Department of Politics, Princeton University Comparative Politics 2010 General Examination Reading List The general examination in comparative politics is based on a shared reading list. The purpose of the list is to help identify the most important topic areas and theoretical debates in comparative politics and provide a very basic “toolbox,” a repertoire of important intellectual strategies. The list reflects the plurality of perspectives in the field. It is not meant to be exhaustive. There are many good books and articles not on the list, of course, and we expect students to take courses and read more broadly in the themes on which they focus. It is thoroughly appropriate to mention these additional sources in answer to a general question, in addition to showing familiarity with the ideas represented here. To prepare for the exam, those for whom comparative politics is a major field should acquaint themselves with “Paradigms & Research Methods” as well as four of the other six major sections. (That is, each student may omit two of the major sections and still be adequately prepared.) It is worth remembering that in real life/scholarship, as in the exam, most problems require integration of ideas across sections. Many works cited in one section could easily have been listed under multiple sections on this reading list. To be “conversant” with the material means demonstrating the ability to compare and contrast alternative plausible explanations/theories in answer to some of the important questions in the sub-field. The format of the exam is similar to discussion papers in the gateway seminar, Politics 521. Central to success are 1) capacity to identify and use theories relevant to the question posed, 2) specificity, including ability to recount the “story line” that links causes to effects, and 3) originality. “Originality” may mean many things, including demonstrated ability to integrate disparate material, to use explanations to help understand a new problem (including your own research interests), or to extend and revise explanations in the literature. Graduate students have the option to take one of their additional examinations in the politics of a region in which they will specialize. The reading lists for these exams are developed by faculty members in the area of interest in conjunction with the student.
39
Embed
Department of Politics, Princeton University Comparative
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Department of Politics, Princeton University
Comparative Politics
2010
General Examination Reading List
The general examination in comparative politics is based on a shared reading list. The
purpose of the list is to help identify the most important topic areas and theoretical debates in
comparative politics and provide a very basic “toolbox,” a repertoire of important intellectual
strategies. The list reflects the plurality of perspectives in the field. It is not meant to be
exhaustive. There are many good books and articles not on the list, of course, and we expect
students to take courses and read more broadly in the themes on which they focus. It is
thoroughly appropriate to mention these additional sources in answer to a general question, in
addition to showing familiarity with the ideas represented here.
To prepare for the exam, those for whom comparative politics is a major field should acquaint
themselves with “Paradigms & Research Methods” as well as four of the other six major sections.
(That is, each student may omit two of the major sections and still be adequately prepared.) It is worth
remembering that in real life/scholarship, as in the exam, most problems require integration of ideas
across sections. Many works cited in one section could easily have been listed under multiple sections on
this reading list.
To be “conversant” with the material means demonstrating the ability to compare and contrast
alternative plausible explanations/theories in answer to some of the important questions in the sub-field.
The format of the exam is similar to discussion papers in the gateway seminar, Politics 521. Central to
success are 1) capacity to identify and use theories relevant to the question posed, 2) specificity, including
ability to recount the “story line” that links causes to effects, and 3) originality. “Originality” may mean
many things, including demonstrated ability to integrate disparate material, to use explanations to help
understand a new problem (including your own research interests), or to extend and revise explanations in
the literature.
Graduate students have the option to take one of their additional examinations in the politics of a
region in which they will specialize. The reading lists for these exams are developed by faculty members
in the area of interest in conjunction with the student.
