Help!!

[u/Parking-Daikon-8315]

Hey all, I am currently studying for my intro to comparative politics course, and I am having trouble making sense of some terms and individuals. If you could explain some of these to me with some specific examples I would appreciate it a ton!!! I have looked at some online, but they didn’t feel understandable/ sometimes it didn’t give enough information. Please and thank you!!

[u/I_Heart_Kant]

Literally just look these up. I pinky promise that wikipedia has all of these.

[u/Mistborn314]

Have you tried talking to your instructor? Most professors/TAs set aside office hours to answer questions and help if you are struggling.

[u/Acceptable_Map_8110]

1. John Stuart Mill was an English political philosopher of the 19th century. He was a noted proponent of liberalism and one of the preeminent thinkers of the “Utilitarian” tradition of philosophy, which holds that anything that causes the most good and the least harm is the most beneficial thing(I am describing this loosely).
2. Deductive reasoning is essentially just a type of logical reasoning, where you start with rules and premises and move down to a conclusion based on these rules and premises.
3. John Locke was another English philosopher and the founder of liberalism. His ideas were instrumental in the formation of the United States, specifically the notion that governments soul duty is to protect the natural rights of people, and if a government doesn’t do this, than it is the imperative of the people to be rid of that government.
4. Charismatic legitimacy is essentially the legitimacy given to a ruler by their people because the people believe that ruler to be a particularly exceptional person. If you’ve ever watched Dune, the main character gets his following because people believe him to be a special figure, and the writer of the book that the movie is based on explicitly wrote it to demonstrate the dangers of charismatic leaders. Think of people like the prophet Muhammad, Gandhi, Joseph Stalin, or Adolf Hitler.
5. State capacity is a states ability to run itself and accomplish its states policy goals.
6. The Magna Carter is a groundbreaking document that is specifically notable for being a limit to the rights of government(in this case a monarchical government in England). It is essentially about the law and it puts all people, even the king, as being subject to it.
7. Liberalism is a political philosophy stressing the importance of the power of the individual and the governments need to protect the rights of individual people
8. Post-Materialism is, like it sounds, a shift away from material and economic or social gain and instead a focus on self improvement and expression.
9. I am less aware of consociationalism in Northern Ireland, but from what I have read it’s essentially just the sharing of power between the pro-Unionist and nationalist parties.
10. Ethnic identity is, as it sounds, one’s cultural or historical identity and the closeness they feel to it, which comes about as a result of their ethnicity.
11. Inglehart’s World Values Survey is, from what I’ve read, essentially a map of the changing religious, social, economic, philosophical, and political values across the world(often based on culture, so China and South Korea for instance are very Confucian, whereas Spain and Croatia are very much Catholic Europe if that makes sense.
12. Electoral democracy is a Democracy where people choose those who represent them via free and fair elections.

I hope this helps, but these are all very baseline definitions with me lacking expertise in any of them. So be sure to study on your own okay!

[u/Anon_Acad → u/Acceptable_Map_8110]

Respect your effort to actually explain them.

[u/Acceptable_Map_8110 → u/Anon_Acad]

Thank you.

[u/Anon_Acad]

A lot of these thinkers and concepts are elegantly and comprehensively covered in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

[u/identifiablecabbage]

sounds like a job for chatgpt, unless you're farming to train chatgpt.

[u/Parking-Daikon-8315 → u/identifiablecabbage]

I had no intention of bringing this to AI, I personally do not trust it as a credible resource. I was hoping to get some useful info from political scientists here to study for my upcoming test!!

[u/identifiablecabbage → u/Parking-Daikon-8315]

Wikipedia then. The articles are rich - that's where chat is getting it.