Instructor: M. Humphreys
These two graduate level seminars are designed to introduce students to many of the main questions motivating research in comparative politics. The courses are not designed as exercises in intellectual history, although some “classics” are included. They are also not designed to teach particular approaches or methods in the study of comparative politics, although many such approaches and methods are included in the readings. Instead, they are designed to give students a sense of what we “know” today about the answers to some major questions that animate the subfield and to encourage students to develop the analytical skills, substantive knowledge, and theoretical insights necessary to make their own contributions to comparative politics and political science. Comparative Politics Survey II builds on the topics developed Comparative Politics Survey I, but can easily be taken before taking Comparative Politics Survey I. Topics to be covered in the surveys include among others, institutions, culture, parties, violence, collective action, economic development, bureaucracy, regimes and regime change, the welfare state, corruption and political behavior.
