Comparative Politics and Religion

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Comparative Politicsand Religion

• POLITICAL PROBLEMS OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD
• PS 597n.02
• MR DOUG PERKINS

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TODAYS AGENDA

• Administrivia
• Concepts of the Day
• Websites of the Day
• Introduction to Afghanistan
• Talk about the News
• Comparative Political Science
• Comparative Method
• Mechanisms/Rational Choice
• Case Studies
• Science and Religion
• Clash of Civilizations

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ADMINISTRIVIA

• Exam Thursday
• Study Guide
• Research design (use handout)
• Iannaccones defense of religious rationality
• Huntington hypotheses, civilizations, data,
  problems

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POLITICAL NEWS
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THE FUTURE

• It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source
  of conflict in this new world will not be
  primarily ideological or primarily economic. The
  great divisions among humankind and the
  dominating source of conflict will be cultural.
  Nation states will remain the most powerful
  actors in world affairs, but the principal
  conflicts of global politics will occur between
  nations and groups of different civilizations.
  The clash of civilizations will be the battle
  lines of the future. (Huntington 1993 22)

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BASES OF CONFLICT

• Rival Hypotheses
• Cold War
• First, Second, and Third Worlds
• Some kind of new power conflict
• Economic Divisions
• Modernization theory
• Developed, Developing, UD/Pre-modern
• What else might cause conflict?
• Why civilizations?

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WHAT IS A CIVILIZATION?

• Cultural Entity
• Broadest level of identification
• Language, history, religion, customs,
  institutions, self identification of people.
• The differences between them are basic,
  fundamental, and cannot be compromised.
• What is the Western Civilization?
• Do on board
• Be able to recognize each of them, their aspects,
  and their centers.

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WHY WILL THEY CLASH?

• There cannot be compromises
• Interactions increase as world gets smaller
• Economic modernization challenges old identities
  (is this new? Slv vs. W)
• Dual role of the west
• Foster McWorld, but encourages Jihad
• Economic regionalization cuts down on useful
  interaction and reinforces cultural identities

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WHERE WILL THEY CLASH?

• Fault lines
• Examples?
• Yugoslavia
• Middle East
• Horn of Africa
• Former Soviet Union?
• Others?
• Why not here?
• NEXT Evaluate the Research Design

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AN IDEAL RESEARCH DESIGN (from King, Keohane,
and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry)

• Research Question
• Criteria? Should be important, interesting
• The Theory
• Hypothesis/es
• Rely on existing literature
• The Data
• Predict some results using your hypothesis
• So called observable implications
• If my explanation is correctwhat should I
  expect in the real world?
• Find Positive AND Negative Examples
• The More Data, the Better!
• Where does it come from? Bias?
• Use of the Data
• Uncover and explain variation (comparative
  method)
• Explain mechanism (stylized description/rational
  choice?)
• Tell how it happened in the real world (case
  studies)

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KKVs RULES FOR CONDUCTING SCIENCE

• 1) Construct Falsifiable Theories
• How can we disprove it?
• Find limits of theory (when it is true)
• 2) Build Internally Consistent Theories
• Formal Modelling Helps
• 3) Select Dep. Variables Carefully
• Dont select on dep. variable!
• Make sure the Dep. variable varies!
• 4) Maximize Concreteness
• Observable operationalizations
• 5) Be Encompassing w/ Theories
• Increases the possible n
• Allows us to explain more

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POTENTIAL PROBLEMS

• Indeterminacy
• More Inferences than Observations
• One Observation gt One Inference
• Multicollinearity
• Two ivs are Highly Correlated
• Cannot discriminate between the two

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MECHANISMS

• Correlation versus Causation
• Spurious, Tautological, Coincidence
• How Do We Prove Causation?
• Must Identify the MECHANISMS
• How did it happen?
• These Three Methods Will Help
• Conduct an Experiment or...
• Use Psychology or Rational Choice

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CASE STUDIES

• Already found variation
• Already provided a mechanism
• Now put the proper nouns back in
• Case studies describe how the result was actually
  obtained. Should be structured, focused, and
  guided by theory.

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QUESTIONS???