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 Contents vii

THINKING COMPARATIVELY Qualities of Good Analysis and

Argumentation 34
Step 1: Asking Good Questions: Why? 34
Step 2: Hypothesis Testing: Generating Good Hypotheses and Testing Them
Fairly 34
Step 3: Balancing Argumentation: Evidence, Originality, and Meaningfulness 34

Part II The State, Development, Democracy, and Authoritarianism 37

3 The State 38
Concepts 40
The Modern State 40
Post-colonial States and Settler States 41
State Capacity 42
Failed States 43
The State–Society Relationship 43
Types 45
Characteristics of Modern States 45
Traditional Functions of States 49
Causes and Effects: Why Did States Emerge and Expand? 51
Political/Conflict Theories 51
Economic Theories 53
Cultural Theories 53
Diffusion Theories 54
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Great Britain, the United Kingdom, or Neither?
State and Nation in England and Scotland 57
CASES IN CONTEXT
Mexico 45
United Kingdom 54
Brazil 55

4 Political Economy 62
Concepts 63
Inequality 65
Employment and Inflation 67
Types 69
Markets and States in Modern Economies 69
Economic Functions of Modern States 73
Causes and Effects: Why Do Welfare States Emerge? 76
Cultural Changes 76
Industrial Capitalism 77
viii Contents

Mobilization and Political Action 78

International Learning Effects 80
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Welfare States in the Nordic Countries: What
Can We Learn, and How? 81
CASES IN CONTEXT
Japan 75
Canada 78

5 Development 84
Concepts 85
Types 86
Poverty 86
Social Outcomes and Human Development 86
Gender Relations and Racial and Ethnic Identities 88
Satisfaction and Happiness 90
Cultural Development 91
Sustainability 92
Causes and Effects: Why Does Development Happen? 92
Institutions: The Market–State Debate, Revisited 93
Institutions: Beyond the Market–State Debate 95
Culture and Development 96
Systems and Structures: Domestic and International 100
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Explaining the Development of North and
South Korea 102
CASES IN CONTEXT
India 87
Japan 88
Saudi Arabia 90
China 95
Iran 99

6 Democracy and Democratization 107

Concepts 109
Democracy and Democratic Regimes 109
Regime Change and Democratization 111
Types 112
Types of Democracy 113
Types of Democratization 116
Causes and Effects: What Causes Democratization? 117
Modernization 118
Culture and Democracy 119
The International System 121
 Contents ix

Domestic Institutions 122

Agents and Actors: The Role of Individuals and Groups 122
Combining Arguments and Theories: Multiple Causes 124
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Is Canadian Democracy a Model? 125
CASES IN CONTEXT
Canada 118
India 119
United States 125

7 Authoritarian Regimes and Democratic Breakdown 129

Concepts 131
Authoritarianism and Authoritarian Regimes 131
Transitions to Authoritarian Regimes 132
Types 132
Types of Authoritarianism 132
Types of Transition (or Nontransition) to Authoritarianism 137
Causes and Effects: What Causes Authoritarian Regimes to Emerge
and Persist? 142
Historical Institutionalist Theories 142
Poverty and Inequality 143
State Weakness and Failure 145
Political Culture Theories of Authoritarian
Persistence 145
Barriers to Collective Action 146
Special Causal Circumstances Surrounding
Hybrid and Semi-authoritarian Regimes 147
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Why Did Zimbabwe Become Authoritarian? 149
CASES IN CONTEXT
Iran 134
Mexico 139
Germany 141

Part III Institutions of Government 153

8 Constitutions and Constitutional Design 154

Concepts 156
Constitutions 156
Constitutional Design: Including Some, Excluding Others 158
The Separation of Powers? 161
Types 162
Flexible and Rigid Constitutions 162
x Contents

Separation of Powers: Judicial Review and Parliamentary Sovereignty 164

Federalism and Unitarism 165
Authoritarian and Democratic Constitutions 167
Causes and Effects: What Are the Effects of Federal Constitutions? 168
Are Federal Constitutions Good for Social Stability? 168
Are Federal Constitutions Good for Democratic Rights? 170
Are Federal Constitutions Good for the Economy and Society? 171
Judicial Review and Democracy 172
THINKING COMPARATIVELY What Explains the Similarities between the
Brazilian and South African Constitutions? 174
CASES IN CONTEXT
Iran 169
Canada 170
India 172

9 Legislatures and Legislative Elections 178

Concepts 180
What Legislatures Are 180
What Legislatures Do 181
Types 182
Unicameral and Bicameral Legislatures 182
Electoral Systems 184
Executive–Legislative Relations 189
Causes and Effects: What Explains Patterns of Representation? 191
Patterns of Representation 192
Electoral Systems and Representation 193
Legislative Decision-Making and Representation 196
Executive–Legislative Relations and Representation 197
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Representation in New Zealand
and Beyond 198
CASES IN CONTEXT
Japan 190
Germany 191
United States 195

10 Executives 202
Concepts 203
Types 206
Executive Structures: Presidential and Parliamentary 206
Formal Powers 209
Partisan Powers 212
 Contents xi

Coalitions 212
Informal Powers 216
Causes and Effects: What Explains Executive Stability? 216
Stable and Unstable Regimes: Presidentialism, Parliamentarism,
and Democracy 217
Stable and Unstable Executives: Styles of Presidential Rule 218
Stable and Unstable Executives: Patterns of Parliamentary Rule 219
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Beyond the American and British Models 221
CASES IN CONTEXT
France 207
United States 208
Russia 211
Nigeria 217

11 Political Parties, Party Systems, and Interest Groups 225

Concepts 226
Political Parties 227
Party Systems 228
Interest Groups 229
Types 230
Political Parties: Elite, Mass, and Catch-All Parties 230
Party Systems: Dominant-Party, Two-Party, and Multiparty Systems 231
Interest Groups: Pluralism and Corporatism 235
Causes and Effects: Why Do Party Systems Emerge, and What Effects Do
They Have? 237
Party Systems and Representation 238
Interest Groups and Representation 241
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Party Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa 243
CASES IN CONTEXT
China 233
Russia 237

Part IV Politics, Society, and Culture 247

12 Revolutions and Contention 248

Concepts 249
What Is “Contention”? 250
Revolutionary and Non-revolutionary Contention 251
Types 251
Social Movements 251
xii Contents

Revolutions 254
Insurgencies and Civil Wars 257
Terrorism 258
“Everyday Resistance” 259
Thinking about Contention: Summary 259
Causes and Effects: Why Do Revolutions Happen? 260
Relative Deprivation 260
Resource Mobilization and Political Opportunities 260
Rational Choice 261
Cultural or “Framing” Explanations 264
THINKING COMPARATIVELY The “Arab Spring” of 2011 265
CASES IN CONTEXT
France 256
Russia 261
China 262

13 Nationalism and National Identity 270

Concepts 271
Identity 271
Nationalism and the Nation 273
Types 273
The Academic Study of Nationalism 273
Types of Nationalism 276
Causes and Effects: What Causes Ethno-National Conflict? 278
Primordial Bonds 279
Cultural Boundaries 280
Material Interests 281
Rational Calculation 281
Social Psychology 283
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Ending Ethnic and National Violence 284
CASE IN CONTEXT
Nigeria 280

14 Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 287

Concepts 289
Race and Ethnicity 289
Gender 290
Sexual Orientation 291
Types 292
Disentangling Race and Ethnicity 292
Discrimination Based on Race and Ethnicity 293
 Contents xiii

Gender Discrimination 294

Empowerment of Women and Minority Groups 296
Feminism and Intersectionality 297
Causes and Effects: What Factors Influence the Political Representation
of Women and Minority Groups? 298
Social Movement Mobilization 298
Political Parties Based on Gender or Ethnicity 299
Institutions for Promoting Women’s and Minority Group Representation 302
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Indicators of Gender Empowerment 304
CASES IN CONTEXT
Brazil 298
Saudi Arabia 300

