Political Science 120, Comparative Political Regimes

Winter 1998-99

Professor: Alfred P. Montero	Office: Willis 407
Phone: x4085 (Office) x5407 (Home)	Email: Amontero@carleton.edu
Office Hours: 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. M-Th

Course Description

This course serves as an introduction to the basic concepts, methods, primary empirical materials, theoretical approaches, and current challenges of comparative politics. Students will be trained to think and write critically on substantive issues in the politics of different countries. Although comparative politics is often defined as "the study of all countries excluding the United States," this course will not abide by that rather perfunctory definition. The U. S. will be included at different points in the course as a baseline for comparison.

As a primer for newcomers to this subdiscipline of political science, the course has been organized with an increasing level of difficulty. Students begin with an introduction to the most basic tools of political science; then they are trained to analyze complex empirical materials. Later, they must make their way up the "ladder of abstraction" to the tricky world of theory-building and hypothesis testing.

In the first section of the course (Session 1), students will examine the methods, concepts, and epistemology of comparative politics. Learning how to use these tools to study politics is similar to "basic training." I prefer: a "bootcamp for the mind" - not very pleasurable, but very necessary.

The second section of the course (Sessions 2 - 4) introduces students to six empirical cases: Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Brazil, and India. This survey will provide students with a basic lay of the political land. Students will learn about the crucial moments, institutions, processes, and individuals that shaped the political experiences of these six major countries. The surveys will also present several "mid-range propositions" - causal statements about particular sets of countries that come in handy when attempting to understand complex empirical materials.

As students use these empirical cases and mid-range propositions, class lectures will introduce students to some of the theoretical arguments that have been built on the comparative study of these countries. The study of Britain and Germany will inform our on-going discussion about diverse routes to democracy; Russia and China will provide empirical material for the application of theories about state-building and revolution that are taken from the study of Western Europe; and finally, the study of India and Brazil will highlight the problems of forming democratic governance in the context of "late late" development.

Thus empowered with a solid methodological and empirical background, section 3 of the course (Sessions 5 - 7) will challenge students to think about a central question in comparative politics: How is democracy built and why does it endure in some countries and erode in others? In this section, students will read Robert Putnam's seminal contribution to the debate around this question, Making Democracy Work. Students will also read short, contrasting theoretical approaches to the question and compare these with Putnam's treatment.

What is Expected of Students

Students will be expected to read, think, criticize, and form arguments. That means that students must keep up in their reading assignments and attend class regularly. Students must be fully prepared at all times to discuss the readings and concepts from previous lectures. The best students will be critical but balanced in their assessments, and will develop coherent arguments that they can defend in their writing and their in-class discussion.

Reading Materials

This course requires your purchase of three books. These materials have been ordered and are presently on sale at the college bookstore. The texts are:

Mark Kesselman, Joel Krieger, and William A. Joseph, eds. 1996. Comparative Politics at the Crossroads. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath (Houghton Mifflin). Best collection of "middle-range" studies of comparative cases on the market. We will refer to this reading as "KKJ," for short.

Christian Soe, ed. 1998. Comparative Politics 98/99. Guilford: Dushkin/McGraw Hill.

Robert Putnam. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Seminal contribution to the literature on democracy authored by a major scholar.

In addition to these texts, this course requires your study of a number of other readings from diverse sources. In order to facilitate your access to these materials, I have prepared a compendium of these readings. You are free to borrow this compendium for photocopying. It is available at my office during the day. Students are advised to make readable copies of these materials early during the course. Also, in order to reduce your costs, I have placed the required materials, including books and photocopied essays on closed reserve.

I will occasionally distribute handouts and clippings from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Minneapolis/St. Paul newspapers, and the internet at the beginning of class. Students are also invited to check out links to course relevant web pages on the professor's web page. Materials on the course's web page will be updated during the semester and will supplement rather than duplicate the substance of the lectures and the readings. Students will be invited to reference these resources during the course.

Grading

Assessment of the students in this course will be based on their performance on two exams, two short writing assignments, a single, long writing assignment, and in-class participation. The grade breakdown follows:

Exam 1	20%
Exam 2	25%
First Writing Assignment	10%
Second Writing Assignment	10%
Third Writing Assignment	15%
Class Participation	20%

Exams

The exams are designed to test and reinforce the primary skills taught in this course. The final exam is cumulative.

