• Comparative politics represents a shift towards the expanding horizon of political science, emerging from a period of doubt and uncertainty to a higher level of understanding.
• The study has evolved from the skeptical decade of the 1950s to the determined decade of the 1960s, leading to a new perspective on the subject.
• Earlier, highly regarded areas of the discipline have lost some of their importance, while neglected areas have gained significance.
• The study of political reality has become a motivating force, pushing for new techniques and approaches to cover the entire area of politics.
• The focus has shifted from studying government to studying governments, emphasizing decision-making processes across various domains such as United Nations, parish councils, trade unions, papal conclaves, board rooms, and tribes.
• The importance of comparative politics lies in the experimentation with new approaches, definitions, and research tools.
• A significant reason for the shift is the disappointment with the traditional descriptive approach to the subject, leading to intellectual ferment and the search for more effective ways of studying politics.

Comparative Politics: Meaning, Nature and Scope: Emergence of the ‘New Science of Politics’

• Politics is a continuous, timeless, ever-changing, and universal activity, primarily focused on decision-making to address and solve predicaments.
• It arises from a special kind of activity, a human behavior, involving political action, where individuals engage in decisions that affect collective issues.
• Political scientists define political action in varying ways, leading to distinctions such as conservative, traditionalist, or modernist.
• Oakeshott defines political activity as involving individuals in a civil association, proposing changes, persuading others, and acting to promote those changes.
• David Easton views political activity as an action for the authoritative allocation of values.
• Harold Lasswell and Robert Dahl describe political activity as a special case of power exercise.
• Jean Blondel emphasizes decision-making in political activity.
• Oakeshott also highlights that political activity is like sailing a boundless and bottomless sea, with no fixed destination, focusing on maintaining balance.
• In comparative politics, the term “politics” encompasses three connotations: political activity, political process, and political power.
• Political activity involves efforts to create and resolve conflicts, often relating to the interests of the people in the struggle for power.
• The resolution of conflicts can occur through tension-reduction mechanisms, whether permanent or reserve mechanisms in times of crisis.
• Conflict arises from the disparity between the values desired by people and those held by those in power, creating a need for political action.
• Government is responsible for resolving conflicts but must prevent the breakdown of the polity, as politics ceases when secession or civil war occurs.
• Political activity stops when a political rest is achieved, whether through spontaneous unanimity or imposed consensus.
• Political process extends political activity, encompassing agencies involved in decision-making, including non-state entities that influence government decisions.
• Finer asserts that private associations’ success is maximized with state power behind them, making their struggle public, either to influence or become the government.
• Comparative politics also studies the interaction between state and non-state associations, exploring their influence on one another.
• Blondel suggests examining the stages in which government allocates values, from formulation to decision-making and implementation.
• Political power is central in comparative politics and has various definitions, including Carl J. Friedrich’s view as a human relationship and Tawney’s as the ability to modify the conduct of others.
• Lasswell links power to decision-making, where decisions influence others’ policies and actions.
• Politics, therefore, involves the exercise of power, attempting to change others’ conduct to align with one’s interests.
• Power in politics is a spectrum of external influences shaping behavior to achieve specific outcomes.
• The study of power in politics widens comparative politics, including analysis of governing elites, ruling class, and the infrastructure of political systems.
• Politics is often studied through the lens of authority, where democratic systems justify power through consensus, while totalitarian systems rely on coercion.
• A key principle of comparative politics: Where consensus is weak, coercion tends to be strong, and vice versa.
• Politics in comparative politics is now defined empirically, free from normative constraints, and focuses on the exercise of power.
• The study of politics involves understanding how power is obtained, exercised, controlled, and the context in which decisions are made, as described by Curtis.

Growth of Comparative Politics: From Unsophisticated to Increasingly Sophisticated Directions

