The field of comparative politics traditionally has been divided into two camps: on the one hand, quantitatively driven work on a broad scale; on the other, more qualitative area studies. This edited collection promotes a new approach to comparative politics that transcends the debate about the future of the discipline. The contributors' essays are innovative in their interweaving of case studies of the political situations in particular regions with the project of political theorizing. The chapters take as their points of departure such diverse topics as the liberal tradition in United States politics, the impact of drug-related violence on democratic stability in Colombia, and the relationship between poverty reduction and support for democracy in Mali, thereby resoundingly demonstrating the broad relevance of the volume's unifying theme: theoretically informed comparative analysis. Students of politics, from advanced undergraduates to practicing scholars, will find this volume useful in assessing, analyzing, and uniting the fields of comparative politics and political theory.
This book explores, using a set of data from 150 countries, whether there are any evolutionary mechanisms in politics that guide mankind towards the rule of law regime, domestically and globally.
Explores the importance of comparative politics, discusses different comparative methods, investigates the big issues of today and looks forward to the key challenges for comparative politics over the next century.
This book examines the issues involved in the attempts to compare political systems, and discusses how the methods and results of comparative politics can be improved.
Qualitative comparative methods – and specifically controlled qualitative comparisons – are central to the study of politics. They are not the only kind of comparison, though, that can help us better understand political processes and outcomes. Yet there are few guides for how to conduct non-controlled comparative research. This volume brings together chapters from more than a dozen leading methods scholars from across the discipline of political science, including positivist and interpretivist scholars, qualitative methodologists, mixed-methods researchers, ethnographers, historians, and statisticians. Their work revolutionizes qualitative research design by diversifying the repertoire of comparative methods available to students of politics, offering readers clear suggestions for what kinds of comparisons might be possible, why they are useful, and how to execute them. By systematically thinking through how we engage in qualitative comparisons and the kinds of insights those comparisons produce, these collected essays create new possibilities to advance what we know about politics.
This book highlights the necessity of analyzing Latin American society and politics within broad comparative frameworks. It explores methodological strategies for regional comparison and offers new approaches to the study of women, state power, corporatism, and political culture.
The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science is a ten-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. Each volume focuses on a particular part of the discipline, with volumes on Public Policy, Political Theory, Political Economy, Contextual Political Analysis, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Law and Politics, Political Behavior, Political Institutions, and Political Methodology. The project as a whole is under the General Editorship of Robert E. Goodin, with each volume being edited by a distinguished international group of specialists in their respective fields. The books set out not just to report on the discipline, but to shape it. The series will be an indispensable point of reference for anyone working in political science and adjacent disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics offers a critical survey of the field of empirical political science through the collection of a set of chapters written by forty-seven top scholars in the discipline of comparative politics. Part I includes chapters surveying the key research methodologies employed in comparative politics (the comparative method; the use of history; the practice and status of case-study research; the contributions of field research) and assessing the possibility of constructing a science of comparative politics. Parts II to IV examine the foundations of political order: the origins of states and the extent to which they relate to war and to economic development; the sources of compliance or political obligation among citizens; democratic transitions, the role of civic culture; authoritarianism; revolutions; civil wars and contentious politics. Parts V and VI explore the mobilization, representation and coordination of political demands. Part V considers why parties emerge, the forms they take and the ways in which voters choose parties. It then includes chapters on collective action, social movements and political participation. Part VI opens up with essays on the mechanisms through which political demands are aggregated and coordinated. This sets the agenda to the systematic exploration of the workings and effects of particular institutions: electoral systems, federalism, legislative-executive relationships, the judiciary and bureaucracy. Finally, Part VII is organized around the burgeoning literature on macropolitical economy of the last two decades.
Mehran Kamrava examines current and past approaches to the study of comparative politics and proposes a new framework for analysis through a comparative examination of state and social institutions.
