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Unit 2: Comparative Method and Politics

and Locke; the capitalist system of the nineteenth century created Mill and Marx. Obviously, in Notes
order to understand political theory, it is equally necessary to understand clearly the time,
place and circumstances in which it was evolved. The political philosopher “may not actually
take part in the politics of his times, but he is affected by it and, in his own turn, he tries
vigorously to affect it.” Sabine well takes note of this fact when he observes that all great
political theories “are secreted in the interstices of political and social crises.”
It may, however, be added at this stage that the historical approach to burning political questions
differs in many ways depending upon the range of choice that a scholar adopts for his purpose.
If Machiavelli could make use of history for exalting the record of the Romans and thereby
exhorting his people to restore the ‘glory of Rome’, Oakeshott associates it with the trend of
conservatism. It is contained in his treatment of politics as the “activity of attending to the
general arrangements of a collection of people who, in respect of their common recognition of
a manner of attending to its arrangements, compose a single community.” That is, a political
activity mainly springs neither from instant desires, nor from general, principles, but from the
existing traditions of behaviour themselves. As he says: “In any generation, even the most
revolutionary, the arrangements which are enjoyed always far exceed those which are recognised
to stand in need of attention, and those which are being prepared for enjoyment are few in
comparison with those which receive amendment; the new is an insignificant proportion of the
whole.” Again: “What we are learning to understand is a political tradition, a concrete manner
of behaviour. And for this reason it is proper that, at the academic level, the study of politics
should be an historical study.”
The historical approach has certain weaknesses. For instance, as James Bryce says, it is often
loaded with superficial resemblances. As such, historical parallels may sometimes be illuminating,
but they are also misleading in most of the cases. Likewise, Prof. Ernest Barker holds: “There are
many lines —some that suddenly stop, some that turn back, some that cross one another; and one
may think rather of the maze of tracks on a wide common than of any broad king’s highway.”
That is, a scholar subscribing to this approach adheres to a particular path of his choice in making
use of historical data and then offering his explanation so much so that other important aspects
are virtually ignored. It is also possible that he may play with his emotions or prejudices while
making use of this approach as we may find in the cases of Machiavelli and Oakeshott.
Nevertheless, the value of the study of political theory in the context of its historical evolution
and growth cannot be so lightly dismissed. Works of G.H. Sabine, R.G. Gettell, W.A. Dunning,
C.C. Maxey, T.I. Cook, R.J. Carlyle, G.E.G. Catlin, C.E. Vaughan, etc. have an importance of
their own. Such an approach has its own usefulness in understanding the meaning of eminent
political thinkers from Plato and Aristotle in ancient to St. Augustine, St. Thomas and Marsiglio
in the middle and thereon to Machiavelli, Bodin, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Mill, Marx
and Laski in the modern ages. If political theory has a universal and respectable character, its
reason should be traced in the affirmation that it is rooted in historical traditions.
3. Institutional Approach: Here a student of politics lays stress on the study of the formal structures
of a political organisation like legislature, executive and judiciary. This trend may be discovered
in the writings of a very large number of political scientists from Aristotle and Polybius in the
ancient to Bryce and Finer in the modern periods. However, the peculiar thing about modern
writers is that they also include party system as the ‘fourth estate’ in the structures of a political
system, while contemporary writers like Bentley, Truman, Latham and V.O. Key, Jr. go a step
further by including numerous interest groups that constitute the infrastructure of a political
system. That is why, institutional approach is also known by the name of structural approach.
The institutional or structural approach may be visualised in the works of several English and
American writers. We may refer to the works of Walter Bagehot, F.A. Ogg, W.B. Munro,
Herman Finer, H.J. Laski, Richard Neustadt, C.F. Strong, Bernard Crick, James Bryce, Harold
Zink, Maurice Duverger and Giovanni Sartori. The striking feature of their works is that the
study of politics has been confined to the formal, as well as informal, institutional structures of
a political system. Moreover, in order to substantiate conclusions, a comparative study of
major governmental systems of certain advanced countries of the West has also been made.

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