Mariana Rojas Hincapie

Apuntes

Mariana Rojas Hincapie RRII 2 Mariana Rojas Hincapie Comparative Political Systems - Midterm What is comparative politics? Politics is the struggle in any group of power that will give one or more personas the ability to make decisions. It is hard to separate the idea of politics from the idea of power, which is the ability to influence others or impose one's will on them. Topic 0 - Introduction Challenges that we face in comparative politics: 1. Controlling a large number of variables. - Ex: USA and weapons legislation 2. Controlling for the interaction of variables (multicausality) 3. Limited number of cases to research 4. Limited access to information from cases 5. Uneven research across cases and regions - Area studies 6. Cases selected on the basis of effect and not the cause (selection bias) - Revolutions 7. Variables may be either cause or effect (endogeneity) “Comparative politics has been around for thousands of years” ... Albeit with a different meaning Aristotle - Conducted comparative research on existing political systems - Analyzed constitutions of 158 Greek-city states Perhaps, the first westerner to understand politics as something differen...