Comparative Politics - Essay Example

139396 Even though there is no snappy definition for Comparative Politics, it can be defined as the comparative analysis of present politics including the study of political institutions and systems, to explain variables, to appraise policy measures, identify problem regions, and predicting institutional trends and processes. Comparative politics is the way of comparing various forms of governments, administrations, states and ideologies that support them. There are several approaches that are useful in Comparative Politics and the major ones amongst them are the Normative Approach and the Empirical Approach. But knowing the research involved in Comparative Politics, undoubtedly Empirical Approach is not only the most suitable, but also absolutely necessary. Comparative politics is considered to be an area of intense and continuous research, trying to keep up with the world politics, understanding intricacies of international relationships and foreign policies and diplomacies either leading to events or resulting from them. "The study of comparative politics, like the study of the other sciences, has had a logic of its own, a developmental pattern that combined specific questions about the various nations and peoples in the world, specific data, and specific problems, all within a learning process that has taken a specific direction and reached a working synthesis of its own past," Lane (1997, p.2). It is important as it is also the study of different cultures, ideologies, nations and diverse thinking processes. This is different from political correctness and it does not expect all administrations and policies of all countries to be uniform. Actually it celebrates the diversity, accepts peculiarities and the unknown and hence, more natural and less overbearing. It does not revel in terms like barbarians or foreigners. It involves comparing countries, their problems, economic development and democracy, monarchies, military and autocratic rules, violent political dissent and social revolutions, pure and hybrid regimes, predicting the democracies, non-violent political dissents and transitions to democracy, performances of such democracies, design of institutions, new challenges, and in the end, there is a process to compare the comparisons. It also involves in a linear relationship between economic development and democracies, explanations to democratic institutional performances, positive and negative relationships between ideologies and their institutions. Hard facts concerning history, economics, sociology and politics are found through empirism. It emphasizes the collection of empirical data and the rigorous testing of theoretical proposition against this data. "Empiricism: models or theory were non-existent in traditional comparative politics, at least at the level of intention and recognition. Concepts were often employed with little methodological discussion as to their definition and measurement," Bill and Hardgrave in Lane and Ersson (1994, p.2). As unanimity cannot be established in world governments, the interests and attitudes of influential groups that are running the administration in various countries have to be studied under 'Comparative Government' and for this process, there is no replacement of empirical approach. In studies concerning politics, empirical method provides all answers and offers insights to understand diversity. Aristotle, in his days, being disturbed by the infighting and instability of States around him, causing havoc, had studied those governments empirically, by classifying them into three groups and then, by subdividing them into further five groups, according to their wellbeing and wealth, legitimacy, monarchy and tyranny. This is exactly what the present day political scientist does by way of analysing through empirical methods, collecting data, enhancing or condensing the collected evidences and classifying them under various groups, according to their ideologies, forms, institutions, political religions, cultures, agendas and national ambitions. This definitely does not mean that Comparative Politics is a well established, well defined science that could provide all answers through its research. On the contrary, it is an imperfectly designed branch of knowledge still trying to find its feet. "The study of comparative government is as old as Plato and Aristotle, but, as its history has shown, is an enormously complicated that its findings and even its basic typology are still fluid. Te best one can do, then, is to try" p. 33). While studying or researching through comparison, it is important to provide answers for questions like how do the public opinions affect the political system and ideologies, how do the political parties manage and control the governments and administration, how do governments retain their territorial integrity, how do they conduct their institutions, and how do the governments administer or operate in comparison with other governments, satisfying the same conditions, or how do they differ from diverse administrations. This kind of study cannot be conducted without the help of empirical research. In the Preface of Introduction to Comparative Politics, Irish and Frank (1978), while stressing the need of empirical study of comparative politics, say: "World War II has made us all aware of new, dynamic, and diverse approaches. Many political scientists have broken away from the historical, legal, and institutional studies that were once traditional in political science." Cross-level and longitudinal comparisons, systemic or contextual differences, political culture and social character cannot be done without empirical help. Local, regional, national, international differences, similarities, consequences, possibilities, circumstantial predictions need empirical research. Legitimising the political community has become necessary in recent years, mostly through democracy and popular institutions and elections, and this needs empirical data. For healthy growth of human activity, co-existence, prediction, hypothesis testing, classification, contextual description, it should take on and explain political challenges and changing agendas. Helps to understand the changing global order and world hegemony; it is important today, in the globalised world, to explain every remote event in the global context. Comparative politics also explains how the domestic compulsions explain and represent the international identities and relations. Today interests, identities, and institutions of every country and region are globalizes and advertised worldwide. Today, global community does not consist of one country or one administration. It represents the entire world, every area in its solitary splendour, its instability, its past, present and future political upheavals, international competition, trade relationships and conflicts, fight for regional and international hegemony, insecurity due to threatening neighbours, cultural hegemony and above all, its quest for better life for its people, and trying to find its rightful place in the globalised world. "In addition to competing for military power, states compete for economic plenty. Mercantilism, beggar-thy-neighbor competition to stay on top economically, was more prominent in the interwar period but also occurs today," Kopstein and Lichbach (2000, p.8). Every country has its own political, economic, cultural and social fights to fight. How it deals with its internal concerns and tries to establish a welfare state too is the field study of Comparative Politics. Free and impartial media plays a great part in this study, because some of the empirical research is conducted by the media itself. Researchers sometimes depend upon the media data for furthering the cause of comparative politics. Media research is put into great use as the best raw material available for the subject. It is not possible to ignore all the logical inconsistency and uncertainty combined with competition between countries and they depend on empirical variables. Transition to democracy has become a major world agenda today. It is clear that transition to democracy could not be conducted without the information, predictions and theories provided by Comparative Politics. This means, all these predictions, theories, comparisons and knowledge depend mainly on the data provided through empirical research and adapted by comparative politics. They go a long way in changing the minds of general public through substantiated arguments. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Irish, Marian D. and Frank, Elke (1978), 2nd edn., Introduction to Comparative Politics, Prentice Hall Inc., New Jersey. 1. Kopstein, Jeffrey and Lichbach, Mark (2000), Comparative Politics, Cambridge University Press. 2. Keman, Hans (1993), Comparative Politics, VU University Press, Amsterdam. 3. Kesselman, Mark, Joel Krieger, William A. Joseph (2000), Introduction to Comparative Politics, Political Challenges and Changing Agendas, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. 4. Landman, Todd (2000), Issues and Methods in Comparative Politics, Routledge, London. 5. Lewis, Paul G. and Potter, David C. ((1973), ed., The Practice of Comparative Politics, The Open University Press. 6. Lane, Jan-Erik and Ersson, Svante (1994), Comparative Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge. 7. Lane, Ruth (1997), The Art of Comparative Politics, Alyn and Bacon, London. Read More