Comparative Politics of Developing Countries New York University, Spring 2021
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POL-GA 1551: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries New York University, Spring 2021 Professor Pablo Querubin Professor Arturas Rozenas Wilf Family Department of Politics Wilf Family Department of Politics 19 West 4th Street, 428 19 West 4th Street, 411 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Time: Wednesdays, 2:00-3:50 Location: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/92378453113 1. Course Description This seminar aims to introduce students to some of the central topics, concepts, and questions in the field of comparative politics, with an emphasis on topics outside the scope of \developed" or \advanced" democracies. The course is designed to familiarize students with the field as it stands today, and will focus on relatively recent contributions. This course does not pretend to cover the most important, \seminal" or \foundational" articles and books in the field. We will focus on the \frontier" of research being done on the politics of developing countries by political scientists, economists and scholars from other disciplines. The most important goal of the course is to stimulate students curiosity, to give a broad overview of the range of methodological approaches that can be used to tackle challenging questions, and to motivate students to identify areas where there is potential for making a contribution to the discipline. However, students specially interested in comparative politics should become familiar with the more classical, foundational articles and books throughout their Ph.D. program. We will not focus on any specific region of the world, and the course will not be structured around area studies. Rather, throughout the semester, we will analyze substantive topics that are central to the current debates in comparative politics, including: the importance and origins of institutions, de- mocratic and authoritarian regimes, the role of the state, political representation and accountability, violence, social and political change, survival of democracy. 2. Course Requirements Class participation: This course is organized as a weekly seminar. The class is designed to be highly participatory. It is essential that students come to class fully prepared to discuss the required weekly readings. Discussion memos: On the day before the seminar, students must submit one page memo with discussion questions on that week's readings. The memo must be concise and straight to the point: list the set of questions that follow from your reading of a particular paper. The memo is not an essay and should be written sharply, preferably using bullet-points. The reading memos are to be submitted 1 through NYU classes by 4PM on Tuesday prior to the class. We will circulate the comments among the class participants by 6PM on Tuesday so that we can all prepare for the discussion. Paper reviews: The seminars will be structured around the in-depth discussion of two/three papers per session. Students will be assigned to write referee reports on the papers marked with two asterisks. In addition to briefly summarizing the paper (in one paragraph), the review should evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the paper, critically assess its overall contribution, and propose how the paper could be made better and outline further questions that follow from that paper. We will then have an open discussion and discuss potential avenues for future research. The number of discussions per student during the semester will depend on the number of students enrolled. At the start of the semester, we will randomly assign students to review papers, but you will have a week to voluntarily redistribute the papers among yourselves. Research paper: Students must also submit a research proposal on April 26th. This must be a concrete proposal on a research paper. It should include a motivation and contribution to the literature, data sources and empirical strategy. These research proposals will be circulated among all class participants. During the last 2 sessions of the semester, we will all discuss each proposal and provide feedback. The distribution of grading is as follows: In-class participation: 25 % Discussion memos: 25 % Referee reports: 25 % Research proposal 25 %. 3. Readings All readings marked with a \(*)" or a \(**)" are required and you should read them carefully. Your weekly one-page memo will be based on these readings. Each reading marked with a \(**)" will be reviewed by one students. Students are encouraged to bring particular readings of interest to our attention, and to make suggestions of any kind about the syllabus. We may adjust the syllabus and the required readings throughout the semester. Week 1: Feb 3 - Theory and Method in Comparative Politics William Roberts Clark and Matt Golder. Big Data, Causal Inference, and Formal Theory: Contradictory Trends in Political Science?: Introduction. PS: Political Science and Politics, 48 (1):65{70, 2015 (*) Angus Deaton. Instruments, Randomization, and Learning about Development. Journal of Economic Literature, 48(2):424{455, 2010 (*) John D Huber. Is Theory Getting Lost in the\Identification Revolution"? Newsletter of the Political Economy Section of the American Political Science Association, 2013. URL http:// themonkeycage.org/2013/06/is-theory-getting-lost-in-the-identification-revolution/ (*) 2 Additional Readings: Adam Przeworski. Is the Science of Comparative Politics Possible? In Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, chapter 6. Oxford University Press, New York, 2007 Susan C Stokes. A Defense of Observational Research. In Field Experiments and their critics: Essays on the Uses and Abuses of Experimentation in the Social Sciences, pages 33{57. Yale University Press New Haven, 2014 Week 2: February 10 - Institutions, History, and Development Douglass North. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, Chs. 1-3, p. 1-26 (*) Avner Greif and David Laitin. A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change. The American political science review, 98(4), 2004 (*) Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. The Colonial Origins of Compara- tive Development: An Empirical Investigation. American Economic Review, 91(5):1369{1401, 2001 (**) Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou. Pre-Colonial Ethnic Institutions and Contem- porary African Development. Econometrica, 81(1), 2013 (**) Additional Readings: Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvarez, Jose Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990. Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2000 Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer. History, Institutions, and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India. American Economic Review, 95(4):1190{ 1213, 2005 Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long Run Growth. In Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, editors, Handbook of Economic Growth, chapter 6. 2005 Nathan Nunn. The Importance of History for Economic Development. Annual Review of Economics, 1(1):65{92, 2009 Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4):1231{1294, 2002 Dani Rodrik, Arvind Subramanian, and Francesco Trebbi. Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development. Journal of Economic Growth, 9(2):131{165, 2004 John H. Coatsworth. Structures, Endowments, and Institutions in the Economic History of Latin America. Latin American Research Review, 40(3):126{144, 2005 3 Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff. The Evolution of Suffrage Institutions in the New World. Journal of Economic History, 65(4):891{921, 2005 Alexander Gerschenkron. Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. Harvard Univer- sity Press, Cambridge, MA, 1962 Elise Huillery. History Matters: The Long-Term Impact of Colonial Public Investments in French West Africa. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(2):176{215, 2009 Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou. National Institutions and Subnational Develop- ment in Africa. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(1):151{213, 2014 Week 3: February 17 - Origins of Democracy Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006 (Chapters 1, 2 and 6) (*) Ben W Ansell and David J Samuels. Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach. Cambridge University Press, 2014 (Chapters 1 and 2) (*) Jacob Gerner Hariri. The Autocratic Legacy of Early Statehood. American Political Science Review, 106:471{494, 2012 (**) L´eonardWantch´ekon and Omar Garcia-Ponce. Critical Junctures: Independence Movements and Democracy in Africa. 2013 (**) Additional Readings: Seymour M. Lipset. Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy. American Political Science Review, 53:69{105, 1959 Alessandro Lizzeri and Nicola Persico. Why did the Elites Extend the Suffrage? Democracy and the Scope of Government, with an Application to Britain's \Age of Reform". The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(2):707{765, 2004 Humberto Llavador and Robert J. Oxoby. Partisan Competition, Growth, and the Franchise. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 120(3):1155{1189, 2005 Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James A. Robinson, and Pierre Yared. Income and Demo- cracy. American Economic Review, 98(3):808{42, 2008