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Oct 30, 2025
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POL 204 - Comparative Politics
Credits: 3
3 Lecture Hours
Description
This course provides theoretical and empirical tools to help students understand comparative politics. The course aims to illustrate the rich diversity of political life, to show available institutional alternatives, to explain differences in processes and policy outcomes and to communicate to students the importance of global political and economic changes. Students will explore three different types of States: established democracies, developing democracies and non-democracies through country case studies from Americas, Africa, Middle-East, Europe and Asia. The comparative aspect of the course involves searching for similarities and differences among different case studies in order to formulate generalizations about politics.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course, the student will:
- Define fundamental concepts in the field of comparative politics.
- Develop familiarity with the political systems of other countries.
- Apply political concepts to specific country case studies.
- Define key institutions and make comparisons across different types of political systems.
- Compare and contrast how political decisions are shaped by institutions and processes in various political systems.
- Relate comparisons across cases in order to gain a broader and deeper understanding of political events, institutions and processes.
- Compare and assess the impact of political decisions on individuals and groups in various political systems.
- Appraise how participation in the political process varies across political systems.
- Develop ability to categorize states according to the dominant typologies in the field.
- Describe the basic concepts and steps in conducting research in political science.
Listed Topics
- Analytical techniques of political science
- Political institutions and power
- States and nations
- Democracy: theory and practice
- Political participation in democracies and non-democracies
- Political culture
- Political ideologies
- Political economy
- Country case studies (Americas, Africa, Europe, Middle-East and Asia)
- Countries and leaders
Reference Materials
Current text, internet
Approved By: Johnson, Alex Date Approved: 05/28/2013
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