Section syllabus
TF: Sima Biondi
Sections: Thursdays at 3pm and 4:30pm
Office hours: (usually) Thursdays 1-3pm @ Jenny's Cafe (inside the Harvard Art Museum). Sign up here!
Office hours sign up link and location are listed above. Please feel free to drop-in to talk about the assignments, course material, or anything else you need. If the listed hours above do not work, email me, and we’ll find an alternative time to meet.
Contact: Emailing me (sbiondi [at] g.harvard.edu) is the best way to contact me. I promise to respond to your emails within (usually) 24 hours, except in the day before an assignment is due. All emails should have a subject line that begins with "Gov20:".
Section policies and expectations
Attendance, participation, laptop, and paper policies can be found on the
extended section syllabus.
Section suggestion box
Please feel free throughout the semester to give your anonymous input about topics, concepts, readings, or news stories you’d like to cover in section here.
1) Introduction and Approaches to Comparative Politics
Section 1 slides
Week 1 Recap
Section 1 (Thursday 3pm) Norms
Section 2 (Thursday 4:30) Norms
2) The Politics of Economic Development: Modernization Theory and its Alternatives
Section 2 slides
Week 2 Recap
Week 2 Handout
3) The Politics of Late Development: State- versus Market-Led Approaches
Section 3 slides
Week 3 Recap
4) The State, State-Building, and State Weakness
Section 4 slides
Week 4 Recap
5) Democracy and Democratization
Section 5 slides
Week 5 Recap
Tips for essays in Gov 20
6) Democratization and Democratic Breakdown in the Contemporary World
Section 6 slides
Week 6 Recap
7) Authoritarianism
Section 7 slides
Week 7 Recap
8) Explaining Social Revolution I
Section 8 slides
Week 8 Recap
9) Explaining Social Revolution II
Section 9 slides
Week 9 Recap
Week 9 Handout
10) Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict
Section 10 slides
Week 10 Recap
Week 10 Handout
11) Do Institutions Matter?
Section 11 slides
Week 11 Recap
12) Parties, Electoral Systems, and Political Representation
Section 12 slides
Week 12 Recap
13) Civil Society and Social Capital
14) The United States in Comparative Perspective