Case Studies in Comparative Politics by David J. Samuels
ISBN 10: 020574009X
ISBN 13: 9780205740093
Comparative politics is fundamentally about constructing arguments that
answer compelling questions. Teaching political science is about developing
students? skills so they can be informed, engaged, and analytical citizens,
a core element in a liberal arts education. Students should learn how to
identify and contribute to questions that central to our field, recognize competing
hypotheses, apply research to arguments by analyzing different sorts of evidence,
and relate different perspectives to each other.
All comparative politics textbooks confront a ?chicken and egg? problem:
how should we as instructors teach students about how to analyze politics while
also helping them learn something important about the real world around them?
Thematic texts hone in on the important questions we ask as comparativists and
help students learn how to analyze politics, but they sacrifice some degree of detail
about different cases, details that help ground students? critical thinking. On the
other hand, country study texts alone necessarily concentrate on learning about
the real world at the expense of learning how comparativists ask and attempt to
answer interesting questions. When used together, my thematic survey?Comparative
Politics?with this edited collection of country cases resolves the pedagogical
tradeoff.
