This course surveys the problematiques of ‘development’ and ‘modernization’ in comparative politics;  explore the emergence of the institutions and structures of capitalist modernity in a global comparative context, as well as the subsequent efforts to achieve/impose late-development;  inter-disciplinary framework in order to avoid Eurocentrist biases of conventional comparative political analysis, such as a pre-determined division between East and West, North and South or ‘First World’ and ‘Third World’.

‘Comparative Political Development’ has a number of objectives including providing core skills and knowledge for higher levels of research in comparative political development; to develop a critical understanding of the methods and epistemologies of comparative political development; to develop specialized theoretical and historical knowledge of comparative political development to actively complete a specialised research project (thesis); to understand and critically evaluate different approaches to comparative political development; to encourage students to acquire and retain, analyse, critically reflect upon, summarise and disseminate knowledge of comparative political development; and to apply practical transferrable skills, including note-taking, organisation, co-operation and team working, presentation and communication skills.

Course Outline

• Comparative Political Development: Methods of Inquiry I
• Comparative Political Development: Methods of Inquiry II
• Problematizing Modernity
• Asia, Europe, and the Origins of Modernity
• Europe: The Rise of ‘the West’ or Divergent Trajectories?
• Continental European Development as ‘Late Industrialization’
• Comparative Politics, Nationalism and the Nation State
• States, Economic Development, and the Global Context
• The Tradition/Modernity Dichotomy and Analysis of Social Change in the Third World
• Modernization and Development: Critical Perspectives
• Institutionalism, Statism, and the Developmental State
• Development and Social Movements
• Gender, Race, Nation