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EXCERPTED FROM

Doing Comparative Politics:

An Introduction to

Approaches and Issues

SECOND EDITION

Timothy Lim

ISBN: 978-1-58826-744-3 pb

1800 30th Street, Ste. 314

Boulder, CO 80301

USA

telephone 303.444.6684

fax 303.444.0824

This excerpt was downloaded from the

Lynne Rienner Publishers website

www.rienner .com

List of Figures ix

Preface xi

1Introduction: What Is Comparative Politics? 1

What Is Comparative Politics? 2

Why Does Comparative Politics Focus on What Happens

Inside Countries? 11

What Is Politics? 13

What Does It Mean to Compare? What Is a Comparativist? 17

Why Compare? 19

What Is Comparable? 22

What Are the Advantages of the Comparative Method? 23

By Way of a Conclusion: Method and Theory in

Comparative Politics 26

Questions 26

Part 1 Doing Comparative Politics

2Comparing to Learn, Learning to Compare:

APrimer on Comparative Methods 31

Comparing and Critical Thinking 32

Strategies of Comparing 33

The Logic of Comparative Analysis 33

Concrete Strategies of Comparative Analysis 46

Conclusion 63

Questions 63

3Thinking Theoretically in Comparative Politics 67

Why Study Theory? 67

Theory in Comparative Politics 73

Rationality: A Nontechnical Introduction 78

Contents

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The Structural Tradition 82

The Cultural Tradition 88

A "Hybrid" Tradition: Institutionalism 93

Separation or Synthesis? 96

Conclusion: Bringing Everything Together 97

Questions 98

Part 2 The Questions

4Why Are Poor Countries Poor?

Explaining Economic Underdevelopment 105

Defining Poverty 107

Individual Choice, Collective Outcomes, and Poverty:

A Rational Choice Perspective 109

Cultural Explanations of Poverty 117

Keeping the Poor Down? Structural Explanations of Poverty 126

Conclusion 134

Questions 135

5Why Is East Asia Rich?

Explaining Capitalist Growth and Industrialization

in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China 139

Rationality, the Strong State, and Rapid Economic

Growth in East Asia 144

Culture and Capitalist Development in East Asia 154

Global Capitalism and the Rise of East Asia 162

Explaining China's Economic Rise 169

Conclusion 176

Questions 177

6What Makes a Democracy?

Explaining the Breakdown of Authoritarian Rule 179

Defining Democracy: A Never-Ending Debate? 180

Economic Development and Democracy:

A Necessary Relationship? 184

Agents of Democratization: Rational Choice and

Democratic Transition 192

Structure and Rationality: Competition or Synthesis? 204

A Missing Link? Culture and Democracy 205

Conclusion: Taking the Next Step 216

Questions 218

vi Contents

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7What Makes a Terrorist?

Explaining "Violent Substate Activism" 221

What Is Terrorism? 221

The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product

of Strategic Choice 225

Culture, Religion, and Terrorism 234

Globalization and the Rise of Terrorism: A Structural View 241

Conclusion: The (Methodological) Dangers of Studying

Terrorism 248

Questions 250

8What Makes a Social Movement?

Explaining the Rise and Success of

Collective Mobilization, by Atsuko Sato 253

Defining Social Movements 254

Collective Action, Social Movements, and Rationality 259

Structural Accounts of Social Movements 266

Culture and Social Movements:

Two Contrasting Approaches 273

Conclusion 280

Questions 280

Part 3 The Futureof Comparative Politics

9Globalization and the Study of Comparative Politics 285

What Is Globalization? A Reprise 287

Implications of Globalization in Comparative Politics 291

Assessing Globalization's Impact on Comparative Politics:

The Case of Immigrant Rights 293

Globalization and the Three Research Traditions 295

Rational Choice in a Global Context 296

Globalization and Culture 300

Globalization and Structural Approaches 305

Conclusion 308

Questions 308

Glossary 311

Selected Bibliography 337

Index 355

About the Book 369

Contents vii

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Let us begin this book with a few basic, but very big questions:

• Why are there so many gun-related homicides in the United States?

• Why do so many peoples and countries around the world remain mired

in poverty and economic misery? Conversely,how have some peoples

and countries been able to become "rich" and prosperous in only a gen-

eration or two?

• Is the expansion of "democracy" inevitable? Will it necessarily reach

all countries over time?

•Why do people and groups resort to "terrorism" and other forms of po-

litical violence? Is anyone capable of becoming a terrorist, or are ter-

rorists the product of a particular type of society and culture?

•How do social movements—such as the Civil Rights Movement in the

United States and prodemocracy movements in the Ukraine, Burma

(Myanmar), and Iran—emerge, and why do some succeed while others

fail?

There are, of course, many answers to these questions. Some answers may

sound very persuasive, whereas others may seem far less convincing, even ab-

surd. On the first question, for example, the controversial director Michael

Moore argued in his Oscar-winning 2002 film Bowling for Columbine that the

high level of gun violence in the United States is largely due to a "culture of

fear" that has been created and constantly reproduced through policies and prac-

tices that exacerbate insecurity throughout US society. This culture of fear,

Moore suggested, pushes Americans to resolve problems and interpersonal con-

flict through violence, a reaction that, in turn, creates a self-confirming cycle:

fear begets violence, which begets more fear, which begets even more violence,

and so on. A culture of fear may not explain everything we need to know about

gun violence in the United States, but according to Moore, it is almost certainly

Introduction

What Is Comparative Politics?

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amajor element—perhaps the major element—of any explanation that purports

to tell us why Americans are so prone to shooting each other. Is Moore right?

Or is his argument completely baseless? How do we know? More broadly, how

do we know if any argument—especially one that deals with complex social,

political, or economic phenomena—is valid or even plausible? This book is de-

signed, in part, to help you answer this question. Learning how to evaluate spe-

cific arguments, however, is secondary to the overarching goal of this book,

which is to enable you to better understand and explain social, political, or eco-

nomic processes, events, and outcomes on your own.

So, what does all this have to do with comparative politics?The answer

is fairly simple: comparative politics, as a field of study, provides us with a

ready array of conceptual and analytical tools that we can use to address and

answer a wide range of questions about the social world. I will talk about ex-

actly what this means shortly; for now, though, let me just add that compara-

tive politics provides a systematic, coherent, and practical way to understand

and make better sense of the things that happen in the world around us. In a

broader sense, moreover, comparative politics is relevant to almost anyone,

even those not interested in "studying foreign countries." A "comparative pol-

itics approach" can be applied to a huge variety of problems, from the mun-

dane to the sublime, in a wide variety of areas. Explaining gun violence is just

one example, but there are many others. Consider the following potpourri of

questions and issues: Can a single-payer national health care system work in

the United States? Are fundamentalist religious beliefs and democracy com-

patible? Is vast economic inequality a necessary by-product of a capitalist sys-

tem? What encourages people to save and invest? If marijuana use is legalized,

will such use necessarily lead to the abuse of "harder" drugs? What can be

done to improve the performance of US students in science, reading, and math?

Acomparative politics approach is well suited for addressing all these

questions and many others. At this point, of course, the reasons may not be

clear, but they will become much clearer as we proceed. It is also important

to say,at this early juncture, that comparative politics is not the only, nor is it

always the best, approach one can use. Nonetheless, virtually any student or

concerned citizen (not to mention scholar or policymaker) will benefit

tremendously from cultivating and developing a "comparative politics ap-

proach." With all this in mind, the next important step we need to take is to

clarify what the term "comparative politics" means and what it implies. As we

will see, this is easier said than done.

What Is Comparative Politics?

Many textbooks on comparative politics provide a clear, seemingly simple an-

swer to the question, what is comparative politics? Perhaps the simplest is this:

2Introduction

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comparative politics is the study of politics in foreign countries (emphasis

added; Zahariadis 1997, p. 2). Few texts, though, stop here. Most also empha-

size that comparative politics, in slightly more formal terms, involves both a

method of study and a subject of study. As a method of study, comparative pol-

itics is—not surprisingly—premised on comparison. As a subject of study,

comparative politics focuses on understanding and explaining political phe-

nomena that take place within a state ,society ,country , or political system .

(See Figure 1.1 for a discussion of these various terms.) This slightly more de-

tailed definition of the field gives us a better sense of what comparative poli-

tics is and how it may differ from other fields of inquiry, although, as I will dis-

cuss below, it is a definition that raises far more questions than it answers. Still,

defining comparative politics as a method of study based on comparison and a

subject of study based on an examination of political phenomena in a country

(or other "macrosocial" unit) highlights several important points. First, it im-

mediately tells us that the field is primarily concerned with internal or domes-

tic dynamics, which helps to distinguish comparative politics from interna-

tional relations (IR)—a field of study largely, though not exclusively,

concerned with the external relations or foreign policies of states. Second, it

tells us that comparative politics is, appropriately enough, concerned with po-

litical phenomena. Third, and perhaps most important, it tells us that the field

is not only characterized but defined by a comparative method of analysis. I

might also point out that this second definition does not automatically exclude

the United States (as the first does) from the field of comparative politics: the

United States is a state or country in exactly the same sense that France, Japan,

India, Mexico, South Korea, Zimbabwe, or Russia is.

