Starting out: some conceptual and

organizational themes
Five Principles of Politics
1. All political behavior has a purpose.
■ People's goals are achieved through
political actions.
Five Principles of Politics

2. Cooperation through bargaining or collective

action is difficult, and the difficulty mounts as
the number of participants grows. All politics is
collective action.
■ Incentives are necessary to induce cooperation
through informal and formal bargaining.
■ Informal bargaining is determined by personal
preferences and is referred to as
horse-trading, back-scratching, logrolling, etc.
■ Formal bargaining is governed by rules.
Five Principles of Politics
3. Rules matter: procedures shape politics
□ Rules and practices, which are socially constructed,
govern the lives of all political actors.
Five Principles of Politics
4. Political outcomes are the products
of individual preferences and
institutional procedures.
■ Individual preferences are determined
by ideological, personal, electoral, and
institutional ambitions and interests.
■ These preferences for in response to
procedures (and, some times, vice-
versa)
Five Principles of Politics
5. History matters. How did we get to
where we are?
■ Political memories transmit across time.
■ Politicians remember what procedures
solved past political problems and which
policies do not work.
■ History provides an interpretative
framework for political conflicts.
■ History provides a context to incorporate
current information and experience.
Help from History
■ Major turning points in world politics in
the 20th Century - Conclusions of major
wars:
• WWI
• WWII
• Cold War
■ 9/11: American Projection of Power
• Q: How do these international historical
timelines shape and/or influence the
political history and culture of my case
country?
Challenge of doing comparative
studies…

1. There is a lot going on!

2. Events are complicated!
3. People resist ideas that undermine
their ways of viewing the world
3. Need for a “verifiable” basis of
comparison
The Question

How do we intelligently examine these

events happening in one country and
accurately compare it with what is taking
place in another?
What is Comparative Politics?
1. It is concerned with the comparative
study and analysis of political systems.
2. The primary focus of both theoretical
and empirical work in comparative
politics is on the comparison of
institutional practices between states.
3. It aims to develop an understanding of
how and why different institutions have
the effects on political outcomes that
they do.
What is Comparative Politics?

Comparative politics examines

political realities in countries all over
the world. It looks at the many ways
governments operate and the ways
people behave in political life.
“Democracy” as Yardstick for
Comparison
-Using the principles and parameters
accompanying the concept of democracy
-assessing “how democratic” one
country is in relation to another
Learning Outcomes
• What is democracy? How do we know it
when we see it? What are its defining
principles and features?
• What are the various forms that democracy
can take?
• Are there certain basic conditions that a
country must fulfill for democracy to
develop and prosper there?
• Are there any observable patterns in the
ways democracies get established?
Learning Outcomes
• To what extent do democracies live up to
their proclaimed ideals, and to what extent
do they violate or ignore them, whether
inadvertently or hypocritically? Is there such
a thing as partial democracy? Can a country
have a mixture of democratic and non-
democratic institutions and practices?
• Is democracy essentially a Western concept,
one that is ill-suited to countries with other
cultures and other historical traditions?
Learning Outcomes
• Why do many countries that manage to
establish functioning democracies fail to keep
them, reverting to some form of nondemocratic
rule?
• Why is it that some countries with long records
as centrally governed states have come to
democracy either very late in their history or
not at all?
• Can democracy be imposed on a country by
outsiders, or must it have homegrown roots in
order to emerge?
Learning Outcomes
• For democracy to succeed, people must want it.
What happens when large numbers of people—
perhaps a majority—simply do not want
democracy as we know it?
• What happens if people take advantage of free
elections, press freedoms, and other democratic
opportunities in order to promote
nondemocratic causes or the destruction of
democracy?
• More broadly, what are some of the root causes
of nondemocratic government?
Learning Outcomes

• Will a democratic world necessarily be a more

peaceful world?
• How do political actors affect a country’s ability
to develop it's economy, improve it’s
population’s health and education, and
safeguard the Earth’s delicate environment?
• Is there an overall trend in the direction of
democracy in the world we live in?
Goal of this course

• How governments are structured and how

they function, including different forms of
democracy and various forms of non-
democratic government. This area of inquiry
focuses mainly on governmental institutions.
Goal of this course

• How governments interact with their

populations in pursuing community goals
(such as improving health care, reducing
unemployment, and so on) and in dealing with
conflicts that arise over a variety of political,
economic, and social issues.
Goal of this course
• How political leaders and the population
behave in politics, including the ideas they
have about politics and the ways they
participate in political life through such
mechanisms as elections, parties, interest
groups, and other modes of political activity.
• How political leaders and the mass public
think and feel about politics, and how these
attitudes affect their behavior.
References
• Sodaro, Michael J. (2008). Comparative Politics: A Global
Introduction—3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.

• Bara, J and Pennington, Mark, Eds.(2009). Comparative

Politics: Explaining Democratic Systems. Sage Publications
Ltd.

• Lijphart, Arend. (1971).Compartive Politics and the

Comparative Method. The American Political Science Review,
Sept. 1971, Vol. 65, No. 3, pp. 682-603