Exam #1 (Mid-Range Proposition Building):

Format: timed, short essay, "blue book" test. Students will select two of four questions for analysis.

This exam will test the ability of the student to (1) become familiar with particular empirical cases, (2) build and apply simple causal arguments about issues and problems specific to these cases, and (3) identify similarities and differences in the politics of addressing these questions across national cases.

Exam #2 (Analysis and Application of Contrasting Theories):

Format: cumulative, take-home essay exam. Students will select two of four questions for analysis.

This exam will test the capacity of the student to (1) become familiar with theoretical approaches to state-building and democratization and (2) apply these approaches to empirical cases in ways that identify the most useful theories for understanding the politics of states and political regimes. Each answer cannot exceed five typed pages. I will assess your ability to edit your work and provide a concise answer to each question.

Writing Assignments

Paper assignments in this course are of varying lengths. Yet they must all be typed and double-spaced with 12cpi font size and one-inch margins. These assignments must be turned in before or on the due date specified below. Late work will receive no credit. Proper use of spelling, punctuation, and grammar is expected. Since ability to edit your own work and produce concise argument is a touchstone for assessing and developing your critical skills, students will not be allowed to surpass the required number of pages.

Paper #1 (Methods Exercise):

Students will be asked to select a single article from a list of citations and make a photocopy of the selection. Once acquired, students will evaluate the article by identifying the main argument, the key variables, indicators for variance, and main concepts. Students must specify if the concepts are clear to them or not. If not, they must explain why. This paper must be four to five pages in length. Additional requirements of this Methods Exercise will be made available in a handout. Furthermore, I will arrange a library tour of political science databases and bibliographic sources during off-class times in the first week of the course to familiarize students with all available resources.

Paper #2 (Mid-Range Proposition Building Exercise):

Based on their study of Britain, Germany, Russia, and China, students will prepare a five to six page paper proposing a causal argument about the formation and maintenance of democracy. They will support their argument with a brief comparison of two of the four countries listed above. These papers will be used in preparing the simulation on building democracy in Brazil and India (see below).

Paper #3 (Theory Application Exercise):

Using alternative theoretical approaches to building democracy, students will critique Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work. Students will be asked to evaluate the consistency and usefulness of Putnam's main arguments by pointing out strengths and weaknesses. The essay must make a case for an alternative approach among those discussed in the course. This paper will be five to six pages in length.

Class Participation

Communicating your insight into the subjects analyzed in this course is an integral part of the learning experience. In no way do I consider class participation a residual category for subjectively determining the final grade. In this course, I will evaluate your performance in both formal, scheduled presentations and informal class discussion. The following are structured presentation formats that will be used in this course:

1. A simulation entitled, "Building Democracy in India and Brazil: Applied Perspectives from Other Countries." (February 24 & 26). Several small groups of students will each apply a causal proposition developed by one of their colleagues for Paper #2 to the country cases of India and Brazil. Students will negotiate a common position within the group and then present their argument in class as a prescription for the problems of democracy in each of the two cases. The student groups will take on the identity of "Democracy Monitors."
2. Scheduled debates on contentious resolutions based on the readings.
3. Small group discussion sections.

The Grading Scale

I will be using the following grading scale in this course:

Academic Misconduct

Given the fact that academe relies upon the ethical conduct of scholars, students are held to the same standards in their own work. Any act of academic dishonesty or misconduct will be referred to the Office of the Dean. For further information, see Carleton College's Academic Honesty in the Writing of Essays and Other Papers and the section on "academic honesty" in Academic Regulations and Procedures, 1998-99. Both are available in Laird 140.

Special Needs

Students requiring access to learning tools/special schedules approved by Student Support Services should contact me at the beginning of the course.

NOTE: Readings must be completed for the dates assigned below.

Session 1: Science! Assumptions, Causal Relationships, Concepts, Methods, and Variables

Toward a Science of Politics (Jan. 4, Monday)

Handout: The Truth About the Piltdown Man (A Cautionary Tale About The Importance of Verification in Scientific Inquiry).

Epistemology: The Assumption of Rationality in Political Science (Jan. 6, Wednesday)

William H. Riker, "Political Science and Rational Choice." In Perspectives on Positive Political Economy, eds., James E. Alt and Kenneth A. Shepsle (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 163-181.

Theory and Comparative Method: How Do We Know a Good Causal Argument When We See One? (Jan. 8, Friday & Jan. 11, Monday)

Harry Eckstein, "Case Study and Theory in Political Science." In Regarding Politics: Essays on Political Theory, Stability, and Change (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 117-131.

