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Foundations of Comparative Politics
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Foundations of Comparative Politics

Second Edition

Other Titles in:
Comparative Politics

July 2024 | 528 pages | CQ Press
Adapted from the groundbreaking bestseller Principles of Comparative Politics, Fourth Edition!

Foundations of Comparative Politics, Second Edition presents a scientific approach to the rich world of comparative inquiry, research, and scholarship, providing a guide to cross-national comparison and why it matters. This condensed, more accessible format introduces students to the key questions in comparative politics, using brief insights from tools such as decision, social choice, and game theory to help them understand clearly why some explanations for political phenomena are stronger than others.

William Roberts Clark, Matt Golder, and Sona Nadenichek Golder concentrate on describing the core features of regimes and institutions and on analyzing how these fundamental attributes drive variation in the economic and political outcomes we care about most. This approach—constructing and testing theories on political phenomena over basic memorization of country-specific facts—more closely replicates what comparative scholars do to explain, rather than describe. Current examples that show the application of theory help students develop invaluable real-world skills in critical thinking and empirical analysis that they will carry with them long after the course is over.

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Part I: What is Comparative Politics?
 
Chapter 1: Introduction
 
Chapter 2: What is Science?
 
Chapter 3: What is Politics?
 
Part II: The Modern State: Democracy or Dictatorship?
 
Chapter 4: The Origins of the Modern State
 
Chapter 5: The Economic Determinants of Democracy and Dictatorship
 
Chapter 6: The Cultural Determinants of Democracy and Dictatorship
 
Chapter 7: Democratic Transitions
 
Part III: Varieties of Democracy and Dictatorship
 
Chapter 8: Varieties of Dictatorship
 
Chapter 9: Problems with Group Decision Making
 
Chapter 10: Parliamentary, Presidential, and Semi-Presidential Democracies
 
Chapter 11: Elections and Electoral Systems
 
Chapter 12: Social Cleavages and Party Systems
 
Chapter 13: Institutional Veto Players
 
Part IV: Varieties of Democracy and Political Outcomes
 
Chapter 14: Consequences of Democratic Institutions

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