Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure

by Mark Irving Lichbach , Alan S. Zuckerman

• ISBN13: 9780521885157
• ISBN10: 0521885159
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-02-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure is a completely revised second edition of the volume that guided thousands of scholars through the intellectual demands and gratifications of comparative political science. Retaining a focus on the field's research schools, it now pays parallel attention to the pragmatics of causal research. Mark Lichbach begins with a review of discovery, explanation and evidence and Alan Zuckerman argues for explanations with social mechanisms. Ira Katznelson, writing on structuralist analyses, Margaret Levi on rational choice theory, and Marc Ross on culturalist analyses, assess developments in the field's research schools. Subsequent chapters explore the relationship among the paradigms and current research: Joel Migdal examines the state; Mark Blyth adds culturalist themes to work on political economy; Etel Solingen locates the international context of comparative politics; Doug McAdam, Charles Tilly, and Sidney Tarrow address contentious politics; Robert Huckfeldt explores multi-level analyses; Christopher Anderson describes nested voters; Jonathan Rodden examines endogenous institutions; Isabela Mares studies welfare states, and Kanchan Chandra proposes a causal account of ethnic politics. The volume offers a rigorous and exciting assessment of the past decade of scholarship in comparative politics.

Table of Contents

1. Paradigms and pragmatism: comparative politics during the past decade Mark I. Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman; 2. Thinking and working: discovery, explanation, and evidence in comparative politics Mark Irving Lichbach; 3. Advancing explanation in comparative politics: social mechanisms, endogenous processes, and empirical rigor Alan S. Zuckerman; 4. Strong theory, complex history: structure and configuration in comparative politics revisited Ira Katznelson; 5. Reconsiderations of rational choice in comparative and historical analysis Margaret Levi; 6. Culture in comparative political analysis Marc Ross; 7. Researching the state Joel S. Migdal; 8. An approach to comparative analysis, or a sub-field within a sub-field? Political economy Mark Blyth; 9. The global context of comparative politics Etel Solingen; 10. Comparative perspectives on contentious politics Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly; 11. Citizenship in democratic politics: density dependence and the micro-macro divide Robert Huckfeldt; 12. Macropolitics and microbehavior in comparative politics Christopher J. Anderson; 13. Back to the future: endogenous institutions and comparative politics Jonathan Rodden; 14. The comparative political economy of the welfare state Isabela Mares; 15. Making causal claims about the effect of 'ethnicity' Kanchan Chandra.