User:Jgcab/sandbox/History of comparative politics

Select parliaments of the world, from top left to right: 1. National People's Congress, People's Republic of China; 2. United States Congress, United States of America; 3. Parliament of Australia, Australia; 4. Jatiya Sangsad, Bangladesh; 5. National Diet, Japan; 6. Parliament of Malaysia, Malaysia; 7. National Assembly, Nigeria; 8. Parliament of South Africa, South Africa; 9. Parliament of Canada, Canada; 10. Bundestag, Germany; 11. National Congress of Argentina, Argentina; 12. National Congress of Brazil, Brazil.

The history of comparative politics is intimately related to the wider history of political science. In fact, political science in the early 20th century, was commonly referred to as "comparative government," as the discipline was practically synonymous with the study of comparative politics. Because of this, the terms "comparativist" (i.e. a practitioner of comparative politics), and "political scientist" (i.e. social scientist who studies politics), are used interchangeably throughout this entry.

However, what makes comparative politics distinct from other disciplines of political science is its methodology. The comparative method is the cornerstone of comparative research, and serves as the discipline's most defining characteristic.

Modern comparative politics is also a social-scientific discipline which promotes multi-paradigmatic eclecticism and multi-methodology. Modern comparativists make use of diverse theoretical approaches (e.g. formal-legal, historical institutionalist, rational choice, sociological), methodological traditions (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, small-N, large-N), and epistemological perspectives (e.g. positivism, interpretivism, feminist, Indigenous, postcolonial, postmodern) in the study of politics.

The history of comparative politics developed very differently than other disciplines within political science such as political theory, international relations, or public policy.

However, if one were to take a broader interpretation of comparative politics, as simply the comparison of another nation's politics with one's own national politics. Then it could be concluded that virtually every civilisation in human history has engaged in some form of comparative politics.

The concept of paradigm shifts has traditionally been applied to disciplines in the natural sciences. However, comparative politics offers an example of a social-scientific discipline which experienced observable paradigm shifts in scientific inquiry.

Comparative politics is a social-scientific discipline which experienced paradigms shifts

In the 20th century, comparative politics experienced three paradigm shifts: 1)

Overview

Similar to other histories of social science, scholarship on the history of comparative politics is typically framed within the context of Thomas Samuel Kuhn's (1922–1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).

The tension between behaviouralists and post-behaviouralists. Behaviouralists argue that comparative politics ought to adopt.

There is trade off between scientific rigour and social relevance. This tradeoff is known as the "tragedy of political science."

In contrast, Karl Popper conceived of science as a linear, continuous enterprise; science was a body of knowledge that produces an endless stream of learning based on objective truth.

In his authoritative 1994 book, Theories of Comparative Politics, Ronald H. Chilcote (1935-) described comparative politics as a discipline "in search for a paradigm." This has proven to be a challenge for the discipline, since throughout its history, it has been composed of multiple paradigms. Historically, paradigms interacted competitively with each other: when a new paradigm emerged, its adherents would aggressively dismantle the existing paradigm, as a means to achieve theoretical and methodological dominance within the discipline. Gabriel Abraham Almond (1911–2002) described comparative politics as a prosperous yet unhappy profession; "a discipline divided" between competing "schools and sects."

A similar trend can be observed in a sister discipline, International Relations, where theory – rather than methodology – is a source of contention. Paradigm shifts in international relations can be characterised by the Great Debates

In the present period, comparative politics has taken a complimentary or pluralistic approach towards paradigms.

American comparativist Barbara Geddes (1944-) likened the frequent rise and fall of paradigms in comparative politics as sand castles on a beach. Each sand castle "built with great effort and attention to theoretical detail, only to be washed away by the tide of the next generation of graduate students, whose research batters at the weak points of existing paradigms – as it should – until the theoretical edifice crumbles and disappears."

Paradigm shifts in comparative politics

Scholarship on the history of comparative politics generally agree that comparative politics as an academic discipline, has experienced at least four paradigms.

For example, Mark McGann Blyth (1967-) uses the term "Great Punctuations," which is defined as events that completely overthrow the coherent, unified set of common assumptions, methods, and theories of the period.

Harry H. Eckstein (1924–1999) identifies two periods of development which predated the establishment of comparative politics as an distinct academic discipline:

1. Machiavelli and the Renaissance ()
2. Montesquieu and the Enlightenment ()

Historical scholarship generally agrees that comparative politics as an academic discipline, has experienced at least four distinct periods or paradigms, each punctuated by three paradigm shifts or "social-scientific revolutions." However, it is Gerado L. Munck who provides the most coherent model for periodisation:

1. Constitution of Political Science as a Discipline (1880–1920) or simply the Classical period. This period is also known as the Traditional phase, the Formal stage, Premodern phase, and the Rationalist Idealism stage.
2. Behavioural Revolution period (1921–1966) or simply the Behavioural period, which included Behavioural Revolution. This period is also known as the First Great Punctuation, Modern phase, and the Realism with Vision stage. The Behavioural Revolution shifted focus away from formal political institutions, the state, and governments, towards the study of informal politics (e.g. interest groups, political parties, bureaucracy, military) and political behaviour (e.g. public opinion). Theoretically, many behaviouralists were structural functionalists, as they emphasised the roles of groups and individuals in political affairs. This position however, treated the state as a "black-box," whose outcomes were the result of nonpolitical factors. Methodologically, behaviouralists prioritised the use of empirical, quantitative methods (e.g. cross-national studies, statistical analyses, surveys), precise tools of measurement, and "scientifically-valid" research designs (i.e. falsifiable hypotheses, verifiable statements). Simultaneously, behaviouralists abandoned historical or formal-legal approaches for its inability to produce theories or scientific statements.
   1. Several scholars identify an intermediary stage between the 1920s and 1930s known as the Pluralist Revolt or the Pluralist Revolution. This stage is also known as the Traditional phase, or the Material Positivism phase. This intermediary stage marked the beginning of pluralist approaches in American comparative politics.
3. Post-behavioural period (1967–1988), which started with the Post-behavioural Revolution. This period is also known as the Second Great Punctuation, Postmodernist phase, This period revived the study of the state and formal political institutions, both of which were abandoned by the Behavioural Revolution.
4. Second Scientific Revolution (1989–present day), otherwise known as the modern period. This period is also known as the Third Great Punctuation
   1. During this period, comparative politics' longstanding methodenstreit, otherwise known as the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide, reemerged to the forefront of the discipline. As a result, comparative politics has shifted towards mixed methodological research, which synthesises the two traditions.

Matthew Charles Wilson observed that there is an observable change in research agendas between the different paradigms of the discipline, especially between the Behavioural and Second Scientific revolutions.

Renaissance to the Enlightenment (15th to 18th century)

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527) is considered to be the founder of political science.

See also: Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment

During the Renaissance, the study of politics was concerned with the affairs of the state. Renaissance thinkers regarded the state as a "work of art," in the sense that it was constructed to serve the interests of individual actors. Rather than the Staatswissenschaft ('science of the state' or 'political science) of the Enlightenment period, this early form of political science resembled that of Staats-kunst ('statecraft' or the 'art of governing'). For example, Il Principe (The Prince; 1532) by Niccollò Machiavelli (1469–1527), asks questions such as, "what makes a ruler successful?" and "how does she acquire, maintain, and expand her power?" Il Principe represents one of the earliest works of an empirical study of political affairs in the Western world.

The Enlightenment produced a score of political philosophers who were concerned on the origins and structures of the state.This was best represented by the emergence of social contract theory, which viewed the state as a contract or agreement between individuals bound by a set of moral and political obligations. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) have been identified as foundational figures for this theoretical framework.

In Leviathan (1688), Hobbes argued the brutish state of nature, would eventually force self-interested individuals to voluntarily submit themselves to a Commonwealth governed by an absolute sovereign. In contrast, Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689) argued naturally free individuals would consent to the rule of a legitimate government, on the condition it guarantee the natural rights of its citizens – namely life, liberty, and property. In a similar thread, Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité (Discourse on Inequality; 1755) and Du contrat social (The Social Contract; 1762), argued that modern humans – corrupted descendants of their solitary, innocent ancestors – can embody the best of society's virtues by means of a democratic republic.

