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Comparative Area Studies:

Methodological Rationales and


Cross-Regional Applications Ariel I.
Ahram
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Comparative Area Studies
Comparative Area Studies
Methodological Rationales
and Cross-​Regional Applications

Edited by
Ariel I. Ahram
Patrick Köllner
Rudra Sil

1
1
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This volume is dedicated to the memory of the late Giovanni Sartori, whose writings
on concepts and methods have been informing sophisticated discussions about
strategies of comparative analysis for nearly half a century.
CONTENTS

List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
Acknowledgments xiii
List of Contributors xv

PART I Introduction
1. Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 3
Patrick Köllner, Rudra Sil, and Ariel I. Ahram

PART II What Comparative Area Studies Brings to the Table


2. Comparative Area Studies: The Golden Mean between Area Studies
and Universalist Approaches? 29
Dirk Berg-​Schlosser
3. Depth Perception: Improving Analytic Focus through
Cross-and Interregional Comparisons 45
Laurence Whitehead
4. Comparisons across World Regions: Managing Conceptual, Methodological,
and Practical Challenges 66
Christian von Soest and Alexander Stroh
5. Context, Concepts, and Comparison in Southeast Asian Studies 85
Mikko Huotari and Jürgen Rüland
viiiContents

6. American Political Development in the Mirror of Europe: Democracy


Expansion and the Evolution of Electoral Systems in the 19th Century 103
Amel Ahmed
7. Comparative Area Studies and the Study of Middle East Politics after
the Arab Uprisings 119
André Bank

PART III CAS in Action: Leveraging Cross-​Regional Comparison


8. Comparing Post-​communist Authoritarianism in Russia and China:
The Case of Anti-​corruption Campaigns 133
Cheng Chen
9. Comparative Area Studies and the Analytical Challenge of Diffusion:
Explaining Outcomes in the Arab Spring and Beyond 152
Ariel I. Ahram
10. Comparing Separatism across Regions: Rebellious Legacies in Africa,
Asia, and the Middle East 168
Benjamin Smith
11. Gaining by Shedding Case Selection Strictures: Natural Resource Booms
and Institution Building in Latin America and Africa 185
Ryan Saylor
12. Organizing Production across Regions: The Wenzhou Model in China
and Italy 204
Calvin P. Chen

PART IV Conclusion
13. Triangulating Area Studies, Not Just Methods: How Cross-​Regional
Comparison Aids Qualitative and Mixed-​Method Research 225
Rudra Sil

Bibliography 247
Index 289
LIST OF FIGURES

2.1 Levels of Analysis according to Coleman (1990) and Esser (1993) 32


2.2 MDSO and MSDO Designs 34
2.3 Types of Political Participation 42
5.1 Typology of Area Studies Comparisons 94
10.1 Contentious and Quiescent Trajectories in Kurdistan 174
13.1 The Epistemological Range of Different Styles of Small-​N Comparative
Analysis 238
LIST OF TABLES

1.1 Single-Area vs. Cross-Area Case Selection in Small-N Research


in Recent Books in the Field of Comparative Politics 17
2.1 Usage of Configurational Comparative Methods 35
2.2 Central Differences between Macro-​Qualitative and
Macro-​Quantitative Methods 36
2.3 Patterns of Transformation 39
2.4 Commonalities across Cases (Regions) 40
2.5 Most Important Organizations in the Settlement (in %) 41
4.1 Typical Characteristics of Research Questions for Applied CAS 74
9.1 Comparative Strategies of CAS 157
13.1 Expertise and Portability in Varieties of Comparative Approaches 234
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors of the volume are grateful to many colleagues, mentors, and former
students worldwide who have helped to shape their thinking about area studies
and comparative methods. They also appreciate the valuable critiques and sug-
gestions provided by two anonymous reviewers as well as the steady encourage-
ment offered by David McBride at Oxford University Press. In addition, Ariel I.
Ahram gratefully acknowledges support from the Office of the Vice President for
Research at the University of Oklahoma and the Institute for Society, Culture,
and Environment at Virginia Tech for this project. Patrick Köllner gratefully
acknowledges financial support by the GIGA German Institute of Global and
Area Studies for this publication. And Rudra Sil gratefully acknowledges finan-
cial support from the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania
and the Advisory Board of the Huntsman Program in International Studies and
Business for his contributions to this volume.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Amel Ahmed is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University


of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research focuses on the dynamics of
democratization in both historical and contemporary contexts. Her regional
expertise spans Europe and the United States, with additional background in
contemporary politics of the Middle East. She is the author of Democracy and the
Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance (Cambridge
University Press, 2013), which received the Best Book Award from the European
Politics and Society section of the American Political Science Association
(APSA). She has also written extensively on issues of research methods and the
epistemological foundations of social scientific inquiry. Her work has appeared
in various journals including Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics,
Journal of Politics, and the Middle East Law and Governance Journal.
Ariel I. Ahram is Associate Professor in the Virginia Tech School of Public
and International Affairs. He earned a BA in history and Islamic studies from
Brandeis University, and an MA in Arab studies and PhD in government from
Georgetown University. A specialist in Middle East politics, he is the author of
Proxy Warriors: The Rise and Fall of State Sponsored Militias (2011) and numerous
substantive studies dealing with politics in Iraq and Syria. He has also written
extensively on issues of research methods, including the theory and method
of comparative area studies and the linking of qualitative and quantitative
methodology. His work has appeared in the journals Political Research Quarterly,
Qualitative Research, Theory & Society, International Journal of Middle East Studies,
Survival, and Terrorism & Political Violence, among others.
André Bank is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Middle East Studies
at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. He
received his doctoral degree in Political Science from Philipps University Marburg
in 2010. At GIGA, he is serving as the Speaker of the Leibniz Competition-​funded
xvi List of Contributors

Research Network on “International Diffusion and Cooperation of Authoritarian


Regimes” (IDCAR). He also leads the research project “The Syrian War in Jordan”
funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF). His research
interests encompass the study of authoritarian politics, violent conflict, and
regional order in the Middle East region and beyond. His scholarly publications
have appeared in both disciplinary and area studies journals, among them
Democratization, Journal of Arabian Studies, Journal of Peace Research, Middle East
Critique, Review of International Studies, and Third World Quarterly.
Dirk Berg-​Schlosser has been Professor and Director of the Institute of
Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy
at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany. His research interests include
political culture, empirical democratic theory, development studies, comparative
politics, and comparative methodology. He has taught and conducted research
at several universities across Germany and worldwide, including in Berkeley,
Nairobi, and Stellenbosch (South Africa). From 1988 to 2000, he chaired the
International Political Science Association (IPSA) Research Committee on
“Democratization in Comparative Perspective.” From 2003 to 2006 he was Chair
of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), and from 2006
to 2009 Vice-​President of IPSA. He has published widely, including articles in
Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political
Research, European Political Science Review, Government and Opposition, Journal of
Postcommunist Studies, and Politische Vierteljahresschrift. His recent books include
Democratization—​the State of the Art (2007) and Mixed Methods in Comparative
Politics (2012).
Calvin P. Chen is Associate Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College
(Massachusetts), where he was Department Chair from 2012 to 2014. His
research and teaching interests encompass comparative politics, Chinese
politics, East Asian political economy, comparative labor politics, rural economic
development, and ethnographic methods. He is the author of Some Assembly
Required: Work, Community, and Politics in China’s Rural Enterprises (Harvard
University Asia Center, 2008). He is also the author of several book chapters
as well as articles that have appeared in Studies in Comparative International
Development and the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. Chen has won numerous
grants and scholarships for his research, which has included fieldwork in China,
Taiwan, Italy, and Spain. This research includes in-​depth interviews with members
of Chinese diaspora communities in Europe as well as participant-​observation
involving working on the shop floor in two Chinese enterprises.
Cheng Chen is Associate Professor of Political Science at the State University of
New York at Albany. Her research and teaching interests include post-​communist
List of Contributors xvii

politics, nationalism, and nation-​building, Chinese politics, and comparative-​


historical methodology. She is the author of The Return of Ideology: The
Search for Regime Identities in Post-​communist Russia (University of Michigan
Press, 2016) and The Prospects for Liberal Nationalism in Post-​Leninist States
(Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007, 2012). She is also the co-​editor of
Confronting the Challenges of Urbanization in China: Insights from Social Science
Perspectives (Routledge, 2016) and The Emergence of a New Urban China: Insider’s
Perspectives (Lexington, 2012, 2013), which was selected by Choice as an
“Outstanding Academic Title” in 2012. She has published numerous book
chapters as well as articles in such journals as Communist and Postcommunist
Studies, Europe-​Asia Studies, Post-​Soviet Affairs, and The Pacific Review. Currently,
Chen is working on a research project comparing corruption crackdowns in
China and Russia during and after communism as well as a co-​edited volume on
anti-​corruption campaigns in Asia.

Mikko Huotari is Head of the Program on Foreign Relations at the Mercator


Institute for China Studies in Berlin. His research interests include international
political economy, regional order in East Asia, Chinese foreign (economic)
policy, China-​ Europe relations, methodology, and Asian Area Studies. He
is co-​editor of a volume on Methodology and Research Practice in Southeast
Asian Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and a Pacific Affairs special issue on
“Context, Concepts and Comparison in Southeast Asian Studies” (2014). His
recent publications in refereed journals focus on emerging powers and change
in the global financial order and China’s experimental financial and monetary
initiatives as well as on China’s regional role, geopolitics through infrastructures,
and Chinese investment in Europe.

Patrick Köllner is Vice President of the GIGA German Institute of Global


and Area Studies and Director of the GIGA Institute of Asian Studies. He is
also Professor of Political Science at the University of Hamburg. His research
interests center mainly on political organizations and institutions in Asia and
in comparative perspective. He has authored, co-​authored, or co-​edited ten
books, including monographs on the role of the state in managing South Korea’s
economic dependence on Japan and on the formal and informal organization of
political parties in Japan. Between 1996 and 2013 he served as lead editor of a
yearbook on the politics, economy, and society of the two Koreas. He has also
co-​edited special issues of Democratization and Politische Vierteljahresschrift on
comparing autocracies. His work has appeared in numerous academic journals,
such as the Japanese Journal of Political Science, the Journal of East Asian Studies,
and Politische Vierteljahresschrift. He currently works on the trajectories and roles
of foreign policy think tanks in Asia.
xviii List of Contributors

Jürgen Rüland is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political


Science at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Chair of the university’s
Southeast Asia program. From 2006 to 2014, he served as Chair of the
Academic Advisory Board of the GIGA German Institute for Global and Area
Studies Hamburg. His research interests focus on Southeast Asian regionalism,
democratization, and international relations theory. His recent books include
ASEAN as an Actor in International Fora: Reality, Potential and Constraints
(Cambridge University Press, 2015), co-​authored with Paruedee Nguitragool,
and Methodology and Research Practice in Southeast Asian Studies (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014), co-​edited with Mikko Huotari and Judith Schlehe. His articles
have appeared in journals such as European Journal of International Relations, the
Journal of European Public Policy, Third World Quarterly, Foreign Policy Analysis,
International Relations and Development, International Relations of the Asia-​Pacific,
The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, European Journal of East Asian
Studies, Contemporary Southeast Asia, and TRaNS: Trans–​Regional and –​National
Studies of Southeast Asia.
Ryan Saylor is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa,
where he teaches courses on bureaucratic reform, state building, Latin American
politics, and African politics. His principal research examines state building in the
developing world. He is the author of State Building in Boom Times: Commodities
and Coalitions in Latin America and Africa (Oxford University Press, 2014). His
articles have appeared in such journals as Review of International Political Economy,
Sociological Methods and Research, Theory and Society, and World Politics. He is
currently engaged in two research tracks on state building. The first focuses on
institutional development in Europe. The second research initiative is a cross-​
regional examination of bureaucratic reform in the developing world.
Rudra Sil is Professor of Political Science and SAS Director of the Huntsman
Program in International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
His research encompasses Russian and post-​communist studies, Asian studies,
comparative labor politics, international development, qualitative methodology,
and philosophy of social science. He is the author of Managing “Modernity”: Work,
Community, and Authority in Late-​ Industrializing Japan and Russia (2002)
and, with Peter Katzenstein, of Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the
Study of World Politics (2010). His articles have appeared in a wide range of
journals, including Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Studies in
Comparative International Development, Current History, Post-​Soviet Affairs, and
Europe-​Asia Studies. He is also co-​editor of four anthologies, including The Politics
of Labor in a Global Age and Reconfiguring Institutions Across Time and Space. He
is currently working on two books, Russia Reconsidered: The Fate of a Former
Superpower (under contract with Cambridge University Press) and Pathways of
List of Contributors xix

the Post-​communist Proletariat: The Routinization of Labor Politics in Russia, China,


and Eastern Europe.
Benjamin Smith is Research Foundation Professor and Associate Professor
of Political Science at the University of Florida. His research focuses on ethnic
conflicts and on the politics of resource wealth. His first book, Hard Times in
the Lands of Plenty: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia, was published in 2007 by
Cornell University Press and was a finalist for the Gregory Luebbert Book Award
of the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Politics section.
His articles have appeared in, among other venues, World Politics, The American
Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, World Development, and Conflict
Management and Peace Science. His research has been funded by the National
Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Harry Frank
Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Harvard Academy for
International and Area Studies.

