Comparative Politics
Since the early 1950s, Berkeley has placed great emphasis on contemporary political and social theory as a way to understand politics cross-culturally and cross-nationally. Faculty interest and course offerings within the comparative subfield focus on the politics of modernization, the politics of communist systems and post-communist transition, the politics of industrial societies, and phenomena such as liberalization and democratization, the politics of identity, and globalization and national sovereignty. Political economy and political sociology are both approaches with strong representation among the faculty in Comparative Politics. In addition, most of the faculty with a comparative politics interest also have "area" expertise, and do research in, and offer courses about, a particular geographic region.
View Berkeley's recent publications in Comparative Politics
Professors with special interests in this field:
- Christopher K. Ansell - organization theory
- Leonardo Arriola - political economy, democratization, ethnic politics, Sub-Saharan Africa
- Henry Brady - party systems, national and ethnic identity, Canada, the Baltics
- George W. Breslauer - political leadership, Russia
- Kiren Aziz Chaudhry - political economy, state theory, Middle East
- Pradeep Chhibber - party systems, electoral politics, India
- David Collier - comparative methodology, Latin America
- Ruth Collier - labor and the state, Latin America
- Guiseppe DiPalma- democratization, Europe, Italy
- Lowell Dittmer - China
- Barry Eichengreen - comparative economics
- Steven Fish - liberalization, party systems, Russia
- A. James Gregor - Fascism
- Andrew Janos - world systems theory, ethnic conflict, Eastern Europe
- Hong Yung Lee - state and economy, China, Korea
- Jonah D. Levy - political economy, globalization, France
- Peter Lorentzen - political economy, development, authoritarianism, China
- Kevin O'Brien - democratization, social movements, China
- T. J. Pempel - political economy, Japan and Asian regionalism
- Robert M. Price - democratization, politics of identity, South Africa
- Gérard Roland - comparative economics
- David Vogel - environmental politics and policy, business and politics
- Steven Vogel - political economy, Japan
- Margaret Weir - urban politics and social policy, welfare state
- Jason Wittenberg - Eastern Europe and the Post-Soviet region
- J. Nicholas Ziegler, political economy, ideologies, politics and science, Germany
- John A. Zysman - political economy, state and economy, politics and technology