In other areas, political philosophers paid attention to the institutions of government. In De l'esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws; 1748), Montesquieu (1689–1755) analysed the nature of government, including its structural principles and the conditions of its origins. His concept of 'tripartite system' serves as the foundation for the modern governing principle of the separation of powers. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) built upon this work with De La Démocratie en Amérique (Democracy in America; 1835), in which he analyses the norms that characterised contemporary American politics.

Constitution of comparative politics as a discipline (1880–1920)

The constitution of comparative politics as as discipline was part of the larger development of the study of politics as a social science. Political science as a social-scientific discipline occurred relatively later than its sister disciplines economics and sociology. Early economists such as Alfred Marshall (1842–1924), Adam Smith (1723–1790), David Ricardo (1772–1823) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), helped draw the study of economics away from its mother discipline, political economy, by developing the concept of marginalism. Likewise, sociologists established themselves as a separate discipline by building on the social theories of Auguste Comte (1798–1857), Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), David Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), Karl Heinrich Marx (1818–1883), Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (1864–1920), Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto (1848–1923), Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941), and Robert Michels (1876–1936).

Early political science however, did not emerge as a rejection or continuation of established social-scientific theories. Instead, political science emerged as an empirical study of history. This is exemplified by the Victorian aphorism, "history is past politics, and politics present history." This strong focus on history made classical political science, a discipline that was bereft of theory (i.e. metatheories, middle range theories). In fact, classical works of comparative politics consisted largely of historical descriptions of formal institutions. This trend was influenced by the dominant German tradition of Staatswissenschaft ('science of the state'), which promoted a formal-legal approach towards Geiteswissenschaft ('science of the mind' or 'humanities').

Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–1892) popularised the term "comparative politics." He is most known for his quote, "history is simply past politics and that politics are simply present history," which summarised the close relationship between classical comparative politics and history.

Classical comparative politics and the formal-legal approach

The first recorded usage of 'comparative politics' as an academic discipline was by historian Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–1892) from his 1873 book Comparative Politics. In his book, Freeman defines comparative politics as:

"the comparative study of political institutions, of forms of government [...] between the political institutions of times and countries most remote from one another."

Because of this, classical comparative politics could be re-termed as "comparative government," as the discipline was largely confined to the comparison of formal institutions of government (e.g. constitutions, jurisprudence, legislatures, systems of government, political history). This early form of comparative politics – defined by the formal-legal approach – is part of the tradition of Old Institutionalism, which mainly focused on describing political institutions and government rather than theory-building or explaining causation of political phenomena. The desire to ground the discipline into observable realities was a conscious reaction to the dominant philosophical trends of the period.

Classical comparative politics emerged partly as a rejection of "European grand theorising" and "philosophies of history." These grand theories promoted fanciful narratives of a unilinear progression of human history, in which the end result was a utopian political community. Examples of these grand theories, otherwise known as historicism, included Marquis de Condercet (1743–1794) with his ideas of progress, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) with his philosophy of history, and Karl Heinrich Marx with his historical materialism. However, the predictions offered by historicists did not materialise, as they optimistically assumed that every country adhered to a uniform mode of development. What formal-legal approaches offered was an empirical study of politics based on observable reality. The reorientation away from historicism in favour of positivist modes of inquiry, helped solidify comparative politics' position as a social-scientific discipline.

Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (1864–1920) was a prominent German sociologist. Weber contributions on the state, state violence, political authority, legitimacy, and bureaucracy, were foundational for later comparative research. They were first conceptualised in his 1919 essay "Politik als Beruf" (Politics as a Vocation).

Classical comparative research consisted largely of historical or contemporary case studies, which sometimes involved small-N comparisons. In this regard, Old Institutionalism – more specifically, formal-legal approaches – could be understood as comparative, historical, and inductive. Comparative, in the sense it compares the institutions of other countries, as a means to understand the power relationships that exist domestically. Historical, in the sense it analyses present-day institutions by their historical development. And lastly, inductive, in the sense that political institutions is best studied through inferences of repeated observation (e.g. behaviours, histories, empirical facts). This however, does not suggest that formal-legal approaches lack relevance for modern political science. In fact the very study of political institutions is central to political science's disciplinary identity. These include essential concepts such as the state, regimes, government institutions, and legitimacy. As Harry H. Eckstein (1944–1999) reminds:

"If there is any subject matter at all which political scientists can claim exclusively for their own, a subject matter that does not require acquisition of the analytical tools of sister-fields and that sustains their claim to autonomous existence, it is, of course, formal-legal political structure. Its study, therefore, quite naturally became the focal point of the new discipline of political science in search of a raison d’être."

Classical comparative politics was dominated by scholarship from Germany (then Prussia), the United Kingdom, and the United States. Notable publications from this period included: Handbuch des Oeffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart (Handbook of Contemporary Public Law; 1894), Politik: geschichtliche Naturlehre der Monarchie, Aristokratie und Demokratie (Politics: History of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy; 1892), Political Science: Or, The State Theoretically and Practically Considered (1877), The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics: A Sketch of Institutional History and Administration (1889), Lehre vom modernen Stat (The Theory of the State; 1875) Ancient Law: Its Connection to the Early History of Society and Its Relation to Modern Ideas (1861), Lectures on the Early History of Institutions (1874), The State and the Nation (1919), and Der Staat (The State; 1908).

John Stuart Mill's (1806–1873) methods of inductive reasoning – originally designed for the natural sciences – are widely regarded as the basic rationale for the comparative method in the social sciences.

John Stuart Mill and the comparative method

See also: Mill's Methods and John Stuart Mill

By the mid-19th century, the 'comparative method' was an already established methodology in the nascent disciplines of comparative philology (presently comparative linguistics) and comparative mythology. In other social sciences, such as sociology, the push towards positivism was inspired by the disciplines' desire to align themselves with the natural sciences. Comparative politics was no exception.

In his 1843 book, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative, and Inductive, Mill identified four methods of experimental inquiry based on inductive reasoning. The two methods critical for comparative politics are also the simplest of the four: the Method of Agreement and the Method of Difference. A simplified version of Mill's Method of Agreement postulates: 1) if two or more cases share a similar outcome (or phenomenon of interest), and 2) if the cases share nothing in common except for one condition (or circumstance); therefore that one common condition is responsible for the given phenomena. The opposite is true for Mill's Method of Difference: 1) if two or more cases result in two different outcomes (i.e. one positive, one negative), and 2) if the cases share many things in common except for one condition, and 3) if that one condition is present only in the positive case; therefore that one common condition is responsible for the given phenomena.

Mill's Methods is the earliest form of the comparative method, and continues to serve as the discipline's fundamental source for comparative research. It is difficult to overstate the importance of the comparative method, as it is the one feature that differentiates comparative politics from other disciplines in political science. This is confirmed by Freeman, who considered the comparative method as "the greatest intellectual achievement of our time," The comparative method allowed for the scientific study of human affairs, without the need for controlled experiments – which is not always possible for comparative research.

Frank Johnson Goodnow (1859–1939) was the first President of the American Political Science Association, which was established in 1903. According to Goodnow, the Association addressed political science's longstanding envy of "the economist and historian" – disciplines which professionalised into learned societies during the 1880s.

Rationalist idealism in the United States

Between the 19th and early 20th centuries, American comparative politics was still under the influence of European scholarship. For example, the study of American liberal democracy was heavily informed by the Greek ideal of the imagined pólis (πόλις). Sigmund Neumann (1904–1962) describes this period of American comparative politics as "rationalist idealism." Rationalist idealism held three fundamental assumptions: 1) the belief in the assured spread of democratic institutions, 2) the essential harmony of interests among peoples, and 3) the basic rationality of people who – through debate and civil discussion – would reach a common understanding." As such, the primary research agenda for rationalist idealism was the descriptive study of "national institutions, constitutional structures, and administrative organisations." The motivation at the time was, before politics could be studied scientifically, it required a definite and concrete framework as a foundation. In doing so, political science severed its "subjective" ties with political philosophy and punditry, by maintaining the study of politics "on neutral ground."