15 Ideology and Religion in Modern Politics 307

Concepts 308
Modernity and Modernization 309
Ideology 309
Religion 310
Secularization, Religion, and Modern Politics 310
Religious Conflict 312
Types 312
Modern Ideologies 312
Modern Forms of Religion in Politics 315
Causes and Effects: Why Do Religion and Ideology Remain Prevalent in
Modern Politics? 318
Why (and How) Does Modernization Alter Religion’s Role in Politics? 318
Why Didn’t Ideology (and History) End? 320
THINKING COMPARATIVELY Is 21st-Century Populism an Ideology? 323
CASE IN CONTEXT
Saudi Arabia 316

Part V The Comparative–International Nexus 327

16 Comparative Politics and International Relations 328

Concepts 330
Issues 331
Globalization and Trade 331
International Institutions and Integration 335
Immigration 337
Environment and Sustainability 339
xiv Contents

Transnational Networks 341

Nuclear Threats and Terrorism 342
Causes and Effects: What Are the Main Causes in International
Relations? 344
Realism 344
Liberalism 346
Constructivism 347
Socialism 348
THINKING COMPARATIVELY The EU and Levels of Analysis 349
CASES IN CONTEXT
France 339
Iran 343
India 343

Part VI Country Profiles and Cases 353

Brazil 354
PROFILE 354
Introduction 354
Historical Development 356
Regime and Political Institutions 358
Political Culture 359
Political Economy 359
CASE STUDIES 360
Democratic Consolidation in Brazil (Chapter 3) 360
Gender and Political Representation in Brazil: Where Has Progress Come From?
(Chapter 14) 361
Research Prompts 362

Canada 363
PROFILE 363
Introduction 363
Historical Development 365
Regime and Political Institutions 369
Political Culture 370
Political Economy 370
CASE STUDIES 371
How Does Canada Compare in Terms of Gender Equality?
(Chapter 4) 371
 Contents xv

What Is the Future of Reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and the

Canadian Settler State? (Chapter 6) 372
Is Quebec Independence Now off the Agenda? (Chapter 8) 373
Research Prompts 374

China 375
PROFILE 375
Introduction 375
Historical Development 377
Regime and Political Institutions 379
Political Culture 380
Political Economy 381
CASE STUDIES 382
The Chinese Party System (Chapter 11) 382
The Chinese Revolution (Chapter 12) 382
Research Prompts 383

France 385
PROFILE 385
Introduction 385
Historical Development 387
Regime and Political Institutions 390
Political Culture 390
Political Economy 391
CASE STUDIES 392
Electing the French President: What Do Runoffs Do? (Chapter 10) 392
The French Revolution (Chapter 12) 392
Globalization and Culture in France (Chapter 16) 393
Research Prompts 394

Germany 395
PROFILE 395
Introduction 395
Historical Development 397
Regime and Political Institutions 400
Political Culture 401
Political Economy 401
CASE STUDIES 402
Democracy and Authoritarianism in Germany (Chapter 7) 402
Institutional Design: Germany’s Bundestag and Bundesrat (Chapter 9) 402
Research Prompts 403
xvi Contents

India 405
PROFILE 405
Introduction 405
Historical Development 407
Regime and Political Institutions 410
Political Culture 411
Political Economy 411
CASE STUDIES 412
What Explains India’s Recent Growth? (Chapter 5) 412
India in the 21st Century: Domestic Politics, Identity,
and Security (Chapter 16) 413
Research Prompts 413

Iran 415
PROFILE 415
Introduction 415
Historical Development 417
Regime and Political Institutions 420
Political Economy 420
CASE STUDIES 421
Gender in Post-revolutionary Iranian Politics (Chapter 5) 421
Democratic Features of Authoritarian Systems?
The Case of Iran (Chapter 7) 422
Iran and the Politics of Nuclear Proliferation (Chapter 16) 422
Research Prompts 423

Japan 424
PROFILE 424
Introduction 424
Historical Development 426
Regime and Political Institutions 429
Political Culture 429
Political Economy 430
CASE STUDIES 431
Gender Empowerment in Japan? (Chapter 5) 431
The Hybrid Electoral System of the Japanese
Diet (Chapter 9) 432
Research Prompts 432
 Contents xvii

Mexico 434
PROFILE 434
Introduction 434
Historical Development 436
Regime and Political Institutions 439
Political Economy 440
CASE STUDIES 441
Why Aren’t There Major Ethnic Parties in Mexico? (Chapter 3) 441
The Mexican State and Rule of Law (Chapter 7) 442
Research Prompts 443

Nigeria 444
PROFILE 444
Introduction 444
Historical Development 446
Regime and Political Institutions 448
Political Culture 448
Political Economy 449
CASE STUDIES 450
Federalism and the States in Nigeria: Holding Together or Tearing Apart?
(Chapter 10) 450
Are Natural Resources Sometimes a Curse? The Nigerian Case
(Chapter 13) 451
Research Prompts 452

Russia 453
PROFILE 453
Introduction 453
Historical Development 455
Regime and Political Institutions 458
Political Culture 459
Political Economy 459
CASE STUDIES 460
Oligarchy, Democracy, and Authoritarianism in Russia
(Chapter 10) 460
Personalism and the Party System in Russia (Chapter 11) 461
The Russian Revolution (Chapter 12) 461
Research Prompts 462
xviii Contents

Saudi Arabia 463

PROFILE 463
Introduction 463
Historical Development 465
Regime and Political Institutions 467
Political Culture 468
Political Economy 469
CASE STUDIES 470
The Rise of Mohammed bin Salman (MBS): Reform or Repression?
(Chapter 5) 470
Why Has Saudi Arabia Made Such Little Progress on Women’s Rights?
(Chapter 14) 471
Yemen’s Civil War: What Is the Saudi Role? (Chapter 15) 472
Research Prompts 473

United Kingdom 474

PROFILE 474
Introduction 474
Historical Development 476
Regime and Political Institutions 479
Political Culture 480
Political Economy 480
CASE STUDIES 481
No Constitution? No Supreme Court? Constitutionality in the United Kingdom
(Chapter 3) 481
The United Kingdom and the Westminster Model (Chapter 9) 482
Research Prompts 483

United States 484

PROFILE 484
Introduction 485
Historical Development 485
Regime and Political Institutions 489
Political Culture 490
Political Economy 490
CASE STUDIES 491
Is American Democracy in Trouble? (Chapter 6) 491
The United States Congress: Dysfunctional or Functioning by Design?
(Chapter 9) 492
 Contents xix

The United States and the World: A Love–Hate Relationship?

(Chapter 16) 493
Research Prompts 493

Glossary 495
Notes 507
References and Further Reading 519
Index 543
BOXES

INSIGHT

Chapter 3 Chapter 12
Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States 53 Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A
Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors 56 Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China 263

Chapter 4 Chapter 13
Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare David Laitin, Nations, States, and Violence 282
Capitalism 79 Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict 283

Chapter 5 Chapter 14
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson, Frances Henry, Enakshi Dua, Carl E. James, Audrey
The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development 98 Kobayashi, Peter Li, Howard Ramos, and Malinda S.
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System 101 Smith, The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at
Canadian Universities 297
Chapter 6 Sheryl Lightfoot, Global Indigenous Politics: A Subtle
Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Revolution 299
Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects Mona Lena Krook, Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender
for Democracy 124 and Candidate Selection Reform Worldwide 303

Chapter 7 Chapter 15
Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship David Rayside, Jerald Sabin, and Paul E.J. Thomas, Religion
and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the and Canadian Party Politics 317
Modern World 144 Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular:
Timur Kuran, Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in Religion and Politics Worldwide 318
the East European Revolution of 1989 146 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man 321
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the
Chapter 9 Remaking of World Order 322
Hannah Pitkin, The Concept of Representation 193 Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities 322

