Limits of Comparative Political Analysis

Neera Chandhoke

The general loss of alt certainties has in particular posed problems for comparative political analysis which is
based on grand theories and categories of understanding. The contemporary disenchantment with and philosophical
scepticism towards grand theory, and the recovery of rigorous historical understanding are questioning the validity
of totalising categories like modernisation and the nation-state. In such a situation of flux, the article argues for
a methodology of concrete analysis of specific situations which wilt serve the aim of comparative politics by highlighting
the distinctiveness of various social processes.

T O its observers and practitioners, politics, For one, the precise status of the has become neither fish nor fowl.
comparative political analysis seems to be sub-discipline is in doubt. Comparative The crisis of comparative politics is
once again in the grip of multiple crises that political analysis by its very nature is heavily compounded by methodological confusion.
range from the crisis of self-definition, to dependent upon other subfields of political Peter Winch had pointed this out as early
crisis of cognitive schemes, to crisis of science, such as political theory, for its as 1970. In The Idea of a Social Science una
academic and political aims and objectives. approaches, methods and concepts. its Relation to Philosophy (1970), he had
Above ail, comparative politics is embroiled Consequently, it has not been able to attain argued that cross-national comparative
in a massive crisis of method. Indeed, the status of, say political philosophy, which analysis, based upon global categories,
practitioners can legitimately wonder has generated its own internal debates, applied political and social criteria based
whether there is something about passions and furore over method and issues. upon one culture to other cultures, where
comparative politics, or something lacking A sub-discipline does not have to be these categories had limited relevance.
in it, which makes it peculiarly vulnerable foundational, as political philosophy is, but Comparative analysis in this mode. Winch
to repeated crisis. The first crisis as is by it does need to possess a central core of argued, had resulted in adding up apples and
now well known - indeed it has become a concepts, definitions and focus. These may oranges. Comparative politics, it seems to
part of the mythology of this field - was in have been borrowed from, and adapted from me, has never really recovered from this
1955. In that year, Roy Macridis dramatically other fields, but nevertheless they do perform particular attack which has shaken its very
challenged the way comparative political the function of serving as the referent point foundations.
analysis had been practised in the past of inquiry. But in comparative politics there However, the crisis thai besets the sub-
[ Macridis 1955]. He argued that comparativeis no longer any central body of literature, discipline today is more far-reaching and
politics was parochial since it focused solely any co-ordinating grand theory, let alone a fundamental than at any time in the past. It
on the experiences of Western Europe; that set of concepts arrived at consensually, which is a part of the wider attack on cpistemology
it was descriptive rather than analytical; that can function as a fulcrum for analysis, such and methodology that marks thinking on
it was formalistic and legalistic; and that it as that provided by. for example, Samuel social science today. This crisis poses
highlighted individual case studies rather Huntington's work in 1968 [Huntington problems for the very possibility of
than comparisons of two and more societies. 1968]. The crisis has much to do with the comparison. It is not only that since
The results of the attack launched by general delegitimisation of modernisation comparative politics is in its own way
Macridis are equally well known. Scholars and development theory, which were at one parasitic, feeding upon other sub-disciplines
of comparative political analysis based in time the reigning orthodoxies, and which lie of political science, particularly theory as it
the US, which had by then become the in disarray today. As the cpistemological does, a crisis in any one subfield
hegemonic centre of academic activity, set status of, and the political implications of automatically affects that of comparative
out to make the field non-parochial, non- developmentalism have been challenged, the political analysis. The attack on theory pet
formalistic, non-legalistic, analytical and confidence in and the validity of the se affects comparative politics in a
genuinely comparative. Properly speaking, comparative method has declined. fundamental sense. Contemporary critiques
it was in the late 1950s and early 1960s that The lack of an autonomous status, however charge political theory in the meta-narrative
comparative political analysis came into its relative such autonomy may be, means that mode, with imposing coherence upon
own. This was largely because schools of comparative politics has not been able to otherwise incoherent and incommensurable
political modernisation and p o l i t i c a l stand on its own feet. But, then, neither has political phenomena. And since grand theory
development, which were in the main a it been able to locate itself vis-a-vis other which forms the bedrock of comparison, has
product of American preoccupations, sub-disciplines of political science. In many become the target of philosophical
provided the foundations for the construction centres it is regarded as a part of area studies, scepticism, comparative politics is the first
of grand analytical f r a m e w o r k s of or as an extension of international politics, casualty of this exercise. This is because
understanding and comparing different or even business studies which is a legacy large-scale historical comparisons draw their
societies. Indeed, for a short while as the of American scholars, or slotted into policy sustenance from meta-narratives. These
objectives of comparative politics - such as research as is the trend in many research comparisons look for the recurrence of events
that of creating a value free science - were institutes. Consequently, it has come to and sequences across histories and cultures,
adopted by other sub-fields of political acquire functional properties, which change and are based upon expectations of
science, it came to dominate the discipline. with the switch from field to field. Scholars uniformities and causal regularities. The
Since then for a variety of reasons the sub- need to recognise that comparative politics comparative method in political analysis is
discipline has entered a period of decline. is applied theory. It is properly speaking an attacked, because in its search for casual
Scholars are no longer confident that they extension of political theory (as discussed regularities it abstracts events and processes
can define or delineate either the boundaries, below). But it has been made to serve so from their muItilayered contexts. For
or the scope, or the method of comparative many masters, except that of theory, that it instance, Theda Skocpol, a reputed

PE-2 Economic and Political Weekly January 27, 1996

comparativist, insists that "(t)he investigators
commitment is not to any existing theory or
theories, but to the discovery of concrete
causal configurations adequate to account
for important historical patterns" [Skocpol
1984:375). It is in response to statements
like these, that theorists like Abbott argue
that events are only given meaning in
particular contexts which possess various
levels of temporality. Thus, causes, argues
Abbott, cannot be abstracted from their
narrative environments, and used to see why
analytically similar causes beget different
results (Abbott 1991]. Consequently,
comparative analysis is charged with
reductionism, and with subordinating
otherwise complex events to the variables
which have been isolated for the purposes
of comparison.
