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Unit 2: Comparative Method and Politics

2.3 Traditional Approaches to the Study of Comparative Politics Notes

Approaches to the study of politics may be broadly classified into two categories — normative and
empirical. While the former is said to be value-laden, the latter is known for being ‘value-neutral’.
In other words, while normativism is the hallmark of the former, empiricism is that of the latter.
Fact-value relationship is, therefore, the basis of our classification in this regard. On this basis, we
may say that while traditional approaches lean to the side of ‘values’, the latter do the same for
‘facts’. The result is that ‘fact-value dichotomy’ becomes the determining factor. The traditional
approaches have a historical-descriptive and prescriptive character with a dominating place for
values and goals. Their different varieties may be discussed as under.
1. Philosophical Approach: The oldest approach to the study of politics is philosophical. It is also
known by the name of ethical approach. Here the study of state, government and man as a
political being is inextricably mixed with the pursuit of certain goals, morals, truths or high
principles supposed to be underlying all knowledge and reality. A study of politics, in this
field, assumes a speculative character, because the very word ‘philosophical’ “refers to thought
about thought; a philosophical analysis is an effort to clarify thought about the nature of the
subject and about ends and means in studying it. Put more generally, a person who takes a
philosophical approach to a subject aims to enhance linguistic clarity and to reduce linguistic
confusion; he assumes that the language used in description reflects conceptions of reality, and
he wants to make conceptions of reality as clear, consistent, coherent, and helpful as possible.
He seeks to influence and guide thinking, and the expression of thought so as to maximise the
prospect that the selected aspect of reality (politics) will be made intelligible.”
It is for this reason that thinkers and writers subscribing to the philosophical-ethical approach
look like advising the rulers and the members of a political community to pursue certain
higher ends. Thus, great works of Plato, More, Bacon, Harrington, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel,
Green, Bosanquet, Nettleship, Lindsay and Leo Strauss take the study of ‘politics to a very high
level of abstraction and also try to mix up the system of values with certain high norms of an
ideal political system. Here normativism dominates and empiricism as contained in certain
classics like those of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Bodin, Hobbes, Locke and Montesquieu looks like
integrating the study of politics either with ethics, or with history, or with psychology, or with
law respectively just in an effort to present the picture of a best-ordered political community.
The philosophical approach is criticised for being speculative and abstract. It is said that such
an approach takes us far away from the world of reality. For this reason, it is accused of being
hypothetical. At the hands of Kant and Hegel, it culminates in the exaltation of state to mystical
heights. Politics, therefore, becomes like the handmaid of ethics or metaphysics. The case of
things as they ‘are’ is dominated by the case of things as they ‘ought to be.’ However, great
protagonists of such an approach like Leo Strauss and Berlin affirm that values are an
indispensable part of political philosophy and they cannot be excluded from the study of
politics. He says: “If this directedness becomes explicit, if men make their explicit goal to
acquire knowledge of the good life and of the good society, political philosophy emerges.”

What was the oldest approach to the study of Politics?

2. Historical Approach: The distinguishing feature of this approach is focused on the past or on a
selected period of time as well as on a sequence of selected events within a particular phase so as
to find out an explanation of what institutions are, and are tending to be, more in the knowledge
of what they have been, and how they came to be, what they are than in the analysis of them as
they stand.” It may also be added that here a scholar treats history as a genetic process—as the
study of how man got to be, what man once was and now is.” A study of politics with such a
point of view also informs him “to look into the role of individual motives, actions,
accomplishments, failures and contingencies in historical continuity and change.”

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