1. WHAT IS COMPARATIVE POLITICS?
Why did Setzler stress out over whether to assign you Chp. 1 of Essentials? (most of what you need to know starts in Chp. 2). And why did he assign it despite the reservations?
Why are we going to study politics as well as history, and anthropology, and geography and economics? Why don’t most Americans already know the basics about the world’s most important countries?
What is the difference between comparative politics and international relations? Should we have separate “fields” in most social science disciplines?
Why is comparing worth our time? (data)
Why don’t even scholars agree on the appropriate way to study other societies?
Areas studies vs. the comparative method
Qualitative vs. quantitative methods

3. What are some of the key concepts for comparing countries?
What are states? How are they different from nations, nation states, and “failed” states? Are there alternative ways of organizing the main unit of intl. politics?
What are regimes? How are they different from governments or countries
In what sense are states sovereign?
What are political institutions? (I like my defn. better than pg. 5). Do they have to be formal structures?
What is civil society?
What is political culture?

4. WHY AND HOW DO WE COMPARATIVELY STUDY SOCIETIES?
Is there such a thing as a science of comparative politics?
Some key ideas: (1) categorization, (2) generalization (3) theory & hypothesis testing with evidence and (4) replication?
What are “most-similar” comparisons? (e.g. looking at the advanced democracies or “presidential” systems)
What are the most dissimilar comparisons? (e.g. India and the US or the US vs. UK)
Is it better to use inductive (bottom up logic) or deductive (top down) inquiry?
This class puts a big bet on the idea that deductive reasoning is extremely useful, but we’ll spend a lot of our time using inductive reasoning to learn the principles of why countries do what they do.
Why would political scientists use fancy math and bunch of craazy equations to predict what a country is going to do? Rational choice theory (aka game theory)

5. What categories are the most useful for comparison?
Geo-politics : The 1st, 2nd, and Third World
Socio-economic development: e.g., the global South, NICS, tigers, the BRIC, under-developed, developing, advanced nations
Geographical and cultural regions (e.g., Latin America or the west vs. the rest?
Consolidated (durable and highly institutionalized) vs. transitional regimes (and very likely to change)
Intl. relations: Great/regional powers vs everyone else.
How strong is the US? Strong vs. weak states (i.e.: states vary by capacity, autonomy, and stability).
Nature of power legitimacy: Traditional, charismatic, rational/legal
How many people have power? One, few, many
Three main political regime types: democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian (basically consensus vs. coercion)
Economic regime types: Free-market capitalism/ communism vs. a command economy/ socialism/state capitalism