Comparative Politics E-Book

John T. Ishiyama

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: POPS - Principles of Political Science
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 457

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

By revealing the contextual conditions which promote or hinder democratic development, Comparative Politics shows how democracy may not be the best institutional arrangement given a country's unique set of historical, economic, social, cultural and international circumstances. * Addresses the contextual conditions which promote or hinder democratic development * Reveals that democracy may not be the best institutional arrangement given a country's unique set of historical, economic, social, cultural and international circumstances * Applies theories and principles relating to the promotion of the development of democracy to the contemporary case studies

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Principles of Political Science Series

Title page

Copyright page

1 Introduction: Comparative Politics and Democracy

Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method

The Evolution of Comparative Politics

The Plan of this Book

2 Democracy and Democratization in Historical Perspective

Introduction

Democracy and Democratization

A Historical Approach to Democratization

Six Historical Cases

Patterns of Political Development

3 Economics and Political Development

Modernization Theory

Dependency

Statism

Modernization, Dependency, and Statism Compared

4 Political Culture and Ethnopolitics

The Explanatory Power of Political Culture

Explaining Political Culture

Renaissance of Political Culture

Ethnic Politics and Nationalism

The Effects of Culture and Ethnicity on Democracy

5 Social Structure and Politics

Feudalism and Democracy

Socioeconomic Inequality and Democracy

Civil Society and Democracy

Conclusion

6 Democratization and the Global Environment

Democratic Diffusion and Waves of Democratization

The Legacy of Colonialism

Globalization and Democracy

Imposed Democracy

Conclusion

7 Electoral Systems

What Is the Electoral System?

The Effects of Electoral Systems

Electoral System Change

Conclusion

8 Legislatures and Executives

Presidentialism

Parliamentarism

Hybrid Systems

The Effects of Presidentialism and Parliamentarism

The Perils of Presidentialism: Do Presidential Systems Produce Democratic Instability?

Organizing Executives and Legislatures

Conclusion

9 Comparative Judicial Politics and the Territorial Arrangement of the Political System

Judicial Systems

The Territorial Arrangement of the Political System

Conclusion

10 Conclusion: Principles in Application

The Case of Afghanistan

Index

Principles of Political Science Series

Published John T. IshiyamaComparative PoliticsForthcoming Marijke BreuningInternational RelationsJeffrey S. LantisUS Foreign Policy in Action

This edition first published 2012

© 2012 John T. Ishiyama

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Hardback 978-1-4051-8685-8

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1

Introduction: Comparative Politics and Democracy

This book is not an introduction to political science in general, but an introduction to one of the major subfields of the discipline – comparative politics. It is designed as a book that builds upon a student’s knowledge of politics, and assumes that the student has some basic familiarity with some central questions in political science – questions such as: What is politics? What is the state? What is government? What is a political system? Although designed primarily as a book for students with some familiarity with politics and political science, this book can be used by both “beginners” in the field and by more advanced students. It can be used by more advanced students because rather than being about “countries,” it is about theories and principles in comparative politics. By adopting a problem-based learning approach, this can help even those students with little innate interest in comparative politics to understand how these concepts and principles can be used to make sense of hotspots like Iraq or Afghanistan.

This book is organized around a basic pedagogical principle: that students learn best when theories and concepts are understood in application to solving a problem (or problem-based learning). Hence this book is organized around a problem. How does one promote the development of political democracy? What are the factors that help explain the emergence of political democracy? Although some may object to the seemingly prescriptive nature of the question (the implication that democracy should exist everywhere), I adopt this focus for two reasons. First, it is a very practical question. Knowing the factors that affect the development of democracy can help students understand why “building” democracy in post-war Iraq or Afghanistan is so difficult, if not impossible. Thus, the question is not prescriptive – rather it presumes that students need to ask this question first to realize that democracy may not be the best institutional arrangement, given a set of historical, economic, social, cultural and international circumstances. Second, it provides an issue on which “to hang our theoretical hats” – it demonstrates that some very practical questions can be addressed using theories that students read about in texts – it makes the field relevant and real.

Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method

However, before we begin to address the question about how to build a democracy, we do need to address some preliminaries – when we talk about a text book on “comparative politics,” what do we mean? How does comparative politics fit as a subfield of political science? What has characterized the evolution of comparative politics as a subfield over time and how has that evolution reflected the development of political science generally? Finally, to sum up this chapter, I offer a brief outline of how this book is organized, and why is it organized the way it is.

Turning to a definition of comparative politics, it is first important to note that comparative politics is a subfield of political science, which includes other subfields, such as International Relations, Political Thought/Theory, Public Administration, Judicial Politics, etc. In American political science, American Politics is also considered a subfield, but this view is not shared by European scholars, for instance, who simply include American politics as a case within comparative politics. In this book I share that European perspective, and consider the United States as one of the cases among many we investigate for comparative purposes.

There have been many different definitions of comparative politics offered by a variety of political science scholars. These can be divided into at least three general types: First, there are those who think of comparative politics large as the study of “other” or “foreign” countries – in most cases, this means countries other than the United States (Zahariadis, 1997, p. 2). A second approach emphasizes comparative politics as a subject of study. For instance, David Robertson (2003) defines comparative politics as simply the study of “comparative government” whose essence is to compare the ways in which different societies cope with various problems, the role of the political structures involved being of particular interest. Most definitions of comparative politics, however, think of the field as both a of study and a of study (Lim, 2006). Thus, for example, Howard Wiarda notes that the defining feature of comparative politics is that it “involves the systematic study of the world’s political systems. It seeks to explain differences between as well as similarities among countries. In contrast to journalistic reporting on a single country, comparative politics is particularly interested in exploring patterns, processes, and regularities among political systems” (Wiarda, 2000, p. 7). These topics can include: