Introduction to Comparative Politics: Political Challenges and Changing Agendas

Updated to reflect today's political climate, the seventh edition of INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE POLITICS offers a country-by-country approach that allows students to fully examine similarities and differences among countries and within and between political systems. Each chapter offers an analysis of political challenges and changing agendas within countries and provides detailed descriptions and analyses of the politics of individual countries. The text offers a condensed narrative and student-friendly pedagogy, such as marginal key terms and questions that will help them make meaningful connections and comparisons about the countries presented. This edition consists of 13 country case studies, as well as a case study on the European Union, providing an interesting sample of political regimes, levels of economic development, and geographic regions.

Mark Kesselman is the 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), along with 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 department chair 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).