Page 44 - DPOL202_COMPARATIVE_POLITICS_AND_GOVERNMENT_ENGLISH

Unit 2: Comparative Method and Politics

• The comparative method and the case study method have major drawbacks. But precisely Notes
because of the inevitable limitations of these methods, it is the challenging task of the
investigator in the field of comparative politics to apply these methods in such a way as to
minimize their weaknesses and to capitalize on their inherent strengths.
• “The only reason for including the term comparative in the designation of the field is to
emphasis that the responsibility which the field has to the discipline of political science is to
treat the political systems existing in the world as units for comparison in the general quest
of theory-building and testing in political science.”
• It is needed that, apart from looking at the three formal structures of a political organisation
like legislature, executive and judiciary, he should also study the role of legislators, behaviour
of the voters, operational form of the political parties and pressure groups etc.
• It is a different thing that, while making a definition of the political system, he may take
some and ignore other aspects as per his area of concern. As such in the field of comparative
politics, one should feel concerned with the conceptual units and proceed ahead in the
direction of making comparisons on the basis of definitions that he has made.
• Taxonomy occupies a very important place in the field of comparative government and
politics on account of this fact that it facilitates the making of broad general judgements as to
the characteristics of a very-complex phenomenon. The work of theory-building and testing
conclusions becomes easier when a student of comparative politics draws tables and charts
to categorise different political systems on the basis of division of powers (between federal
and unitary systems), or relationship between the executive and legislative departments
(between parliamentary and presidential systems), or liberties of the people (between
democratic and totalitarian systems), etc.
• The work of making comparisons should be done in a way that hypotheses are formulated
and then tested so that the requirement of verifiability and applicability is fulfilled. By taking
political system as the basic unit of his study, a student of comparative politics is necessarily
concerned with the question as to how political systems operate.
• The purpose is to determine what difference is brought about between the ways power is
deployed at different levels. Power is wielded by the state, it is exercised by the government.
• A marked change occurred after 1960 when the new writers on this subject like Harry Eckstein,
David Apter, R. C. Macridis, Lucian W. Pye, S.P. Huntington, F.W. Riggs etc. realised that
the comparative study had thus far been comparative in name only.
• It may well be argued that description of the formal political institutions is vital for the
understanding of the political process and that, as such, it leads to comparative study. If, we
hardly ever have any comparison between the particular institutions described.
• It has ignored the dynamic factors that account for growth and change. It has concentrated
on what is called ‘political anatomy’.
• The new comparative politics does not reject what was done by the writers on this subject in
the past. It desires emphasis on social change and economic development while making a
comparative study of the political institutions of different countries.
• In the domain of new comparative politics, we take note of emphasis on the institutionalisation,
internalisation and socialisation of norms drawn particularly on learning theory imported
from social psychology and on value theory imported from political anthropology.
• The adoption of the inter-disciplinary approach has so much widened the field of this subject
that a student often feels perplexed as to what it includes and what not.
• Comparative method is the life-breath of the subject of comparative politics and a writer on
this subject, whether he likes it or not, “has to examine, account for and, as many would
want him to do, find recipes to redress the structure and behaviour of government.”
• 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

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 39