Most American political scientists of this period received their formal training in European universities – especially in Germany, which at the time was considered the "academic Mecca" for the social sciences. This included Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1801–1889), John William Burgess (1844–1931), Herbert Baxter Adams (1850–1901), Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), and Westel Woodbury Willoughby (1867–1945). Woolsey in particular, was fond of organising American political science according to the German tradition: Naturrecht ('natural rights') or Staatsrecht ('public rights'), Staatslehre ('theory of the state'), and Politik ('politics'). Prominent German social scientists who had a great influence included Heinrich Rudolf Hermann Friedrich von Gneist (1816–1895), Wilhelm Georg Friedrich Roscher (1817–1894), Gustav Friedrich von Schmoller (1838–1917), Heinrich Gotthard Freiherr von Treitschke (1834–1896), Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903), and Maximilian Karl Emil Weber.

Behavioural Revolution period (1921–1966)

Between the late 1890s and the early 1920s, the paradigm established by the Staatswissenschaft, formal-legal approach was under severe strain. Early critics of the paradigm emerged primarily in the United States, which had undergone immense social and political change during the Progressive era (1896-1916). A prevailing concern of political scientists at the time was: how does the discipline rationalise the increased role of social activism (e.g. women's suffrage, trade unions, prohibition) and mass media (e.g. muckrakers) in national politics. Existing theories of "the state" were unable to address the anomalies or theoretical challenges posed by a dynamic civil society.

As a result, American comparativists developed an interest in the study of "non-state" institutions, which included political parties, pressure groups, civil society, and state bureaucracy.

As mentioned previously, the formal-legal approach was equally inadequate in producing theories. Advances in social-scientific research, especially with regards to statistical methods and experimental techniques, casted further scepticism over the viability of the formal-legal approach. The "historical comparative" methods of classical comparative politics, appeared amateur or antiquated relative to other social-scientific disciplines such as sociology, psychology, or economics. Comparative politics in this regard, needed to play "catch-up," if it were to continue being a social science. American comparativists of the formal-legal tradition were replaced with a "behavioural" generation who advocated for a new methodology and a social-scientism agenda in comparative politics.

These changing trends in American political science allowed for the United States to eventually overtake continental Europe as the global leader of comparative research.

Mary Parket Follett (1868–1933) is considered to be one of earliest adopters of the pluralist approach. In her seminal book The New State (1918), she famously asks: "The pluralists have pointed out diversity but no pluralist has yet answered satisfactorily the question [...] – What is to be done with this diversity?"

Pluralism and the Pluralist Revolution (1920s–1930s)

See also: Pluralism (political theory) and State

Similar to the study of formal political institutions, "the state" is one concept that remains the exclusive domain of political science. This preoccupation with the state, led comparative politics to take a state-centric approach to understanding political affairs. This view suggested that analysis at the state level (e.g. political institutions, system of government, national history etc.) could provide a sufficient explanation for political events and related phenomena.

This conceptualisation of the state in American comparative politics was based on the German Romantic tradition of der Staat ('the state'). This tradition viewed the state as "supreme, indivisible, divine, and omnipotent," while the concept of "government" was understood as the limited institutional agent of the state. In this sense, the state was practically synonymous with the related concept, "nation" (see: nation-state) – or in the German Romantic tradition, das Volk ('the people'). These theories became part of the "statist approach," known also as the "monist theory of sovereignty." Statists treated society as if it was irrelevant and insignificant; the interests of groups and individuals had a negligible impact on the absolute authority of the state. This approach also had a normative component, which promoted "the establishment of a unified state, supported by a unified and competent nation."

The statist approach had several shortcomings in explaining contemporary politics, especially in the American context. Firstly, because the United States adopted a federal system of government, it was essentially incompatible with the statist view for a strong, centralised government. Secondly, statist approaches were unable to explain the upswell of social activism during the Progressive era. For progressivists and radical social scientists, they regarded the government as a vehicle for the democratic majority to achieve social reform. Lastly, as a result of the First World War, the German tradition of der Staat, fell out of fashion in American political science due to its associations with authoritarian and imperialistic politics. For statists, political and social diversity were regarded as pathologies. It was viewed that unfettered diversity would eventually result in the fragmentation and polarisation of the unified nation-state.

However, the most glaring omission made by statists was their ignorance towards social and political diversity. American statists had a difficult task of reconciling their approach with the immense diversity and pluralism within American society, especially with the United States' long experience with social cleavages – such as those based on race and ethnicity, gender, urban-rural divisions, and North-South regionalism. Mary Parket Follett (1868–1933) famously asked: "What is to be done with all this diversity?" A statist response would be to erase it. However for pluralists, this diversity was critical to the functioning of an efficient and just state, especially for liberal democracies like the United States.

Harold Joseph Laski (1893–1950) was an early proponent of the pluralist approach. Alongside his illustrious academic career, he was a noted

These criticisms culminated into the "pluralist approach," known also as the "pluralist theory of sovereignty." Some of the earliest adopters of this approach included Arthur Fisher Bentley (1870–1957), Harold Joseph Laski (1893–1950), Mary Parket Follett, and George Edward Gordon Catlin (1896–1979). The pluralist approach was intimately tied to its normative agenda of social reform. In fact, part of the pluralists' discontent with statist approaches was its top-down explanation for social progress. For pluralists, progress was the result of conflict and variation within society; groups and individuals, each with their own interests and experiences, would compete in the public forum to achieve their own goals and demands. Pluralists regarded power as democratised, since it is diffused across society, rather than concentrated in the hands of the state. In this sense, government policy was a product of a "parallelogram of forces," as the legislative process was subject to pressure from social actors (e.g. political parties, bureaucracy, interest groups, public opinion). Examples of early pluralist publications included The Process of Government (1908), Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (1917), The New State (1918), Authority in the Modern State (1919), and The Science and Method of Politics (1927).

John G. Gunnell (1933-) however, refers to the 1920s to mid 1930s as the "Pluralist Revolution." Gunnell further claims that the Pluralist Revolution represents the only "real" Kuhnian revolution in political science," in which he contests the "revolutionary" qualities of the Behavioural or Post-behavioural revolutions. However, John S. Dryzek (1953-) challenges Gunnell's claim by arguing that none of the early pluralists considered their work as particularly revolutionary. Instead, Dryzek refers to 1920s as the "Pluralist Revolt" in American comparative politics.

Despite the discipline's initial support, academic interest in pluralist ideas declined by the 1940s. Pluralist approaches faced stiff resistance within the discipline, most notably from Charles Austin Beard (1874–1948), Ellen Deborah Ellis (1878–1974), Walter James Shepard, Francis William Coker (1878–1963), and William Yandell Elliott (1896–1979). Laski in particular, received the most criticisms, notwithstanding his involvement in the socialist movement. Ellis associated pluralism with radical groups who could not differentiate between the state from government. Meanwhile, Elliott's 1928 book The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics, compared trends in pluralism with syndicalism and Italian fascism.

Chicago School of Political Science

See also: Charles Edward Merriam and Chicago school

In its nascent years, some political scientists expressed scepticism on whether the study of politics should be constituted as a social science. Thomas Woodrow Wilson famously detested the term "political science," (see: interpretivism) stating that: "Human relationships [...] are not in any proper sense, the subject-matter of science. They are the stuff of insight and sympathy and spiritual comprehension." However, for many political scientists of the time, not only could politics be studied with the same rigour of the sciences, but it could also be used to better the social condition of humankind.

Charles Edward Merriam Jr. (1874–1953) is considered to be the founder of the Behavioural paradigm. He is remembered for a 1923 quote: "unless a higher degree of science can be brought into the operations of government, civilisation is in the very gravest peril from the caprice of ignorance and passion."

This normative agenda is associated with Charles Edward Merriam (1874–1953) and his colleagues from the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science. Later termed the "Chicago School of political science," its members advocated for a series of reforms in the study of politics. The original members of the Chicago School consisted of five men: Merriam himself, Harold Foote Gosnell (1896–1997), Harold Dwight Lasswell (1902–1978), Leonard Dupee White (1891–1958), and Philip Quincy Wright (1890–1970). This group later expanded to include Gabriel Abraham Almond (1911–2002), Valdimer Orlando Key Jr. (1908–1963), David Bicknell Truman (1913–2003), and Herbert Alexander Simon (1916–2001).

In 1921, Merriam published an article entitled, "The Present State of the Study of Politics," to the American Political Science Review. In the article, Merriam criticised the dominant formal-legal approach for its inadequacy in constructing social-scientific theories that explained political phenomena. He observed that other scientific disciplines such as "statistics, psychology, biology, geography, ethnology, and sociology," have made great progress in terms of producing "material facts, interpretations and insights, correlations and conclusions," which directly or indirectly expanded the understanding of politics.

