POLI 359 Notes PDF

**Topic 1 ** - The Logic of Comparison: - Comparison helps to establish understanding, explanation, order and meanings to our complex world - Root facts in isolation mean nothing - We use concepts and theories to understand this political world...

**Topic 1 ** - The Logic of Comparison: - Comparison helps to establish understanding, explanation, order and meanings to our complex world - Root facts in isolation mean nothing - We use concepts and theories to understand this political world - You can reframe old questions anew (questions pre COVID can be refocused as questions post COVID)  - Comparative Politics: the systematic comparison of cases, variables and/or meanings in relation to politics and power relations - Employs systematic comparison and seeks generalizations beyond the specific - Your idea can travel to other places (e.g: concepts of colonialism, idea, time etc can all travel) - When things are said in relative terms is when we get meaning (e.g: describing someone without using relative terms is hard, height is a relative concept which has been imbued in meaning)  - We want to understand HOW a causal relationship happened (Statisticians miss this)  - Qualitative Understanding: you get into the nitty gritty but you are only focusing on a single case - We are interested in interpretivist type of work (e.g: what does BLM mean for civil rights in America) - This is where logic wins the game, can't really measure  - The Study of Comparative Politics: - A Primary sub - field of political science - A relatively young discipline - A western centric field of study - Seeks to establish arguments around causation and/ or meaning about particular political phenomena - Demonstrating causation is the ultimate goal in Political Science  - A comparative study involves: - I. Observation & question formation - Research and analysis should be pursued around a question - II\. Conceptual and theoretical formulation - What are we looking at  - Don\'t just make a claim but engage in conceptualisation - Example: "What is this a case of" - A Concept is something that you are trying to capture (an idea of something),  - Concepts are usually are not directly tangible - Theory is more about how things relate to other things - We are interested in finding the relation between things  - Example: What does BLM mean for democracy within the Western World - Example: is this democratization, is this international law etc - we have to be very clear about our concepts (Jordan Peterson skips actual questions by opening up the conceptualisation) - III\. Methodological development - Methodology is how we go about learning what we want to know - IV\. Testing of hypothesis using the specified comparative methods - Using Theory and applying theory to the empirical world - V. Findings and thesis formulation - Questions of Comparative Politics: Asking When, Where and How?  - Asking questions beyond when, where and who? - This is the easy stuff to find out  - Interested in [what (identify explanatory variables or outcomes), why (try to establish some sort of causal relationships) and how (what is the meat of this relationship)] questions - Whats and Whys can be used via Quantitative Analysis but Small Single Case studies are best to answer the how questions - You want to pursue open ended questions - Example: what were the causes of the coup belt in Eastern or Central Africa - Avoid assuming answers: Pose your question as "Electoral Impact of Marijuana for the Liberals" as opposed to, "Why did marijuana laws lead to electoral success for the liberals" and keep questions open ended - Avoid leading questions - All findings are tentative (we are in the business of analysis, not faith and are ideas have to be open to potential falsification) - Comparativists focus on the bigger provocative questions - Pursue open ended questions and avoid leading questions - We have to interpret facts, they do not speak for themselves - Real comparativists focus on questions they truly are interested in - Issues of Focus in Comparative Politics: - Regime types, Government Institutions and processes, Government Policies, State - market - society - relations, Economic outcomes, Identity Politics, Ideology, Human Rights, Contentious Politics, International Relations - Ideational factors are the fastest growing area of study - Identity Politics: any politics surrounding identity - Key tools for Comparative Politics:  - Concepts: Abstract Ideas use to make sense of, organize and think about our world - We do nots see concepts, we create them (constructivist) or discover them (positivist) - Conceptualisation: The process of creating a concept - Indicators: empirical features that indicate and unobservable concept - Voting every election is a indicator for democracy - Operationalisation: the process of making a concept observable through the assignment of indicators - Concepts: - Concepts range from very general to very specific - We use conceptual ladders to organize our concepts - Giovanni Satori's ladder of abstraction - This is how we organize our concepts, we start super broad and the more general,  the higher order concept and the more distinctive terms given, the lower it goes (e.g: regime types, sub regimes and