The Comparative Politics field provides a broad array of thematic and area-specific courses on governments and politics around the world.
The Ohio State comparative politics faculty are the U.S. leaders of the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP), which focuses on politicization, political communication, and social structure within the context of election campaigns using compatible research designs and common survey questions across two dozen nations. The CNEP is now located at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies.
Graduate students in Comparative Politics have the opportunity to participate in a dissertation research workshop, as well as a department Comparative Politics Workshop, and university-wide centers and workshops such as the Globalization Workshop at the Mershon Center, among others.
Graduate students in Comparative Politics have won an array of prestigious grants to support dissertation research around the world, including: Fulbright Hays, Social Science Research Council (IDRF and Pre-dissertation), National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant, IREX, Horowitz Foundation, Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS)
Comparative Politics Faculty:
Sarah Brooks, Marcus Kurtz, Erin Lin, Jan Pierskalla, Philipp Rehm, Amanda Robinson, and Sara Watson.
Emeriti: Richard Gunther, William Liddle, Anthony Mughan, Goldie Shabad
Comparative Politics Courses
Courses include:
- Theories of Comparative Politics
- Comparative Political Behavior
- Comparative Political Parties
- Politics of Inequality
- Field Research Methods
- African Politics
- Comparative Political Economy
- Political Violence
- The Field of Political Economy
- Latin American Politics
- Research Design Methods
- Politics of the Developing World
Graduate students majoring in Comparative Politics are expected to take courses dealing with broad theoretical debates in the field, to utilize the most rigorous and relevant methodological techniques, and to apply them to empirical questions in geographic areas of their choice.