COMPARING FEW COUNTRIES, Study notes of Systems Design

Download COMPARING FEW COUNTRIES and more Study notes Systems Design in PDF only on Docsity!

COMPARING FEW

COUNTRIES

#Week 9

UNIT OF ANALYSIS/ SUBJECT OF RESEARCH IN

SMALL-N COMPARISON

• The comparison of countries is based on the idea that all countries can be

seen as ‘units’ , on which certain pieces of information can be collected and

compared.

• Units has been intentionally selected and is significantly smaller than a

global selection.

• The number of countries may vary at the upper limit (<20), but by

definition is always greater than or equal to two.

MSSD & MDSD IN SMALL-N COMPARISON

• The method of comparing few countries is divided primarily into two types of system design: ‘most similar systems design’ and ‘most different systems design’.
• Most similar systems design (MSSD) seeks to compare political systems that share a host of common features in an effort to neutralize some differences while highlighting others. MSSD seeks to identify the key features that are different among similar countries and which account for the observed political outcome.
• Most different systems design (MDSD), on the other hand, compares countries that do not share any common features apart from the political outcome to be explained and one or two of the explanatory factors seen to be important for that outcome.

MSSD AND MDSD

MDSD

LUEBBERT (1991)