Political Science 850                                                                                                                           R.A. Francisco

Fall 2012                                                                                                                                               204 Blake

Friday                                                                                                                                                    1:00-3:50 pm

                                                                               

 

Seminar in Comparative Politics

 

Our course surveys the core of the research field of comparative politics. Comparative politics covers all of the domestic governments in the world. It is concerned principally with the discovery and confirmation of knowledge about the institutions and behavior of domestic governments and their citizens. Comparative politics is arguably the central field in political science, since it subsumes U.S. politics, public policy, and even public administration. The reality, however, is that comparative politics is alternatively seen as a messy, disorganized field or one that focuses specially on one country or region by each individual. It is neither of these. This semester we will attempt to discern what the field really comprises.

 

The course is a proseminar. It guides you through the history of the field, its eclectic methodologies, its topics and the knowledge we have confirmed. None of this is intuitive and most is neglected in undergraduate comparative politics courses. To the extent possible, I will not lecture. I will introduce topics and their backgrounds, ask questions and even occasionally debate. All this works best if you read for meaning each of the assigned papers and chapters each week. Recommended readings are for those who will take more graduate comparative politics courses and for those taking the preliminary examination in comparative politics.

 

Office Hours and Contact Information

 

My office is 313 Blake. You may e-mail me (ronfran@ku.edu), phone me (864-9023) or visit me there. Office hours are reserved on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9:00 until 10:50 and well as on Wednesdays from 1:00 to 3:00. I can also arrange appointments if the office hours preclude your visit. This syllabus is available in digital form at http://web.ku.edu/ronfran/.

 

 

Grading and Assignments

 

Each student must write a research design for an open problem. Problems in each topic of the course are below each of the reading assignments. Choose one and design a research project that can solve one of the open problems. Early in the course I will discuss what constitutes a good research design. The scary research design comprises 25 percent of your grade and is due at the start of class on October 31.

 

A larger project constitutes one-half of the semester grade. The task is to take one of the topics we cover and to write what we know about it, the findings of each (active or moribund) research program, bottlenecks, and to recommend what should be done to broaden the findings of the topic. This assignment seeks to help you later in writing research papers that might be presented at conventions or sent to journals. This essay is due after Thanksgiving on November 30 at 4:00 pm.

 

The final quarter of the grade constitutes a take-home final examination and an evaluation of participation in the course. The take-home examination will be handed out on November 14 and is due on Wednesday, December 5 at 4:00 pm. Late papers lose one letter grade per day.

 

Texts

 

There is necessarily a great deal of reading required in a survey graduate course. Please buy the three texts below, and then either buy the photocopy packet for the course, or go to the reserve area and read each assignment that is not in the texts.

 

Mark I. Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman, eds. Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture and Structure. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009, second edition.

Adam Przeworski. Democracy and the Market. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Kenneth A. Shepsle and Mark S. Bonchek, Analyzing Politics: Rationality, Behavior and Institutions. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.  Or Shepsle’s new edition in 2010.

Topics

 

  • Introduction and History; Philosophy of Science;  Introduction to Social Choice Theory
  • Methodological Issues in Comparative Politics: Case Studies, Data Sets, Selection Bias, and MDS
  • The Dominant Approaches in Comparative Politics: Culture, Structure and Rationality
  • Macro Forms of Government: Parliamentary, Presidential, Semi-Presidential & Dictatorships; Group Choice

·         Institutions, Institutional Design, Arrow’s Theorem and Spatial Models of Majority Rule

  • Electoral Laws and their Consequences; Political Parties
  • Voting and Voting Behavior
  • Democratization and Democracy vs. the Results of Social Choice Theory
  • Interest Groups, Bureaucracies, Legislatures and their Interaction
  • Ethnicity and Nationalism; Political Culture
  • Political and Economic Development
  • Political Economy and the Welfare State
  • Protest and Repression; Revolution
  • Rational Choice and Area Studies and the Future of Comparative Politics
  • Micro-Macro Level Integration

 

 

24 August: Introduction and History; Philosophy of Science; Introduction to Social Choice Theory

 

Lichbach and Zuckerman, Chapter 1.

Shepsle and Bonchek, Chapter 1. Or Shepsle, Chapter 1.

