Honestly, favorite class at UVA. Loved the material, and the professor. Yes, Gerard tended to dive extremely in to certain things that weren't the most relevant or helpful, but he would always get us he material we needed to know one way or another. You'll spend half the semester covering Britain and France, which is unfortunate because you get so little time to do Germany, Italy, and Spain. But there was never a time where I didn't think the material was interesting. It's a ton of work, with tons of reading assigned before every class. You don't have to do all of them, I would just read the first half of a some of them and as long as you got the jist, you're good to go. But when those essays come, sit down, and spend every day you can working on them. Catch up on the readings during that time, and treat that essay like it's everything, because they'll make the difference between B's and A's. If you can develop your argument well and in an organized way, you will get above a B+. But you honestly can't wait until the last minute. Final isn't bad at all, some essays and ID's. TLDR- work super hard on the essays and enjoy this class!

Don't take it if you don't have to. This guy is a tough, tough grader, and while he is knowledgable about his field, it is not a rewarding experience. You will come out with a better understanding of Western European political structures, but the class isn't worth it.

Professor Alexander is fantastic. He is very fun and entertaining and makes the material fun to learn if you aren't already interested. Class is not particularly difficult. Focus on the readings that your TA emphasizes and go to lecture and you'll be fine. One of my favorite politics classes here at UVa

This class has a shit ton of reading (more than my other two classes put together). Alexander is really passionate about the topic and you can see that from how fast he talks, how much info he tries to fit in 50 mins and how many times he digresses into little anecdotes (that were helpful, at least for me, in remembering the info). There are two 4 pages double spaced papers and a final that is pretty much formatted like the midterm papers. I never did the readings, skipped three classes and got an A-.

Great class. Alexander is really passionate and interesting. You don't really have to do all the readings. I would suggest going to lecture and focusing on the readings he mentions in class.

Good class; learned a lot, and it was worthwhile.

A very strange class. Basically, Professor Alexander tries to force the political history of Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, and Spain into easily compared and contrasted bullet points. Alexander is obsessed with the idea of relating the ideas, interests, and institutions that affect policy in these 5 countries, expect to hear these terms ad nauseum and be sure to understand them the way Gerard wants you to or your TA is going to grade you poorly. In many ways, this class seems to attempt to straddle the gap between a first year-level intro course in comparative politics and a more in-depth lecture series on western european domestic politics since world war I. I'm not sure it was entirely successful, as often times lofty and broad ideas were awkwardly shoehorned into a few narrow categories.
As for Alexander, he's an enthusiastic but somewhat ineffective lecturer in a large class. He infuriatingly insists on lecturing to word documents, which he always forgets to scroll through and then fires past 2 pages of important points that you can't get anywhere else. He also has a habit of getting hung up on something simple or even irrelevant in the first 30 minutes of lecture, leading to rushed explanations of key topics.
The amount of reading for the class is preposterous given what you're ultimately required to know for the papers and exam. Both the central textbook and the dozens of Collab readings will often go unmentioned in lecture and discussion. Ultimately, knowing 10 or so collab readings fairly well will give you everything you need to know for all assignments.
Overall, if you're clever about how you take this class you can do very well with very little work. However, the lectures don't offer much insight outside of the confines of what Professor Alexander wants you to write about, so that class has little bearing on other courses I've taken on European politics. Sarah Eskew is a friendly and fair TA, she can clear up something for you if Gerard has confused the class, and your TA's opinion is the only thing that really matters for your class grade in this instance.

Not a very hard class, but tedious. Never went to lecture and still got a B+. My TA showed us movies in discussion and the whole thing was kind of a joke. Def not the easiest course ever, but if you try I'm sure it would be

The class was good at explaining the basic situations in the 5 countries it looked at. It had a lot of reading. Alexander is a good lecturer but talks extremely fast so that you cannot write notes on all that he is saying. He also didn't use a microphone in the lecture hall which made him sometimes hard to hear so sit close to the front.

I enjoyed Alexander as a lecturer, but sometimes I had trouble with the way he categorized Western European politics. Often,things seemed to be confused chronologically and categorizing countries was difficult especially with such precarious differences between them. Don't let it discourage you though if comparative politics is your strong suit! It definitely isn't mine. Sarah Eskew is a nice TA, though in my opinion a difficult grader. However, if you ask her questions, she easily explains things to you with enthusiasm.