In some cases, the political observations of these other disciplines, produced work of higher academic quality than that of contemporary political science. If political science was to maintain its position as the foremost discipline dedicated to the study of politics, it needed to emulate the advances of other scientific disciplines. Merriam concluded by providing four suggestions of reform:

1. More adequate equipment for collection and analysis of political material;
2. More adequate organisation of the political prudence of our profession;
3. The broader use of the instruments of social observation in statistics, and of the analytical technique and results of psychology; and closer regard to and relations with the disciplines of geography, ethnography, biology, sociology, and social psychology;
4. More adequate organisation of our technical research, and its coordination with other and closely allied fields of inquiry.

Merriam's call for professional organisation was achieved by the formation of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in 1923. The SSRC was the first national organisation dedicated for the social sciences. In the same year, the National Conference on the Science of Politics was established. The National Conference's reports between 1923 to 1925 emphasised the need for the discipline to produce scientific research that would "improve the quality of political life in America."

In response to Merriam’s 1921 article, the discipline produced its first works that explicitly used quantitative methods. According to Michael T. Heaney, members of the Chicago School were among the first political scientists to conduct randomised field experiments, to employ advanced statistical techniques (e.g. multivariate regression, factor analysis), and to combine qualitative methods (e.g. ethnography, content analysis) with statistical methods. Examples of these works included Getting Out the Vote (1927), Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927), and The Prestige Value of Public Employment in Chicago (1929). Additionally, Harry H. Eckstein includes in this early cannon: Modern Democracies (1921) by James Bryce (1838–1922), Theory and Practice of Modern Government (1932) by Herman Finer (1898–1969), and Constitutional Government and Politics (1937) by Carl Joachim Friedrich (1901–1984).

Robert Alan Dahl (1915–2014) is regarded as one of the most influential comparativists of the 20th century. He described behaviouralists as

Behavioural Revolution (1945–1966)

See also: Behavioralism

By the end of the Second World War (1939–1945), majority of American comparativists withdrew their support for the classical paradigm, and its associated formal-legal approach. Pluralism shifted the discipline's research agenda towards the study of informal institutions, procedures, and behaviours (e.g. interest groups, political parties, mass media, political culture, and political socialisation). Similarly, growing demands for a more scientific approach to comparative theories and methods were not possible with the historical and descriptive methods of the formal-legal approach.

What resulted was the construction of a new paradigm known as behaviouralism, or the scientific study of political behaviour. Based off work by Ronald H. Chilcote (1935-) and David Easton (1917–2014), behaviouralism is identified as having eight major tenants:

1. Regularities or uniformities in political behaviour can be expressed in generalisations or theory;
2. Verification or the testing of the validity of such generalisations or theory;
3. Development of rigorous techniques for seeking and interpreting data;
4. Quantification and measurement in the recording of data, or "quantification, whenever possible and plausible;"
5. Values as distinguished between propositions relating to ethnical evaluation and those relating to empirical explanation;
6. Systematisation of research, or establishing clear, step-by-step procedures for research;
7. Pure science, or the seeking of understanding and explanation of behaviour before utilisation of knowledge for solution of societal problems;
8. Integration of political research with that of other social sciences.

From 'political behaviour' to 'behavioural science'

The founder of behaviouralism, Charles Edward Merriam, first introduced the term political behaviour in his 1925 presidential address to the American Political Science Association: "Some day we may take another angle of approach than the formal, as other sciences do, and begin to look at political behaviour as one of the essential objects of inquiry." The term was later popularised by journalist Frank Richardson Kent (1877–1958) with his 1928 book Political Behavior. However, it was not until the 1937 publication of Political Behavior by Herboert Lars Gustaf Tingsten (1896–1973), did the term reach the annals of comparative politics.

Harold Dwight Lasswell (1902–1978) is celebrated for being one of the "most original and productive" political scientist of the 20th century.

Behaviouralism gained steam during the mid-1940s, when it was formally recognised by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). In its 1944-45 Annual Report, the SSRC shifted its focus on the "behaviour of individuals in political situations, [which] calls for examination of the political relationships of [humans] – as citizens, administrators, and legislators." Instrumental to this shift was E. Pendleton Herring (1903–2004), who in the same year, served as the first chairperson of the SSRC Committee on Political Behaviour. In September 1949, SSRC along with the University of Michigan, held the first conference on Research on Political Behaviour at Ann Arbor. During this conference, attendees decided to rename the study of political behaviour with the interdisciplinary term, behavioural science (later simplified as behaviouralism). The motive to adopt the name "behavioural," was an attempt to distance the discipline from the term "social science," which was regularly confused for "socialism."

The rise of behaviouralism can be understood as a rejection of formal-legal approaches, which were criticised for being "too historical and descriptive." This sentiment is confirmed by Morton Gabriel White's (1917–2016) book, Social Thought in America (1949), in which he succinctly summarises the Behavioural Revolution as a "revolt against formalism." This is echoed by Robert Alan Dahl (1915–2014), who describes behaviouralism as a protest movement:

"Historically speaking, the behavioural approach was a protest movement within political science. Through usage by partisans, partly as an epithet, terms like political behaviour and the behavioural approach came to be associated with a number of political scientists, mainly Americans, who shared a strong sense of dissatisfaction with the achievements of conventional political science, particularly through historical, philosophical, and the descriptive-institutional approaches, and a belief that additional methods and approaches either existed or could be developed that would help to provide political science with empirical propositions and theories of a systematic sort, tested by closer, more direct and more rigorously controlled observations of political events."

Important publications of early behaviouralism included Power and Society (1950), The Governmental Process (1951), and The Political System (1953).

During the 1920s and 1930s, other social-scientific disciplines (e.g. sociology, psychology) had usurped political science's monopoly on the study and interpretation of voting behaviours and elections – mostly due to the other disciplines' early adoption of quantitative research methods. With the introduction of survey methods and statistical analyses, behaviouralists were able to regain their footing within the wider social sciences. Other currents in the discipline focused on the formalisation of methodologies and the logic of comparison. This trend encouraged the application of Boolean logic and the experimental research design in the study of comparative governments. Statistical concepts such as selection bias, time-series analysis, scientific controls, and validity became part of the wider comparative research lexicon. Pioneering texts using cross-national statistical analyses include Politics of Developing Areas (1960), Political Man (1960), and The Civic Culture (1963).

Structural functionalism: democratic and modernisation theories

Behaviouralists are noted for their appropriation of sociological theories, namely structural functionalism. For example, the revival of pluralist theories in the study of the state, coincided with the rise of its associated discipline, political sociology. Notable behaviouralist, Gabriel Almond, argued that political systems and their associated structures, "perform political functions in all societies regardless of scale, degree of differentiation and culture." Structural functionalism were rooted in the concepts of "the universality of political structure" and the "universality of political functions," in which universal political patterns can be observed across all human civilisations. The proposition for a umbrella theory for comparative politics was juxtaposed by a fractured global system – Western liberal democracies, Communist societies, and the developing, non-aligned world. For early behaviouralists such as David Easton, there were high hopes that structural functionalism could serve as a general model for comparative politics.

A main research agenda for American behaviouralists was the justification and rationalisation of democratic societies. Part of this work required the development of concrete conceptualisations of liberal democracy, as compared to other regimes across geography and time. This work expressed a bias favouring democratic regimes, as a political species rooted in science and rationality. An example of this can be found in C. W. Casinell's 1962 book, The Politics of Freedom, where he argues that representative democracies pursue policies related to social welfare and the protection of civil liberty. Similarly in Thomas Landon Thorson's 1962 book, The Logic of Democracy, he argued that the logic of democracy "do not block the possibility of change," resembled the same logic employed by the scientific method, "do not block the way of inquiry."

This bias in behaviouralism was partly influenced by the growing, societal repression of communist and socialist thought in the United States. In his 1960 book Political Man, Seymour Martin Lipset (1922–2006) posited that members of the working-class are prone to holding anti-democratic values such as a suspicion of intellectuals and political elites, political support for welfare policies, and a toleration for civil liberties violations. This concept known as "working-class authoritarianism" was criticised for trivialising genuine grievances from low-income and racialised minorities, and discrediting leftist or liberal movements from mainstream political discourse.