 

Recommended:

 

Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. New York: New American Library, 1970.

Imre Lakatos. “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.” In Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, eds. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Ruth Lane. The Art of Comparative Politics. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997.

Martin C. Needler. The Concepts of Comparative Politics. New York: Praeger, 1991.

Howard Wiarda, ed. New Directions in Comparative Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002.

Frank L. Wilson. Concepts and Issues in Comparative Politics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.

 

Key journals: American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Politics, Political Research Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly.

 

Research questions:

 

1. How logically complete and consistent is any research program in comparative politics?

2. Find a research program rife for a problem shift and suggest a new research approach.

3. Are any of the “vanished” theories of comparative politics (see Barbara Geddes’s “Paradigms and Sandcastles” below) worthy of resuscitation?

 

31 August: APSA meetings; no class

 

7 September:  Methodological Issues in Comparative Politics: Case Studies, Data Sets, Selection Bias, and MDS

 

 

Lichbach and Zuckerman, chapter 3.

Barbara Geddes. “How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics.” Political Analysis 2: 1990: 131-150. (J-STOR)

Stanley Lieberson. “Small N’s and Big Conclusions: An Examination of the Reasoning in Comparative Studies Based on a Small Number of Cases.” Social Forces 70(2): 307-320. (J-STOR)

Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune. The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger, 1982 (originally published 1970), pp. 17-30; 74-87; and 132-134. (J-STOR)

Giovanni Sartori. “Comparing and Miscomparing.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 3:3 (July 1991): 243-257. (J-STOR)

Michael D. Ward, “Cargo Cult Social Science and Eight Fallacies of Comparative Political Research” (handout)

 

Key journal: Political Analysis

 

Recommended:

 

Robert Adcock and David Collier. “Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research.” American Political Science Review 95:3 (September 2001): 529-546.

Roger Benjamin. “Strategy Versus Methodology in Comparative Research.” Comparative Political Studies 9:4 (January 1977): 475-484.

Thomas D. Cook and Donald T. Campbell. Quasi-Experimentation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

Karl W. Deutsch. The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control. New York: The Free Press, 1963.

Douglas Dion. “Evidence and Inference in the Comparative Case Study.” Comparative Politics 30(2), 1998: 127-145.

Bernard Grofman, ed. Political Science as Puzzle Solving. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.

Charles A. Lave and James G. March. An Introduction to Models in the Social Sciences. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993.

Stanley Lieberson. Making it Count: The Improvement of Social Research and Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

James Mahoney. “Toward a Unified Theory of Causality.” Comparative Political Studies 41:4/5 (April-May 2008: 412-436.

Richard L. Merritt. Systematic Approaches to Comparative Politics. New York: Rand McNally, 1970.

Thomas C. Schelling. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978.

 

Research questions:

 

1. Find a published paper that you think has a biased sample. Select other samples that you think are more valid, test the theory and/or results and then write a replication paper.

2. Find an instance of the use of comparative history that includes the problems Lieberson writes about above. Find more cases to test the theory or results in another manner

 

14  September: The Dominant Approaches to Comparative Politics: Culture, Structure and Rationality

 

Lichbach and Zuckerman, chapters 1, 2, and 4.

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapter 2.

Adam Przeworski and John Sprague, Paper Stones, Epilogue. (packet)

David Collier. “Comparative-Historical Analysis: Where do We Stand?” Newsletter of the APSA Section in Comparative Politics, Summer 1998: 1-2 & 4-5. (packet)

Mark Blyth, “Great Punctuations: Prediction, Randomness, and the Evolution of Comparative Political Science, American Political Science Review, November 2006, 493-498. (J-STOR)

 

Recommended:

 

Jeffrey Friedman. The Rational Choice Controversy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.

Clifford Geertz. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Paul E. Johnson. Social Choice: Theory and Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998.

André Kaiser. “Types of Democracy: From Classical to New Institutionalism.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 9 (1997): 419-444.

Atul Kohli et al. “The Role of Theory in Comparative Politics: A Symposium.” World Politics 48:1 (October 1995): 1-49.

Mark Irving Lichbach. “Regime Change: A Test of Structuralist and Functionalist Explanations.” Comparative Political Studies 14(1), 1981: 49-73.

