Introducing Comparative Politics: Concepts and Cases in Context

About this book

Uncomfortable with a strictly thematic approach or tired of a purely country-by-country organization for your comparative politics course? Teach the way you want to teach with this innovative hybrid bookfully accessible to students easy to teach and satisfying to professors who want to give students a real sense of the questions that drive research in the field. Organized thematically around important concepts in comparative politicsWho rules? What explains political behavior? Where and why?the book integrates a set of extended case studies in eleven "core" countries. Serving as consistent geographic touchstones the cases are set in chapters where they make the most sense substantivelynot separated from theory or in a separate volumeand vividly illustrate issues in cross-national context. Features include: Core country case studies: Brazil China Germany Japan India Iran Nigeria Russia the UK the U.S. and new to this edition Mexico. NEW! Methods in Context boxes that model how comparativists do their research and analysis. In Context fact boxes that put eye-opening data into thematic context. Where and Why? boxes that explore why certain political outcomes occur in some countries but not in others. Country and Concept tables that display key indicators for core countries. Updates and revisions include: recent elections around the world and the effects of the global financial crisis and its aftermath authoritarian versus totalitarian regimes ethnic violence racial politics and identity economic globalization executive-legislative institutions and the role of civil society in government.