Dogan And Pelassy

THE COMPASS OF THE COMPARATIVIST-

To Compare is a common way of thinking. Nothing is more natural than to consider people, ideas, or
institutions in relation to other people, ideas, or institutions. We gain knowledge through reference.
Scientific comparison is not of a different nature, even if it requires more sophisticated intellectual
tools. We compare to evaluate more objectively our situation as individuals, as a community, or as a
nation.

Comparativists don't just study their own surroundings. The comparativist expands the scope of
observation to find principles and explain social events. About 160 autonomous nations exist now,
each with unique traits that can be united in various ways. This kaleidoscope has hundreds of questions
for descriptive, theoretical, or ambitious analysis. This challenge to human intellect allows social
sciences to become "sciences."

International comparison requires an articulated conceptual framework. Social scientists who analyze
only one country may proceed step by step, without structured hypotheses, building analytical
categories as they go. Comparativists have no such freedom. They cannot advance without tools.
Confronted with a variety of contexts, they are obliged to rely on abstractions, to master concepts
general enough to cope with the diversity of the cases under consideration. Comparativists, on the
contrary, need a compass that will allow them to pass from one context to another, to select in each
country the differences or similarities that can be integrated into their general scheme.

Every researcher decants reality. But such a decanting is a primary task for the comparativist, who must
have a theoretical orientation from the start with the understanding that it is precisely the purpose of
the research to permit a refinement, a re-modeling of the initial scheme. Perhaps there is no basic
difference between the approach of the specialist and the approach of the comparativist. But there is
an essential difference of degree. What is here latent is there bright; so much so that methodological
and conceptual problems raised by international comparison appear to be specific.

Comparing to Escape from Ethnocentrism-

An age-old idea of philosophers is that knowledge of the self is gained through knowledge of others.
The ego affirms itself by the roundabout way of multiple comparisons. The child develops by imitating
or opposing. The very stature of a person, original and unique, exists only in a relative sense. Hegel
clearly states that consciousness recognizes itself in others, and knows the other in itself. There is no
nation without other nations. This diversity, which actually contributes to the awakening of contrasting
national identities, is the only element that permits the perception of what characterizes people and
systems. Observers who cultivate a distance between themselves and the society in which they live
will find new perspectives opening. It is not by accident that among the finest studies on so many
countries, we inevitably find the work of a surprisingly perspicacious "stranger."

Even before World War II, books written by Europeans analyzed this decline, which scholars from the
Western side of the Atlantic were so late in discovering. Australian geographers, for their part, marvel
at the existence of villages in Europe. Thus, sociologists and political scientists seem to have taken up
the torch of a phalanx of illustrious writers, such as Kant or Goethe, Stendhal or Châteaubriand, Byron
or Shelley, who in their time discovered at least one country: Italy.
Expatriation was usually thought to improve judgement. "Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on
the other," said Montaigne, then Pascal. Most accepted ideals, social structures, and political
institutions are not universal. In the seventeenth century, comparativists sought models. With
Tocqueville, the spectator no longer polishes his political weapons outside. Contrasting his
perspectives sharpens his insight. Later, the comparativist uses anthropologists to explore a new world,
rethinking some generalisations and even asking fresh questions of the most familiar surroundings.

Such a revelation contains an explosive potential. There would not have been a French Revolution
without the British example, or a Meiji era without the shock represented by the discovery of the
Western world. Behind what they called the "big noses," the Japanese did see the vitality of another
civilization, built on other ideas, other behaviors and technologies, all possibly worthy of imitation.

Of fact, totalitarian nations have more tools to battle contagions than monarchs had in the early
nineteenth century when they failed to defend themselves against the French Revolution's infectious
ideals. Isolation logic persists. The leaders of a famous Eastern empire have long restricted both
abstract communication and human migration. They knew risky contacts. Comparative knowledge
risks changing because it suggests that Reason or Providence is not a unique and absolute truth.
Perception of difference is one of history's most powerful political levers, rivalling social conflicts inside
states.