Secondly, the crisis can be traced to the
fact that comparative politics is, in principle,
based upon the study of other societies and
governments. Such studies, as political
theorists have come to recognise, are
particularly vulnerable to charges of imperial
biases and cthnocentricism which plague the
study of the 'other. This is true not only
of colonial texts, but also of modernisation
theories Scholars arc consequently hesitant
to embark upon comparisons of the
experience of other countries and other
societies, because they are no longer sure
whether their own frames of understanding
are sensitive enough to the modes by which
the people of those societies understand
themselves
Thirdly, the crisis is a consequence of the
general crisis of political institutions, indeed
of the nation-stale itself Global Hows of
capital and technology, cultural practices,
consumer seductions, cross-country labour
migrations; monitoring of human rights
violations; military interventions in the name
of famine relief and prevention of ethnic
cleansing and genocide as in Somalia and
Rwanda from above', and deep rooted
challenges to the very notion of the nation-
slate by autonomy movements from below,
signify that the ideas and the institutions of
a 'culturally homogeneous' nation-state
which had come to pervade political thinking
since the 18th century, arc in crisis. Since,
it were these very ideas and institutions that
have been generally regarded as usual
categories of analysis, this, not surprisingly,
has led to doubt and hesitations in respect
as to what is to be made the object of
comparative analysis.
Let me put it this way: it was usually
assumed in the main tenets of political
science, that each society generated its own
state. It was likewise assumed that the
organisation of this slate under the principle
of self-determination was perfectly legitimate
and desirable. Correspondingly, it was
assumed that there existed a close
correspondence between the practices of
societies and those of states. But as we can
see today, the histories of states and societies
have come to acquire distinct and often
divergent trajectories, resulting in the breakup
of nation-state as in former Yogoslavia or
the former Soviet Union. The question of
abstracting practices and institutions for
comparison becomes that much more difficult
when all historical givens are being
challenged. Comparative politics needs to
move outside the state-society corres-
pondence framework, and whether political
scientists whose discipline is rooted firmly
in the concept of the state can do so, is
doubtful.
In the following section I raise some
questions about the manner in which the
comparative study of political phenomenon
has been carried out I do not have any
answers to these questions, merely some
suggestions as to how we should proceed.
This kind of questioning I personally think
is important, since it is a prelude to a
reconstitution of both the method and the
field of enquiry. At historical moments in
the academic biography of any discipline,
it is desirable that its 'practitioners launch an
enquiry, to take slock as it were, as to where
we arc, and where do we go from here. Such
stock taking is particularly important today,
when the very possibility of comparison has
come under question. Therefore, every
scholar has the responsibility of challenging
prevailing orthodoxies and the assumptions
we base our study on, because flawed
understanding can lead to flawed political
practice. It is in this spirit that I undertake
a review of comparative political analysis.
I glorious revolution in England in 1688 and
A f t e r m a t h of the F i r s t Crisis
Dominant trends in modes of knowing
are almost always the product of particular
political conjunctures. When we understand
that the kind of comparative political
analysis that Macridis challenged was
situated in the context of colonialism, we
can immediately understand why the sub-
discipline was the way it was. Scholarship
in the period of formal colonialism took
on an interesting division of intellectual
labour. Whereas disciplines such as social
anthropology focused on the distinctiveness
of the colonial people in terms of customs
and rituals; whereas it sought to capture
the colonised mind in often essentialist
categories, all of which fed into the
discourse on Orientalism; political analysis
had a distinct agenda. This agenda was
concerned with the downgrading of
indigenous institutions and practices, and
the implantation and consolidation of western
institutions, both to 'save the colonised
people from themselves' - in the words of
the coloniser, and to legitimise colonial
domination. Political analysis thus became
the handmaiden of the colonial project of
displacing indigenous institutions and modes
of thinking, and replacing them with alien/
western modes and institutions.
This was not so difficult as aided by the
findings of the social anthropologists, the
colonised people became for the west so
much exotica. The colonies in this perspective
had neither economic, nor diplomatic, nor
maritime, and certainly no political histories.