Alexander Stroh is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University


of Bayreuth, Germany, where his focus is on African politics and development
policy. Alongside a regional interest in sub-​Saharan Africa, his main research
topics include political parties, elections, and judicial politics in the context of
democratization. He has authored a book on party politics in Benin and Burkina
Faso. His authored or co-​authored articles have appeared in such scholarly
journals as Comparative Politics, Democratization, the International Political Science
Review, and the Journal of Contemporary African Studies. He has also contributed
to a number of edited volumes and has recently been invited to contribute to
the Annual Review of Law and Social Science and to co-​edit a special issue of the
International Political Science Review.

Christian von Soest is Head of the “Peace and Security” Research Program
at the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg and a
Lead Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute of African Affairs. From 2013 to
2014, he was a Transatlantic Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead
Center for International Affairs. His research focuses on international sanctions,
authoritarianism, external interventions, and conflict dynamics as well as
corruption and informal institutions. He has published a monograph titled The
African State and Its Revenues: How Politics Influences Tax Collection in Zambia and
Botswana (2009). He has also co-​edited (with Laurence Whitehead) a special
forum of the European Journal of Political Research on international collaboration
among authoritarian regimes (2015). In addition to several book chapters, he has
published in academic journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Journal of
Peace Research, Democratization, Third World Quarterly, Journal of Modern African
Studies, and the European Journal of Political Research.
xx List of Contributors

Laurence Whitehead is a Senior Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College,


Oxford University, where he also served as Senior Proctor in 2011–​2012. He is
presently editing the Oxford University Press series “Studies in Democratization.”
His most recent books are Latin America: A New Interpretation (revised edition,
2010) and Democratization: Theory and Experience (2002). His is also co-​editor of
Let the People Rule? Direct Democracy in the Twenty-​First Century (2017), Illiberal
Practices: Territorial Variation within Large Federal Democracies (2016), The Obama
Administration and the Americas: Shifting the Balance (2010), Democratization in
America: A Comparative–​Historical Analysis (2009), and Citizen Security in Latin
America (2009). His recent articles have appeared in Democratization, Journal of
Democracy, Journal of Political Ideologies, Perspectives on Politics, and the Taiwan
Journal of Democracy. He is also serving as President of the Conseil Scientifique
of the Institut des Amériques in Paris.
PART I

Introduction
1

Comparative Area Studies


What It Is, What It Can Do

PAT R I C K K Ö L L N E R , R U D R A S I L , A N D A R I E L I . A H RA M

Much has been written about the challenges facing area studies in the post–​Cold
War era. Social scientists, in particular, have struggled with finding an equilibrium
that balances the continued search for deep area-​based knowledge with shifting
markers of disciplinary progress. This volume is motivated by two fundamental
convictions. First, sustained qualitative research on particular areas or regions of the
world remains indispensable for the social sciences, both as a way to expand our
fount of observations and as a source of new theoretical ideas. Second, this research
remains at risk of being marginalized without concerted efforts to incorporate it into
cross-​regional comparative frameworks intended to explore the potential relevance
of regional contextual attributes.
Comparative area studies (CAS) refers to a broad approach consisting of any
self-​conscious effort to do two things simultaneously: (i) balance deep sensitivity
to context in each of the locales being examined with the use of some variant of the
comparative method to surface causal linkages that are portable across world regions;
and (ii) engage ongoing research and scholarly discourse in two or more area studies
communities against the backdrop of more general concepts and theoretical debates
within a social science discipline.1 Taken separately, none of the components of

1. In employing the term “area” as part of CAS, we do not mean to reify the concept or to suggest
that it is preferable to such similar terms as “world region.” Indeed, both “area” and “world region”
4 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

this approach is especially novel. We frequently hear the refrain that “context
matters,” just as we are regularly advised that social science requires more than
“mere description” of empirical phenomena. We have also seen efforts to inte-
grate “thick” narratives produced by qualitative research on the ground to “thin”
explanatory propositions derived from elegant theoretical models (Bates et al.
1998). Even so, there is an unavoidable epistemological chasm and methodo-
logical trade-​off between idiographic efforts to decipher the subjective under-
standing actors attach to their practices and discourses within their immediate
contexts, and analytic techniques designed to generate nomothetic explananda
valid across some universe of cases. CAS responds to these dilemmas not by jux-
taposing different styles of research as some scholars have sought to do, but by
encouraging efforts that explicitly seek to carve out a middle ground upon which
“contextualized comparisons” (Locke and Thelen 1995) can reveal and partially
explain convergent or divergent processes unfolding across locales situated in
different areas. While CAS is motivated by general questions that bear on cases
from different areas, it calls for qualitative comparisons that value and engage
ongoing research and scholarly discourse within area studies communities. In
fact, contextualized comparisons ideally rely upon scholars who have training
in a particular world region and can thus draw upon an area specialist’s general
sensibilities when grappling with area-​specific debates and local complexities in
other, less familiar areas.
Of course, small-​N comparative studies that span multiple areas are not new,
and some have even become classics, as is the case with Barrington Moore’s Social
Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966). Yet, most qualitative research
in social science disciplines focuses on particular countries or compares cases
within a single area, even for research problems and phenomena that cut across
world regions. In part, this is a function of the lack of a clear, well-​established
methodological justification for the risks involved in delving into a new area
without the credentials and training for that area. In the absence of such a justifi-
cation, it is not surprising that scholars who do attain area expertise tend to sub-
sequently leverage their steadily expanding fount of area-​based knowledge rather
than expend time and energy to explore less familiar cases drawn from other
areas. Moreover, the few qualitative comparative studies that do cut across areas
tend to leave implicit the rationale for their methodological choices, or explain
those choices in idiosyncratic terms in relation to a specific substantive ques-
tion and a specific research community. In view of these tendencies, CAS offers
a broad rationale for scholars who adopt roughly similar research strategies for

are constructs that are malleable in principle—​a point we elaborate upon in the section “Area
Studies in Flux.” For the purposes of this volume, the terms “area,” “region,” and “world region” are
used interchangeably.
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 5

jointly pursuing the imperatives of demonstrating sensitivity to context, deploy-


ing some variant of the comparative method to illuminate causal linkages that are
portable across world regions, and establishing more productive conversations
between social science disciplines and the scholarly output of multiple interdisci-
plinary area studies communities. Not all small-​N comparisons aspire to do all of
these things, and others may do so without self-​consciously addressing the meth-
odological and practical trade-​offs involved. We view CAS as a common frame-
work within which like-​minded scholars can recognize the family resemblance
between the approaches they adopt in sorting through these similar dilemmas
and trade-​offs.
None of this implies that CAS is intrinsically superior to work done by area
specialists on their respective areas, or that CAS represents a cutting-​edge
approach that should replace or subsume other approaches. The aims of this
volume are more modest: to create more space in the academic division of
labor for small-​N qualitative studies that consciously take into account local
context and area-​specific scholarly discourse while leveraging some version of
the comparative method to generate distinctive theoretical insights into phe-
nomena not confined to a single region. Following Albert Hirschman (1981),
we place a bet that “trespassing” across boundaries—​whether between area-​
studies communities or between area experts and disciplinary generalists—​can
generate new insights and deeper understandings by focusing on previously
unrecognized similarities/​differences across areas. Thus, all of the chapters in
this volume are by social scientists who have expertise in a particular area or
world region but who have expanded their analytic horizons by examining use-
ful cases from a different world region and simultaneously engaging a wider
audience consisting of multiple area studies communities and their discipli-
nary colleagues.
The chapters in the volume are divided into two main parts. Part II consists
of six chapters that address, from slightly different vantage points, the question
of what CAS brings to the table, with special attention to the payoffs and pit-
falls of cross-​regional comparative analysis. The first three chapters in this part
touch on different kinds of research questions while considering the payoffs
and pitfalls of CAS and addressing the general epistemological and methodo-
logical issues underlying cross-​regional comparative analysis. The other three
chapters show how extending the field of vision beyond one’s original area of
expertise can help scholars to refine concepts, questions, and interpretations
that bear on debates within one’s primary area studies community. The five
chapters in Part III then offer substantive applications of CAS in relation to a
range of empirical problems—​from protests and rebellions to anti-​corruption
campaigns, resource booms, institution-​building, and the organization of pro-
duction. These cross-​regional comparative studies vary in terms of their degree
6 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

of theoretical ambition and the extent of immersive fieldwork required. Yet,


they are all self-​consciously seek to balance a context-​sensitive exploration
of phenomena within individual cases with comparative analysis across cases
from more than one area so as to develop portable inferences and illuminate
the convergence, divergence, or diffusion of practices across regions. A con-
cluding chapter elaborates on aspects of CAS, showcasing additional exam-
ples where “triangulating” observations from cases situated in different world
regions have produced distinctive payoffs for both qualitative and mixed-​
method researchers.
The remainder of this chapter is divided as follows. The first section offers
an overview of the challenges and evolution of area studies in different settings.
The second section discusses the origins and evolving significance of CAS, while
elaborating on the distinctive manner in which contextualized cross-​regional
comparison responds to the methodological and practical trade-​offs noted
above. The third section offers an overview of the chapters in Parts II and III of
the volume. The final section, “Where Do We Go From Here?” offers a discus-
sion of possible avenues for broadening the agenda of CAS as it becomes a more
recognized part of the intellectual landscape.

