Political Systems, Regimes, and States

Political systems are structured arrangements of power, authority, and legitimacy that either hold or collapse depending on how they are organized and sustained. You will learn to distinguish states from regimes from governments, to separate democratic from authoritarian systems without treating that as a simple binary, and to understand why legitimacy is the variable that makes or breaks political stability. Federal and unitary structures directly determine how power is distributed in Nigeria, Russia, Mexico, and the UK, which means getting this wrong costs you points on every comparative FRQ later. Every unit after this one is an application of what you define here.

~5% of exam