As international communication develops, so does synchronization. Agitation in one country awakens

public opinion in the next, and ideas make their way. One country drops the voting age to eighteen,
and five or six others seize upon the change. Legislation to protect the natural environment, to ease
restrictions on birth control, and to adopt laws on divorce by consent was formulated and
implemented at about the same time in France and Germany. The social reforms enacted in Italy during
the first postwar decade were modeled on those of France.

Political leaders imitate this. In Third World countries, an entire generation of rulers tried to impose
Western or Eastern models on the population. European nations even more so. They prefer to copy
neighbouring countries' economic and social solutions due to their similarities. Comparison becomes
heuristic. It advises political platforms make clear that such replication does not ensure worthy
answers in one location are appropriate in another. A great prescription here may fail elsewhere.
Scientific comparison illuminates the value of original circumstances, which actively assimilate the
variable introduced.

Comparison is the engine of knowledge. Because the comprehension of a single case is linked to the
understanding of many cases, because we perceive the particular better in the light of generalities,
international comparison increases tenfold the possibility of explaining political phenomena. The
observer who studies just one country could interpret as normal what in fact appears to the
comparativist as abnormal. Even that which is most familiar can escape perception. “Was ist bekannt,
ist nicht erkannt”, underlined Hegel.

The discovery of the extraordinary urges the observer to explain why the rule that exists here is absent
there, and vice versa. The historian would seek the reason for this or that uncommon delay in
mobilization; the demographer would ask why fertility, here or there, is not affected by urbanization.
The political scientist seeks the reason for instability in a particular context by progressively eliminating
variables that do not produce instability elsewhere.

Comparison is a journey for enlightenment as well as information. Its fruitfulness comes from that. It
removes fossilised ideas, forces us to question unspoken perceptions, and expands our visual field.
Even comparativist researchers have a culture that limits their perception. Western sociologists were
slow to realise they were using their own measures for universal ones. Classic comparisons have
implicitly included the idea of progress, placing each political system on an imaginary scale heading to
"development," "democracy," or "Westernisation."

Comparing risks ethnocentrism, but it may be the best way to avoid it. Contrasts sensitise scholars to
knowledge's relativity and free them from cultural shells.

It is precisely the objective of comparative sociology and political science, in their efforts to become
more explanatory than descriptive, to insert each study partial, regional, sector-alinto a larger context.
The historian Paul Veyne went so far as to say, paradoxically, that even specific and individual
knowledge passes through conceptual generalizations. It is necessary to conceive of imperialism in
general in order to perceive what is particular about Roman imperialism, British colonial imperialism,
Soviet imperialism by satellites, or American economic imperialism.

Empirical experiences stimulated ethnocentrism acknowledgment. It helped us appreciate

"development" as a two-way process shaped by vibrant cultures and traditional institutions. Not
irrevocable, but with detours that are not setbacks. Not a journey towards one universal liberal-
democratic model, but a process towards multiple political and social forms, with differentiation and
rationalisation possibly creating statism or authoritarianism. Western analysts expected everyone to
follow their way. They "was to generalise inappropriately from the sociopolitical institutional
concomitants of modernization in Western Europe, which they knew best and assumed to be desirable
to other nations which they knew less well."

Social scientists have tried to discard their society' norms to find relevant categories. How can we
quantify "participation," "democracy," or "freedom" using political system-specific criteria? Eastern
European researchers like Jerzy Wiatr have noted the challenges of communicating with Western
scholars. Western comparativists show normative prejudice. Charles Moskos and Wendell Bell have
criticised harmful concepts such democracy being unsuitable for poor people or that military
governments are more effective at a specific stage of development. How to imagine an objective
researcher? Being aware of your values may be more beneficial than pretending to be preconception-
free.

