Prof Simon Hix and Dr Ryan Jablonski

This course is available to General Course ‘Spring Semester’ students.

The course is an introduction to politics in a globalised world, with a focus on how political science tries to understand and explain cross-country and cross-time differences. The course will begin by introducing students to some of the main empirical variations political institutions, before turning the attention to how institutional variation affect policy outcomes across the world, focusing mainly on democratic and partially democratic countries (in both the developed and developing world), and introducing students to some of the basic theoretical ideas and research methods in political science. Each subsequent week will be devoted to a substantive topic, where a more detailed analysis of political institutions or political outcomes will be presented and various theoretical explanations will be assessed. Most weeks will involve an interactive element. General Course students should review introductory lectures and readings from the MT of the year-long version of the course, as background context for the topics to be covered in LT.

This course is delivered through a combination of classes and lectures totalling a minimum of 26 hours across Lent Term and Summer Term. Some or all of this teaching will be delivered through a combination of online and on-campus lectures and classes. There will be a reading week in Week 6 of LT.

Student will be expected to produce 1 blog post on a selected topic and country in collaboration with a study group of 4-5 of their peers.

W Clark, M Golder and S Nadenichek Golder, Foundations of Comparative Politics, Sage, 2019. 

A Lijphart, Patterns of Government: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, 2nd edn, Yale University Press, 2012.

G. Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work, Princeton University Press, 2002.

Online assessment (100%) in the ST.

Please note that the exam will be specifically designed for Spring Semester General Course Students.

GENERAL COURSE SPRING SEMESTER STUDENTS ONLY:

The Class Summary Grade for General Course Spring Semester students will be calculated as follows: 75% class participation (including attendance and contribution), and 25% blog post.