POL 2104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Comparative Politics
20 Aug 2016
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Document Summary
Cp is the study and comparison of politics across countries. Involves an implicit comparison across space and time. Refers to processes within a domestic country and involving domestic politics. Compares trends over time (voter turnout, etc) There is an overlap with cp and international relations (foreign policy) Cp is one third of the eld of politics science at uottawa: Canadian politics (what would be considered comparative politics anywhere other than. Uses tools of science but cannot reproduce scienti c experimentation (real life variables cannot be controlled) There are no absolute laws (eg: water boils at 100 degrees) Highly subjective or biased (knowledge is contextual) Dif cult to distinguish the dependent variable (the effect) from the independent variable (the cause) Attempts to distinguish correlation (a and b happening at the same time) from causality (a caused b, therefore b comes after a) Classi cation and identi cation of patterns or trends (is there a typology? what is it?)
