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ii AP® Comparative Government and Politics: 2006–2007 Workshop Materials Table of Contents Special Focus: Teaching the Comparative Method Introduction Jean C. 3 Comparative Tools Using the Internet to Teach AP Comparative Government and Politics Ken Wedding. 7 Using and Understanding Tables, Charts and Graphs Jean C. 21 Comparative Concepts Why and What Do We Compare? The Story of Revolution and Democratization Mehrzad Boroujerdi.
27 Ideology, Religion and Politics: The History of a Changing Concept Jeffrey Key. 41 Gender, Comparison, and Political Equality Jean C. 48 Political Culture Ethel Wood. 59 Understanding Civil Society and Social Capital Kristen Parris.
64 Conceptualizing Globalization in Comparative Politics Lisa Laverty. 90 Important Note: The following set of materials is organized around a particular theme, or “special focus,” that reflects important topics in the AP Comparative Government and Politics course. The materials are intended to provide teachers with resources and classroom ideas relating to these topics. The special focus, as well as the specific content of the materials, cannot and should not be taken as an indication that a particular topic will appear on the AP Exam.
AP® Comparative Government and Politics: 2006–2007 Workshop Materials Special Focus: Teaching the Comparative Method Introduction Jean C. Robinson Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana A tremendous excitement about the new AP Comparative Government and Politics course is shared by all of us who have been working on its development, from the College Board administration to the AP teachers and college faculty who created the topic outline and examination. The curriculum it covers is much closer to that offered in college and university introductory comparative politics courses, and many of the topics speak to contemporary global political issues that are vital to us both as students and as citizens. These materials have been designed to assist you in developing your course materials for the new AP Comparative Government and Politics topic outline and examination.
The first examination for this latest version will be in May 2006; the new topic outline replaces the existing course starting in the 2005–2006 academic year. The decision to revise the existing course was made after conducting surveys of college and university courses and consulting with major political scientists involved in the teaching of introductory comparative politics. The move away from a country-by-country study to one that links country studies through applying concepts and themes is the current trend in colleges and universities. Furthermore, as in the discipline of political science as a whole, the AP Comparative Government and Politics course follows trends that are catalyzed by actual political events.
Current and recent political changes and systemic evolutions are part of what our students should study. But the study of comparative politics is more than current events; it is also about learning scholarly social science skills. The disciplinary subfield of comparative politics has been engaged in vigorous debates about methodology and analysis: How, in other words, should we study the incredible political events of the last decade? What kinds of methods should we use? What kinds of skills do our students need to better understand political evolution and difference? If we have no method, as Patrick O’Neil argues in Essentials of Comparative Politics, all we are left with is “a collection of random details.” Certainly the introductory class is no place to begin teaching statistical analysis or the case-study method, but it is the place to begin thinking about what we are comparing, why we are comparing it, and what kinds of generalizations we might be able to draw from the details. The new course offers you an opportunity to provoke exciting conversations with your students about the compelling political and economic issues facing our world.
It provides AP® Comparative Government and Politics: 2006–2007 Workshop Materials Special Focus: Teaching the Comparative Method the opportunity to challenge students to be more conceptual and more analytical— precisely the skills that are most highly valued in postsecondary education. The major changes you will see in the AP Comparative Government and Politics course are greater emphasis on conceptual and thematic analysis; a change in the country focus; coverage of six countries, albeit in slightly less factual depth (Britain, China, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia); and a new emphasis on themes such as political change, globalization, public policy, and citizen-state relations. The topic outline and examination include renewed attention to beginning mastery of analytical skills, from graph and chart reading to application of concepts and cross-national comparisons. The focus of these materials, then, is to help you prepare to teach students the following: • How and what to compare • How to make reasonable use of abstract concepts in explaining data and historical materials • How to employ both comparative and conceptual approaches when analyzing politics Knowing that no set of materials can provide you with everything you need, we want to remind you that AP Central has a great deal of information and reviews on resources, briefing papers on countries and themes, and current articles on political events.
We have made a concerted effort to review the most up-to-date resources on AP Central, which we hope you will use as a complement to these materials as well as the new ® Teacher’s Guide: AP Comparative Government and Politics. In addition, because some of the concepts and countries to be covered in the course are not in all textbooks, the College Board has prepared a series of briefing papers, which contain full analyses of Iran, Mexico, and Nigeria and lengthy discussions of concepts such as political institutions, legal systems, and civil society. In the following pages, we have included information and examples from many of the countries you will be teaching in your class. We have included sample classroom exercises, reading lists, and discussion questions.
While we have not been able to provide chapters on every major concept and country, we have endeavored to provide you with ideas about how to teach some important central concepts and approaches. You will find here substantive discussions about: • Comparative revolutions and political change, with extensive discussions about Iran, China, and Russia • Teaching about religion, ideology, and politics, with a special emphasis on Islam AP® Comparative Government and Politics: 2006–2007 Workshop Materials Special Focus: Teaching the Comparative Method • Civil society and social capital and applications to nondemocratic as well as democratic countries • Gender, comparison, and political equality We have included two pedagogical chapters on using the Internet and using tables, graphs, and charts. To complement articles found on AP Central as well as in the briefing papers, we have also included two shorter chapters that provide overviews of the concepts of globalization and political culture. The authors, all of whom are experienced teachers of comparative politics, have prepared discussion questions, ideas for in-class activities, reading lists, glossaries, and the like for you to apply in your class.
Everything that follows in these materials has been designed for you to use in the classroom or to use as a basis for developing your own lectures and activities for students. Teaching the new AP Comparative Government and Politics course will require that you find ways to move back and forth between studying factual information about countries and understanding and applying concepts as a way to compare individual countries. This kind of movement between concept and country is modeled in the essays in the special focus section. In addition, following the topic outline will be an effective approach to developing a successful course for your students.
The topic outline, as in the previous versions, covers quite a bit of territory. Recognizing that textbooks generally do a good job in covering political institutions, these materials focus on presenting topics that are less well covered in the textbooks. We have been guided by the topic outline, which is divided into six sections: 1. Introduction to Comparative Politics 2.
Sovereignty, Authority, and Power 3. Citizens, Society, and the State 5. Political and Economic Change 6. Public Policy The essays in the special focus section fit into the topic outline at different points.
For instance, you may find Ken Wedding’s “Using the Internet to Teach AP Comparative Government and Politics” and my “Using and Understanding Tables, Charts, and Graphs” useful at the beginning of the course when you are introducing the idea of comparison, or you may want to introduce them later after you have spent a bit of time working with data from individual countries. Certainly both Mehrzad Boroujerdi’s “Why and What Do We Compare? The Story of Revolution and Democratization” and Jeffrey Key’s “Ideology, Religion, and Politics: The History of a Changing Concept” will be extremely relevant in AP® Comparative Government and Politics: 2006–2007 Workshop Materials Special Focus: Teaching the Comparative Method section 2, “Sovereignty, Authority, and Power.” But both are also useful ways to introduce the idea of comparison at the beginning of the course. The Boroujerdi essay will also be quite useful for preparing your class lessons for studying revolutions in section 5, “Political and Economic Change”; the Key article will come in handy when you discuss cleavages in section 4 and factors that inhibit or promote democratization in section 5. Lisa Laverty’s discussion, “Conceptualizing Globalization in Comparative Politics,” will be helpful when you discuss supranational levels of government in section 3, “Political Institutions”; it will also obviously be a major source as you develop your lessons on globalization for section 5.