Hi. I’m a junior taking AP Comparative Gov self-study, with 99% Ethel Wood book and 1% Kesselman book. I know you have to know recent events in the 6 countries up to a year ago, but since I’m self-studying, I don’t know where to get that info from - the Ethel Wood book goes only up till ~the beginning of 2011. Many countries had elections in 2012 and some of the information in the EW book is simply wrong at this point (for example, it says that Russia isn’t in the WTO). Any ideas/suggestions? </p>
Comments in general about AP Comp Gov or self-studying are welcome!</p>
<p>I am doing Comparative Governments as well and I am also self-studying
I am working with the book “Comparative Politics Today - A world View” by Powell, Dalton and Strom as a textbook and using “Worldwide Scholar Guide to AP Comparative Governments & Politicts: 2014 Edition” as a Prep-Book.
I find those two are very much up to date, which might be because they are both from this year, but that doesn’t necessary mean that the books are really up to date, if you know what i mean, since a new edition is printed so easily without really changing anything.
But what i am also doing is just reading a newspaper that has a few political things about the world, either online or an actual paper. I don’t do that everyday, but once or twice a week i am looking through the world news in politics and try to keep up on what is happing in those 6 countries. I don’t now if that will be useful or not, but at least it gives me a direct “link” to what is happening right now. And it is also something different then just reading textbooks or prep-books, since there are some articles that aren’t as dry as most other political things are.
So if you are just searching for a way to keep up with the newest politics of the world, i would recommoned that you just check out a few websites of big newspapers and see what you can find. I like the New York times, BBC news, huffingtonpost and Sueddeutsche Zeitung (a german newspaper). As i said already i don’t look everyday but try to look through the websites at least once a week and just pick one or two articles and read those. </p>
<p>Also if you have the time and want to put the effort into it, you could always research the individual countries directly to learn more about their political standings and governments, for example Russia. If you want to learn more about how the country works, research it as a whole, with historical facts and up until today. But that takes time and you have to pick what you think will be important, but it could be helpful. </p>
<p>I can’t think of anything else right now that might be helpful, but please let me know if you do find anything that helps, maybe it can help me as well :)</p>
<p>this is always difficult to predict - last year I was fortunate and the events that the comp exam asked for were in the ethel wood 4th edition book. I would say only research recent changes in countries that change more often like Nigeria and maybe even China to some extent. Generally though, you do not need to know more about England, Iran etc.</p>
