I enjoy having students write comparative papers, rather than merely sing-country case studies for their papers. I think it forces them to think harder about what their research question. I usually also insist that the two “cases” come from different “areas” (geographic/cultural regions)—unless, of course, it’s a course on a specific region (e.g. Latin American politics).
For my “Democracy & Democratization” course, I’m applying this again. But since the course also qualifies as a Latin American Studies elective, one of their two cases must come from Latin America (broadly defined to include the Caribbean island nations). The students can select their own Latin American case. But they must do so in a way that allows for a comparison w/ another non-Latin American case.
And so we’re having a country raffle. Students will draw names of countries from an envelope. These countries will be “theirs” for the semester—which includes their semester comparative research paper. The countries available for drawing are:
Africa: Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania
Europe: Greece, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain
South Asia: Bangladesh, India, Mauritius, Pakistan, Sri Lanka
Oceania (which includes one African island nation): Cape Verde, Fiji, Indonesia, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea
Post-Soviet: Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Ukraine
East & Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Mongolia, The Philippines, South Korea, Thailand
