Chapter 39 — Exercises

These exercises are designed to be done after reading the chapter and the two case studies. Each one asks you to apply comparative-political-science methods to a specific question. Some are individual; some can be done in groups; some are appropriate for written assignments and some for class discussion.

The chapter's central methodological caution applies throughout: comparison is hard. Apples-to-apples requires care. When you compare across countries, you must control for the variables that vary along with the institution you are studying. Citation is required.

Exercise 1 — Pick a peer democracy and compare its handling of one institution

Choose one of the seven peer democracies covered in the chapter (UK, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Brazil, India). Choose one of the institutional dimensions: executive type, legislature, federalism, electoral system, party system, judicial review, civil rights framework, or healthcare. Write a 750-word comparative analysis that addresses:

  1. How does your chosen country handle this institution? (Cite primary sources — official government websites, comparative-politics texts, or academic articles. Do not rely on Wikipedia alone.)
  2. What are the trade-offs of that approach, in the country's own terms? (What does this design get the country, and what does it cost?)
  3. How does the U.S. compare on the same dimension?
  4. What would adopting (some element of) the comparison country's approach require in the U.S.? Would it require constitutional amendment, ordinary legislation, regulatory change, or cultural shift?

The grading criterion is not whether you support or oppose adoption. It is whether your analysis is honest about trade-offs on both sides.

Exercise 2 — Analyze a recent V-Dem or Freedom House report

Go to v-dem.net or freedomhouse.org and download the most recent annual report (the 2024 reports if available, or 2025 if released). Read the global summary and the country profile for one peer democracy that has shown significant change — Hungary, Poland, India, Israel, Brazil, or Turkey work well.

Write a 600-word analysis that addresses:

  1. What specific institutional changes does the report identify? (Be specific: which laws, which courts, which media outlets, which civil-society restrictions.)
  2. How does V-Dem or Freedom House operationalize the concepts they are measuring? (What is "judicial independence" in their framework? What evidence do they rely on?)
  3. What objections to the methodology have been raised by critics — including, in some cases, by the governments being measured?
  4. On the basis of the same kinds of evidence, where does the U.S. score on the same dimensions? (Compare specific scores from the same report.)

This exercise teaches you to read primary comparative-democracy data critically, not just to absorb conclusions.

Exercise 3 — Identify reforms peer democracies have actually attempted

Pick one major reform that a peer democracy has attempted in the past 20 years. Examples:

  • New Zealand's 1996 transition from FPTP to MMP
  • France's 2008 constitutional reform (limiting presidential terms, creating the question prioritaire de constitutionnalité)
  • Italy's 2005 and 2017 referendums on parliamentary reform
  • Canada's 2015 Liberal pledge to replace FPTP (and the abandonment of that pledge)
  • Mexico's 2024 judicial-election reform under President López Obrador
  • Israel's 2023 judicial-reform proposals (see Case Study 2)
  • Brazil's various electoral and political-finance reforms
  • The UK's 2009 creation of the Supreme Court replacing the Law Lords

Write a 500-word analysis that addresses:

  1. What was the reform proposing to change?
  2. What political coalition supported and opposed it?
  3. Did it pass, and how (referendum, parliamentary vote, court decision, hybrid)?
  4. What were the consequences, intended and unintended, in the years after enactment (or after defeat)?

This exercise teaches you that reform is not just an abstract design question but a political process with winners, losers, and unintended consequences.

Exercise 4 — Steel-man "American exceptionalism" — both ways

The phrase "American exceptionalism" is contested. It can mean a normative claim ("the American political system is uniquely good") or a descriptive claim ("the American political system has features no other country shares"). It is invoked by people across the political spectrum, with varying meanings.

Write two 400-word essays — yes, two — making the strongest version of each of the following claims:

Essay A: "American exceptionalism is real and is a strength." Steel-man this claim. Identify three specific institutional or cultural features that the U.S. has and that peer democracies do not, and argue that those features have produced demonstrable goods. Cite evidence. Avoid clichés.

Essay B: "American exceptionalism is overblown and obscures the U.S.'s real comparative weaknesses." Steel-man this claim. Identify three areas where the U.S. underperforms peer democracies on objective measures, and argue that the rhetoric of exceptionalism has shielded the U.S. from learning from peer experience. Cite evidence.

The grading criterion is whether each essay would pass muster with a believer in that position. Both should. The point is not to tell us what you think; the point is to demonstrate that you can think on both sides of a contested claim.

Exercise 5 — Democracy Audit: comparative layer

Throughout this textbook, you have been building a Democracy Audit of your own congressional district. This chapter adds a comparative layer.

Identify three peer democracies that you might use as comparison points for your district's representation. (Match by population, urban-rural composition, or some other relevant variable — and justify your choice.) For each comparison, address:

  1. How is a constituency the size of your district represented in your comparison country? (Roughly how many constituents per legislator? What kind of legislator: single-member-district, multi-member, list-based?)
  2. What share of policy that affects your district is decided at the national, subnational, and local levels in your comparison country? How does that compare to the U.S.?
  3. What channels for citizen input does your comparison country provide that the U.S. does not (or vice versa)?

