Comparative Politics of Industrialized Democracies

Catalog description

This course familiarizes students with high-quality research and writing in a particular area of comparative politics: the politics of representative government in industrialized democracies. We read and discuss work in four categories. We begin with voters and examine drivers of their behavior, including policy preferences, valence considerations, and economic motivations. We then move to electoral systems and their effects on politicians' behavior and policy choices, paying particular attention to how electoral systems influence particularism. Next, we consider why politicians form parties and weigh up competing theories of the functions served by parties. Finally, we study questions of governance, including why certain coalitions are formed and not others, how coalitions are managed, and how ministerial portfolios are allocated. Class discussions are focused on understanding why the authors tackled the questions they did and how they went about crafting and evaluating answers to those questions. One of the course's goals is to provide students with an opportunity to write a research paper of their own. To this end, the bulk of assessment will be writing-based.