INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE POLITICS

Why do we need to study comparative politics?

Comparative politics – is a fascinating field of study that provides valuable insights into the political world.

Here are some reasons why studying comparative politics is important:

1. **Understanding Our Own Country**:

To truly understand our own country, we must also study other countries. Often, we take our own political
institutions, practices, and customs for granted, assuming they are natural or inevitable. However, examining
other countries' ways of doing things helps us recognize the uniqueness or peculiarity of our own system.

As the writer Rudyard Kipling once said, "What knows he of England, who only England knows?" In other words,
people who lack knowledge of other countries cannot fully understand their own.

2. **Understanding Other Countries**:

To comprehend the politics of other countries, we need to learn about their history, culture, and institutions.
This knowledge is crucial because what other countries do can directly or indirectly affect us.

For instance, they may impose import duties on our goods, refuse to sign trade agreements, contribute to
international peacekeeping forces, or threaten us with military force. Conversely, they may collaborate on
international projects or support efforts to improve infrastructures across national borders.

3. **Arriving at Valid Generalizations**:

Comparative politics allows us to arrive at valid generalizations about government and politics. Without the
comparative method, it's challenging to make meaningful comparisons and draw accurate conclusions.

By examining how different countries handle similar issues or challenges, we can identify patterns and
understand what works (or doesn't work) in various contexts.

4. **Practical Importance for Policy Making**:

Comparative politics helps policymakers reject false explanations of political phenomena by broadening their
understanding of what is possible.

When crafting policies or making decisions, considering how things are done in other countries provides valuable
insights and alternative approaches.

5. **Adding to Our Ability to Understand the Political World**:

− Despite its limitations and challenges, comparative politics enriches our ability to comprehend global
political dynamics.
− By studying different political systems and their outcomes, we gain a deeper understanding of the
complexities and variations in governance worldwide¹.
 In summary, comparative politics not only enhances our knowledge but also contributes to informed decision-
making and a more nuanced view of the world's political landscape.

STUDYING COMPARATIVE POLITICS

 Political science is the study of politics. Political scientists search for explanations of political behavior and events by
breaking down the “who get what, when, and how” into specific and targeted queries.

 Comparative politics is a subfield of study within political science that seeks to advance understanding of
political structures from around the world in an organized, methodological, and clear way.

 What is Comparative Politics?

 Comparative politics is the systematic search for answers to political questions about how people around
the world make and contest authoritative public choices. In essence, it compares and contrasts why people
around the world make similar decisions under different political rules—or why they make different
decisions under similar rules.
  Comparative politics, further explained, seems to be a field of study wherein scholars compare and
contrast various political systems, institutions, characteristics and outcomes on one, a few, or a group of
countries.
 comparative politics examines politics within different countries around the world—both in terms of how
countries are similar, and how they differ.

 A comparative approach to understanding politics around the world seeks to ask questions, generate
hypotheses that offer plausible potential answers to those questions, and test those hypotheses against
evidence we gather from the real world to develop strong arguments, using what we call the comparative
method. At its simplest, the comparative method involves comparing and contrasting cases (a set of
countries, for example) that share attributes or characteristics but differ on the outcome you’re exploring—
or that have diverse attributes but experience the same outcome.

 Scholars can, for instance, analyze countries, in part or in whole, in order to consider similarities and
differences between and among countries.

 Comparative politics involves looking first within countries and then across designated countries (this
contrasts with International Relations, which is described below, but entails looking primarily across
countries, with less attention given to within country analysis).

Comparativists have a number of interesting areas they research and will look within countries and then across
designated countries to compare and contrast. One area of focus may be considering the different types of
leadership in countries along with associated regime types. Who are the heads of state and where do they conduct
their official government work?

 Comparative politics, further explained, seems to be a field of study wherein scholars compare and contrast
various political systems, institutions, characteristics, and outcomes on one, a few, or a group of countries.

 Ways Comparativists Look at the World

 Comparativists often study institutions when looking inside a country and then comparing across.
o Institutions are the beliefs, norms and organizations which structure social and political life. They
encompass the rules, norms, and values of a society.

o March and Olsen (2011), define institutions as a relatively enduring collection of rules and
organized practices, embedded in structures of meaning and resources that are relatively invariant
in the face of turnover of individuals and relatively resilient to the idiosyncratic preferences and
expectations of individual and changing external circumstances.

o Institutions come in many shapes and sizes. There are formal institutions, which are based on a
clear set of rules that have been formalized. Formal institutions often have the authority to enforce
the rules, usually through punitive measures.