The most notable theory produced during this period was modernisation theory. It argued that pre-modern or traditional societies will eventually undergo a process of modernisation, in which all societies will become 'modern' liberal democracies. In one framework proposed by Lipset, this process is facilitated by internal factors such as industrialisation, urbanisation, public education, economic liberalisation, and democratic consolidation. Another account by Lucian W. Pye (1921–2008), states that modernisation theory was "a combination of Talcott Parsons' social systems, Harold Lasswell's political psychology, and Gabriel Almond's structural functionalism."

During the 1960s, modernisation theory became widely influential across the social sciences. In his critique of Marxist theory, economist Walt Whitman Rostow (1916-2003), proposed a five-stage, historical model of economic growth – from primitive, traditional societies to an age of high mass-consumption. Modernisation theory was later absorbed as a tenant of American foreign policy towards the "Third World" during the Cold War. Despite its early promise, modernisation theory would later come under serious criticism in the 1970s – namely from dependency theorists arguing for a world-systems approach.

Gwendolen Margaret Carter (1906–1991) was a distinguished Africanist, who was a pioneer in establishing African studies as a field in comparative politics. Her book, The Major Foreign Powers, on Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China, became a standard textbook on comparative government.

Establishment of area studies

Behaviouralism played in important role in the professionalisation of area studies within comparative politics. Classical comparative politics focused exclusively on the affairs of big European countries (i.e. France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom), which limited research to small-N comparisons. Behaviouralism however, encouraged – if not demanded – comparativists to examine the affairs of "small European countries, the newly independent countries of Asia and Africa, and the longstanding independent countries of Latin America."

Harold Dwight Lasswell in particular, noted this shift was accelerated by the declining importance of European imperial powers in the postwar period, as a result of decolonisation. In a 1968 article, Lasswell observed:

"[P]olitical scientists have been belatedly responding to the accelerated interdependence of the world arena, an interdependence that was shockingly dramatized by World War II, by the bipolarised tensions between the Communist and the non-Communist worlds, and by the anticolonialist emergence of new nation-states in Africa and Asia. When the United States became involved in World War II, we discovered, for instance, how few American scholars were specialists on India. And after the war the discovery was repeated, notably with reference to Africa."

Within American comparative politics, this trend facilitated the emergence of area studies associations such as: the Association for Asian Studies (1941), the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (1948), the African Studies Association (1957), the Latin American Studies Association (1996), and the Middle East Studies Association (1996). By expanding the areas of study, comparative politics became more aware of its historical, case selection bias against the Global South. Area studies also facilitated behaviouralism's push for statistical methods. By expanding the discipline's scope into the Global South, behaviouralists were encouraged to produce large-N, cross-national data sets. This push allowed for quantitative and statistical analyses across a wide number of cases. This new interest in the non-Western world was pivotal for comparative politics, as it restructured the discipline around area studies. Subsequent comparativists were trained to deeply immerse themselves in the cultures, histories, and languages of the foreign societies. In the United States, this restructure captured the attention of the federal government, who saw the potential of area studies research in crafting American foreign policy. As a result, comparative politics soon became a strong competitor among the social sciences for national research funding.

Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH FRS FBA (1902–1994)

Behaviouralism and the deductive-nomological model

See also: Deductive-nomological model and Karl Popper

During the behavioural revolution, philosophers of science became incredibly influential in shaping the discipline. Philosophers such as Karl Raimund Popper (1902–1994), Richard Bevan Braithwaite (1900–1990), Carl Gustav Hempel (1905–1997), and Ernest Nagel (1901–1985), promoted a model of inquiry known as the deductive-nomological (D-N) model. Popper in particular, argued that all political phenomena – even the most irregular, disorderly and unpredictable – were governed by deterministic "covering" laws (i.e. regular, orderly, and predictable). In this sense, historical perspectives or subjective "emotional" experience were irrelevant for the study of politics.

The D-N model, as the name suggests, argues that facts are those which can be deduced from generalisable theories (i.e. covering laws). Simplified, the D-N model posits that a similar political causes will always yield the same outcome, based on a common theory. This philosophical position made comparative politics closely aligned to the epistemology and methodology of the natural sciences. This is confirmed by Gabriel Abraham Almond, who argued that behaviouralism rested on three assumptions:

1. The purpose of science is the discovery of regularities in, and ultimately laws of, social and political processes;
2. Scientific explanation means the deductive subsumption of individual events under "covering laws" (i.e. D-N model);
3. The only scientifically relevant relationships among events in the world are those that correspond to a physicalistic conception of causal connection.

Overall, the goal of behaviouralists was to develop a set of generalisable theories for political science, similar to that of evolutionary theory in biology. Examples of social-scientific laws in comparative politics include: Duverger's Law, which explains the dominance of two-party systems in plurality voting elections and Iron Law of Oligarchy, which argues that all complex organisations eventually develop into oligarchies.

Despite initial support, comparativists grew sceptical over the utility of the D-N model. The most glaring shortcoming of the D-N model was its inability to produce functional covering laws for political science. Unlike other social sciences, political science remains a discipline with very few social-scientific laws. Secondly, the D-N model was insufficient for quantitative research. For example, behaviouralism's demand for increased statistical techniques, required more rigorous induction rather than deduction as prescribed by the D-N model. Lastly, the D-N model provided very little for dealing with the social and moral problems of society. Within the discipline itself, there was a growing demand for political science to be a "relevant science," especially in the face of social injustice. These demands eventually culminated into the post-behaviouralist paradigm.

Kuhnian challenge to behavioural science

There was a general sentiment among behaviouralists that political science developed along similar lines as the natural sciences; that political science could uncover transcendental, objective truths of social phenomena.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) totalitarianism.

Comparative politics-political theory split (1960s)

Historically, political philosophy was considered the central core of the study of politics. Indeed, modern comparative politics can trace its historical development from classical philosophical texts such as the Al-Muqaddimah (المقدمة), Arthaśāstra (अर्थशास्त्र), Politéia (Πολιτεία), Politiká (Πολιτικά), and Sìshū Wǔjīng (四書五經). As late as the 1930s, American political science viewed philosophy as complimentary to social-scientific inquiry.

This shifted in 1939, when an article George Holland Sabine (1880–1961) entitled "What is Political Theory?," formally identified political theory as a separate discipline. This work was followed by Benjamin Evans Lippincott (1902–1988) with his 1940 article "The Bias of American Political Science," which described the discipline's growing "hostility" towards political theory for being insufficiently empirical and scientific. This charge carried into the Behavioural Revolution, which solidified positivism's foothold in political science.

For American behaviouralists, However, this attitude shifted with the emigration of refugee scholars from Germany. The political climate of Nazi Germany became increasingly hostile against intellectuals, especially those of Jewish descent. To avoid prosecution, scholars such as ... sought refuge in the United States.

American behaviouralists' desire for a "value-neutral" science of politics, contradicted their implicit preference for liberal democratic values. For behaviouralists, political theory confirmed the rationality of liberal democracy, stretching from the Greek pólis (πόλις) to the Enlightenment. However, emigré philosophers, such as Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), Leo Strauss (1899–1973), and Eric Voegelin (1901–1985), began questioning the foundations of this line of thinking (see: Continental philosophy).

Emigré scholars like Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin introduced antiliberal concepts to political theory. Instead of integrating their ideas, behaviouralists divorced comparative politics from its sister-discipline, political theory.

Post-behavioural Revolution period (1967–1988)

Main article: Post-behavioralism

Between 1954 and 1968, the United States was embroiled with the Civil Rights Movement. During this period, African Americans and their allies conducted a series of protests and acts of civil disobedience in an effort to end institutionalised racial discrimination, disenfranchisement, and racial segregation.

American political science faced accusations for being a discipline that served the "Establishment ideology," rather than an autonomous social science.

Between the decade from 1958 to 1968, the prestigious journal American Political Science Review, published "only 3 articles on the urban crises; 4 on racial conflicts; 1 on poverty; 2 on civil disobedience; and 2 on violence in the United States."

By the end of the Behavioural Revolution, the discipline had been completely restructured to fit the visions of the behaviouralists. However, as an unintended result, political science became detached from the everyday concerns of society. For critics, it was more important that the discipline address the urgent problems of society, even if it means utilising less rigorous, social-scientific techniques. This was most pronounced in American political science, which was openly criticised for being "irrelevant and conservative." Philip Green (1932-) and Sanford Victor Levinson (1941-) summarise the general discontent felt by comparativists against the behavioural paradigm:

"First, contemporary American political science has often been rendered irrelevant to vital political concerns by the pursuit of petty methodological purity. Second, this supposedly pure – i.e., value-free –work has always been strongly influenced by personal value judgments, which with few exceptions have been supportive of the political status quo in the United States and have generally conveyed a false picture of political life in western democracies."