They were simply not worthy of serious
political analysis, let alone as capable of
providing a model for political institutions
in other parts of the world. They could
neither provide the elements of rational
authority, or legitimacy, or constitutionalism,
or representativeness which was the stuff of
modern political theory. That these
institutions and practices had their own norms
of legitimacy and responsibility, loyalty,
authority, and obedience was never
understood, because these norms were never
studied on their own terrain. Since they were
being continuously and unfavourably
compared to the enlightenment philosophies
which had been nurtured in different climes
altogether, these practices were downgraded.
Comparative politics, accordingly, came to
concentrate on only a handful of countries
such as Britain, France and Germany, since
these were expected to serve as archetypes
for the rest of the world. The scholars were
very often European and trained largely in
law, therefore,comparative political analysis
was legalistic [Friedrich 1941; Lowenstem
1957; Bryce 1978].1 The confidence in formal
political institutions which had been the
product of great revolutions such as the
the French revolution of 1789, was immense:
therefore, analysis was formal. Comparative
politics thus came to reflect the ethno-centric
biases of its practitioners. In the process, we
as the people of the colonised world, were
reduced to being objects of the attention of
social anthropologists, with nothing to offer
the world except myths and traditions,
customs and rituals, wondrous objects,
strange, romantic and fascinating practices.
And if these practices were kept alive in the
colonial texts of anthropologists, it were
these very practices that had to be forgotten
as the colonies embarked upon their grand
trysts with modernity and progress. For the
comparativist focusing upon the historical
experiences of Western Europe, the colonial
world became something upon which the
west would inscribe its own patterns and
categories of cognition. The violence
involved in this intellectual exercise has still
to be documented.
It was this perspective that was challenged
by Macridis and scholars of his persuasion,
but certainly not in the same way as has been
highlighted above. Blind to the political
implications and pitfalls of existing modes
of political analysis, the new comparativists
set out to refine comparative politics in
terms of method. As we shall see, it led to
colonialism in a different mode.
The post-second world war period saw the
emergence of a consensus in mainstream
political theory - a consensus largely dictated
by American political scientists - that the
study of politics should strive to become an
exact, value - free science. The factors which
prompted this approach are well known.
Dominant among these was the emergence
of the US as the centre of intellectual activity,
and the cold war which intensified not only
political and economic but also intellectual
competition for hegemony.
The victory of capitalism after the second
war, and the arrival of the US as the major
global capitalist power, legitimised the
domination of the US in all fields. And
intellectual labour in the US was profoundly
conditioned by the political situation
prevailing there. The cold war conditions
and McCarthyism in US created their own
intellectual reverberations. As David Easton
one of the leaders of the behavioural
approach in political science acknowledged
in 1985,
Senator Joseph McCarthy inaugurated and
led a reign of psychological and legal terror
against liberals and others in the US. Scholars
were selected as particularly vulnerable
targets for attack. McCarthyism succeeded
in driving underground an interest in social
reform and critical theory. From this
perspective, objective, neutral, or value free
research represented a protective posture for
scholars. It offered them intellectually
legitimate and useful grounds for fleeing
from the dangers of open political
controversy... McCarthyism, ...represented
simply a historical circumstance that drove
an interest in social reform underground. In
doing so, it led scholars into the politically
less dangerous grounds of basic research
[Easton 1985:139-40].
The political situation thus catalysed the
adoption of Conformist positions, the search
for quantitative and measurable phenomena,
and a focus on method rather than on the
normative implications of what was being
studied. The aspirations of behaviouralist
political scientists that the study of politics
should comply with the norms of an objective,
value free and accurate science, resulted in
the exclusion of all those concepts which
could not be accommodated in these goals
and ambitions. The foremost casualty in this
exercise was the state. The state which is the
stuff of classical political theory is a
normative concern and precisely because of
its normative dimension the concept has
been embroiled in numerous debates which
have made it supremely contestable. The
PE-4
concept just could not be adjusted to the
requirements of an accurate, value free and
consensual political science and, therefore,
it was abandoned and was replaced by the
notion of the political system. Along with
the jettisoning of the concept of the state
went other normative concerns which
classical political theory had been engaged
with since its inception - such as justice,
equality, rights, and legitimacy. (It is an
ironical thought that if we were, and are
doomed to be colonised by western- oriented
political theory, it would in retrospect have
been just better political common sense, if
these concepts instead of modernisation or
development, had become the ruling wisdom
of academia and policy planning establish-
ments in Asia, Africa and Latin America.)
Underlying this consensus dictated by
American social scientists was the belief that
it was possible to craft universal modes of
analysis, so that all countries could be studied
within one framework. The need to
accommodate new countries was of course
prompted by the fact that by the 1960s, a
host of newly independent nations had joined
the international community. They not only
expanded the horizon of comparative
politics; they not only provided new data
and experiences; they also provided new
markets for the capitalist economies. This
consideration continues to hold sway even
today, when debates on neo-colonialism have
exhausted themselves in pointing out the
imperial nature of western social science. A
recent book on comparative politics states
this clearly, and somewhat unashamedly.
In the preface the editors write, "Our third
reason is related to the importance of
comparative politics not only to foreign
policy formulation, but also to the
international context of secure business
investment and the political determinants of
what is called new development policy"
[Cantori and Ziegler 1988].
