POLS 373 Foundations of Comparative Politics Week One, Lecture One/ Session One A Primer on Comparative Politics October 3, 2006.

POLS 373 Foundations of Comparative Politics

Week One, Lecture One/ Session One

A Primer on Comparative Politics

October 3, 2006

Doing Comparative Politics

Becoming a “good comparativist” means … knowing how to compare, and actually using comparisons in your analyses of

political phenomena; but …


… knowing how to compare—much less using comparisons—is not a simple as it may sound:

it involves putting together a lot of different and often complex pieces


Knowing how to compares:

Means understanding the logic of comparing

Means understanding the various strategies of comparison

Both of these require strong thinking

Doing Comparative Politics A good comparativist must also demonstrate a willingness and capacity to do in-

depth, careful research

After all, it is hard to make a good comparison unless you know something and, preferably, a lot of things about what it is you are comparing.


Becoming a good comparativist: Four more points

First, becoming a good comparativist means knowing how to use comparisons in conjunction with the use of theory. Theory and the comparative method are used to develop and support a larger arguments and explanations about political, social, and economic phenomena.

Second, becoming a good comparativist means knowing what the limitations of comparative analysis are.


Becoming a good comparativist: Four more points

Third, becoming a good comparativist means knowing how to set up a comparative research design, which requires understanding how to select “units of comparison,” how to determine the number of units needed to compare, how to focus on specific variables and relationships, and so forth

Fourth, becoming a good comparativist means knowing how to support your comparative research design with adequate, sufficient, and reliable empirical evidence.


Becoming a good comparativist

In sum, becoming a good comparativist is a complicated endeavor; however, becoming a good comparativist is not beyond the reach of any of anyone


Becoming a good comparativist

As long as you take the time to read and seriously think about the material covered in the text and as long as you actively listen and engage yourself in class discussion, you will be able to become a good comparativist


Remember the “Three Legs of a Comparative Argument: Method, Theory and Evidence

Your argument must have all three legs, otherwise it will fall down

Becoming a good comparativist: Last point


Is Michael Moore a “good comparativist”?

• Did his argument incorporate a theoretical perspective?

• Short Answer: Yes, although it was largely implicit

Becoming a good comparativist and Bowling for Columbine



• Did Moore use a comparative method to support his argument?

• Short Answer: Yes, although his methodology was very casual and implicit




• Did Moore present evidence to support his argument?

• Short Answer: Yes, although it was largely anecdotal, often problematic, and generally undocumented. At the same time, there was a valid and undeniably useful “logic” to his use of comparisons.




• Overall assessment: Moore met the minimal criteria needed for a good comparativist. To be sure, however, his argument, from a social scientific perspective, had a lot of (very big) holes and potential problems.



Some Questions:

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

Why do so many peoples and countries around the world remained mired in poverty and economic misery? Conversely, how have some peoples and countries been able to become “rich” and prosperous in only a generation or two?

Can the United States successfully impose democracy on Iraq or other countries? Or, are all such efforts doomed to failure?


Some Questions:

What are the causes of “terrorism” and other forms of political violence? Is anyone capable of becoming a terrorist, or are terrorists the product of a particular type of society and culture?

How do social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movements in the United States, emerge and why do some succeed, while others fail?


Right or Wrong? How do you know?

How do you know whether your answer to a question--such as, “Why are poor countries poor?”--is right or wrong?

Indeed, how do we know if any argument is right, wrong or something else?



Short Answer: We have to able to “test” the argument is some manner.



In the natural sciences, this testing is often (though not always) done through experimentation, that is, the creation of carefully controlled situations in which certain variables can be isolated.



In the social sciences, however, experimental conditions are extremely hard to create. There are lots of reasons for this, but the main one is simply that the social world is just too “messy” and uncontrollable

For example, to “test” the argument that some countries are poor because they lack appropriate leadership, a researcher cannot simply replace a “bad” leader with a good leader, while holding every other conceivably significant variable constant



Since social scientists cannot create experimental conditions, they must use the “next best thing” (or a second best method), which, in many cases, is comparative analysis

Consider how comparative analysis can be used to help answer some of the following questions …


Some More Questions:

What are the reasons for the relatively poor math and science skills of American teenagers?

