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For such a wide-ranging and truly global subject as comparative politics, the internet offers an invaluable source of information. Its range and accessibility is unequalled in human history. But its vastness presents challenges as well as opportunities when it comes to studying and researching comparative politics: When so much information is available to you, where do you choose to look? How do you know which type of sources will be most useful to your work? How can you tell which websites to trust and which websites to be wary of? How can you identify bias? What types of source are worth citing in an academic essay? Ultimately, making effective use of the internet requires good research skills, especially in searching thoroughly and interpreting wisely. This guide offers a few pointers to help you get started.
One point concerns the internet itself. As of 2017, just over half of the world’s population still did not have internet access – the levels of access remained greatest in Western liberal democracies: for example, 80% of people in Europe had internet access). By contrast, only 22% of people in Africa were able access the web in 2017. In the poorest parts of the world, effective use is constrained by illiteracy, and even access to electricity. The difficulty of censoring the flow of electronic information means that the internet, and especially social media, can be politically important even in countries where internet penetration is low. Even so, our understanding of politics would be distorted if we imagined a world where web use is universal.
Just as the highest proportions of internet users are in the developed world, so too are most websites. This gives rise to the selection bias discussed in Chapter 3 of Comparative Government and Politics, 11 th edn. (see pp.46–8): a bias arising when selected cases and variables are unrepresentative of the wider class from which they are drawn . It is easier for us all – professors as well as students – to write about internet-rich topics such as the American presidency or the British Parliament than about internet-poor areas such as the politics of remote regions in low-income countries.
As a result of selection bias, the known becomes ever clearer but the unknown remains opaque, thus contradicting the underlying spirit of academic enquiry. A case can even be made that a greater total contribution to knowledge would emerge if, for a period, we all agreed to research website-free topics! At the end of your internet research on a given topic, ask yourself what else you might have been able to discover had you conducted research in the field rather than just from the screen.
The internet gives access to various sources of information relevant to comparative politics, including (with examples):
Government portals
- UK
- USA
Intergovernmental organizations
- NATO
- IMF
International non-governmental organizations
- Oxfam
Policy institutes (think-tanks)
- Civicus
Interest groups
- Federated Farmers of New Zealand
Social movients
- #MeToo
Corporations
- Shell
Constitutions
Library catalogues
- Bibliothèque nationale de France
Academic journals (see Section 6, below, for a longer list).
- Comparative Political Studies
Electoral data
- International Foundation for Electoral Systis
- Federal Electoral Commission (USA)
- Australian Electoral Commission
- Electoral Commission of South Africa
Polling services
- Ipsos
Scholarly search engines
More Resources
- Political Resources on the Net (hundreds of resources, broken down into regions/countries)
The data (population, GDP, etc.) relating to the countries detailed in the Spotlight features in Comparative Government and Politics, 11th edition, and in the chapters of Cases in Comparative Government and Politics, was based on the following resources:
For more information about the GDP, population, and various other stats relating to countries across the globe, see the interactive Spotlight Map on this companion website.
Making sense of internet sources requires the same skills as interpreting non-internet sources, plus additional ruthlessness in disposing of irrelevant, low-grade and out-of-date material. How can we judge the accuracy, objectivity and comprehensiveness of internet material?
Sources do not need to be perfect to be useful. Sometimes, we are just interested in finding a particular fact or statistic, a task for which a simple query through a search engine is ideal. Encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia are helpful here, but Wikipedia entries are based on contributions from users, and should be checked for accuracy. (If you use user-generated resources like Wikipedia, you should play fair by improving existing entries or adding new ones.) Confirmation through multiple sources does not ensure accuracy since information, whether accurate or inaccurate, is often simply copied. For this reason, slight differences in facts and statistics can add to rather than detract from confidence in the underlying point.
Often, we are interested in what a government, interest group or political party has to say in and of itself. What an organization says – on its website or elsewhere – is significant, whether or not it accurately reflects the views of individuals within the organization. In general, information supplied by an organization about itself is a form of marketing; it is unlikely to be false but will certainly be selective. Provided you always ask what is left unsaid, a trawl through relevant sites is likely to be helpful.
There is no magic formula for judging validity but here are some guidelines (most of which also apply to hard-copy documents):
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and the Chinese-language Baidu provide a convenient way of trawling the web for a particular topic; bear in mind, however, that some engines permit organizations to pay to appear near the top of a results page. Results vary from one engine to another so it is worth trying at least two for any topic. Also vary the phrase for which you search.
Such trawls will deliver a variable catch and some of the results will lack the authority and depth needed for academic purposes. Still, we have to start somewhere.
An intelligent search aims to produce a manageable set of results so explore the advanced search facilities of your preferred engines. These enable you, for example, to limit your results to those:
- of a particular type (e.g. Adobe PDF files, which are often substantial reports)
You can search for a specific file type in Google by including the following your search bar: filetype:pdf. Or, if you wanted to search for PowerPoint slides: filetype:ppt. Or just use Google Advanced Search.
- in a particular language (e.g. English)
- from a specific (but still overlapping) top-level domain, e.g.
.biz (business)
.com (commercial)
.coop (cooperative)
.edu (education, US only)
.ac (academic, various counties; followed by country, e.g.: .ac.uk)
.gov (government, US only)
.info (information)
.int (international)
.mil (military, US only)
.museum
.net (portal)
.org (organization, particularly non-profit)
.pro (profession)
from a specific country such as .dk, .no, .se, .uk
To search within a particular domain in Google, including the following at the end of your search: site:[domain]. For example if you wanted to search for references to ‘comparative politics’ on only the pages of university websites in Singapore, you could put the following in your search bar: “comparative politics” site:.edu.sg. Or just use Google Advanced Search.