The product is a 600-word comparative section to add to your Democracy Audit. The point is to evaluate your district's representation in comparative perspective, not just on its own terms.

Exercise 6 — Healthcare system comparison

The chapter notes that the U.S. healthcare cost-outcome gap is one of the cleanest empirical findings in cross-national comparison. This exercise probes the finding.

Pick two peer democracies — one with single-payer (UK, Canada) and one with multi-payer universal coverage (Germany, France, Japan). For each, research and report:

  1. Per-capita healthcare spending (most recent OECD data).
  2. Life expectancy at birth (most recent data).
  3. One health outcome other than life expectancy (infant mortality, preventable mortality, cancer survival, mental-health outcomes — your choice).
  4. The financing structure of the system (taxation, payroll contributions, premiums, etc.).
  5. The provider structure (public hospitals, private hospitals, private practice, mix).
  6. One acknowledged problem in that country's system (long wait times, regional disparities, drug availability, etc.).

Then write a 500-word comparative essay arguing for or against adopting one specific feature of one of those systems in the U.S. Be specific about what you are proposing, why you think it would help, what it would cost, and what political and constitutional obstacles it would face.

Exercise 7 — The trade-off matrix

The chapter argues that every institutional choice involves trade-offs. Build a 4-column matrix on a single page (you can use a spreadsheet) with the following columns:

Institutional choice Benefit Cost Real-world example of the trade-off

Fill in 8 rows for the following pairings:

  1. Parliamentary vs. presidential
  2. FPTP vs. proportional representation
  3. Federal vs. unitary
  4. Strong vs. weak judicial review
  5. Broad vs. limited free-speech protection
  6. Single-payer vs. multi-payer healthcare
  7. Compulsory vs. voluntary voting
  8. Two-party vs. multi-party system

Each row should fill in both the benefit and the cost honestly, and provide a real example from one of the seven peer democracies in this chapter. The exercise tests whether you have internalized the point that institutional design is choice among trade-offs, not selection of obvious goods.

Exercise 8 — Backsliding case study

Choose one of the comparative-backsliding cases discussed in the chapter (Hungary, Poland, India, Israel, Brazil under Bolsonaro, Turkey). Research the case in greater depth than the chapter provides. Write a 700-word analysis that addresses:

  1. What were the institutional preconditions that made this democracy vulnerable to backsliding?
  2. What specific actions did the executive (or governing coalition) take to weaken democratic institutions?
  3. What countervailing actors resisted those actions, and with what tools?
  4. What is the current state of the democracy, and what factors will determine whether it recovers, stabilizes, or further declines?
  5. What lessons, if any, does this case offer for U.S. democracy?

Be specific. Avoid sweeping generalizations. The grading criterion is the specificity and accuracy of the institutional analysis.

Exercise 9 — Policy transplant analysis

Pick a policy that one peer democracy has implemented and that some American advocates argue should be transplanted to the U.S. Examples:

  • Compulsory voting (Australia, Brazil, Belgium)
  • Public financing of campaigns (Germany, France, Sweden)
  • Constructive vote of no confidence (Germany)
  • Restrictions on extremist parties (Germany's Verfassungsschutz)
  • Independent boundary commissions for legislative districts (UK, Canada)
  • Universal pre-kindergarten (France, several Nordic countries)
  • Paid parental leave (most of Europe)
  • High-speed rail networks (Japan, France, Germany)

Write a 500-word analysis evaluating whether and how this policy could be transplanted. Address: legal feasibility (constitutional, statutory), political feasibility (which coalitions would support and oppose), institutional preconditions (does the U.S. have the administrative capacity?), and likely unintended consequences. Conclude with an honest judgment of whether the transplant is more likely to produce benefits comparable to the source country, costs not seen there, or some mix.

Exercise 10 — Cross-cutting reflection

After completing the exercises above, write a 400-word reflection on the following questions, drawing on your specific exercise responses:

  1. Which comparative finding surprised you most, and why? Was it because the U.S. performed better than you expected, worse than you expected, or differently than you expected on a dimension you had not previously considered?
  2. Which comparative reform path seems most viable, given American constitutional structure and political feasibility constraints? Be specific: do you mean a constitutional amendment, a federal statute, a state-level reform, or a cultural shift? What is the path of least resistance?
  3. Which comparative reform path seems least viable but most important on the merits? In other words, what does comparative analysis suggest the U.S. should do that the American political system cannot do under current conditions?
  4. Where does your own thinking about American government look different now than it did before you read this chapter? Be specific. Honest answers may include "I now have more humility about institutions I previously criticized" or "I now have more concern about institutions I previously took for granted" or "my views have not changed but I now have stronger evidence."

The grading criterion is intellectual honesty about what you have learned. The reflection is graded on engagement with the comparative material, not on the political conclusions you draw. Some students will become more committed reformers after reading this chapter; some will become more committed defenders of existing institutions; both responses are intellectually serious if grounded in honest engagement with the trade-offs.

A note on collaboration: many of these exercises are stronger as group projects than individual work, particularly Exercises 1, 3, 6, 7, and 8. If your course supports it, working in pairs or small groups with assigned roles (one student researches the comparison country; another researches the U.S. counterpart; both write the analysis) often produces better comparative work than solo research.