PO221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Science, Authoritarianism, Dependent And Independent Variables
Document Summary
Chapter 1 notes - (taken in class and from textbook) Three core theme of the course: states, citizens, and identity. Three objectives of comparative politics: describing, explaining and understanding. Born out of industrial revolution (which took place in 19th century) Comparative politics answers why questions to offer a deeper understanding of the social and political world. We seek to understand causes and effects to comprehend the world around us. Questions in this discipline are specific, yet open e(cid:374)ded. No hunch or expected answer is built into it. Some questions that begin with why may be poor questions, or at least they may be ill suited for cause and effect research. Contrast the following two questions where the how is more open ended and better question than the why. Why did the united states foolishly invade iraq in 2003 for no good reason? (normative question) How did the decision to initiate military action against iraq come about? (empirical or casual)