- which have been updated since a particular date (e.g. 11 September 2001).
- which have been accessed by many other users
- which have links to the page you specify
- which include an exact phrase
To search for an exact phrase in the Google search bar, put your search term in double quotation marks, e.g.: “comparative government and politics”.
Many websites themselves contain internal search engines; if you search the United Nations site for ‘literacy’ you are likely to discover documents there that would not be included in the results of a more general search.
Your reading list will probably include key articles from academic journals which you can access in physical or electronic form through your university library. Indeed, this will be essential for projects and dissertations.
How do you go about searching for academic articles? A starting point is to find articles that are referenced in the books or papers you are assigned to read. As you become more familiar with a topic, you will find the same references appearing over and over again – a good indication that these are sources you should read. Alongside such frequently-cited papers, it is often helpful to read some more recent articles. This method is in effect a form of quality control which eliminates the large amount of minor material thrown up by an electronic search. But beware the bandwagon effect: the most-used sources often become that way because scholars feel the need to follow their peers, raising the danger of overlooking sources that are just as valuable (perhaps even more valuable) simply because they have not been cited as much.
If you do want to engage in an electronic search, you will need to use a bibliographic database such as Web of Science, EBSCOhost or JSTOR. Libraries subscribe to these databases, often at considerable expense, but their use is usually free to current students. They enable you to search through academic journals seeking all articles on a particular topic (catalogued by title or topic). Google Scholar is a free to use database performing a similar function but its coverage is more uneven, and its cataloguing less advanced, than most subscription databases.
The main drawback of a database search is too many results, with many of marginal relevance and quality. You will need to be able to search precisely and scan lists of results quickly, relying in part on the quality of the journal and the reputation of the author. In general, it is better to engage in detail with the major articles than to attempt the impossible task of reading everything that seems relevant. Researching a topic, as opposed to writing an essay from the select works on a reading list, is as much about deciding what to read as about what not to read.
If you are unable to obtain access to the text of academic papers, you can usually consult abstracts (summaries) at no charge on the websites of journal publishers. Listed below are links to some key academic politics journals cited in Comparative Government and Politics, as well as some additional journals useful for the study of comparative politics.
Specific Regions/Groups of Countries:
Specific Countries:
Other:
In principle, all books could be accessed electronically but we are not there yet. In fact, this is one area where the hard-copy holdings of your university’s library are likely to be most useful. Given that library holdings are arranged by topic, physical browsing of the shelves remains an effective way of identifying a quality-controlled selection of books on particular aspects of comparative politics.
Your library probably has electronic access to some books, or has an arrangement for inter-library loans. In addition, sites such as VitalSource offer online textbooks, without needing a dedicated reader. If you need to search further for books, library catalogues such as the Library of Congress and the British Library are good starting points. Amazon and Google Books are also helpful.
Publishers’ websites (such as Macmillan International Higher Education) also allow you to search for details of relevant books, including those on comparative politics specifically. The publishers of books included in the references section of our book are likely to be particularly relevant.
As with articles, so too with books: electronic searches will result in lists that are less discriminating than those on course reading lists. Before any purchase, consult the table of contents and reader reviews and check whether your library can obtain a copy on your behalf. Avoid placing all your eggs in one basket: if you are relying on a particular book to answer questions you have been unable to answer elsewhere, you would be well-advised to avoid such a risky bet by modifying your questions.
Selective use of current newspapers, periodicals and blogs can add currency and vitality to your work but overuse may detract from academic depth. In comparative politics, you are more likely to be asked to focus on the framework of institutions and ideas within which current politics takes place, rather than the contemporary politics and personalities which form the focus of most media coverage.
Again, your library will be the best route to online newspapers and periodicals. Its subscriptions will probably allow you to access and search back issues. For current news, use either the news section of your search engine or media websites themselves. Here are just a few of the thousands of options available:
Whenever you incorporate material of any kind into your own work, you are expected to reference your source. If you fail to do this, you are guilty of plagiarism (passing off the work of others as if it were your own).
There are plenty of published and online sources on how to cite your sources correctly, but websites often cause difficulties and are routinely cited incorrectly. Compared to books and articles in paper form, websites change rapidly, and they come in many different forms, including online journals and magazines, blogs, databases, emails, tweets, Facebook pages, and so on. The essential point is to give as much information as is needed for the reader to understand the source, and to find it themselves if needed. That information includes the name of an article, the title of a web site, the name of the hosting organization or publisher, the URL, and the date the material was accessed.
For more readings related to the subjects covered in each chapter of Comparative Government and Politics, see the Further Reading sections at the end of every chapter in the book.
For more on how best to undertake research using internet and digital resources, see the following books:
Hartman, Karen, and Ernest Ackermann (2010)Searching and Researching on the Internet & World Wide Web, 5 th edn. (Franklin Beedle & Associates).
Hewson, Claire, Carl Vogel, and Dianna Laurent (2016) Internet Research Methods: A Practical Guide for the Social and Behavioural Sciences , 2nd edition (London: Sage).
Munger, Dave, and Shireen Campbell (2012)What Every Student Should Know About Researching Online, 2 nd edition (Harlow: Pearson).
Roberts, Steven, et. al. (eds) (2016) Digital Methods for Social Science: An Interdisciplinary Guide to Research Innovation (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
Rogers, Richard (2019) Doing Digital Methods (London: Sage).
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