Comparative Politics

Our program has long been recognized as exceptionally vibrant in its coverage of Latin America. In recent years, we have considerably expanded our program's geographical, thematic, and methodological breadth.  Today, Notre Dame is one of the most exciting and strongest political science departments at which to study Comparative Politics in the United States.

At Notre Dame, fifteen full-time faculty members specialize in comparative politics, a much larger group than the comparative faculty in other strong and prestigious political science departments.

Regional Specializations

Latin America

The international reputations of seven Latin American faculty specialists, including two concurrent faculty members  make Notre Dame one of the best places to study Latin American Politics. Guillermo O'Donnell is the most frequently cited Latin Americanist in the world. 

Europe and Former Soviet Union

  • Andrew Gould: Politics and game theory
  • Debra Javeline: Mass political behavior, survey research, and the politics of post-Soviet and other post-communist regimes
  • Donald Kommers: American constitutional law, European legal institutions, German politics, comparative constitutionalism
  • A. James McAdams: German politics; transitional justice; law and society; politics of the internet
  • Anthony Messina: British politics, European Union, immigration policy

Africa

  • Peter Walshe: African politics; political economy; social justice
  • Robert Dowd: African Politics; Religion and Politics; Ethnic Conflict and Peace building; Political Parties and Party Systems; Comparative Democratization.
  • Naunihal Singh: African politics; game theory; quantitative approaches to politics

Asia

  • Peter Moody: Chinese politics; comparative politics of east Asia; political culture; international relations of east Asia; Chinese political thought; theory of comparative politics; international politics theory
  • Victoria Tin-Bor Hui: Comparative history of Asia and Europe, transformation of world politics, the emerging world order in the post-Cold War era, international security, state formation and state-society relations, contentious politics and resistance movements, political culture, Asian and Confucian values, Chinese politics

The Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Directed by Scott Mainwaring, The Kellogg Institute: sponsors conferences and workshops, brings in 7-10 resident scholars and several additional speakers each year, and funds graduate (and undergraduate) student research, mainly, but not exclusively, on Latin America.  Through the Kellogg, graduate students gain access to a continual stream of fine visiting scholars who can provide feedback on student research and help establish professional contacts.
http://www.nd.edu/~kellogg

 

Themes

Collectively, the Political Science faculty covers the following themes.

Comparative Constitutions and the Judiciary

Democratization and Regime Change

Elections and Political Parties

Ethnicity, Identity, and Nationalism

Executives and Legislatures

Political Economy/Public Policy

Religion and Politics

Research Methods

Social Movements

Methodology

The faculty of the Department of Political Science include practitioners of all research strategies from case studies to comparative historical analysis to large-scale quantitative analysis.


Graduate students work in whatever tradition is most appropriate for their projects, whether it is institutional analysis, survey research, historical approaches, class analysis, textual analysis, and/or formal theory. Advanced training in quantitative methods is offered in our department and in other social science departments at Notre Dame.
The Department of Political Science also frequently supports more advanced training in:

  • Statistics at the Summer Program of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan
  • Qualitative methods at Arizona State University
  • Formal modeling through the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) workshops held in the recent past at Duke and Harvard Universities.   

APSA-CP Newsletter

Since 2003, Notre Dame’s Political Science Department has published the official newsletter of the Organized Section on Comparative Politics of the American Political Science Association, APSA-CP, which reaches over 1600 members of the section, the Association’s largest. 
In the four-year cycle of Notre Dame’s editorship, several graduate students in Comparative Politics have published reviews and other articles in the newsletter, and have also assisted the co-editors, Professors Anthony Messina and Michael Coppedge, in publishing the newsletter.  Xavier Marquez, Annabella España Nájera, Claudia Maldonado, and Lucas González have served consecutive terms as Assistant Editor.

Select Job Placements

Recent graduates now hold positions at Oxford University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pittsburgh, and at other prestigious research institutions.   

Financial Support

Although the Department of Political Science typically provides full financial support for 5 years, graduate students in comparative politics have fared well in competitions for outside funding.
Almost all of our doctoral candidates have obtained funding for their field research and in the past several years, our students have won grants or fellowships from:

  • Social Science Research Council
  • Inter-American Foundation
  • Fulbright
  • IREX
  • ICPSR
  • World Society Foundation
  • Irving L. Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy
  • Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies
  • Institute for the Study of World Affairs

Contact

Christina Wolbrecht , Director of Graduate Studies or
Frances Hagopian, Chair of Comparative Politics Field
Department of Political Science
203 O’Shaughnessy Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
(574) 631-9017

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