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Comparative Politics Today*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Geoffrey K. Roberts
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COMPARATIVE POLITICS IS EVERYTHING – OR IT IS NOTHING. Superficially, these appear to be the only logical positions that can be maintained when considering the relationship of comparative politics to the various areas and divisions of the discipline of political science. The now old-fashioned use of the title to indicate either a small number of country studies loosely linked by structural comparison, or a somewhat broader field of institutional comparison, whatever the pedagogic arguments of coherence or convenience, possesses neither logical boundary nor scientific integrity. Yet once that treacherous one step further is taken in the directions of functional comparison, or, further, consideration of the ‘comparative method’ itself and the distinctions between comparative politics and, say, political theory, political sociology or political analysis disappear completely.

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Government and Opposition , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1972, pp. 38 - 54
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Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1972

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References

1 Such arguments may be legitimate and indeed persuasive—it is just that the term ‘comparative politics’ should be dropped in favour of ‘area studies’, ‘comparative institutions’ or some such more accurate title.

2 By political theory I mean empirical theory, equivalent in status to economic theory or psychological theory, and not political philosophy or political thought.

3 W. J. M. Mackenzie, ‘The Present State of Political Science’ in the series Studies in Comparative Politics, forthcoming Macmillan.

4 Merkl, P., Modern Comparative Politics, Holt, Rinehart Winston, 1970, p. 4.Google Scholar

5 Heckscher, G., The Study of Comparative Government and Politics, Allen and Unwin, London, 1957, p. 17.Google Scholar

6 Eulau, H., ‘Comparative political analysis; a methodological note’ in Midwest Journal of Political Science, 1962, Vol. vi, No. 4, p. 397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Blondel, J., An Introduction to Comparative Government, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969, p. 3.Google Scholar

8 Haas, M., ‘Comparative analysis’ in Western Political Quarterly, 1962, Vol. xv, No. 2, p. 303.Google Scholar

9 Eckstein, H. and Apter, D., eds., Comparative Politics: A Reader, Free Press, New York, 1963, p. vi.Google Scholar

10 Curtis, M., Comparative Government and Politics, Harper and Row, New York, 1968, p. vi.Google Scholar

11 Almond, G., ‘Determinacy—Choice, Stability—Change: Some thoughts on a Contemporary Polemic in Political Theory’ in Government and Opposition, 1970, Vol. v, No. I, p. 22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 M. Haas, op. cit., pp. 294–6.

13 Heckscher, G., The Study of Comparative Government and Politics, Allen and Unwin, London, 1957 Google Scholar; Macridis, R., The Study of Comparative Government, Doubleday, New York, 1955;Google Scholar Beer, S. and Ulam, A. (eds.), Patterns of Government, Random House, New York, 1952.Google Scholar

14 Almond, G. and Coleman, J. (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas, Princeton University Press, 1960;Google Scholar Almond, G. and Powell, G., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach, Little, Brown, Boston, 1966 Google Scholar. Almond has not yet ceased commenting and analysing in the field of comparative politics, but his latest work properly belongs to the last of the four phases of development noted here, e.g. his article in Government and Opposition, 1970, Vol. v, No. I, pp. 22–40: ‘Determinacy‐Choice, Stability‐Change: Some Thoughts on a Contemporary Polemic in Political Theory’.

15 Easton, D., A Systems Analysis of Political Life, Wiley, New York, 1965;Google Scholar G. Almond and J. Coleman (eds.), op. cit.; Deutsch, K., The Nerves of Government, Free Press, New York, 1963.Google Scholar

16 For instance, the papers in the section ‘Churches as Political Institutions’ at the IPSA Conference, Munich, 1970.

17 R. Holt and J. Richardson, ‘Competing Paradigms in Comparative Politics’ in Holt, R. and Turner, J. (eds.), The Methodology of Comparative Research, Free Press, New York, 1970, p. 27.Google Scholar

18 This is not to claim that these languages are always internally consistent, or that the concepts are always clearly defined, useful, or even positively applicable: some polities may be noted for their zero score concerning e.g. gatekeepers, or their responses to certain types of stress.

19 As well as some practitioners in institutes of various kinds: PEP, the RAND Corporation, various polling organizations, for instance.

20 Verba, S., ‘Some Dilemmas in Comparative Research’ in World Politics, 1967–68, Vol. xx, No. I, p. III.Google Scholar

21 Sartori, G., ‘Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics’ in American Political science Review, 1970. Vol. Ixiv, No. 4, pp. 1033–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Holt, R. and Turner, J. (eds.), The Methodology of Comparative Research, Free Press, New York, 1970.Google Scholar

23 Przeworski, A. and Teune, H., The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, Wiley, New York, 1970.Google Scholar

24 For instance, the articles by Finer, S. and Almond, G. in Government and Opposition, 1970, Vol. v, No. I;Google Scholar and by Lasswell, , LaPalombara, and Macridis, in Comparative Politics, 1968, Vol. I, No. I.Google Scholar

25 M. Curtis, Comparative Government and Politics, p. 5.

26 G. Sartori, ‘Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics’, p. 1040.

27 M. Curtis, op. cit., p. 9.

28 G. Sartori, op. cit., p. 1039.

29 For example, see the discussion on concept formation in Kuhn, A., The Study of Society, Tavistock, London, 1966, ch. 7.Google Scholar

30 For reasons peculiar perhaps to the subject matter of political science, there is no very clear dividing line between these two realms of activity!

31 F. Riggs, ‘The Comparison of Whole Political Systems’ in R. Holt and J. Turner (eds.), The Methodology of Comparative Research, p. 89.

32 For an example of such a new vocabulary, see Riggs, op. cit., p. 98. The attempt to find some way out of the dilemma stated in this paragraph is the central concern of a new group formed in Munich at the 1970 IPSA Conference, now styled the IPSA Committee on Conceptual and Terminological Analysis (COCTA).

33 The author does not offer this as a proposed definition of a political party—only as a simple contrived example. Two points further—few works on comparative politics have even gone so far as such a three‐step operational definition of a central concept; and, second, it is recognized that such a definition may involve further subsidiary definition (e.g. what is to be classed as ‘elective public office’? what is the test of an ‘explicitly stated programme’? etc.).

34 The above paragraph owes much to the arguments set out in A. Przeworski and H. Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, ch. 5.

35 Sartori, op. cit., p. 1045.

36 Przeworski and Teune, op. cit., pp. 9–10.

37 Sartori, op. cit., p. 1044.

38 This is not to say that low‐level conceptualization is a waste of time. It is a necessary preliminary to middle‐range theory, enabling description and classification to take place, leading to generalization.

39 Such as those of Crick, ‘The Elementary Types of Government’ in Government and Opposition, 1968, Vol. iii, No. I, pp. 3–20; Riggs in Holt and Turner (eds.), op. cit.; and Field, Comparative Political Development, Routledge Kegan Paul, 1968.

40 Heckscher, G., The Study of Comparative Government and Politics, Allen and Unwin, London, 1957, p. 69.Google Scholar

41 Macridis, R., The Study of Comparative Government, Doubleday, New York, 1955 Google Scholar, especially the Introduction.

42 Although Macridis does touch on the problem in his Introduction to The Study of Comparative Government.

43 Zetterberg, H., On Theory and Verification in Sociology, 3rd ed., Bedminster Press, 1965, p. 50.Google Scholar