The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics offers a critical survey of the field of empirical political science through the collection of a set of chapters written by 48 top scholars in the discipline of comparative politics.

Carles Boix is Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He has written the books Political Parties, Growth and Equality (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Democracy and Redistribution (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Both books won the American Political Science Association Award for the best book on political economy. Boix has also published articles in leading journals such American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, International Organization, and World Politics.
Susan Stokes: PhD, Stanford University, 1988. John S. Saden Professor of Political Science and director of the Yale Program on Democracy. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Russell Sage Foundation.

• Part I. INTRODUCTION


• 1: Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes: Introduction


• Part II. THEORY AND METHODOLOGY


• 2: Robert J. Franzese Jr: Multicausality, Context-Conditionality, and Endogeneity in Comparative Politics


• 3: James Mahoney and Celso M. Villegas: Historical Inquiry and Comparative Politics


• 4: John Gerring: The Case Study: What it is and What it Does


• 5: Elisabeth Jean Wood: Field Research


• 6: Adam Przeworski: Is the Science of Comparative Politics Possible?


• 7: Robert H. Bates: From Case Studies to Social Science: A Strategy for Political Research


• 8: Elinor Ostrom: Collective Action Theory


• Part III. STATES AND STATE FORMATION: POLITICAL CONSENT


• 9: Hendrick Spruyt: War, Trade and State Formation


• 10: Russell Hardin: Compliance, Consent, and Legitimacy


• 11: Liah Greenfeld and Jonathan Eastwood: National Identity


• 12: Ashutosh Varshney: Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicy


• Part IV. POLITICAL REGIMES AND TRANSITIONS


• 13: Christian Welzel and Ronald Inglehart: Mass Beliefs


• 14: Barbara Geddes: #What Causes Democratization?


• 15: Filippo Sabetti: Democracy and Civic Culture


• 16: Ronald Wintrobe: Dictatorship: Analytical Approaches


• Part V. POLITICAL INSTABILITY, POLITICAL CONFLICT


• 17: Steven Pincus: Rethinking Revolutions: A Neo-Torquevillian Perpective


• 18: Stathis N. Kalyvas: Civil Wars


• 19: Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly: Contentious Politics and Social Movements


• 20: Mark I. Lichbach and Helma G. E. de Vries: Mechanisms of Globalized Protest Movements


• Part VI. MASS POLITICAL MOBILIZATION


• 21: Carles Boix: Emergence of Parties and Party Systems


• 22: Herbert Kitschelt: Party Systems


• 23: Anne Wren and Kenneth M. McElwain: Voters and Parties


• 24: Frances Hagopian: Parties and Voters in Emerging Democracies


• 25: Susan C. Stokes: Political Clientelism


• 26: Pippa Norris: Political Activism: New Challenges, New Opportunities


• Part VII. PROCESSING POLITICAL DEMANDS


• 27: G. Bingham Powell Jr.: Aggregating and Representing Political Preferences


• 28: Rein Taagepera: Electoral Systems


• 29: David Samuels: Separation of Powers


• 30: John Ferejohn, Frances Rosenbluth and Charles Shipan: Comparative Judicial Politics


• 31: Pablo Beramendi: Federalism


• 32: Kaare Strom and Benjamin Nyblade: Coalition Theory and Government Formation


• Part VIII. GOVERNANCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE


• 33: Raymond M. Duch: Comparative Studies of the Economy and the Vote


• 34: James E. Alt and Shanna S. Rose: Context-Conditional Political Budget Cycles


• 35: Matthew E. Carnes and Isabela Mares: The Welfare State in Global Perpective


• 36: Phil Keefer: The Poor Performance of Poor Democracies


• 37: Jose Maria Maravall: Accountability and the Survival of Governments


• 38: Timothy Frye: Economic Transformation and Comparative Politics