Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-321) and index.

"This book is about states and the challenges to sovereignty they fa ce in the contemporary world. We address this issue by systematically c omparing states around the globe. As such, this book represents a contr ibution to comparative politics, which is a core subfield within the ac ademic discipline of political science. (The other subfields include in ternational relations, political theory, and American politics.) The ob ject of study of comparative politics is the domestic, or internal, pol itics of states. Unlike other fields in the social sciences, comparativ e politics also offers a method in its very name -- comparison. Thus, a "comparativist" is one who observes similarities and differences among states, develops theoretical explanations for them, and then seeks to test these explanations against new cases. What one searches for depend s on the questions one asks"-- Provided by publisher.