Comparative Politics
European Political Science Review (2009), 1:1, 33–61 & Cambridge University Press, 2009 doi:10.1017/S1755773909000010
The nature and future of comparative politics
PHILIPPE C. SCHMITTER
1
1,2
*
Emeritus Professor, European University Institute, Florence, Italy 2 Recurring Visiting Professor, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
The future of comparative politics is in doubt. This sub-discipline of political science currently faces a ‘crossroads’ that will determine its nature and role. In this essay, I make a (willfully distorted) plea that it should eschew the alternative of continuing to follow one or another versions of ‘institutionalism’ or that of opting completely for ‘simplification’ based on rational choice. It should embrace the ‘complex interdependence’ of the contemporary political universe and adjust its selection of cases and concepts accordingly. Without pretending to offer a novel paradigm or method. I explore some of the implications of conducting comparative research in this more contingent and less predictable context.
A promising but controversial future
Comparative politics is as old as the empirical study of politics itself. Today, even those scholars who only conduct research on a single polity find themselves ineluctably drawn into the sub-discipline. As soon as they move beyond pure description and start using a vocabulary based on generic analogies or more comprehensive systems of classification, they risk exposing themselves to comment and criticism from aggressive comparativists. For example, a student of American politics who concludes that a two-party system has been an indispensable element for this regime’s democratic stability may be challenged by those who have studied such exotic polities as Uruguay or Colombia where analogous institutions have sometimes failed to produce the same result. Indeed, in the latter case, one of the most destabilizing features may have been its oligarchic and sclerotic
The nature and future of comparative politics
PHILIPPE C. SCHMITTER
1
1,2
*
Emeritus Professor, European University Institute, Florence, Italy 2 Recurring Visiting Professor, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
The future of comparative politics is in doubt. This sub-discipline of political science currently faces a ‘crossroads’ that will determine its nature and role. In this essay, I make a (willfully distorted) plea that it should eschew the alternative of continuing to follow one or another versions of ‘institutionalism’ or that of opting completely for ‘simplification’ based on rational choice. It should embrace the ‘complex interdependence’ of the contemporary political universe and adjust its selection of cases and concepts accordingly. Without pretending to offer a novel paradigm or method. I explore some of the implications of conducting comparative research in this more contingent and less predictable context.
A promising but controversial future
Comparative politics is as old as the empirical study of politics itself. Today, even those scholars who only conduct research on a single polity find themselves ineluctably drawn into the sub-discipline. As soon as they move beyond pure description and start using a vocabulary based on generic analogies or more comprehensive systems of classification, they risk exposing themselves to comment and criticism from aggressive comparativists. For example, a student of American politics who concludes that a two-party system has been an indispensable element for this regime’s democratic stability may be challenged by those who have studied such exotic polities as Uruguay or Colombia where analogous institutions have sometimes failed to produce the same result. Indeed, in the latter case, one of the most destabilizing features may have been its oligarchic and sclerotic
References: Almond, G. (1990), A Discipline Divided. Schools and Sects in Political Science, Newbury Park: Sage. Almond, G. et al. (1973), Crisis, Choice and Change: Historical Stories of Political Development, Boston: Little Brown. 26 Charles C. Ragin, Fuzzy-Set Social Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). For two empirical examples of the application of this technique plus a two-stage design, see the work of Carsten Schneider and Claudius Wagemann. The nature and future of comparative politics 61 Ragin, C.C. (1987), The Comparative Method, Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (1994), Constructing Social Research, Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. Sartori, G. (1970), ‘Concept misinformation in comparative politics’, American Political Science Review, LXIV(4): 1033–1053. Schmitter, P.C. (1996), ‘Imagining the future of the Euro-Polity with the help of new concepts’, in G. Marks, F. Scharpf, P.C. Schmitter and W. Streeck (eds), Governance in the European Union, London: Sage Publications, pp. 121–150. Tilly, C. (1984), Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.