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Comparative politics is a subfield of political
science, characterized by an empirical approach based on the comparative method. Arend Lijphart
argues that comparative politics does not have a
substantive focus in itself, but rather a
methodological one: it focuses on "the how but
does not specify the what of the analysis."[1] In
other words, comparative politics is not defined by the object of
its study, but rather by the method it applies to study political
phenomena. Peter Mair
and Richard Rose advance
a slightly different definition, arguing that comparative politics
is defined by a combination of a substantive focus on the
study of countries' political systems and a method of
identifying and explaining similarities and differences between
these countries using common concepts.[2][3]
Rose states that, on his definition: "The focus is explicitly or
implicitly upon more than one country, thus following familiar
political science usage in excluding within-nation comparison.
Methodologically, comparison is distinguished by its use of
concepts that are applicable in more than one country."[3]
When applied to specific fields of study, comparative politics
may be referred to by other names, such as for example comparative government (the
comparative study of forms of
government) or comparative foreign policy
(comparing the foreign policies of different States in
order to establish general empirical connections between the
characteristics of the State and the characteristics of its foreign
policy).
Sometimes, especially in the United States, the term
"comparative politics" is used to refer to "the politics of foreign
countries." This usage of the term, however, is often considered
incorrect.[4][5]
The
comparative method
The comparative method is - together with the experimental method, the
statistical method and
the case study
approach - one of the four fundamental scientific methods which can be used
to test the validity of general empirical propositions,[6] i.e. to
establish empirical relationships among two or more variables while
all other variables are held constant.[7] In
particular, the comparative method is generally used when neither
the experimental nor the statistical method can be employed: on the
one hand, experiments can only rarely be conducted in political
science;[8] on the
other hand the statistical method implies the mathematical
manipulation of quantitative data about a large number of cases,
while sometimes political research must be conducted by analyzing
the behavior of qualitative variables in a small number of
cases.[9] The
case study approach cannot be considered a scientific method
according to the above definition, however it can be useful to gain
knowledge about single cases, which can then be put to comparison
according to the comparative method.[10]
Comparative strategies
Several different strategies can be used in comparative
research.[11]
- Most Similar Systems Design/Mill's
Method of Difference: it consists in comparing very similar
cases which only differ in the dependent variable, on the
assumption that this would make it easier to find those
independent variables which explain the presence/absence
of the dependent variable.
- Most Different Systems Design/Mill's
Method of Similarity: it consists in comparing very different
cases, all of which however have in common the same dependent
variable, so that any other circumstance which is present in
all the cases can be regarded as the independent
variable.
Some major works in
comparative politics
- Aristotle: In his work The
Politics, Aristotle compares different "constitutions", by
introducing a famous typology based on two criteria: the number of
rulers (one, few, many) and the nature of the political regime
(good or corrupt). Thus he distinguishes six different kinds of
"constitutions": monarchy, aristocracy, and polity (good types),
versus tyranny, oligarchy and democracy (corrupt types).
- Montesquieu: The Spirit of the
Laws
- Alexis de Tocqueville:
Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the French
Revolution
- Seymour Martin Lipset:
Political Man: The Social Basis of Politics
- Barrington Moore: In Social
Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the
Making of the Modern World (1966) Moore compares revolutions
in countries like England, Russia and Japan (among others). His
thesis is that mass-led revolutions dispossess the landed elite and
result in Communism, and that revolutions by the elite result in
Fascism. It is thus only revolutions by the bourgeoisie that result
in democratic governance. For the outlier case of India, practices
of the Mogul Empire, British Imperial rule and the Caste System are
cited.
- Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba: In
their work, The Civic Culture, Almond and Verba embark on
the first major cross-national survey of attitudes to determine the
role of political culture in maintaining the stability of
democratic regimes.
- Samuel P. Huntington:
The Third Wave and Political Order in Changing
Societies
- Robert
A. Dahl: Polyarchy
- Arend
Lijphart: Patterns of Democracy (1999), a
comprehensive study of democracies around the world.
- Giovanni Sartori:
Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into
Structure, Incentives and Outcomes
- Theda
Skocpol: In States and Social Revolutions: A
Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China Theda
Skocpol compares the major revolutions of France, Russia and China:
three basically similar events which took place in three very
different contexts. Skopcol's purpose is to find possible
similarities which might help explain the phenomenon of political
revolution. From this point of view, this work represents a good
example of a research conducted according to the Most Different
Systems Design.
See also
References
- ^
Lijphart, Arend (1971). "Comparative politics and the comparative
method". American Political Science Review
65 (3): 682–693. doi:10.2307/1955513.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1955513.
- ^
Mair, Peter (1996). "Comparative politics: An
introduction to comparative.overview". in Goodin, Robert E.;
Klingemann, Hans-Dieter. A New Handbook of Political
Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 309–335. ISBN 0198294719. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oso/414665/1998/00000001/00000001/art00016.
- ^ a
b
{{cite Comparative politics is that branch of political
science,which deals with the comparative analysis of politics
between countries,in terms of methodical similarities and
differences.
journal|last=Rose|first=Richard|date=1991|title=Comparing forms of
comparative analysis|journal=Political
Studies|volume=39|issue=3|pages=446–462|url=http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119347508/abstract|doi=10.1111/j.1467-9248.1991.tb01622.x}}
- ^
Hopkin, J. [2002 (1995)] "Comparative Methods", in Marsh, D. and G.
Stoker (ed.) Theory and Methods in Political Science,
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 249-250
- ^ van Biezen, Ingrid; Caramani, Daniele
(2006). "(Non)comparative politics in
Britain". Politics 26 (1): 29–37. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9256.2006.00248.x. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118602277/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0.
- ^
Lijphart, A. (1971), cit., p. 682
- ^
Lijphart, A. (1971), cit., p. 683
- ^
Hopkin, J. [2002 (1995)], cit., p. 250
- ^
It should be noted however that, as Lijphart points out in the
article cited above, the experimental and statistical methods share
the same logic as the comparative method: they all imply a
comparison between cases which differ on the variable which is
being studied, while remaining identical on all the other possible
variables.
- ^
Lijphart, A. (1971), cit., p. 691
- ^
http://poli.haifa.ac.il/~levi/mlogic.html
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