• The study of comparative politics became significant in the 1950s when American political scientists aimed to transform the field from studying foreign governments to analyzing political systems.
• The development of comparative politics can be categorized into three phases: unsophisticated, sophisticated, and increasingly sophisticated.
• Early contributions came from thinkers like Aristotle, Machiavelli, de Tocqueville, Bryce, Ostrogorski, and Weber, who used the comparative method to understand political organizations and their functions.
• The comparative method aimed to find ideal types and progressive forces of political history through comparisons of different polities.
• John Stuart Mill and Lord James Bryce emphasized the importance of the comparative method, which allowed for identifying causal relationships in political systems.
• Samuel H. Beer, M. Hass, Bernard Ulam, and Roy C. Macridis were part of the sophisticated phase where they applied the comparative method with greater rigor and self-awareness, focusing on political systems rather than just governments.
• Writers in the sophisticated phase introduced various strategies for comparison, such as area studies, configurative approach, and institutional comparisons, and addressed challenges like conceptualization, cross-cultural difficulties, and data availability.
• The increasingly sophisticated phase involved scholars like David Easton, Gabriel A. Almond, Robert A. Dahl, and Sidney Verba, who used complex concepts to analyze political systems in a more systematic manner.
• This phase introduced concepts such as inputs, outputs, feedback, and autonomy in the analysis of political systems.
• The analytical and empirical investigation methods have expanded the field, clearing up previous ambiguities in the study of politics and focusing on both normative and descriptive concerns.
• Comparative politics now includes the study of infrastructure, not just formal governmental structures, by examining patterns of behavior and practices that shape political systems.
• The role of political parties, pressure groups, and social forces has become as important as that of executives and legislatures in understanding modern political systems.
• There is an increasing focus on the politics of developing societies, recognizing the significance of studying developing political systems alongside developed ones, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• Scholars emphasize the need to build theories and models for the preservation and development of democracy in new nations, given the fragility of their political systems.
• The inter-disciplinary approach in comparative politics incorporates insights from sociology, psychology, economics, and anthropology, enriching the field with more complex analysis tools.
• Topics like political development, modernization, socialization, and leadership are studied with insights from disciplines beyond political science.
• The rise of value-free political theory in comparative politics marks a shift from normative concerns to empirical investigations focused on real-world political systems, where values are studied in an empirical rather than a normative sense.
• The study of comparative politics has broadened, focusing on global political systems, particularly in developing countries and those emerging from decolonization.
• The field has become more diversified and globalized, reflecting the political dynamics in non-western societies and the interaction between state and non-state actors.
• Following the end of the socialist world, the study of comparative politics has become more focused on how to build democracy in regions where it is not indigenous, emphasizing decolonization and democratization.
• Neo-institutionalism, a term coined by Apter, integrates traditional institutionalism with a focus on developmentalism, highlighting the study of growth and the challenges of political change in underdeveloped countries.

Comparative Politics and Comparative Government: Case of Identities and Similarities in Basic Implications

• The terms comparative politics and comparative government are often used interchangeably but have distinct meanings.
• Comparative government focuses on a comparative study of political systems, especially their institutions and functions.
• Comparative politics has a broader scope, encompassing not only the study of political systems but also non-state politics, such as political processes and the influence of sociological, psychological, and economic factors.
• Sidney Verba suggests that comparative politics should extend beyond description and focus on theoretical problems, examining political processes and functions beyond formal institutions and including new nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
• Curtis explains that comparative politics looks at regularities, similarities, and differences in political institutions and behavior, requiring empirical data and research techniques like sampling and experimentation.
• Curtis stresses that the goal is not to seek certainty or predictability but to create explanatory hypotheses and acknowledge that political phenomena cannot always be quantified, especially mood changes in politics.
• The term comparative politics is preferred over comparative government due to its broader and more comprehensive scope.
• Blondel identifies two aspects of comparative government: horizontal (study of national governments) and vertical (study of the state and other political associations and groups). He argues that comparative government becomes comparative politics when both aspects are considered.
• Edward Freeman distinguishes between comparative government (focus on political institutions and forms of government) and comparative politics (study of analogies across times and countries, emphasizing essential likeness of institutions).
• A cautious approach is needed in comparative politics to avoid oversimplification and ensure that useful aspects of comparison are not ignored.
• According to Roberts, a narrower conception of comparative politics can lack clarity in identity and criteria for selection and exclusion.
• Eckstein and Apter warn that an overly broad conception of comparative politics could expand it to encompass all of political science.

