Instructions
Upload submissions to this link. Response must be composed of a minimum of 250 relevant, responsive, and complete words in order to receive full points (this is a little more than one half a page, double-spaced, 12-point font with one-inch margins). Your Discussion response is worth up to 10 points. No quotes, paraphrases, or plagiarism allowed. Points will be deducted if instructions are not followed.
There are more than 200 nation-states in the world today, and there are different types of political institutions spread among them. What do we know about them? What can political scientists observe about them? Its challenging to study political systems outside of our own lived experience; indeed, its challenging to study American politics and government on their own. The subdiscipline of comparative politics provides political scientists with tools to use to understand different types of political systems by making comparisons or doing deep investigations into single countries.
My training is in comparative politics with an emphasis on Latin America and a specialty in post-1910 Revolutionary Mexican politics. Though I dont conduct research in political science, I have benefited from my training in teaching about American and Texas politics. Comparative politics opens our eyes to both similarities and differences observable in political systems, so we must be prepared to find out that some of what we believe to be true may, in fact, be wrong. Our observations and evidence based on rigorously defined research have to speak to us; we must not superimpose our preferences or experiences on our research. This is a major reason why the scientific method is used in political science research.
For this discussion, Id like you to go to this website https://ourworldindata.org/democracy (Links to an external site.) and select one of the following maps to analyze (just scroll down from the entry page):
Number of Democracies
Share of World Population Living in Democracies
World Map of Political Regimes Over 200 Years (use the slide bar for different views)
Political Freedom is a Very Recent Achievement
Spend some time looking at and thinking about what the data describes. Heres what to include in your Discussion response:
Describe the map you reviewed and your main takeaways (what struck you as most important?)
In what ways does knowing this information alter or amplify what you previously knew?
What more information would you like to know now?
