Graduate Program - Comparative Politics

Program Overview:

The comparative politics faculty believes that advances in political analysis are best achieved through a simultaneous commitment to rigorous empirical research and extensive theoretical knowledge. All of us have devoted many years of our lives to studying politics as it is practiced in specific places in the world, but we also seek to connect this knowledge to the broader social scientific enterprise aimed at advancing our understanding of politics more generally. We encourage our students to ask big questions about the political impact of social structures, institutions, and culture, and we advocate using all of the tools available to us—quantitative and qualitative; area and cross-regional studies—to expand our understanding of politics. We embrace methodological pluralism, and we promote awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of different methodological approaches so that our students can evaluate and select the methods most suited to their research objectives.