Ch1 and Ch2 : intro to comparative politics Flashcards
What does comparative politics seek to explain and how?
- cause and effects to understand the world around us
- through how and why questions
What are some good questions to ask in comparative politics?
- why do some social revolutions succeed and some fail?
- why are some countries democratic and some not?
- How do things work in borders compared to outside border?
What time of questions should you focus on in comparative politics?
empirical arguments or the cause of things
even though we tend to stray towards normative
What do concepts do for us?
they are the ideas we us to organize/categorize and enable us to measure/compare observations
What makes a good concept?
- clear/coherent
- consistent
- useful (measure/identify variations/differences)
What is the journey a concept takes?
Concept–>Conceptualization
–> operationalization
What happens to “general concepts” in conceptualization?
the conceptualizations can be different/contradictory, and resonate differently with different people
What is given to a concept to make it workable?
an operational definition
for example:
democracy (conceptualized in terms of elections)
a country can be measured as democratic if it hold free/fair/competitive/reoccuring elections etc
empirical evidence
observations we can make by looking at the real world instead of abstract ideas
comparative politics relies heavily on facts and evidence (this!)
what are some qualifications of evidence in comparative politics?
- how well evidence is used to back hypothesis
- how relevant it is
- evidence should be at same level of analysis (country to country etc)
What is one of the main empirical approaches in CP?
the use of case studies anad comparisons between them
like a country to country, or certain events can be many things
what do variables do?
enable comparison between cases, and they vary from one case to another
What is unqiue about MSS (most-similar systems)?
they are similar in a variety of ways with an
expected similar outcome
difference in outcome can lead to political scientists to explain why?
What does a good comparative study require?
- detailed explanantion of similar/different variables
- further examination with use of compartive checking/within-case comparison
What do social scientists use to build arguments about the world?
theories
hypotheses
evidence
difference between theories and hypotheses?
theories - general explanation for empirical phenomena
hypothesis - prediction about cause and effect to be tested measurably
Normative Theory
questions of values, morals, ethics
empirical theory
empirical questions, variables, cause and effect
What is true about politics and their scientific conclusions?
cannot prove conclusions with aboslute certainty
What represents an increase in our understanding?
rejecting theories
What is an important fact about qualitative and quantitative evidence?
they are increasingly interdependent, and complement eachother in important ways
What is an important feature of Qualitative evidence?
- important in providing context
- non mathematical
What is an important feature of quantitative evidence?
- compare and contrast at a statistical level of analysis which is more advanced
- measure the degree of association between the statistics
Normative arguments
“HOW THINGS SHOULD BE”
most research passions start from normative arguments, lead empirical
Empirical arguments
does happen, could happen, will happen
what is the small “n” problem?
- cannot do study on entire society
- some countries arent good to compare
- small numbers
- n = number
social science problem, for example fertility rates