Chapter 10 Chapter 16
Juan Linz, The Perils of Presidentialism and the Virtues of Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons 341
Parliamentarism 218 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics 345
Arend Lijphart, Consociational Democracy 220 Michael Doyle, Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign
Affairs 347
Chapter 11 Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics 348
Maurice Duverger, Les Partis politiques [Political Parties] 238
Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods
and the Theory of Groups and The Rise and Decline
of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social
Rigidities 242
 Boxes xxi

ONLINE CASE STUDIES

In addition to the case studies that appear in this book, you Japan
can find the following case studies online at www.oup. • How Did Japan’s Dominant Party Win for So Long?
com/he/DickovickCe: • Importing National Identity in Japan?
• Resource Management in Japan
Brazil • State-Led Development in Japan
• Brazil’s Landless Movement
• Does the Global Economy Help or Hurt Developing Mexico
Nations Like Brazil? • Industrialization, Modernity, and National Identity in
• Electoral Rules and Party (In)Discipline in Brazil’s Mexico
Legislature • Mexico’s “Perfect Dictatorship” and Its End
• The PRI and Corporatism in Mexico
Canada
• Should the Senate Be Reformed to Be More Accountable Nigeria
and Democratic? • The Presidency in Nigeria: Powers and Limitations
• Why Does It Take So Long to Choose a Leader? • The Nigerian Civil War or Biafran War: Nationalism and
Ethno-national Conflict in a Post-colonial Society
China • What Is a Weak State, and Can It Be Changed? The Case
• How Did China Become a Global Economic Power? of Nigeria
• Is China Destined for Democracy?
• Who Governs China? Russia
• Communist Ideology in Practice: Russia and the Soviet
France Union
• Authoritarian Persistence in 19th-Century France • Executives in Russia: Formal and Informal Powers
• Religion and Secularism in France
• The State in France Saudi Arabia
• How Has Saudi Arabia’s Welfare State Saved the
Germany Regime?
• Consensus-Based Politics in Germany
• Ethnic Boundaries of the German Nation? United Kingdom
• The German State: Unification and Welfare • National Identity in the United Kingdom
• Political Economy of Britain
India • The State in the United Kingdom
• Democracy’s Success in India
• Ethnicity and Political Parties in India United States
• Federalism and Differences in Development in India • Did Free Markets Help the United States Get Rich? Will
They in the Future?
Iran • Is Judicial Activism in the United States a Problem?
• Constitutional Design: Theocracy in Iran • “The Most Powerful Person in the World”? Checks on
• Iran’s Islamic Revolution and “Green Revolution”? American Presidents
• Religion and Politics in Iran
PREFACE AND
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The field of comparative politics is changing, not only in how it’s studied but in how it’s
taught. This textbook reflects the need for a new approach—one that is truly comparative,
that goes beyond a litany of facts or abstract ideas. In the process, we had to rethink what a
book for this course should look like. We started with a central aim: to get students to think
like comparativists. Toward that end, we have integrated theories and methods with a range
of country case applications to address the big questions in comparative politics today.
In this new Canadian adaption, we have also sought to reflect content of interest to
Canadian students of comparative politics, most of whom are living through an era of recon-
ciliation between Indigenous and settler peoples, and during a time when multiculturalism
remains an important ideational force in Canada. This book updates the earlier US edition,
with new content throughout reflecting many of the changes that have taken place since
2015. This includes the rise of global populism in Europe, Asia, Latin America, the United
States, and Canada. It also includes many political changes, including the rise of Donald
Trump, the re-election of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in Canada, the machinations
of the Islamic State, and the outcome of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.
Many undergraduates take a course in comparative politics because they are broadly
interested in world affairs. They want to understand issues such as democracy and democ-
ratization, economic and social development, transnational social movements, and the rela-
tionship between world religions and conflict around the globe. This book focuses squarely
on these big issues and offers a framework for understanding through comparison.
This new adaption shifts the focus from the US version of this book, which tended to
assume a certain level of knowledge of American history and politics. It also assumed a
certain American-centred standpoint that needed some adjusting for students outside of
the United States. Instead, this text now places Canadian students and their experiences
at the centre of the analysis. Throughout, Canadian examples and data have been added to
help make the concepts more accessible and engaging for students living and studying in
Canada. Reflecting David’s research interests, there is now considerable coverage given to
Indigenous politics and issues affecting Indigenous peoples around the world. There is also
additional content on pressing issues of race, gender, and sexual identities in Canada and
in comparative context. In Part VI: Country Profiles and Cases, we have also expanded the
number of featured countries to 14 (increased from 12), with the addition of Canada and
Saudi Arabia. We have also made additional case studies available online at www.oup.com/
he/DickovickCe.
Our goal is to enable students to think critically and apply these vital skills to analyze
the world around them. We want our students to do more than just memorize facts and
theories. Ultimately, we want them to learn how to do comparative politics. This course is
successful if students can use the comparative method to seek out their own answers. We
are successful as educators if we give them the analytical skills to do so.

An Integrative Approach
One of the distinctive features of this book is the way we have integrated theories, methods,
and cases. Rather than focusing on either country information or themes of comparative
politics, we have combined these approaches while emphasizing application and analysis.
By providing students with the tools to begin doing their own analyses, we hope to show
them how exciting this kind of work can be. These tools include theories (presented in an
accessible way), the basics of the comparative method, and manageable case materials for
practice, all in the context of the big questions.
 Preface and Acknowledgements xxiii

We thus take an integrative approach to the relationship between big themes and coun-
try case studies. This text is a hybrid, containing 16 thematic chapters plus linked materials
for 14 countries of significant interest to comparativists. This is supplemented by online
case study resources. The country materials following the thematic chapters include both
basic country information and a series of case studies dealing with specific thematic issues.
We link the country cases to the thematic chapters via short “call out” boxes—“Cases
in Context”—at relevant points in the chapters. For example, a “Case in Context” box in a
discussion of theory in Chapter 3, “The State,” points students to a full case study on dem-
ocratic consolidation in Brazil, included at the back of the text.
Using these short “linking” boxes has enabled us to integrate a complete set of case
materials without interrupting the narrative flow of the chapters. The kind of reading we
suggest with the structure of this text is similar to following hyperlinks in online text—
something students do easily. This flexible design feature also caters to the diversity of
teaching styles in today’s political science classroom. Instructors can choose to have stu-
dents follow these links to case studies as they go, using all or just some of them, or they can
choose to teach thematic chapters and country materials separately.
The text integrates theories, methods, and cases in other ways as well. “Insights” boxes
make connections by briefly summarizing important scholarly works representative of the
major schools of thought.
Each chapter after the introduction closes with a “Thinking Comparatively” feature,
which focuses on a case or set of cases to illustrate how students can apply the theories
discussed in the chapter.
In these features, we highlight important methodological tools or strategies, such as the
use of deviant cases and the most-similar-systems (mss) design. We then model for students
how to use these analytical tools in practice.

