William Roberts Clark - Principles of Comparative Politics

Third Edition

Principles of Comparative Politics

Third Edition

• William Roberts Clark
• Texas A&M University
• Matt Golder
• Pennsylvania State University
• Sona Nadenichek Golder
• Pennsylvania State University

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Clark, William Roberts, 1962 author. | Golder, Matt, author. | Golder, Sona Nadenichek, author.

Title: Principles of comparative politics / William Roberts Clark, Texas A&M University, Matt Golder Pennsylvania State University, Sona Nadenichek Golder, Pennsylvania State University.

Description: Third edition. | Washington DC : SAGE/CQ Press, [2017] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016052425 | ISBN 9781506318127 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Comparative government. | Democracy. | Political scienceResearchMethodology.

Classification: LCC JF51 .C53 2017 | DDC 320.3dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016052425

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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This book began as a syllabus for an introductory comparative politics class taught by a newly minted PhDone of the books authors, Bill Clarkat Georgia Tech in the early 1990s. The class had three goals: (1) to introduce students to the major questions in comparative politics, (2) to acquaint them with the fields best answers to those questions, and (3) to give them the tools to think critically about the answers. The decision to write this textbook was born out of the frustration caused by our inability, ten years later, to find a single text that accomplished these goals. The intervening period, however, allowed us to conduct what turned out to be a useful experiment, because along the way, our frustration led us to gradually develop an ambitious syllabus from research monographs and refereed journal articles. The benefit of this approach has been our ability to respond flexibly to the changes in the discipline of political science and the field of comparative politics that have, for the most part, not made their way into textbooks. As a result, we have had the satisfaction of introducing many students to exciting work being done at the cutting edge of this field. And we learned that students were by and large up to the task. Nonetheless, we have also recognized the frustration of students confronting material that was not written with them in mind. The goal of this text is to try to maximize these upside benefits while minimizing the downside risks of our previous approach. We want students to be challenged to confront work being done at the cutting edge of the field, and we believe we have packaged this work in a way that is comprehensible to ambitious undergraduates with no prior training in political science.