Chapter 1 Quiz

1. Comparative politics tends to produce certain kinds of arguments. Which of the following is the best label for those arguments?

a. Basic Descriptions

b. Rationalizations

c. Explanations

d. Tautologies

2. Which of the following could be a good comparative politics explanation of the revolutions of the Arab Spring?

a. Every country naturally turns to democracy: it's just a matter of when.

b. The revolutions were products of revolutionary processes.

c. The Arab Spring happened because the relevant countries have culture.

d. Important groups felt discontent, the capacity to organize increased, and the relevant states were unable to repress dissenters.

3. Which of the following is the best comparative question?

a. Why is development better than underdevelopment for countries in Africa?

b. Why should we listen when some people in Africa complain about their lack of rights?

c. Why is capitalism the morally preferable economic system?

d. Why have some sub-Saharan African countries been so much better off than others in recent years?

4. Which of the following is not a strong comparative question about cause and effect?

a. Why does France have unitarist political institutions while the United States has a federal system?

b. Why must we favor freedom?

c. Why do Italy and Israel often exhibit unstable parliamentary coalitions?

d. What are the major tools available to states as they aim to foster economic development?

5. Which of the following would not, for most purposes, be considered good evidence?

a. Observations of the structure of an organization or bureaucracy

b. Observations of the behavior of protestors in public squares

c. The analyst's feeling about what explains a given process

d. Survey data about the beliefs of citizens of a country of interest

6. Which one of the following claims about concepts in comparative politics is true?

a. It is usually obvious which concepts you should use if you think about it for a minute.

b. If concepts are good, we can directly measure them without further work.

c. Concepts in comparative politics are just like concepts in physics, but just about different things.

d. It is very important to be attentive to conceptualization when carrying out or evaluating empirical work.

7. Which of the following best describes the idea of operationalizing concepts?

a. Operationalizing concepts involves making concepts measurable.

b. Operationalizing is the same as making concepts valid.

c. Operationalizing concepts means making them more like machines.

d. Operationalizing concepts is mainly an issue for the physical sciences, not for comparative politics.

8. Which of the following is a necessary feature of good concepts?

a. Good concepts are always brand new.

b. Good concepts are coherent.

c. Good concepts are hard to understand.

d. Good concepts are hidden from the uninitiated.

9. Which of the following is closest to the meaning of "Sartori's Ladder of Abstraction"?

a. Don't get too abstract!

b. We can choose the specificity of concepts depending on our research purposes, questions, and cases.

c. If concepts are general, that means they are low-level concepts.

d. Trick question: the correct name is Collier's Ladder of Generality.

10. Say we want to examine the relationship between electoral systems and the number of parties in a given country, and we already have Mexico and South Africa as two cases. Which of the following might make an appropriate additional case?

a. Social Networks

b. Mexico City

c. Chile

d. Sub-Saharan Africa

11. In a comparative study that analyzes the impact of the rule of law on economic development, which of the following might be the "dependent variable"?

a. Degree of rule of law

b. Weak states

c. Economic growth

d. Trick question: this study has no variables

12. Which of the following situations calls for a Most Similar Systems design (MSS)?

a. There are several interesting cases but no clear pattern of similarity or difference among them in terms of the variables we consider to be important.

b. The cases in question have the same outcome.

c. The cases are all very, very different.

d. The cases in question are similar in terms of most conditions, but the outcomes vary.

13. Which of the following situations calls for a Most Different Systems design (MDS)?

a. We do not know which cases may be useful.

b. We are working with strikingly different cases.

c. The cases in question differ on key variables but have similar outcomes.

d. What we really want to do is to select a whole new set of cases, because the current ones are over-researched.

14. Why might we use comparative checking?

a. Better safe than sorry when double-checking your work.

b. To make generalizable claims, it is a good idea to broaden your arguments to review additional cases.

c. It is best to ask others to do the same work and see what their answer is and whether it is the same as yours.

d. This question is more for biologists than political scientists.

15. Which of the following statements best describes the scientific character of comparative politics?

a. Comparative political analysis is just like the physical sciences in its ability to produce certain knowledge.

b. Comparative political analysis is a type of science that probably cannot produce knowledge of the same degree of certainty as in the physical sciences.

c. Comparative political analysis is a non-explanatory mode of science

d. Comparative political analysis is basically reducible to ideology and opinions

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