The Comparative Method: Two Decades of Change

Abstract

Chapter 2 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL o DYNAMICS : Global qResearch Perspectives. Edited by by Dankwart A. Rustow City University of New York Graduate School and University Center Kenneth Paul Erickson Hunter College and City University of New York Graduate School and University Center Ha_rperCollins Publishers ' 1;991l7 lThe Comparative Method: Two Decades of Change David Collier “And what should they know of England who only England know? q Rudyard Kipling‘ ' qNations can be understood only in comparative perspective. q Seymour Martin Li_pset2- The idea that comparison is a “good thing” is built into our intuitive sense of how we understand the world. Comparison sharpens our powers of description and can be an invaluable stimulus to concept for- mation. It provides criteria for testing hypotheses and contributes to the inductive discovery of new hypotheses and to theory building.‘ Harold D. Lasswell, in the lead article of the first issue in 1968 of the journal Comparative Politics, argued that comparison is so central to good analysis that the scientific method is unavoidably comparative.3 Within the political science subfield of comparative politics, a con—i p cern with techniques of comparison is very much alive and well, and the expression “comparative methodq is often used to refer to the partially distinctive methodological issues that arise in the systematic analysis of a small number of cases, or a “small-N.” This concern with analyzing few cases appears to derive in part from the types of large-scale political phenomena commonly studied by scholars of comparative politics—such as revolutions, national political regimes, and the evolution of nation- states. A small number of cases is studied‘ either because these phenomena occur relatively infrequently or because, even if they are more common, it is believed that they are best understood through the close analysis of relatively few observations.‘ The practice of focusing on ‘ T