Office:
930 PLC, 346-4402 or by appt.
This
seminar introduces the major theoretical debates and approaches in comparative
politics. The first section briefly reviews the historical foundations of the
subfield from the 1700s to the 1960s. Then it considers important contributions
to the subfield’s three most prominent issues: economic development/political
economy, democratization, and revolution/social movements. The goal is not a
comprehensive review of this enormous literature, but to make students familiar
with its most important antecedents, logics, and trends.
COURSE
ASSIGNMENTS
1. Read. Each session will require at least a full
day of reading in preparation. A significant portion of your grade will reflect
the quality of your contribution to class discussion.
2. Three response papers. You will write a 7-9 page
response paper to questions sent out by Prof. Parsons on readings on the main
three topics in the course (political economy/development, democracy,
revolution). See the guidance/questions
handout for what I expect.
3. Reading
reviews. Each student will present
and review one reading in class very briefly (10-15 minutes). You will
summarize the argument and methods and offer critiques and/or connections to
other readings to launch discussion.
4. Final exam. There will be an eight-hour, take-home comprehensive final exam on Wednesday
Dec. 9 from 9am to 5pm. It will be
designed for you to do in 3-4 hours of actual writing; the additional time is
mainly to allow for flexibility and to not penalize those for whom English is a
second language. There will be choice among a few questions, and we will
hold a study session prior to the exam.
EVALUATION
Three response papers 3 x 20%
Reading review 5%
Final exam 35%
Participation in class can boost your grade modestly
but cannot hurt you.
All the readings for the course will be
available in PDF files on e-reserve on the course Blackboard website, with the
exception of the following books you should buy. All should be available on
Amazon or other internet booksellers (I like the meta-search Bookfinder.com to
find used and new copies). Full cites for the books are in the reading schedule
below.
Janos 1986. Politics
and Paradigms.
Moore 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and
Democracy.
Polanyi 1944. The
Great Transformation.
North 1981. Structure and
Change in Economic History.
O’Donnell and Schmitter
1986. Transitions from Authoritarian
Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies.
Skocpol 1979. States and Social Revolutions.
Parsons 2007. How to Map Arguments in Political Science.
PLEASE BRING THE RELEVANT
READINGS TO EVERY SESSION, AS WE WILL OFTEN REFER TO THEM.
I. Historical Foundations
Read prior to
class, for session 1:
Janoš, Chapter 1-2, “Images
of Change: the Classical Paradigm,” and “Neo-Classicism: Variations on a
Theme,” 7-64.
Harry Eckstein, “A
Perspective on Comparative Politics, Past, Present, and Future,” in H. Eckstein
and D. Apter, Comparative Politics (NY: Free Press, 1963), 3-32.
Gabriel
Almond, “Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics,” in
Almond and Coleman, eds. The Politics of the
Developing Areas. Princeton University Press, 1960, 3-64.
James Farr,
"Remembering the Revolution: Behavioralism in American Political
Science" in Farr et al, eds. Political
Science in History. Cambridge
University Press, 1995, 198-224.
John Stuart Mill, “Two
Methods of Comparison,” (1888), reprinted in Amitai Etzioni and Fredric Dubow,
eds. Comparative Perspectives: Theory and Methods. Little, Brown, 1970,
205-213.
David Collier, “The
Comparative Method: Two Decades of Change,” in Rustow and Erickson, eds. Comparative
Political Dynamics. Harper Collins, 1991, 7-31.
Barbara Geddes, “How the
Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative
Politics,” Political Analysis 2 (1990), 131-150.
SESSION 1: Classical and
“neo-classical” comparative politics
Recommended:
Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge
Comparisons. Russell Sage Foundation, 1984.
Read for Session 2:
Janoš, Chapter 3,
“Breakthrough: From the Social to the Global System,” 65-96.
Gabriel Almond, “The Return
to the State,” American Political Science Review 82:3 (1988), 853-874,
and response by Eric Nordlinger.
Barrington Moore, Jr. Social
Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Beacon Press, 1966, xvii-xxv, 3-39,
228-313, 413-483.
Theda Skocpol, “A Critical
Review of Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy,”
Politics and Society 4:1 (Fall 1973), 1-34.
