POL S235 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Justin Trudeau, Comparative Politics, Political Question
26 Aug 2016
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Example: india & china have population pressures but india does not have an official childbirth policy. Normative: what ought to be; prescriptive; value judgement; driven by moral/ethical consideration. Puzzles: an interesting political question confounding action, decision or problem (something intriguing) Deviant case: governments get defeated even in good economic conditions. The goal of comparative politics is to explain and can also predict. Even the concept of politics has no agreed definition. Concepts must be clear, coherent, consistent, and useful. However one can argue that zimbabwe is a democracy. Conceptualization of concept is to define a concept. By relying on definitions offered by a scholarly authority b. ) To operationalize a concept is to highlight its essential qualities to make it measurable. To be empirical is to make observations about the real world rather than speculation or innuendoes. Evidence must itself be based on a fact. It must be relevant to the topic being discussed.
