Lecture 1: Comparative Politics and Comparative Method
Two different traditions of teaching comparative politics:
Northern American tradition: Start to teach by looking at different countries; then,
you start to draw conclusions
European tradition: Start with concepts, classifications and theories; then, you start
to look at different countries — Leiden, this course
Political Theory deals predominately with normative and theoretical questions: What is
justice? What is democracy?
International Relations deals predominately with interactions between states (and
addresses empirical questions): What are the causes of war?
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
Sub-field of political science studying political structures, actors, and processes
within a political system and analyzing them empirically by exploring their
similarities and differences across political systems
Focus on empirical questions: Is political participation good or bad for democracy?
Level of analysis is political systems (democracies, developing countries, individual
countries)
Defined both by its substance and methods
Importance has to do with the general importance of comparative method in
political analysis
Comparative politics elevates intuitive comparisons to systematic
comparisons e.g. comparing what you consider normal in your national context to
some other situation (intuitive comparison)
Comparative method is a valuable way of analyzing political phenomena
Why comparison? What is the value of comparative methods (systematic
comparison)?
1. Provides knowledge about other countries
2. Descriptions, classifications, typologies
Allow us to classify or typologize particular phenomena
Comparison allows us to identify similarities and differences and cluster
them together on the basis of some common attribute, e.g. Belgium and The
Netherlands are both democracies with free and fair elections, but their
electoral systems are different
Classifications cluster actors and institutions into a group/class that
shares common attributes; comparing two countries with each other
or changes within one country over time
Why is it important to have classifications?
There is no good explanation without good classifications
You need good classifications to systematically arrive at some
explanation, e.g. different kinds of non-democratic regimes
, 3. Hypothesis testing
Comparative methods allow us to test hypotheses
Social sciences don't have an experimental method; we can’t subject
political phenomena to the same kind of manipulations that other scientists
can in a laboratory
4. Prediction
CONCEPTS IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS
Concepts are ideas or terms with clear definitional structure
Why do we need concepts?
Concepts give meaning to reality, they are tools thorough which we think,
reason, argue and analyze
e.g. presidency is a set of ideas about how to organize executive
within a given country; knowledge built by refining the concept
The use of concepts sets us apart from the world of practical (or beer)
politics
Through conceptualization and definition, we avoid using the same
language used by politicians when they talk about phenomena
e.g. Brexit: Euro-scepticism because of a dislike for European
integration; but, what is European integration?
Controversy related to concepts and their precise meaning: What is a political
party/interest group/social movement? Which activities fall within this concept of
political participation?
COMPARATIVE METHODS
Rules and standards of comparative analysis
They give us an answer to how a comparison should be carried out in order to
improve description, classification, prediction or hypotheses testing
Issues in comparative politics
Comparative politics focuses on very different units of analysis
What is the typical unit of analysis?
Mostly focused on individual components of political systems
(structures, actors) — not on individual countries
We study these different units of analysis on different levels
Difference between units of analysis and levels of analysis
One of those levels of analysis is the country level
There is NO one comparative method
Distinction between these different comparative methods of analysis
depends on the number of cases employed in the comparison
Methods in comparative politics (Lijphart, 1971)
,1. Case study method
Intensive examination of one particular case and the context in which it
exists
Some case studies are comparative, and some are not comparative
e.g. Study of electoral performance of Front National in the last French
election because it is a representative case of a wider phenomena of
electoral breakthrough of populist parties in Europe (representative
case study that is part of the comparative method)
Case study method is most of the time quantitative in nature; focus on the
interpretative evidence from a particular case
Types of case study methods:
Deviant case study
Identifies and examines an exception to what is generally
expected from an established theory, e.g. Deviant cases of
democratization: Costa Rica, countries that are relatively poor
but managed a transition to democracy
Deviant cases are useful for theory rebuilding or refining
Theory-testing case study
Case study in which you probe an existing theory in a new
empirical context
Can we use that theory to explain a particular
case/phenomenon in a different context?
Advantages: Holistic; sensitive to the context, studying a particular
phenomenon in the context in which it exists and you study one case, e.g.
studying democracy as it is
Disadvantages: If it's just one country/party, how can you generalize? How
representative is this case of this phenomenon?
2. Comparative method (Small-N method) (qualitative method in the book)
A systematic analysis of a small number of cases (small-N analysis); difficult
to define “small number of cases"
e.g Why are small European countries economically more successful
than their larger and economically more powerful neighbors? (study of
7 democracies) Because they employ a particular form of policy-
making called corporatism.
Problem 1: Too few cases, too many variables
e.g. “If you employ corporatist policy-making, you will be
a successful country” However, economic performance is also
impacted/influenced by other factors: level of corruption, type of
business culture, freedom of enterprises. How do you know it's policy-
making that is responsible for good economic performance?
Solutions
Increase N: Increase the number of cases
But you could run out of cases because there is not an
infinite number of cases
MSSD: Most similar system design
Choose countries so carefully that you control for all
possible variations except the one you want to explain
, Choose countries that look alike except for the variable
you want to explain; controlling for impact and
variation, e.g. Choosing all Northern European countries,
not corrupt and similar freedom for enterprises
Problem 2: Selection on dependent variables
e.g. What about small countries (New Zealand) that are also
economically successful, have low levels of corruption, and have a
business culture, but they are not corporatist?
Solution:
Choose the most dissimilar system (MDSD): Selecting all
countries that are small, economically successful and compare
them to countries that are not so small and economically
successful/unsuccessful
Advantages: Reaching more robust conclusions because there are more
cases than one; sensitive to the context; studying few cases allows you to
study them holistically
Disadvantages: Suffers from selection bias in the dependent variable
selection; how representative are these cases?
3. Statistical method (quantitative method in the book)
Comparative method based on a large N of cases, using statistical
techniques to examine relationships between variables
Advantages: Less/no risk of selection bias because all available variables
are thrown into the analysis
Disadvantages: Largely insensitive to context or meaning, e.g. Corruption
Perception Index: Corruption might get overrepresented
Differences from Small-N: Turning dependent and independent variables into
numerical indicators and you draw your conclusions not by interpreting the
evidence/case, but by looking at the relationship between these variables
Conclusions
Comparative politics is one of the most important sub-fields of political science
Comparative method is an important tool for studying politics (+analyzing political
phenomena)
Plurality of comparative methods
