Week 5: Overview

Week Five: Overview

Presidential and Parliamentary Democracy I

Welcome to Week Five of Introduction to Comparative Politics!  Our midterm will be this Monday, from noon Monday to noon Tuesday (24 hour take home exam).  Make sure you turn it in!  It is open book, open note, but not collaborative (please do your own work).  

We will also begin our unit on political institutions.  We start with presidential versus parliamentary democracy, a core constitutional difference.   Listen to lectures, download and study the slides, and attend section.  Reading is fairly light and there will be no quiz this week.


Activities

Readings Videos Assignments
  • Mezey
  • US fiscal crisis
  • Belgian government formation crisis 

  • US Senate election, 2020.     
  • 5.1 Introduction
  • 5.2 Presidential Democracy Core Characteristics
  • 5.3 Divided and Unified Government
  • 5.4 Policy Making in Presidential Systems
  • 5.5 Variants of Presidentialism and Governance Challenges

Midterm I due (see Syllabus for details).