Author Description

"The question of "country" or "concept" has long divided and, to some extent, confounded the teaching of introductory comparative politics: should we teach the course as a series of country studies highlighting the key similarities and differences among political institutions around the world, or should we focus on the important concepts in the discipline? This textbook tries to resolve the country-or-concept dilemma using what we call a hybrid approach. While the book is organized conceptually, each chapter introduces concepts and then examines these concepts with relevant case studies. We use eleven countries throughout the book as touchstones, returning to these countries to illustrate the themes we address. The eleven countries - Brazil, China, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States - span the globe, illustrate a wide array of current and past regimes, and avoid the Eurocentrism still too common in the field of comparative politics. These countries cannot illustrate every aspect of comparative politics, though, so we reference dozens of others as examples or features throughout the text. Thus we introduce students not only to a wide array of important concepts and theoretical debates but also to each of the eleven countries. We do not and cannot systematically examine all elements of all eleven as a standard country-by-country book would. Instead, after a brief contextual overview of each country, we identify the most conceptually interesting elements of each country. The case studies are organized and written in a way that allows students to understand the context of the debates and concepts without having to read an entire "country chapter" on each. We introduce students to the broad debates in comparative politics to show how comparativists have used various theories and methodologies to understand political phenomena. We do not generally offer definitive conclusions about which approach is best for un