Arend Lijphart, "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method," American Political Science Review 65 (1971).

Definitions and Conceptualization (Jan. 13, Wednesday)

Giovanni Sartori, "Conceptual Misformation in Comparative Politics," American Political Science Review 64 December (1970).

Larry Diamond, "Is the Third Wave Over?" in Soe, ed., pp. 226-229.

Philippe Schmitter & Terry Lynn Karl, "What Democracy Is....and Is Not," in Soe, ed., pp. 107-113.

Using Empirical Evidence to Confirm Hypotheses (Jan. 15, Friday)

Larry Diamond, "Is the Third Wave Over?" in Soe, ed., pp. 229-234.

NO CLASS: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. BIRTHDAY (OBSERVED) (Jan. 18, Monday)

SHORT PAPER #1: METHODS EXERCISE DUE (Jan. 20, Wednesday)

Session 2: The Advanced Capitalist States: Class Alliances and Democracy

Britain

KKJ, Chapter 2, Sections 1 - 3 (Jan. 20, Wednesday)

KKJ, Chapter 2, Sections 4 - 5; Soe articles 2 & 3 (Jan. 22, Friday)

Soe articles 4, 6, 9, and 36 (Jan. 25, Monday)

Germany

KKJ, Chapter 4, Sections 1-2; Soe articles 12 & 13 (Jan. 27, Wednesday)

KKJ, Chapter 4, Sections 3-4; Soe articles 10 & 11 (Jan. 29, Friday)

KKJ, Chapter 4, Section 5; Soe articles 33 & 35 (Feb. 1, Monday)

Session 3: Communist and Post-Communist States: States and Social Revolutions

Russia

KKJ, Chapter 6, Sections 1-3 (Feb. 3, Wednesday)

KKJ, Chapter 6, Sections 4-5; Soe articles 37 & 38 (Feb. 5, Friday)

No class on Feb. 8, midterm break.

China

KKJ, Chapter 7, Sections 1-3 (Feb. 10, Wednesday)

KKJ, Chapter 7, Sections 4-5; Soe articles 45 & 46 (Feb. 12, Friday)

EXAM #1: MID-RANGE PROPOSITION-BUILDING (Feb. 15, Monday)

SHORT PAPER #2: PROPOSITION-BUILDING EXERCISE DUE (Feb. 15, Monday)

Session 4: 'Third World' States: Development and Democracy

India

KKJ, Chapter 8, Sections 1-2; Soe article 47 (Feb. 17, Wednesday)

KKJ, Chapter 8, Sections 3-5 (Feb. 19, Friday)

Brazil

KKJ, Chapter 10, Sections 1-2 (Feb. 19, Friday)

KKJ, Chapter 10, Sections 3-5 (Feb. 22, Monday)

Transnational Task Force on Democracy Simulation (Feb. 24 & 26 Wednesday & Friday)

"Building Democracy in India and Brazil: Applied Perspectives from Other Countries."

Session 5: Culturalist Approaches (March 1 Monday)

Howard Wiarda, "Social Change, Political Development, and the Latin American Tradition," in Peter F. Klarén and Thomas J. Bossert (eds.). Promise of Development: Theories of Change in Latin America, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986).

David L. Kirp, "Tocqueville in Italy," in Soe, ed., pp. 80-81.

Putnam, Making Democracy Work, Chapters 1 & 2.

Session 6: Social Structural Approaches (March 3 & 5 Wednesday & Friday)

Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvarez, José Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, "What Makes Democracies Endure?" In Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Themes and Perspectives, eds., Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, Yun-han Chu, and Hung-mao Tien. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 295-311.

Gabriel Almond, "Capitalism and Democracy," in Soe, ed., pp. 235-242.

Putnam, Making Democracy Work, Chapters 3-4.

Session 7: Institutionalist Approaches (March 8 & 10 Monday, & Wednesday)

Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, "Toward Consolidated Democracies." In Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Themes and Perspectives, eds., Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, Yun-han Chu, and Hung-mao Tien (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 14-33.

Putnam, Making Democracy Work, Chapters 5-6.

SHORT PAPER #3: THEORY APPLICATION EXERCISE DUE (March 10)

EXAM #2: ANALYZING AND APPLYING CONTRASTING THEORIES (Handout on March 10, Due March 17)