The Politics of Governing: A Comparative Introduction

It’s tough to keep students afloat in a sea of detail when moving from country to country in a comparative course. While it’s important to give students a sense of place, lengthy textbooks can overwhelm them with far too much description. Students are left with no clear path for understanding regional context or for making meaningful cross-national comparisons, and little sense of larger concepts and themes.

The Politics of Governing: A Comparative Introduction answers this dilemma in a truly brief text—only 320 pages long—that frames country case studies within regional chapters. This approach equips students to see the bigger picture and understand how the issues of governing can no longer be separated from events outside a country’s borders. The authors answer the same set of questions in each chapter—What are the purposes of government (the ends of politics)? What do governments do (the functions of politics)? Who exercises political power (the processes of politics)?—giving this concise text strong analysis of particular countries within a powerful regional framework.

The book incorporates the American experience as a familiar touch point for students and examines those areas of the world in which the U.S. is most engaged:

• The European chapters highlight the development of supranational institutions and their impact on politics in Great Britain, France, and Germany. These stand in contrast to the transitional politics underway to the east with Central Europe’s new democracies and the upheavals in Russia, the Ukraine, and the Balkan states keeping those countries at the margins of this new Europe.
• The diversity of Asian governments is explored within the context of competing forces between markets and democracy, at the core of which stands mainland China.
• The forces of religion and culture across the Muslim world shape the chapter that encompasses North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, with country case studies focused on Morocco, Iran, and Indonesia.
• The chapter on Latin America highlights the draw of North American markets and the appeal of distinctive political and economic patterns in South America, with case studies on Mexico and Brazil.
• A final chapter on regional convergence examines both developing countries and competing supranational markets to understand how people in countries caught in between larger, competing regional trading blocs are affected.

Lawrence S. Graham is emeritus professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. A specialist in public policy and comparative politics, he has had a faculty appointment at UT since 1965. Throughout his career he has combined teaching and research with hands-on experience as a consultant with a variety of national and international organizations. This work has taken him throughout Latin America, Eastern and Southern Europe, and Africa. His publications―14 books and over 100 articles―have focused on development policy and administration in Latin America, principally Brazil and Mexico, and in Southern Europe, especially Portugal and Romania.

Richard P. Farkas is professor of political science at DePaul University. He has taught for more than three decades about Central and East European Politics. He holds an honorary degree from Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration and has lectured in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Montenegro, Greece and Kosovo. His research compares strategies for political and economic development in post-Communist countries. The future trajectory of these systems is a special focus of his research.

Robert C. Grady is emeritus professor of political science at Eastern Michigan University. He received degrees from Centre College and Vanderbilt University. His research and teaching interests are seventeenth through nineteenth century British and American political theory, contemporary democratic theory, and American politics and government. His articles have appeared in Interpretation, Journal of Politics, Political Science Quarterly, and Polity. Restoring Real Representation was published by University of Illinois Press. He has applied theory to practice, serving briefly on the Ann Arbor, Michigan, city council.

George Joffé teaches the contemporary history, geopolitics, and international relations of the Middle East and North Africa at the University of Cambridge and at Kings College, London University. He was previously the deputy-director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He specializes in Palestinian issues and on political developments in Algeria and Morocco.

Donley T. Studlar is Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Political Science at West Virginia University, teaching courses in comparative politics and public policy. Past Executive Secretary of the British Politics Group, he has been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Waterloo, Victoria, Toronto, and Regina (Canada), Strathclyde and Warwick (United Kingdom), Bergen (Norway) and Aarhus (Denmark). The author of four books and over 100 published articles, among them are Tobacco Control: Comparative Politics in the United States and Canada (Broadview Press, 2002) and the widely-read “A Constitutional Revolution in Britain?” in Christian Soe, ed., Annual Editions: Comparative Politics (Dushkin).