AREA STUDIES IN FLUX


The notion of area studies emerged with a focus “on faraway places that needed
to be better understood in the world centres of power” (van Schendel 2005
[2000], 290). And certainly, the proliferation of area studies centers and insti-
tutes in Europe, the United States, and the former Soviet bloc through much of
the 20th century has been connected to the putative goals of advancing imperial
ambitions or international trade interests, and, later on, knowing “the enemy”
and seeking out allies during the Cold War era (Lewis and Wigen 1997, 163–​
169; Mielke and Hornidge 2017; Sidaway et al. 2016; Schäbler 2007; Szanton
2004). In the process, while the academic division of labor has become more
differentiated, area specialists function as members of two different kinds of
intellectual communities. On one hand, they are a part of interdisciplinary area
studies associations (for example, the Latin American Studies Association and
Association for Asian Studies in the United States, the German Middle East
Studies Association, the European Association for Japanese Studies, and so
on). On the other hand, they are expected to contribute to scholarly debates
and intellectual progress within their respective disciplines and subdisciplines
(comparative politics, social anthropology, historical sociology, and so on).
At the same time, different intellectual traditions, institutional structures, and
national priorities have contributed to the distinctive organization of area
studies research in different countries. Even within the same country, one area
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 7

studies community may tend to focus more on debates over language, history,
culture, and arts of various groups, while another may be more influenced by
social scientific concepts and policy-​related debates in such disciplines as soci-
ology, political science, (human) geography, and some branches of economics
(see also Eckert 2005, 46–​47; Wissenschaftsrat 2006, 9). Thus, particular area
studies fields in various countries can become “strikingly distinctive in their
political, institutional and intellectual histories, and in their relationships with
the disciplines” (Szanton 2004, 4).2
To complicate matters further, what constitutes an “area” or “world region”
within the academe is not self-​evident and can sometimes give rise to concep-
tual and methodological dilemmas. As Amitav Acharya (2012, 23–​24) noted in
his presidential address to the International Studies Association: “Regions are no
longer viewed as fixed physical, cartographic or cultural entities, but as dynamic,
purposeful and socially constructed spaces.” Rather, they are material and idea-
tional constructs “born out of imagination, discourse and socialization.” In more
recent times, world regions are “more likely to be imagined and constructed from
within than to emerge as convenient labels by outside observers reflecting prima-
rily strategic or economic interests” (Acharya 2012, 35). In short, no standard
physical, biological, historical, political, economic, or sociocultural criteria suf-
fice to demarcate world regions—​or even continents—​in a coherent and con-
sistent manner (see also Lewis and Wigen 1997).3 Even when regions have been
specifically defined as “geographically bounded parts of the world that are com-
monly viewed as occupying the same large part of the world” (Mainwaring and
Pérez-​Liñán 2007, 201, our emphasis), the communities formed among scholars
who study particular expanses of territory only partly overlap with geographic
demarcations influenced by other factors, such as ideological cleavages, develop-
mental patterns, proclivities of leading scholars, and geopolitical battle lines (see
also Middell and Naumann 2010, 156–​157; Sidaway et al. 2016, 777–​778).4 For
all these reasons, we view past, present, and future conceptualizations of areas
and regions as tentative social constructions subject to revision and contestation.
Indeed, a number of the chapters in this volume implicitly or explicitly challenge
or problematize the boundaries of geographic areas by highlighting the role of

2. Parts of this and the next section draw upon Basedau and Köllner (2007). Related ideas have also
been offered in preliminary form in Ahram (2011b) and Sil (2009).
3. Some geography textbooks (e.g., Blij and Mueller 2010; Rowntree et al. 2014) identify at least a
dozen distinct “world regions” or “realms” that do not always match up with area studies as presently
constituted. For a discussion of the “plasticity” of Asia and the various epistemological approaches
used to track the making and unmaking of this huge phantom region, see Holbig (2017).
4. In this regard, Böge (1997) also offers a path-​breaking critical overview of efforts by German
geographers in the 19th and 20th centuries to divide the earth into large areas.
8 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

cross-​cutting historical legacies or transregional processes in producing similar


institutions or practices across vast expanses of space.
At the same time, for contextualized comparison, some in-​depth understand-
ing of a given area remains indispensable, if for no other reason but to have some
basis for assessing the potential significance of discrete contextual attributes and
local complexities. Moreover, for some social science questions, heuristic ben-
efits may well accrue from taking existing regional classifications or area demar-
cations as a basis for organizing qualitative research. Stephen Hanson (2009)
argues that there may be good reasons to focus on bounded regions or areas,
especially where a set of locales may share either common historical or institu-
tional legacies within the boundaries of former empires, or where more deep and
sustained exposure to the diffusion or exchange of particular norms and prac-
tices is likely among more proximate societies. Moreover, demarcations of area
and region, once they emerge, are frequently reproduced by institutions in the
real world—​via national agencies (such as regional desks at foreign ministries),
regional associations (such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or the
European Union), and international bodies (such as regional offices set up by
the World Bank or regional classifications in international sports competitions
such as the FIFA World Cup). Even if artificial, such groupings provide common
frames for discussions that cut across scholarly and policy communities. Thus,
even though regions are socially constructed and do not in and of themselves
explain anything (Bunce 2000, 721), they may nevertheless represent a practi-
cal means to organize scholarly research on the ground, sometimes also offer-
ing controls for comparative analysis or establishing scope conditions for causal
narratives.
Because area-​based scholarship may be grounded in very different disciplines
across the humanities or the social sciences, it is not a surprise that area special-
ists proceed from different epistemological perspectives and methodological
approaches. Even within social science disciplines—​the main concern of this
volume—​empirical research into particular countries or areas may be deployed
to engage different styles of qualitative analysis with different objectives and
assumptions. At the most nomothetic extreme, there is the treatment of geo-
graphically bounded spaces, usually countries or subnational locales, as cases
designed to produce illustrations or tests of universal hypotheses that purport
to explain some set of recurrent phenomena. At the other extreme is the effort
to understand and “thickly” describe social practices of actors within their local
contexts. The resultant narratives are geared to understanding the subjective
experience of the actors than toward portable models or inferences. Thus, at any
given time in any given academic setting, disciplinary battles over epistemology
and methodology inflect the intellectual commitments of different kinds of area
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 9

specialists, while also affecting the standing of area studies writ large in a given
discipline.
Since the end of the Cold War, the wide-​ranging styles of area studies schol-
arship have evolved in different ways even in the face of similar global predica-
ments, whether in terms of new security challenges in the aftermath of 9/​11 or
the impact of heightened global flows of capital, people, ideas, and best practices.
These trends have certainly affected international affairs in profound ways, with
some popular notions such as “the end of history” (Fukuyama 1989) and “a flat-
tening of the globe” (Friedman 2005) implicitly privileging global processes
of homogenization or convergence. This is not sufficient reason, however, to
assume away the diversity within and across areas, especially when we consider
the different ways in which actors in different locales have been responding to
transnational or global phenomena. Indeed, deep familiarity with area-​specific
contextual knowledge becomes arguably more critical for debating the extent to
which “reactions to the global condition” of different groups in different locales
may vary (Middell and Naumann 2010, 163; see also Appadurai 2000; Drake
and Hilbink 2004).
Nevertheless, area studies communities have been contending with a number
of fundamental critiques. One line of attack, especially prominent in the humani-
ties and cultural anthropology, took the form of a poststructuralist deconstruction
of narratives related to non-​Western countries or regions. At least partly inspired
by Edward Said’s seminal work on “Orientalism,” this critique drew attention to
the fact that the lens through which non-​Western regions and their inhabitants
are typically viewed by Western observers consisted of deep-​seated fundamen-
tal binaries of “us” and “them.” This binary reinforced relations of hegemony
and domination in the real world. The implication here is that the study of other
cultures and societies must be radically restructured so as to expose and reverse
prejudiced constructions of the object of knowledge (cf. Mitchell 2004; Schäbler
2007; Sidaway 2013). The putative solutions include calls for greater engagement
with content from the “Global South”—​both theoretical and empirical—​on its
own terms. The keywords in this context are inclusiveness, which refers to “a will-
ingness to work with alternative theoretical approaches and take into account
hitherto excluded voices,” and pluralism, which requires “a willingness to rec-
ognize the existence of alternative intellectual philosophies, theories, models,
norms, and values” (Narlikar 2016, 3–​4). Other scholars have advocated tak-
ing onboard perspectives provided by either European social theorists, such as
Bourdieu, Foucault, Giddens, Gramsci, and Habermas, or by revisionist histori-
ans exploring the lives of “subalterns” in South Asia or other postcolonial regions
(Szanton 2004; Drake and Hilbink 2004; Chakrabarty 2000). In practical terms,
however, this critique did not imply a diminishing of area expertise, but rather
10 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

more intensive engagement with diverse intellectual traditions within the coun-
tries and areas being studied.
With the end of the Cold War, a quite different critique arose in the field of
global or world history, which has come to occupy an increasingly prominent
niche within the discipline of history (e.g., Belich et al. 2016b; Conrad 2013;
Little 2014). This movement has taken issue with the privileged and convenient
focus on nation-​states as the default unit for collecting and organizing obser-
vations about social phenomena and world-​historical events. This critique has
gained further traction in conjunction with the idea that globalization has inten-
sified dialectical processes of de-​and reterritorialization of geographic units pre-
viously assumed to be stable (see Middell and Naumann 2010). Even if global
history does not necessarily imply a universal history, it does depend on a de-​
coupling of cultural and geographic space and a de-​centering of historical nar-
ratives that focus only on a given locale or society. Countering the fixed spatial
constructs undergirding area studies, scholars have recommended more atten-
tion to how local identities and practices are affected by global flows of culture,
media, and the like, and by the growing significance of migration and diaspora
communities, particularly in relation to transnational economic relations, social
networks, movements, and organizations (see Chakrabarty 1998; Katzenstein
2001; Eckert 2005; van Schendel 2005). Global history extends beyond and
complements, but it need not replace, or compete with, the kind of research pro-
duced by historians focused on a given country or region.
Perhaps the strongest and most sustained challenge to area studies, especially
in the United States, has emerged out of methodological battles in political sci-
ence, where the subfield of “comparative politics” had long treated expertise in
the politics of different countries or regions as a core feature. During the height
of the Cold War, the conceptual apparatus of structural-​functionalism (e.g.,
Almond and Coleman 2015 [1960]) provided a bridge between the academic
study of “modernization” in different areas and the U.S. government’s efforts to
track the developmental trajectories of countries in those areas. Substantial fund-
ing was made available to support research within countries and regions, and area
expertise quickly became a key part of both graduate training and job descrip-
tions in comparative politics. With the end of the Cold War, political science wit-
nessed calls for a unified methodology based on fundamental rules of inference
that could ensure rigor across quantitative and qualitative approaches (King et al.
1994). Area specialists doing qualitative research were faulted (at least implicitly)
for relying too much on country-​or area-​specific training while lacking the level
of theoretical sophistication and methodological rigor expected at the cutting
edge of the discipline. Some even raised the possibility of an “international divi-
sion of labor,” with area-​based observational knowledge to be supplied by native
researchers from various countries while political scientists in the United States
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 11

could concentrate on building up technical skills to analyze data in support of


“non-​specific, increasingly abstract theory” (Golden 1998). This project did not
go very far. Some of the leading figures in comparative politics offered a spirited
defense of intensive area training and expertise (Hall and Tarrow 1998; Johnson
1997; Lustick 1997; Katzenstein 2001). Still, the field began to tilt. As nomo-
thetic forms of research became more prevalent and prestigious, calls were made
for country-​or area-​focused qualitative research to be combined with formal
models and/​or statistical inferences as part of mixed-​method research designs
(Bates et al. 1998; Laitin 2003; Lieberman 2005).5
There is still no new hegemonic paradigm or a unifying methodological con-
sensus (Lichbach 2003). Qualitative area-​focused research continues to be reg-
ularly and frequently published in comparative politics journals in the United
States (Munck and Snyder 2007a, 25). Moreover, the events of 9/​11, in particu-
lar, have served to underscore for many “the value of country-​and region-​specific
knowledge” (Wibbels 2007, 39). Nevertheless, the field of area studies in the
United States remains vulnerable, if not “in the thralls of a fiscal and epistemo-
logical crisis” (Goss and Wesley-​Smith 2010, ix). The visibility of single-​country
or single-​area studies in the discipline’s highest-​ranked journals has diminished
(Mahoney 2007). Scholars in comparative politics in the United States face
mounting challenges as the government cuts funding for advanced language and
cultural training in key regions, including the former Soviet Union (King 2015).
Available funding has increasingly been channeled through the U.S. Department
of Defense and linked to the priorities of the security sector (Mosser 2010; Wiley
2012). Yet with war and conflict extending from the Middle East to East Asia
and the former Soviet Union, prominent scholars and private foundations have
continued to reaffirm the need for deep knowledge of countries and areas for
both theory-​development and policy-​relevant knowledge (e.g., Hanson 2009; Sil
2009; Gallucci 2014; King 2015; Mosely 2009; Pepinsky 2015).
In contrast to the United States, Europe has seen the emergence of new fund-
ing models that have given impetus to new and varied strategies for area-​based
inquiry. In the United Kingdom, major schools set up to study parts of the world
continue to draw distinguished scholars and support country-​or area-​focused
research. For example, the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) at the
University of London, established in 1916 with the mission to advance knowl-
edge about Asia and to train officials for overseas postings across the British
Empire, remains a premier institution for in-​depth study of Africa, Asia, and the
Middle East, boasting the largest staff of area specialists (over 300) of any univer-
sity in the world.6 To take another example, at the University College London, the