As I already suggested, though, this second definition raises a number of

other questions and issues. Can comparative politics, for example, focus only

on what happens inside countries? In other words, is it possible to understand

the internal politics of a place without understanding and accounting for the

impact of external or transnational/international forces? This is a very impor-

tant question, but there are several others: What is meant by political phe-

nomena—or by politics more generally? Are economic, social, and cultural

phenomena also political, or do they fall into a completely different category?

Regarding the question of method, we might also ask: What does it mean to

compare? Is comparison in comparative politics different from, say, compar-

ison in sociology or any other field of study? Even more basically, why do we

compare? That is, what's the point of making comparisons in the first place?

And, last, how do we compare?

The Importance of Definitions

In asking so many questions, I realize that I also might have raised a question

in your mind, namely, why can't we be satisfied with the relatively short and

What Is Comparative Politics? 3

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Figure 1.1 Some Key Concepts in Comparative Politics: State,

Nation, Nation-State, Government, and Country

The terms "state," "nation," "nation-state," "government," and "country"

are often used interchangeably, especially in the popular press and media. Al-

though this practice is not entirely unwarranted, it is important to recognize

that the terms are not synonymous. Astate, for example, is a legal concept that

is premised on a number of conditions: a permanent population, a defined ter-

ritory, and a national government capable of maintaining effective control

over its territory. In addition, many scholars (following Max Weber)argue

that a state must have a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force or

violence within a given territory. Notice that the definition of state includes a

reference to government, which can be defined as the agency or apparatus

through which a body exercises authority and performs its functions. In this

definition, governments need not be part of a state; moreover, multiple gov-

ernments may exist within a single state. We can find governments in all sorts

of places—in a university or school (that is, the student government) or in

sovereign "nations" (for example, a Native American tribal council)—and at

many levels. Cities, counties, provinces, and whole regions (for example, the

European Union)can also have their own separate governments.

The example of Native Americans is a useful way to differentiate a na-

tion from a state. A nation, in the simplest terms, can be defined as a group

of people who recognize each other as sharing a common identity. This

common identity can be based on language, religion, culture, or a number

of other self-defined criteria. This makes the concept of the nation inher-

ently subjective or intersubjective. Nations do not require states or gov-

ernments to exist, nor must nations exist within a single defined territory.

One can speak, for example, of nations that transcend borders, such as the

Nation of Islam. Combining the definitions of state and nation creates the

concept of the nation-state. Technically speaking, a nation-state would only

exist if nearly all the members of a single nation were organized in a single

state, without any other distinct communities being present (Willets 1997,

p. 289). From this perspective, despite its prevalent usage, many scholars

argue that there are no true nation-states and that the concept should be en-

tirely abandoned. But there are what we might call national states—states

in which a common identity is forged around the concept of nationalism it-

self (for more on this issue, see Eley and Suny 1996). For example, people

living in the United States may be divided by a wide range of religious, cul-

tural, ethnic, linguistic, and other differences. Y et they all may share a com-

mon sense of "being American." Practically speaking, the term "national

state" is often used as a synonym for nation-state. The notion of a national

state, moreover, comes close to the more concrete concept of country, which

may be defined as a distinct political system of people sharing common val-

ues and occupying a relatively fixed geographic space (Eley and Suny

1996). "Country" is the most generic of the terms referred to here.

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easy-to-understand definition first mentioned? One reason is clear: before we

begin studying any field, we need to understand what the field is really about.

To do this, we typically start at the most basic level—with how people define

the field. Unfortunately, even seemingly simple and straightforward defini-

tions (or questions, such as what is comparative politics?) are often filled with

complexities and subtleties, many of which are not immediately apparent. As

students generally—and as students of comparative politics specifically—I

want you to keep this firmly in mind. Moreover, I want you to understand that

few (social, political, or economic) issues can be adequately understood or ex-

plained without taking the time for careful and serious reflection. Asecond re-

lated reason is this: definitions are important. Very important. This is partly

because they tell us what is included in the field of study and what is left out.

Consider the definition offered at the beginning of this section: Comparative

politics is the study of politics in foreign countries. This definition (unlike the

other we discussed), quite clearly, leaves out the United States. But, it is not

clear why the United States should receive such "special" consideration. Is it

because the United States is different from all other countries—literally in-

comparable? Or, is there some other, less obvious, reason? We are left to won-

der.Consider, too, the notion of politics: Does a study of politics mean that

we do not study economic, social, or cultural forces? Does it mean we only

examine those things that governments or states do? What, in short, is in-

cluded in and excluded from the notion of politics? (I will return to these

questions shortly.)

There are other closely related problems we need to address. One of the

most important of these is the generally unintentional, but still quite serious

problem of bias .Bias was a particularly serious problem in the early concep-

tualization of comparative politics as a field of study. To put it bluntly, schol-

ars and others who helped shape the field did so in a way that suggested the

world was divided into two basic categories: countries and peoples that mat-

tered and those that did not. In this regard, it would be fair to say that the early

development and conceptualization of the field were profoundly influenced

by the ethnocentric biases, values, and political domination of US scholars

and leaders who saw the United States as the guiding light for the rest of the

world.

To see this (and to see the danger of this type of influence), consider the

character of comparative politics prior to World War II, when the field was al-

most entirely defined in terms of western European affairs. During this period,

the vast majority of research by scholars in the United States was devoted to

ahandful of countries: Britain, France, and Germany (a little later, the Soviet

Union and Japan were included). These were the countries or states consid-

ered most important in US eyes—as I just noted, they were the only countries

deemed to matter. Even the notion of studying countries or states, it is im-

portant to add, portrays an ethnocentric bias: prior to World War II, much of

What Is Comparative Politics? 5

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the world was colonized by western powers. As such, those societies without

asovereign state were, almost automatically, considered unworthy of study.

Their histories, their cultures, their peoples, their methods of governing, and

so on were simply dismissed (by scholars in the United States and other west-

ern countries) for lack of political sovereignty .

Predictably, then, issues that are now considered especially important to

researchers in comparative politics and to other comparative social scientists

("comparativists" for short), such as economic development and democrati-

zation, were also largely ignored by early students of comparative politics in

the United States. These issues were not considered pressing or worthy of

study, because the West had already "solved" them. In other words, non-

democratic and economically "backward" countries were treated as aberra-

tions or immature versions of the West and of the United States specifically,

"rather than as political systems with distinct characteristics . . . worthy of ex-

amination on their own merits" (Zahariadis 1997, p. 7). The tendency for po-

litical scientists in the United States to ignore most of the rest of the world

(even much of western Europe), moreover, rested on the immodest assump-

tion that the United States simply had little or nothing to learn from anyone

else. From this perspective, it is far easier to understand why comparative pol-

itics remained so narrowly defined for the first half of the twentieth century.

"The reasons," as Wiarda (1991) nicely put it,

go to the heart of the American experience, to the deeply held belief that the

United States is different [from] and superior to European and all other na-

tions, the widespread conviction at the popular level that the United States

had little to learn from the rest of the world, the near-universal belief of

Americans in the superiority of their institutions and their attitudes that the

rest of the world must learn from the United States and never the other way

around. Hence political science as it developed as a discipline in the United

States was predominantly the study of American politics, for that is where

the overwhelming emphasis and interest lay. . . . Those who studied and

wrote about comparative politics were generally believed to have little to

offer intellectually to other areas of the discipline. (emphasis added; p. 12)

The Changing Context of Comparative Politics

The relegation of comparative politics to the margins of political science

changed dramatically following the end of World War II—although it would

be more accurate to say that the deepest changes began during the war, when

US policymakers recognized an urgent need for area specialists, that is, peo-

ple with a strong understanding of specific cultures, languages, societies, and

political systems, and not just in Western Europe. What sparked this new-

found interest in the rest of the world? The answer is easy to discern. Specif-

ically, World War II brought home the importance of knowing about other

6Introduction

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peoples so that the military-strategic interests of the United States could be bet-

ter protected. Certainly, in terms of funding and official support, there is little

doubt this was true. As Bruce Cumings (1997), a prominent area specialist on

Korea, pointed out, the first effort to create a systematic base of knowledge

about "foreign" countries (from the perspective of the United States) was car-

ried out by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Cen-

tral Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to Cumings, in 1941, OSS director

William "Wild Bill" Donovan established the rationale for employing the na-

tion's best expertise to collect and analyze all information and data that might

bear upon national security. Once this rationale became policy, the future of

comparative and area studies in the United States brightened considerably.