Organization
We have divided the 16 thematic chapters of this book into five parts:
• Part I (Chapters 1 and 2) focuses on basic methods in comparative politics, cover-
ing conceptualization, hypothesis testing, the formation of theories, and the use of
evidence. The goal in these first two chapters is not to focus on the details of meth-
odology, which can be taught in more specialized courses, but on the overarching
logic of comparative inquiry.
• Part II (Chapters 3 through 7) focuses on the state (Chapter 3), political economy
(Chapter 4), development (Chapter 5), democracy and democratization (Chapter 6),
and the various forms of authoritarian regimes (Chapter 7).
• Part III (Chapters 8 through 11) focuses on the analysis of political institutions,
giving students the tools to analyze institutional design in constitutional struc-
tures and judiciaries (Chapter 8), legislatures and elections (Chapter 9), executives
(Chapter 10), and political parties and interest groups (Chapter 11).
• Part IV (Chapters 12 through 15) focuses on issues that link comparative politics
to political sociology, such as the study of revolution and other forms of contention
(Chapter 12), national identities and nationalism (Chapter 13), race, gender, and
ethnicity (Chapter 14), and religion and ideology (Chapter 15).
• Part V consists of a single chapter, 16, which links comparative politics to interna-
tional relations, emphasizing how global politics has produced new sets of prob-
lems that both comparativists and international relations scholars must analyze.
As such, the book points to another kind of integration, pushing students to see
connections between comparative politics and other courses in political science.
xxiv Preface and Acknowledgements

After Chapter 2, the thematic chapters follow a common format. They are divided into
three main sections:
• Concepts: covers basic definitions and develops a working vocabulary.
• Types: discusses useful typologies, such as the major types of dramatic social change
that interest political scientists.
• Causes and Effects: walks students through the major theories that aim to explain
causes and effects, ending with the “Thinking Comparatively” feature to model analysis.
The final part of the book, Part VI, comprises country “profiles” and in-depth “case
studies.” We selected 14 countries after surveying instructors of comparative politics
to see which they considered most crucial for inclusion. The cases are Brazil, Canada,
China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the
United Kingdom, and the United States. This selection offers broad coverage of every
major world region, democratic and authoritarian polities, every major religious tra-
dition, highly varying levels of economic and social development, and quite different
institutional designs. In this Canadian adaption, we have added country materials on
Canada and on Saudi Arabia.
For each country, we first provide a “profile”: an introduction with a table of key fea-
tures, a map, and pie charts of demographics; a timeline and historical overview; and brief
descriptions of political institutions, political culture, and political economy.
Following each profile is a set of case studies (two or three for each country) that we
reference in the thematic chapters as described earlier (via the “Case in Context” boxes).
The case sets end with research prompts to help students get started as comparativ-
ists, and includes a list of the online case studies that you can find at www.oup.com/he/
DickovickCe.

Flexibility in Instruction:
Ways of Using This Text
The chapters are arranged in a logical order yet written in such a way that instructors might
easily rearrange them to custom-fit a course. Some instructors, for example, may wish to
pair Chapter 3 (on the state) with Chapter 13 (on nationalism and national identity). Others
might wish to assign Chapter 15 (on religion and ideology) alongside Chapters 6 and 7 (on
democratic and authoritarian regimes). We have written the book with the flexibility to
facilitate such pairings. Indeed, while we strongly suggest beginning with Chapters 1 and 2,
students will be able to follow the text even without reading them first.
Similarly, the book’s structure supports a range of options for using the country mate-
rials found at the back of the book (Part VI). Some instructors may wish to teach selected
country materials at or near the beginning of a course. Some may wish to make reference to
country materials as the course proceeds, assigning students to read them as they are clearly
and visibly “called out” in the text. One approach could require all students in a course to
familiarize themselves with only a subset of the countries detailed here rather than all 14.
Another might require each student to select three or four countries, following rules or
categories of countries as laid out by the instructor.
The book also works with or without supplemental materials chosen by the instructor.
The “Insights” boxes throughout the text provide indications of excellent options for further
readings. Many other choice readings are noted in the “References and Further Reading”
section at the back of the text, organized by chapter.
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A classification according to the morbid condition of the brain has
thus far proved unsuccessful. Up to the present time this remains
largely a field of speculation, and even with the immense progress of
the past dozen years it is a subject upon which there is now little
definite to be said. Voisin's system is purely visionary—namely: I.
Idiopathic insanity, due to vascular spasm. II. Insanity dependent on
brain lesions: Congestive insanity; insanity from anæmia;
atheromatous insanity; insanity from brain tumors. III. Insanity from
alterations of the blood: Diathetic insanities; syphilitic insanity.

In basing his nomenclature on the clinical history of the various

forms of insanity, Clouston makes his classification as follows:

(1) States of mental depression (melancholia, psychalgia): (a)

Simple melancholia; (b) hypochondriacal melancholia; (c) delusional
melancholia; (d) excited melancholia; (e) suicidal and homicidal
melancholia.

(2) States of mental exaltation (mania, psychlampsia): (a) Simple

mania (folie raisonnante); (b) acute mania; (c) delusional mania; (d)
chronic mania.

(3) States of regularly alternating depression and exaltation (folie

circulaire, psychorhythm, folie à double forme, circular insanity,
periodic mania, recurrent mania).

(4) States of fixed and limited delusion (monomania,

monopsychosis): (a) Monomania of pride and grandeur; (b)
monomania of unseen agency; (c) monomania of suspicion.

(5) States of mental enfeeblement (dementia, amentia,

psychoparesis, congenital imbecility, idiocy): (a) Secondary
(ordinary) dementia (following acute or subacute disease, ending in
chronicity); (b) primary enfeeblement (imbecility, idiocy, cretinism),
the result of deficient brain development or of brain disease in very
early life; (c) senile dementia; (d) organic dementia (the result of
organic brain disease).
(6) States of mental stupor (stupor, psychocoma): (a) Melancholic
stupor (melancholia attonita); (b) anergic stupor (primary dementia,
dementia attonita); (c) secondary stupor (transitory, after acute
mania).

(7) States of defective inhibition (psychokinesia, hyperkinesia,

impulsive insanity, volitional insanity, uncontrollable impulse, insanity
without delusion): (a) Homicidal impulse; (b) suicidal impulse; (c)
epileptiform impulse; (d) animal impulse; (e) dipsomania; (f)
pyromania; (g) kleptomania; (h) moral insanity.

(8) The insane diathesis (psychoneurosis, neurosis insana, neurosis

spasmodica).

Some of the German mental pathologists have endeavored to

combine in their classification the clinical history with the little that is
known of its morbid anatomy. Meynert has gone so far in this
direction as to have constructed an ideal mental pathology belonging
to the sphere of brilliant speculation rather than exact science.
Schüle has well summarized our knowledge on these points, as
follows:

I. States of mental defect or degeneration. (1) States of mental

defect: (a) Microcephalism; (b) idiocy. (2) States of mental
degeneracy, chiefly as the result or further development of (a)
Hereditary insanity, impulsive insanity, moral insanity; (b) insanity
from the severe neuroses, epileptic insanity, hysterical insanity,
hypochondriacal insanity; (c) periodic and circular insanity.

II. Insanity in persons of full mental and physical development:

(A) The cerebral neuroses causing mental disease, affecting

primarily the mind alone (psychoneuroses): (1) The acute or
subacute typical cerebral neuroses in healthy neurotic persons and
with a vaso-motor origin: (a) Primary form, melancholia, melancholia
agitata, simple mania; (b) secondary form, chronic mania and
monomania, dementia. (2) The chronic cerebral neuroses giving rise
to mental disease founded on degeneration and of neurotic origin
primarily (delusional insanity): (a) Primary monomania of
persecution, with a condition of pure mental depression or with
exaggerated and exalted ideas; (b) delusional insanity, strictly
speaking, psycho-convulsive form (maladie du doute), psycho-
cataleptic form (delusional insanity attended with anomalies of
sensation).

(B) The organic mental diseases affecting the psychic functions

(cerebro-psychoses), differing from (A) chiefly in being deeper-
seated: (1) With motor symptoms of excitement (acute mania): (a)
Mania furiosa (including mania transitoria); (b) mania gravis; (c)
acute delirious mania. (2) With motor neuroses and symptoms
resembling catalepsy, tetanus, and anergic stupor, or the various
forms of Spannungsneurosen: (a) Melancholia attonita; (b)
delusional stupor; (c) primary dementia (stupor), acute and chronic.
(3) With progressive paralysis, the typical form of paralytic dementia.

(C) The distinct lesions of the brain, giving rise secondarily to

psychical disturbances. The modified paralyses or cerebral diseases
in which dementia and paralysis are both observed clinically: (a)
Meningo-periencephalitis, chronic and subacute; (b) pachymeningitis
and hæmatoma; (c) diffuse encephalitis with sclerosis, without
mental excitement and with mental excitement; (d) diffuse
encephalitis with local softening, apoplexy, capillary aneurisms in
groups or singly, multiple sclerosis; (e) diffuse encephalitis arising
from foreign growths in the brain; (f) chronic periencephalitis, with
previous tabes dorsalis; tabic paralysis: (g) primary atrophy of the
brain, with accompanying spinal tabes, tabic dementia; (h) syphilitic
encephalitis, with disturbances of the mind.

