Suchergebnisse

Comparative politics textbooks play an important role in scientific socialization within political science. Thus, textbook reviews should take their role in this process into account. Analytical review criteria have to be based on understanding the different potential roles textbooks may play within tertiary education & of the goals they may fulfill. The argument about different strategy patterns of comparative politics textbooks is illustrated here on the example of relatively recent textbooks by Daniele Caramani & Alan Siaroff. Such an analysis may serve not only to identify reasonable criteria to assess comparative politics textbooks, but it also utilizes the findings of Thomas Kuhn about the "discipline-forming" role of textbooks. Textbooks also play an important role as a space for meta-reflective analysis of comparative politics as a field of. To study textbooks therefore also means to study authoritative texts about comparative politics. Adapted from the source document.

The article deals with district level electoral competition in Canada & Great Britain. Analyzing fragmentation, degree of competition & district heterogeneity of party support, using a calibrated set of research tools (Laakso-Taagepera's N, graphical methods, second-first loser ratio (SFLR) & Gini index as measure of heterogeneity), we argue that in respect to the Duvergerian agenda, Great Britain & Canada now represent proximate (and not -- as before -- distal) cases. This convergence has been accompanied by the departure of both electoral arenas from the former status quo in at least one of the dimensions under observation. We briefly discuss possible reasons for that departure, mostly exogenous of electoral rules, stressing their increasing importance for the Duvergerian agenda in general. Adapted from the source document.

The article deals with the concept of the advantage of "backwardness" and its use in comparative research on European parties and party systems. Politics in the "post-Rokkanian" world, characterized by de-aligning patterns of interest representation and intermediation, raises new questions and challenges in the field of research on political parties, pressure groups, and social movements. The text poses questions that should be asked in regard to this "post-Rokkanian" transformation of political processes connected to the opening of new research perspectives on multilevel party competition in European countries. The article elaborates the concept of the advantage of backwardness at three main levels: the organizational patterns of internal life within political parties, party systems, and interest intermediation systems generally. The article also tries to put the whole concept of the advantage of backwardness into the proper geopolitical and historical area in the framework of European countries. Adapted from the source document.

The article tries to evaluate the Europeanization research agenda from the point of view of a politics-sphere A basic precondition for understanding the character of the political systems in East-European countries after the Second World War is to define the key concepts, especially different types of non-democratic regimes. In other words, we must know what "totalitarianism", and "authoritarianism" means, and how we should approach studying these species. According to empirical and analytical methods, we consider them both as ways of governing, as types of political systems and not something else (e.g. ideology, a way of thinking, etc.). Eastern Europe after 1944, with some exceptions, was not totalitarian and is better described as quasi-totalitarian or authoritarian. However by the term "quasi-totalitarianism" we do not mean a subtype of "post-totalitarianism" (as Juan J. Linz does), but as a separate category of non-democratic regime. Of course it is necessary to take into account the differences existing among particular countries as well as differences "inside" these countries, meaning their unique historical development. This is evident in the case study portion of this article which describes the political system of Poland 1944-1989. Adapted from the source document.

The article tries to evaluate the Europeanization research agenda from the point of view of a politics-sphere and actor-centered approach. The authors postulate that the concept of Europeanization is lacking in regards to problems of political process and its dominant actors -- political parties and interest/pressure groups. The article consists of several parts. First, a critical examination of existing Europeanization conceptualizations is provided. Second, the impact of democratic transition and consolidation upon Europeanization in new member countries of the EU (and in potential candidate states) is examined. Third, ways of necessary adaptation suitable for analyzing politics in terms of Europeanization are suggested and discussed. The article concludes with sections devoted to agenda-setting for research about the Europeanization of political parties and interest groups. The overall tenor of the article is to point out the necessity of integrating Europeanization-related issues, methodological, and research tasks into a broader framework of comparative politics/comparative government; and that the theoretical basis of actor-oriented Europeanization research should be drawn more from this area of political science than it has been in previous research. Adapted from the source document.

"Bringing space back" into comparative politics is a difficult task, perhaps inevitably accompanied by various substantive and methodological problems. This paper introduces the concepts of "territorial homogeneity" (of D. Caramani) and "party nationalization" (of M. Jones and S. Mainwaring), both of them dealing with political parties as actors and territorial space as an environment in which they operate. Our aim is to identify some of the typical issues/ matters (selection of cases, elaboration of relationships among variables) any researcher who would try to conceptualize the relationships between political parties and territorial units has to cope with. In respect of issues in question the solutions offered by Caramani and Jones&Mainwaring often seem neither intercompatible nor fully satisfactory. This may raise the question about inevitably ethnocentristic nature of the "homogeneity concepts". We further extend our methodological note, limiting -rather than delineating- the areas of possible use of the homogeneity concept for the post-communist countries, arguing that sensible comparisons would require much better control for intervening institutional variables- a task which is almost impossible to achieve with such a heterogeneous sample. ; "Bringing space back" into comparative politics is a difficult task, perhaps inevitably accompanied by various substantive and methodological problems. This paper introduces the concepts of "territorial homogeneity" (of D. Caramani) and "party nationalization" (of M. Jones and S. Mainwaring), both of them dealing with political parties as actors and territorial space as an environment in which they operate. Our aim is to identify some of the typical issues/ matters (selection of cases, elaboration of relationships among variables) any researcher who would try to conceptualize the relationships between political parties and territorial units has to cope with. In respect of issues in question the solutions offered by Caramani and Jones&Mainwaring often seem ...