George Tsebelis. Nested Games: Rational Choice in Comparative Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Gordon Tullock, Arthur Seldon, and Gordon L. Brady. Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute.

 

Research questions:

 

1. Locate a work using culture, structure or rationality as its method and test it with one or two of the other approaches.

2. Read James DeNardo, Power in Numbers (1985, p. 17). Use a structural theoretical work and test it in time as DeNardo suggests.

3. What are the limitations of the rationality approach? Find one and try to extend it with another approach.

 

21 September: Macro Forms of Government; Parliamentary, Presidential, Semi-Presidential and Dictatorial; Group Choice

 

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapters 3 & 16. Or Shepsle, chapters 3 & 16.

Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Shugart. “Juan Linz, Presidentialism and Democracy: A Critical Appraisal.” Comparative Politics 29:4 (July 1997): 449-471. (J-STOR)

Timothy Frey, “A Politics of Institutional Choice.” Comparative Political Studies 30:5 (October 1997): 523-552. (J-STOR)

 

Recommended:

 

John Gerring, Strom C. Thacker & Carola Thacker. “Are Parliamentary Systems Better?” Comparative Political Studies 42:3:327-359.

John D. Huber and Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo. “Replacing Cabinet Ministers: Patterns of Ministerial Stability in Parliamentary Democracies.” American Political Science Review 102:2 (May 2008): 153-180.

Michael Laver and Kenneth Shepsle, eds. Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Government. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Arend Lijphart, ed. Parliamentary Versus Presidential Government. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Juan J. Linz. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000.

Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds. The Failure of Presidential Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Powell, G. Bingham, Jr. Contemporary Democracies: Participation, Stability, and Violence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Lee Kendall Metcalf. “Measuring Presidential Power.” Comparative Political Studies 33(5): 660-665.

Steven D. Roper. “Are All Semi-Presidential Regimes the Same? A Comparison of Premier-Presidential Regimes.” Comparative Politics 34:3 (April 2002): 253-272.

Matthew Soberg Shugart and John M. Carey. Presidents and Assemblies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Tsebelis, George. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Wintrobe, Ronald. The Political Economy of Dictatorship. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

 

Research questions:

 

1. What level of power does a legislator have in a presidential, parliamentary or semi-presidential government?

2. What happens to party loyalty and party discipline in different forms of government?

3. Can Frye’s index of presidential power be applied equivalently to parliamentary governments, e.g., prime ministers?

4. Does Riker’s minimum winning coalition theory work in non-parliamentary governments?

 

 

28 September: Institutions, Institutional Design, Arrow’s Theorem and Spatial Models of Majority Rule

 

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapters 4 and 5. Or Sheplse, chapters 4 and 5.

John D. Huber and Nolan McCarty, “Cabinet Decision Rules and Political Uncertainty in Parliamentary Bargaining.” American Political Science Review 95:2 (June 2001): 345-360. (J-STOR)

Hannu Nurmi. “Problems in the Theory of Institutional Design.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 5 (1993): 523-540. (J-STOR)

 

Recommended:

 

David Austen-Smith and Jeffrey S. Banks. Positive Political Theory I: Collective Preference. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.

Daniel Diermeier and Randy T. Stevenson. “Cabinet Survival and Competing Risks.” American Journal of Political Science 43:4 (October 1999): 1051-1068.

Goodin, Robert E., ed. The Theory of Institutional Design. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Robert W. Jackman. Power without Force: The Political Capacity of Nation-States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

Arthur Lupia and Kaare Strom. “Coalition Termination and the Strategic Timing of Parliamentary Elections.” American Political Science Review 89 (1995): 648-669.

Nolan McCarty. “Proposal Rights, Veto Rights, and Political Bargaining.” American Journal of Political Science 44:3 (July 2000): 506-522.

Douglass C. North. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Peter C. Ordeshook. “Are ‘Western’ Constitutions Relevant to Anything Other than the Counties They Serve?” Constitutional Political Economy 13:3  24, 2002: 1-24.

John A. Rohr. Civil Servants and their Constitutions. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002.