The war not only broadened the perspective of the United States with re-

gard to the list of countries that mattered but also with regard to the issues that

mattered. In particular, the rise of fascism and militarism in Germany, Japan,

and Italy and the rise of communism (and Stalinism ) in Russia and, later,

China, had a profound impact on the field of comparative politics and politi-

cal science as a whole (Wiarda 1991). For good reason, scholars, policymak-

ers, and others wanted to understand these political phenomena, which dif-

fered so much from the democratic and capitalist paths followed by the United

States and most Western European countries. They especially wanted to un-

derstand not only how and why fascist or totalitarian rule emerged and de-

veloped but also how and why it seemed to thrive in certain places (especially

to the extent that it represented a serious and real threat to the democracies of

the West). The question was how to best accomplish this understanding. For

an increasing number of scholars and policymakers, the answer was to be

found in a more sophisticated approach to comparative study.One of the lead-

ing advocates of this view was Roy Macridis (1955), who, in the mid-1950s,

strongly criticized traditional comparative politics as being overly parochial

(with its near-exclusive focus on Western Europe), too descriptive (as op-

posed to analytical), exceedingly formalistic, atheoretical, and even noncom-

parative. Macridis'scritique helped lay the basis for a sea change in the field.

The Cold War and Comparative Politics

The impact of World War II on comparative politics, therefore, was immense;

but it was the onset of the Cold War that ensured the longer-term prominence

of the field. It was the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States

that compelled US policymakers to pay sustained and systematic attention to

"lesser" countries and regions—especially to a huge number of former colonies,

variously referred to as the "South," the "developing world," and the "Third

World" (see Figure 1.2). The reason is clear enough: since these hitherto ne-

glected countries were viewed, in strategic terms, as potentially important allies

or enemies, it behooved US policymakers to know more about the peoples they

What Is Comparative Politics? 7

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would now have to treat as relatively independent players in world affairs. Sig-

nificantly, it was not just any countries and regions that were included: "Japan

got favored placement as a success story of development, and China got obses-

sive attention as a pathological example of abortive development" (Cumings

1997). Latin and South American countries also became important foci of at-

tention for scholars and policymakers (starting in the 1960s), as did South

8Introduction

Figure 1.2 Note on Terminology—What's in a Name?

The "Third World" and Other Terms

The terms "South," "Third World," the "developing world" (or developing

countries), and "less developed countries" (LDCs) are often used inter-

changeably to refer to those parts of the world except for Western Europe,

North America (Canada and the United States), Australia, New Zealand,

Japan, and the former communist "bloc." During the Cold War era, so-called

Third World countries were distinguished from "Second World" countries

largely based on political ideology and military power; thus, the Second

World comprised the communist or socialist regimes, including the Soviet

Union and its satellite states (it is not clear, however, whether other commu-

nist states—such as China, Vietnam, North Korea, and others—were in-

cluded). T oday, of course, the former Soviet Union and its erstwhile "satel-

lites" no longer exist. They have been replaced by Russia and a plethora of

newly independent states, located primarily in Eastern Europe and Central

Asia. For this reason, the concept of the Second W orld has essentially disap-

peared (although, even during the Cold War era, the term was rarely used).

So where have these countries gone? Into the Third World, or some-

place else? This is not a trivial question, for there is considerable debate

over the issue of what terminology to use. For many researchers, the con-

cept of the Third World not only has become an anachronism but was sus-

pect from the very beginning in that it implied inferiority—as did the term

"less developed countries." Instead, many preferred the more neutral term

"South." This term, too, is problematic, given that countries such as Aus-

tralia and New Zealand are situated in the Southern Hemisphere, whereas

most countries of Asia, many countries of Africa, and even some countries

of South America are located in the Northern Hemisphere. More recently,

others have proposed a whole new set of terms. Advocates of neoliberalism,

for example, like the term "emerging markets"; not surprisingly, that term

has not been embraced by everyone. One interesting alternative has been

proposed by Titus Alexander (1996), who argued that the most appropriate

term is "majority world." This term, noted Alexander, is descriptively accu-

rate but does not imply any degree of homogeneity among the huge number

of countries that compose the majority world—an important point consid-

ering the "huge social, economic and political differences within and be-

tween all countries" (p. ix). Moreover, "majority" world does not contain

any connotation of inferiority, backwardness, or subordination.

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 8

Korea, Taiwan, and a few other countries that showed "promise." Much of the

research during this time, moreover, was driven by the desire to understand and

confront the appeal of and potential challenge posed by communism. In this re-

gard, it is no coincidence that one of the most influential academic books of the

1950s and 1960s was W. W. Rostow's The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-

Communist Manifesto (1960). Although not strictly a work of comparative pol-

itics, Rostow's anticommunist sentiments were shared by the foremost scholars

of comparative political development of the time, including the likes of Gabriel

Almond, James Coleman, and Lucien Pye (Wiarda 1991, p. 14).

This bit of history, it is important to understand, is still relevant. It tells

us, quite clearly, that outwardly objective fields of study are not immune to a

host of subjective, generally hidden—but sometimes quite open—social and

political forces. (See Figure 1.3 for a contemporary example.) And what is

true of the past is almost assuredly true of the present. This means that we al-

What Is Comparative Politics? 9

Figure 1.3 A Continuing Trend: A Note on

the Post-9/11 Period and Comparative Politics

Since 9/11, we have witnessed a resurgence of "academic" interest in Is-

lamic nations and, in particular, in the Islamic Middle East (in the United

States, Middle Eastern studies was "invented" in the 1950s [Kramer 2001,

p. 5]). This resurgence is manifested in large part through increased federal

funding. Since the early 2000s, in particular, Arabic has been designated a

"strategic language" by the US government (other strategic languages in-

clude Hindi, Mandarin, Persian, Russian, and Urdu), and funding for Ara-

bic language training increased 33 percent between 2001 and 2004 to

$103.7 million. It is worth emphasizing, too, that strategic language grants

(which can be as much as $60,000) are restricted to US citizens: the clear

implication is that US citizens are more likely to use their language skills to

benefit the security interests of the United States. It is not hard to see, then,

that military-strategic interests continue to influence the development of the

field, although there has long been a strong tension between those who re-

sist this influence and those who embrace it. Consider, on this point, an ar-

ticle by a prominent Middle East scholar,Martin Kramer .In his article,

Kramer criticized other Middle East academics for doing "nothing to pre-

pare America for the encounter with Muslim extremism" and for failing to

"contribute anything to America's defense." In his view, there was no "jus-

tification for an additional penny of support for this [Middle East studies]

empire of error" (Kramer 2001).

The key point here is not to say whether Kramer is right or wrong, or to

argue that government funding is good or bad. Rather, the key point is that

the development of an academic field of study, such as comparative politics,

does not take place in a social (political, economic, and cultural) vacuum.

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 9

ways need to be careful, and even a little skeptical, of the knowledge that is

produced in any context. This does not mean that all of today's scholarship,

even more, the scholarship of the 1940s and 1950s, is irredeemably tainted

and illegitimate. It is not (although some parts may certainly be). Instead, we

should never assume it is entirely or even mostly "objective" or free of polit-

ical, cultural, or social bias.

This said, since the 1960s, the field has continued to change. Definitions

of the field, too, have changed. Today, in fact, the definition of comparative

politics, except in a very broad or generic sense,

is characterized as much by

divergence as by consensus. (For a sampling of current definitions of com-

parative politics, see Figure 1.4.) This is one reason why the bulk of this chap-

ter is devoted to the question, what is comparative politics? Unless you can

10 Introduction

Figure 1.4 A Few Definitions of Comparative Politics

"Comparative politics involves the systematic study and comparison of the

world's political systems. It seeks to explain differences between as well as

similarities among countries. In contrast to journalistic reporting on a single

country, comparative politics is particularly interested in exploring patterns,

processes, and regularities among political systems" (Wiarda 2000, p. 7).

"Comparative politics involves both a subject of study—foreign

countries—and a method of study—comparison" (Wilson 1996, p. 4).

"What is comparative politics? It is two things, first a world, second a dis-

cipline. As a 'world,' comparative politics encompasses political behavior

and institutions in all parts of the earth. . . . The 'discipline' of comparative

politics is a field of study that desperately tries to keep up with, to encom-

pass, to understand, to explain, and perhaps to influence the fascinating and

often riotous world of comparative politics" (Lane 1997, p. 2).

"Comparative politics . . . involves no more and no less than a comparative

study of politics—a search for similarities and differences between and

among political phenomena, including political institutions (such as legisla-

tures, political parties, or political interest groups), political behavior (such

as voting, demonstrating, or reading political pamphlets), or political ideas

(such as liberalism, conservatism, or Marxism). Everything that politics

studies, comparative politics studies; the latter just undertakes the study

with an explicit comparative methodology in mind" (Mahler 2000, p. 3).

