class 1 Flashcards
comparative politics
sub-field of political science studying
- political structures,
- actors and
- process within a political system,
and analyzing them empirically by exploring their similarities and differences across political systems
e.g. why do young people participate politically differently than older generations?
implicates = comparative politics is defined by its substance (really broad: anything that takes place at a political system) and its method
WHY COMPARISON?
- Knowledge About Other Countries (rather than what you know best: your own country + learning about other countries may help you to understand/explain your own/other countries)
- Description/Classification/Typologies (important for explaining)
- Hypothesis Testing
- Prediction (makes CP interesting for politicians)
e.g. many EU countries now have democratic fragmentation -> becomes hard to form governments -> politicians look into changing institutions to get less fragmentation (empirical evidence: won’t happen in the first next elections + doesn’t has as big an effect as often thought)
intuitive/implicit comparison made explicit
comparative methods
= rules and standards of comparative analysis
how should a comparison be carried out in order to enhance or improve description, prediction, theory-testing and classification?
ISSUES IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS
- Comparative Politics focuses on very different units of analysis (countries (rarely), individual components of political systems (rather than political systems as such))
- There is NO one comparative method
Methods in Comparative Politics
Lijphart (1971): 3 main methods CP
- Case Study Method = 1 case (e.g. Dutch parliament, African national Congress, Hamas in Israel) = qualitative
- Comparative Method = small-N method (e.g. small democracies, communist parties in Europe, ethnic parties in Africa)
- Statistical Method = large-N comparison/method
- (Experimental Method) = more used now than in Lijpharts time (therefore these brackets)
Case Study Method
= intensive examination of one particular case and the context in which it exists
- it is holistic: only explains for the one case (you will never know how generalisable your conclusion is)
comparative component - some don’t have a comparative component -> offering context (e.g. saying it is an example of…)
(e.g. electoral performance populist party France last election, if you don’t say why you study this specific case it’s not really comparative)
Deviant Case Study = identifies and examines an exception to what is generally expected from an established theory
Theory-Testing Case Study = probing a theory in a new empirical context to which it is supposed to apply
Comparative Method (Small-N)
= a systematic analysis of a small number of cases (small-N analysis) (= interpretative + not numerically measured indexes)
how many cases? where does this type of method end (when is it large-N)?
= very valuable tool to further our understanding of certain phenomena (robust understanding)
Problems:
- Too Few Cases, Too Many Variables -> Increase N (risk of conceptual stretching: using cases that don’t fit) + MSSD
(there are always other factors that may affect X (e.g. eco success small countries Europe)
- Selection on Dependent Variable -> MDSD
e.g. Katzenstein: Small States in World Markets: Why are (7) small European countries more successful economically than their larger and economically more powerful neighbors?
- they have adopted corporarist model of policy-making
Statistical Method (large-N)
= comparative method based on a large N of cases, using statistical techniques to examine relationships between variables
main differences with small-N =
- how you measure dependent (what is to be explained) and independent variable (what is the explanation) = numerical
- how you draw/generate conclusions = not interpretative, but simply from statistical analysis
advantage = if you have the data, you may reach very robust/large conclusions
e.g. relation corruption and human development -> correlation line between these levels
Conclusion
- Comparative politics is (one of the) most important sub fields of political science
- Comparative method an important tool for studying politics
- Plurality of comparative methods
main branches polsci
- political theory = normative, theoretical questions
- International Relations = predominantly interactions between different states (e.g. what causes war, how to explain lack of cooperation?) = empirical questions
- Comparative politics = level of analysis: political systems (e.g. democracies, communist regimes, developing countries) = empirical questions
classifications and typologies
clustering differences into different classes of phenomena according to common attributes that they share
CP enables this
we would we do this?
classifications are the first (descriptive) step in arriving at some sort of explanations
- without having good classifications we will not be able to explain properly certain phenomena (e.g. democratic vs non-democratic you need this distinction to e.g. answer if eco. development correlates with democratization)
unit of analysis vs level of analysis?
- unit = object
- level =
deviation from the book: they do
Deviant case study
identifies and examines an exception to what is generally expected from an established theory
- e.g. study some poor democratic countries (deviant: there is an expectancy that there is some wealth necessary to sustain democracy)
- e.g. The Netherlands: before the 60s deeply divided among religious and other social groups, yet it is/was stable (rather than fall apart because of how fragmented, divided it was) -> offered a new explanation….
Theory-Testing Case Study
= probing a theory in a new empirical context to which it is supposed to apply
e.g. Lijphart: Power-Sharing in South Africa post-1990
- does power-sharing in South Africa work in the same way as it did in the Netherlands pre-1960 to sustain democracy
MSSD
most similar system design
select for cases that you assume are similar on almost all variables that may influence what you want to explain
e.g. used in Katzenstein’s study of 7 small economically successful European states
in this way you account for alternative explanations
! we see this most often (e.g. often look at democratic European states, as we assume they are equal)