The contribution of anthropology to the "release" of political science from narrow cultural limits
should be mentioned here. The study of primitive societies has permitted social scientists to
comprehend their own universe in a different light. The integration of primitive groups into the
recognized corpus of social systems has obliged them to draw back and elaborate more universal
categories. It is not by accident that functionalism descends directly from anthropology.
One should not attempt to overcome one ethnocentrism by falling into another. In the best of
hypotheses, the concepts will be swollen out of all proportion; they will be softened to such a degree
that they will lose their accuracy even for the particular countries in which they were born. "

Sartori's critique is addressed to those who make indiscriminate use of what we have learned from
non-Western societies. Nevertheless, one should not neglect how much some pages from
anthropology have animated comparative political science. Parallels developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss
between myths and ideologies in Anthropologie structural have fertilized the analysis of both myths
and ideologies.

Sociology also warned against ethnocentrism. World societies are infinitely diverse. At the turn of the
century, Chicago School sociologists invented culture to explain the differences they saw between
Poles, Italians, Irish, and black people. They were the first to emphasise civilizations' diversity and
history's psychological borders. A few decades later, American and European social scientists invaded
the planet with sophisticated surveys and quickly realised their "universal" conceptions were
ineffective.

Questions that were meaningful in England or Scandinavia would shock Japanese and cannot be
translated into Arabic. However, these challenges have prompted deep thought and promoted growth.
Erwin Scheuch warns that a question or research tool "does not fit," implying "that the researcher
from a foreign culture is usually unaware of the existential basis of his own thinking." Thus, cross-
cultural research's "pains" represent the same correction it is supposed to provide for a social science
operating within a particular social order. Comparative studies expose ethnocentrism and reduce it.
Test your boundaries to overcome them. International comparison, like any science, will improve by
correcting inaccuracies.

Functional Equivalences-

The notion of functional equivalence descends directly from the concept of "function." The idea that
a political system necessarily fulfils certain fundamental tasks helped functionalists move to an
important stage. They have indeed emphasized with particular clarity, first, the different structures
may perform the same function, and second, that the same structure may perform several different
functions. The search for functional equivalences passes through this analytical disassociation of roles
and functions. The same performance may be accomplished in various countries by different organs;
and similar or comparable institutions may fulfil, in various countries, different tasks. In some places a
tribe can assume the function of political recruitment that a well-organized political party performs
elsewhere, while what is labelled "party" is only the nominal equivalent of what a party may represent
elsewhere. Now, the organization of modern political parties does not impede other organs from
contributing to the recruitment of political elites, as do, for example, unions in Great Britain or Catholic
Action in Italy. The higher administration not only plays an executive function; it is well known that it
also intervenes in the legislative process upstream, although to varying degrees. This intervention is
particularly important in France, Austria, Sweden, Norway; it is much less so in Belgium, Italy, or the
Netherlands.

For the comparativist, functionalism starts with the search for equivalences. But it is necessary to
emphasize here how much this concept is a tributary of functionalist theory and systems analysis. Only
the universal matrix of the political "system," such as Easton in particular has imagined it for the study
of political phenomena and processes, has rendered possible the development of comparisons in
terms of functions. Recognition of these functions did not exist prior to the discovery of this allegorical
system. This fact alone testifies to the usefulness of theoretical elaboration; without it, it would have
been impossible to construct the marvelous "instrument" of functional equivalence.

Comparing as a functionalist has the advantage of getting rid of misleading labels. Comparing "White
House and Whitehall," Richard E. Neustadt suggests that the American and British machines are not
at opposite poles, but rather "near the center of a spectrum stretching between ideal types, from
collective leadership to one man rule."

Functional equivalence is not a trivial equivalence; it implies conceptualization, that is to say, it appears
only after an in-depth analysis of the political processes. Functional equivalence allows for a
comparison that automatically sheds light on the manner in which the political system "functions" in
general and in its various sectors. This conceptual matrix calls for generalization. Because each function
is conceived of as a part of a living complex, even the most empirically oriented research eventually
nourishes theoretical thinking. The accumulation of knowledge seems to be naturally promised by an
approach that does not recognize "function" outside the organizing matrix of the "system."