"Politics is . . . the struggle in any group for power that will give a person

or people the ability to make decisions for the larger groups. . . . [C]ompar-

ative politics is a subfield that compares this struggle across countries"

(O'Neil 2004, p. 3).

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 10

get an adequate grasp of this deceptively simple question, it will be exceed-

ingly difficult to develop a grasp of the field as a whole. Given the lack of

consensus, my intention is not to provide the definition of comparative poli-

tics in this chapter. Instead, my goal is, first, to help you understand the com-

plexities and subtleties of defining the field and, second, to give you a basis

for deciding how best to answer the question. One of the best ways to ac-

complish this is by asking the type of questions I posed above. Next, of

course, we need to try to answer these questions, which is what we will en-

deavor to do in the remainder of this chapter.

Why Does Comparative Politics Focus on

What Happens Inside Countries?

To answer the question upon which this section is based, it is extremely use-

ful to recognize that comparative politics is not the only field in political sci-

ence that focuses on countries or states as the primary units of analysis.

Scholars in international relations, as I noted above, are also intimately con-

cerned with countries or,more accurately, states. But, as I also noted, inter-

national relations is typically more interested in relations between and among

states—that is, with their interactions in an international system. Even though

this has not precluded IR scholars from looking at what happens inside states

or countries, a good deal of research in the field has tended to treat states as

undifferentiated wholes, which is to say that IR scholars (especially those as-

sociated with the dominant research school in IR, realism or neorealism) as-

sume that states are functionally alike when interacting with other states. This

is a critical assumption, largely because it suggests that it is possible to ex-

plain the behavior of states or countries without a careful examination of their

"internal workings." The reasoning behind this assumption stems from the be-

lief that the international system is anarchic, so that each and every state is

forced to behave in similar ways regardless of its internal makeup or its do-

mestic politics. The logic here is both simple and compelling: in an anarchic

(as opposed to hierarchic) system, states must compete with other states for

security, power, and influence. They must do so precisely because there is no

ultimate rule maker and rule enforcer for the system as a whole. Lacking an

ultimate authority, individual states (or actors) are forced to take matters into

their own hands, so to speak. Each state must, in other words, do those things

that ensure its own long-term survival. This generally means, among other

things, building a strong army, developing a network of mutually beneficial

military-strategic alliances, maintaining a diplomatic corps, gathering intelli-

gence, and engaging in military conflict when necessary.

In this view, the internal (political) makeup of a country is relatively unim-

portant in terms of explaining or predicting its external behavior. Thus, for ex-

What Is Comparative Politics? 11

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ample, a liberal democracy with a strong presidential system (such as the

United States) would behave—with regard to its foreign policy decisions—in

the same way that a single-party, communist -led dictatorship would.

In a sim-

ilar vein, we would expect a state governed by an Islamic (or Christian) funda-

mentalist regime, say Iran, to act in essentially the same manner as any other

state. A more salient consideration would be the size and military capacity of a

country. That is, a large, militarily powerful country would behave differently

from a small, militarily weak country. The foregoing discussion, I should stress,

is highly simplified and stylized; in addition, it fails to account for wide and sig-

nificant divergences within IR scholarship.

Nonetheless, it is a useful way to

grasp a basic distinction between IR and comparative politics. This is necessary

if only because so many people, including some political scientists, are largely

oblivious to the differences between the two fields. Yet, for the most part, the two

fields have developed along very different lines both theoretically and method-

ologically (as I will discuss shortly) and have only occasionally intersected in a

significant and meaningful manner. This is reason enough to spend a lot of time

defining comparative politics, for if we cannot even distinguish it from related

fields, how can we reasonably talk about a "comparative politics approach"?

Given the strong focus on external (or interstate) relations in IR, compar-

ative politics has, by default, tended to focus on the internal dynamics of coun-

tries. In this respect, we might say that, whereas IR is generally based on an

"outside-in" approach, comparative politics is generally based on an "inside-

out" approach. The different emphases of the two fields, in turn, have produced

(at least in the past) a very clear-cut "division of labor." Thus, as Zahariadis

(1997) pointed out:

Comparative research tends to be geographic in orientation; that is compar-

ativists generally describe themselves either as country specialists or as Eu-

ropeanists, Africanists, Asianists, and so on. [Ironically,this has led many

"comparativists," in practice, to eschew engaging in comparative research;

instead, many have become narrowly, even exclusively, focused on their

country of expertise.] In contrast, divisions in international relations are

more thematic and involve issues such as international conflict or interna-

tional political economy that transcend geographic boundaries. (p. 4)

Zahariadis is correct, but his observations do not go far enough. The division

of labor between comparative politics and IR has resulted not only in differ-

ent orientations and research interests but also in a belief that there is a real

and fundamental difference between domestic and international politics.

Is It Possible to Understand the Internal Politics of a Place

Without Understanding the Impact of External Forces?

All this brings us back to an integrally related issue, one raised earlier in the

chapter, namely, is it possible to understand the internal politics of a place

12 Introduction

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without understanding the impact of external forces? My answer to this ques-

tion is an unequivocal "no." This, I think, has been true for a very long time

(at least since the beginnings of colonialism in the fifteenth century) but is

particularly true today. Processes such as globalization in all its various di-

mensions (a topic that I cover at length in Chapter 9), in particular, have made

it nearly impossible to understand the internal dynamics of a country without

looking at what happens on the "outside." In practice, virtually all compara-

tivists clearly recognize this, although there is still a great deal of disagree-

ment over the relative importance of internal versus external factors. Some

scholars argue that "external" and, particularly, system-level factors—such as

the structure of the world economy or particular relationships of dependence

between poor and rich countries—are extremely and sometimes overwhelm-

ingly important. Others argue that, although such things matter, what matters

most are the individual attributes of societies and their states. These individ-

ual attributes may derive from particular historical experiences, from culture,

from language, from religion, and so on. The debate between these two sides

is related to the main theoretical approaches in comparative politics, which we

will cover in much more depth in subsequent chapters. For now, suffice it to

say that although almost all comparativists recognize the peril of defining the

field strictly in terms of what happens inside a country, state, or society, there

is no consensus on exactly what this means.

Comparative Politics: The Interplay of

Domestic and External Forces

Admitting that comparative politics cannot be limited to looking at what hap-

pens inside a country or other large social unit, I should stress, does not mean

that we need to completely abandon any distinctions among fields of study,

and especially between comparative politics and IR. W edo need, however,to

amend our definition of comparative politics. Thus, rather than defining com-

parative politics as a subject of study based on an examination of political

phenomena within or in countries, we can say that comparative politics ex-

amines the interplay of domestic and external forces on the politics of a given

country, state, or society. This amended definition, unfortunately, still does not

tell us if it is legitimate to separate the study of politics from economics, so-

ciety, culture, and so on. It is to this question that I will turn next.

What Is Politics?

Traditionally (that is, prior to World War II), comparative politics mainly in-

volved describing the basic features of political systems. Most research in

comparative politics, moreover, operated on the premise that politics referred

exclusively to the formal political system, that is, to the concrete institutions

What Is Comparative Politics? 13

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of government (such as the parliament, the congress, and the bureaucracy) and

to the constitutional and judicial rules that helped governments function. Ac-

cordingly, early studies tended to be little more than factual and generally su-

perficial accounts of how particular institutions of government operated and

were organized or how certain laws were written and then passed. Such ac-

counts may be useful and even necessary, but they can only tell a small part

of what we need to know about politics. Even those political processes and ac-

tors closely associated with the formal political system—such as political par-

ties, elections, and foreign and domestic decisionmaking—were left out of

these early studies. Politics, in short, was conceived of in very narrow terms.

AProcess-Oriented Definition of Politics

This narrowness began to change in the 1950s, when scholars laid a new foun-

dation for the field of comparative politics and for political science more gen-

erally. There are several complex reasons for this, some of which I have al-

ready discussed (and some of which I will discuss later). For now, I would like

to concentrate on how the traditional concern with the formal and legalistic

definition of politics was challenged and ultimately cast aside in favor of a

broader definition. An influential article by Roy Macridis (whom I mentioned

above) and Richard Cox (1953) symbolized this change. The two authors ar-

gued that the preoccupation with formal political institutions and judicial rules

was too close to the study of law and not close enough to the study of politics,

"which [in contrast to the study of law] observed that relations between soci-

ety and authority were governed by judicial but also by informal rules and

sometimes by brute force" (cited in Zahariadis 1997, p. 7). Although Macridis

and Cox (along with several other prominent scholars) succeeded in breaking

the hold of formalism/legalism in comparative politics, they did so only to a

limited extent. This was true for two basic reasons. First, although the move

away from formalism/legalism opened the door to comparative study of a

broader range of political institutions and processes, politics was still defined

primarily if not solely in relation to activities that involved the state or the gov-

ernment. Second, the discipline of political science generally and comparative

politics specifically remained tied to the idea that "politics"—as a subject of

study—could be separated from economics, sociology, history, geography, an-

thropology, or any other field in the social sciences and humanities .

