Why compare political institutions and practices? Often, people assume that political problems they encounter are comprehensible only to other people facing the same problems. Rarely is this the case. Most political phenomena replicate themselves from country to country, although distinctive local characteristics may obscure their commonalities.  By comparing complex phenomena systematically, we can improve our understanding of political dynamics, and better appreciate why political concepts matter. In this introductory course on comparative politics, we will unpack a set of conceptual tools with which to do that. We begin with some terminology and typologies relevant to four elementary categories of inquiry: state formation, regime type, identity politics, and political economy. Then, guided by expert lecturers from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, we try out these categories on six important countries: Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea. In each case, we sharpen our analysis through careful attention to specific features, while keeping sight of larger questions about the state-society nexus; democratic versus authoritarian forms of government; gender relations; and the politics of ethnic, religious, regional and sexual minorities, and majority-minority cleavages. At the end of the course, we will have a set of concepts that we can take away and use for rudimentary analysis of politics in any country around the world, and some practice in using them. Simultaneously, we will have deepened our knowledge of what is going on in the Asia-Pacific in the Asian century, and why it matters to think about the region comparatively.