POLS 373 Foundations of Comparative Politics

POLS 373 Foundations of Comparative Politics Week One, Lecture One/ Session One A Primer on Comparative Politics October 3, 2006

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a “good comparativist” means … • knowing how to compare, and • actually using comparisons in your analyses of political phenomena; • but …

Doing Comparative Politics • … knowing how to compare—much less using comparisons—is not a simple as it may sound: it involves putting together a lot of different and often complex pieces

Doing Comparative Politics Knowing how to compares: • Means understanding the logic of comparing • Means understanding the various strategies of comparison Both of these require strong thinking

Doing Comparative Politics • A good comparativist must also demonstrate a willingness and capacity to do in-depth, careful research • After all, it is hard to make a good comparison unless you know something and, preferably, a lot of things about what it is you are comparing.

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a good comparativist: Four more points • First, becoming a good comparativist means knowing how to use comparisons in conjunction with the use of theory. Theory and the comparative method are used to develop and support a larger arguments and explanations about political, social, and economic phenomena. • Second, becoming a good comparativist means knowing what the limitations of comparative analysis are.

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a good comparativist: Four more points • Third, becoming a good comparativist means knowing how to set up a comparative research design, which requires understanding how to select “units of comparison,” how to determine the number of units needed to compare, how to focus on specific variables and relationships, and so forth • Fourth, becoming a good comparativist means knowing how to support your comparative research design with adequate, sufficient, and reliable empirical evidence.

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a good comparativist • In sum, becoming a good comparativist is a complicated endeavor; however, becoming a good comparativist is not beyond the reach of any of anyone

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a good comparativist • As long as you take the time to read and seriously think about the material covered in the text and as long as you actively listen and engage yourself in class discussion, you will be able to become a good comparativist

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a good comparativist: Last point Remember the “Three Legs of a Comparative Argument: Method, Theory and Evidence Your argument must have all three legs, otherwise it will fall down

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a good comparativist and Bowling for Columbine • Is Michael Moore a “good comparativist”? • Did his argument incorporate a theoretical perspective? • Short Answer: Yes, although it was largely implicit

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a good comparativist and Bowling for Columbine • Is Michael Moore a “good comparativist”? • Did Moore use a comparative method to support his argument? • Short Answer: Yes, although his methodology was very casual and implicit

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a good comparativist and Bowling for Columbine • Is Michael Moore a “good comparativist”? • Did Moore present evidence to support his argument? • Short Answer: Yes, although it was largely anecdotal, often problematic, and generally undocumented. At the same time, there was a valid and undeniably useful “logic” to his use of comparisons.

Doing Comparative Politics Becoming a good comparativist and Bowling for Columbine • Is Michael Moore a “good comparativist”? • Overall assessment: Moore met the minimal criteria needed for a good comparativist. To be sure, however, his argument, from a social scientific perspective, had a lot of (very big) holes and potential problems.

Doing Comparative Politics Some Questions: • Why are there so many gun-related homicides in the United States? • Why do so many peoples and countries around the world remained mired in poverty and economic misery? Conversely, how have some peoples and countries been able to become “rich” and prosperous in only a generation or two? • Can the United States successfully impose democracy on Iraq or other countries? Or, are all such efforts doomed to failure?

Doing Comparative Politics Some Questions: • What are the causes of “terrorism” and other forms of political violence? Is anyone capable of becoming a terrorist, or are terrorists the product of a particular type of society and culture? • How do social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movements in the United States, emerge and why do some succeed, while others fail?

Doing Comparative Politics Right or Wrong? How do you know? • How do you know whether your answer to a question--such as, “Why are poor countries poor?”--is right or wrong? • Indeed, how do we know if any argument is right, wrong or something else?

Doing Comparative Politics Right or Wrong? How do you know? • Short Answer: We have to able to “test” the argument is some manner.

Doing Comparative Politics Right or Wrong? How do you know? • In the natural sciences, this testing is often (though not always) done through experimentation, that is, the creation of carefully controlled situations in which certain variables can be isolated.