Steven S. Smith and Thomas F. Remington. The Politics of Institutional Choice: The Formation of the Russian State Duma. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

George Tsebelis. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

 

Research questions:

 

1. Attempt to use spatial models of majority rule to test cabinet termination rather than strategic methods or event history (note Diermeier and Stevenson and Lupia and Strom above).

2. A large puzzle is why politicians who design institutions know the results without reading about electoral laws, parliamentary issues, or even government forms. How do they know what will happen?

 

5 October: Electoral Laws and their Consequences; Political Parties

 

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapter 7. Or Shepsle, chapter 7.

Gary Cox, Making Votes Count, Introduction, pp. 3-33. (packet)

 

Recommended:

 

Adams, James and Samuel Merrill III. “Candidate and Party Strategies in Two-Stage Elections Beginning with a Primary.” American Journal of Political Science 52:2 (April 2008): 344-359.

André Blais, Louis Massicotte, and Agniezka Dobrzynska. “Direct Presidential Elections: A World Summary.” Electoral Studies 16 (December 2000): 441-455.

Steven Callander and Catherine H. Wilson. “Turnout, Polarization, and Duverger’s Law.” Journal of Politics 69: 4 (November 2007): 1047-1056.

Maurice Duverger. Political Parties. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1959.

Federico Ferarra, Erik S. Herron, and Misa Nishikowa. Mixed Electoral Systems: Contamination and its Consequences. New York: Palgrave, 2005.

Erik Herron and Misa Nishikawa. “Contamination Effects and the Number of Parties in Mixed-Superposition Electoral Systems.” Electoral Studies 34 (2001): 5-33.

Mark P. Jones. Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies. South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1995.

Mark P. Jones. “Electoral Laws and the Effective Number of Candidates in Presidential Elections.” Journal of Politics 61 (February 1999): 171-184.

Michael Laver and Norman Schofield, Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Michael Laver and Kenneth A. Shepsle. Making and Breaking Governments. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Lijphart, Arend and Bernard Grofman. Electoral Laws and their Consequences. New York: Agathon Press, 1986.

Lijphart, Arend. Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of 27 Democracies, 1945-1990. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Monroe, Burt L. and Amanda G. Rose. “Electoral Systems and Unimagined Consequences: Partisan Effects of Districted Proportional Representation.” American Journal of Political Science 46:1 (January 2002): 67-89.

Mori McElwain, Kenneth. “Manipulating Electoral Rules to Manufacture Single-Party Dominance.” American Journal of Political Science 52:1 (January 2008): 32-47.

G. Bingham Powell, Jr. Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.

Rein Taagepara and Matthew Soberg Shugart. Seats and Votes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.

Alan D. Taylor, Mathematics and Politics: Strategy, Voting, Power and Proof. New York: Springer Verlag, 1995.

 

Key journals: Electoral Studies, American Journal of Political Science, Political Parties

 

Research questions:

 

1. Does Duverger’s law hold in all circumstances of plurality and majority electoral laws?

2. What percentage of the total population in countries can vote for an electoral law in regime transition or institutional revision?

3. How does the relationship between governance and representation work in countries that have a plurality, d’Hondt, greatest remainder or STV electoral law?

 

12 October: Voting and Voting Behavior

 

Adam Przeworkski and John Sprague, Paper Stones, prologue. (packet)

 

Recommended:

 

Colton, Timothy. Transitional Citizens: Voters and What Influences Them. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Jackman, Robert W. “Political Institutions and Voter Turnout  in the Industrial Democracies.”  American Political Science Review 81 (1987): 405-423.

Lipset, Seymour Martin. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.

Przeworksi, Adam and Glaucio A.D. Soares. “Theories in Search of a Curve: A Contextual Interpretation of the Left Vote.” American Political Science Review 65:1 (March 1971): 51-68.

Przeworksi, Adam and John Sprague. Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Rose, Richard, ed. Electoral Behavior: A Comparative Handbook. New York: The Free Press, 1974.

Tsebelis, George. “A General Model of Tactical and Inverse Tactical Voting.” British Journal of Political Science 16 (1986): 395-404.

 

1. Traditionally women were considered to be always moderate voters. Is it is still true? Was it true in Europe in the early 1930s?