The limitations of this latter view become particularly clear, noted Adrian

Leftwich (1983), "when one considers concrete problems in modern societies,

such as unemployment in the industrial societies on the one hand, and rural

poverty in the Third World on the other. The harder you think about these is-

sues, the more difficult it is to identify them as strictly economic, social, or

political in their causes or consequences" (p. 4). I agree, which is why in this

book we will begin with a definition of politics that is broader than what is of-

fered in many traditional textbooks. This alternative definition, what we might

14 Introduction

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 14

call a process-oriented or processual definition (Stoker and Marsh 2002), sees

politics as part and parcel of a larger social process. In this view, politics "is

about the uneven distribution of power in society [or between societies], how

the struggle over power is conducted, and its impact on the creation and dis-

tribution of resources, life chances and well-being" (emphasis added; p. 9).

This process-oriented definition makes it difficult if not impossible to main-

tain firm boundaries between disciplines. To see this, consider, for example,

how uneven distributions of power in societies come about in the first place.

Are these uneven power distributions the product of history? Or do contem-

porary economic forces play the determinative role? What about the effects of

culture, religion, custom, or even geography? Is it possible to say that one

type of factor always predominates, or is there an inextricable interaction

among these different forces—be they economic, social, political, cultural,

geographic, and so on? The answer to all these questions is, I believe, fairly

clear, and boils down to the conclusion that "politics" is integrally and neces-

sarily tied to history, culture, economics, geography, and a variety of other

forces. In practice, I think, most comparativists agree with this view of poli-

tics, which is why comparative political analysis today tends to be wide-

ranging and inclusive.

In addition to transcending disciplinary boundaries, a process-oriented

definition of politics has at least two other implications. First, it clearly takes

politics out of the governmental arena and puts it into almost all domains of

life. These other domains include virtually all social and civil institutions and

actors, such as churches, factories, corporations, trade unions, political par-

ties, think tanks, ethnic groups and organizations, women' sgroups, organized

crime, and so on. Second, a process-oriented definition of politics reinforces

our amended definition of comparative politics above (namely,as a field that

looks at "the interplay of domestic and external forces on the politics of a

given country,state, or society"). For it is clear that politics—as a struggle for

power over the creation and distribution of resources, life chances, and well-

being—is not something that can be easily compartmentalized into the do-

mestic and international. This is because the activities that determine the dis-

tribution and use of resources (at least for the past few hundred years) are

rarely confined to a single, clearly defined political territory; thus, as all pol-

itics is local (according to one popular saying), all politics is also potentially

international and global.

Losing Focus?

There are many political scientists who would disagree with this broad con-

ception of politics. We are already familiar with the basic argument. To repeat:

overly broad definitions force us to lose focus; that is, because there are no neat

boundaries telling us what is and what is not included in the scope of the def-

inition, we are studying both everything and nothing. Zahariadis (1997), for

What Is Comparative Politics? 15

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example, would like us to differentiate politics from "corporate decisions"; the

latter, he asserted, "affect only a specific corporation" (p. 2). Certainly, there are

myriad decisions made within a corporation (or within a family, factory, church,

or other social institution) with a very limited public or societal impact; yet, it

is also true that a vast number of "private" decisions have a clear and sometimes

profound public dimension. By their very nature, in fact, many corporate deci-

sions have a deep influence on how resources are obtained, used, produced, and

distributed. Moreover, in an era of "mega-corporations"—where the largest

firms are bigger, and often immensely bigger, than many countries in terms of

command over economic resources—the suggestion that corporate decisions do

not have a far-reaching public impact is difficult to maintain. Consider, in this

regard, Wal-Mart. In the 2008 fiscal year, Wal-Mart's total sales (domestic plus

international) amounted to $374.5 billion (Wal-Mart 2008 Annual Report),

which was more than three times bigger than New Zealand's gross domestic

product (GDP) of $115.7 billion (2008 estimate), in terms of purchasing

power parity (PPP), and vastly more than the GDP of most of the world's

smaller countries. Haiti's GDP, to cite just one example, was a paltry $11.5 bil-

lion in 2008, or about 3.1 percent of Wal-Mart's total sales. (See Figure 1.5 for

additional details.) It is not hard to assert that Wal-Mart's decisions, in general,

have a much greater political impact than decisions made in Haiti. Where, then,

do we draw the line between public and private decisions? Is it even possible to

do so? I would argue that the line, in some respects, has simply become too

blurred to be of major significance today.

At the same time, it would be a mistake for politics to be defined as

"everything-including-the-kitchen-sink." Indeed, as I discuss in subsequent

chapters (and as I suggested earlier), it is often necessary to provide clear-cut,

precise definitions. This is especially true when trying to develop an argument

or when trying to support a specific hypothesis or claim. After all, if you can-

not precisely or adequately define what it is you are studying—say "democ-

racy" or "terrorism"—how can you possibly claim to say anything meaning-

ful about that subject? In defining an entire field of study,precision is less

important, but not irrelevant. The trick, then, is to develop a definition that is

neither too narrow nor too unfocused. One solution, albeit a pragmatic one, is

to acknowledge that the politics about which comparativists (and other polit-

ical scientists) are most concerned, according to Stoker and Marsh (2002), (1)

is primarily collective as opposed to interpersonal and (2) involves interaction

within the public arena—that is, in the government or state—or between the

public arena and social actors or institutions (p. 10). No doubt, this qualifica-

tion will still be unsatisfactory to many political scientists, but it is also one

upon which a large number of comparativists have chosen to base their re-

search and analysis.

With all this in mind, let us now turn to the other major aspect of com-

parative politics, namely, comparing. To begin this discussion, let me pose a

simple question: what does it mean to compare?

16 Introduction

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 16

What Does It Mean to Compare?

What Is a Comparativist?

In thinking about what it means to compare, let's first consider what one re-

searcher has to say: "Thinking without comparison is unthinkable. And, in the

absence of comparison, so is all scientific thought and scientific research"

(Swanson 1971, p. 141; cited in Ragin 1987, p. 1). This scholar is telling us that

in all social sciences, researchers, scholars, and students are invariably en-

gaged in making some sort of comparison. If this is so (and it is fair to say that

it is), then there is very little that sets comparative politics apart—on the sur-

face, at least—from other fields of study. This is to say that the comparative

What Is Comparative Politics? 17

Figure 1.5 Wal-Mart vs. the World (2008 estimates)

The table below provides some simple (maybe simplistic) comparisons of

Wal-Mart (one of the world's largest companies in terms of sales) and a few

selected countries. Traditional definitions of politics suggest that countries,

no matter how small, have greater relevance to "politics" than corporate ac-

tors. These figures, although hardly definitive, suggest otherwise.

Wal-Mart Saudi Arabia New Zealand Haiti

Employees/

population 1.4 million 28.7 million 4.2 million 9.0 million

Sales/GDP-PPP

(in billions US$) $374.5

$593.4 $115.7 $11.5

Per capita sales/

GDP (in US$) $267,500 $23,834 $27,060 $1,316

Growth rate

(3-year average,

2006–2008) 10.03% 3.6% 1.75% 2.6%

International sales/

exports (in

billions US$) $90.6

$311.1 $29.5 $0.49

Imports (in

billions US$) N/A $92.4 $31.1 $2.1

Sources: Figures for Wal-Mart are all based on the 2008 fiscal year ("Wal-Mart 2008

Annual Report," http://walmartstores.com/sites/AnnualReport/2008/). GDP-PPP figures

for Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, and Haiti are from the International Monetary Fund,

World Economic Outlook Database (April 2009), www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/

2009/01/weodata/index.aspx. All other data are from the CIA World Factbook, www.cia

.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook.

Notes: GDP = gross domestic product; PPP =purchasing power parity; N/A =figures

not available.

a. Includes sales from Sam's Club and Wal-Mart International. Sales for Wal-Mart

only were $239.5 billion.

b. Figure is included in total sales.

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 17

strategies used by "comparativists" are not, in principle, different from the com-

parative strategies used by other political scientists or by sociologists, econo-

mists, and so on. But it does not mean that no differences exist: arguably, one

practice that sets comparative politics apart from other fields is the explicit and

direct focus on the comparative method—as opposed to simply "comparing."