5. But, on the limits and potential pitfalls of mixed-​method approaches, see Ahmed and Sil (2012).
6. As per the website of SOAS: https://​www.soas.ac.uk/​about/​ (accessed February 27, 2017).
12 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

School of Slavonic and East European Studies is among the leading institutions
worldwide for the study of Russia, the Baltics, and Central and Eastern Europe.
There are also a host of British area studies associations for various countries and
regions, many of which have joined the United Kingdom Council for Area Studies
Associations, founded in 2003. In addition, the Arts and Humanities Research
Council, the British Academy, and other governmental funding bodies have in
recent years funded five collaborative “Centres for Excellence in language-​based
Area Studies” that focus on China, Japan, the Arabic-​speaking world, and Eastern
Europe, including areas of the former Soviet Union. While similar public invest-
ment is not available for the study of other parts of the world, on the whole, the
commitment in the British academe to area studies remains more robust than in
the United States.
In Germany, the federal government has provided since 2006 massive funding
to foster competition among state universities with the express aim of creating
a dozen or so “universities of excellence.” Complementary competition-​based
funding lines have become available for non-​university research institutes. Area
studies have benefited from these moves to the extent that they have been suc-
cessful in obtaining funding for new graduate schools, research clusters, and
collaborative national and international academic networks. They have also
benefited since 2009 from a major funding initiative by the Federal Ministry of
Education and Research (BMBF) specifically intended to boost a wide array of
area studies centers and research networks on many world regions as well as on
cross-​regional flows and interactions. This has been followed by a BMBF initia-
tive to set up fellowship-​based collaborative research centers in South Asia, Latin
America, China, and in Sub-​Saharan Africa.7 Finally, private foundations and the
federal government have initiated new think tanks and funding lines for research
on and with (partners in) China, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and some other
world regions. Examples include the Mercator Institute for China Studies
(MERICS), the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS),
and the Volkswagen Foundation’s funding initiative for research on Central Asia
and the Caucasus. Notably, these new streams of funding have not only served
to strengthen and internationalize research and teaching on major regions of
the world, but they have also helped to promote new initiatives intended to
explore transregional connections and circulations (cf. Middell 2017; Mielke and
Hornidge 2017) as well as diffusion processes (see also Huotari and Rüland, this
volume).
Despite the different conditions facing area studies communities in different
countries, the end of the Cold War has prompted social scientists in both Europe

7. Support for these initiatives was boosted by the recommendations by the German Council of
Science and Humanities on how to advance area studies (Wissenschaftsrat 2006).
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 13

and North America to ask more questions about processes that traverse and con-
nect world regions, just as scholars of global history are doing in the discipline of
history. Far from suggesting a “flattening” of the world (Friedman 2005), these
engagements emphasize the swerving course of commodity chains, production
networks, diasporic communities, and norm diffusion across an ineluctably tex-
tured global terrain. In Germany, the vitality of such transnational and transre-
gional approaches and of newer global studies programs resulted in 2014 also in
the establishment of an association for transregional studies, comparative area
studies, and global studies (CrossArea). In the United States, the push for multi-​
method research, in addition to recent efforts to revitalize comparative-​historical
analysis (Mahoney and Thelen 2015), has created an impetus for frameworks
where common concepts are structuring qualitative narratives focused on differ-
ent countries and regions. Still, this work is pushed more by individual scholars
(including several featured in this volume) than by particular institutes. Thus,
research explicitly focused on cross-​regional comparisons or transregional pro-
cesses, while still overshadowed by large-​N studies and single-​area studies, is gain-
ing more traction on both sides of the Atlantic. Importantly, this work is building
on—​not ignoring or undercutting—​qualitative research focused on given areas.
This type of research does not point to a single analytic strategy or proceed from
a uniform epistemic commitment. It is, however, predicated on objectives and
assumptions that are similar enough to represent a shared analytic perspective
that we refer to here as “comparative area studies” (CAS).

THE ADVENT OF CAS AND THE CASE


FOR CROSS-​R EGIONAL COMPARISON
The term CAS is not new. During the 1990s, for example, Duke University offered
a major in “comparative area studies.” In recent years, the term has become prom-
inent in Europe as a way of capturing an analytical perspective situated at the
interstices of area studies and comparative inquiry in social science disciplines
(Basedau and Köllner 2007; Ahram 2011b; Berg-​Schlosser 2012; Huotari
and Rüland 2014). The German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA)
in particular has actively promoted CAS by encouraging a range of scholarly
activities—​including lecture series, workshops, and research networks—​that
bring together specialists on Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East to
explore parallel and contrasting trajectories (Basedau and Köllner 2006; 2007;
von Soest and Stroh, this volume). The term is not as common in the United
States, but the methodological rationales and research practices associated with
CAS are evident in efforts to promote “cross-​regional comparison” (Huber
2003; Sil 2009) or to identify certain advances in historical institutionalist or
comparative-​historical analysis (Immergut 2006; Mahoney and Rueschemeyer
14 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

2003; Mahoney and Thelen 2015). The common theme running through these
efforts is a desire to uncover portable mechanisms and causal processes, but with
due attention to the potential impact of context conditions present in specific
historical, sociocultural, institutional, and geographic settings.
This volume brings together methodological essays and empirical studies
that, in different ways, highlight the shared assumptions and intellectual payoffs
of CAS. While area specialists tend to focus on analyzing or interpreting phe-
nomena in individual countries or world regions (however bounded), the social
sciences have also long embraced the quasi-​experimental logic associated with
variants of the comparative method. Historically, the two endeavors have been
associated with different research objectives and strategies, yielding different
kinds of knowledge claims. More importantly, the two kinds of approaches were
seen previously as operating at cross-​purposes. Dedicated area specialists often
expressed skepticism about the reliability of case studies produced in the service
of macro-​comparative analyses, but sometimes without the training or experi-
ence to understand conditions on the ground in a given locale. From the other
side, comparativists in the social sciences have sometimes wondered about the
utility of narratives focused on a single context for theoretical debates or policy
questions that matter for more than one area. This methodological trade-​off can-
not be completely overcome or bypassed. CAS is predicated on the assumption
that, while the implied trade-​off can never be fully resolved, it can be mitigated
by research strategies that split the difference between a context-​bound narra-
tive and universalizing comparison. This not only increases the chances of hitting
upon fresh insights and recognizing parallel debates and discoveries taking place
across different communities, but it also expands the dialogue between general
comparativists and members of different area studies communities.
CAS comes with no pre-​set methodological toolkit. Nevertheless, the chap-
ters in this volume reveal CAS’s elective affinities to comparative analyses that
rely on context-​sensitive process tracing and cross-​case comparisons in iterative
and conjunctive fashion. Put differently, the CAS approach shares with much
recent case-​based qualitative research an interest in moving beyond correla-
tional claims toward identifying specific concatenations of factors responsible
for macro-​transformations (Mahoney 2001a). The distinction between “data-​set
observations” (DSOs), normally used to increase degrees of freedom in regres-
sion analysis, and “causal process observations” (CSOs), which refer to obser-
vations that contain built-​in insights and information about the interaction of
contexts, processes, and mechanisms in the process of generating causal infer-
ence is particularly salient (Brady and Collier 2010 [2004]; Mahoney 2010b).
While individual case studies are able to engage in process-​tracing, the use of
multiple comparable cases allows for the juxtaposition of an array of causal proc-
ess observations that can yield portable but problem-​focused inferences while
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 15

also allowing for some degree of engagement with scholarly discourses and con-
tested historiographical traditions within area studies communities.8
CAS refrains from a priori privileging a particular level of analysis, master
variable, or causal mechanism. Rather, CAS presumes an open-​ended approach
that reflects the pragmatic spirit of “analytic eclecticism” (Sil and Katzenstein
2010). That is, the ontological and epistemological foundations of CAS sup-
port problem-​driven configurative efforts to trace complex interactions between,
rather than prioritize, individual-​level mechanisms stressed in rational choice
or psychological analysis, on the one hand, and various structural mechanisms,
material and ideational. Moreover, while searching for portable causal linkages,
CAS recognizes that highly localized contextual attributes can condition the
influence of general mechanisms and even prove decisive in accounting for a
given set of trajectories or outcomes. Charles Tilly and Robert Goodin (2006,
6) assert: “attention to context does not clutter description and explanation of
political [or more broadly: social] processes, but, on the contrary promotes sys-
tematic knowledge”—​for example, by recognizing the range of factors at various
levels that drive a particular process, or by identifying scope conditions for expla-
nations of a particular outcome. It is not enough to say that “context matters.”
CAS implies an effort to identify what attributes of different kinds of spatial and
temporal contexts matter in what way for understanding the operation of a given
mechanism or explaining the range of phenomena, processes, and outcomes evi-
dent across a discrete set of contexts (see also Ferree et al. 2013).
In practical terms, the commitment of CAS to context-​sensitivity does not
mean focusing on hermeneutic projects and/​or eschewing causal generalization
(see Hollis and Smith 1990). It does, however, entail a self-​conscious effort to
become familiar with locally significant cultural discourses, social institutions,
contested narratives, and historiographic traditions. While not every scholar can
become an expert in every country or area, it is still worthwhile to experience
some exposure to local complexities on the ground, to intellectual traditions of
native scholarship, and to ongoing debates within relevant area studies com-
munities. This type of exposure can help researchers, especially those who have
expertise in at least one area, strike a balance between the search for portable
inferences and a better grasp of the challenges involved in interpreting actors’
choices and understandings across diverse contexts. This puts CAS near a “mid-
dle ground” between, on the one hand, context-​bound scholarship oriented to
idiographic narratives or hermeneutic interpretation and, on the other hand, the
analysis of cases according to the dictates of the comparative method in search

8. For more extensive discussions of process-​tracing and the utility of case studies, see Beach and
Pederson (2013), Bennett and Checkel (2015), Blatter and Haverland (2012), Collier (2011),
Gerring (2016), George and Bennett (2005), Rohlfing (2012), and Tansey (2007).
16 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

of nomothetic generalizations intended to cover a larger population of cases. In


short, CAS seeks to leverage some of the contextual knowledge created by immer-
sion in area-​specific scholarly discourse and some of the analytic purchase associ-
ated with the logic of the comparative method in a small-​N study.
This implies that CAS continues to depend on intra-​regional qualitative
research. Even where a scholar moves from a single-​case study to a small-​N com-
parison, it is understandable that she would want to rely on preexisting expertise
and language within a familiar area, forfeiting the study of other cases that may
be methodologically more suitable. Small-​N studies are thus far more prevalent
within world regions than across them, particularly such regions where a single
language can help conduct research in multiple cases. We see this in research on
Latin America, where Spanish is used everywhere except Brazil (e.g., Collier and
Collier 1991; Mahoney 2010a), sub-​Saharan Africa with its many Anglophone
and Francophone countries (e.g., Elischer 2013; Stroh 2014), the Middle East
with the prevalence of Arabic (Bank et al. 2015; Lynch 2012), and the former
Soviet Union, where Russian is still handy for interviews and archival research
(Hale 2014; Luong 2002). And, for the advanced industrial economies of
Europe, North America, and East Asia, volumes of standardized data and readily
available translations of many documents allow for fruitful comparative research
(e.g., Steinmo 2010; Thelen 2004). More generally, area specialists working on a
given world region tend to be more familiar with each other, are more likely to
interact institutionally and professionally through area studies centers and con-
ferences, and engage in interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations that lead
to insights most likely to be appreciated first by other scholars in that area studies
community. CAS regards these benefits of area-​focused qualitative research as
extremely valuable, even necessary, for moving ahead with cross-​regional com-
parative analysis with any degree of confidence.
Yet, what distinguishes CAS is the idea that the context conditions across
two or more regions—​and of countries and locales within those regions—​may
encompass similarities and differences that affect the operation of more gen-
eral causal processes and mechanisms. At the broadest level, CAS highlights
the possibility and desirability of inter-​regional comparison, where the unit of
comparison is a whole region and where research questions sit at the “intersec-
tion of comparative politics, international relations and (comparative and tran-
sregional) area studies” (Börzel and Risse 2016, 5). Such efforts are predicated
on the assumption that there are regionally specific transformational processes
that influence the trajectories of world regions and the countries within them
(Whitehead, this volume). Local distinctiveness is downplayed to illuminate
regionally bounded historical pathways or discrete waves of diffusion. Examples
of such region-​wide processes include the clustered transitions to democracy on
different continents (O’Donnell et al. 1986; Bogaards 2016), the consolidation
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 17

of states (V. Lieberman 2009), regional pathways to industrialization (Gereffi and