The focus on the newly independent areas
was primarily economic, but it was also
propelled by a strong political desire that
they should follow the example of the west
in creating modern, liberal democratic
pluralist polities. The modern democratic
nation should be middle of the road, pluralist,
urbanised, and democratic - qualities which
were, not unsurprisingly, attributed to the
new capitalist and intellectual centre - the
US. Nothing was more indicative of this
than W W Rostow's book The Stages of
Economic Growth: A Nan Communist
Manifesto.
These were the very assumptions which
were shared, though never articulated, by
the members of the American Social Science
Research Council's Committee on
Comparative Politics. Members such as
Samuel Beer, Harry Eckstein, Karl Deutsch
and Roy Macridis in an early version of
Economic and Political Weekly
behaviouralism, began to focus on informal
and measurable aspects of political behaviour
at the expense of classical concepts of political
science such as justice, equality, or the rule
of law, which were crucial for the new
countries embarking on democratic
experiments.
It was, however, the chairman of the
committee Gabriel Almond who was to
influence the study of the post-colonial world
[Almond and Coleman I960]. Almond
himself greatly influenced by the structural
functional theories of Talcott Parsons,
attempted to combine the study of the 'third
world' and of the advanced capitalist world
into an ideal type model. This combination
and comparison was based on Parsonian
concepts of pattern variables - ascriptive vs
achievement, particular vs universal and
diffuseness vs specificity. It was either
deliberately ignored, or never considered,
that the values which underlay the grid of
these frameworks were inspired by
perspectives and norms of the western world.
The developing world naturally in this
perspective came to acquire the 'qualities'
of ascriptiveness, particularity and
diffuseness, compared to the west which
was achievement-oriented, universal and
specific. As societies were graded by
arranging them along an axis ranging from
the traditional to the modern, the newly
independent world again, obviously, came
to occupy the lowest rungs of the axis. This
was colonialism in a different, opaque, but
nevertheless dangerous mode. For the
objective for this world, equally obviously,
became those very levels of acheivement
which had been achieved by the west, without
either the historical baggage, or the intellec-
tual strains which the west had experienced.
On a normative level. Almond wanted to
bring development as encapsuled in the
western historical tradition to the developing
world. Focusing on informal aspects of
politics such as political culture, interest
group activity and process variables, Almond
created recipes for the formerly colonised
areas to modernise and develop exactly as
the advanced capitalist countries of the west
had done. This was reinforced by David
Easton's (1953) concept of the political
system based upon flows, processes, informal
actors and input-output analysis, and W W
Rostow's concept of stages of growth. The
'third world' was shown a way to achieve
the same kind of development that the west
had achieved. The posited link between
economic and political modernisation and
democracy was strengthened by Seymour
Upset's Political Man. That these frames of
analysis were generally thought to be
convincing, coherent, neat and as satisfying
the requirements of rigorous analysis, did
little to modify their imperious political aims.
The creation of global universal frames
January 27, 1996
of analysis which could analyse several
societies, helped to bolster confidence in the
notion of a universal social science
underpinning the grid of comparative
political analysis. However, in time, it was
this very notion that came to be attacked by
scholars deeply suspicious of these models
of universal social science. The
subsumption of distinct and in their own
ways rich cultures and specific histories
within one framework, was both ahistorical
and ethnocentric. What was ethnocentric
was also that the framework which was
deeply permeated by the values and the
historical experiences of the western world,
was left untheorised and unquestioned.
Since what was presented as universal
social science was actually the product of
the European and American experience, and
since the criteria to measure development
were drawn from the Anglo-American world,
the problems that came to dominate the field
of comparative political analysis, and the
Haws in this mode of analysis were many.
Students who set out to study the developing
world, assumed that the same institutions
and practices which marked the advanced
capitalist world were to be found in the
developing world, and when they were not
so found, these countries were typed as
dysfunctional. Something was wrong, it was
concluded, with these societies. That the
modes of analysis were themselves flawed
and deeply biased was neither considered
nor recognised.
The Parsonian framework further
generated an entirely unproductive debate
on tradition vs modernity which continues
to haunt post-colonial societies. The
pervasive presence of caste or tribes as
solidarity groupings in the countries of
Asia and Africa, insufficient political
institutionalisation, or absence of the British
model of the two-party system were never
sought to be discovered on the terms of the
host societies. These institutions were
consequently typed as remnants of a
premodern past and constraints upon future
developments. The models, in short, were
asethno-centricas earlier modes of analysis
which had been castigated by Roy Macridis.
Above all, the recipes generated by these
categories were flawed because they refused
to take into account the history of colonialism,
and the deliberate distortions of the cultures,
the economies and the political arrangements
of the colonies. This rather visible historical
fact was to be highlighted by the theorists
of dependency, who argued that the third
world was not undeveloped, it had been
underdeveloped by centuries of colonialism.
Therefore, argued the proponents of the
dependency school, the recipes generated by
the modernisation school were not only
plainly irrelevant, they were historically
flawed.