2
3
CONTENTS
SECTION I: PARADIGMS & RESEARCH METHODS 5
I.A) Theory, Concepts, Measurement 5
I.B) Theory-Building Strategies or Paradigms 5
I.C) Research Design and Data Collection 6
I.D) Selected Special Issues in Theory and Research Design 7
I.E) Area Studies and the Discipline 8
SECTION II : STATES & REGIMES 9
II.A) State Formation 9
II.B) Theories of Political Development 10
II.C) Political Regimes and Democratization 11
SECTION III: INSTITUTIONS 14
III.A) Executives, Assemblies, and Courts 14
III. B) Unitary Government, Federalism, & Decentralization 16
III. C) Bureaucracy 17
SECTION IV : PARTICIPATION, COLLECTIVE ACTION, AND CONTENTIOUS POLITICS 18
IV.A) Rebellion, Revolution, and Violence 18
IV. B) Participation, Collective Action & Social Movements 20
IV.C) Interest Groups and Interest Intermediation 22
SECTION V: ELECTORAL POLITICS 23
V.A) Electoral Systems & Representation 23
V.B) Voting & Party Systems 25
SECTION VI: POLITICAL CULTURE AND IDENTITY/ETHNIC POLITICS 27
VI.A) Political Culture 27
VI.B) Ethnicity, Identity Politics and Nationalism 29
4
SECTION VII. POLITICAL ECONOMY 32
VII.A) Introduction to Political Economy (read as a preface to the subsequent sections) 32
VII.B) Political Economy of Advanced Industrial Societies 33
VII.C) Political Economy of Development 37
5
Section I: Paradigms & Research Methods
I.A) Theory, Concepts, Measurement
John Stuart Mill. “How We Compare,” in A System of Logic, Book VI, chapter
10, New York: Harper, 1846.
Arthur L. Stinchcombe. “The Logic of Scientific Inference” from Constructing
Social Theories. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. New York, pp. 15-38.
Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune. “Comparative Research and Social Science
Theory” from The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: Wiley
Scientific, 1970, pp. 17-30.
Jon Elster. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. (Some students have indicated that
they find Daniel Little, Microfoundations, Method, and Causation more useful.)
Giovanni Sartori, “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics,” APSR, 64:4:
1033-53.
Charles Judd, Eliot Smith, and Louise Kidder, “Maximizing Construct Validity” and
“Measurement: From Abstract Concepts to Concrete Representations,” in
Research Methods in Social Research.
Robert Adcock and David Collier. "Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for
Qualitative and Quantitative Research." American Political Science Review 95,
no. 3 (2001): 529-47.
I.B) Theory-Building Strategies or Paradigms
Gabriel Almond. “Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics,” in
Almond and Coleman, The Politics of Developing Areas.
Gabriel Almond, “The Development of Political Development,” in Myron Weiner and
Samuel Huntington, eds., Understanding Political Development, 1987, pp. 437-
478.
Robert Bates. “Macropolitical Economy in the Field of Development,” from James
Alt and Kenneth Shepsle, Perspectives on Positive Political Economy
Graham Allison, “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” American Political Science
Review, 63, 3 (1969): 689-718.
Kenneth A. Shepsle, "Studying Institutions: Some Lessons from the Rational Choice Approach,"
Journal of Theoretical Politics 1, 2 (April 1989), 131-147.
Kenneth Shepsle. “Statistical Political Philosophy and Positive Political Theory,”
From Jeffrey Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy.
6
Donald Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice, chapter 5.
Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial
Inquiry,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22, 2 (April 1980): 174-
197.
Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical
Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992, ch. 1.
Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor. “Political Science and the Three New
Institutionalisms,” Political Studies 44 (December 1996): 936-958.
Louis Mink, “The Autonomy of Historical Understanding,” History and Theory 5: 30-47 or
another selection that explains the difference between historical reasoning and social
science reasoning.
Albert O. Hirschman, “Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding,” World Politics, 22,
3 (1970): 329-343.
I.C) Research Design and Data Collection
Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune. “Research Designs,” from The Logic of
Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: Wiley Scientific, 1970, pp. 31-47.
Earl Babbie, “Types of Study Design,” from Survey Research Methods or for a more
sustained and interesting discussion see Donald T. Campbell and Julian Stanley,
Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research, Houghton Mifflin,
first published 1963 and reissued as a reprint recently or Stephen van Evera.
Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1997.
Evan S. Lieberman, "Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative
Research," American Political Science Review 99 (August 2005), 435-452
John Gerring. Social Science Methodology: A Criterial Framework. Cambridge ; New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Donald Campbell & J.C. Stanley. 1966. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs
for Research. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., pp.5-27; 31-4.