Wyman 1990), and contrasting approaches to nuclear proliferation (Solingen
2007). As more scholars delve into processes that mark how individual regions
are affected by global dynamics (e.g., Pempel 2005), CAS sees a payoff from
interregional comparisons that may reveal different trajectories of regionalization
(e.g., Katzenstein 2005) as well as the differential impact across regions of global
“vectors of connectivity” (Belich et al. 2016a, 5).
The bulk of this volume, however, is dedicated to a more modest objective: cre-
ating more space for cross-​regional small-​N comparison encompassing cases
drawn from different areas while retaining the commitment to context-​sensitivity
evident in area-​bound small-​N comparison. Cross-​regional comparisons are not
absent from the social sciences, yet they are still a small part of the repertoire
of qualitative research compared to single-​case studies or intra-​regional small-​N
comparisons. As Table 1.1 indicates, in the field of comparative politics—​which
encompasses area studies research as well as cross-​case comparisons—​cross-​
regional comparison represents no more than 15 percent of the literature. This
is consistent with observations previously made by Evelyne Huber (2003) and
Gerardo Munck and Richard Snyder (2007a). Yet, social scientific research tack-
les many questions where one region does not cover the extent of variation. For
such questions, analytic benefits accrue to comparing sets of cases selected on the
basis of the systematic, problem-​driven matching of dependent or independent
variables (George and Bennett 2005; Gerring 2016; Tarrow 2010b). Moreover,
as Huber (2003, 1) notes, cross-​regional comparison can help to refine theories

Table 1.1. Single-​A rea vs. Cross-​A rea Case Selection in Small-​N
Research in Recent Books in the Field of Comparative Politics*

Total books in sample 409 100%


Studies limited to a single area 346 85%
—​Single case or country studies (203) (55%)
—​Multiple cases in a single region (143) (30%)
Studies with cases from more than one area 63 15%

* The sample is based on books reviewed in the comparative politics section of Perspectives
on Politics between March 2006 (volume 4, issue 1) and March 2013 (volume 13, issue 1).
Books are coded as presenting small-​N research here when they offer either chapters
on cases or comparisons of the same set of cases over two or more thematic chapters.
Excluded from the sample are: edited volumes, medium-​N studies (more than eight
cases), and qualitative studies used solely to illustrate logics rooted in formal or statistical
models. For Europe, Eastern and Western Europe count as separate regions when the
time period examined overlaps with the Cold War. In post-​communist studies, books are
coded as single area where all cases are from the former Soviet bloc. Excellent research
assistance was provided by Todor Enev and Basak Taraktas.
18 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

and specify theories if similar processes are found to be unfolding through dif-
ferent paths in widely different contexts. Considering these potential intellectual
payoffs, it is surprising that the balance between cross-​regional comparisons and
area-​based qualitative research is so heavily tilted in favor of the latter.
The approach of CAS to cross-​regional comparison rejects the dichotomous
trade-​off between the need for prior area expertise and the logic of comparative
inquiry. It is true that limiting a small-​N study to cases from one region, even
for the sake of leveraging prior area expertise, risks shrinking the population of
cases and truncating the full range of variation (Geddes 1990; Rohlfing 2012).
Yet, there is little point to adding new cases if one “gets the story wrong”—​for
example, through unconscious selection bias in the use of sources stemming
from a lack of familiarity with the context (Lustick 1996). CAS is predicated on
the possibility that each side of the trade-​off can be partly reduced so as to pro-
duce a distinctive kind of research product with a distinctive intellectual payoff.
On one hand, CAS backs away from a strict application of the logic of Mills’s
methods in favor of somewhat more flexible selection criteria for cases—​with at
least one or two drawn from a scholar’s area of expertise. On the other hand, CAS
can identify a degree of context-​sensitivity in the handling of a given case that,
while not based on first acquiring full-​blown training and expertise (including
language study), extrapolates from an area specialist’s experience to recognize the
relevance of contextual attributes, historiographic debates, and the complexities
on the ground in cases outside of one’s primary area of expertise. In effect, CAS
encourages contextualized comparison of similarly defined units selected from
different world regions but with close attention to the complexities and contro-
versies present in studies of each of the individual units. This holds the promise
of intellectual payoffs that are distinct from those generated by more “standard”
approaches in the field, be they large-​N analyses or case studies focused on a sin-
gle locale or area.
For this style of comparative inquiry, simply identifying and absorbing the
relevant background knowledge and/​or acquiring the necessary skills for field-
work can be a daunting task (see also Hall and Tarrow 1998). Nevertheless, a
growing number of scholars have taken on this challenge, typically in mono-
graphs that afford the space needed to delve into contextual factors across several
cases.9 Some examples may be found among past works by many of the authors
contributing to this volume (Ahmed 2013; Ahram 2011a; Cheng Chen 2007;
Saylor 2014; Sil 2002; Smith 2007). Just a few other examples from the last two
decades include: Ruth Collier’s comparative-​historical examination of the role of

9. Such work is generally difficult to compress into article form, unless we relax our expectations of
context-​sensitivity for each case. See, however, Chen and Sil (2006), Saylor and Wheeler (2017),
Slater and Simmons (2013), and von Soest et al. (2011).
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 19

working-​class and elite mobilization in democratization in 19th-​century Europe


and 20th-​century South America (Collier 1999); Elisabeth Wood’s comparative
study of the termination of insurgencies and the negotiation of democratic pacts
in El Salvador and South Africa (Wood 2000); Evan Lieberman’s study of the
politics of race and taxation in Brazil and South Africa (E. Lieberman 2003); Atul
Kohli’s account of state-​directed development in postcolonial Brazil, India, Korea,
and Nigeria (Kohli 2004); and Jason Brownlee’s analysis of electoral authoritari-
anism in Egypt, Malaysia, Iran, and the Philippines (Brownlee 2007). Such stud-
ies collectively demonstrate the further potential of cross-​regional comparisons
that delve deeply into their cases and engage area studies debates while offering
novel arguments that speak to portable concepts and theories. Nevertheless, as
seen in Table 1.1, they are more the exception than the norm.
Cross-​regional comparisons are not without pitfalls. Aside from the practical
issues in carrying out research in different regions, any cross-​case comparison
must be especially attentive to the use of concepts across heterogeneous con-
text conditions (Dogan and Pelassy 1990). Small-​N analyses depend on being
able to identify and code similar phenomena in a consistent manner so as to
ensure comparability across cases. In the process, problems can arise from dif-
ferent understandings of a concept not only among scholarly communities but
also among groups of social, economic, and political actors in different countries
or regions (Schaffer 2016, see also Huotari and Rüland, this volume). A concept
such as “democracy” can have quite different meanings in specific local politi-
cal contexts, with free and fair elections ascribed the greatest importance in one
setting but the rule of law, economic security, equality, or solidarity given prefer-
ence or mattering greatly in another (cf. Lipson 1948; Schaffer 2000). Moreover,
operationalizing concepts across a larger number of cases carries risks with
respect to conceptual precision (Sartori 1994; Collier and Mahon 1993; Collier
and Levitsky 1997). These risks are even greater where the cases are chosen from
different regions. Yet, construing concepts to fit only one region risks Balkanizing
our knowledge. Scholars may develop distinctive concepts that endure within a
single area studies community but stand in the way of recognizing similarities in
the actual phenomena unfolding in different regions. This represents both a chal-
lenge and an opportunity for CAS, which must guard against “over-​stretching”
concepts across regions, taking care to adjust the meanings and indicators of a
concept across discrete local contexts (Locke and Thelen 1995).10
The choice of research strategies and levels of abstraction represents another
crucial methodological issue for contextualized comparison across regions.
Given the interest of CAS in the interaction between general mechanisms and

10. For further discussion of concepts, see Collier et al. (2006), Gerring (2012: ­chapter 5), Goertz
(2006), Schedler (2011), and Schaffer (2016).
20 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

contextual attributes, the level of generality at which a mechanism is defined and


the extent of thickness in depicting contextual conditions must be consistent in
addressing different regional settings. Adapting the basic logic of comparative
method, where the objective is to explain a common outcome across different
conditions, a “least similar systems” design points to greater heterogeneity of
context conditions. Where the objective is to explain a difference in outcomes
given certain initial conditions, a “most similar systems” implies greater homo-
geneity across context conditions. Despite the simplicity of these logics, how-
ever, caution must be exercised in setting up cross-​regional comparisons. This is
because assumptions about the relevance of contextual similarities or differences
become especially difficult when we take into account the operation of contex-
tual attributes that apply to whole world regions and those that apply to distinc-
tive kinds of locales that happen to exist across such regions (such as the presence
of certain natural resources or certain geographic features such as dense forests or
proximity to waterways).
Ultimately, what counts as truly “comparable cases” (Lijphart 1975) depends
on the formulation of a research question and the broader aims of the researcher.
From the perspective of CAS, a common purpose involves balancing the search
for novel hypotheses or partial explanations of variation (or convergence) across
cases with a modest effort to engage the local discourses, historiographic debates,
and intellectual traditions held to be important by the relevant area studies com-
munities. The contributors to this volume have all done research as area specialists.
Here, they seek to highlight either the (distinct but overlapping) methodological
rationales for CAS (Part II of the volume) or the substantive research projects
comparing cases drawn from at least two world regions (Part III of the volume).