Economic and Political Weekly January 27, 1996
By the 1970s criticism of the develop-
mentalist school was widespread [Holt and
Turner 1975; Roberts 1972]. Intellectually,
the developmental paradigm was seen as
ethnocentric, biased and as embodying false
claims to universality. It was politically
conservative, since it focused on stability
and integration, and ignored the phenomenon
of class and conflict, or the constraints of
the market and dependency. But more
importantly, it attempted to fit the develop-
ing world into ill-fitting categories of
abstract theoretical approaches [Dodd 1973].
Above all, it was ahistorical because it
failed to realise that each society has its own
specific history and political trajectory,
which cannot be either understood or
evaluated against criteria derived from other
societies.
The flaws of the modernisation paradigm
were partly remedied by the dependency
school [Wallerstein 1974, 1980; Cardoso
and Faletto 1979; Smith 1981; Frank 1970].
The dependency paradigm which came to
preoccupy the scholars of the post-colonial
world for a short while, firmly grounded the
societies of Latin America, Asia and Africa
in the structures of dependency generated
by colonialism. In other words, dependency
theory in an important academic endeavour
came to historically locate the countries of
Asia, Latin America and Africa in the
experience of colonialism - hence the
increasing preference for the term post-
colonial. Through this particular intellectual
exercise, dependency theory performed an
important historical task since it contributed
greatly to the delegitimisation of the
modernisation perspective. It could
demonstrate that countries which had been
underdeveloped through long and sustained
phases of colonialism, could not possibly
follow the path of development shown by
the advanced capitalist world. It also
highlighted the fact that colonialism had
deeply distorted the cultural, economic,
social, political and intellectual structures of
the colonial world, by making these societies
irrevocably dependent upon the west.
Subsequent developments after the event of
independence, had merely served to
perpetuate the underdevelopment of these
countries. The only way the underdeveloped
world could emancipate itself from the
enduring structures of underdevelopment
was to break away from the global structures
of power.
The dependency perspective challenged
not only the modernisation paradigm, it
simultaneously launched an attack upon
orthodox Marxism which had relied heavily
upon a stage theory of growth. Capitalism
could not be developed in the dependent
world, argued the dependency theorists,
because this world continued to be subordi-
nated to the processes originating in the
west. Progressive forces in this part of the
world should, therefore, move towards the
launching of a socialist revolution without
waiting for capitalism and then building
socialism.
The placement of the 'third world' within
the historical constraints of colpnialism, a
perspective which the modernisation
theorists had completely neglected, brought
back the importance of historical
understanding to comparative politics. And
yet the dependency perspective was strangely
ahistorical. For one, it lumped all the countries
of Asia, Africa and Latin America within
the category of the 'third world'. Though
it is true that these countries had undergone
experiences of colonialism, they were distinct
in various ways. Their experiences of
colonialism differed - the case of Algeria
which had lost its identity because it had
been made into a department of the French
government during colonialism, was
radically different from India which had
seen the development of some measure of
self-governing institutions since the end of
the 19th century. Different countries had
witnessed different kinds of anti-colonial
struggles, based on their specific experiences
of colonialism, their own histories of myths
and tradition of protest, distinctive political
ideologies, intellectual contributions, and
stemming out all of them, differing visions
for the future. And after independence,
various countries embarked on different
paths of building institutions, creating
legitimising ideologies, patterns of political
mobilisation, and nation-state projects.
Above all, the pessimistic prognostications
of the dependency theorists that the countries
of the post-colonial world will never develop,
floundered with the growth of the four Asian
Tigers.
The dependency perspective by putting
all countries of Asia, Latin America and
Africa into the same category of the
'underdeveloped world' failed to come to
grips with specific historical traditions and
future visions, distinctive historical
trajectories and the way societies came to
terms with their pasts [Bayart 1991 ]. But it
was ahistorical in a second and more
important way. Somewhat tragically, the
dependency perspective despite its
emergence as a challenge to the concepts of
the modernisation perspective was the mirror
image of the modernisation school. It was
trapped in same unproductive debate on
development vs underdevelopment.
Development was something the west had,
and the underdeveloped world did not. The
argument wasideological- the 'third world'
was underdeveloped because it was not
developed like the western world. The
concept of development itself was never
interrogated as a value, as an end, and as
an ambition.
PE-5
 Above all, the dependency perspective
floundered on its own grand methodological
and epistemological assumptions, seeking
as it did global frames of analysis and
transcultural generalisations. It was to be
replaced by a more nuanced and rigorous
historical understanding of the countries of
the post-colonial world.
