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The Importance of Studying Comparative Politics Essay

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The Importance of Studying Comparative Politics

Comparative politics is an important aspect of political science in that instead of studying how this country functions, it studies why other countries around the world are the way they are. There must be some medium for finding the differences and similarities between one county and another in order discover what can effect such aspects as economic strength, military strength, and the structure of the regime in power. One reason to compare countries is to help ourselves by allowing us to learn about other countries while escaping the ethnocentric fallacy many of us have. The Unites States may have a good government but is not necessarily a perfect government; certain countries may …show more content…

For example, many governments of the world are non-secular, such as Iran and Egypt. These country's government and laws originated strongly from the Islamic roots of the people. Then one can note that most of these countries that are dominated by religion have weak economies and unstable regimes. Fundamentalist groups battling with socialist groups who battle with supporters of a democracy is what makes these countries what they are today. Another example of popular ideology of a country is Russia and the other remnants of the USSR. Most of the people that live in these countries today lived under the Communist regime for years as they group up under its influence. Now that the regime has fallen and democratic capitalism taken its place the countries are struggling among themselves and each other. The views on working and the role of government are still archaic with many of these people. They still expect a paycheck and a guaranteed job despite the quality of their work. They came from an era where there was little motivation to work. This helps cause a weakened economy as people are still adjusting to the new order. One major theory was Inglehart's Post-Materialistic Theory. He says that as an advanced welfare emerges, then people become more liberal as conservative ideas of monetary gain take a backseat to ideas of

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