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Unit 1: Nature and Scope of Comparative Politics

• The subject of ‘authority’ becomes the handmaid of power. The rulers in a democratic Notes
system try to justify their authority by means of having the title of ‘consensus’, those of a
totalitarian system resort to the naked use of power for achieving the superficial title of
legitimacy. As Curtis says: “Politics is organised dispute about power and its use, involving
choice among competing values, ideas, persons, interests and demands. The study of politics
is concerned with the description and analysis of the manner in which power is obtained,
exercised, and controlled, the purpose for which it is used, the manner in which decisions
are made, the factors which influence the making of those decisions, and the context in
which those decisions, and the context in which those decisions take place.”
• The transformation which “has taken place has been from a field which would most
appropriately be labelled ‘foreign governments’ to one which might most adequately be
called comparative political systems.” However, the historical development of this subject
may be roughly put into three phases — unsophisticated, sophisticated, and increasingly
sophisticated.
• The comparative method “may assume several forms, the ‘most perfect’ of which is the
process of difference by which two politics, identical in every particular except one, are
compared with a view to discovering the effect of the differing factor.”
• The ‘sophisticated’ phase in the growth of the subject of comparative politics inasmuch as
these writers “were concerned with the various strategies of comparison: area studies,
configurative approach, institutional and functional comparisons, a problem-based
orientation, and with various methodological problems: conceptualisation, the establishment
of agreed categories for comparison, validity as a problem, cross-cultural difficulties and
the availability of data.”
• As Roberts says: “If Easton talks of inputs, outputs, demands, gatekeepers, supports and
stresses, environment, feedback, values, critical ranges and political authorities.
• Almond’s aim of ‘universality’ sums up the purpose for the choice of such languages —
they are sufficiently general to be applicable to any political unit, regardless of size, period,
degree of development or other factors.”
• The study of comparative politics is not confined to the formal structures of government as
was the trend with the traditional political scientists.
• If instead of ‘government’ the term ‘political system’ is used, naturally it becomes a part of
the entire social system and the ‘input-output’ process includes all those forces of the
‘environment’ that have their effect on the decision-making process. Thus, the role of political
parties and pressure groups, for example, becomes as significant as the role of legislatures
and executives in the study of modern political systems.
• It has occurred as a result of the realisation that the subject of comparative politics must
include all governments along with their infra-structures that “exist in the contemporary
world and, where possible, references to governments throughout time.” The study of
comparative government is no longer a study of the selected European or American
governments; it is as much a study of developed western governments as those of the
developing political systems of the poor and backward countries of the Afro-Asian and
Latin American world.
• Political scientists were worried about the preservation of democracy as the dominant form
of government in the world or simply about the best way of assuring that the newly
emerging fragile systems would have the best opportunity for stable development.
• Political science has become the “application of sociological and psychological analysis to
the study of the behaviour of government and other political structures.
• The subject of political science has lost its normative aspect and assumed empirical
dimensions in the sphere of comparative politics. The result is that value-free political
theory has replaced value-laden political theory.

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