Krafft-Ebing's classification is as follows:

A. Mental Diseases of the Normal Brain.—I. Psychoneuroses: 1.

Primary, curable diseases: a, Melancholia—_α, Simple melancholia;
β, melancholia with stupor; b, Mania—α, Maniacal exaltation; β,
acute mania; c, Stupidity (primary dementia) or curable dementia; d,
confusional insanity (Wahnsinn). 2. Secondary, incurable diseases:
a, Chronic delusional insanity; b, terminal dementia—α, with
agitation; β, with apathy.

II. Conditions of Mental Degeneration.—a, Constitutional affective

insanity (folie raisonnante); b, moral insanity; c, primary monomania
—α, With delusions of persecution; β, with delusions of ambition; d,
with imperative conceptions; e, insanity from constitutional neuroses
—α, epileptic; β, hysterical; γ, hypochondriacal; f, periodic insanity
(folie circulaire).

III. Diseases of the Brain with Mental Disturbances Predominating.—

a, Paralytic dementia; b, cerebral syphilis; c, chronic alcoholism; d,
senile dementia; e, acute delirium.

B. Conditions of Arrested Mental Development.—Idiocy and

cretinism.

Krafft-Ebing agrees with Schüle in dividing mental diseases into two

classes—those of a degenerative nature arising from the
development of an hereditary or congenital neurotic tendency, or
from injury, sexual or alcoholic excess, etc., and those which occur
from what may be called accidental causes in otherwise healthy
persons, in whom mental disease would not be anticipated, and from
which the late Isaac Ray said that, with sufficient exciting cause, no
one has any privilege of exemption. The essential distinction
between them was pointed out by Moreau and Morel, and is best
stated by Krafft-Ebing:

Degenerative insanity is a constitutional disease arising from slight

exciting causes, even physiological conditions (puberty,
menstruation, the puerperal state, climacterium), but for the most
part from pathological conditions, chiefly hereditary predisposition,
injury to the head, acute disease, etc., occurring during development
of the sensitive brain, forming often the last in a series of neuropathic
disorders, such as spinal irritation, hysteria, hypochondria, epilepsy.
The tendency to recovery is slight, and generally there is only
temporary return to the primary condition. Relapses and progressive
development of graver forms of disease are common. There is
progressive hereditary mental degeneration or a strong tendency to
appear in descendants in progressively severer form. All forms of the
psychoneuroses occur, but of severe type and irregular course, with
sudden and rapid changes in the character of the disease, which
does not follow any particular course and cannot be definitely
classified, rarely ending in dementia, and often lasting in some form
through life. The tendency to periodicity is strong. Delusions are
chiefly physio-pathological as direct creations of the diseased brain,
entirely without apparent cause, to the astonishment of the person
and independent of his frame of mind at the time. They appear and
disappear, to be replaced by morbid impulses or mental weakness.
Delusions are strange, mysterious, monstrous, without possible
explanation from the nature of the disease. There is, for the most
part, an inseparable transition from pathological predisposition to
actual disease, with a strange mixture of lucidity and diseased
mental perversion. Acts are often from impulse. There are sudden
outbursts or short attacks; as, for instance, in periodic, hysterical,
and epileptic insanity.

In psychoneuroses developed in persons of previously normal brain-

function heredity is only a latent predisposing cause. The tendency is
to recovery; relapses are infrequent. They are not so readily
transmitted to later generations. The disease follows the course of
some well-defined type. There is not a tendency to periodicity.
Delusions arise chiefly from psychological sources as the result of
diseased mental conditions. They are usually not early symptoms,
and in general they correspond with the prevailing state of the mind.
Delusions correspond with the mental state. The change from health
to disease is well defined.

These are the main features of the two classes of mental disease,
but the line between them is not a hard and fast one, and it is not
seldom impossible to place a particular diseased person definitely in
the one or the other.

The objection to all of the classifications of insanity now in use, that

they have not an accurate scientific basis, and that a diagnosis must
often be delayed or changed as symptoms develop, applies,
although in a less degree, to other diseases than of the mind.

HISTORY.—The history of insanity is probably as old as the human

race, although its rarity among savage nations at the present day,
and its greatest prevalence where there are the widest extremes of
wealth and poverty, indicate that it is essentially a disease of the high
civilizations. It is found even in the lower animals. It is described in
the early writers on medicine from Hippocrates and Plato down. The
ancient Egyptians had temples dedicated to Saturn, where they
cared for the insane with music and dancing. The Greeks and
Romans treated the sick, and probably some of the insane, in rooms
adjoining their temples. The monks of Jerusalem built an asylum for
the insane of their number in the sixth century. There were several
asylums in existence among the Moors in the seventh century, and it
is thought that at the time of their invasion of Spain they introduced
them into Western Europe. The monks, who were the chief
depositaries of medical knowledge in the Middle Ages, treated the
insane, as they did to a less extent each other, by flagellations, until
St. Vincent de Paul and the Knights of Malta proclaimed insanity a
disease and treated it as such. It would be idle to estimate how many
were put to the rack, burned, and otherwise maltreated as
possessed of the devil or as witches—how many were called
prophets or saints.

As late as the last quarter of the last century the insane, when not
starving or neglected, were for the most part confined in jails and
poorhouses or kept in chains. In Scotland a farmer reputed to be as
large as Hercules was said to cure them by severity. In England the
practice of exhibiting the inmates of Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam) to
the populace for a small fee was given up only in 1770. In Paris a
few of the insane were treated in general hospitals, and the asylums
were considered as receptacles for chronic cases, where the
attendants, often convicts serving out their time, were allowed to
whip them. Van Helmont recommended the sudden immersing of the
insane into cold water and keeping them there for several moments
—a remedy brought even to this country. Rush says, as late as
1812, that by the proper application of mild and terrifying modes of
punishment (the strait waistcoat, the tranquillizer chair, privation of
customary pleasant food, pouring water under the coat-sleeve so
that it may descend into the armpits and down the trunk of the body,
the shower-bath continued for fifteen or twenty minutes, and a resort
to the fear of death) chains will seldom, and the whip never, be
required to govern mad people. The intelligent ideas of the
Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans regarding insanity were degraded
first by the Jewish, and then by the Goth and Vandal, influences in
Europe, until, after sixteen centuries of perverse teaching, the
stimulus given to all medical work by John Hunter and Bichat, and to
humanity by John Howard, prepared the way in France for the
philosopher-physician Pinel and his pupil the clinical observer
Esquirol. In Italy, Chiarruggi; in Germany, Langemann; in England,
Tuke; in America, Rush,—began the reform. Up to that time the
metaphysicians had nearly usurped the study of insanity. Hospitals
for the treatment of curable mental disease were built in Germany
besides the asylums for the chronic insane, but still sudden plunges
in water, rapid whirling around, and all sorts of shocks and surprises
formed a part of the treatment, while Heinroth, Pinel's leading pupil
in Germany, thought that all insanity began in vice, that its source
was a conscious neglect of God's will, that its best treatment
consisted in a pious life, and the only means of prevention to be in
the Christian religion. From that time to this, especially since the
metaphysical theory of insanity was abandoned, and more
particularly during the last quarter of this century, during which the
theory of physical disease as the basis of insanity has prevailed,
there has been a great and rapid advance in our knowledge of the
pathology and treatment of the diseases of the mind, so as to place
them beyond the pale of mystery, but on the same footing with other
diseases, to be treated on the general principles of common sense
and medical science.

