Field Seminar in Comparative Politics

Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Seminar: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session

Prerequisites

Instructor permission is required.

Course Overview

This course is a graduate-level seminar in comparative politics. It aims to provide you with the conceptual and analytical tools necessary to conduct research in the subfield and to acquaint you with key topics.

The readings focus on foundational material, including classics, modern classics, and recent work (though usually only when enough time has elapsed following the publication of a piece to assess its staying power). Roughly 10% of the required readings are from before 1900, 45% are from the 20^th century, and 45% are from the 21^st century. Almost all have many thousands of citations.

Given the volume of material in the field, treatment of the topics we will cover is inevitably cursory and incomplete. A number of topics are left out entirely: ethnic politics, political communication and the mass media, legislatures and coalition formation, interest group representation, public goods provision, and politics in autocratic regimes (to name just a few)—mainly because they are the subjects of other classes. For each week, a list of recommended readings provides a more extended bibliography for those of you who wish to do further reading on your own in preparation for comprehensive exams or your own research on the subject.

Course Requirements

• Weekly required readings of (on average) ~175 pages per week. You should do all of the required readings for the week—and none of the recommended readings—and come to class with a general sense of how they fit together. It really shouldn’t take you more than 8–10 hours to read the required material, abstract it, and prepare for class discussion; if it does, we should meet and chat about strategies. Appendix I has a list of hints for approaching the readings.
  • Note, however, that the readings for the first substantive week—on the state—will take longer. Make sure to leave extra time for that week.
  • I will occasionally send you articles on current events or links to video that strike me as (a) particularly insightful, (b) balanced in their presentation of issues, and (c) relevant to course themes—with the idea being that “if you are going to read/see anything about this topic, you should check out this one” Of course, you are under no obligation to read or watch them. .
• Class attendance and participation. Some classes will begin with a brief lecture designed to summarize works not covered in the syllabus. We will then attempt to go through some or all of the discussion questions listed (though not necessarily in the order listed) and any questions you have.
  • I was originally planning to prerecord all of the short “lectures” at the beginning of class. However, some have suggested to me that COVID has left them sick of watching videos and they prefer these sessions to be live, in order to give people more of a chance to ask questions in real time and to hear classmates’ questions. Therefore, I have otherwise left the original format intact. Let me know, though, if you think it would be easier to change it around.
  • Because this is a seminar, class participation is important, and attendance is a requisite for participation. Things come up, of course, so everyone gets one bye over the semester for a legitimate personal reason (e.g., to attend an academic conference, go to a funeral, or participate in a wedding).
• Six “response papers” over the course of the semester. For more detail, please see the Assignments section.