SCHOOL OF PUBLIC and INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Master of Arts in Diplomacy and International Affairs
SYLLABUS –
Comparative Politics (Fall 2023)
EXAM questions:
Explain democracy deficit in the 21 century in
light of state nationalism and capitalism by
juxtaposing Liberal and Marxist theories
Deadline is 26th of December at 20:00
READINGS
PART I: FOUNDATIONS: WHAT IS POLITICS?
LECTURE 1: PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS 1 (ANCIENT GREECE
AND ROME)
- Plato, Republic, Book VIII
- Aristotle, Politics, Books I, III
- Cicero
- Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. University of Chicago press, 2013.
LECTURE 2: PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS 2 (ENLIGHTENMENT)
- St. Augustine, The City of God, Books, IV, XI
- Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, Ch. I, Fifth Discussion; Ch. II, Section 7; Ch.
III, Sections 1, 6, 9, 12-16.
- Machiavelli, Prince, Chs. 1, 15, 25
- Hobbes, Leviathan, Chs. 13-14.
- Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, Chs. 1-2
- Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book XI
- Rousseau, Social Contract, Chs. 6-8.
Watch: The Politics of Al-Farabi (video lecture) https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=nrQW1bja5As
PART II: SOCIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
LECTURE 3: MARX
- Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/
Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf
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LECTURE 4: DURKHEIM
- Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, Rules of the Sociological
Method.
- Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
LECTURE 5: WEBER
- Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
LECTURE 6: FREUD
- Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its discontents.
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*********MIDTERM 1***************
PART III: COMPARATIVE POLITICS AS A SCIENCE
LECTURE 7: PARADIGMS
- Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the state back in.” Policy Process. Routledge, 2014.
126-138.
- Bob Jessop, “Bringing the state back in (yet again): Reviews, revisions,
rejections, and redirections.” International Review of Sociology/Revue
internationale de sociologie 11.2 (2001): 149-173.
- Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman, Paradigms and Pragmatism:
Comparative Politics During the Past Decade in Lichbach, Mark Irving, and
Alan S. Zuckerman. Comparative politics: Rationality, culture, and structure.
Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 1-17.
- Jeffrey Kopstein, Mark Lichbach, and Stephen E. Hanson, eds. Comparative
politics: interests, identities, and institutions in a changing global order.
Cambridge University Press, 2014, “What is Comparative Politics?” pp. 1-15
and the “Framework for Analysis” pp. 16-39.
Recommended
- Kenneth Newton, and Jan W. Van Deth. Foundations of Comparative Politics.
Cambridge University Press, 2016.
LECTURE 8: METHODOLOGY
- Giovanni Sartori, “Concept misformation in comparative politics.” The
American Political Science Review 64(4) (1970): 1033-1053.
- David Collier, and Steven Levitsky. “Democracy with adjectives: Conceptual
innovation in comparative research.” World politics 49(3) (1997): 430-451.
- Bernard Lewis, “Translation from Arabic”, Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society, Vol. 124, No. 1 (Feb. 29, 1980), pp. 41-47
- Arend Lijphart, "Comparative politics and the comparative
method." American Political Science Review 65.03 (1971): 682-693.
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- George, Alexander, and Andrew Bennett. "The method of structured, focused
comparison." George, Alexander and Andrew Bennett, (2005) Case Studies
and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: MIT (2005): 73-
88.
- Andrew Bennett, and Colin Elman. "Case study methods in the international
relations subfield." Comparative Political Studies40.2 (2007): 170-195.
Recommended:
- David Collier, "The comparative method." Political Science: The State of
Discipline II, Ada W. Finifter, ed., American Political Science
Association (1993).
- James D. Fearon, "Counterfactuals and hypothesis testing in political science."
World politics 43.02 (1991): 169-195.
- Giovanni Sartori, "Comparing and miscomparing." Journal of Theoretical
Politics 3.3 (1991): 243-257.
- Theodore W. Meckstroth, "Most Different Systems" and" Most Similar
Systems":" A Study in the Logic of Comparative Inquiry." Comparative
Political Studies 8.2 (1975): 132.
LECTURE 9: VICTORY DAY (NO CLASS)
*********MIDTERM 2***************
PART IV: STATE, CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, and DEMOCRACY
LECTURE 10: THE MODERN STATE, NATIONALISM and THE
CAPITALISM
- Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and
spread of nationalism. Verso books, 2006.
- Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological
Introduction. Stanford University Press, 1978.
- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins
of Our Time, New York: Beacon, 1944.
- Schumpeter, Joseph A. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942.
LECTURE 11: LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
- James Madison, Federalist 10.
- Alexis de Tocqueville, “Tyranny of the Majority,” in Democracy in America,
Vol. 2 http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/detoc/1_ch15.htm
- Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy.
- Karl Popper, Open Society and Its Enemies.
- Arend Lijphart Patterns of Democracy Government Forms and Performance in
Thirty-Six Countries.
- Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the late twentieth
century. Vol. 4. University of Oklahoma press, 1993.
- Larry Jay Diamond, "Toward democratic consolidation." Journal of
democracy 5.3 (1994): 4-17.
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- Andreas Schedler, "What is democratic consolidation?" Journal of
Democracy 9.2 (1998): 91-107.
- Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Towards a
Radical Democratic Politics.
- Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach. "Constitutional frameworks and democratic
consolidation: Parliamentarianism versus presidentialism." World
Politics 46.01 (1993): 1-22.
- Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner eds. Democracy in Decline.
- Adam Przeworski Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government Cambridge
Studies in the Theory of Democracy.
PART V: COMPARATIVE POLITICS IN THE 2OTH CENTURY
LECTURE 12: DEVELOPMENT OR DEPENDENCY? WORLD SYSTEMS
THEORY
- Walt Whitman Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-communist
Manifesto. Cambridge University Press, 1971.
- Immanuel Wallerstein, The modern world-system I: Capitalist agriculture and
the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century, with a
new prologue. Vol. 1. Univ of California Press, 2011.
Recommended:
- Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow, eds. Political modernization in
Japan and Turkey. Princeton University Press, 2015.
- Frank, Andre Gunder. 1969. “The Development of Underdevelopment.”
Monthly Review 18, 4.
- Fernando Henrique Cardoso, 1972. “Dependency and Development in Latin
America,” New Left Review 74 (July/August).
- Alex Inkles and David H. Smith. Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six
Developing Countries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.
LECTURE 13: MAN, SOCIETY, and THE STATE
- Hannah Arendt, "The origins of totalitarianism [1951]." New York (1973).
- Barbu Zevedei, Democracy and Dictatorship: Their Psychology and Patterns
of Life. (1956).
- Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics.
- Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies.
- Joel Samuel Migdal, Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue. State power and social
forces: domination and transformation in the Third World. Cambridge
University Press, 1994.
PART V: MAJOR TOPICS
LECTURE 14: SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS
- Ted Gurr, Why men rebel?
- Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy Lord
and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World.
- Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions a Comparative Analysis of
France, Russia and China.
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- Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Economic origins of dictatorship
and democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
- Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and war. Cornell University Press, 1996.
LECTURE 15: INSTITUTIONS, PARTIES and ELECTIONS
- Paul Pierson. Politics in time: History, institutions, and social analysis.
Princeton University Press, 2004.
- Elinor Ostrom, “Institutional Rational Choice: An Assessment of The
Institutional Analysis,” in Theories of Policy Processes, pp. 35-72.
- Sven Steinmo. Taxation and Democracy: Swedish, British, and American
approaches to financing the modern state. Yale University Press, 1996.
- Jose Antonio Cheibub, Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy.
- Baldini, Gianfranco, Adriano Pappalardo, and Adriano Pappalardo. Elections,
electoral systems and volatile voters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
- Maor, Moshe. Political parties and party systems: Comparative approaches
and the British experience. Routledge, 2005.
- Mair, Peter, Wolfgang C. Müller, and Fritz Plasser, eds. Political parties and
electoral change: party responses to electoral markets. Sage, 2004.
- Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, Harper and Row, N.Y.,
1957.
- William Riker. "Liberalism against populism." (1982).
LECTURE 16: CIVIC CULTURE AND SOCIAL CAPITAL*
- Gabriel Abraham Almond, Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture Political
Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations.
- Robert D Putnam, "Bowling alone: America's declining social
capital." Journal of democracy 6.1 (1995): 65-78.
- Ronald Inglehart, The silent revolution: Changing values and political styles
among Western publics. Princeton University Press, 2015.
*Will not be included in the final exam as we will not be able to have a lecture for this
topic this year due to missing class during a national holiday.
*********FINAL EXAM***************