PREVALENCE.—It would be idle to attempt to say what proportion of

the population was insane at any time or in any country of the world
until the most recent years. In Massachusetts in 1820 there were
under custody in the one insane asylum in the State 50 patients, or
9.55 in each 100,000 of the population. This number had increased
to 11.34 to every 100,000 people in 1830, 61.99 in 1840, 84.97 in
1850, 97.90 in 1855, 122.17 in 1860, 121.24 in 1865, 134.83 in
1870, 138.50 in 1875, and 177.67 in 1880, in six State, one county,
one city, one corporate, and six private asylums. The number of the
insane in asylums had increased sixty times, and the rate
proportionately to the population had augmented more than eighteen
times.

In the United States, even after due allowance for the fact that the
enumeration of the insane was quite complete for the first time in
1880, the following table shows a recent large increase in their
numbers. Of the 91,997 insane reported in 1880, there were 40,942
in lunatic hospitals, 9302 in almshouses without special departments
for the insane, and 417 in jails. There are no statistics of the insanity
prevalent among the 265,565 Indians living in tribal relations by the
enumeration of 1883.

CENSUS OF THE UNITED STATES.

Population.
Year. Total. Native. Foreign. White. Colored.
1860 31,443,321 27,304,624 4,138,697 26,922,537 4,441,830
1870 38,558,371 32,991,142 5,567,229 33,589,377 4,880,0092
1880 50,155,783 43,475,840 6,679,943 43,402,970 6,580,7933
Insane.
1860 24,042 17,399 5,784 23,276 766
1870 37,432 26,205 11,227 35,610 1,774
1880 91,997 65,651 26,346 85,840 5,998
Idiotic.
1860 18,930 17,685 1,125 16,952 1,978
1870 24,527 22,882 1,645 21,324 3,188
1880 76,895 72,888 4,007 67,316 9,4904

2 Unknown, 55.

3 Unknown, 148.
 4 Unknown, 1.

INSANE AND IDIOTIC POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES BY THE CENSUS OF

1880.5
Negro
Native Foreign
Total. Native. Foreign. White. and
White. White.
Mixed.
Insane. 91,997 65,651 26,346 85,840 5,998 59,600 26,240
Idiotic. 76,895 72,888 4,007 67,316 9,490 63,314 4,002
Of unsound
168,892 138,539 30,353 153,156 15,488 122,914 30,242
mind.

Population
545 662 253 505 1,097 618 250
to 1 insane.
Population
652 596 1,666 644 693 581 1,642
to 1 idiotic.
Population
to 1 of
297 314 220 283 425 299 217
unsound
mind.

5 Total population, 50,155,783; native, 43,475,840; foreign, 6,679,943; white,

43,402,970 (unknown, 148); negro and mixed, 6,580,793; native white, 36,828,640;
foreign white, 6,574,330; civilized Indians, 66,407; Chinese, 105,465. Among the
Indians there were 53 insane, 84 idiotic, 137, or 1 in 485, distributed over 30 States
and Territories; among the Chinese, 105 insane, 5 idiotic, 110, or 1 in 959.

In England and Wales in 1860, with a population of 19,902,713,

there were known to the lunacy commissioners 38,058 persons of
unsound mind, including the insane, idiots, and imbeciles, or 523
persons to 1 of unsound mind. In 1870 this number had increased to
1 in 411. It seems by the census of 1871, however, that there were
39,567 insane and 29,452 idiots and imbeciles, in all 69,019 of
unsound mind, or 1 in 330 of the population. In 1880, with a
population of 25,708,666, there were known to the lunacy
commissioners 71,191 persons of unsound mind, or 1 to 362 of the
population. The census returns of 1881 are not available. The most
recent statistics in Ireland indicate 1 person of unsound mind to each
260 of the population by the census, and in Scotland 1 in 362,
according to the returns (not complete) to the lunacy commission.

In the following list, after the original States, of which Vermont,

Maine, and West Virginia were parts later separated, the others are
given in the order of their having been admitted as States to the
Union, and finally the eight Territories. The States maintaining
slavery up to the time of the civil war are printed in italics. The large
proportion of insane persons in the District of Columbia is due to the
fact that the government hospital contains so many officers and
privates who really belong to the several States; and in California the
insane hospitals have been used to a considerable extent by the
adjoining States and Territories.

By the United States census of 1880 there was 1 person of unsound

mind (insane and idiotic) in the United States to each 297 of the
population; in the District of Columbia, 1 in 169; Connecticut, 1 in
245; Delaware, 313; Georgia, 373; Maryland, 294; Massachusetts,
249; New Hampshire, 197; New Jersey, 326; New York, 251; North
Carolina, 270; Pennsylvania, 289; Rhode Island, 301; South
Carolina, 368; Virginia, 290; Vermont, 182; Kentucky, 261;
Tennessee, 259; Ohio, 232; Louisiana, 457, Indiana, 239;
Mississippi, 415; Illinois, 330; Alabama, 337; Maine, 226; Missouri,
324; Arkansas, 371; Michigan, 328; Florida, 433; Texas, 414; Iowa,
334; Wisconsin, 305; California, 286; Minnesota, 416; Oregon, 312;
Kansas, 478; West Virginia, 263; Nevada, 1270; Nebraska, 561;
Colorado, 1104; Arizona, 1263; Dakota, 839; Idaho, 836; Montana,
529; New Mexico, 434; Utah, 481; Washington, 412; Wyoming,
3464.

The proportion of the enumerated insane in asylums was—District of

Columbia, 90.6 per cent.; Connecticut, 39; Georgia, 36.8; Maryland,
49.1; Massachusetts, 60.1; New Hampshire, 27.1; New Jersey, 67.8;
New York, 57.2; North Carolina, 13.2; Pennsylvania, 36.1; Rhode
Island, 57.3; South Carolina, 38.2; Virginia, 45.5; Vermont, 44.7;
Kentucky, 50.7; Tennessee, 16; Ohio, 48; Louisiana, 44.9; Indiana,
26; Mississippi, 33.7; Illinois, 42.7; Alabama, 24.5; Maine, 26.1;
Missouri, 40.7; Michigan, 41.5; Florida, 30; Texas, 22.3; Iowa, 37.8;
Wisconsin, 48.6; California, 80.3; Minnesota, 61.8; Oregon, 65.5;
Kansas, 31.9; West Virginia, 40.1; Nebraska, 38; Colorado, 34.3. In
Arkansas and in Nevada there was no insane asylum in 1880, and in
Delaware the insane were sent to a Pennsylvania asylum or to the
almshouse. In the Territories the provisions for the insane are very
incomplete.

The statistics just given indicate an enormous increase in the

numbers of the insane who become a public charge, and the figures
gathered from all countries prove conclusively that more insane
people are known to be in existence proportionately to the population
from decade to decade. The question naturally arises, Is insanity
increasing as fast as appears at first sight to be the case, or is the
increase apparent rather than real?

In the first place, the definition of insanity has so widened of later

years as to include vastly greater numbers of the population than
hitherto. The nice adjustment of social relations in a high order of
civilization and greater medical skill make insanity easier of
detection. Large numbers of persons now confined would have been
considered far from being fit subjects for insane asylums a half
century ago. Again, it is hardly a generation ago that we began
taking proper care of the insane. Some States have hardly
commenced yet, and even in the oldest parts of our country many of
unsound mind are kept neglected and squalid in town almshouses or
county jails. Wherever humanity has demanded improved
accommodations for the insane they have accumulated enormously,
from the simple fact that they are protected like children, and kept
from dying of neglect, suicide, and exhaustion. In other words,
science and humanity have prolonged their lives of illness, in some
cases to as much as tenfold their natural length if they had been left
to themselves, even where nothing can be done but to prolong their
misery. The more intelligent views now held of insanity as a physical
disease rather than a family disgrace have led people to be less
backward in reporting their insane relatives as such, while the
increasing number of insane asylums and the growing confidence in
them have brought many of the insane to notice who formerly would
have been concealed in attics and cellars and never mentioned.

