Comparative Politics - Examination Guide
Introduction and Requirements| Examination Guide | Master Syllabus | Faculty
For testing in comparative politics you are expected to know and be able to critique the body of material associated with the field of comparative politics. You need to be able to discuss and integrate theoretical and empirical concerns. Your knowledge should not be limited only to the classes you have taken in comparative politics but should be knowledge of the field generally and broadly. There is a broad list of comparative readings, informally known as the Master Syllabus, available from the main office in hard copy and the Web. This is a useful guide for the comprehensive exams.
If you have not taken courses from certain faculty members, we strongly urge you to visit those professors in their offices and to do so several times. Please come see us, all of us. This is particularly important for the faculty from whom you have not taken classes. We will not be re-establishing the advanced overview seminar but we encourage students testing to sign up for a directed reading course with their major advisor or someone else in the field during the semester you are preparing for exams.
Written Component
The exam is intended to demonstrate your ability to represent the comparative politics tradition, but also your intellectual acuity and ability to construct your own convincing arguments. It is not wrong to criticize the literature or the field; only to do so poorly. The exam will be made up of broad gauged essay questions designed to test:
- Your knowledge of the literature in the field.
- Your ability to use the literature in constructing an analytically coherent argument.
- Your ability to apply a critical perspective to the literature.
For each response, think of the "big questions" raised in the field and relate them to the specifics of the question. You will have to make a coherent argument in your answer, and your argument should flow logically and empirically, building toward your conclusion.
As for the questions, if you are a comparative major you will be tested at three levels and you will write 3 questions. You will have 3 days to write the exam. If you are a comparative minor you will be asked to test at only the first two levels, you will write only 2 questions, and you will have 2 days to write the exam. For all of these levels, please be sure to answer the question in all its parts. The levels are as follows:
- Level one: (7-10 pages) a broad, general question on comparative politics for which you will draw upon the literature of the field. At this level you will have only one question and all students will write that question.
- Level two: (5-7 pages) at this level you will have a limited amount of choice (2 questions; you write one) and will answer a question on a general theme in comparative politics (democratization, culture, revolution, political economy, or something similar). At this level you will draw upon a subset of the literature in the field but will be asked to know about the literature on the thematic subject across a variety of regions.
- Level three (majors only): (5-7 pages) at this level you will have more choice and different students will choose different questions. This question will require you to extrapolate from the literature on a given region or theme with which you are familiar.
Oral Component
The oral exam is an integral component of the Ph.D. qualifying exam. It will be derived from the student's written exam, but may venture beyond it. Since no decision on students will have been made prior to the oral, the oral exam provides you with an opportunity to:
- develop more fully your arguments in the written exam, especially as they relate to some of the "big questions" in the field;
- respond to weaknesses/gaps in your arguments;
- draw on other relevant literature and empirical evidence to bolster your arguments; and
- demonstrate your broad understanding of the literature and how it might relate to your future research agenda.
Whereas the written part of the exam (3 questions for majors, 2 for minors) will be the same for every student taking an exam in a particular semester, the composition of the oral examination committee will vary. For your oral exam your examining committee will consist of 3 full time faculty members:
- your major advisor
- one other full time tenured member of the field (designated by the field committee)
- one other full time tenured or tenure track member of the field whose names you will pull from a hat when you return your written exam to Sue.
The implications of this change are several. First, you will not have to face the entire field for your comprehensive exams. Second, for one of the faculty members who will comprise your committee, you will rely entirely upon the luck of the draw and all students will have the same fortune in that drawing. Third, this method will require you to prepare yourselves to take and pass an oral exam administered by any combination of faculty members of the comparative field. It will be your responsibility to prepare yourself for such an exam by getting to know all members of the field. It is your responsibility to be prepared to take an exam administered by any combination of faculty.
We hope that no students will fail their comprehensive exams. However, in the event of a poor exam performance we have agreed upon the following procedure. After you complete your oral exam and leave the room, the members of your examining committee will discuss and vote in the following fashion. You will then be informed of the decision.
- If one member of your committee feels that you have not performed satisfactorily and votes against your passing the exam, you will pass anyway. Please note: one vote against you will not result in failure.
- If two members of your committee feel that you have not performed satisfactorily, you will fail the exam. As always, after one failure, you will have one chance to test again. Two failures means that you will need to leave the program.