2. In U.S. politics, there is a theory of voting shifts. Does voting shift happen in other countries?

 

 

19 October: Democratization and Democracy vs. the Results of Social Choice Theory

 

Lichbach and Zuckerman, chapters 7 and 11.

Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy, chapters 4 and 5. (packet)

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapter 6. Or Shepsle, chapter 6.

Przeworski, chapters 1 and 2.

William H. Riker, Liberalism vs. Populism, chapter 1. (packet)

 

Recommended:

 

Steven J. Brams. Paradoxes in Politics: An Introduction to the Nonobvious in Political Science. New York: The Free Press, 1976.

Robert A. Dahl. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956.

Robert A. Dahl. Democracy and its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.

Russell J. Dalton. Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies. New York: Chatham House, 2002.

Giuseppe Di Palma. To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

David L. Epstein, Robert Bates, Jack Goldstone, Ida Kristensen and Sharyn O’Halloran. “Democratic Transitions.” American Journal of Political Science 50(3): July, 2006, 551-569.

Ronald A. Francisco. The Politics of Regime Transition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.

Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman. The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Samuel P. Huntington. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.

Robert W. Jackman. Power without Force: The Political Capacity of Nation-States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Timur Kuran. Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Seymour Martin Lipset, Kyoung-Ryung Seong, and John Charles Torres. “A Comparative Analysis of the Social Requisites of Democracy.” International Social Science Journal 1993: 155-175.

G. Bingham Powell, Jr. Contemporary Democracies: Participation, Stability and Violence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Adam Przeworski et al. Sustainable Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Robert D. Putnam. Making Democracy Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Kenneth A. Shepsle. “Representation and Governance: The Great Legislative Tradeoff.” Political Science Quarterly 103:3 (1988): 461-484.

Alfred Stepan. Arguing Comparative Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Georg Sørensen. Democracy and Democratization. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993.

Cass R. Sunstein. Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

 

Key journals: Journal of Democracy, Democratization

 

Research questions:

 

1. Given that rationality is the enemy of democracy, how should democratic theory be reformed to take this fact into consideration?

2. Count up the veto points in democratic countries and find if the number correlates with the level of democracy.

 

26 October: Interest Groups, Bureaucracies, Legislatures and their Interaction

 

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapters 11, 12 and 13. Or Shepsle, chapters 11, 12 & 13.

 

Recommended:

 

William P. Bottom, et al. “The Institutional Effect on Majority Rule Instability: Bicameralism in Spatial Policy Decisions.” American Journal of Political Science 44:3 (July, 2000): 523-540.

Daniel Diermeier and Randy T. Stevenson. “Cabinet Survival and Competing Risks.” American Journal of Political Science 43:4 (October): 1051-1068.

Joan Esteban and Debraj Ray. “Collective Action and the Group Size Paradox.” American Political Science Review 95:3 (September 2001): 663-672.

Sean Gailmard and John W. Patty. “Slackers and Zealots: Civil Service, Policy Discretion, and Bureaucratic Expertise.” American Journal of Political Science 51:4 (October 2007): 873-889.

Keith Krehbiel. Information and Legislative Organization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991.

Gerhard Loewenberg, Peverill Squire, & D. Roderick Kiewiet, eds. Legislatures: Comparative Perspectives on Representative Assemblies. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Terry M. Moe. The Organization of Interests. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Jeannette Money and George Tsebelis. Bicameralism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Mancur Olson. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Michael Taylor and V.M. Herman. “Party Systems and Government Stability.” American Political Science Review 65 (March 1971): 28-37.

 

Key journals: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Representation, Public Administration Quarterly

 

Research questions:

 

1. Do semi-presidential governments have legislatures with low-level power? How does their power compare with parliamentary and presidential systems?

2. What level of oversight do most legislatures provide for the bureaucracy (see Shepsle and Bonchek, chapter 13)?

 

2 November: Ethnicity and Nationalism; Political Culture/Research Designs due

 

Lichbach and Zuckerman, chapters 9 and 15.

Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso, 1991, chapters 1 and 2. (packet)

Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict, chapter 1 (packet)

James M. Jasper. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements, chapter 4, “Cultural Approaches”. (packet)

 

Recommended:

 

Seyla Benhabib. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Walter Berns. Making Patriots. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

John Breuilly. Nationalism and the State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Walker Connor. Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Karl W. Deutsch. Nationalism and Social Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966.

