Suchergebnisse

This symposium is the culmination of work that began in October 2007, when fourteen scholars from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States convened at Case Western Reserve University to participate in the research conference Toward a Comparative Politics of Gender: Advancing the Discipline along Interdisciplinary Boundaries. The conference was funded by a Presidential Initiative Grant from the University and further supported by an ACES grant. Dr. Gregory Eastwood made available the Library of the Inamori Center for Ethnics and Excellence for our conference meetings. Many thanks to Linda Gilmore, Tonae Bolton-Dove, Gail Papay, Shelley White, and Sharon Skowronski for their expert administrative support. Professors Dorothy Miller (Women's Studies), Rosalind Simson (Philosophy, Law and Women's Studies), and Kelly McMann (Political Science and International Studies) served as discussants of the conference papers. To Theda Skocpol, who presented remarks at the opening dinner of the conference, and to the scholars who participated in the CPG conference and whose contributions are included in this symposium, I offer my deepest appreciation and gratitude.What do we mean by a comparative politics of gender? How would a comparative politics of gender advance our understanding of politics generally? What would it take to develop a gendered comparative political analysis? In the essays that follow, Teri Caraway, Louise Chappell, Leslie Schwindt-Bayer, and Aili Mari Tripp elaborate their understandings of a comparative politics of gender. Five additional essays focus specifically on issues of democratization (Lisa Baldez, Georgina Waylen), political institutions and representation (Mili Caul Kittilson, Mona Lena Krook), and comparative sex equality policies (Mala Htun and Laurel Weldon). In this introductory essay, I discuss what I mean by "gender" in the context of comparative politics. Briefly enumerating the advantages of comparative politics as a subfield for a gendered analysis of political phenomena, I discuss how a comparative politics of gender can serve to advance our understanding of politics generally, and I provide an example of subfield research—the study of political violence—where gender as a metaconcept may be particularly useful. I conclude by considering what it would mean to our study of gender and of comparative politics to place gender as a central concept in comparative political research and to move to a comparative politics of gender.

"Cases in Comparative Politics is the best-selling case book for the course because it uses a consistent framework to illustrate major concepts in comparative politics. Featuring coverage of the 13 most-taught countries, Cases combines foundational knowledge with the most ruthlessly up-to-date coverage to foster easier comparison across countries"--

A review essay on books by (1) Robert H. Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, & Barry R. Weingast, Analytic Narratives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U Press, 1998); (2) Robert H. Bates, Open-Economy Politics: The Political Economy of the World Coffee Trade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U Press, 1997); & (3) Lee J. Alston, Thrainn Eggertsson, & Douglass C. North (Eds), Empirical Studies in Institutional Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U Press, 1996). Rational choice & formal theory have gained increasing prominence in comparative politics. Grounded in deductive logic, this analytic turn has often been perceived to be at odds with historical & case-oriented methodologies. The innovation of the three books under review lies in their claim that rigorous analytic techniques are in fact complementary to historical & case-oriented approaches. This review evaluates the strengths & weaknesses of this new approach & assesses its implications for the future of comparative politics. While this new approach falls short of the claims it makes regarding causal validity & generalizability, the authors of these books should be commended for their willingness to engage important criticisms of rational choice theory & their determination to comprehend significant historical episodes. 1 Table. Adapted from the source document.

This article compares the state of the art of comparative politics in Britain with the US and continental Europe. Three main traditions are distinguished: a narrative single-country tradition, in which comparative politics is understood as the study of foreign countries, a methodology-oriented tradition, which is concerned with the development of the techniques of comparison, and an analytical comparative tradition, which understands comparative politics as a combination of substance and method. It is argued that comparative politics in Britain is dominated by single-country studies, while the methodology-oriented and the analytical comparative traditions are more strongly developed in the US and continental Europe respectively. A comparative analysis of research interests and teaching provision furthermore demonstrates that, in Britain, comparative politics is an underdeveloped sub-field in terms of both teaching and research. This currently results in the need to import comparativists trained outside the British system in order to sustain the discipline. The article concludes by stressing the potential for the development of comparative politics in Britain.