Understanding Comparative Politics

A Framework for Analysis

Mehran Kamrava

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415773041
• eBook ISBN: 9781135978969
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Comparative politics has undergone significant theoretical changes in recent decades. Particularly since the 1980s, a new generation of scholars have revamped and rejuvinated the study of the subject.

Mehran Kamrava examines current and past approaches to the study of comparative politics and proposes a new framework for analysis. This is achieved through a comparative examination of state and social institutions, the interactions that occur between them, and the poltical cultures within which they operate. The book also offers a concise and detailed synthesis of existing comparative frameworks that, up to now at least, have encountered analytical shortcomings on their own.

Although analytically different in its arguments and emphasis from the current "Mainstream" genre of literature on comparative politics, the present study is a logical outgrowth of the scholarly works of the last decade or so. It will be essential reading for all students of comparative politics.

1  Introduction

Political science in the mid-twentieth century is a discipline in search of its identity. Through the efforts to solve its identity crisis it has begun to show evidence of emerging as an autonomous and independent discipline with a systematic theoretical structure of its own. The factor that has contributed most to this end has been the reception and integration of methods of science into the discipline.¹

Thus began the discussion of the discipline of “political science” in the 1968 edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Indeed, the discipline within which this book falls has been one in search of an identity, defining and redefining its very core, its analytical agendas, and the concepts and methodology with which it has sought to prove its points. The sub-field with which the book is specifically concerned, that of comparative politics, has undergone even wider oscillations in its search for an adequate paradigm, an overall conceptual and theoretical framework based on a certain methodological approach. But there has also been a growing realization by a number of comparitivists that, because of its very nature, comparative politics does not need achieve a paradigm, nor can it really do so: the best the discipline can do is to build testable explanatory theory. It is within this vein that the present book is written. The book presents a modified framework for comparative political analysis; but its approach is not radically new, nor does it pretend to be. What the book does is to draw on existing explanations and approaches in order to give theoretical cohesion and to explicitly spell out an approach that the logic of the recent literature on comparative politics implies.

Comparative politics has undergone significant theoretical and paradigmatic changes in recent decades. Particularly since the 1980s, a new generation of scholars have revamped and rejuvenated the study of the subject. The discipline, or at least specific paradigms within it, have been brought “back in”. Yet interest in society, which dominated the field in the 1960s and the 1970s, has not completely subsided, and there is still reference to it in relation to the state, even if only implicitly and as an auxiliary. It is the interrelationship between state and society that the present work seeks to examine. Thus, the reader may soon note a deliberate measure of continuity in the arguments presented here and those put forward in some of the previous publications on the subject. Although analytically different in its arguments and emphases from the current “mainstream” genre of literature on comparative politics, the present study is a logical outgrowth of the scholarly works of the past decade or so. The arguments contained in the following chapters form the implicit underpinning of many recent thematic as well as case-study comparative examinations. The aim here is not necessarily to lay out a new paradigm to comparative politics but rather to give more explicit direction to a newly emerging analytical framework that seeks to examine politics within different national, political, social, and cultural settings.

In the following chapters, the book calls attention to the inseparability of “state” and “society”, and more importantly to their mutual interaction, as the very essence of comparative politics. In its theoretical odyssey from the start to the present, comparative politics has been marked by shifting emphases on one or other of these two domains of analysis. But politics is made up of a complex web of political as well as social forces and events. Put differently, politics takes place within the state, and within society, and also between state and society. Only the so-called systems approach, by now largely discredited, has sought to examine the entire systemic context within which states and societies operate. The contribution of this approach lies in its detailed attention to the links that bind state and society. Nevertheless, the approach’s insistence on the fusion of state and society minimizes, and at times even discards, the quite separate roles that states and societies may play in shaping the political arena. The framework outlined here, on the other hand, highlights the separateness of state and society, both analytically and in reality, but maintains that the two remain in constant interaction. It is this interaction, the book argues, itself a product of characteristics and forces within state and society, that forms the very essence of politics.

Politics is the process and the context within which state-society interactions are formulated and take place. Therefore, it is a naturally changeable and diversified phenomenon. Its character and nature—its determining dynamics, its norms and values, its limitations and boundaries, and its overall direction—all vary according not just to the existing social and political institutions within a polity but also according to unique historical events, prevailing international circumstances, and the types and extent of available economic resources at the disposal of both state and social actors. States and societies relate to one another in a unique and particular way, one that represents the “national politics” of a given country. Yet, despite this uniqueness, there are broad similarities to be found among various types of political systems. While the exact nature and manner of interaction between states and societies may vary among different nations, enough parallels in patterns of state-society relations and in the functions of state and social institutions exist to enable the comparativist to classify various nations into different political categories. In other words, it is possible to find certain societies and certain states whose interactive relations are shaped by more or less similar dynamics and follow basically similar patterns. Cross-national and comparative analysis must thus concentrate on three specific levels: the similarities that underlie certain states, the similarities that underlie certain societies, and the similarities that underlie the relationships between the two.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I examines the various paradigms in comparative politics. Despite the rich and in-depth contribution that each of these paradigms has made to the study of the discipline, chapter 2, which presents an overview of some of the main approaches to the study of comparative politics over the last century or so, argues that each framework fails to consider one or other of the central aspects of analysis. Part II concentrates on an alternative framework of analysis, entailing discussions on state and social institutions in chapters 3, 4, and 5. Chapter 3 lays out the main arguments of an alternative framework for comparative analysis, the details of which are further discussed in chapters 4 and 5. This analytical framework is then applied in subsequent chapters to the study of states and two of the most dramatic events that can happen to them. Chapters 6 and 7, both in Part III, examine the underlying characteristics of democratic and non-democratic states respectively. Both chapters draw attention to the different ways in which varieties of democratic and nondemocratic states interact with society. Chapters 8 and 9, in Part IV of the book, take the analysis of state-society interactions one step further, examining processes whereby states are, respectively, overthrown through revolutions or are forced to democratize through processes of democratization. The book’s main arguments and thesis are summed up in chapter 10.

