POLITICS IN A CHANGING WORLD A COMPARATIVE INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL SCIENCE

Revising a political science textbook through five editions is a wonderfully compelling way to confront the reality of political change. When we wrote the first edition, the United States had never experienced a significant terrorist attack, an elected president had never been impeached, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) still controlled Mexico, Saddam Hussein had a firm grip on power in Iraq, ethnic conflicts in southern and eastern Europe were only beginning, the “Euro” was still in the planning stage, per capita income in China was less than a quarter of what it is today, and the North American Free Trade Agreement was just about to take effect. Political scientists were only beginning to consider how international affairs would be changed by the end of the Cold War, and there was widespread optimism that genuine democracy was dawning in Russia. No one expected the party controlling the U.S. White House to gain seats in the House of Representatives in a midterm election. (That has now happened twice, in 1998 and 2002!) Although political scientists correctly predicted few of these changes and events, the accumulated knowledge generated by the discipline helps us to make sense of them. Studies of voting behavior, the causes of war, the process of political development, and the impact of economics on politics help us understand what factors will be important as government and international relations evolve in the years to come. The increasing importance of international trade will figure in both foreign and domestic policy in nearly all countries, and the protracted state of cultural and ethnic conflict—particularly conflict involving radical Islamic Fundamentalism—will influence many of the choices governments and citizens will make. The spread of democracy throughout the world has slowed, but the trend toward greater openness in both the political and the economic spheres is firmly entrenched in many areas. Technological advances and the spread of the Internet will shape a great deal of our lives, including commerce, our expectations of privacy, and national security. Political science sheds light on all of these factors.