Introducing Comparative Politics: The Essentials

Introducing Comparative Politics: The Essentials is organized thematically around the essential questions in comparative politics—Who rules? What explains political behavior? Where and why? Adapted from the authors’ Introducing Comparative Politics, Fourth Edition, The Essentials version offers the same framework for understanding comparative politics in a briefer format. Instructors have greater flexibility in teaching the course because this version of Stephen Orvis and Carol Ann Drogus’ best-seller does not include extended case studies. Loaded with contemporary examples and up-to-date research, this streamlined text helps students engage with the critical issues shaping global politics today.

KEY FEATURES:

• Chapter-opening key questions help you focus on the key issues as you are reading. The chapters sometimes provide conclusive answers to the key questions, but more often they show you different ways the questions can be answered or approached.
• Multiple “In Context” features in every chapter illustrate basic data about the chapter topics so you can set that idea into a comparative (and sometimes provocative) context.
• Critical Inquiry features highlight methodological issues in comparative politics, providing a gateway for empirical study and analysis.
• More than a hundred full color tables, figures, and maps help you visualize comparative data and better understand concepts. 
• End-of-chapter lists of key concepts with page references are included to help you easily study and review the concepts, and a list of works cited and list of important print and electronic references offer you resources for further research.