II
Second Crisis of Comparative
Politics and Its Aftermath
The recovery of rigorous historical
understanding, and the replacement of
ahistorical generalisations by such
understanding, has been prompted by a
renewed interest in, and focus on, local and
specific histories and cultural practices. This
focus on the local and the specific and the
rejection of universal and abstract categories
of analysis, is partly due to academic
exhaustion with such categories,2 but more
importantly it mirrors the kind of issues that
have been thrown up by various social
movements in the post-colonial world. The
opposition and challenges to universal
categories such as modernisation, has come
not from the elites of Asia, Africa and Latin
America, many of whom unabashedly adopt
modernisation as an objective, the challenge
has come from localised grass roots struggles
against state-sponsored practices of
modernisation and development. This is most
evident in the ideology of the Narmada
Bachao Andolan today, but these challenges
have also been generated by other struggles
in other places, such as the Chipko movement,
the movement for the Baliraja dam in
Maharashtra, the struggle of the Amazonian
forest dwellers in Brazil, and the demand for
the right to culture by indigenous people,
among others. The criticism of the imperialist
and the utterly insensitive designs of projects
designed as prototypes of modernity,
simultaneously criticised the imperial nature
and the complete insensitivity of universal
categories of analysis. The rejection of these
projects has been accompanied by the
reinstation of local practices whether of
irrigation and agriculture, as for example,
in response to the depredations of the green
revolution, and an insistence that people
have a right to their own lifestyles, cultural
traditions and interpretative techniques. In
the academic field this has been mirrored in
the attempt to resurrect the downplayed, if
not the lost voices of local cultures, modes
of knowing and methods of interpretation.
The subaltern school of historiography has
played an important historical role in
privileging these voices which have been
dimmed in the clamour of the elites for
modern ways of life and thinking. And what
the subalternist did for history the articulators
of contemporary social movements of
PE-6
women, environment, caste and class, are
doing for political science [see Omvedt
1993].
All this has naturally led to a profound
rethinking on the project of the nation-state.
Historians, sociologists and political
scientists, who in an earlier period had been
the main proponents of national integration,
unity and national identity, and the dominant
spokespersons of the nation-state, are today
privileging the local, the specific, the
particular over the general, the abstract, and
the totalising. The general and pervasive
disenchantment with the project of building
the nation-state has led to a re-examination
of histories and practices. The recovery of
local voices and histories, the privileging of
specific identities and loyalties, and the
recovery of lost traditions has meant in
academics, skepticism towards transcultural
generalisations, and emphasis upon the
plurality of processes and events in a
given moment in time. And all this has led
to the recovery of rigorous historical
understanding.
Contemporary disenchantment with, and
philosophical scepticism towards grand
theory, and the recovery of rigorous historical
understanding has greatly' enhanced our
comprehension of the post-colonial world,
but it poses severe problems for comparative
political analysis. After all, comparative
political analysis as a child of American
post-war social science is founded upon the
creation of grand categories of analysis —
such as development, revolution, state, or
nationalism, which can provide a frame of
analysis which encompasses all phenomenon
to be studied, A nuanced and sensitive
historical understanding of societies can pose
problems for grand theory in various ways.
Firstly, one wonders whether grand
categories of analysis as basis for comparison
are at all possible. For instance, I wonder
whether we can compare societies histori-
cally, in terms of say, nationalism. When we
study the phenomena of nationalism in detail,
we can sec that national movements have
not only been plural; various streams of this
movement have been constituted in
hierarchical and often authoritarian relation-
ships to each other. And we have also learnt
that these different voices drew their
sustenance and inspiration from their own
distinctive sources, ideologies and
experiences. Historians in an attempt to
capture the suppressed voices of nationalism
- that of women, tribals, peasants and
workers - have shown us that in many cases
these voices grew out of indigenous traditions
of protest, local mythologies, and responses
to specific conditions. This complexity, and
the hierarchical relation of various streams
of nationalism to each other, can certainly
not be captured by narratives which reduce
the experience of nationalism to essence.
Economic and Political Weekly
If this is so, then the construction of a
grand narrative of nationalism which can
capture the history of all these voices, and
compare different voices in different
countries becomes difficult to construct. The
recovery of all these voices becomes a mailer
of understanding specific historical
conjunctures and localised analysis, which
cannot be reduced to one meta-narrative as
the basis for comparison. Let me put it in
another way: when we compare say Chinese
anti-colonial and Indian anti-colonial
struggles, prevailing orthodoxies hold that
despite variations, one can capture the
struggles in terms of essences. Normally, we
tend to conceptualise these essences in
terms of a national-democratic revolution
in India vs peoples-revolutionary was in
China. But the moment we are sensitised
to the phenomena of plural struggles in the
two countries, or of the fact that these
struggles often conflicted or at least uneasily
coexisted with each other, our task of
imputing an essence to nationalism becomes
infinitely more difficult. 1 am not saying
that this cannot be done; all 1 am doing is
to issue a warning against constructing
generalisations at the risk of neglecting
specificities.
Secondly, as Bertrand Badie has shown
us, historical analysis has become
inordinately sensitive to differing notions of
time. That societies do not proceed according
to a linear notion of time has now become
a truism. 'The use of historical sociology
in comparative analysis is tricky because of
the different time scales and historical period
involved. To begin with, every culture
contains its own images of time, which thus
affects its own political science... The
conception of time cannot be reduced to that
found in other cultures: it clearly contrasts
with the cyclic nature of time commonly
encountered in schools of sociology based
on Islamic culture, as may be seen... from
Ibn Khaldun's idea of asahiya, which
describes the cycles of strength and decay
to which all forms of community solidarity
are subject" [Badie 1992:320-21]. As Badie
further argues, "History does not lend itself
very easily to comparison, because of its
unique quality that defies analysis in at least
two ways: firstly, history is culture, that is
to say, is indissociable from the idea of time
inherent in each cultural universe; secondly,
different histories cannot by their very nature
be compared, since each generates its own
conceptual system and significant variables"
[Badie 1992:320].
