Welcome to the POLS 8200 course blog site. We will be using this site primarily to construct our class wiki.

You will see that there are three different wikis: one for theory, one for concepts, and one for methods. I will post resources in a later post that show you how to post your entries. For your reference, the requirements for this assignment are pasted below.

Theory/concepts/methods wiki: Over the course of the semester, we will build a class “wiki” that catalogs the theories, concepts, methods and empirical claims that we encounter in this course. The goal of this exercise is to create, by the end of term, a tool that should be helpful to you as a sort of personalized reference tool for your future work in comparative politics. Each student will analyze two books for the wiki (15%) and serve as peer editor on another student’s wiki contribution (10%). (Participation in the wiki is worth 25% of your course grade.)
Entries will be distributed across four categories: theories, concepts, methods, and empirical claims. For the books you have chosen, you will provide a 300-word entry for each of these categories.

Each entry should:

1. be a concise summary of the category for that book (for example, major theoretical contribution, or key concepts, or methodological approach) and

2. provide insightful critical analysis, making connections to other readings as appropriate.
In addition, you will make substantive, constructive comments on the contributions of one other student. This will provide a real-time opportunity for us to share our understanding and analysis with one another and will provide fuel for critical discussion over the course of the semester.