January 8, 2015 Chapter 1: Introduction and the Evolution of Comparative Politics Flashcards
What are the two types of questions asked in comparative politics?
Methodological and substantive questions.
Methodological questions.
Why compare? How should we compare? What can or should we compare?
Substantive questions.
Why are poor countries poor? Why is East Asia rich?
What are the 3 subfields of political science?
Political theory, comparative politics, and international relations.
What does political theory deal with?
Normative and theoretical questions. What the society ought to be.
What does comparative politics deal with?
Empirical questions. What the society is.
What does international relations deal with?
The interactions between political systems.
Explain the difference between normative and empirical questions.
Normative is how things should be, empirical is how things are.
A comparative study must focus on two countries. True or false?
False. A comparative study may focus on a small number of countries (2 or more), or it may incorporate the analysis of a very large range of countries.
What are some components of the political system that can be compared?
National, sub-national, supra-national, single elements, or components.
What is compared in comparative politics?
Political systems, regimes, institutions, actors, processes, and policies.
Describe the comparative politics of pre-modern times using 3 characteristics.
Speculative, normative, and anecdotal.
In pre-modern comparative politics, boundaries between ___, ___, and ___ were not clearly defined.
Philosophy, jurisprudence, and history.
How was pre-modern comparative politics modernized?
By drawing from the historical theories of evolution (Darwinism and Marxism) and the works of John Stuart Mill.
According to John Stuart Mill, the social sciences implied two methods. What are they?
Method of Agreement and Method of Difference.
What is John Stuart Mill’s Method of Agreement?
When comparing cases with similar variables. For example, what everyone ate when everyone gets sick at a restaurant.
What is John Stuart Mill’s Method of Difference?
When comparing cases with different variables. For example, what the person who didn’t get sick didn’t eat at the restaurant.
Modern comparative politics looks at political ___ and ___.
Behaviour, culture.
During the ___ and ___, attention turned towards the study of the political behaviour and political attitudes of the public. What was this shift called?
1950’s and 60’s. Behavioural revolution.
What triggered the behavioural revolution?
Breakdown of democracies and the rise of new types of regimes.
What are some consequences of the behavioural revolution for comparative politics?
- Increase in the variety of political systems.
- Study of non-formal institutions.
- New methodology.
- New language.
- Developments in survey techniques and emerging computerization.
Due to the development of new methodology, language, and survey techniques and computerization during the behavioural revolution…
The possibility for social scientists to do number-crunching increased.
The behavioural revolution in political science was met with resistance in the ___.
1960’s.
What are some signs of the move away from behavioural revolution in the 1960’s?
- Social movements and disobedience among young people.
- Inability to predict youth political apathy, move away from political parties.
- Duplicating an alienated political world by its survey.
What is post-modernism?
Contested the idea of objective “social facts.” Instead, social facts are seen as social constructs.
Post-modernism is not a completely new theory, but rather a set of ___ ___.
Theoretical assumptions.
