Comparative Political Science Reading Questions
Boston University Comparative Political Science Reading Questions
Part 1: Reading Questions
The following questions refer to the D & E textbook case study that asks “Is China Destined for Democracy” (reading from Tuesday of Week 4).
How would a “modernization theorist” answer the question “Is China destined for democracy?” and which factors in China’s recent history would they use to support this position (may sure to be clear about why these factors should matter)? Do not directly quote the text.
China’s industrial growth has led to rapid urbanization and increasing inequality be- tween urban and rural areas. According to the logic of “winning coalition size,” if China democratized would this be likely to increase or decrease inequality after the transition? Why? (HINT: See Lecture 5.1 for a discussion of winning coalitions and democratization)
The following questions refer to the article on “Clientelism and Voting Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Benin” (posted reading for Thursday of Week 4).
3. What is clientelism? Is it more common in more consolidated or less consolidated democracies and why? (HINT: The second question was discussed in Lecture 5.2.)
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4. What were the two types of messages compared in the field experiment described in the article? How did women differ from men in their voting response to these messages? How did the messaging results differ for incumbent candidates (as opposed to challenger candidates)?
The following questions refer to the article “Did Ortega Just Kill Nicaragua’s Democracy?”
5. Refer to Lecture 5.2’s discussion of “gradual decay” of democracy. Describe 3 elements from the list of signs of “gradual decay” of democratic institutions from the lecture which seem to apply to Nicaragua, based on the reading. Provide at least one example from Nicaragua’s experience (drawn from the reading) for each of the 3 elements you selected.
Part 2: Case Exploration and Application
In this section, you will compare three commonly-used datasets that measure democracy in different ways. You will also gather some data on your country cases (both your primary and secondary). If either of your countries is missing most of the data, you may want to just substitute a different country in your region for this exercise.
Freedom House, Polity V, and DD are the three datasets we will compare. You should first download the codebook for each of the three datasets to answer the questions below.
Freedom House is a think tank focused on “freedom” which puts out an annual report scoring countries on how “free” they are.
Looking at the Codebook for Freedom House, scroll down to where it says “Scoring Process.” Read the second paragraph under this header (the paragraph that starts with the bold word “Scores.”). What are the two broad categories included in Freedom House’s scoring process? How many total points is each of the two categories worth in their dataset? If they sum the scores of the two categories to provide a single index out of 100, which category is worth more in the total score?
To see the Freedom House data for 2020 to answer this question use this link. You can see each country’s total score. Click on the country to get the details to answer the questions. What is your primary country’s total score? What is it’s “status”? Was the total score higher or lower than “last year’s score” (2019)? What is the total score for your secondary country (in 2020)? Which of the two countries is more free according to Freedom House?
Polity is a data project run by the “Center for Systemic Peace.” It is called Polity V because they only update it periodically (five times so far). The last update was in 2018, and the annual data go all the way back to 1800. I have provided you with a spreadsheet (download
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the Excel file from Brightspace called “PolityV 2018 only”) that only includes the most recent year, 2018, to make it less overwhelming. Use the Codebook and the Excel file to answer the following questions.
8. In the Polity V Codebook, scroll down to section 2, “Indicators of Democracy and Autocracy (Composite Indices)” and then scroll to the next page to the first indicator (section 2.1) “Democ.” What are the three broad categories included in the “Democ” indicator? What are the minimum and maximum scores of the “Democ” indicator (i.e., what score means “maximally democratic” and which score means “not at all democratic”)? What did your primary and secondary country each score, respectively, on this indicator in 2018 (use the Excel file). Which is more democratic by this metric? Are these findings consistent with your Freedom House findings from 2020?
The DD dataset (Democracy and Dictatorship) was first created in 2010 by Cheibub, Gandhi and Vreeland (all professors) and was updated in 2020 by Bjornskov and Rode (also profes- sors) using the same rules as the original authors. It has annual data going back to 1950, but I have included only the most recent year, 2020, in the associated Excel file on Brightspace, “DD Democracy Dataset 2020 only,” for clarity.
Scroll down to the “Democracy” indicator in the DD Codebook. What criteria do these authors use to determine whether a country is a democracy or not? What are the possible score values a country could get on this indicator? What score do your primary and secondary country get on this metric (use the Excel file) in 2020? Which is more democratic by this metric? Is this ranking consistent with your Freedom House finding from 2020? What about your Polity V finding from 2018?
This dataset provides additional indicators for “Full Suffrage” and for electoral com- petition (“Electoral”). What are the possible values these variables can take on and what do they mean? How complete is your primary country’s suffrage and what kind of electoral competition do they have according to this dataset?
What does the “Spatial Democracy” score measure? Why might this score be relevant to predicting the likelihood that your country is a democracy according to some de- mocratization theorists (see lecture 5.1 on democratization)? Looking at this score for your primary and secondary countries, which has a larger share of democracies among its neighbors? Based on this information, which country would diffusion theorists say is the more likely one to be democratic? Did this theory do a good job at predicting which of your countries is more democratic on the Polity V measure of democracy? What about Freedom House? DD? How well are you able to evaluate this with only two countries?
Finally, I would like to solicit your opinion as a new scholar of comparative politics.
12. Which of the measures you examined in these three datasets do you think is best for ranking countries on how democratic they are and for testing theories about what causes democratic governance? Why would you pick this one over the others? (There is no right answer as long as you do a good job at explaining your logic.)
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