ORGANIZATION OF THE VOLUME


The six chapters that make up Part II of this volume deal with the epistemolog-
ical and methodological issues undergirding CAS. The authors of these chap-
ters acknowledge the challenges in cross-​regional comparisons. These include
managing the practical problems of in-​depth case research in different world
regions, addressing conceptual issues from a categorical logical or interpretive
perspective, and matching research strategies with appropriate comparable cases.
Epistemologically and methodologically self-​aware researchers need to calibrate
concepts and analytic strategies to mitigate the most significant problems while
producing novel insights pertaining to both general theoretical problematiques
at the disciplinary level and related (or even parallel) debates going on in separate
area studies communities.
The first three chapters consider general issues related to research in a CAS
framework. In ­chapter 2, Dirk Berg-​Schlosser focuses on how area studies
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 21

research has evolved over the past two decades, evincing greater theoretical ambi-
tion and incorporating Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), which is par-
ticularly useful for medium-​N studies. He delves into studies of democratic
transformation across four regions and of political participation in marginalized
communities across four countries to demonstrate the value of cross-​regional
comparative studies for gaining traction on important political problems of our
time. Laurence Whitehead, in ­chapter 3, sees CAS as offering a distinctive “depth
of vision” that allows researchers to strike a balance between the deep but narrow
treatment of countries with the broader but often “flat” view of political reality
in universal studies. Warning against overly reductionist explanations for phe-
nomena spanning multiple world regions, Whitehead lays out several protocols
for cross-​regional comparative research that aims at propositions that may be
broadly causal but are also configurative, multidisciplinary, and aimed at devel-
oping understandings that can be corroborated within each world region. In
­chapter 4, Christian von Soest and Alexander Stroh point to structured qualita-
tive comparison across world regions as a bridge between studies that highlight
diversity within regions and those concerned with global datasets without atten-
tion to regional context. While recognizing the practical challenges of executing
research across regions and the pitfalls of concepts made to travel too far, they
employ cross-​area comparative studies of judicial politics and neopatrimonialism
to highlight the value of “applied CAS.”
The next three chapters look into how specific area studies traditions initially
contribute to particular understandings that can be refined through considera-
tion of comparable phenomena in other areas. In ­chapter 5, Mikko Huotari and
Jürgen Rüland highlight the possibilities opened up by CAS for moving the field
of Southeast Asian studies forward, using the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of area
studies scholarship to lower disciplinary (and subdisciplinary) barriers centered
on methodological issues. While emphasizing the importance of concept port-
ability and transitivity, they stress the importance of drawing comparisons to
non-​Western regions around crucial phenomena as a means of forging broad
arguments that can transcend “Western-​centric” theory-​building in many social
science disciplines. Amel Ahmed, in ­chapter 6, reexamines key assumptions and
debates in American political development against the backdrop of scholarship
on 19th-​century European democratization. While historical studies of elec-
toral reform in Europe generally ignore the American case, Ahmed delves into
U.S. political history to show how efforts to contain working-​class mobilization
through electoral reform first emerged in the United States and subsequently
influenced European elites in their efforts to cope with the same problem. At
the same time, the implicit parallels between the objectives and strategies of
American and European political elites enable Ahmed to show that the absence
of a workers’ party in the United States is perhaps not as much of an exceptional
22 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

outcome as once thought. In ­chapter 7, the final chapter of Part II, André Bank
notes that, while intra-​regional comparisons have been the most prevalent in
Middle Eastern studies to date, the various efforts to analyze the Arab Spring
have created more openings for cross-​regional comparisons. The varied dynam-
ics, trajectories, and outcomes of the political upheavals that swept across the
Middle East have encouraged area experts on the region to engage in more sys-
tematic comparative work and to recognize the value of insights drawn from
parallel phenomena in other spatial and historical contexts. In particular, Bank
refers to insights that can be drawn from political upheavals that evinced simi-
lar dynamics, though not necessarily similar origins or outcomes, in both post-​
Soviet space and European history.
The chapters in Part III of the volume are intended as exemplary empirical
studies based on comparative analyses of cases selected from different world
regions. All of the chapters share the premise that direct comparison of similar
units is necessary for a better understanding of political, social, and economic
transformations unfolding in two or more world regions. The chapters are topi-
cally diverse and deal with different sets of comparable cases; yet, they all dem-
onstrate a common self-​conscious effort to treat the cases in a context-​sensitive
manner while relying on cross-​case comparison to uncover hidden parallels and
generate novel arguments. Collectively, the studies go a long way toward demon-
strating the kinds of intellectual gains that CAS brings to the table.
In c­ hapter 8, Cheng Chen offers a careful, contextualized comparison of anti-​
corruption campaigns launched in China and Russia by, respectively, President Xi
Jinping and President Vladimir Putin. Although superficially similar in their official
goal of seeking to curb corruption, these campaigns reflect quite different political
imperatives derived from different antecedent conditions and institutional settings.
Putin’s anti-​corruption campaign is mostly a defensive move to contend with fac-
tionalism in a weakly institutionalized “hybrid” regime. In ­chapter 9, Ariel Ahram
offers an explanation of state and regime breakdown in the Arab world that hinges
on the precursor regimes and the varying ability of different kinds of republican and
monarchical authoritarian systems to respond effectively to the diffusion of popu-
lar challenges. But, Ahram also shows how the Arab Spring uprisings had varying
ripple effects in neighboring non-​Arab countries like Israel and Mali.
In c­ hapter 10, Benjamin Smith’s study of separatist movements across Africa,
Asia, and the Middle East derives its core insights from examining the history of
the Kurds, who comprise significant minorities in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
Hypothesizing that the Kurds’ semi-​feudal social structure provided a kind of
ready-​made institutional and organizational basis for rebellion, Smith circles back
to examine Tuareg and Acehnese state-​seeking movements, as well as the negative
cases of Latin America’s “missing” separatism. In ­chapter 11, Ryan Saylor delves
into the impact of natural resource booms on state development, relying on a
Comparative Area Studies: What It Is, What It Can Do 23

deep historical comparison that spans not just two disparate geographic areas,
Africa and Latin America, but two distinct periods of global political economy,
the 19th and mid-​20th centuries. This audacious scope allows Saylor to explain
how different interests and institutional alignments can turn natural resources
into a blessing or a curse.
In c­ hapter 12, the final chapter of Part III, Calvin Chen traces the diffusion
of a particular form of economic organization from China to European coun-
tries in the post–​Cold War period, borne by immigrants who have been able to
reconstruct stable diaspora communities. Using multi-​site ethnography, Chen
details the remarkable adaptability and usefulness of particular social networks
and cultural norms that were built into the “Wenzhou model” but reappeared
in Prato, Italy, where Wenzhounese Chinese settled down and set out to launch
new business ventures. While some ethnographers (and historians) continue
to be averse to comparison on epistemological or even ontological grounds (cf.
Middell and Naumann 2010; Sidaway 2013; Sidaway et al. 2016), Chen’s chapter
demonstrates that comparative inquiry can take the form of multi-​sited ethnog-
raphy, which has come to be an increasingly accepted form of idiographic analysis
within anthropology and other social science disciplines.11
In the concluding chapter of this volume, Rudra Sil redeploys the term “trian-
gulation”—​typically used to suggest a combination of quantitative and qualitative
approaches to data collection and analysis—​to capture the distinctive role that
CAS and cross-​regional contextualized comparison can play in pooling observa-
tions, analyses, and narratives that arise from doing purely qualitative research
across different geographic areas. Such a comparative approach is not without risks
and pitfalls, especially considering the challenges of grappling with esoteric debates
or particular local complexities in cases that fall outside of one’s primary area of
expertise. Yet, Sil argues that the payoffs are well worth it, given the potential for
hitting upon distinctive kinds of theoretical insights and illuminating new connec-
tions between scholarly inquiry taking place in separate area studies communities.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?


Looking ahead, CAS’s value lies not only in the novel insights generated through
cross-​regional comparison, but also in translating and aggregating the findings
of—​and expanding the dialogue between—​qualitative researchers operating

11. George Marcus (1995, 102) notes that “[c]‌omparison reenters the very act of ethnographic
specification by a research design of juxtapositions in which the global is collapsed into and made
an integral part of parallel, related local situations rather than something monolithic or external
to them. This move toward comparison embedded in the multi-​sited ethnography stimulates
accounts of cultures composed in a landscape for which there is yet no developed theoretical con-
ception or descriptive model.”
24 P atrick K ö llner , R udra S il , and A riel I . A hram

on the basis of different objectives and assumptions. Nomothetically oriented


qualitative researchers doing comparative analysis often adopt the logic of
what Sandra Comstock (2012) calls experimental comparisons, where sepa-
rate histories are used to test replicable causal relationships or produce general
explanatory theories. Yet, among idiographically oriented qualitative scholars,
too, comparative studies are becoming more common, typically in the form
of what George Steinmetz (2004) terms hermeneutic comparisons. Unlike
experimental comparisons, hermeneutic comparisons are designed to high-
light the distinctiveness of key events and historical turns in different settings
(see also Somers 1996). With its balancing of context-​sensitivity and cross-​
case causal process observations, CAS is positioned to mediate conversations
between nomothetic/​experimental and idiographic/​hermeneutic modes of
qualitative research. In this regard, it is worth noting that CAS can also accom-
modate crisp and fuzzy-​set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), another
approach that embraces the complexity of causal configurations and the heter-
ogeneity of contextual features while still seeking broader patterns and infer-
ences (Basedau and Richter 2014; Bank et al. 2015; Rihoux and Ragin 2009;
see also Berg-​Schlosser, this volume). The QCA approach, although developed
within a nomothetic tradition of social science, is more likely than standard
experimental comparisons to facilitate engagement with the “thick” narratives
favored by those working in a more idiographic tradition. By backing diverse
efforts to grapple with causal complexity, CAS can expand the scope for con-
versations among qualitative researchers operating on the basis of different
ontologies and epistemologies.
One can also imagine a broader role for CAS in the critical appraisal of con-
ventional research practice, including the continued reliance on “methodological
nationalism”—​the presumption that the current configuration of nation-​states
is a natural or default focal point for inquiry and analysis (Wimmer and Glick
Schiller 2002; Amelina et al. 2012). Across the social sciences, and particularly in
the case of comparative research, the present-​day nation-​state is often regarded
as a fixed entity and default unit of analysis, even when the socially constructed
nature of territorial boundaries is nominally acknowledged. Certainly, for many
questions, including the character of regimes, the origins of interstate conflicts,
or the effectiveness of given national economic policies, this is entirely appro-
priate. Yet, for other questions, there is the lurking possibility of privileging
methodological nationalism without adequate consideration of the long, often
slow-​moving, intertwined historical processes out of which the current array of
nation-​states originally emerged (e.g., Tilly 1990). The fact that researchers sel-
dom consider the counterfactual political entities—​say, the Confederate States
of America or the formation of Kurdistan—​illustrates the tendency to discount
the role of contingencies and deeper historical forces in the making of seemingly
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1. Survey of London, Vol. III., p. xviii.


