Approaches to State-Society Relations

Course content

This course is a critical survey of the major theories and literature in comparative politics, the logic of cross-national inquiry, and the major concepts and approaches. It attempts to deal with the question of how to analyse state-society relations within a historical-comparative perspective. In the first part of the course, alternative methodological approaches will be introduced and key conceptual issues will be examined. The second part of the course focuses on three main approaches to state-society relations. Finally, the third part deals with the main conceptual issues in comparative analysis on state-society relations.