so and so) - We want to find a balance when creating our concepts, we do not want to be too abstract  - Don\'t want to be too high where its useless and too low where its top descriptive - We want our concepts to travel beyomd 1 situation: conceptual travel - The specificity or generality of  a concept determines the reach of the phenomena it is meant to represent - We want our concepts to travel but want to avoid conceptual stretching - Don\'t apply concepts that do not fit to the concepts (e.g: Left of Center people being called Communists v Right of Center people being called Fascists) - Trudeau can\'t be called a Fascist or Communist for invoking the Emergency Act - Variable: the causes/ outcomes we are trying to identify and/or measure - Synonymous with factor  - Independent Variable (X): The cause - Dependent Variable (Y): The effect of outcome - Y is the result of X - We are interested in variation and similarities between causes - Variation: differences between cases - Causality: A causal relationship of 2 or more factors - Correlation: A non - causal relationshipl  - If the quality of one thing goes up, the quality of another thing goes up and down - There is a correlation between ice cream sales and murder rates - But you cannot say that ice cream sales cause murder - Very rare to demonstrate causality compared to correlation - For years we assumed that increased democratization brought about economic growth - That is not the case, there is no clear causal relationship here - Further democratization has resulted in negative economic growth in some places and some autocracies are well developed - Finding causation is a holy grail but difficult - We can confuse causation with a lot of stuff - We should avoid conflating arguments (e.g: Country becomes stable with more order) - Reverse Causality: Some argue that increased economic growth is conducive to democratisation (Y actually causes X) - This is correlation in a different way - Endogeneity Problem: This is where variables cause each other (like the chicken and the egg problem) - There is a causal relationship between democratization and economic growth but we cannot ping what causes what - Intervening variable: X causes Y but that is indirect (Poorer kids score less in school) - Intervening variable was the lack of food - Omitted Variable Problem: There is a variable in the relationship but we do not know what it is (Omitted variable in the Ice cream sales and murder problem was the hotter weather; easier to kill and sell ice cream in this weather) - Necessary and Sufficient conditions - Key tools for comparative politics:  - Case: a basic unit of analysis (case study analysis can be either cross case or within case) - You can have 1 case and a 100 different Observations of the case - Case is the phenomenon or directly related to the phenomenon we are dealing with - Can be a situation (e.g: need not be a country, can be a group of people or territory or city) - You can have multiple observation of a case (Can have the case of Canada in 1920 v 2024, two separate cases with multiple observation of the case) - Comparativists engage in case studies, small N studies (Single Case) and large N studies - May not be comparative but part of a comparative enterprise - Level of analysis: The level (individual, institutional, societal, international) at which observations and comparisons are made - Avoid comparing two different things/ two different levels of analysis - Example: Dont compare the Conservative Party to Trudeau - [Politics: the practices and processes of power relations] - Iron Law of Oligarchy: some form of hierarchy is to be formed in any system - **DO NOT BE DEFINITIVE** - The Diffusion Theory: happens in geographically specific regions, something spreads more quickly and effectively  - The Domino Theory: What happens in one place is more likely to happen in similar circumstances in other places - We have to be very careful in how we are conceptualizing the issues we are looking at  - Determining which factors are key is essential - You can be involved in the comparative enterprise even though you are not comparing in one case only (can apply it to a similar case, deviant cases etc) - Can discover a lot of concepts through a study of the Coup Belt - Coup Belt in West Africa: - Started in 2020 - Coup: Extrajudicial takeover of power (usually extra- democratic, illegal and unconstitutional) - Takeover by military or some civilian or interest group - Began in Mali, continued in other countries like Guinea, Burkina Faso etc - Counter Factualist: Comparison of one situation with a comparison of the situation if something would have happened  - Example: What if Trudeau did not invoke the Emergencies Act on the Convoy in 2022 - Used by a lot of Political Scientists - **DO NOT DO COUNTERFACTUALS IN PAPERS SEEN BY MARK MACHACHEK** - We have seen a re - politicization of traditional authority in Africa - Use a single case study to see why this happened - Use the findings to compose a theory across wider concepts  - Exploring a single case to find concepts  - Subfields of Political Science: - Comparative Politics, Political Philosophy and International Relations  - Comparative is just the study of methodology of political science