Among the universal and fundamental functions, two in particular attract the attention of the
comparativist interested in a great variety of political systems because they permit a significant
differentiation between them. They are (1) the articulation of interests, which consists of the
translation of diffuse interests into explicit demands (claims, petitions, proposals, amendments, etc.);
(2) the aggregation of interests, which consists of converting these demands into global and coherent
alternatives (party programs, congressional platforms, parliamentary majorities, etc.)

Functional equivalence is most useful when we consider highly contrasting countries. Functionalists
have, in fact, purposefully designed it to make possible comparison between two countries when one
is structured in an embryonic way and the other has reached a high level of structural differentiation.
For example, it would be easier to compare Germany and Austria without the concept of functional
equivalence than it would be to compare Indonesia and Canada.

The more a system develops, the more it becomes differentiated; the specialization of structures tends
to grow until each particular function is performed by a specific institution. It is incumbent upon the
comparativist to bring to light the way in which various specialized political agencies have historically
crystallized executive power, legislatures, bureaucrats, court sand to indicate which different functions
could be fulfilled by similar structures in various historic, cultural, or systemic contexts.
The function of mobilization, for instance, frequently escapes the central political structures. It is well
known that this role may be played by institutions outside the political sphere, such as religious ones;
newspapers; universities; unions; the army; or even sports associations.

Functional equivalences vary depending on the distance between countries and the political system's
prominence of the observable function. The modernising bourgeoisie of nineteenth-century Europe is
harder to compare to Eisenstadt's bureaucracy or the armies of Third World nations than the secretary
of state in France or the senior minister outside the Cabinet in Great Britain. However, the search for
equivalence should include less significant functions. It may be instructive to compare US primary
elections to French first rounds. Surveys, adopted in Britain, are similar to this first electoral cycle. One
cannot understand electoral behaviour or political leader selection without considering these
equivalences. Functional equivalency is useful but hard to apply empirically. The assumption,
theoretically valuable, that certain fundamental functions are completed everywhere has undoubtedly
helped the comparativist perceive the value of certain structures, revealing their hidden jobs and
secondary roles. However, there are drawbacks. Actually, not all political system-essential functions
are executed everywhere. This road will not lead to great truths. Giovanni Sartori has argued against
equating "participation" to systems where it is not practised. As terms are diluted to include the most
political regimes, functionalism risks losing analytical strength.
Functional equivalence as a device forged by Westerners to understand non-Western countries has
certainly contributed to a lessening of ethnocentrism. This sometimes had the side effect of
transforming the comparativist into an insightful witness. No longer a crusader for democracy, he may
have gained sufficient broadness of sight to understand, for example, some positive functions of
authoritarian regimes. We are told that our "antimilitary bias" and "favoritism toward civilian
government" prevent us from seeing military coups "neutrally and scientifically,'' that is, not as
irregular, dysfunctional, unconstitutional aberrations, but as inevitable events. We ignore their "legal-
constitutional basis, the reasons for them, their functional similarity to elections." There is some truth
in these statements. Open to every cynical interpretation, they may also constitute an incentive to
question reality further. To ask objectively about the functional role of political corruption may sound
scandalous. But it certainly helps us understand why certain phenomena recur in certain contexts.

The issue with functionalism is that such theoretical implications are rarely articulated. According to
Henry Teune, the identification of universal functions has not helped much in resolving the question
of "how do societies meet these difficulties or requirements... Although specific research questions
were and can be articulated within such frameworks, they do not assert relationships that serve as the
foundation for developing theoretical explanations."Teune correctly argues that the question "why"
must be added to the inquiry "how." We believe that by "making some order," structural-functional
categories can at least appropriately focus theoretical inquiry.