The idea that not only different societies,
but each society contains a plurality of time
scales makes comparison so much more
difficult. This means that concepts that we
used formerly to capture the commonalities
between societies, such as the transition from
feudalism to capitalism, or the articulation
January 27, 1996
of modes of production, or the notion of and values in the comparative study of even of agrarian strategies of entire countries
revolution as ruptural moments, let alone societies.) should be avoided in the interest of refraining
debates on the premodern vs the modern from oversimplified generalisations. We
become problem concepts. Since each in have to move towards concrete analysis of
society has a very specific trajectory and Issues for Consideration specific situations, we have to ground
distinctive understanding of history itself, ourselves in the narratives of that particular
how do we go about capturing the The general loss of all certainties has situation.
complexity o f these societies in a posed problems for all theory, but particularly Comparison is not only a matter of
comparative way? W i l l it not be dishonest for comparative political analysis which is adding apples and oranges, it is a matter of
to impose one time scale upon the another willy-nilly based upon grand theories and finding differences rather than similarities
society, or indeed, impose one time scale categories of understanding. The problem in situations which are highly localised and
upon another in societies which are marked is two-fold. If we adopt a highly localised issue specific. Comparative politics rather
by plural consciousness of time? approach to bring out distinctiveness, then than finding uniformities in patterns, or
The third problem relates to that of units comparative analysis becomes difficult, grading societies along an axis, has to seek
of analysis. In comparative analysisnormally because then we include an entire range of differences. For, if each event is embedded
phenomena are studied within the reference factors which make a particular situation in its own context then pinpointing the
point of the nation-state. Today, the nation- the way it is. On the other hand, if we start distinctiveness of each experience has to be
state is under threat from two sources. One, from general categories we risk missing the aim of comparative politics.
the global flows of capital, populations, out the irreducible specificities of each Finally, a word about the placement of
information, technology and entertainment situation. comparative politics. In many academic
transcend the boundaries of the nation-state. I would suggest that the former approach centres in India, comparative analysis has
On the grass roots level, the hegemonic is desirable, provided we are conscious of become the handmaiden of either the
concept of the nation-state has been the very many problems associated with international relations and foreign policy, or
challenged by various social movements, comparing disparate phenomena; that we of area studies. Both these fields are crisis
who focus on the exclusions of the nation- avoid arranging societies along a value ridden today because of their anti-theory
state. At a lime when the nation-state is itselfladen axis; that we do not abstract proclivities. Comparative politics in order
a matter of political contestation, whether phenomenon from their multilevel contexts, to be a self-reflective and critical venture,
comparative analysis can still take the nation- and that we do not subordinate events, to needs to align itself with political philosophy
state as the given category of analysis is what we see as factors such events have and respond to the Rebates there. We cannot
fraught with difficulties. in common. continue to belong to traditions of thought
The fourth problem relates to Let me put it this way: if we study which have been found wanting metho-
methodology. When we compare two or comparatively collectivisation in China and dologically and epistemologically. We have
more societies, what frame of understanding Tanzania, it is perfectly possible to argue to keep in step with the critical debates in
do we use? We have till now accepted that collectives were a success, at least for political philosophy, and bring these to bear
concepts which are largely the product of a particular period in the former country and on areas as the objects of study. I think
western inspired paradigms. If we shift to a failure in the latter. It will be not only a of at least one area which needs to be
adopting the framework of, say, our own matter of conceptualising this as messy reconsidered here. I am speaking of the hold
society as a replacement, it is still unfair to policies, it will also be a matter which takes that developmentalism continues to exercise
the other society which is the object of us into the cultures of both the countries. on the minds of scholars, despite the fact that
comparison. The problem is simply one of Did collectivisation fit into the cultural it has been made the object of a wide-ranging
thinking out whether explanatory systems perspectives of the Tanzanian peasant who debate both in terms of epistemology, and
are independent of the cultures which are had a low history of living in villages? The value systems in political theory.
the object of study? Since the notion that task of the comparativist expands infinitely Comparative politics, in .short, has to think
explanations are independent of historical if we start taking all these factors into of itself as applied theory.
