What exactly are we comparing when we compare political systems? What are some of the key words we should be careful to define for comparative politics, according to your reading of our Week 1-2 readings? How should we define these words, according to the sources?

Comparative Politics Terms and Subject Matter

Discuss the following question:

In the Preface of one of your assigned readings, Philippe Schmitter and Marc Blecher discussed the challenges of defining our subject matter when we study comparative politics. They wrote that one important objective of comparative analysis is to choose “the right words and associations to capture the similarities and differences in politics across space and time” (2021: xvii).

This raises some questions for our discussion: what exactly are we comparing when we compare political systems? What are some of the key words we should be careful to define for comparative politics, according to your reading of our Week 1-2 readings? How should we define these words, according to the sources? Considering some of the examples in our lesson content, what are some of the pitfalls of not having a clear definitichoon of our subject matter?