Gaines, BJ, JH Kuklinski, and PJ Quirk. 2007. "The logic of the survey experiment
reexamined." Political Analysis 15 (1):1-20.
Earl Babbie, Survey Research Methods, chapters 3,4,5.
Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett. Case Studies and Theory Development
In the Social Sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005, at least chapter 1, Part II,
and chapter 8.
Clifford Geertz. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in
7
Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books: 3-30.
Elisabeth Jean Wood. 2007. "Field Research." In The Oxford handbook of comparative
politics, ed. C. Boix and S. C. Stokes. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University
Press.
Lustick, Ian S. "History, Historiography, and Political Science: Multiple Historical
Records and the Problem of Selection Bias." American Political Science Review
90, no. 3 (1996): 605-18.
I.D) Selected Special Issues in Theory and Research Design
a. Endogeneity and Path Dependence
Paul Pierson. “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,”
American Political Science Review, 94, 2 (June 2000).
Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier. Shaping the Political Arena. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, chapter one on critical junctures.
Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry, pp. 185-196.
b. Case selection and selection bias
Barbara Geddes, “How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection
Bias in Comparative Politics,” in Political Analysis, edited by James Stimson,
v. 2 Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990: 131-149. (optional)
Gary King, Robert Keohane and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, pp. 129-132.
David Collier, James Mahoney, and Jason Seawright. “Claiming Too Much: Warnings
About Selection Bias,” in Henry Brady and David Collier, eds., Rethinking
Social Inquiry. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, pp. 85-86, 88-92, 94-5,
100-101.
c. Analytic Narratives
Robert Bates, et. al. Analytic Narratives. Princeton: Princeton University Press, chapter
One and conclusion plus Jon Elster, “Rational Choice History: A Case of
Excessive Ambition,” American Political Science Review, 94,3 (Sept. 2000),
Bates et. al. reply in same and/or Daniel Carpenter, “Commentary: What is the
Marginal value of Analytic Narratives?” Social Science History, 24, 4 (winter
2000).
d. Counter-factuals
James Fearon, “Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science,” World
Politics
e. Comparative Method
David Collier, “Comparative Politics and Comparative Method,” in Dankwart
Rustow and Kenneth Paul Erickson, eds., Comparative Political Dynamics
8
Gary King, Robert Keohane and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994, chapters 1-3 especially plus “Symposium on
Qualitative-Quantitative Disputation” (reviews of KKV) American Political
Science Review, June 1995.
Charles Ragin. The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and
Quantitative Strategies, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
I.E) Area Studies and the Discipline
Robert H. Bates, “Area Studies and the Discipline: A Useful Controversy?” PS: Political
Science and Politics, pp. 166-169.
Peter A. Hall and Sidney Tarrow, “Globalization and Area Studies: When Is Too
Broad Too Narrow?” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 23, 1998, B5.
Atul Kohli, et. al., “The Role of Theory in Comparative Politics: A Symposium, World Politics,
October 1995, pp. 1-15, 37-49.
9
Section II : States & Regimes
II.A) State Formation
A Useful Metaphor?
Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime, “in Bringing the
State Back In
Mancur Olson. “The Criminal Metaphor,” from Power and Prosperity. NY: Basic Books, 2000,
pp. 3-24.
Theories of State Formation
Charles Tilly. The Formation of National States in Western Europe. (read enough to get the
basic ideas)
Hendrick Spruyt. The Sovereign State and Its Competitors. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1994.
Charles Tilly. Coercion, Capital, and the European States. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990,
pp. 1-3, 16-23, 25-26, 28-32, 71-75, 94-95, 99-103, 187-191.
Stephen Krasner. Sovereignty. Princeton: Princeton University Press, chapters 1 and 2 or the
argument’s earlier manifestation in Stephen Krasner. “Approaches to the State:
Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics,” Comparative Politics, 16, January
1984: 223-246.
Albert Hirschman, “Exit, Voice, and the State,” World Politics, 31, 1 (1978): 90-107.