Doing Comparative Politics Right or Wrong? How do you know? • In the social sciences, however, experimental conditions are extremely hard to create. There are lots of reasons for this, but the main one is simply that the social world is just too “messy” and uncontrollable • For example, to “test” the argument that some countries are poor because they lack appropriate leadership, a researcher cannot simply replace a “bad” leader with a good leader, while holding every other conceivably significant variable constant

Doing Comparative Politics Right or Wrong? How do you know? • Since social scientists cannot create experimental conditions, they must use the “next best thing” (or a second best method), which, in many cases, is comparative analysis • Consider how comparative analysis can be used to help answer some of the following questions …

Doing Comparative Politics Some More Questions: • What are the reasons for the relatively poor math and science skills of American teenagers? • Can a national health care system work? • Are fundamentalist religious beliefs and democracy compatible? • Is vast economic inequality a necessary by-product of a capitalist system? • What encourages people to save an invest? • Are government bureaucracies necessarily ineffective and inefficient?

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is comparative politics? • Basic answer: Comparative politics is both a subject of study (focusing on specific countries, societies and/or regions) and a method of study

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is comparative politics? • As a subject of study, comparative politics may be said to focus on the many different societies, types of institutions, political systems, and countries that make up the world • Traditionally, the United States was excluded, but, in principle, no good reason for doing so

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is comparative politics? Comparative politics is not the same as International Relations, or IR for short. What is the difference?

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is comparative politics? The distinction between comparative politics and IR • Comparative politics has tended to focus on “domestic” issues, while IR has focused on “external” issues or on the inter-relationship between/among states. In this view, the internal makeup of individual countries is often assumed to be relatively unimportant

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is comparative politics? The distinction between comparative politics and IR • Comparative politics, in contrast, has tended to adopt an opposite approach. That is, comparative politics assumes that “internal” differences (which may derive from culture, institutional arrangements, history, ideology, etc.) are very important

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is comparative politics? The distinction between comparative politics and IR • Things are changing, however, and probably for the best. • My position is that it is no longer appropriate to make a sharp distinction between the internal and the external: the two should be seen as interactive and unavoidably interrelated, especially in the present era of globalization

Doing Comparative Politics An Amended Definition of Comparative Politics • Comparative politics looks at the interplay of domestic and external forces on the politics of a given country, nation-state or society.

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? • A process oriented definition: “Politics is about more than what governments chose to do or not do; it is about the uneven distribution of power in society, how the struggle over power is conducted, and its impact on the creation and distribution of resources, life chances and well-being”

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? Implications of a process oriented definition • Makes it difficult if not impossible to maintain firm boundaries between disciplines. Consider the issue of uneven distributions of power.

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? Implications of a process oriented definition • Are these uneven power distributions the product of history? • Or do contemporary economic forces play the determinative role? • What about the effects of culture, religion, custom? (re: sociology, anthropology, religious studies) • Or do geographic conditions play a role? (geography)

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? Implications of a process oriented definition • Second Implication: a process oriented definition clearly takes politics out the governmental arena and puts it into almost all domains of life. These other domains include virtually all social and civil institutions and actors, such as churches, factories, corporations, trade unions, political parties, think tanks, ethnic groups and organizations, women’s groups, organized crime, etc.

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? Implications of a process oriented definition • Third Implication: a process-oriented definition of politics reinforces our amended definition of comparative politics above (namely, “as a field that looks at the interplay of domestic and external forces on the politics of a given country, state, or society”)

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? Implications of a process oriented definition • It is clear that politics—as a struggle for power over the creation and distribution of resources, life chances and well-being—is not something that can be easily compartmentalized into the domestic and international. • Thus, as all politics is local (according to one popular saying), all politics is also potentially international and global.

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? Disagreements • Not everyone agrees with a process-oriented definition. Some argue that not is it too unfocused and too broad; as such, it makes the definition of politics meaningless.

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? Disagreements • Critics might argue that there is a clear distinction between the private and the public (the former of which is supposedly not “political”) • Thus, for example, a decision made within a family is clearly a private, non-political decision, as is an internal decision by a business, say, to buy more paper clips. • True, but …

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? Disagreements • … in societies where men make all the important household decisions, some scholars would argue, this authority is part of patriarchal structure which is very much a reflection of an uneven distribution of power within society at large. Patriarchy is unequivocally political.

Doing Comparative Politics Basic Questions • What is Politics? Disagreements • The case for corporate decisions is even clearer: if Wal-Mart, for examples, decides to buy more paper clips—or perhaps more relevantly, cloths—from China, this almost certainly will have an impact on the “creation and distribution of resources, life chances and well-being.” • Almost any decision Wal-Mart makes has political implications.

POLS 373 Foundations of Comparative Politics