Karl W. Deutsch and William J. Foltz, eds. Nation-Building. New York: Atherton Press, 1963.

Ernest Gellner. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Daniel M. Green, ed. Constructivism and Comparative Politics. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002.

Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, eds. Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Ronald Inglehart. Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

James Johnson. “Why Respect Culture?” American Journal of Political Science 44:3 (July 2000): 405-418.

James C. Scott. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.

Mitchell Seligson. “The Renaissance of Political Culture or the Renaissance of the Ecological Fallacy? Comparative Politics 34:3 (April 2002): 273-292.

Crawford Young. The Politics of Cultural Pluralism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.

 

Research questions:

 

1. Find a cultural theory; test it in another culture or several cultures. Does the theory remain valid?

2. Discover an area where the standard attitude is that political culture is the main reason for all policies and institutions. Eliminate political culture as a variable and test other theories in that area to test the importance of political culture.

 

 

9 November: Political and Economic Development

 

Lichbach & Zuckerman, chapters 8.

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapter 10. Or Shepsle, chapter 10.

Barbara Geddes. “Paradigms and Sand Castles in Comparative Politics of Developing Areas.” (packet)

Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi. “Political Regimes and Economic Growth.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7:3 (Summer 1993): 51-99. (J-STOR)

 

Recommended:

 

Robert Bates. Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

Jared Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.

Ross Levine and David Renelt. “A Sensitivity Analysis of Cross-Country Growth Regressions.” American Economic Review 82:4 (September 1992): 942-963.

Joel S. Migdal. Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Mancur Olson. Power and Prosperity. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

James C. Scott. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Lester C. Thurow. Building Wealth. New York: Harper Collins, 1999.

Harold L. Wilensky. Rich Democracies: Political Economy, Public Policy, and Performance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

 

Research questions:

 

1. Why have the resource-poor Asian NICs developed rapidly, while many African countries remain abjectly poor?

2. How do authoritarian regimes endure in the face of the rapid development of more democratic countries?

 

16 November: Political Economy and the Welfare State/Final Exam hand out

 

Lichbach & Zuckerman, chapter 14.

Przeworski, chapters 3, 4 and conclusion.

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapter 8. Or Shepsle, chapter 8.

 

Recommended:

 

Ronald H. Chilcote. Comparative Inquiry in Politics and Political Economy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999.

Ronald H. Chilcote. Theories of Comparative Political Economy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.

Peter F. Cowhey and Mathew D. McCubbins, eds. Structure and Policy in Japan and the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Jonathan Gruber & David A. Wise, eds. Social Security and Retirement around the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Amy Gutmann, ed. Democracy and the Welfare State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Peter A. Hall. Governing the Economy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens. Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Charles E. Lindblom. Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic Systems. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Adam Przeworski. Capitalism and Social Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Adam Przeworski and Michael Wallerstein. “Structural Dependence of the State on Capital.” American Political Science Review 82:1 (1988): 11-29.

 

Research questions:

 

1. Find dictatorships and democratic countries that collapsed and survived in the great depression. Then model the process of collapse and survival.

2. Does European welfare cause less economic growth with the necessary taxes, or does it help private corporations and cause more economic growth?

3. Are European welfare states sustainable? If not, what can happen to their political parties and states?

 

23 November: Thanksgiving, No Class

 

30 November: Protest and Repression; Revolution/class evaluations/Bibliographic Essays due

 

Lichbach & Zuckerman, chapter 10.

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapter 9. Or Shepsle chapter 9.

DeNardo, Power in Numbers, chapter 1. (packet)

Mark Lichbach. “Rethinking Rationality and Rebellion: Theories of Collective Action and Problems of Collective Dissent.” Rationality and Society 6:1 (January 1994): 8-39. (J-STOR)

 

Key journals: Journal of Conflict Resolution, Mobilization

 

Recommended:

 

Hannah Arendt. On Revolution. New York: Penguin, 1963.

Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1973.

Dennis Chong. Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler. “Greed and Grievance in Civil War.” World Bank Research Paper, 2002.

Ronald A. Francisco. Dynamics of Conflict. New York: Springer Verlag, 2009.