2. “Exinde secundum quod via extra idem gardinum protenditur usque ad
metas dividentes Mersland et parochiam S. Ægidii.”
3. Survey of London, Vol. III. (St. Giles-in-the-Fields, Part I.), p. xvi.
4. Middlesex Feet of Fines, 37 Henry VIII., Mich.
5. British Museum Addl. MS., Charters, 15636.
6. Namely, reckoning west to east: (i.) Star; (ii.) unnamed house of John
Bishop; (iii.) Sun and Dolphin; (iv.) Gridiron (easternmost house in St. Giles); (v.)
Eagle and Child; (vi.) Cock and Coffin; (vii.) unnamed house in occupation of
Thos. Fisher. (Close Rolls, (a) 1652, Alexander Goddard, etc., and Philip Cotham;
(b) 1652, Alexander Goddard, etc., and Jonathan Read; (c) 13 Chas. II., Samuel
Bishopp and William Rymes).
7. Sale by Robert Harris to John Coke (Land Revenue Enrolments and
Grants, vol. 311, p. 204.)
8. Survey of London, Vol. III. (St. Giles-in-the-Fields, Part I.), p. 3.
9. British Museum MS. Claudius E VI, 218b–219.
10. Grant to Thos. Ellys, 22 Henry VIII (Land Revenue Miscellaneous Books,
No. 62); grant to Thomas Bochier (Patent Roll, 36 Henry VIII. (745)).
11. Lease of 21st July, 8 Chas. I., by Henry Hurlestone to John Allen and
Thomas Clements (Chancery Proceedings, Bridges 5–105,—Suit of John King);
Close Roll, 6 Chas. I. (2853)—Indenture between Wm. Newton and Anthony Bailey
and John Johnson.
12. Survey of London, Vol. III. (St. Giles-in-the-Fields, Part I.), pp. 3–4.
13. Certain properties, some of which include houses, are mentioned as
extending from Holborn on the north to Fickett’s Field on the south, but some, at
least, of these may have been to the west of Little Turnstile. The records in
question, when dateable, may be referred to the time of Henry III. or Edward I.
14. Parliamentary Survey (Augmentation Office), No. 25.
15. It was afterwards occupied by Chamberlain’s Stable (Survey of Crown
Lands) and this formed the eastern boundary of a piece of ground, 21 feet in width
“abutting upon the footeway leading from Master Newman’s building [west
portion of north side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields] to the Little Turnstile on the west,”
purchased by John Weston [Whetstone] from Edmond Gregory in 1661, (Close
Roll, 13 Chas. II. (4087).)
16. Close Roll, 2 Elizabeth (566).
17. Inquisitiones Post Mortem, II. Series, Vol. 149 (74).
18. Close Roll, 18 Elizabeth (990).
19. Burrard Cranigh, M.D., by his will proved 21st November, 1578, left his
lands, etc., in Holborn to be sold to pay his debts and legacies (Somerset House
Wills, Langley, 41).
20. Patent Roll, 20th July, 18 Elizabeth (1144).
21. Close Roll, 18 Elizabeth (990).
22. Close Roll, 18 Elizabeth (994).
23. Close Roll, 31 Elizabeth (1318).
24. Close Roll, 21 Charles II. (4270).
25. Blott’s Blemundsbury, p. 201.
26. Close Roll, 33 Elizabeth (1375).
27. Daughter of Sir Nicolas Harvey, and widow of George Carew, dean of
Windsor, who died in June, 1583, and was buried in the church of St. Giles-in-the-
Fields (Dictionary of National Biography).
28. No doubt the same afterwards occupied by Sir William and Lady Segar,
and Lord Bothwell (see plan of 1658 in Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn, Vol, II.) The
easternmost portion of the northern boundary of Purse Field is described as “the
late garden wall of Sir William Seager, Knt.” in the grant of the field to Newton in
1638 (Patent Roll, 13 Charles I. (2775)), and as “the garden of Bothwell House” in
the sale of that part of the field in 1653 (Close Roll, 1653 (3715))—(Indenture
between Humfrey Newton and Arthur Newman).
29. It is no doubt this intermixture of gardens and houses that caused the
peculiar shape of Partridge Alley, seen on the map accompanying Strype’s edition
of Stow (Plate 5), and better still on Hollar’s Plan of 1658 (Plate 3).
30. It is strange, however, that her will (Somerset House Wills, Hayes, 61)
bequeathing her property to her son, Sir George Carew, only mentions “all such
leases as are in my possession, as inter alia Savoy, St. Giles.”
31. Close Roll, 16 Charles I. (3228).
32. Chancery Proceedings, Bridges XX, 45. Suit of Henry Harwell.
33. Chancery Decree Roll, 1922. Suit of William Duckett and Hugh Speaks
against Henry Harwell, George Smithson, Daniel Thelwall and William Byerly.
34. Privy Council Register, Vol. 47, p. 24.
35. Chancery Proceedings, Bridges, 447–82. Suit of Peter Broome and Thos.
Barker.
36. Close Roll, 28 Elizabeth (1263).
37. On 13th June, 1592, administration of probate was granted to John Buck’s
widow, Margaret Buck. He had, therefore, died quite a short time previously (Arch.
London Probate Acts, II., 88).
38. Close Roll, 25 Elizabeth (1155).
39. Close Roll, 10 Charles I. (3018).
40. Close Roll, 13 Charles II. (4086).
41. Middlesex Registry Memorials, 1716, III., 63.
42. Close Roll, 15 Charles II. (4143).
43. John Apsley sold the inn in 1639 to Daniel Thelwall, William Bierley and
Sir Chas. Dallison. See Close Roll, 22 Charles I. (3343)—Indenture between
Dallison, Thelwall, Bierley, and George Smithson and George Gentleman.
44. Close Roll, 5 James I. (1910). Indenture between Gregory Miller and Geo.
Flower.
45. Parton (Hospital and Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, p. 354) records the
fact of the residence of Sir Anthony Ashley and Sir John Cowper (see above) in
Thornton’s Alley.
46. Middlesex Feet of Fines, 16 Elizabeth, Easter.
47. Close Roll, 2 Charles I. (2677). Indenture between Frederick Johnson and
Mary Worliche and Francis Cole.
48. Close Roll, 5 Charles I. (2800). Indenture between Francis Cole and
Robert Offley.
49. See warrant given in Indenture of 9th April, 1630, between Wm. and Joan
Newton and Anthony Bailey and John Johnson. (Close Roll, 6 Charles I. (2853).
Newton, the designer of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, had married the daughter and heir of
Gregory Miller, son of John.)
50. Survey of London, Vol. III. (St. Giles-in-the-Fields, Part I.) pp. 5–6.
51. Close Roll, 15 Chas. I. (3193).
52. Close Rolls, 20th July, 1639, between William Newton and Lewis Richard
(15 Chas. I. (3191)); 15th March, 1638–9, between Wm. Newton and John Giffard
(15 Chas. I. (3188)); 1st October, 1657, between Humfrey Newton and Arthur
Newman (1657 (3945)).
53. The houses to the south of Fortescue’s premises seem to have been built
originally as three houses. The southern boundary of Fortescue’s houses is said to
be “a greate house lately built by the said William Newton.” This, according to the
Hearth Tax Rolls, was the Earl of Northampton’s mansion. Then came “a faire
messuage or howse of one Master Crewe,” and to the south of this, at the corner of
Great Queen Street, and having a width from north to south of 42 feet, was in 1648
a plot of ground on which “Henry Massingberd intends to erect a house.” (Close
Roll, 24 Chas. I. (3411.) Indenture between Humfrey Newton and Henry
Massingberd.) If, however, only one house was built on this plot, it was divided
quite early, as the premises already appear in two occupations in the Hearth Tax
Roll for 1666.
54. One of the two houses was in 1643 in the tenure of Sir John Thimbleby
(Close Roll, 18 Chas. I. (3295)—Indenture between John Fortescue and John
Pynchon and Wm. Barnard).
55. Moved to No. 1, Lincoln’s Fields, in 1743 (Survey of London, Vol. III., p.
24.)
56. British Museum Additional MS., 11,411, ff. 70 and 77.
57. Ibid., f. 17b.
58. Reproduced here.
59. See Land Revenue Enrolments, Book IV., No. 52, p. 120.
60. Patent Roll, 7 Jas. I. (1802) (Translated from the Latin).
61. Parliamentary Survey (Augmentation Office), No. 25. Middlesex—
tenements in St. Giles-in-the-Fields and High Holborn.
62. Close Roll, 7 Jas. I. (1971).
63. Close Roll, 8 Jas. I. (2032).
64. See p. 36.
65. Close Roll, 9 Jas. I. (2083).
66. Middlesex Feet of Fines, 10 Jas. I., Easter.
67. Close Roll, 13 Chas. II. (4084). Indenture between Thos. Newton and Geo.
Goodman and Arthur Newman. William Lane, by his will dated 15th February,
1653–4, left nine messuages in Holborn to his grandson, who enjoyed two-thirds
leaving one-third to his grandmother Elinor. The premises were rebuilt about
1698–1701. (Chancery Proceedings, Bridges, 328–31. Suit of Roger Reading, 3rd
February, 1703–4.)
68. In 1618 William Taylor was reported to the Privy Council for building a
house “in Fawlcon yard in the upper end of Holborne where none was before.”
(Privy Council Register, No. 29, 493).
69. Survey of London, Vol. III. (St. Giles-in-the-Fields, Part I.), p. 7.
70. Privy Council Register, Vol. 47, p. 410.
71. Inquisitio Ad Quod Damnum—Brevia Regia, Petty Bag Office, No. 17.
72. Petition of the Lord Mayor, etc., dated 10th April, 1635. (Calendar of State
Papers, Domestic, 1635–6, p. 17).
73. Privy Council Register, Vol. 47, p. 370.
74. Close Roll, 16 Chas. I. (3232)—Indenture between Henry Darrell and Mary
Blague.
75. I.e., “very well with brick and covered with tyle.”
76. In the case of Shenton’s tenements, built probably at about the same time,
it is known that rebuilding was carried out before October, 1682. (Chancery
Proceedings, Bridges, 271–13. Suit of Elizabeth Stratton).
77. 3rd Report of H.M. Commissioners of Woods and Forests (1819), App. 2,
pp. 38–9.
78. Reproduced here.
79. Close Roll, 1650 (3510)—Indenture between William Short, Gregory Short
and William and Magdalen Curtis and Thomas and Elinor Vaughan.
80. Middlesex Feet of Fines, 1650, Easter.
81. Close Roll, 18 Chas. II. (4195).
82. Exchequer Pleas 582 (2)—Suit of William Bell (Easter term, 18 Chas. I.)
against Sir Samuel Somaster.
83. Blott’s suggestion (Blemundsbury, pp. 201–2) that the place referred to
was Little Turnstile, has nothing to recommend it.
84. Calendar State Papers, Domestic, 1629–31, p. 284.
85. Ibid., pp. 321–2.
86. Exchequer Pleas 582 (2), cited above.
87. See p. 107.
88. Close Roll, 9 Eliz. (742)—Indenture, dated 1st February, 1566–7, between
Lord and Lady Mountjoy and Edward Kingston.
89. The southernmost of the three northerly houses mentioned above.
90. Close Roll, 24 Eliz. (1129)—Indenture, dated 30th July, 1582, between Jas.
Briscowe, etc., and Jas. Mascall.
91. See p. 27.
92. It will be remembered that the houses, including, and for a little distance
west of, No. 198, High Holborn (the Public Library), are on the site of Rose Field
(see p. 18).
93. Inquisitiones Post Mortem, Middx., Series II., vol. 208.
94. Together with a moiety of the three northernmost of the 8 houses and of
other property on the north side of High Holborn, acquired by Mascall of Edward
Kingston.
95. Close Roll, 11 Chas. I. (3057)—Indenture between Thos. Godman and Olive
his wife and Francis Gerard and Frances his wife.
96. Blott’s Blemundsbury, p. 381.
97. As showing the connection between the Gerard and Cole families attention
may be drawn to the fact that Philip Gerard, successor of Francis Gerard in Drury
Lane, and probably his son, was associated with Salomon Cole in a deed relating to
property at King’s Gate. (Close Roll, 1658—Indenture between Sir Thos. Fisher,
Gerard and Cole and John Plumer).
98. Close Roll, 1655 (3857)—Indenture between Chas. Lovell, etc., and Philip
Wetherell.
99. Middlesex Registry Memorials, 1756, II., 325–6—Indenture between John
Smart and John Higgs.
100. Middlesex Registry Memorials, 1717, II., 272.
101. Reproduced here.
102. Parton’s Hospital and Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, p. 71.
103. From deeds quoted by Parton (Hospital and Parish of St. Giles) it is
evident that in the 13th century Drury Lane was known as “Aldewych” or “Via de
Aldewych.” The name “Drury Lane,” given later, was no doubt due to the existence
of Drury House near the Strand end of the road. How late “Via de Aldewych” was
used there is nothing to show. In certain deeds of the 17th century (e.g., Close Roll,
24 November, 8 Charles I.—Indenture between Francis, Lord Russell, and Earl of
Bedford and John, Earl of Bristol, etc.) the road is called “Drury Lane alias
Fortescue Lane.” It is just possible that the latter name is to be connected with Sir
John Fortescue, who held the Elm Field (i.e., the land between Castle Street and
Long Acre) in the reign of Henry VI. (Close Roll, 30 Henry VI. (302)—Grant by
John Crouton and Wm. Horn to John and Katherine Nayler); in fact there is
reason for thinking that the “viam regiam ducentem ... a villa Sci. Egidii versus
Bosomysynne modo Johis. Fortescue militis” mentioned in the same deed is
actually Drury Lane. The road seems also to have gone by the name of St. Giles’s
Lane in the early part of the 17th century. (See p. 35n.)
104. See p. 107.
105. They appear together as witnesses in many deeds. Two deeds bearing the
name of William Christmas as witness can be dated with certainty 1257–8 and
1276.
106. Blott’s statement that here “stood the mansion house of the Christmasse
