Canadian Studies in Comparative Politics.

Analyzing East/West Power Politics in Comparative Cultural Studies

In his article, "Analyzing East/West Power Politics in Comparative Cultural Studies," William H. Thornton acknowledges culture as a central force on the geopolitical map and undertakes at once to preserve the strategic potency of political realism and to move beyond the "billiard ball" externality of both neoand traditional realisms. Although Huntington and Fukuyama are taken seriously on the q...

Comparative politics

Power in Voting Games and Canadian Politics

In this work we examine power measures used in the analysis of voting games to quantify power. We consider both weighted and non-weighted voting games giving simple examples of each. The power indices considered are the Shapley-Shubik [8] index, the Banzho index [1], the Penrose [7] index and Coleman [2] indices. We apply them to speci c examples taken from recent Canadian parliaments and to th...

Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics

This article provides an overview of recent developments in historical institutionalism. First, it reviews some distinctions that are commonly drawn between the “historical” and the “rational choice” variants of institutionalism and shows that there are more points of tangency than typically assumed. However, differences remain in how scholars in the two traditions approach empirical problems. ...

Comparative Politics Qualifying Examination

Comparative politics scholars disagree about what the ideal research program should entail. Some scholars argue in favor of deductive hypotheses and/or large N research designs relying on sophisticated statistical techniques that do not require much in-depth knowledge of a particular polity. Other scholars favor a more inductive approach and pursue more qualitative work using case study methods...