Comparative Politics Today: A World View, 12th edition

Published by Pearson (November 13, 2017) © 2018

  • G Bingham Powell, Jr. University of Rochester
  • Russell J. Dalton Universtity of California, Irvine
  • Kaare J. Strom University of California - San Diego

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For courses in Comparative Politics
A thematic overview of comparative politics coupled with country studies that bring theory to lifeComparative Politics Today: A World View combines a comprehensive thematic overview of the discipline with in-depth country studies written by expert scholars in their respective fields. Emphasizing the similarities as well as the differences among governments around the globe, authors G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Kaare W. Strøm, Melanie Manion, and Russell J. Dalton help students to sort through the world’s complexity and to recognize patterns that lead to genuine political insight. Focusing as in previous editions on the challenges of democratization and globalization, the 12th Edition presents significantly updated coverage in the 12 detailed country studies as well as contemporary data throughout.
Comparative Politics Today: A World View, 12th Edition is also available via Revel™, an interactive learning environment that enables students to read, practice, and study in one continuous experience. Learn more.
A combination of theory and detailed country studies helps students grasp and apply key concepts
  • A balance of thematic chapters and country studies gives readers the theoretical and practical knowledge they need to understand comparative politics. This approach also facilitates an exploration of the author’s key themes: why governments exist, what functions they serve, and how they create problems and solutions.
  • UPDATED! The text’s theory chapters (1–6) have been substantially revised for the 12th Edition to better introduce the key concepts and theories that are applied in the country studies.
    • Chapters 1, 3, and 6 provide more thorough discussions of globalization and its components and consequences, as well as challenges to democracy.
    • Chapter 2 offers a more extensive introduction to scientific inquiry in comparative politics.
    • The content included in the previous edition’s Chapters 4 and 5 — on interest articulation and interest aggregation — has been merged into a single consolidated Chapter 4 on political representation processes. This updated chapter provides a streamlined and integrated introduction to interest groups, political parties, and elections.
    • Chapter 6, on public policy issues such as welfare, fairness, and security outcomes, now includes a discussion of politicides — cases of extreme government abuses of their own populations.
  • UPDATED! A broad geographical survey of developed and developing countries, including a unique chapter on the United States, helps students take an inclusive, global approach to comparative politics. The 12 country studies that comprise Part III of the text have been revised and updated to help students better understand how the concepts introduced in the text are seen in practice around the world.
  • UPDATED! Data tables and references have been updated to cover more countries systematically. And an extensive use of graphs and charts enhances the text.
  • NEW! Learning objectives keyed to the main chapter headings and review questions that emphasize the key theme of each chapter provide a consistent structure that facilitates learning.
Comparative Politics Today: A World View, 12th Edition is also available via Revel™, an interactive learning environment that enables students to read, practice, and study in one continuous experience. Learn more.
Comparative Politics Today: A World View, 12th Edition is also available via Revel™, an interactive learning environment that enables students to read, practice, and study in one continuous experience. Learn more.

A combination of theory and detailed country studies helps students grasp and apply key concepts
  • UPDATED! The text’s theory chapters (1–6) have been substantially revised for the 12th Edition to better introduce the key concepts and theories that are applied in the country studies.
    • Chapters 1, 3, and 6 provide more thorough discussions of globalization and its components and consequences, as well as challenges to democracy.
    • Chapter 2 offers a more extensive introduction to scientific inquiry in comparative politics.
    • The content included in the previous edition’s Chapters 4 and 5 — on interest articulation and interest aggregation — has been merged into a single consolidated Chapter 4 on political representation processes. This updated chapter provides a streamlined and integrated introduction to interest groups, political parties, and elections.
    • Chapter 6, on public policy issues such as welfare, fairness, and security outcomes, now includes a discussion of politicides — cases of extreme government abuses of their own populations.
  • UPDATED! The 12 country studies that comprise Part III of the text have been revised and updated to help students better understand how the concepts introduced in the text are seen in practice around the world. Major updates include the following.
    • Chapter 7, Politics in Britain, includes coverage of the 2014 referendum wherein Scottish voters rejected a proposal to leave the United Kingdom and become an independent state, as well as the 2016  “Brexit” vote.
    • Chapter 8, Politics in France, covers the series of terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere that have rocked the nation, caused significant casualties, and increased support for the populist right-wing party National Front.
    • Chapter 9, Politics in Germany, explains the coalition between the Angela Merkel-led CDU/CSU and the SPD, which has worked together successfully but faced stressful challenges in crises in the Euro and in dealing with refugees fleeing war in the Middle East.
    • Chapter 10, Politics in Japan, offers coverage of the election of 2012 — reinforced by the 2013 upper house election, which returned the Liberal Democrat Party to government — and the 2014 lower house election that confirmed support for ShinzM Abe as prime minister.
    • Chapter 11, Politics in Russia, covers the third presidential term of Vladimir Putin, as well as material on how the Russian state continues to repress civil society groups and prosecute politicians it deems hostile.
    • Chapter 12, Politics in China, examines how Xi Jinping’s regime continues to reject political liberalization. This chapter also covers the challenge of slowing economic growth and mounting demographic imbalances that have produced a reversal of the one-child policy introduced decades ago.
    • Chapter 13, Politics in Mexico, covers the 2012 election of President Enrique Peña Nieto, which brought the once-dominant PRI party back into power for the first time since Mexico’s democratizing election of 2000.
    • Chapter 14, Politics in Brazil, includes coverage of how a series of major corruption scandals — their impact enhanced by an economic recession and other stresses — led to the impeachment and conviction of President Dilma Rousseff of the leftist PT party, elected in 2011.
    • Chapter 15, Politics in Iran, covers how Hassan Rouhani’s election as president in 2013, with the support of pragmatists and reformists, has marked a sharp break from Ahmadinejad’s radical foreign and domestic policies.
    • Chapter 16, Politics in India, covers the general election in 2014 which dealt a sharp defeat to the Congress Party coalition and gave an unusual absolute parliamentary majority for the BJP and its controversial prime minister, Narendra Modi.
    • Chapter 17, Politics in Nigeria, details how President Jonathan stepped down in favor of Muhammadu Buhari after losing the presidential election of 2015 — the first time in Nigerian history that power was peacefully transferred from one party to another as a result of democratic elections.
    • Chapter 18, Politics in the United States, includes coverage of the surprise victory for Republican candidate Donald Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, as well as the intense policy polarization between Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
  • UPDATED! Data tables and references have been updated to cover more countries systematically. And an extensive use of graphs and charts enhances the text.
  • Learning objectives keyed to the main chapter headings and review questions that emphasize the key theme of each chapter provide a consistent structure that facilitates learning.
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Challenge and Change in Comparative Politics
2. Comparing Political Systems 