Whether or not more persons become insane each year in

proportion to the population we have no methods of determining
statistically. The mortality returns in Massachusetts for the last five
census years show that the deaths from insanity, paralysis, apoplexy,
softening of the brain, and unspecified diseases of the brain,
including cephalitis, were 12.06 per 10,000 inhabitants in 1860,
14.39 in 1865, 14.95 in 1870, 16.42 in 1875, and 17 in 1880; which
would probably indicate an increase, even after allowing for a
considerable source of error due to inaccurate diagnoses, imperfect
registration, and the influx of a large foreign population. It is claimed
that the table on page 111 indicates a direct importation of insane
persons from Europe. It is certainly a curious fact that the proportion
of idiots and of the insane differs so little in the native population,
and that among foreigners the idiots, who could not easily be sent
here without being detected and sent back, are less than one-sixth of
the number of their insane. But it is also true that the amount of
insanity among strangers in a foreign land would naturally be greater
than among those who are at home.

The prevalence of insanity as compared with other diseases at the

present time may be fairly estimated from the statistics of
Massachusetts for twenty years, where there were 604,677 deaths
reported, including 2145 from suicide, 1995 from insanity, 1838 from
delirium tremens and intemperance. The reported deaths from
pulmonary consumption are fifty times as many as from insanity;
from diarrhœal diseases, thirty times; from pneumonia, twenty times;
from diphtheria, including croup, fifteen times; from scarlet fever,
heart disease, and typhoid fever, each eleven times; from accidents,
ten times; from cancer, five times; from childbirth and measles, each
more than twice as many. The average death-rates reported from
insanity per 100,000 inhabitants were 6.24 from 1861-70, and 7.12
from 1871-80, whereas the increase in the number of admissions to
Massachusetts insane asylums in the twenty years was from 846 to
1610. The total number of insane people living in the State is less
than the number of consumptives dying each year, and far less than
the number of syphilitics.

CAUSATION.—It is clear that only a small proportion of the human race

is liable to become insane, and one can only wonder that so few
brains are overthrown by the multiplicity of causes in modern life
which tend to disturb those “invisible thoroughfares of the mind
which are the first lurking-places of anguish, mania, and crime.”
When we come to investigate the causes of mental disease, we find
that they are of two kinds—remote or predisposing and immediate or
exciting. They are also moral or mental and physical.

Among the predisposing causes heredity includes nearly or quite 75

per cent. of all cases, and is easily first; in considering which not only
the immediate parents are to be taken into account, but also the
collateral branches, grandparents, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers,
and cousins, for hereditary insanity often skips one generation, and
even appears, sometimes, first in the child, then later in the parent.
An insane parent may have several children, of whom some may be
exposed to the exciting causes of insanity and become insane,
transmitting their disease, intensified or not, to their children, while
others may avoid the exciting causes of mental disease, escape
insanity, but yet transmit to their children a temperament
predisposing them to disorder of the mind, which becomes the
starting-point for actual mental disease as soon as the exciting
causes are sufficient to develop the taint. If the exciting causes do
not appear, however, in that generation, and wise marriages are
made, the stock returns to the normal healthy standard and the
disease disappears from the family. The same form of disease, too,
is frequently not transmitted from parent to child or grandchild, but
the neuroses, the psychoneuroses, and the cerebro-psychoses, the
degenerative forms and the developed forms, are interchangeable.
In the ancestry of insanity we find not only actual cerebro-mental
disease, but epilepsy, brain disease due to syphilis, habitual
drunkenness, any of the severe neuroses, apoplexy, pulmonary
consumption, a closely-allied disease, and suicide. Very often the
patient's friends think that there is no hereditary predisposition to
mental disease, when the physician trained to study such cases
would discover so strong a taint that he would not expect all of
several children to escape insanity or some of its allied diseases
even in a case where there had not been actual insanity in the family
for several generations. For instance, where one parent is habitually
using alcoholic liquors to such a degree as never to be drunk, and
yet rarely quite himself, with the other a sufferer from one of the
severe neuroses or cerebral diseases, a single child from such a
marriage might stand a fair chance of inheriting and retaining mental
health, but if several children should be born the chances that all
would escape mental disorder are few. Again, if one parent were the
victim of that intense intellectual strain and moral perversion so often
seen in the eager pursuit of position and wealth, and the other,
straining to keep up in the race, died early of pulmonary
consumption, if there had been in the family cases of convulsions,
chorea, apoplexy, or suicide, and if some member were hysterical or,
without sufficient external cause, unreasonable, anxious, irritable, full
of baseless fears, there might have been no insanity in the family,
and yet a tendency to insanity might be transmitted to a considerable
proportion of the offspring. On the other hand, the existence of a
number of cases of insanity in a family may be due to external or
accidental causes, and not indicate any general taint.

It is true that there are families in which insanity occurs where the
allied neuroses do not often appear, and that various diseases of the
nervous system may be frequent in a stock in which insanity is rare
or absent. A person who has recovered from an acute attack of
cerebro-mental disorder, if previously healthy and without hereditary
predisposition to such diseases, may marry and not transmit to
offspring either insanity or any of its allied diseases, while it is not
uncommon for an individual seemingly the least liable to mental
disease of a whole family to become insane, leaving several brothers
and sisters with ill-balanced minds to get through life without
breaking down, the morbid energy in the latter case expending itself
in irregularities of conduct and of mental operations as fast as it is
created, instead of being stored up for occasional outbreaks. The
degree to which insanity may be expected to follow any given
antecedents can only be estimated very approximately, as the laws
of heredity are very little known, and as there is a tendency in nature,
so strong that it is constantly asserting itself, to return to the healthy
type if it has a chance. But, in general, it may be said that the more
individuals of both branches in whom insanity and its allied diseases
are found, just so far may a larger proportion of the children be
expected to suffer. The character of the particular disease or
tendency to disease which is likely to develop from any given
antecedents is still a very obscure matter. But the case is often clear
enough to justify the remark that if childhood has any rights it has the
right to be born healthy.

It must be admitted that geniuses and men of extraordinary talent

appear in families tainted with insanity, and, indeed, that
comparatively few families have had distinguished men among them
for several generations without also showing a considerable number
of insane members. Schopenhauer, “mad Jack Byron's son,” and
Johnson—who said that his inheritance made him mad all his life—
are conspicuous examples of this well-known fact; and it is also
observed that children and grandchildren of men distinguished for
their great intellectual powers are subjects of degenerative mental
disorders, or at least are of less than ordinary mental capacity and
moral force. The sound and the unsound, too, may exist together in
the same mind, each acting in certain ways independently of the
other, and cerebro-mental disease not seldom, occurs in persons of
the highest intellectual attainments. Dean Swift, with his delusion
that parts of his body were made of glass; Bishop Butler, tormented
all his life by his morbid fancies; Chatterton, committing suicide in an
attic; Rousseau, Tasso, Pascal, Comte, Beethoven, Charles Lamb,
John Bunyan, the author of Rab and His Friends, Schumann,
Shelley, Cowper, Swedenborg, and the epileptics Julius Cæsar,
Mohammed, and Napoleon,—are only a few of the many illustrations
of this law. In the descending scale from insanity we find also crime,
drunkenness, and all sorts of moral perversions, which may be its
antecedents also. Even a man's self-indulgences may be intensified
as mental or moral degeneration in his children. The degenerative
processes may go on where there is intellectual stagnation in small
communities, with the vices of civilization, as well as in the crowd,
producing a large class of persons for whom doctors have only
compassion, considering them as invalids although treated as
responsible by law and society.