Behaviouralism's critics desired for a "future-oriented" discipline which turned towards "relevancy and action." Modernisation theory lost momentum by the 1970s, as its application in the Global South was not successful in transforming developing economies into modernised ones. Modernisation theory was unable to indicate an appropriate timeframe to test its validity (e.g. years, decades, or centuries).

Behaviouralism prescribed that political science should aspire to the ideals of the natural sciences, more specifically by adopting their methods and epistemologies. Works by Carl Gustav Hempel (1905–1997) and Karl Raimund Popper (1902–1994) were instrumental in this reconstruction. Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (1864–1920) and Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) believed there were definite differences between the natural and social sciences.

In 1964, the Committee on Political Behaviour was replaced with the Committee on Governmental and Legal Processes. Unlike its predecessor, the new Committee was more concerned with the impact of legislation on the wider public, rather than the legislative process itself. The Committee was notable for producing policy studies that addressed issues such as air pollution control, urban redevelopment, medical care, civil rights, and racial inequality.

Post-behavioural revolution

In his 1969 Presidential Address to the American Political Science Association, David Easton (1917–2014) announced a "new revolution in political science." He termed this paradigm shift as the "post-behavioural revolution." He defines seven characteristics of this new paradigm:

1. Substance must precede technique: it is better to be vague than non-relevantly precise;
2. Behavioural science conceals an ideology of empirical conservatism: an ideology of social conservatism tempered by modest incremental change;
3. Behavioural research must lose touch with reality: post-behaviouralism must reach out to the real needs of humankind in a time of crisis;
4. Research about the constructive development of values are inextinguishable parts of the study of politics: science cannot be and never has been neutral despite protests to the contrary;
5. Members of a learned discipline bear the responsibilities of all intellectuals: the intellectuals historical role must be to protect the humane values of civilisation;
6. To know is to bear the responsibility for acting and to act is to engage in reshaping society: political scientists must put their knowledge to work;
7. If the intellectual has the obligation to implement their knowledge, those organisations composed of intellectuals – the professional associations – and the universities themselves, cannot stand apart from the struggles of the day.

By 1971, the APSA had active research committees on the status of women, Black Americans, and Chicanos.

Path dependency, strategic interaction, and complex systems

During the 1960s and 1970s, comparative research grew divided over whether political phenomena could be explained under a universal covering law. Instead, there was a strong interest on analysing the complex interactions of actors and individual behaviours, as well as the sequence of events which led to a particular outcome. This shift argued that outcomes – and their associated chains of causation – were contingent to specific times they occurred under. This spawned two major theories: path dependency, which placed an emphasis on historical analyses; and strategic interaction, which was heavily influenced by game theory.

Both these theories made it difficult to model linear, causal mechanisms. For example, a path might trigger a feedback effect, in which a variable reinforces itself in a positive loop. Path dependency attempts to identify critical junctures in history. If a causal variable meets a certain threshold, then it leads to a cascading change in the outcome. This change is difficult to reverse, as it is influenced by positive feedback effects or "increasing returns" of a dependent variable. The events leading up to a critical juncture are known as a historical trajectory or "path." For example, a wealthy society might have the conditions to, however unless it follows a specific path, then it cannot

"Restoring the state": Revival of the concept of the state (1981-1989)

As a result, the state became the exclusive domain of international relations.

The theme for the 1981 American Political Science Association Annual Conference was "Restoring the state in political science."

There was an appetite among comparativists to revisit the concept of the state. During the Behavioural period, scholarship on the state became the domain of international relations, in which the state remained the fundamental unit of global politics. This trend was spurred by a 1985 book, Bringing the State Back In, by Skocpol, Evans, and Rueschemeyer.

Political evolutionists of the 1920s, produced historicist state theories which described state development as a process towards an inevitable goal (e.g. democracy, perfect freedom).

Contemporary period (1989–present day)

The end of the Post-behavioural period coincided with seismic shifts in global relations, starting with the Revolutions of 1989 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Although there were

The contemporary period is sometimes referred to as the Second Scientific Revolution in comparative politics. began in 1989, when the American Political Science Association (APSA) established a section on Comparative Politics, with the aim of "counteracting the fragmentation of the field" along area studies lines (i.e. regions of study).

The new revolution can be understood as a continuation of behaviouralism, for both share a common ambition: the construction of a general, unified theory of politics. For the new revolution, a game-theoretic version of rational choice theory serves as the discipline's dominant metatheory, or framework of analysis. The metatheories of the new revolution, unlike the pluralism of the behavioural revolution, did not lead into a redefinition of the subject matter of comparative politics. In fact, the main division of this new revolution is one rooted in methods rather than theory.

Traditional qualitative research produce highly contextualised and interesting historical narratives that address big-picture questions of comparative politics. However, this came at the expense of scientific rigour and generalisability. Traditional quantitative research produced rigorous and high quality results which addressed narrow questions with well-defined concepts. However, the work they produced was so specialised, it was not

The importance of agency and structure, divisions between qualitative and quantitative research, and social-scientific methods with critical modes of inquiry (e.g. colonised

Political Science and the

Refining research designs

Theda Skocpol (1947-) is a prominent architect of the historical institutionalist tradition. Her seminal book States and Social Revolutions helped revitalised the use of small-N research designs in comparative politics.

New Institutionalism

Institutions are seen as constraints on the behaviours of political actors, and as such, are endogenous to the political process.

James G. March and Johan P. Olsen first

Rational Choice Institutionalism

Rational choice institutionalism focuses on the w. ay institutions shape individual behaviours through the use of incentives and sanctions. This assumes that individuals make decisions, based on relevant available knowledge, will maximise their utility

Historical Institutionalism

Historical institutionalism is

Homo economicus: Rationality and rational choice theory (1970s-2000s)

This challenged the dominant paradigm of pluralism, which argued that individual interests automatically lead to collective action or that collective action necessarily produces a collective good.

Bounded rationality

In international relations, the constructivist paradigm was established in direct opposition to rationalist, "neo-neo" international theories, namely neorealism and institutionalism (sometimes confused for neoliberalism). Constructivism viewed states, not as rational actors, but rather sociological agents, who fulfil roles as dictated by the global system or structure.

Sen introduced the

Interpretivism and the Interpretivist Revolution (1980s-2000s)

Main articles: Cultural turn and Constructivism (philosophy of science)

Interpretivism sparked a methodological shift in comparative politics, which challenged the influence of "rationalist methodology" and "neopositivst epistemology" of the Behavioural paradigm. Intepretivists argue that positivism may be appropriate for an objective, natural world as understood by the natural sciences, but not for the social sciences. As Daniel M. Green summarises: "interpretivism insists on the centrality of human interpretation, perception, and cognition to explain any action." Or a coalition of postmodernist, culturalist, and constructivist approaches. Whereas positivists identify the desires, preferences, and interests for human behaviour, interpretivists seek to ground these variables in their specific contexts and origins. In other words, "[individuals] have identities, worldviews, and cognitive frames, informed by culture, that shape perception and interests" – conditions not reducible to utility maximisation and self-interest.

This is what Green refers to as the Interpretivist Revolution, a methodological shift that aids the understanding of human action, when assumptions of exogenous, fixed, and material preferences and interests are insufficient. The leading meththeoretical framework for this revolution is Constructivism, which Green defines as "the idea that most sociopolitical phenomena are constructed by human social interaction and the resultant shared understandings of their value and meaning, as opposed to being natural occurring."

While concepts such as law, money, and systems of government were generally understood by the discipline as socially constructed; constructivists took a step further by deconstructing social categories that were considered by some to be "natural." Concepts such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality, were reduced to their historical-cultural foundations.

Pertinent issues in comparative politics, such as nationalism, ethnic conflict, and genocide, often lack meaningful material interests to be grounded in a purely rationalist framework. Rather, they are conflicts rooted in identity politics, where indiviudals are mobilised by a constructed worldview or 'imagined community.'

