Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrialized Countries

How do mature democracies actually work when you look past the textbook label of "Western liberal state"? This course takes Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the US as parallel cases and pushes you to compare them on the same axes: how their states formed, how their institutions channel conflict, and why similar pressures produce different policy outcomes. The work is case-driven rather than exam-heavy — two case-study reports plus participation — so you're expected to move from the lecture frameworks to defending claims about specific countries. It builds on the intro comparative and political theory courses and gives you the empirical grounding you'll lean on in later electives on political economy, European politics, and democratization.