Introduction to Comparative Politics: Political Challenges and Changing Agendas

Written by a distinguished group of comparativists, this innovative and accessible introductory text surveys 12 key countries organized according to their level of political development: established democracies, transitional democracies, and non-democracies. The country studies illuminate four comparative themes in a global context: the world of states, examining the interaction of states within the international order; governing the economy, covering the role of the state in economic management; the democratic idea, discussing the pressure for more democracy and the challenges of democratization; and the politics of collective identities, studying the political impact of diverse attachments and sources of group identity. The theoretical framework developed in an expanded introduction provides a rich context for each country study, and clear prose makes the book accessible to students with little or no background in political science. Students will also benefit from the data sheet at the beginning of each chapter that includes basic demographic, socioeconomic, and political information, to aid in country comparisons. In addition, they can use the Geographic Setting sections in each chapter, as well as maps, tables, charts, photographs, and political cartoons to further their understanding of each country studied.

Mark Kesselman is senior editor of the International Political Science Review and professor emeritus of political science at Columbia University. His research focuses on the political economy of French and European politics. His publications include The Ambiguous Consensus (1967), The French Workers Movement (1984), The Politics of Globalization: A Reader (2012), and The Politics of Power (2013). His articles have appeared in The American Political Science Review, World Politics, and Comparative Politics.

Joel Krieger is the Norma Wilentz Hess Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College. He is author of Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Decline (Oxford University Press, 1986), British Politics in the Global Age (Oxford University Press, 1999). He is the editor-in-chief of The Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics (Oxford University Press, 2013).

William A. Joseph is professor of political science and chair of the department at Wellesley College. He is also an associate in research of the John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. His major areas of academic interest are contemporary Chinese politics and ideology, the political economy of development, and the Vietnam War. He is the editor of and a contributor to Politics in China: An Introduction, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Christopher S. Allen is an associate professor at the University of Georgia, where he teaches courses in comparative politics and political economy. He has held research fellowships at the Harvard Business School, Johns Hopkins University, and from the German Marshall Fund. He is the editor of THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE GERMAN POLITICAL PARTY SYSTEM (Berghahn, 1999), and is working on a study of democratic representation in parliamentary and presidential systems.