The research goal for constructivist comparative politics, is the production of an "analytic framework, incorporating the interpretivist revolution, that is adept at examining sociopolitical change in the late modern world and that places the state/polity/society in a larger, and theorised, global-systemic and historical context."

Pertinent issues in comparative politics, such as nationalism, ethnic conflict, and genocide, often lack meaningful material interests to be grounded in a purely rationalist framework. Rather, they are conflicts rooted in identity politics, where indiviudals are mobilised by a constructed worldview or 'imagined community.'

These academic trends

Homo sociologicus: Influences from sociology

John Dearlove

Constructivism in international relations

In international relations, the constructivist paradigm was established in direct opposition to rationalist, "neo-neo" international theories, namely neorealism and institutionalism (sometimes confused for neoliberalism). Constructivism viewed states, not as rational actors, but rather sociological agents, who fulfil roles as dictated by the global system or structure.

Questioning the primacy of the state in the age of globalisation

Leading up to the post-Cold War era, post-behaviouralists were successful in re-introducing the concept of the state for a new generation of comparative politics. In

The state was the primary actor in global affairs and

For much of the twentieth century, the concept of the state was virtually synonymous with the concept of the nation. This complex relationship was so foundational to comparative politics, the concepts were often collapsed into one – the nation-state – when referring to sovereign states. Despite their centrality to the discipline, there is no academic consensus for a standard definition of the state or the nation as independent concepts. This

A basic understanding of the state comes from Max Weber, who defines it as a political organisation with a centralised government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory. For example, functionalist approaches focused on the state's capacity to accomplish its policy goals – or within the context of welfare states, the capacity of the state to guarantee a decent standard of living for its citizens.

Challengin

Bridging the qualitative-quantitative divide (1960s-present day)

Main articles: Positivism, Interpretivism (social science), and Multimethodology

Bridging the divide between qualitative and quantitative researchers remains an ongoing issue for modern comparative politics. The divide over methodological traditions (see: Methodenstreit) has resulted in fierce, public exchanges between some of the discipline's eminent figures. Gabriel Abraham Almond, in his 1990 book, A Discipline Divided, provides a high-level overview of comparative politics' longstanding methodenstreit:

"There is a long-standing polemic in political science between those who view the discipline as a hard science – formal, mathematical, statistical, experimental – dedicated to the cumulation of tested "covering laws," and those who are less sanguine and more eclectic, who view all scholarly methods, the scientific ones as well as the softer historical, philosophical, and legal ones, as appropriate and useful. The second school [...] takes the position that relationships in the social sciences are less predictable than in the hard sciences, since the data of the social sciences – human actions and events – are governed by memory, learning, aspiration, and goal seeking."

An

Giovanni Sartori (1924–2017) described the field as divided between "overconscious thinker" who. For Sartori, the "unconscious thinker" whose research uncritically depends on previous academic literature, while the "overconscious thinker" with her sophisticated methods, produces highly rigorous yet uninteresting research.

Early attempts to bring together Arend Lijphart (1936-) harkened for a return to the comparative method.

As a result of the Behavioural Revolution, comparative politics was a discipline which privileged the use of quantitative methods and positivist modes of inquiry. In this regard, qualitative methods and interpretivist modes of inquiry, were viewed as inferior or less scientific.

Seminal Publications in Comparative Methodologies (1987-2004)

Comparative politics' methodenstreit was further enflamed during the late 1980s to early 2000s, following a series of publications on comparative methodologies. Publications that were intended to unify the discipline under a common methodological tradition, only entrenched the positions of qualitative and quantitative comparativists. According to James Mahoney and Gary Goertz, three books in particular were highly influential in the discipline: The Comparative Method (1987), by qualitative sociologist Charles C. Ragin (1952-); Designing Social Inquiry (1994; often shorted to KKV or DSI), by quantitative political scientists Gary King (1958-), Robert Owen Keohane (1941-), and Sidney Verba (1932–2019); and Rethinking Social Inquiry (2004; often shortened to RSI), edited by qualitative political scientists David Collier (1942-) and Henry E. Brady. They observed:

"Although Ragin's book was intended to combine qualitative and quantitative methods, it was written from the perspective of a qualitative researcher, and it became a classic in the field of qualitative methodology. However, statistical methodologists largely ignored Ragin's ideas, and when they did engage them, their tone was often quite dismissive (e.g., Lieberson 1991, 1994; Goldthorpe 1997). For its part, the famous work of King, Keohane, and Verba was explicitly about qualitative research, but it assumed that quantitative researchers have the best tools for making scientific inferences, and hence qualitative researchers should attempt to emulate these tools to the degree possible. Qualitative methodologists certainly did not ignore the work of King, Keohane, and Verba. Instead, they reacted by scrutinising the book in great detail, pouring over each of its claims and sharply criticising many of its conclusions (e.g., see the essays in Brady and Collier 2004)."

Barbara Geddes (1944-), Paradigms and Sand Castles (2003).

In the decades following the Behavioural Revolution, qualitative research was severely marginalised in the prestigious journals of political science – including the American Political Science Review. For example, in the leading 7 journals of the discipline, articles presenting case studies fell from 12% in 1975, to 7% in 1985, to 1% in 1999-2000.

In 2015, it was observed that among the 25 leading US political science doctoral programmes, only 60% of top departments offered dedicated graduate training in qualitative methods.

For example, for all the departments of political science of Canada's U15 group of top research universities, it is required that undergraduates take at least one statistics or quantitative methods course in order to complete their programme. This is in contrast to qualitative methods, where for a majority of U15 universities, this methodology is not even offered as a course option.

Giovanni Sartori (1924–2017) described the field as divided between "overconscious thinker" who. For Sartori, the "unconscious thinker" whose research uncritically depends on previous academic literature, while the "overconscious thinker" with her sophisticated methods, produces highly rigorous yet uninteresting research.

The 1980s and 1990s represented a reinvigoration of qualitative methods. This was partly due to the criticisms posed by quantitative researchers over the validity and academic rigour of qualitative research.

Reinvigoration of qualitative methodology

Today, qualitative methods has maintained its dominance in several research areas of the discipline: democracy and authoritarianism, economic growth, market-oriented reform and regulation (e.g., Ekiert & Hanson, 2003; Haggard & Kaufman, 1992; Hall & Soskice, 2001; Kitschelt, 1994; Nelson, 1990; Vogel, 1996; Weyland, 2002), state building (e.g., Downing, 1992; Ertman, 1997; Tilly, 1990; Waldner, 1999), nationalism and ethnicity (e.g., Brubaker, 1992; Haas, 1997; Lustick, 1993; Marx, 1998; Varshney, 2002; Yashar, 2005), violence and state collapse (e.g., Boone, 2003; Reno, 1998), social revolutionary change (e.g., Colburn, 1994; Goodwin, 2001; Parsa, 2000), social movements (e.g., Goldstone, 2003; McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001; Tarrow, 1994), electoral and party systems (e.g., Collier & Collier, 1991; Kitschelt, Masfeldova, Markowski, & Tóka, 1999; Mainwaring & Scully, 1995), and social policy (e.g., Esping-Andersen, 1990; Hacker, 2002; Hicks, 1999; Immergut, 1992; Pierson, 1994; Skocpol, 1992).

Conceptual stretching

Giovanni Sartori's classical piece, "Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics," he criticised quantitative researchers for inappropriately imposing the same experimental methods and logic of inquiry as that of the natural sciences. Sartori identified an inverse relationship between a concept's intention of attributes and extension across multiple cases. This observation became known as the ladder of generalisability (or the ladder of abstraction), which stipulates that the more a concept is generalised across a wider number of cases, the less precise and contextual our concept becomes. This is known as "conceptual stretching"

Conceptual stretching

Most different systems design: Selecting on the dependent variable

Most similar systems designs select cases on the independent variable. In which

Rise of mixed-methodologies

Comparativists such as Tarrow have promoted the use of triangulation as a means for quantitative and qualitative researchers to collaborate. This method is quite simple: qualitative and quantitative researchers are asked to investigate similar research questions. From this common starting point, researchers then attempt to answer the question using the methods of their respective methodological traditions. Once both traditions have finished their work, they then synthesise their findings to determine if they arrive at similar or dissimilar conclusions. If both traditions arrive at similar conclusions, it provides a stronger confirmation for, as one tradition's findings compliment and reinforce the other.

