Political Studies: POLS 7230/POLS 4160

Required Textbooks:

• Capitalism Unleashed
• Buying Time
• Social Democracy: A Comparative Account of the Left Wing Party Family
• The Incomplete Revolution:  Adapting Welfare States to Women's Roles
• Big Structures, Large Processes and Huge Comparisons
• Ruling the Void: The Hollowing Out of Western Democracies

Topic 2: Introduction to Comparative Politics

• "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method"
• "Is a Science of Comparative Politics Possible?" (Chapter 10 in Philosophy, Politics and Society by Peter Laslett (ed.)
• "Incorporating Comparison within a World-Historical Perspective:  An Alternative  Comparative Method"
• Mair, P. (1998), “Comparative Politics, an Overview”, Goodin, Robert E. and Hans-Dieter Klingemann,  A New Handbook of Political Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1998, pp. 309-335.

Topic 3: Understanding the State

• State and Revolution or at the Dafoe Library
• Bringing the State Back in
• Government of the Shadows, Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty

Topic 4: Neoliberal Capitalism

• See the course syllabus

Topic 5: Varieties of Capitalism

•  Block, F. (2012), "Varieties of what? Should we still be Using the Concept of Capitalism?", Go, J. (Ed.) Political Power and Social Theory (Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 23), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 269-291.

•  How will Capitalism End? by Streeck (In order)

Topic 6: The 2009 Crisis and Its Aftermath

• See the course syllabus

Topic 7: Crisis in the Eurozone

• See the course syllabus

Topic 8: Democracy

• Ruling the Void:  The Hollowing of Western Democracy
• New Left Review, November/December 2006

Topic 9:  Politics of the Right

• Brexit and British Politics
• Brexit, the City, and the Crisis of Conservatism

Topic 10: Politics of the Left

• Social Democracy:  A Comparative Account of the Left Wing Party Family (In order)

Topic 11:  The Crisis of the Welfare State

• The Incomplete Revolution:  Adapting Welfare States to Women's Roles 

Topic 12: History and Social Science

• See the course syllabus

Topic 13: Review and Wrap-up

• See the course syllabus