SESSION 2: Classical/neoclassical
comparative politics breaks down; neo-Marxism, institutions, and the state as
challenges.
DEVELOPMENT
Read for Session 3:
Alexander
Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in
Historical Perspective. Harvard University Press, 1962, 5-30.
Karl Polanyi, The Great
Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Beacon
Press, 1944.
William Reddy, The Rise
of Market Culture. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984, ix-xi, 1-18.
Douglass
North.
1981. Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: Norton.
SESSION 3: Economic Development 1.
Recommended:
Robert Heilbroner, The
Worldly Philosophers: the Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980.
Albert Hirschman, The
Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its
Triumph. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Mancur Olson, The Rise and
Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
Immanuel Wallerstein, The
Capitalist World-Economy: Essays. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1979.
Max Weber, The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge, 2001 [1905].
Reinhard Bendix, Work and
Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of
Industrialization. New York: Wiley, 1956.
Richard Biernacki,The
Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914. Berkeley: UC Press ,
1995.
Read for Session 4:
Suzanne Berger,
“Introduction,” in Berger, ed. Organizing Interests in Western Europe:
Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Transformation of Politics. Cambridge
University Press, 1981, 1-23.
Hall, Peter A. “The Role of Interests, Institutions, and
Ideas in the Comparative Political Economy of the Industrialized Nations,” in
Mark Lichbach & Alan Zuckerman, eds. Comparative Politics: Rationality,
Culture, Structure. Cambridge University Press, 1997, 174-207.
Peter
Hall and David Soskice, “An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism,” in Hall
and Soskice, eds., Varieties of
Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford
University Press, 2001, 1-68.
Stephen Vogel, Freer
Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries Cornell University Press, 1996, 1-42.
SESSION 4: Economic Development 2:
Industrialized countries.
Recommended:
Andrew Schonfeld, Modern Capitalism. Oxford University
Press, 1965.
John Zysman, Governments, Markets, and Growth.
Cornell University Press, 1983.
John Goldthorpe, ed. Order and Conflict in Contemporary
Capitalism. Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Peter Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets. Cornell
University Press, 1985.
Herbert Kitschelt et al, eds.
Continuity and Change in Contemporary
Capitalism. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Hall and Soskice, eds. Varieties of Capitalism.
Kathleen Thelen, How
Institutions Evolve: the Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the
United States, and Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Read for Session 5:
Robert Heilbroner, “The Wonderful World of Adam
Smith,” in The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives and Times of the Great
Economic Thinkers, 6th
ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 42-74.
J. Samuel Valenzuela and
Arturo Valenzuela, “Modernization and Dependency: Alternative Perspectives in
the Study of Latin American Underdevelopment,” Comparative Politics 10:4 (1978), 535-558.
Gunnar Myrdal, Rich Lands
and Poor. Harper, 1957, 3-38. (plus 3 page summary of Myrdal by Petra
Behrens/Marc Smyrl, 1999)
Peter Evans, Dependent
Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil.
Princeton University Press, 1979, 3-54.
Robert Wade, Governing
the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian
Industrialization. Princeton University Press, 1990, 3-51.
SESSION 5, 10/25: Economic Development 3:
Third World development.
Recommended:
Helen Shapiro and Lance
Taylor, “The State and Industrial Strategy,” World Development 18:6 (1990), 861-878.
Chalmers Johnson, MITI and
the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975. Stanford University Press, 1982.
Alice Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late
Industrialization. Oxford University
Press, 1989.
Stephen Haggard, Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of
Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries. Cornell University Press,
1990.
Ziya Onis, “The Logic of the
Developmental State,” [Review] Comparative Politics 24:1 (October 1991),
109-126.
John Meyer et al., “World
Society and the Nation-State,” American Journal of Sociology 103:1
(1997), 144-181.
FIRST RESPONSE PAPER DUE
SUNDAY, 11/1, 5PM, EMAILED TO ME.
REGIME OUTCOMES/DEMOCRACY
Read for Session 6:
Robert Dahl, Polyarchy.
Yale University Press, 1971, 1-16.
Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some
Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,”
American Political Science Review 53:1 (March 1959), 69-105.
Gabriel Almond, “Capitalism
and Democracy,” PS: Political Science and Politics 24 (September 1991),
467-74.
Dietrich Rueschemeyer,
Evelyn Stephens and John Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy.