Development of comparative politics in Russia

Fyodor Mikhailovich Burlatsky (Бурлацкий, Фёдор Михайлович; 1927–2014) is considered to be one of the founders of modern Russian political science.

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (1917–1991)

Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, the political science of Imperial Russia was closely aligned to the German traditions of Staatswissenschaft ('science of the state') and Staatslehre ('theory of the state'). This tradition was carried over during the Stalin era, in which Soviet political science was known under the names of pravovédeniye (правове́дение; 'juridicial sciences'), gosudarstvovedeniye (государствоведение; 'state sciences'), or teoriya gosudarstva i prava (теории государства и права; 'theory of the state and law')

Fyodor Mikhailovich Burlatsky (Бурлацкий, Фёдор Михайлович; 1927–2014)

Burlatsky's 1965 Pravda article, "Politics and Science," was the first documented use of the terms politicheskaya nauka (политическая наука; 'political science') and in an authoritative Soviet publication. In the article, Burlatsky calls for political science as an independent social science, distinct from "scientific communism, theory of the state and law, sociology, and economics."

and politologiya (политология; 'politology')

Area studies and comparative politics

Soviet comparative politics, Sravnitel'naya politologiya (сравнительная политология), emerged with the rise of area studies associations: the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (1956), the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System (1960), the Institute for African Studies (Институт Африки; 1960), the Institute of Latin American Studies (Институт Латинской Америки; 1961), the Institute of Far Eastern Studies (Института Дальнего Востока; 1966), and the Institute for US and Canadian Studies (Институ́т Соединённых Шта́тов Аме́рики и Кана́ды; 1967).

Samizdat (самиздат; 'self-publishing')

Russian Federation (1991–present)

During the Cold War, it was common for universities to host departments dedicated towards the study of Soviet culture and politics. Specialists in this field were referred as Sovietologists, who

Since the end of the Cold War, Sovietologists and departments of Sovietology no longer served the important role they did in previous decades. The transition towards the specialised study of Russian politics and society became Kremlinology. In Western comparative politics, Kremlinologists maintained their position in security studies, especially in the aftermath of Russia's annexation of Crimea and its interventions in foreign elections. This negative analysis has led Kremlinologists to denounce Western comparativists for anti-Russian attitudes.

Russia is an important country in Arctic politics

Development of comparative politics in the Americas

Canada

Canadian political science throughout the 20th century, was largely introspective, or insular in nature. By the 1990s onwards, the discipline experienced a profound shift, which saw it engage deeper with, and integrate itself into, the theory and practice of comparative politics. This shift is viewed as the "comparative turn" in Canadian political science. Since then, Canada's major contributions to the discipline come in three major areas: multiculturalism, diversity, and rights; federalism and multilevel governance; and political parties and public policy. This is bolstered by the wealth of Indigenous scholarship, such as: Indigenous sovereignty and self-governance; critical theories (including 'ways of knowing and being'); and social mobilisation.

Behaviouralism was a lesser force in

Political economy was an intellectual force in the Canadian social sciences. Core-periphery models such as Staples thesis by Harold Adams Innis (1894–1952) and William Archibald Mackintosh (1895–1970). Dependency theories also made a notable impact in Canadian foreign policy, which described Canada as a satellite or peripheral-dependent state under the American sphere of influence. Along with the principal power and middle power models, 'economic-structuralism' continues to be one of the three dominant theoretical frameworks of Canadian international relations.

Colombia

Comparativists specialising on Colombian politics (Colombianists) have largely focused on the country's violent civil conflict between the national government and the FARC. Recently, following the contentious 2016 peace agreement, there has been a renewed interest by peace and conflict scholars to regard Colombia as a potential positive case for state reconciliation.

Colombia represents a case where state power and authority is contested by a non-state actor. It challenges existing theories on the state and stateness. Colombianists have proposed geographical explainations for Colombia's weak state. The violent La Violencia period, serves as an extreme case of political polarisation. Colombia has been applied as an example

Mexico

Due to the linguistic landscape of Latin America, comparative researchers have difficulty communicating between the region's two dominant languages: Portuguese and Spanish. Brazilian political science is itself an isolate, relative to the other countries of the region, who have the fortune of collaborating under a common language.

Mexico and Chile represent the region's two oldest countries for political science research. This is reflected in the Latin America's two highly cited journals, Política y gobierno (Mexico City, Mexico) and Revista de Ciencia Política (Santiago, Chile).

There has been an increase in scholarship on the topics of political behaviour and political theory and thought, while research on traditional comparative topics such as institutions or systems of government have remained unchanged.

Development of comparative politics in East Asia

Countries such as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, were heavily influenced by developments from the United States. South Korea's comparative researchers were aligned with American debates

China

China's historic Yi-

Japan

Exposure to Western social sceince occured during the Tokugawa period, under the auspicies of Rangaku (meaning Western learning)

South Korea

See also: Politics of South Korea and History of South Korea

Comparativists specialising on South Korean politics (Koreanists) have praised South Korea's as a positive case for modernisation theory of development. It is one of the few countries in the late 20th century to successfully transition into a developed country. This transition had been attributed to the country's shift towards export oriented substitution in the 1970s (see: East Asian Tigers).

South Korean political science developed within the context of the country's turbulent political history.

The first phase occurred under the early Cold War period (1945-1960), in which the field was heavily influenced by academic trends from Japan and America. For example, on the question of state theory, Japanese-influenced research focused on traditional approaches (e.g. institutions, jurisprudence, political history), while American-influenced research were informed by liberal democratic theories and pluralist models.

According to Kang Won Taek (강원택), modern political science in South Korea can be periodised into four distinct periods: 1) the postwar period (1945–1960), 2) the Park Chung Hee (박정희) regime (1961-1979), 3) the Chun Doo-hwan (전두환) regime (1980-1987), and 4) the post-democratisation period (1987-present).

Seoul National University is the country's leading university for political science. In 1953, the University's temporary wartime campus in Busan served as the birthplace for the Korean Political Science Association.

Park Chung Hee regime (1961–1979)

The second period occurred under the Park Chung Hee regime (1961-1979) The 1970s represented a turn towards political behaviouralism, in which Korean comparativists wished to apply Western theories and models for the Asian context. Regions of interest for South Korean comparativists were In response to the military dictatorship, comparativists dedicated much of their attention towards modernisation theory and liberal democratic models of state theory.

The regional implications of the Cold War, Korea's political scientists took an interest in geopolitics and what this meant for international relations and regional studies.

Chun Doo-hwan regime (1980–1987)

The military government inspired political scientists to study radical theories, with the aim for political change.

Post-democratisation (1987–present)

Comparativists revived the study of political institutions, political processes, and political ideologies, in response to the country's process of democratisation. Research during this early period identified social problems and institutional weaknesses that threaten political reform.

Korean comparativists has become more outward-looking since democratisation. Historically, area studies were focused largely on China and Japan, however this has since been expanded to include the United States (e.g. South Korea-United States relations), the European Union (e.g. South Korea-EU relations), and Southeast Asia (e.g. South Korea-ASEAN relations)

Present-day Korean political science also has a normative agenda: 1) to develop policy solutions that address social conflicts between regions, generations, socioeconomic classes, and ethnic minorities; 2) to promote the deepening of democracy; 3) to consider potential reforms to the 1987 constitution; and lastly 4) to address the complicated question of North Korea relations and the possibility for reunification. Due to the profession's 'reform-minded' attitude, Korean political scientists in the present-day, act as "constructive" social critics in Korean politics.

Development of comparative politics in Southeast Asia

Philippines

Maximo Manguiat Kalaw (1891–1955). Philippine political science:

The study of the state, and principally of its organ, the government – its development, organisation, and function – is [...] of vital importance especially to a people of a young republic that have assumed for themselves the supreme sovereign powers of a state.

Philippine political science during the 20th century can be periodised into three distinct periods: the World Wars period (1915–1945); the independence period to the golden jubilee year of the University of the Philippines' political science department (1946–1965); and the post-golden jubilee period until 1981, or the end of martial law (1966–1981).

Semicentennial years to martial law (1966–1981)

Between 1986 and 1971, about 15% of Philippine political scientists employed in universities were doctoral degree holders.

Further Reading

Histography of comparative politics

Behaviouralism and the Behavioural Revolution

Postbehaviouralism and the Postbehavioural Revolution