Page 21 - DPOL202_COMPARATIVE_POLITICS_AND_GOVERNMENT_ENGLISH

Comparative Politics and Government

Notes • We may say that the term value is used by the writers on comparative politics in the sense
of a ‘price’ or ‘worth’ that a thing gets after it is recognised by the policy-makers. There is
no value in a thing unless it is allocated by those who are in authority.
• The study of comparative governments and politics can be traced back to the fourth century
B.C. when Aristotle made a study of 158 constitutions of Greek city-states and offered
classification based on the principles of number of people wielding power and the nature of
government.
• After Aristotle Polybius, Cicero, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, J.S. Mill, Freeman, James Bryce
etc. also made contribution to comparative study. In present century main contributions
were made by Herman Finer, Friedrich, Sait etc.
• In the post-World War II period comparative politics has assumed more importance and
various writers evolved new techniques and approaches for the study of comparative politics.
There is a feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction with the traditional descriptive
approach to the subject of comparative politics and hence much experimentation is now
going on with new approaches, new definitions and new research tools. The study of
individual political systems, though of great educational value, has some serious draw-backs.
• The comparative method does not consist in just studying the different constitutions in
different order but consists in interpreting political data in terms of hypothesis or theories.
Interpretation must deal with institutions as they really function. Thus comparative method
lays emphasis on scientific nature of inquiry, on political behaviour and orientation of
research within a broad analytic scheme.
• 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’.
• 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.
• 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.
• Sometime the most significant political phenomena are those changes in the mood of the
times that are impossible to quantify. It is affirmed by Chlicote in these words: “Comparative
government usually refers to the study of institutions and functions of countries or nation-
states in Europe with attention to the executives, legislatures and judiciaries as well as such
supplementary organisations as political parties and pressure groups.
• “Comparative government can thus be defined in a preliminary fashion as the study of
patterns of national governments in the contemporary world.”
• By comparative government I mean the comparative study of political “institutions, of
forms of government. The developed countries of the world are those which are highly
industrialised and politically modernised in which democratic system has come to stay. The
countries of the ‘third world’ suffer from what is given above in spite of the fact that their
political systems have the marks of diversity as an established secular democracy in India,
a theocratic authoritarianism in Pakistan, a semi-democracy in Bangladesh, a budding
democracy in Nepal, a military regime in Myanmar, a communist party-state in China, a
new democracy in South Africa and the like.

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