The comparative method, as I will discuss in detail in the following chap-

ter, is a distinctive mode of comparative analysis. According to Ragin (1987),

it entails two main predispositions. First, it involves a bias toward (although

certainly not an exclusive focus on) qualitative analysis,which means that

comparativists tend to look at cases as wholes and to compare whole cases

with each other. Thus the tendency for comparativists is to talk of comparing

Germany to Japan or the United States to Canada. This may not seem to be an

important point, but it has significant implications, one of which is that com-

parativists tend to eschew—or at least, put less priority on—quantitative

analysis,also known as statistical or variable-centered analysis (Ragin

1987, pp. 2–3). In the social sciences, especially over the past few years, this

orientation away from quantitative and toward qualitative analysis definitely

sets comparativists apart from other social scientists. Even within compara-

tive politics, however,this is beginning to change. The second predisposition

among comparativists is to value interpretation and context (pp. 2–3). This

means, in part, that comparativists (of all theoretical orientations, I might add)

begin with the assumption that "history matters." Saying that history matters,

Ishould caution, is much more than pointing out a few significant historical

events or figures in an analysis; instead, it involves showing exactly how his-

torical processes and practices, as well as long-established institutional

arrangements, impact and shape the contemporary environment in which de-

cisions are made, events unfold, and struggles for power occur.It means, in

other words, demonstrating a meaningful continuity between the past and the

present. This is not easy to do, but for a comparativist using "history," it is

often an essential task. (See Figure 1.6.)

Although understanding the predisposition of comparativists is impor-

tant, this still doesn't tell us what it means to compare—a question that may

seem easy to answer, but in fact is not. Just pointing out or describing differ-

ences and similarities between any two countries, for example, is not by any

account the be-all and end-all of comparative analysis. Indeed, if you stay

strictly at the level of superficial description—for example, China has a Con-

fucian heritage, whereas the United States does not; both France and Russia

experienced social revolutions —you will never genuinely engage in com-

parative analysis, no matter how accurate your observations may be. And

you're even less likely to tell your audience anything meaningful or insight-

ful about political phenomena. Comparing, then, involves much more than

making observations about two or more entities. Just what else is involved in

comparative analysis is the topic of our next chapter, so I will reserve the re-

18 Introduction

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mainder of my discussion on this topic until then. In the meantime, we need

to address another basic and essential question: why compare?

Why Compare?

To be good comparativists, we need to know why we compare. In other words,

what is the purpose of comparing? On this question, Giovanni Sartori (1994)

offered us a very simple answer, namely, we compare to control .By control,

Sartori means to say—albeit in a very loose way—that we use comparisons as

away to check (verify or falsify) whether our claims or assertions about cer-

tain phenomena are valid by controlling for, or holding constant, certain vari-

ables. Take the statements "poverty causes corruption" or, conversely, "cor-

ruption causes poverty"; "authoritarianism is more conducive to high levels of

economic growth than democracy"; and "social revolutions are caused by rel-

ative deprivation." How do we know, Sartori asked, whether any of these

statements is true, false, or something else? "We know," Sartori answered, "by

looking around, that is, by comparative checking"(emphasis added; p. 16). It

is important to understand that, in most comparative analyses, actual control

variables are not used. This issue may not be very clear right now and, for our

purposes, is not critical. The main point is this: different types of comparisons

allow a researcher to treat a wide variety of similarities or differences as if

they are control variables. In so doing, the researcher can safely eliminate a

whole range of potentially significant factors and, instead, concentrate on

those variables he deems most important.

What Is Comparative Politics? 19

Figure 1.6 The Importance of History

Good historical analysis must show how past events and processes connect

with and shape contemporary events and processes. Just "talking about" his-

tory is never enough.

The "Past" The "Present"

Contemporary events

and processes

Historical events

and processes

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 19

Unfortunately, comparative checking usually cannot (indeed, can almost

never) provide definitive answers. This is true, in part, because comparative

checking is an imperfect mode of analysis, at least when comparing real-

world cases. It is also true, in more substantive terms, because comparison—

although one method of control—is not the best. There are much better meth-

ods of control, such as the experimental method and statistical control.

"But," as Sartori also noted, "the experimental method has limited applicabil-

ity in the social sciences, and the statistical one requires many cases" (1994,

p. 16), something that research in comparative politics generally lacks (this is

referred to as the small-N problem). Like it or not, therefore, comparison

often represents only a "second-best" method of control in the social sciences

and comparative politics.

Despite its second-best status, comparing to control is an undeniably im-

portant purpose of comparative analysis. Yet many comparativists, especially

those with a strong predisposition toward qualitative and historical analysis, are

not always, or even mostly, involved in "testing" hypotheses through their com-

parisons (Ragin 1987, p. 11). Instead, as Ragin noted, "[many comparativists]

...apply theory to cases in order to interpret them" (emphasis in original; p.

11). We will see examples of this in subsequent chapters, but what Ragin meant,

in part, is that comparativists recognize that countries or other types of macroso-

cial units all, in important ways, have a unique story to tell. Ragin suggested,

therefore, that some researchers are often most interested in using comparative

analysis to get a better grasp of these individual "stories," rather than primarily

using them as a way to verify or falsify specific arguments. In other words, for

these researchers, in-depth understanding is the goal of comparative analysis.

Comparing to understand, to put it in slightly different terms, means that re-

searchers use comparison to see what other cases can tell them about the spe-

cific case or country in which they have the most interest.

In a similar vein, some comparativists assume that the sheer complexity of

real-world cases makes control a worthwhile but difficult, if not impossible,

goal to achieve. Instead, they advocate a more pragmatic approach that at-

tempts to build theoretical generalization—or explanation —through an accu-

mulation of case-based knowledge (this is sometimes referred to as analytical

induction). In this view, it is understood that no case, by itself, or no compar-

ison of a small number of cases is sufficient to test a theory or general claim.

This is largely because the overwhelming complexity of any given case makes

any test problematic and highly contingent. Instead, each case or each small-N

comparison provides comparativists another piece (albeit often a very compli-

cated piece in and of itself) to work into a much larger puzzle. I will come back

to this issue—and specifically the issue of complex causality —below.

Even though the foregoing discussion may be a little confusing, the key

point is simply that, although researchers use comparisons for different rea-

20 Introduction

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 20

sons, doing comparative politics requires that you be aware of your reason

and rationale for making a comparison. Figure 1.7 provides a summary of the

three general purposes of comparing.

What Is Comparative Politics? 21

Figure 1.7 Three Purposes of Comparing: A Summary

General Purpose

Comparing Comparing to Comparing

to Control Understand to Explain

Basic strategy Comparative Interpretation Analytical

or purpose checking induction

Logic or Researcher uses Researcher is Researcher uses

approach to a range of cases primarily cases as a way to

comparative as a way to "test" interested in a build a stronger

analysis (verify or falsify) single case and theoretical

aspecific claim, uses different explanation. Cases

hypothesis, or cases or general are used in a "step-

theory. theories as a way by-step" manner,

to learn more with each case

about the case he/ contributing to the

she is studying. development of a

general theory.

Basic example (1) Begin with a (1) Begin with a (1) Begin with a

claim: "A high case (and issue): general theory:

level of gun The high level of "Structural theory

ownership will homicides in of democratization."

lead to a high South Africa. (2) Use various cases

level of gun- (2) Use existing to strengthen the

related homicide." theories and/or theory: Researcher

(2) "Test" the other cases to begins by looking at

claim: Researcher better understand the democratization

examines a range case: Researcher process in Mexico.

of countries in uses a range of This examination

order to "control theories on gun may lead researcher

for" gun owner- violence to better to "tweak" or revise

ship; if countries understand why elements of theory;

with the highest South Africa is he then looks at

rates of gun owner- the most violent T aiwan, Poland, and

ship have low rates country in the Ukraine. Each case is

of gun-related world. Researcher used as a stepping-

homicides (and vice also uses other stone in developing

versa), the claim is cases to see what or strengthening

falsified and must those cases can original theory.

be rejected. tell her about

South Africa.

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What Is Comparable?

Another important question about comparing involves the issue of exactly

what one can compare. What, to put it simply, is comparable? Again, the an-

swer may seem obvious at first blush (especially in the context of compara-

tive politics). For instance, it certainly seems reasonable to assert that coun-

tries, governments, societies, or similar entities are comparable. Yet, why

should this be the case? What makes "countries" (or other units of analysis)

comparable? One easy answer to this question is simply that all countries

share at least some common attributes—for example, they all occupy a terri-

tory defined by political boundaries, they all represent the interests of a polit-

ical community, they are all recognized (albeit not always "officially" as in

the case of Taiwan) by other countries or states, and so on. At the same time,

they each differ in some meaningful way. Indeed, differences are crucially im-

portant in any type of comparative analysis. After all, if all countries were ex-

actly alike, there would be no reason to compare, because what we say about

one case would necessarily be the same in any other case. In this respect, we

might say that comparing apples to oranges generally makes more sense than

comparing oranges to oranges or apples to apples.

