The course's object of analysis is the political regime, that specified set of state/society relations that characterize a given polity. Our first task is to describe different regimes--what do we mean when we call one democratic and another authoritarian? We approach this first task by building a regime model. As we do so we seek to understand what makes political regimes stable, analyzing their effectiveness, popular legitimacy, and institutional adaptability. All regimes are challenged by change, but some remain stable in the face of change, while others are transformed. Why? After building the model we take it through various regions of the world, analyzing the variables which change from regime to regime. In so doing we come to understand political regimes as well as gaining skill with the comparative method, a tool which students will continue to use in other courses and other disciplines.