PART II: SYSTEM, PROCESS, AND POLICY
3. Political Culture and Political Socialization
4. Interest Representation, Interest Groups, and Political Parties
5. Government and Policymaking
6. Public Policy 

PART III: COUNTRY STUDIES
7. Politics in Britain by Richard Rose
8. Politics in France by Martin A. Schain
9. Politics in Germany by Russell J. Dalton and Robert J. Rohrschneider
10. Politics in Japan by Frances Rosenbluth and Michael F. Thies
11. Politics in Russia by Thomas F. Remington
12. Politics in China by Melanie Manion
13. Politics in Mexico by Wayne A. Cornelius and Jeffrey A. Weldon
14. Politics in Brazil by Frances Hagopian and Timothy J. Power
15. Politics in Iran by Arang Keshavarzian and H. E. Chehabi
16. Politics in India by Subrata K. Mitra
17. Politics in Nigeria by A. Carl LeVan and Yahaya Baba
18. Politics in the United States by Thad Kousser 

G. Bingham Powell, Jr. is Marie C. and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. His current research focuses on democratic elections and political representation in legislatures and governments. He is the author of the prize-winning books Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions (Yale University Press 2000) and Contemporary Democracies: Participation, Stability and Violence (Harvard University Press 1982.) In 2011–2012 he was President of the American Political Science Association.
Kaare W. Strøm is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. Strøm's interests include political parties, coalition theory, European politics, and the institutions of parliamentary democracy. He is the author of Minority Government and Majority Rule; co-editor of Challenges to Political Parties, Policy, Office or Votes?, Coalition Governments in Western Europe, Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, and the textbook Comparative Politics Today: A World View. He has received the American Political Science Association's Franklin Burdette Pi Sigma Alpha Award for best conference paper (1983), the Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in Comparative Politics (1984), and UNESCO's Sixth Stein Rokkan Prize in Comparative Social Science Research (1994). He has also served on the National Science Foundation political science panel and on the editorial boards of a number of leading academic journals in the US and Europe. Strøm was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Rochester in 1988 and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace in 1994–95. In 2001, he was a Fellow at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy. Between 2002 and 2004 he was Study Center Director of the University of California's Education Abroad Program in Scandinavia. Strøm is a 2004–05 Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. He is a Fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Sciences and also a Fellow of the Royal Norwegian Society of Science and Letters.
Melanie Manion is Vor Broker Family Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Her research focuses on contemporary authoritarianism, with empirical work on bureaucracy, corruption, information, and representation in China. She is the recipient of numerous research awards, including awards from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and American Council of Learned Societies. Her newest book, Information for Autocrats (Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines representation in Chinese local congresses. Previous publications include Retirement of Revolutionaries in China (Princeton University Press, 1993), Corruption by Design (Harvard University Press, 2004), and Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies (edited with Allen Carlson, Mary Gallagher, and Kenneth Lieberthal, Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her articles have appeared in journals including American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, and China Quarterly.
Russell J. Dalton is a Research Professor at the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine. His research focuses on the role of citizens in the democratic process, involving the topics of political culture, electoral politics, and political representation. Dalton’s most recent books include Political Realignment – Economics, Culture and Electoral Change (2018), The Participation Gap (2017), The Civic Culture Transformed (2015), and The Good Citizen, 2nd Edition (2015). He is also co-editor of Comparative Politics Today, 12th Edition (Pearson 2017) and special issues of Asian Journal of Comparative Politics (2017) and Environmental Politics (2015). He has received a Fulbright Professorship at the University of Mannheim, a Barbra Streisand Center fellowship, German Marshall Research Fellowship and a POSCO Fellowship at the East/West Center.

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