Ronald A. Francisco. Collective Action Theory and Empirical Evidence. New York: Springer Verlag, 2010.

Jack A. Goldstone. Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Studies. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2003.

Ted R. Gurr. Why Men Rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.

Kriesi, Hanspeter, Ruud Koopmans, Jam Willem Dyvendak and Marco G. Giugni. New Social Movements in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1995.

Håvard Hegre, Tanja Ellingsen, Scott Gates, and Nils Peter Gleditsch. “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816-1992.” American Political Science Review 95:1 (March 2001): 33-48.

Mark I. Lichbach. The Rebel’s Dilemma. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Mark I. Lichbach. The Cooperator’s Dilemma. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

Gerald Marwell and Pamela Oliver. The Critical Mass in Collective Action: A Micro-Social Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. Dynamics of Contention. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Barrington Moore, Jr. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966.

James B. Rule. Theories of Civil Violence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Todd Sandler. Collective Action: Theory and Applications. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.

James C. Scott. The Moral Economy of the Peasant. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976.

James C. Scott. Weapons of the Weak: The Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985.

James C. Scott. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.

Sidney Tarrow. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Charles Tilly. From Mobilization to Revolution. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978.

Mark Traugott, ed. Repertoires & Cycles of Collective Action. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.

 

Research Questions:

 

1. Can the concept “mechanism” in Dynamics of Contention be operationalized and tested logically or quantitatively?

2. Do different forms of repression have different effects on mobilization?

3. Test the 5% rule of mobilization.

4. Test the stability of any rebellion or revolution (use the data on my web site or other data, but they must be interval data). If you don’t have any idea how to do this, I can help you.

5. Trace any successful revolution, e.g., the Cuban revolution (1953-1959), and find points in time that indicate whether it was inevitable or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

30  November: Rational Choice and Area Studies; The Future of Comparative Politics/Bibliographic Essays Due/ The Disjuncture of Micro and Macro Levels/course evaluations

 

 

Lichbach and Zuckerman, chapters 5, 6, 12 & 13,.

Shepsle and Bonchek, chapter 17. Or Shepsle, chapter 17.

George Tsebelis. Nested Games: Rational Choice in Comparative Politics, chapter 2 (packet)

Robert Bates et al. Analytic Narratives, introduction (packet)

Ruth Lane. “Political Culture: Residual Category or General Theory?” Comparative Political Studies 25(3), 1992: 362-387. (packet)

Michael Wallerstein. “Bridging the Quantitative/Non-Quantitative Divide.” Newsletter of the Organized Section in Comparative Politics of the APSA 12:2 (Summer 2001): 1-2 & 23. (packet)

 

Key journals: Rationality and Society, Public Choice, Orbis

 

Recommended:

 

Gary Cox. 1999. “The Empirical Content of Rational Choice Theory: A Reply to Green and Shapiro.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 11(2): 147-169.

Scott Gates and Brian D. Humes. Games, Information, and Politics: Applying Game Theoretic Models to Political Science. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.

Bernard Grofman, ed. Political Science as Puzzle Solving. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.

Gordon Tulloch, Arthur Seldon and Gordon L. Brady. Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice. Washington, D.C: CATO Institute, 2002.

 

Research Questions:

 

1. Use detailed area knowledge to model a process of political science.

2. Find a relevant game theory model that relates to a problem you want to research. Then infer the theoretical implications of the model and test these implications in a region for the model’s validity.

3. Discover a process that you might think of as a nested game. Model it as such.

4. Find a small N publication with static causes, then find time series data that relate to the publication and test it statistically.

5. Attempt to perform a cross-level research.

 

5 December: 

Lichbach and Zuckerman, chapters 12 and 13.

 

Recommended:

 

Heinz, Eulau, Micro-Macro Dilemmas in Political Science. Norman University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

David Snyder. “Collective Violence: A Research Agenda and Some Strategic Considerations.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 22(3):499-534.

 

Research Questions:

 

1. Given the difficulty of integrating micro and macro levels, does EITM work well enough?

2. Many game theorists say that there is no empirical way to test their games. Is this valid?

3. How can we start from an individual’s preferences and integrate them with collective groups?