government?
We will discuss these issues in more detail throughout the semester, but for now, it is important to realize that these questions represent significant distinctions amongst the nations of our world.
However, merely describing these differences is not enough.
Political scientists want to systematically explain these differences through qualitative or quantitative analysis
Qualitative Analysis: Comes from historical or other narrative accounts
Example: Almond and Verba’s Civic Culture (1963)
These scholars looked at five countries (US, UK, Italy, Germany, Mexico) and found distinct types of political culture. One of their results was that the US and the UK had similar culture based on citizen participation in politics. This make further sense if we consider the historical “Special Relationship” between these two nations.
Quantitative Analysis: Employs numbers and statistics as forms of data
Example: Using Freedom House scores to compare democratization levels
We will discuss the related issues of democracy and later this semester.
As I hope you are starting to see, a very useful way to compare countries is through the comparative method.
This comparative method answers research questions by looking for variance, or differences, between various units of analysis.
Units of analysis are simply cases that are used to make inferences about a population.
For example, I might ask the following question. “Are citizens living in richer countries more satisfied with their life than those in poorer countries?”
In thinking more about this question, maybe I assume that citizens in more economically prosperous countries might have more spending money for luxuries rather than just being able to afford basic necessities. I compare data from a general satisfaction survey which asks citizens, “On average, how satisfied are you with your life at this time?”
In this example, the countries shown (the U.S. and Nigeria) would be my units of analysis because they are the “units” or components that I am using to “analyze,” and hopefully, find an answer to my research question.