Part I

Approaches to comparative analysis

2 Theories of comparative politics

A brief overview

Despite having been a subject of intellectual curiosity for centuries, comparative politics did not begin to attract serious scholarly attention until the closing years of the nineteenth century. It was only then that a growing number of scholars began studying and comparing politics on a cross-national basis. Most of these early comparativists were English speaking, and a majority American. Not surprisingly, their early writings did not extend far beyond comparative examinations of American and European politics. Over the years and decades since, the schools of thought and the approaches employed by these and other comparativists, as well as the areas of their focus, have undergone a number of substantive changes. The scope, direction, and focus of comparative politics has been—and continues to be—influenced by a variety of diverse and disparate phenomena, a development not unlike that experienced by most other disciplines. Variables such as the evolving international system, the growth of the modern nation-state and its far-reaching social and political ramifications, diplomatic alliances and hostilities, prevailing prejudices and preferences, and ideological predispositions and biases have all contributed to the ways in which comparativists interpret politics and develop methodological approaches to the subject. In more ways than comparativists like to admit, the study of comparative politics has been captive to perspectives of its principal scholarly interpreters, as well as, at times, the changing beats of history. That shifts in the major theoretical and methodological approaches to comparative politics happen to correspond loosely with changing historical eras is more than simply coincidental. In fact, such changes in the study of comparative politics have in most instances been, even if indirectly, a result of evolving historical, national, or international circumstances. It is with this understanding that the different approaches to comparative politics need to be examined. Some of these key theoretical and methodological changes to the study of comparative politics form the focus of the present chapter.

As we shall see throughout this book, the concept of “state” has always been pivotal to the general study of political science and that of comparative politics in particular. In the present century, concern with the state has passed far beyond debate over its mere definition. An overwhelming number of scholars, both past and present, have come to view the state as the locus of political power and thus as the primary area where analytical focus needs to be concentrated. In fact, up until the “behavioral revolution” of the late 1950s and 1960s, the study of the state virtually dominated the field of comparative politics. The emphasis on the state was somewhat overshadowed in the 1960s and the early 1970s, and, instead, concepts and approaches such as “systems analysis” gained increasing popularity. But the retreat of the state was short-lived and its utility to comparative analysis was rediscovered by a new generation of scholars in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Since then, neo-statist analyses of various kinds have once again become dominant. Essentially, the discipline had come full circle. Within a few decades, it had discovered, abandoned, and rediscovered the centrality of the state to comparative politics.

The State

Until the twentieth century, political science existed largely in the shadows of the disciplines of history and philosophy. But the growing complexity of politics, coupled with a concurrent rise in the domestic and international functions of the state in the mid-to late 1800s, attracted a number of scholars to the systemic and scientific study of politics, which many at the time called “the science of the state”.¹ Thus, from the very beginning, the study of politics and that of the state were considered to be intricately connected. Political science, and comparative politics with it, became of particular interest to scholars in Europe (especially in Britain) and in the United States, where separate historical developments had begun pushing politics into the forefront of intellectual curiosity. In Britain, by the end of the nineteenth century, the British state was gradually changing from a liberal into a liberal-democratic one. The coming of age of the American political system, having withstood the ravages of the Civil War of the 1860s and having become increasingly more complex in the process, similarly attracted the attention of a growing number of scholars in the United States and elsewhere.

Formal-legalism

In both Britain and the United States, prevailing political and constitutional circumstances prompted scholars to concentrate on the legal and institutional facets of politics, thus popularizing an approach that has since come to be known as formal-legalism.² In the United States, in fact, the establishment of the American Political Science Association in 1903 was a direct result of efforts by interested academics to study “comparative legislation”.³ “Political institutions”, declared one of the Association’s first presidents, “by which I mean constitutions and forms of government, representative assemblies, national and local, and such like matters, are the principal subjects with which our science deals.”⁴ These state institutions and other “structural forms” became the primary focus of students of the emerging discipline of political science.⁵

The early pioneers of formal-legalism viewed the state as a natural and universal phenomenon. “Of all … social institutions, the state has been one of the most universal and the most powerful”, wrote Raymond Gettell, a noted political scientist at the time.⁶ Similarly, W.W. Willoughby, a contemporary of Gettell, argued that “the state is an almost universal phenomenon”, adding:

Everywhere, and in all times, we find men, as soon as their social life begins submitting to the control of a public authority exercising its powers through an organization termed Government.⁷

Considerable attention was paid to the origin and nature of the state and to the sources of rational justification for its authority.⁸ Texts such as James Dealey’s The Development of the State and Willoughby’s An Examination of the Nature of the State dominated the field.⁹ The state was seen as neither artificial nor deliberate, owing its origins instead to “certain essential human attributes”.¹⁰ Its development was viewed as part of civilization’s natural evolutionary progress,¹¹ its spheres of influence multiple, and its functions numerous.¹² The state was seen as an integral part of the human equation, its importance, particularly in the context of global politics immediately before and after World War ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Preface
• Part I Approaches to comparative analysis
• Part II The comparative study of politics
• Part III State in comparative perspective
• Part IV State-society interactions: revolution and democratization
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index