Thus, to determine what we can compare, we can begin by saying that we

can compare "entities whose attributes are in part shared (similar) and in part

non-shared (and thus, we say, incomparable)" (Sartori 1994, p. 17). Saying

this, however,still doesn'ttell us all we need to know .Is it appropriate, for in-

stance, to compare the United States, Côte d'Ivoire, Japan, Indonesia, Guinea-

Bissau, and New Zealand? Well, the answer is, it depends. That is, it depends

on what the researcher is hoping to accomplish, and it depends on the partic-

ular research design the researcher plans to use. This is an obvious point; still,

it is one worth making because when phrased as a question—"on what does

our comparison depend?"—it forces us to think more carefully about the de-

sign of our analyses. It forces us, as well, to justify the comparisons we ulti-

mately end up making.

Comparing Cases

What we can compare, I should stress, is definitely not limited to countries

(more on this in Chapter 2). Nor is it necessarily limited to comparable data

from two or more countries. Such a restriction, for example, would automati-

cally exclude comparatively oriented but single-country (or single-unit) case

studies,including such classic comparative studies as Alexis de Tocqueville's

Democracy in America ([1835] 1998) and Emile Durkheim's Elementary

Forms of the Religious Life ([1915] 1961) (both cited in Ragin [1987, p. 4]).

As Ragin explained it, "Many area specialists [i.e., researchers who concen-

22 Introduction

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 22

trate on a single country] are thoroughly comparative because they implicitly

compare their chosen case to their own country or to an imaginary or theoret-

ically decisive ideal-typic case" (p. 4). Others, including Sartori, would dis-

agree, or at least would be quite skeptical of the claim that single-country case

studies can be genuinely comparative. Sartori wrote, for example, "It is often

held that comparisons can be 'implicit.' . . . I certainly grant that a scholar can

be implicitly comparative without comparing, that is, provided that his one-

country or one-unit study is embedded in a comparative context and that his

concepts, his analytic tools, are comparable. But how often is this really the

case?" (emphasis in original; 1994, p. 15).

Sartori made a good point, but so

too did Ragin. My own view is that single-case studies can be genuinely com-

parative if the researcher is clear about the "comparative context." But, this is

far less difficult than Sartori implies. (I will return to a discussion of this point

in the following chapter.)

The Importance of Logic

We are not going to resolve the debate here. Suffice it to say, then, that doing

comparative analysis requires far more than just looking at a "foreign coun-

try" or just randomly or arbitrarily picking two or more countries to study in

the context of a single paper or study. It is, instead, based on a general "logic"

and on particular strategies that guide (but do not necessarily) determine the

comparative choices we make. Understanding the logic of comparative analy-

sis, in fact, is essential to doing comparative politics. Needless to say,this will

be an important topic of discussion in Chapter 2. T oconclude our general dis-

cussion of comparing for now, however ,it would be useful to consider some

of the advantages of the comparative method (a number of disadvantages are

discussed in Chapter 2).

What Arethe Advantages of

the Comparative Method?

Earlier I noted that comparativists tend to look at cases as wholes and to com-

pare whole cases with each other. There are important advantages to this prac-

tice, the first and most important of which, perhaps, is that it enables re-

searchers to deal with complex causality (or causal complexity ). At one

level, complex causality is an easy-to-grasp concept. After all, there is little

doubt that much of what happens in the "real world" is an amalgam of eco-

nomic, cultural, institutional, political, social, and even psychological

processes and forces. Not only do all these processes and forces exist inde-

pendently (at least to some extent), but they interact in complicated, difficult-

What Is Comparative Politics? 23

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to-discern, and sometimes unpredictable (or contingent) ways. Thus, in study-

ing a particular phenomenon—say, political violence—it is likely that several

or even dozens of factors are at play. Some factors may be primarily "eco-

nomic," such as poverty, unemployment, and unequal income distribution.

Other factors may be "cultural" (for example, specific religious values and

practices, community norms, etc.), "political" (for example, lack of democ-

racy or a skewed distribution of political power, which itself could be based

on religious or ethnic differences), "socioeconomic" (for example, strong

class-based divisions), and so on. An adequate understanding of political vio-

lence may have to take all these factors into account and will likely have to

specify their interrelationship and interaction within certain contexts. Ragin

(1987) provided a very useful, three-point summary of complex causality:

First, rarely does an outcome of interest to social scientists have a single

cause. The conditions conducive for strikes, for example, are many; there is

no single condition that is universally capable of causing a strike. Second,

causes rarely operate in isolation. Usually, it is the combined effect of vari-

ous conditions, their intersection in time and space, that produces a certain

outcome. Thus, social causation is often both multiple and conjectural, in-

volving different combinations of causal conditions. Third, a specific cause

may have opposite effects depending on context.For example, changes in

living conditions may increase or decrease the probability of strikes, de-

pending on other social and political conditions. . . . The fact that some con-

ditions have contradictory effects depending on context further complicates

the identification of empirical regularities because it may appear that a con-

dition is irrelevant when in fact it is an essential part of several causal com-

binations in both its presence and absence state. (emphasis added; p. 27)

The point to remember is that other methods of inquiry (such as the experi-

mental method and statistical analysis) cannot, in general, adequately deal

with complex causality.Comparative (case-oriented) analysis, by contrast, is

especially—perhaps uniquely—suited for dealing with the peculiar complex-

ity of social phenomena (Rueschemeyer 1991). Why? Quite simply because

comparative analysis, to repeat a point made above, can and often does deal

with cases as a whole—meaning that a full range of factors can be considered

at once within particular historical contexts (which themselves vary over

time). This is especially apparent with regard to "deviant" or anomalous

cases. Comparative analysis can help explain why, for example, some rela-

tively poor countries—such as India, Mauritania, and Costa Rica—are demo-

cratic, when statistically based studies would predict just the opposite.

To ac-

count for such anomalous cases (as many comparativists might argue), we

need to look very closely at the particular configuration of social, cultural, and

political forces in these individual countries and understand how, from a his-

torical perspective, these configurations emerged and developed. We also

24 Introduction

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 24

need to understand how external forces and relationships interacted with the

domestic environment to produce the specific results that they did. None of

this is likely to be achieved, to repeat, without considering the whole context

of each individual case.

A second, strongly related advantage is that comparative analysis (espe-

cially when carried out in a qualitative as opposed to quantitative manner) al-

lows the researcher to better understand or explain the relationship between and

among factors. Quantitative or statistical research, by contrast, does a very good

job in showing that relationships exist (for example, that capitalist development

is related to democratization) but does not generally do a good job at telling us

what the nature or underlying dynamic of this relationship is. To use a metaphor

from aviation, we might say that quantitative analysis shows a strong correla-

tion between engine failure and plane crashes, but it typically does not tell us

the exact reasons (or the chain of causal events leading to the crash—since not

all engine problems, even very similar ones, lead to the same outcome, and vice

versa). To find out the reasons planes crash, therefore, investigators almost al-

ways have to look inside the black box or flight data recorder (see Figure 1.8).

They have to analyze the myriad factors—some of which will undoubtedly be

unique to individual flights—to determine the cause of any particular crash.

Even this may not be enough: quite frequently, investigators have to literally re-

assemble the fragments of the destroyed plane to determine the chain of causal

events. To be sure, the cause is sometimes obvious and does not require inten-

sive investigation, but more often than not, the incident as a whole needs to be

examined in order to develop a complete explanation.

What Is Comparative Politics? 25

Figure 1.8 The Black Box of Explanation

Factor X ■ Outcome Y

Example: Example:

Capitalist growth Democracy

Statistical or quantitative analysis does a very good job of showing a corre-

lation between X and Y but typically does not explain why this correlation

exists in the first place. Getting inside the black box of explanation may be

possible with statistical analysis, but qualitative analysis—and especially

qualitative comparative analysis—is usually much better suited for this task.

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 25

By Way of a Conclusion:

Method and Theory in Comparative Politics

The metaphor of the black box is instructive, but we should be careful not to

take it too far, for comparative analysis is more than just opening up the black

box and analyzing its contents. It also involves—as might already be apparent

from my discussion of the two types of comparative research strategies—a

process of a priori conceptualization. At the most basic level, this simply

means that the selection of cases to investigate should not be purely random or

arbitrary but should be guided by certain criteria, some of which derive from

the particular research design we choose. Yet before we even get to the re-

search design, important choices have to be made regarding the factors (or

variables) we consider significant in the first place. These choices are guided

by theory.In Chapter 3, I talk much more about theory. For now, then, let me

highlight one general point: theory has a bad reputation among students. Part

of the blame, I think, falls on professors who do not help students understand

why theory is not only important but is something none of us can do without

(whether in an academic discipline or in everyday life). As I will make clear,

we all theorize about the world, all the time. Yet just because we all theorize

does not mean we all do it equally well—this is especially true for those of you

who operate on the assumption that theories have nothing to do with the "real

world," or that one can explain or understand anything simply by appealing to

the "facts." One way to rectify this problem is to simply become more self-

conscious and explicit about theory/theorizing; this has the added benefit, I

might add, of helping you become a more disciplined, critical, and analytic

thinker. Thinking theoretically about comparative politics, in this regard, has

value well beyond the confines of this particular subfield. The same can be said

about thinking comparatively,which is the topic of our next chapter .

