Principles of Comparative Politics offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to comparative inquiry, research, and scholarship. In this thoroughly revised Third Edition, students now have an even better guide to cross-national comparison and why it matters. The new edition retains a focus on the enduring questions with which scholars grapple, the issues about which consensus has started to emerge, and the tools comparativists use to get at the complex problems in the field. Updates to this edition include a new intuitive take on statistical analyses and a clearer explanation of how to interpret regression results; a thoroughly-revised chapter on culture and democracy that includes a more extensive discussion of cultural modernization theory and a new overview of survey methods for addressing sensitive topics; and a revised chapter on dictatorships that incorporates a principal-agent framework for understanding authoritarian institutions. Examples from the gender and politics literature have been incorporated into various chapters, and empirical examples and data on various types of institutions have been updated. The authors have thoughtfully streamlined chapters to better focus attention on key topics. Explore online resources: https://edge.sagepub.com/principlescp3e

National-level elections receive more attention from scholars and the media than elections at other levels, even though in many European countries the importance of both regional and European levels of government has grown in recent years. The growing importance of multiple electoral arenas suggests that scholars should be cautious about examining single levels in isolation. Taking the multilevel structure of electoral politics seriously requires a re-examination of how the incentives created by electoral institutions affect the behaviour of voters and party elites. The standard approach to analysing multilevel elections is the second-order election (SOE) model, in which national elections are considered to be first-order elections while other elections are second order. However, this model does not provide micro mechanisms that determine how elections in one arena affect those in another, or explain variations in individual voting behaviour. The objective of this book is to explain how party and voter behaviour in a given election is affected by the existence of multiple electoral arenas. It provides original qualitative and quantitative data to examine European, national, and subnational elections in France, Germany, and Spain from 2011-2015. The volume examines party mobilization efforts across multiple electoral arenas, as well as decisions by individual voters with respect to turnout, strategic voting, and accountability. This book provides the first systematic analysis of multilevel electoral politics at three different levels across multiple countries. Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The series is edited by Emilie van Haute, Professor of Political Science, Universite libre de Bruxelles; Ferdinand Muller-Rommel, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Leuphana University; and Susan Scarrow, Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Houston.