[Ebook PDF] Cases and Concepts in Comparative Politics: An Integrated Approach, 1st Edition

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Cases and Concepts in Comparative Politics: An Integrated Approach, 1st Edition

Authors: Patrick H. O’Neil (Author), Karl J. Fields (Author), Don Share (Author)

Cases and Concepts in Comparative Politics: An Integrated Approach 1st edition pdf. Based on O’Neil, Fields, and Share’s market-leading textbook and casebook, Cases and Concepts in Comparative Politics: An Integrated Approach integrates concepts and cases in one volume. Students get all of the materials in a straightforward, easy-to-use, and cost-effective way.

PREFACE
The past three decades have seen the dramatic transformation of comparative politics: the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the spread of democracy around the world, the rise of new economic powers in Asia, the emergence of globalization. For a time, many looked upon these changes as unmitigated progress that would bring about a decline in global conflict and produce widespread
prosperity. Recently, however, there has been growing doubt, as the uncertainties of the future seem to portend more risk than reward, more conflict than peace. One can no longer suggest that a country and its citizens can function well without a good understanding of the billions of people who live outside of its borders. Consider the Arab Spring and conflict across the Middle East: Will the region face violence and
repression for the foreseeable future, or could the current turmoil eventually pave way for greater stability and democracy? Clearly we ignore such questions at our peril.
This textbook is meant to contribute to our understanding of comparative politics (the study of domestic politics around the world) by investigating the central ideas and questions that make up this field. It begins with the most basic struggle in politics—the battle between freedom and equality and the task of reconciling or balancing these ideals. How this struggle has unfolded across place and time
represents the core of comparative politics. The text continues by emphasizing the importance of institutions. Human action is fundamentally guided by the institutions that people construct, such as culture, constitutions, and property rights. Once established, these institutions are both influential and persistent—not easily overcome, changed, or removed. How these institutions emerge, and how they
affect politics, is central to this work.
With these ideas in place, we tackle the basic institutions of power—states, markets, societies, democracies, and nondemocratic regimes. What are states, how do they emerge, and how can we measure their capacity, autonomy, and efficacy?
How do markets function, and what kinds of relationships exist between states and markets? How do societal components like nationalism, ethnicity, and ideology shape political values? And what are the main differences between democratic and nondemocratic regimes, and what explains why one or the other predominates in various parts of the world? These are a few of the questions we will attempt to answer.
Alongside an in-depth exploration of these concepts and questions, we will apply them directly to thirteen political systems (we call them cases)—developed democracies, communist and postcommunist  countries, and developing countries.
Selecting only thirteen cases is, of course, fraught with drawbacks. Nevertheless, we believe that this collection represents countries that are both important in their own right and representative of a broad range of political systems. Each of the 13 cases has special importance in the context of the study of comparative politics. Five of our cases (France, Germany, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom) are advanced industrial democracies, but they represent a wide range of institutions, societies, political-economic models, and relationships with the world. Japan is an important example of a non-Western industrialized democracy and an instructive case of democratization imposed by foreign occupiers. Though the United Kingdom and the United States have been known for political stability, France and Germany have fascinating histories of political turmoil and regime change.
Two of our cases, China and Russia, share a past of Marxist-Leninist total – itarianism. Communism thrived in these two large and culturally distinct nations.
Both suffered from the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of communist parties and, at times, despotic leaders. The Soviet Communist regime imploded and led to a troubled transition to an authoritarian regime with a capitalist political economy. China has retained its communist authoritarian political system but has experimented with a remarkable transition to a largely capitalist political economy.
The remaining six cases illustrate the diversity of the developing world. Of the six, India has had the longest history of stable democratic rule, but like most countries in the developing world, it has nevertheless struggled with massive poverty and inequality. The remaining five have experienced various forms of authoritarianism.
Brazil and Nigeria endured long periods of military rule. Mexico’s history of military rule was ended by an authoritarian political party that ruled for much of the twentieth century through a variety of nonmilitary means. South Africa experienced decades of racially based authoritarianism that excluded the vast majority of its population. Iran experienced a modernizing authoritarian monarchy followed by its
current authoritarian regime, a theocracy ruled by Islamic clerics.
Cases and Concepts in Comparative Politics: An Integrated Approach can be traced to a decades-long experiment undertaken by the three comparative political scientists in the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound. Over the years we spent much time discussing the challenges of teaching our introductory course in comparative politics. In those discussions we came to realize that each of us taught the course so differently that students completing our different sections of the course did not really share a common conceptual vocabulary. Over several years we fashioned a unified curriculum for Introduction to Comparative Politics, drawing on the strengths of each of our particular approaches.
All three of us now equip our students with a common conceptual vocabulary. All of our students now learn about states, nations, and different models of political economy. All students learn the basics about nondemocratic and democratic regimes, and they become familiar with characteristics of communist systems and advanced democracies. In developing our common curriculum, we became frustrated trying
to find country studies that were concise, uniformly organized, sophisticated, and written to address the major concepts of comparative politics.
We also began to introduce students to country studies using pairs of cases (over the years we have varied the pairs) as a way to get students to think comparatively and to hone their understanding of key concepts. We found that teaching Japan and the United Kingdom, for example, was a wonderful way to study the main features and dilemmas of advanced democracies, while teaching students that such systems can thrive in very different political, economic, and cultural settings. Because we almost always assign reading that covers two countries at once, we have produced country studies that are organized identically and written with a common depth and style.
Instructors can therefore easily assign the sections on the historical development of the state (to take one example) from any of the 13 case studies, and have students draw meaningful comparisons.