family, with its pasture land and orchard bordering the King’s Highway, Oldborne,
the domain reaching to Ficquet Fields,” goes beyond the evidence, and his
imaginative history, based on an identification of “John of Good Memory,” late
chaplain of St. Giles, mentioned in Henry II.’s Charter (not the original foundation
charter, as Blott says), with a John Christmas = John de Cruce the elder = John de
Fonte the elder (all equally hypothetical persons) is absolutely unjustifiable
(Blemundsbury, pp. 333–4).
107. Augmentation Office, Deeds of purchase and exchange, E. 19.
108. The premises, together with a cottage and Purse Field with the pightells,
were farmed to her on 6 June, 1524, by the Master of Burton Lazars, and it is
stated that she was then living there. (Patent Roll, 7 Elizabeth, pt. 3, Grant to Thos.
Jordayne.)
109. “Et de liijs iiijd de Willelmo Hosyer pro redditu cujusdam messuagii
vocati le White Harte in Hamelett Sci Egidii et xviij acr’ pasture ac unius parvi
clausi vocati Pale Close.” (Ministers’ Accounts, 2101, Henry VIII.)
110. Uncertainty on this point and on the date of the period of his tenancy
unfortunately stands in the way of accepting the following note as a contribution to
the history of The White Hart. “Will. Hosyer, of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, London—
Licence (he having had his house burnt down 9th Oct. last [1539] and lost all his
goods therein to the value of £200) to collect alms in England and Wales for his
relief.” (Patent Roll, 32 Henry VIII. pt. 4.)
111. Close Roll, 9 Eliz. (733)—Indenture between Lord Mountjoy and Geo.
Harrison; and Close Roll, 24 Eliz. (1129)—Indenture between Jas. Briscowe, etc.,
and Jas. Mascall. Cockshott was apparently there in 1579, for the piece of ground
or garden plot which 12 years before had been used as “a greate garden belonginge
to ... the White Harte,” (Close Roll, 9 Eliz. (742)—Indenture between Lord
Mountjoy and Edward Kyngston) was in that year described as “then or late in the
tenure of Richard Cockeshute.” (Close Roll, 21 Eliz. (1058)—Indenture between Ed.
Kyngston and James Mascall.)
112. Parton, Hospital and Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, pp. 131–2.
113. See Land Revenue Enrolments, Book IV., No. 52, p. 120.
114. Situated on the north side of High Holborn, just to the west of the present
junction with New Oxford Street.
115. It will be seen that the present Ye Olde White Hart, No. 191, Drury Lane,
is not on the site either of the old White Hart, or even of the land formerly
belonging to it.
116. Parton, Hospital and Parish of St. Giles, p. 238.
117. Reproduced here.
118. The course of this stream as shown in the map accompanying Volume III.
of the Survey of London requires a slight modification, as deeds, which have since
come to light, show that to the south of High Holborn it followed exactly the
winding red line indicating the course of the later sewer, and not the straight line
there suggested.
119. Close Roll, 1657 (3940).—Indenture between William Short and Edward
Tooke.
120. Thomas Burton’s land, which included the site of all the houses in Drury
Lane mentioned in the above deed, had a width along that street of 233 feet. These
houses reached as far south as the house belonging to Mr. Fotherley, on whose
garden St. Thomas’s Street was subsequently formed. (Parton, Hospital and Parish
of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, p. 275.) The distance between the boundary line and the
northern side of Shelton Street, the modern representative of St. Thomas’s Street,
is 243 feet, thus allowing a 10 feet extension of the garden northwards beyond the
street.
121. See p. 20.
122. The occupier of The Rose at this time was Richard Taylor. See Petition of
Geo. Sutton complaining of a confederacy between Taylor and “one Thomas
Barnett, brewer,” to whom Taylor had let the premises after Sutton had given him
lawful warning to avoid. (Augmentation Proceedings, 22–25.) The property is
described as “one tenement called The Roose, lieing and being within the said
parish of Saint Gyles in the feldes, with one barne and syxe acres of land, with
appurtenances to the same.”
123. Close Roll, 42 Elizabeth (1666).
124. Augmentation Office, Miscellaneous Books, 140, p. 56.
125. Hospital and Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, p. 239.
126. Close Roll, 22 Chas. II. (4290).—Indenture between Sarah Hooper, etc.,
and Anthony Hannott.
127. Middlesex Registry Memorials, 1723, III., 289, 390.
128. The entries in the ratebook, from the corner of Duke Street (now
represented by the first courtyard to the east of Grape Street) to the corner of Bow
Street, are as follows:—Jonathan Dodswell, 2 houses (£20); Samuel Chandler
(£20); Nathaniel Chandler (£25); John Lacost (£25); Mr. Anthony Elmes (£70);
Thomas Gwilliam (£20); Alexander Masters (£16); John Pettit (£10).
129. This rough identification is confirmed by the fact that The Rose can be
shown by comparison of particulars given in various deeds to have been the 8th
house westward from the Pale Pingle, the westernmost limit of which seems to
have been opposite the centre of the frontage of the White Hart property. (See
Plate 2).
130. Middlesex Feet of Fines, 16 Chas. I., Trin. Of course, in the absence of
more definite details, there is nothing to prove that this refers to The Rose.
131. Close Roll, 1650 (3542).—Indenture between William Short and Thos.
Walker, Peter Mills and Richd. Horseman.
132. See p. 31.
133. “July 8, 1640. Warrant to the Petty Constables of the parishes of St. Giles-
in-the-Fields and St. Clement’s Danes to give notice to the persons whose names
are underwritten to appear ... before Sir John Hippisley and Sir Henry Spiller to
show cause why they neglect and refuse to cleanse and repair their parts of a
common sewer near Lewknor’s lane, St. Giles-in-the-Fields, which has become a
public nuisance.” (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1640, p. 459). This sewer,
which ran about 74 feet north of Lewknor’s lane (Parton’s Hospital and Parish of
St. Giles, p. 101), seems to have originally, as an open ditch, formed the boundary
between Rose Field and Bear Close.
134. Either this means that Short had purchased a portion of Bear Close, or,
more probably, it refers to that portion of Rose Field which bounded Bear Close on
the east. This had before 1650 been sold to Thomas Grover. (Close Roll, 1654
(3813).—Indenture between William Short and Wm. Atkinson.)
135. Close Roll, 1657 (3940)—Indenture between William Short and Edward
Tooke.
136. Privy Council Register, vol. 258, 46.
137. See letters from him addressed to (a) the Earl of Pembroke, 22nd
November, 1620; (b) Secretary Conway, 23rd November, 1623 (Calendar of State
Papers, Domestic, 1619–23, p. 194, and 1623–5, p. 117).
138. It need hardly be said that Blott’s (Blemundsbury, pp. 357–362)
identification of Lewknor’s house with “Cornwallis House, Drury Lane,” the
residence of Sir William Cornwallis, “adjoining the grounds of the White Hart
Inn ... at the Holborn end of Drury Lane” is a pure fiction. There is no evidence
that Sir William Cornwallis ever lived in Drury Lane. His statement that “it is a
long task to trace how the Christmasse estate passed into the Cornwallis family,
who appears to have been the immediate successors to the great inheritance in
Drury Lane,” is delightful, seeing that “the Christmasse estate” was situated at
White Hart corner, and the Cornwallis “inheritance,” which, by the way, was
acquired only in 1613, some years after Sir William Cornwallis’s death, consisted of
Purse Field, which nowhere reached within 500 feet of Drury Lane.
139. Coram Rege Roll, Easter term, 17 Chas. II., No. 469.
140. Close Roll, 1650 (3542).—Indenture between William Short and Thomas
Walker, Peter Mills and Richard Horseman.
141. This is stated in the deed (20 June, 1652) relating to the sale of the
property by George Evelyn (who had married Sir John Cotton’s widow) to John
Fotherley (Common Pleas, Recovery Roll, 1652, Trin., 278), and Cotton’s name is
given in respect of the house in the Subsidy Roll of 1646.
142. See, e.g.—Indenture between Henry Fotherley Whitfield and Joseph King
(Middlesex Registry Memorials, 1766, I., 379) concerning a parcel of ground in
“St. Thomas’s Street, now intended to be called King Street.”
143. Lease dated 23rd February, 1619–20, by Thomas Burton to Edmund
Edlyn, quoted in Blott’s Blemundsbury, pp. 358–9. It should be explained that
Walter Burton had sublet to Thomas Burton a portion of the ground leased to him
by William Short.
144. It should be noticed that the eastern portion of Parker Street (beyond the
alley lying to the east of the Kingsway Theatre) is on the site of Purse Field, not of
Rose Field.
145. Hospital and Parish of St. Giles, p. 358.
146. “Philip Parcar, for 5 houses built neare Drury Lane in Parcar’s Lane, to
the Star Chamber.” (Privy Council Register (1633–4), vol. 258, No. 46).
147. Philip Parker is seen in a different role in the following: “Recognisances ...
for the appearance of ... William Hartoppe ... to answer ... for refusinge to ayde
Phillip Parker to search for a seminary priest in the house of John Clarke, of St.
Gyles in the Feildes” (11th April, 1626) (Middlesex Sessions Rolls, III., p. 160).
148. Reproduced here.
149. A change of tenancy in 1775 is accompanied by an increase in the rateable
value from £8 to £18.
150. Reproduced here.
151. Close Roll, 9 Elizabeth (748)—Indenture, dated 20th January, 1566–7,
between Lord and Lady Mountjoy and Richard Holford.
152. From other documents it is quite obvious that this must be another name
for Purse Field, but the name has not been met with elsewhere.
153. The deeds show that all the western portion of Parker Street, both south
and north sides, was in Rose Field, and all the western part of Great Queen Street
was in Aldwych Close.
154. This was the line of the sewer, or open stream, which formed the western
boundary of Purse Field. In later deeds relating to the central portion of Aldwych
Close, the latter is described as extending to the common sewer on the east side
towards Lincoln’s Inn. (See e.g. Recovery Roll, 1633, 9 Chas. I., Easter (201).)
155. See p. 124.
156. Inquisitiones Post Mortem (Middlesex), 18 Eliz., vol. 174 (32).
157. I.e., according to a deed referred to in the inquisition on Henry Holford
(16th June, 1624) (Ibid., 22 Jas. I., vol. 428 (87)). There was also, however, or
there had been three years before, “a little howse, forge or shedd” on what was
afterwards the north-west corner of Great Queen Street (Close Roll, 40 Eliz. (1597)
—Demise by Henry Holford to Henry Foster, Margaret Foster and Henry Warner).
158. Recited in lease of 30th April, 1607, by Walter Burton to Thomas Burton,
in possession of the London County Council.
159. See p. 40.
160. See indentures between Richard Holford and Robert Stratton and
Edward Stratton respectively, dated 28th July, 1635, and 24th April, 1658. (Close
Rolls, 11 Chas. I. (3060) and 1658 (3984)).
161. This triangular piece, and the ground on which the houses on the south
side of Kemble Street are built, both originally being portions of Aldwych Close,
have recently been taken out of the Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
162. “The private way in Oldwitch Close for the King and Councell to passe
through leading from St. Giles his lane in the feildes east towardes Holborne.”
(Close Roll, 22 James I. (2601)—Indenture between Jane and Richard Holford and
Jeoffery Prescott.)
163. The two gates are referred to in the petition (ascribed to March, 1632), of
the Surveyor-General of His Majesty’s Ways, who complained that on the day
before the King and Queen went last to Theobalds, he warned Richard Powell, the
scavenger for High Holborn, to cleanse the passage between the two gates in
Holborn, where many loads of noisome soil lay stopping up the way; but Powell
neglected to do this, and at the time of the Royal passage a cart laden with soil
stood in the passage blocking the way. (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1631–
3, p. 298.)
164. On 31st October, 1617, a warrant was issued to Thos. Norton, “Surveyor of
His Majesty’s Wayes and Passages,” calling attention to the fact that in spite of the
King’s commands, “sundry persons have gotten and used false keyes for opening
the lockes and gates of His Majesties private passages through the feildes neere the
Cittie of London, and that divers unruly coachmen, carters, and others, have and
doe use with great hammers and other like tools to breake open the said gates.”
(Privy Council Register, XXIX., 153.) This warrant seems almost too late to refer to

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