Comparative Method in Comparative Politics: An Instrument for Making Comparisons in Search for Theory- Building and Testing in Political Science

• The comparative method is essential to the study of comparative politics as it helps in comparing political systems to build and test political theories.
• This method is used in a specific sense, emphasizing both macro and micro aspects of political systems, or the vertical and horizontal dimensions as described by Blondel.
• Unlike classical political theorists like Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Montesquieu, modern comparative politics uses the method to develop general theories about political systems.
• Wood asserts that the purpose of including “comparative” in the field is to treat political systems as units for comparison in the broader pursuit of theory-building and testing in political science.
• The comparative method in comparative politics has three main characteristics: definition of conceptual units, classifications, and hypothesis formulation and testing.
• Conceptual units are defined to compare political systems, and these units go beyond formal structures like the legislature, executive, and judiciary to include elements such as the behavior of legislators, voters, and the role of political parties and pressure groups.
• Students of comparative politics are concerned with the conceptual units that define the whole system, studying smaller elements only to understand the system as a whole.
• Taxonomy plays a key role in comparative politics, aiding in the creation of broad generalizations about complex phenomena by categorizing political systems based on characteristics like federal vs. unitary systems, parliamentary vs. presidential systems, and democratic vs. totalitarian systems.
• Comparative politics often includes typological classifications to make sense of the variety in political systems, ensuring categories are neither too broad nor too narrow for comparison.
• Finer’s dimensions of political systems—participation-exclusion, coercion-persuasion, and order-representativeness—help in differentiating political systems.
• In comparative politics, hypothesis formulation and testing are vital for analyzing how political systems respond to popular demands, handle external pressures, manage internal crises, and produce effective leadership.
• Questions related to the stability, support, and institutional response of political systems need to be addressed through empirical investigation, aiming for verifiable and applicable theories.
• The comparative method in comparative politics requires that general principles are derived while accounting for diverse conditions like economic, social, moral, and legal standards, as well as the temperament and genius of the people.
• A writer or researcher in comparative politics must carefully define the conceptual units and ensure their theories are empirically sound and testable.
• Ultimately, the comparative method is crucial to understanding and improving political systems, demanding careful attention to the diverse contexts in which they function.

Critical Appraisal: Problems and Prospects of Scientific Analysis in Comparative Politics

• The study of comparative politics faces numerous challenges that hinder scientific analysis, including the problem of defining concepts and terms with precision. Sartori’s concept of “conceptual stretching” highlights how leading writers use different concepts based on their expertise, making accurate comparisons difficult.
• Many political terms in comparative politics suffer from ambiguity and are often used as political rhetoric, which complicates the field and creates the fear of neologism.
• Data collection on political systems and related non-state institutions is difficult due to the range and character of background variables, the role of norms, institutions, and behaviour in governments, and challenges in cross-cultural studies. Many important matters are hard to measure accurately, making them difficult for precise comparison.
• Political behaviour is not always rational or based on scientific principles, which makes it harder to study and analyze scientifically.
• A value-free approach in political science can cause problems for those with a normative approach, as terms may carry different meanings. For instance, systems analysis is considered unsystematic by Marxist-Leninist theorists, and the term “development” varies between bourgeois and Marxist interpretations.
• The complexity of political systems and behaviours makes it difficult to apply one-size-fits-all explanations. No single factor like love for power or charisma can explain the diversity of political systems and behaviours.
• The roles of individuals in politics cannot be subject to uniform rules. For example, the political behaviour of the English cannot be directly compared to that of people in Ghana or Indonesia.
• Much of comparative politics focuses on the stability and maintenance of political systems, based on the assumption that power is conservative. However, political systems undergo change, and ignoring this aspect of change creates difficulties in comparative analysis.
• The use of an inter-disciplinary approach has expanded the scope of comparative politics, leading to uncertainty about what the subject should include and exclude.
• These challenges highlight that comparative politics cannot be treated as a purely scientific field without precise concept construction. It lacks the tools for comparative inquiry to make universal political truths.
• Sartori argues that no comparative science of politics is plausible globally unless we have extensive and precise information for meaningful comparison.
• The inter-disciplinary approach, while valuable, can make the study of politics overly complex and diminish its autonomous character, reducing it to a satellite of sociology, where political activity is seen as determined by societal forces.
• Despite these challenges, the study of comparative politics is not impossible, and it explains why developing a general theory is difficult. Recent political scientists have developed theories to compare political systems more precisely, considering not just structures but also infra-structures.
• Blondel suggests that rather than defining political boundaries strictly, it is more useful to think in terms of lines or channels that activate the government. This approach allows for a more flexible and practical study of politics.
• Curtis affirms that the study of comparative politics is central to contemporary political science, underlining its importance despite the challenges it faces.