Comparative Politics
Graduate students interested in studying comparative politics at UCSD enjoy excellent resources from which to build successful careers. Through our faculty and affiliated institutions both at UCSD and across the UC system, we offer students an exceptional environment for the pursuit of the deep substantive knowledge and advanced theoretical tools required to produce first-rate scholarship.
The integration of theoretical rigor, empirical sophistication and depth of knowledge both within and across traditional regional boundaries is the defining feature of comparative politics at UCSD. We pride our department both for the breadth of its substantive and theoretical expertise. This expertise is augmented greatly by the department's faculty in the American, International Relations, and Methodology fields, as well as associated faculty at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, and the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies.
The nexus of theoretical precision and substantive knowledge is a direct outgrowth of the department's emphasis on the application of sophisticated theory and methods, often developed in the study of U.S. and Western European politics, to a more broadly comparative perspective. Our commitment to theoretical development is evident in our leading position in the study of democratic institutions, political economy, and political and economic development. Gary Cox, former Guggenheim fellow and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is widely renown for his contributions to the study of electoral systems and political parties. Kaare Strom, Matthew Shugart, William Chandler, and Arend Lijphart (emeritus) are known internationally for their contributions to the study of parliamentary and presidential systems. UCSD political scientists have also made fundamental theoretical contributions to the study of political and economic systems and reforms in East Asia (Stephan Haggard, Susan Shirk, Peter Cowhey, Jeeyang Baum, Ellis Krauss, Samuel Popkin), Europe (Ellen Comisso and Victor Magagna), Latin America (Paul Drake, Wayne Cornelius, Ann Craig, David Mares, Peter Smith), Soviet successor states (Philip Roeder), and Africa (Karen Ferree, Clark Gibson). The unifying element in this large and diverse body of work is a commitment to empirically informed research that advances the state of theoretical precision within the discipline.
Our students enjoy an impressive breadth and depth of substantive and regional expertise and resources. Our department is home to many preeminent scholars of Latin American politics, and students are positioned to take advantage of the incredibly diverse opportunities and resources available through the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, as well as UC-wide resources, including access to the UC library system and various UC-wide programs for the study of politics (the Institute on Global Cooperation and Conflict, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies) many of which fund UC students' dissertations through research and travel grants. With our adjunct faculty at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), we can boast of an impressive breadth of faculty, academic programs, and research projects regarding Asia and the Pacific Rim.
It is our commitment to theoretically informed, empirically precise analysis that has put recent UCSD graduates at the forefront of their field. UCSD graduates can be found researching and teaching at some of the nation's finest departments, including the California Institute of Technology, Duke University, UCLA, University of Minnesota, Washington University, SUNY, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and George Washington University, as well as many others.
Students in comparative politics are required to take the core course sequences in both principles and methods in addition to two core field seminars, Institutions and State and Society (see Field Requirements for more detail). The department offers graduate seminars on comparative topics such as divided societies, immigration, development, authoritarian politics, and the politics of post-Soviet transition, as well as regional and country-specific courses on Africa, East Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Mexico, China, Japan and the former Soviet Union.
