Comparative Politics

Abstract

One striking difference between the fields of comparative politics and international relations concerns the relative proportion of theory versus empirical detail. In international relations, theories are organized around the distribution of power, strategic interaction, and the role of institutions, law, and morality. Comparative politics, by contrast, starts from the assumption that the anarchy problem has been solved and that domestic polities are hierarchies of norms and authority. Whereas the distribution of domestic interests remains central, the role of institutions increases and that of power declines—not absolutely but relative to the international realm. Comparative politics, as a field, is different in another way that is more central to this special issue. This difference has to do with its attention to specific countries and place. The articles in this issue struggle with the tension between the generality of theory and explanatory accuracy that must make concessions to time and place. All of the authors want to offer generalizations that are more than summaries of what they have observed, but they want to do so without distorting particular cases. This attention to detail and explanatory accuracy has sometimes meant that comparativists do not depart far from their cases (in the worst case, they do not compare). The division of labor in comparative politics is highly specialized and organized along country or regional lines rather than theoretically, as in American politics, where scholarship limits itself to the explanation of variation within a single country. Barriers to entry into the field of comparative politics are supplied by requirements to know specific languages, histories, cultures, and institutions rather than by the need to master quantitative analysis or formal methods (which is not to say that there are no comparative scholars who are quite skilled at one or both). This division of