Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Monday, July 18, 2011

Compare countries

Melody Dickison sent from Ohio a link to a wonderful web site, If It Were My Home. Created and designed by Andy Lintner and Annette Calabrese, the site offers the opportunity to compare material life in nearly any two countries.

Each comparison comes with a great map showing the two countries' maps overlaying one another. If the US is one of the compared countries, the US map is centered on the location of your Internet connection. That might work in other countries as well, but I'm unable to check it out since my passport has expired. Each of the comparisons offers more details in a drop down option. The source of the data is The CIA World Factbook.

There is also a one-paragraph description of the country you choose to compare to and a list of books to read. And you can join a discussion that doesn't seem very active.

I can imagine creating an activity to use as an introduction to a comparative course. Students would not only learn some basics about the countries they will study but could also speculate about the comparative methodology, the limits of the meaning of the data, and the kinds of comparisons that are impossible with the data offered.

Here's a summary of the comparison between the USA and Mexico as a sample.

Compare the US to Mexico

If Mexico were your home instead of The United States you would…
have 2.9 times higher chance of dying in infancy
use 87.07% less electricity
consume 74.93% less oil
make 70.91% less money
spend 88.42% less money on health care
have 40.2% more babies
have 39.78% more chance at being employed
die 1.98 years sooner
work 9.07% more hours each year
experience 7.11% more of a class divide
be 50% less likely to have HIV/AIDS

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Labels: comparative methodology, pedagogy