 Examples include universities, sports leagues, and corporations.

 Formal institutions often have tangibility, often identified through a building or a location, such
as a university campus, or the headquarters for a sports team or a corporation. However,
physicality is not a requirement. Universities have had an online presence for years. Sports
teams and corporations now engage with their fans and clients virtually.

o There are also informal institutions, which are based on an unwritten set of rules that have not
necessarily been formalized. Informal institutions are based on conventions on how one should
behave. There is no authority that monitors behavior and people are expected to self-regulate.

o According to Peters (2019), institutions “transcend individuals to involve groups of individuals in

some sort of patterned interactions that are predictable”.

o Given this, organizations can end up mattering more than the people. If institutions are self-
enduring and long-lasting, then institutions can outlive the people that founded them. This allows
us to talk about roles rather than individuals. This is why in political science we can talk about the
judiciary instead of judges, or about the presidency instead of presidents. The institution transcends
the individual or individuals that occupy that role.
 o Political institutions are “structures that lend the polity its integrity” (Orren & Skowronek, 1995).
They are the space where the majority of politics and political decisions take place.
 Formal political institutions include written constitutions, executives, such as the US President,
legislatures, such as the US Congress, and judiciaries, such as the US Supreme Court. They can
also include the military, police forces, and other enforcement agencies.
 Examples of informal political institutions involve expectations during negotiations. For
example, lawmakers may logroll, or exchange promises of support during when laws are
written.

From this discussion on institutions, we can see how comparativism can work. Scholars may want to compare
executive power among democracies, seeing how presidents and prime ministers managed the shutdowns of their
societies during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Or, they may want to compare the responses of
national health care systems, as their scope and purposes have been transformed through the pandemic. These
systems often
have to follow policy decided on by policymakers. In the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers often turned to these
systems and their army of experts to decide policy. Finally, we may look at how political ideology, an informal
political institution, has influenced the debate on vaccines and its impact on vaccination rates.

 Area Studies – where studies is located

 One of the more traditional ways of comparing is through the field of area studies, where scholarship is
organized geographically.

 Area studies have their roots in the age of empires when European powers began expanding their borders
beyond the continent of Europe. As imperial forces, such as the British and the French, began to occupy
more territory, there was an attempt by ‘enlightened’ Europeans to understand the peoples and the
indigenous languages, cultures and social of the regions they conquered.

 World War II transformed area studies from a colonial enterprise into a geopolitical imperative.

 Area studies are by their definition multidisciplinary. They can include disciplines such as political science,
history, economics, sociology, anthropology, geography, literature, linguistics, and for some area studies,
religious studies and theology. They also now include geographical areas that were once not considered,
such as European Studies.

 Cross-national Studies
 Cross-national studies can be broadly defined as “any research that transcends national boundaries” (Kohn,
1987). He further refines his definition to “studies that are explicitly comparative, that is students that
utilize systematically comparable data from two or more nations”.
 In this sense, area studies could also be labeled as cross-national studies, as it involves comparing two or
more countries, yet in one defined geographical region.
 In comparative politics, cross-national studies often involve the comparisons of countries, or country
institutions. Cross-national studies usually involve comparing countries across regions, and outside a
specific geographical region.
o Examples of cross-national research include the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, where
scholars meet to design common post-election surveys.

 Subnational Studies
 Subnational studies can be defined as comparing subnational governments within countries. This
comparison can be accomplished wholly within one country, or across countries. A subnational government
is any lower level of government. A subnational government is any lower level of government.
o In other countries it could include provincial governments, regional governments, and other local
governments often referred to as municipalities.
 Subnational governments vary in regard to their level of sovereignty. Sovereignty is defined as fundamental
governmental power.
 THE COMPARATIVE METHOD

 Asking Questions
So how does a comparative approach to politics move beyond merely stating an opinion? First, it takes a
particular approach to asking and answering questions about political events that might seem inevitable or
that might seem to have an “obvious” explanation:

 Formulating Hypotheses
A hypothesis is an argument that links cause to effect. A reliable hypothesis has been tested across more
than one case. Therefore, those who study comparative
politics search for patterns of attributes and outcomes—their presence or
absence—across cases.

