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Comparative Government and Politics Course Requirements
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The AP Program unequivocally supports the principle that each individual school must develop its own curriculum for courses labeled "AP." Rather than mandating any one curriculum for AP courses, the AP Course Audit instead provides each AP teacher with a set of expectations that college and secondary school faculty nationwide have established for college-level courses. AP teachers are encouraged to develop or maintain their own curriculum that either includes or exceeds each of these expectations; such courses will be authorized to use the "AP" designation. Credit for the success of AP courses belongs to the individual schools and teachers that create powerful, locally designed AP curricula.
The AP Comparative Government and Politics course should be designed by your school to provide students with a learning experience equivalent to that of an introductory college course in comparative government and politics. Your course needs to introduce students to fundamental concepts used by political scientists to study the processes and outcomes of politics in a variety of country settings. The course should aim to illustrate the rich diversity of political life, to show available institutional alternatives, to explain differences in processes and policy outcomes, and to communicate to students the importance of global political and economic changes.
There are no specific curricular prerequisites for students taking AP Comparative Government and Politics.
All students who are willing to accept the challenge of a rigorous academic curriculum should be considered for admission to AP courses. The College Board encourages the elimination of barriers that restrict access to AP courses for students from ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the AP Program. Schools should make every effort to ensure that their AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population.
High schools offering this exam must provide the exam administration resources described in the AP Coordinator's Manual.
Requirements
To request authorization to label a course "AP," complete the following two steps:
- Complete and submit an AP Course Audit form, on which the teacher and principal attest that their course includes or exceeds the following curricular requirements delineated by college and university faculty.
- Submit an electronic copy of the course syllabus that demonstrates inclusion or improvement on the curricular requirements (see Syllabus Preparation Guidelines). If your course does not include one or more of the curricular requirements but merits designation as a college-level course, see Instructions for Submitting Materials for the process for describing alternate approaches to the course.
 Syllabus Preparation Guidelines
Instructions for Teachers
Instructions on how to submit AP Course Audit materials via the Web will be posted on AP Central and mailed to principals in January 2007.
Curricular Requirements
- The teacher has read the most recent AP Government and Politics Course Description, available as a free download on the AP Comparative Government and Politics Course Home Page.
AP Comparative Government and Politics Course Home Page
- The course provides instruction in each of the following six topics outlined in the Course Description:
- Introduction to Comparative Politics
- Sovereignty, Authority, and Power
- Political Institutions
- Citizens, Society, and the State
- Political and Economic Change
- Public Policy
- Six countries form the core of the course: China, Great Britain, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia. The course uses concrete examples from these six countries, including contemporary political changes, to illustrate the six major content areas of the course.
- The course teaches students to compare and contrast political institutions and processes across countries and to derive generalizations.
- The course introduces students to the analysis and interpretation of data relevant to comparative government and politics.
- The course requires students to write analytical and interpretive essays frequently.
- The course includes supplemental readings, including primary source materials and contemporary news analyses, that strengthen student understanding of the curriculum.
Resource Requirements
- The school ensures that each student has a copy of a college-level comparative government and politics textbook (supplemented when necessary to meet the curricular requirements) or other supplemental materials and primary sources, for individual use inside and outside of the classroom.
- The school ensures that each student has access to news sources and other information sources in order to understand contemporary political changes that may not be in the textbook.
- The school ensures that the teacher has copies of additional college-level comparative government and politics textbooks or other appropriate college-level books for their own consultation, including the most recent edition for one of these.
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