Comparative Politics Comprehensive Exam Questions
Prepared August 2010
PART I. ANSWER ONE OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS
METHODS:
1. There has always been a tension between 'area studies' and 'comparative politics.'
How can the design of 'case studies' be made more relevant to the testing of social
science hypotheses? What is the role of 'critical case studies'? of 'embedded
design'? Give examples.
2. Comparativists emphasize competing causalities in their explanations of social
and political phenomena. Some emphasize individual agency. Others stress the
critical role of institutions in shaping outcomes. To what extent, though, are
these causalities mutually independent? Are there cases when one causal
explanation is predicated on the absence or presence of another underlying
causality?
PART II. ANSWER ONE OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS
3. Is the early work of Almond and Verba--("The Civic Culture")-- still relevant in
comparative politics, especially when dealing with non-western cases? Select
three cases where national, religious or other cultural values are strong and argue
your point of view.
4. Juan Linz was among the pioneer political scientists who elaborated the important
analytical differences between authoritarian and totalitarian rule. Though we no
longer have clear empirical models of the latter, we still grapple with explaining
the persistence of the former. First, what are some of the essential differences
between authoritarian and totalitarian rule? How do the existing definitions of
authoritarian rule (by Linz and/or others) help us explain their persistence? What
lessons have we learned from more recent scholarship on the topic?
5. Dependency theory advocates presented their arguments as a corrective to
modernization theory. What were the core points of contention? How did
proponents of each theory explain development and underdevelopment? Finally,
much has changed since the 1960s/1970s when this debate was raging: how, and
in what regard, have such events affirmed or debunked these theories? Has there
been a synthesis in the field of development or political economy that goes
beyond this debate?
6. The transitions literature has become a central theoretical framework in the study
of regime change in comparative politics. What are the core assumptions of the
transitions paradigm? What are the key strengths and limitations of this
framework?