Comparative Methods
The best-educated guess that explains a phenomena
What is a theory?
The entity that solves collective action problems
What is the state?
A political system in which the rulers are accountable to the ruled
What is democracy?
A system with minimal responsibility to the public.
What is a non-democracy?
The shift from a non-democratic to a democratic regime
What is democratization?
A statement about the relationship between the DV and IV.
What is a hypothesis?
The principle of primary authority over a state's territory.
What is sovereignty?
The system where votes become legislative seats or executives
What is an electoral system?
A subset of the national population that chooses and removes leaders.
What is the selectorate theory?
The spread of regime type in a particular geographic location.
What is the neighborhood effect?
The comparison between cases with different attributes but shared outcomes/ same attributes but different outcomes.
What is the Mill's method?
A cultural grouping of individuals who associate with each other based on collectively held political identity.
What is a nation?
An electoral system that distributes seats proportionally to the vote each party receives
What is proportional representation?
A system of governance where elections violate democratic standards.
What is electoral authoritarianism?
A country's cultural identity that favors a democratic regime.
What is civic culture?
The explanatory or predictor variable that affects other variables.
What is an independent variable?
An agreement where everyone binds their own hands for the collective good.
What is the social contract theory?
A group of citizens eligible to participate in the election of government leaders
What is the electorate?
A system built around the glorification and empowerment of one person.
What is a personalistic regime?
Democracy as a result of cultural changes that accompany economic growth.
What is the modernization theory?
An issue that arises when the dependent and independent variables are not easily identifiable
A distinct territory associated with a particular group of people.
What is a homeland?
A system where the president and prime minister share duties as heads of state.
What is a hybrid democracy?
The use of the threat of violence to maintain power/control the population.
What is coercion?
The spread of political and economic dynamics beyond the borders of any one particular country.
What is globalization?