To sum up, doing comparative politics requires, minimally ,aclear-eyed

understanding of what comparative politics is, of what it means to compare,

and of the importance and necessity of theory. There is, of course, more to

doing comparative politics than just these three requirements, but they consti-

tute an essential foundation upon which everything else will stand.

Questions

1. How do we know if an argument—especially one that deals with com-

plex social, political, or economic phenomena—is valid or even plausible?

How does knowledge of comparative politics help us answer this question?

2. Consider the early development of comparative politics in the United

States. How was the field defined or understood by scholars in the United

26 Introduction

01_Lim_Ch01.qxd 6/16/10 3:06 PM Page 26

States? What were the problems that characterized the early development of

comparative politics as a field of study?

3. Why did the scope and definition of comparative politics change after

World War II? Did these changes lead to a "better" or more objective defini-

tion of comparative politics?

4. What are the differences between international relations and compar-

ative politics as fields of study? Why is it important to be aware of and un-

derstand these differences?

5. What does it mean to say that international relations, in general, has

adopted an "outside-in" approach, while comparative politics, in general, has

adopted an "inside-out" approach? Is one approach better than the other?

6. What definition of comparative politics is recommended in the chap-

ter? How does it differ from other definitions of the field?

7. What are the key implications of a process-oriented definition of pol-

itics in terms of (1) whom we see as significant actors; (2) what we consider

to be a political issue; and (3) where we understand politics to occur?

8. Does the economic size of a corporation such as Wal-Mart make it a

significant "political" actor? Do the decisions made and implemented by Wal-

Mart have important political consequences and implications?

9. What are the three goals of comparing? How do these goals differ in

terms of doing comparative analysis?

10. Are "apples and oranges" comparable? More generally, are units of

analysis that appear quite different from one another—say ,Haiti and Japan—

comparable? Or,is it only permissible to compare units that are essentially

similar to one another?

11. What are the key advantages of the comparative method?

12. What is the "black box of explanation" and how does it relate to com-

parative analysis?

Notes

1. Terms that appear in boldface type are defined in the Glossary (see p. 311).

2. This seems an obvious point about which most scholars would agree. Yet the dis-

tinction between American and comparative politics still exists in the United States. There

are, of course, plenty of reasons for this, one of which is that it is "natural" for people to

see their own country or society as separate and distinct from other places. Nonetheless,

there is no solid justification for the distinction. As Sigelman and Gadbois (1983) nicely

put it, "the traditional distinction between American and comparative politics is . . . intel-

lectually indefensible. . . . Comparison presupposes multiple objects of analysis . . . one

compares something to or with something else" (cited in Sartori 1994, p. 14).

3. For an interesting discussion of the relationship between US government sup-

port and the development of area studies (specifically in relation to Asia) in the United

States, see Selden (1997).

What Is Comparative Politics? 27

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4. Most researchers in the field, I should emphasize, can probably agree on a

basic, but very general, definition of comparative politics (such as the ones listed in Fig-

ure 1.4). There is far less agreement, however, on how the field should be constituted

interms of a particular theoretical or even methodological approach. In a wide-ranging

discussion on the role of theory in comparative politics, for example, some of the lead-

ing names in comparative politics and comparative analysis fail to achieve a consensus

on what is or should be the theoretical core of the field (see Kohli et al. 1995).

5. I should note, however, that there has never been unanimous agreement on

this point. Indeed, one of the main areas of controversy in international relations the-

ory today revolves around the "democratic peace thesis" (Doyle 1995). The crux of

this argument is that liberal (or democratic) states do not go to war with other liberal

states. In essence, advocates of the democratic peace thesis argue that there is some-

thing unique about the internal constitution of liberal states that changes their behav-

ior in relation to other liberal states.

6. For obvious reasons, I cannot provide a detailed and nuanced discussion of in-

ternational relations theory here. Fortunately, there are a number of very good intro-

ductory texts that do just this. See, for example, The Globalization of World Politics:

An Introduction to International Relations (2008), edited by John Baylis, Steve Smith,

and Patricia Owens. Chapters 5 through 10 in that book cover both mainstream and al-

ternative theories in some depth and detail. Another useful textbook is Jill Steans and

Lloyd Pettiford's International Relations: Perspectives and Themes (2001).

7. Despite the fact that the field is defined in terms of a particular method—that

is, comparison—there are many scholars in the field of comparative politics who, ac-

cording to Giovanni Sartori, "have no interest, no notion, no training, in comparing"

(1994, p. 15). The reason, I might note, may have more to do with the ethnocentric way

the field has been defined than with the scholars themselves. To understand this point,

consider the fact that comparative politics (in the United States) has been defined, most

simplistically, as "studying other countries." Thus, as Sartori put it, "a scholar who

studies only American presidents is an Americanist, whereas a scholar who studies

only French presidents is not" (Sartori 1994, p. 14). The US-based scholar who decides

to study only France, in other words, is only classified as a comparativist by dint of his

or her interest in a country other than the United States.

8. Later, Sartori (1994) stated his case more strongly ."I must insist," he con-

tended, "that as a 'one-case' investigation the case study cannot be subsumed under the

comparative method (though it may have comparative merit)" (p. 23).

9. Costa Rican democracy, especially, has been an issue of special interest to

comparativists, since it constitutes, according to Rueschemeyer,Stephens, and

Stephens (1992), "the real exception to the pattern [of authoritarianism] prevailing in

Central America" (p. 234).

10. Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992) made a very strong argument on

this point. They noted that, although cross-national statistical work has shown an unde-

niable and very strong link (correlation) between capitalist development and democracy,

this correlation, by itself (and no matter how many times it is replicated), "does not carry

its own explanation." "It does not," they continued, "identify the causal sequences ac-

counting for the persistent relation, not to mention the reason why many cases are at odds

with it. Nor can it account for how the same end can be reached by different historical

routes. The repeated statistical finding has a peculiar 'black box' character that can be

overcome only by theoretically well grounded empirical analysis" (p. 4).

28 Introduction

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... During the analysis process, institutions, states, and central processes were combined to have a better understanding of the similarities and differences of the agencification process implemented among them. Five basic approaches in comparative research are generally used ( Fleming, 1970;Hopkin, 2010;Lim, 2010;Peters, 1998) a. Most Similar System (MSS) design where the locus is countries which have similar features, b. ...

Arif Budy Pratama

This paper discusses the agencification phenomena as one of New Public Management (NPM)-based administrative reform initiatives. Thailand, Hong Kong, and Pakistan were chosen because of their similarity on administrative legacy and availability of data. The study uses a review of literature research method, while comparative approach was employed to analyze experiences of agencification in the three selected cases. Research result showed that the three countries implemented agencification in different ways; rational agency model is not the only driver for agencification initiatives; and contextual factor that include traditions, cultures, structures, and values influence the implementation of agencification process as a public sector reform initiative. Policy implications can be drawn by reading the three countries on agencification. Thus, Indonesia, as one of NPM adopters can learn from experience gleaned from the three polities in conducting its administrative reform agenda.

Mustafa Kashiem

Libya early practice of legislative process goes back to the years of political independence, when the first popular parliament was elected in 16 February 1952 during the era of the constitutional monarchy. Nevertheless, the era of Gaddafi's regime (1969 to 2011) resulted in a vacuum of legislative process. The resumption of the Libyan legislative process reoccurred since the early days of the 17th February revolution of 2011; therefore, the National Transitional Council "NTC" was established by revolutionary leaders from different parts of Libya on 27th September 2011. The most important legal document that was issued by the NTC is the Interim Constitutional Declaration "ICD" on 3 August 2011, a document that draws the roadmap for the Libyan future. The legislative processes of the NTC, and especially the National General Congress "NGC", reflected the division of labor technique; thus, permanent, non-permanent and common committees were operational. This study assumes that the Libyan legislative process is a policy influencing rather than an executive dominated branch of government. In order to examine the influence of the NTC and the NGC on public policy, this study is divided into the following sections: the Evolution of the Libyan legislative process, the Libyan legislative process, the Influence of the NTC and the NGC, the Future of the legislative process in the new Libya, and a conclusion. The findings of this study support, by and large, the underlying hypothesis that described the NTC and the NGC as policy influencing rather than executive dominated legislative bodies.

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