It is difficult to estimate the influence of intermarriage as

predisposing to insanity. The history of the early Ptolemies, of
numerous savage or uncivilized races, and of many selected cases
in the enlightened world may be quoted to show that it is often
attended with no evil results; and there are other causes of
degeneration in the royal families and aristocracies of Europe and in
the cases of individuals where intermarriage of relations has resulted
in deterioration of stock. It is, at all events, certain that marriages
may be made so as to intensify morbid tendencies or so as to
eliminate them—to produce a race of clear heads with sober
judgment, or a race part of whom shall be great sufferers from
neuralgia or mental pain; another part ill-balanced or explorers in
fields of thought and action never tried by calmer intellects, perhaps
with now and then at long intervals a genius; a third part morbid and
brilliant or stupid and imbecile; and still a fourth part near enough to
the normal standard of mental health.

Undoubtedly, a great portion of the mental and nervous disorder

commonly attributed to heredity is largely caused or aggravated by
imitation and by vicious training of children. Schopenhauer says that
the normal man is two-thirds will and one-third intellect—in other
words, two-thirds made by education and one-third by inheritance.
The intellect is often trained so as to enfeeble the will as well as to
hinder the development of the physical man. Self-culture may so
degenerate into self-indulgence as to destroy individuality and force;
and mental health, as a rule, depends upon bodily health and the
exercise of self-control.

In the uncivilized and half-civilized races of the world insanity is rare;

in the early civilizations the insane perished from neglect, were
hanged and burned, starved and died in famine and pestilence, and
fell among the foremost in war. Some of the tribes of North American
Indians shoot the insane, considering them possessed of evil spirits,
while their white neighbors keep them in chains and squalor.
Civilization brings better food, clothing, and shelter, and less danger
from war, famine, and pestilence than savage or mediæval times. In
the struggle for existence, however, physical strength no longer
wholly wins the day, but also those faculties that involve great mental
and bodily strain in mines, factories, crowded tenements, counting-
rooms, offices; in the eager, excited over-study for prizes or rank in
overheated, badly-ventilated schools, and, indeed, in every walk of
life. People with marked neuroses, who would have gone to the wall
a couple of centuries ago from want of physical strength, now
support themselves by indoor light work, marry, and reproduce their
kind. Minute division of labor involves monotonous toil and increases
the impairment of the body's resistance to mental and nervous
strain, and abuse of the nerve-stimulants tea, coffee, tobacco, or,
worst of all, alcohol and narcotics, add to the evil. Degeneration due
to the reproduction of poor stock is intensified by intermarriage.
Luxury, idleness, excesses, syphilis, debility, drunkenness, poverty,
disease, and overwork produce vitiated constitutions in which
varying types of insanity appear in various nations and climates, but,
so far as is known at present, not in very different degree under
similar conditions. One of the great problems of the day is whether
the many conditions incompatible with health in our crowded
populations can be overcome so as to prevent the degeneration
going on thereby.

In early life chiefly the degenerative or the hereditary type of insanity

occurs, or some modification of it. The prevalent forms coming next
are insanity of puberty and adolescence and the curious morbid
psychological developments of lying, stealing, running away from
home, all sorts of perversity of action and thought—impulse
overpowering reason; often resulting in cure if wisely treated, but not
seldom ending in various forms of so-called moral insanity, suicide,
epilepsy, hysteria, primary insanity, prostitution, and offences against
the laws. It is largely a matter of accident rather than a result of any
established principle whether such boys and girls are sent to
reformatories and prisons or to insane asylums. In the progressively
advancing years of life organic mental disease and the
psychoneuroses are more common, the favorable or unfavorable
type of which depends largely upon the degree of degenerative
tendency in each case.

The exhaustion and the disturbed cerebral circulation arising from

acute and chronic diseases, profound anæmia, or prolonged mental
strain, associated with emotional disturbance from any cause, are
among the antecedents of insanity. By our asylum reports ill-health is
second only to intemperance as an exciting cause of insanity, and ill-
health comes probably more largely from poverty than from any
other direct cause. Diseases and accidents to the mother during
gestation and injuries to the infant's head during parturition may
reasonably be supposed to so affect the fœtal brain as to predispose
to insanity in later life.

Of 18,422 admissions tabulated from reports of Massachusetts

asylums, the prevalence of insanity by ages was approximately as
follows:

Admissions per
Number of Population by
Age. 100,000 of
Admissions. Census of 1875.
Population.
15 and under 366 312,103 6 117
15 to 20 1,380 165,936 832
20 to 30 5,269 310,861 1695
30 to 40 4,632 240,966 1922
40 to 50 3,372 182,823 1789
50 to 60 1,797 126,430 1421
60 to 70 976 79,186 1106
70 to 80 382 38,283 997
Over 80 58 11,167 519
Age not reported 190 10,302
Total 18,422 1,478,0576 1246
 Total of all ages —— 1,651,912 1115

6 Excluding those under five years of age.

Of the 36,762 persons of unsound mind known to the English lunacy

commission in 1859, there were 31,782 paupers, or 86.45 per cent.,
as compared with 4980, or 13.55 per cent., supported by themselves
or their relatives. At the close of 1880, of 73,113 insane, 65,372, or
89.41 per cent., were paupers, and 7741, or 10.59 per cent., were
private patients or self-supporting. The increase in the number of the
latter from 1859 to 1883 was from 2.53 to 2.96 per 10,000 of the
population, or 17 per cent., and of the pauper insane from 16.14 to
25.72, or 59 per cent., while general pauperism had rapidly
diminished from 43.7 to 29.5 per 1000 inhabitants.

Similarly, of 9541 admissions to the State hospitals for the insane in

Massachusetts from 1871 to 1880 inclusive, there were 4166 State
patients, 4050 supported by cities and towns, and 1325 private
patients; in other words, 86 per cent. were supported by public
charity. Of 7963 admissions in the same time in which the nationality
was stated, 4532 were natives and 3431 foreigners, respectively 57
and 43 per cent., whereas by the census of 1875 the natives were
74.64 per cent. of the population, showing more than twice as great
a percentage among foreigners (chiefly laborers) as among natives.
It is quite clear, therefore, that insanity is more prevalent, or at least
increasing more rapidly, among the lower parts of the social scale
than higher up; but it is impossible to say how many people have
dropped from higher planes of life to lower.

Although women are probably more predisposed to insanity than

men, and men more exposed to its objective causes than women, it
is not certain that more insanity occurs in either sex. It is somewhat
more prevalent in single and widowed and divorced people than in
those married. The period of greatest prevalence is earlier in women
than in men.

Insanity prevails not only at a time of life when the strain on mind
and body is great, as is shown by the preceding table, but also in
those places where the effort is most intense. That fact is well shown
in the distribution of insanity over the State in the large and small
towns, being greatest where the concentration of population brings
with it extremes of poverty and wealth, as indicated by the following
table, showing the number of admissions accredited to cities and
towns in the McLean, South Boston, and State hospitals for the
insane per 100,000 inhabitants from 1871 to 1880, the difference
being exaggerated by the proximity of the hospitals and greater ease
of commitment in the larger towns:

Number Inhabitants Insane Patients

Insane
of Population. by Census per 100,000
Patients.
Towns. of 1875. Inhabitants.
341The State 1,651,912 5689 344
1Boston 341,919 1987 581
1220,000 to 50,000 405,655 1486 367
425000 to 20,000 367,957 1193 324
2865000 and under 536,381 1023 190

Of 9381 men and 9041 women admitted to our asylums, 7435 were
married, 8193 single, and 1620 widowed or divorced. Of the 9381
males, 2215 were laborers, 1357 farmers, 313 clerks, 62 clergymen,
59 physicians, 43 lawyers, 201 students, of whom 114 were in
school. Of 4673 females, 52 were school-girls.

The exciting or immediate causes of insanity are usually so complex

that many of the statistics on that point conform to the preconceived
views of the various compilers of them, as it is very easy to pick out
a few from the many; but out of a large number of persons exposed
to the alleged causes of insanity, one can never feel certain how
many, nor indeed what, individuals will become insane.

It is not always easy to say how and when the furrows left in the
brain by the mental and so-called moral causes of insanity have
deepened into actual mental disease. Prolonged emotional and
mental strain or severe mental shock often are directly associated
with the immediate appearance of insanity. In armies, among people