Can a national health care system work? Are fundamentalist religious beliefs and democracy compatible? Is vast economic inequality a necessary by-product of a capitalist

system? What encourages people to save an invest? Are government bureaucracies necessarily ineffective and inefficient?


Basic Questions

What is comparative politics?

Basic answer: Comparative politics is both a subject of study (focusing on specific countries, societies and/or regions) and a method of study


Basic Questions


As a subject of study, comparative politics may be said to focus on the many different societies, types of institutions, political systems, and countries that make up the world

Traditionally, the United States was excluded, but, in principle, no good reason for doing so


Basic Questions


Comparative politics is not the same as International Relations, or IR for short.

What is the difference?


Basic Questions

What is comparative politics? The distinction between comparative politics and IR

Comparative politics has tended to focus on “domestic” issues, while IR has focused on “external” issues or on the inter-relationship between/among states. In this view, the internal makeup of individual countries is often assumed to be relatively unimportant


Basic Questions


Comparative politics, in contrast, has tended to adopt an opposite approach. That is, comparative politics assumes that “internal” differences (which may derive from culture, institutional arrangements, history, ideology, etc.) are very important


Basic Questions


Things are changing, however, and probably for the best.

My position is that it is no longer appropriate to make a sharp distinction between the internal and the external: the two should be seen as interactive and unavoidably interrelated, especially in the present era of globalization


An Amended Definition of Comparative Politics

Comparative politics looks at the interplay of domestic and external forces on the politics of a given country, nation-state or society.


Basic Questions

What is Politics?

A process oriented definition: “Politics is about more than what governments chose to do or not do; it is about the uneven distribution of power in society, how the struggle over power is conducted, and its impact on the creation and distribution of resources, life chances and well-being”


Basic Questions

What is Politics? Implications of a process oriented definition

Makes it difficult if not impossible to maintain firm boundaries between disciplines. Consider the issue of uneven distributions of power.


Basic Questions


Are these uneven power distributions the product of history? Or do contemporary economic forces play the determinative role? What about the effects of culture, religion, custom? (re: sociology,

anthropology, religious studies) Or do geographic conditions play a role? (geography)


Basic Questions


Second Implication: a process oriented definition clearly takes politics out 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 parties, think tanks, ethnic groups and organizations, women’s groups, organized crime, etc.


Basic Questions


Third Implication: 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”)


Basic Questions


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 domestic and international.

Thus, as all politics is local (according to one popular saying), all politics is also potentially international and global.


Basic Questions

What is Politics? Disagreements

Not everyone agrees with a process-oriented definition. Some argue that not is it too unfocused and too broad; as such, it makes the definition of politics meaningless.


Basic Questions

What is Politics? Disagreements Critics might argue that there is a clear distinction between

the private and the public (the former of which is supposedly not “political”)

Thus, for example, a decision made within a family is clearly a private, non-political decision, as is an internal decision by a business, say, to buy more paper clips.

True, but …


Basic Questions

What is Politics? Disagreements … in societies where men make all the

important household decisions, some scholars would argue, this authority is part of patriarchal structure which is very much a reflection of an uneven distribution of power within society at large. Patriarchy is unequivocally political.


Basic Questions

What is Politics? Disagreements The case for corporate decisions is even

clearer: if Wal-Mart, for examples, decides to buy more paper clips—or perhaps more relevantly, cloths—from China, this almost certainly will have an impact on the “creation and distribution of resources, life chances and well-being.”

Almost any decision Wal-Mart makes has political implications.

POLS 373 Foundations of Comparative Politics Week One, Lecture One/ Session One A Primer on Comparative Politics October 3, 2006.

Documents

good comparativist slide

comparative argument

comparative method

good comparison

comparative research

columbine slide

point slide

strong thinking slide