University of Chicago Press, 1992, 1-39.
Gregory Luebbert, “Social
Foundations of Political Order in Interwar Europe,” World Politics 39:4
(1987), 449-478.
SESSION 6: Why democracy?
Recommended:
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.
Harper & Row, 1942.
Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies.
Yale University Press, 1968.
Almond, Gabriel A., and
Sidney Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in
Five Nations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
James Kurth, “Industrial
Change and Political Change: A European Perspective,” in David Collier,
ed. The New Authoritarianism in Latin
America. Princeton University Press, 1979, 319-362.
Richard Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? Princeton
University Press, 1982.
Ruth Collier, Paths Toward
Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Read for Session 7:
Dankwart Rustow,
“Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model.” Comparative Politics 2 (April 1970), 337-63.
Samuel Huntingdon, “Will
More Countries Become Democratic?” Political
Science Quarterly, 99:2 (Summer 1984), 193-218.
Herbert Kitschelt,
“Political Regime Change: Structure and Process-Driven Explanations?” [Review
essay] American Political Science Review 86:4 (December 1992),
1028-1034.
Fish, M. Steven. 1997. “The Determinants of Economic Reform in the
Post-Communist World,” Eastern European Politics and Societies 12:1,
31-48.
Guillermo O’Donnell and
Philippe Schmitter, Transitions from
Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
SESSION 7: Democratization 2: Transitions.
Recommended:
[very useful compilation] Lisa Anderson, ed. Transitions to Democracy. Columbia University Press, 1999.
Adam Przeworski, Democracy
and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin
America. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Richard Gunther, et al, eds. The Politics of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in
Comparative Perspective. Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Michael Bratton and Nicolas
Van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in
Comparative Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Philippe Schmitter and Terry
Karl, “The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far
to the East Should They Attempt to Go?” Slavic Review 53:1 (1994),
173-185.
Valerie Bunce, “Should
Transitologists Be Grounded?” Slavic Review 54:1 (1995), 111-27.
SECOND RESPONSE PAPER DUE
SUNDAY, 11/15, 5PM, EMAILED TO ME.
REVOLT AND
REVOLUTION
Read for Session 8:
James Scott, The Moral
Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. Yale
University Press, 1976, 1-34.
Samuel Popkin, The
Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam.
University of California Press, 1979, 1-31.
Mark Irving Lichbach, “What
Makes Rational Peasants Revolutionary? Dilemma, Paradox, and Irony in Peasant
Collective Action,” World Politics 46:3 (1994), 383-418.
Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution. Addison-Westley,
1978, 1-51.
Doug McAdam, John McCarthy,
and Mayer Zald, “Introduction: Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and
Framing Processes,” in McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, eds. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements. Cambridge University
Press, 1996 , 1-22.
SESSION 8: Peasant revolt
Recommended:
James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of
Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press, 1985.
Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement. Cambridge University
Press, 1998.
McAdam, Doug. 1982. Political
Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Morris, Aldon D., and Carol
McClurg Mueller, eds. 1992. Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Read for Session 9:
Theda Skocpol, States and
Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China.
Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Jack Goldstone, Revolution
and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. University of California Press,
1991, 1-62.
Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French
Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, 1-51, 123-179.
Sewell, William H., Jr.
1996. “Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing Revolution
at the Bastille,” Theory and Society
25, 841-881.
SESSION 9: Revolution
Recommended:
Eric Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century.
Harper & Row, 1969.
Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel. Princeton University
Press, 1970.
Jeffery Paige, Agrarian Revolution. Free Press, 1975.
Ellen Kay Trimberger, Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats
and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egypt, and Peru. Transaction Books, 1978.
THIRD RESPONSE PAPER DUE
FRIDAY, 12/4, 5PM, EMAILED TO ME.
Read for
session 10:
Craig Parsons, How
to Map Arguments in Political Science (New York: Oxford University Press,
2007), all except Ch. 5,
133-163.
SESSION 10: Mapping it all
[Additional meeting: study session for exam,
TBA, Monday Dec. 7]
FINAL EXAM:
Wednesday,
Dec. 9, 9am-5pm, takehome exam. Questions will be emailed to you at 9am. You
email your exam back to me (cap@uoregon.edu) by 5pm.