Levi, Margaret. 1988. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Weak States
Joel Migdal. “Strong States, Weak States,” in Myron Weiner and Samuel Huntington,
Understanding Political Development. Illinois: Scott Foresman/Little Brown, 1987.
Robert Jackman and Carl Rosberg, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the
Juridical in Statehood,” World Politics, 1982: 1-24.
Jeffrey Herbst. States and Power in Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
The “Resource Curse”
Michael Ross, “Does Oil Hinder Democracy?” World Politics, April 2001. (Do states
that fund government through resource windfalls behave differently from
other states? Look for the rentier state argument summarized in this article.)
Macartan Humphreys, “Natural Resources, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution:
Uncovering the Mechanisms,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 49, 4 (2005): 508-
537.
10
II.B) Theories of Political Development
Modernization Theory
Daniel Lerner. The Passing of Traditional Society. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958, chapter 1.
Karl Deutsch, “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” in Jason Finkle and Richard
Gable, eds., Political Development and Social Change, 1971, pp. 384-401.
Seymour Martin Lipset. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1960, chapter 2.
Alex Inkeles, “The Modernization of Man,” in Myron Weiner, ed., Modernization, New York:
Basic Books, 1966: 138-150.
Ronald Inglehart. Modernization and Postmodernization. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1997…skim for main points. A contemporary version of
modernization theory? Or Ronald Inglehart and Wayne Baker. “Modernization,
Globalization, and the Persistence of Tradition: Empirical Evidence from 65
Societies,” American Sociological Review, 65 (2000): 19-51.
Critics Part 1: Institutionalization & order…
Samuel Huntington. Political Order in Changing Societies, 1968, pp. 1-92 and 344-461.
Samuel P. Huntington and Joan M. Nelson. No Easy Choice: Political Participation in
Developing Countries. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1976.
Critics Part 2: Marx and His Successors: Marxism and Dependency Theory as Alternative Theories of
Political Development
Karl Marx. The Communist Manifesto or some other version of Marx’s argument.
J. Samuel Valenzuela and Arturo Valenzuela, “Modernization and Dependency: Alternative
Perspectives in the Study of Latin American Underdevelopment,” Comparative Politics,
10, 4 (July 1978): 535-552.
Fernando Henrique Cardozo and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America,
University of California Press, 1979, pp. viii-xxv, 177-216.
Andre Gunder Frank, “The Development of Underdevelopment,” in The Political Economy of
Development and Underdevelopment, 109-120.
Thomas Bierstecker. Distortion or Development? Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978 (chapter 1 and
summary charts…an effort to phrase dependency theory as a series of empirically testable
hypotheses)
Tony Smith, “The Underdevelopment of Development Literature: The Case of Dependency
Theory,” World Politics 31 (January 1979): 247-288.
11
II.C) Political Regimes and Democratization
Regimes
Aristotle, from The Politics. Book 4, iv, x, xii and Book 5 vi.
Robert Dahl. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1971.
Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. (1965), pp.
14-29.
Samuel Huntington, “Social and Institutional Dynamics of One-Party Systems,” in S. P
Huntington and C. H. Moore, ed., Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society (1970): 3-44.
Alfred Stepan. Rethinking Military Politics. (There is an extensive literature on military coups,
much of which is not reflected here)
Joseph Schumpeter. Capitalism, Socialism, & Democracy. New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1947
Democratization
Seymour Martin Lipset. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy,” American Political Science
Review, 1959.
Barrington Moore. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. 1968 (see also or as a
reader’s guide: Theda Skocpol, “A Critical Review of Barrington Moore’s Social
Politics and Society, fall 1973)
Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John Stephens. Capitalist Development
and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, chapters 1, 2, and 3.
Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule:
Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1986.
Samuel Huntington. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century.
Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, pp. xiii-xv, chapters 1-4.*
Robert Bates, “The Impulse to Reform,” in Jennifer Widner, ed., Economic Change and
Political Liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1994.
Eva Bellin. “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: A Comparative