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Comparative Politics and Government

Notes what the government should do and about how it should do. In other words, we have to see
whether the norm corresponds to the behaviour. The question of the relationship between norms
and behaviour is complex. These norms are usually to be found in Constitutions or the
various practices which become “solidified” and become the conventions (as in the British
Constitution). Different kinds of norms can be found in different societies and political systems
could be compared in terms of the relationship between norms and behaviour. Thus for the
study of comparative governments it is essential to look into the relationship of norms with
institutions and with behaviour. However, the relationship between these three elements is
not simple.

1.3 Comparative Politics and Comparative Government

The study of comparative government and politics in its latest form includes significant
contributions of those recent writers who have broadened the scope of this subject by taking into
their areas of study more and more countries of the world, particularly of the Afro-Asian and
Latin-American regions better known as the ‘world of developing areas’. These writers, in a way,
have paid their sincere heed to the counsel of Lord James Bryce who once said that ‘the time
seems to have arrived when the ‘actualities’ of government in it is various forms should be
investigated.” The eminent writers on comparative politics have not only endorsed but also
improved upon the observation of James T. Shotwell that as “we pass from France to Italy,
Switzerland, Germany and USSR, there is no common thread, no criterion of why these particular
countries were selected and no examination of the factors that account for similarities and
diversities.”
Although the two terms ‘comparative politics’ and ‘comparative government’ are used loosely
and interchangeably, there is a point of distinction between the two. While the latter covers a
comparative study of different political systems with special emphasis on their institutions and
functions, the former has a broader scope so as to cover all that comes within the purview of the
former and, in addition to that, all else that may be designated as the study of ‘non-state’ politics.
In other words, the scope of comparative politics is wider than that of comparative government
despite the fact that the search for making comparisons is central to the study of both. The
concern of a student of comparative politics does not end with the study of rule-making,
(legislature), rule-implementing (executive) and rule-adjudicating (judicial) departments of the
political systems or even with the study of some extra-constitutional agencies (like political
parties and pressure groups) having their immediate connection, visible or invisible, with the
principal spheres of state activity. In addition to all this, he goes ahead to deal, though in a
particular way, with even those subjects hitherto considered as falling within the range of
economics, sociology, psychology and anthropology. As Sidney Verba concisely suggests: “Look
beyond description to more theoretically relevant problems; look beyond the formal institutions
of government to political processes and political functions; and look beyond the countries of
Western Europe to the new nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
The meaning and nature of comparative politics as distinguished from that of the comparative
government is well brought out by Curtis in these words: “Comparative politics is concerned
with significant regularities, similarities and differences in the working of political institutions
and in political behaviour. Meaningful analysis requires explanatory hypotheses, the testing of
sentiments, categories and classification by the collection of empirical data, observation,
experimentation if at all possible; and the use of research techniques such as sampling, and
communications data to increase knowledge.” Curtis, however, makes it quite obvious that the
inquiry into similarities and differences is not a search for certainty or predictability, nor does it
start from the premise that what is not ‘scientific’ is not knowledge. Systems classification and
categories are always tentative: they cannot claim finality. Politics cannot be reduced to a series
of involuntary and automatic responses to stimuli. Sometime the most significant political
phenomena are those changes in the mood of the times that are impossible to quantify. It is

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