Introducing Comparative Politics: Concepts and Cases in Context

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1608716686 ISBN 13: 9781608716685

Publisher: CQ Press, 2011

Uncomfortable with a strictly thematic approach, or tired of a purely country-by-country organization for your comparative politics course?

Teach the way you want to teach with this innovative hybrid book―fully accessible to students, easy to teach, and satisfying to professors who want to give students a real sense of the questions that drive research in the field. Organized thematically around important concepts in comparative politics―Who rules? What explains political behavior? Where and why?―the book integrates a set of extended case studies in eleven "core" countries. Serving as consistent geographic touchstones, the cases are set in chapters where they make the most sense substantively―not separated from theory or in a separate volume―and vividly illustrate issues in cross-national context.

Features include:

• Core country case studies: Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, India, Iran, Nigeria, Russia, the UK, the U.S., and, new to this edition, Mexico.
• NEW! Methods in Context boxes that model how comparativists do their research and analysis.
• In Context fact boxes that put eye-opening data into thematic context.
• Where and Why? boxes that explore why certain political outcomes occur in some countries but not in others.
• Country and Concept tables that display key indicators for core countries.

Updates and revisions include:

• recent elections around the world and the effects of the global financial crisis and its aftermath,
• authoritarian versus totalitarian regimes,
• ethnic violence, 
• racial politics and identity,
• economic globalization,
• executive-legislative institutions, and
• the role of civil society in government.

About the Author:

Carol Ann Drogus is Senior Associate Director of Off-Campus Study at Colgate University. She is a specialist on Brazil, religion, and women’s political participation. She taught introduction to comparative politics for 15 years, as well as courses on Latin American politics, gender and politics, and women in Latin America. She has written two books and numerous articles on the political participation of women in religious movements in Brazil.

Review:

I have never seen such a positive reaction to a textbook from students, honestly. We have had a problem finding a suitable book for this course. The end of course critiques had been blistering on the subject of the text. Not this year!

Author: David Sacko

The strength of the Drogus and Orvis text is the integration of themes and case studies. This approach enhances the analytical qualities of instruction as the case studies are embedded in thematic coverage and provide a hands-on illustration of concepts and principles.

Author: Boyka Stefanova

The “Where and Why” feature is a very effective way of elaborating on a conceptual methodology that is a cornerstone of comparative analysis without belaboring students with a complex presentation of the comparative method.

Author: Dwayne Woods