experiences has been long since disproved, account. To conclude, I have tried to point out that
it would mean that we are subjecting one The range of issues that have to be thought comparative political analysis has become
culture to the codes generated by another out in comparative analysis widens out a crisis ridden sub-discipline because of the
culture. For instance, Louis Dumont endlessly - a people's sense of history, changes both in the political realm as well
suggested that in studying the caste system cultures and traditions, the history Of peasant as in the fields of knowledge. The
in India, the observer should abandon the consciousness, the role of myths and fragmentation of this field reflects the
presuppositions of the west. "There is traditions, the resistance of the peasantry to fragmentation and the uncertainty of our
scarcely need", writes Dumont. to repeat being colonised by the state - an issue which societies. The crisis in systems of knowledge
that the aspects called 'politico-economic' has been raised to the forefront in the moral means, that we think seriously about the
are thus considered secondary in relation to economy of the peasantry school, and other range of issues that now need to be taken
ideology of caste. This is not the result of such factors. Comparative analysis then into account in any comparative study. It
any prejudice but only of necessity of giving becomes meaningful, even if it becomes a also means that we be self-reflexive and
a faithful picture of system as it appears life long activity. critical about the issues that we wish to
to us. It is not impossible, although it is I suggest that the way out of this impasse, study. It finally means that we do not any
hardly conceivable at present, that in future is to undertake comparative analysis of longer long for a grand synthesis to unite
the politico-economic aspects will be shown specific situations, such as histories of our efforts as development theory did in
to be in reality the fundamental ones, and localised peasant resistance, or of regional the 1960s or the dependency theory did
the ideology secondary. Only we are not cultures and traditions, or specific worker, until fairly recently. We have to accept that
there yet" [Dumont 1970:39]. (There are environmental, peasant and gender struggles. there is diversity of thinking and that
many problems with the Dumontian thesis, Grand comparisons such as comparative acceptance of this can lead to fresh
which need not concern us here; the idea analysis of the nature of the state, or approaches in comparative political
is to foreground the issue of perspectives revolutions, or development strategies or analysis.

PE-7
Economic and Political Weekly January 27, 1996
 Notes
1 It is interesting that until at least the late
1960s, 10 years after the attack by Macridis,
these books were staple readings for the B
A honours courses in political science in
Delhi University.
2 The focus on the local and the specific is
mainly due to the challenges thrown up by
the feminists to universal political theory.
Feminists have shown how in these
generalisations and abstractions of modern
political theory, women have been largely
invisible. And movements based on tribal,
ethnic, linguistic and racial loyalties are
demanding a recasting of history, so that the
role played by these agencies can be
recovered.
Lowenstein, K (1957): Political Power and the
Governmental Process, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago.
Macridis, R C (1955): The Study of Comparative
Politics, Random House, New York.
Omvedt, G (1993): Reinventing Revolution, M
E Sharpe, Armonk, New York.
Roberts, G K (1972): 'Comparative Politics
Today*, Government and Opposition, No 7,
Winter.
Rostow, W W (1960): The Stages of Economic
Growth, Cambridge University Press, New
York.
Skocpol, (1984): "Emerging Agendas and
Recurrent Strategies in Historical Sociology'
in Skocpol (ed). Vision and Method in
Historical Semiology, Cambridge University
Press, New York.
Smith, T (198J): The Logic of Dependency
Revisited', International Organisation,
No 35, No 4.
Wallerstein, 1 (1974): The Modern World System
Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the
European World Economy in the 16th Century,
Academic Press, New York.
- (1980): The Modern World System I and The
Modern World System II: Mercantatism and
the Cmsolidation of the European World
Economy, Academic Press, New York.
Winch, P (1970): The Idea of a Social Science
and Its Relation to Philosophy, Humanities
Press, Atlantic Highlands. N J.

References

Abbott, A (1991): 'History and Sociology: The

Lost Synthesis', Social Science History.
Vol 15, No 2.
Almond, G and J Coleman (eds) (1960): The
Politics of the Developing Areas, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Badie, B (1992): Comparative Analysis and
Historical Sociology'. International Social
Science Journal, No 133. August.
Bayart, J F (1991): 'Finishing With the Idea
of the Third World: The Concept of the
Political Trajectory' in J Manor (ed),
Rethinking Third World Politics, Longmans,
London and New York.
Bryce, J (1891, reprinted 1978): The American
Commonwealth, 2 volumes, Folcroft Library
edition, Folcroft.
Cantori, L J and A H Ziegler (Jr) (1988):
Comparative Politics in the Post Behavioural
Era. Lynne Riener, Boulder, Colorado.
Cardoso, F H and E Faletto (1979): Dependency
and Development in Latin America, University
of California Press, Berkeley.
Dodd. C H (1973): 'Political Development: The
End of an Era', Government and Opposition.
No 8, Summer.
Dumont, L (1970 old edn): Homo Hierarchus,
Vikas, Delhi
Easton. D (1953): The Political System: An
Enquiry into the Stale of Political Science,
Alfred Knopf, New York.
- (1985): Political Science in the United States.
Past and Present', International Political
Science Review, Vol 6, I.
Frank, A G (1970): 'Economic Dependence, Class
Structure and Underdevelopment Policy' in
Cockroft J et al Dependence and Under-
development: Latin America's Political
Economy, Doubleday Books, Garden City,
New York.
Friedrich, C J( 1941).Constitutional Government
and Democracy, Ginn, Boston.
Holt, R T and J E Turner (1975): 'Crises and
Sequences in Collective Theory
Development', American Political Science
Review, No 69, September.
Huntington. S P (1968): Political Order in
Changing Societies, Yale University Press,
New Haven CT.
Upset, S M (1959): Political Man: The Social
Basis of Politics, Doubleday Anchor, New
York.

PE-8 Economic and Political Weekly January 27, 1996