How to Study Comparative Politics: Using Comparative Methods

 Using the Comparative Method – To assess the degree to which hypotheses can be falsified or stand up
against the facts, we use the comparative method, a way of examining patterns of facts or events to
narrow down what is important in terms of building a convincing comparative politics argument. There
are two basic approaches to the comparative method:
1. Method of Agreement - compares and contrasts several cases share an outcome but have only
one attribute in common, that attribute is the cause of the outcome.; or
2. Method of Difference - Determines the cause by finding an attribute that is present when an
outcome occurs but that is absent in similar cases when the outcome does not occur.
 A method which compares and contrasts cases with the same attributes but different
outcomes.

 Four Approaches to Research

 there are four basic approaches: the experimental method, the statistical method, case study methods,
and the comparative method.

 Experimental Method
 What is an Experiment? An experiment is defined by McDermott (2002) as “laboratory studies in which
investigators retain control over the recruitment, assignment to random conditions, treatment, and
measurement of subjects” (pg. 32). Experimental methods are then the aspects of experimental
designs.

 An experiment is used whenever the researcher seeks to answer causal questions or is looking for
causal inference. A causal question involves discerning cause and effect, also referred to as a causal
relationship. This is when a change in one variable verifiably causes an effect or change in another
variable. This differs from a correlation, or when only a relationship or association can be established
between two or more variables.

 Statistical Methods
 What are Statistical Methods? Statistical methods are the use of mathematical techniques to
analyze collected data, usually in numerical form, such as interval or ratio-scale. In political science,
statistical analyses of datasets are the preferred method. This mostly developed from the
behavioral wave in political science where scholars became more focused on how individuals make
political decisions, such as voting in a given election, or how they may express themselves
ideologically. This often involves the use of surveys to collect evidence regarding human behavior.
 Statistical methods are great for discerning correlations, or relationships between variables.
 Given that causation is difficult to prove in political science, many researchers default to the use of
statistical analyses to understand how well certain things relate.
 Statistical methods are also the preferred approach when it comes to the analysis of survey data.
Survey research involves the examination of a sample derived from a larger population.

 The Comparative Method

 What is the Comparative Method? The comparative method is often considered one of the oldest
approaches in the study of politics.
 Most scientific experiments or statistical analyses will have a control or reference group. The reason is
so that we can compare the results of our current experiment and/or analysis to some baseline group.
This is how knowledge develops; by grafting new insights through comparison.
 comparative method involves more than a case study, or single-N research (discussed in detail below),
but less than a statistical analysis, or large-N study. It is for this reason that comparative politics is so
closely intertwined with the comparative method.

 Case Studies
 Why would we want to use a case study? Case studies are one of major techniques used by
comparativists to study phenomena. Cases provide for the in-depth traditional research. Many
times, there is a gap in knowledge, or a research question that necessitates a certain level of
detail.

 A case is defined as a “spatially delimited phenomenon (a unit) observed at a single point in

time, or over some period of time” (Gerring, 2007). Others define a case as “factual description
of events that happened at some point in the past” (Naumes and Naumes, 2015). Therefore, a
case can be broadly defined. A case could be a person, a family household, a group or
community, or an institution, such as a hospital. The key question in any research study is to
clarify the cases that belong and the cases that do not belong (Flick, 2009)

For many comparativists in political science, the unit (case) that is often observed is a country, or a
nation-state. A case study then is an intensive look into that single case, often with the intent that this
single case may help us better understand a particular variable of interest.

For many comparativists in political science, the unit (case) that is often observed is a country, or a
nation-state. A case study then is an intensive look into that single case, often with the intent that this
single case may help us better understand a particular variable of interest.

 Types of Case Studies: Descriptive vs. Causal

Gerring categorizes case studies into two types: descriptive and causal.

Descriptive case studies are “not organized around a central, overarching causal hypothesis or theory”
(pg. 56). Most case studies are descriptive in nature, where the researchers simply seek to describe
what they observe. They are useful for transmitting information regarding the studied political
phenomenon. For a descriptive case study, a scholar might choose a case that is considered typical of
the population.

Causal case studies are “organized around a central hypothesis about how X affects Y” (pg. 63). In
causal case studies, the context around a specific political phenomenon or phenomena is important as
it allows for researchers to identify the aspects that set up the conditions, the mechanisms, for that
outcome to occur. Scholars refer to this as the causal mechanism, which is defined by Falleti & Lynch
(2009) as “portable concepts that explain how and why a hypothesized cause, in a given context,
contributes to a particular outcome”. Remember, causality is when a change in one variable verifiably
causes an effect or change in another variable.