Reasons for comparison: Contextual Description Classification: conceptual classifications allow to group units of analysis (countries, events, etc.) Generalizations Hypothesis-Testing: search for factors that help EXPLAIN. Prediction (the most difficult goal): to make predictions about the future based on previous knowledge (in comparative politics, predictions tend to be probabilistic)

Comparative politics is a field that aspires to be scientific

Ruth Lane: “Comparative politics as an area of study goes back to Greek antiquity, and has continued sporadically throughout history, but has achieved a special importance at the close of the twentieth century, when economics, technology, travel, and communicatins have brought all areas of the world into deep interdependence.”

Comparative analysis seeks... “theoretically informed empirical political analysis, focusing on one or more countries, through diverse conceptual lenses and utilizing a variety of data, contemporary or historical, qualitative or quantitative.” (Atul Kohli)

Science is... “the gradual accumulation of knowledge about the empirical world through systematic practices of inquiry, including the collection of evidence, the generation and testing of hypotheses, and the drawing of substantive inferences.” (Todd Landmann, Issues and Methods in Comparative Politics, p. 12)

But… Can we study politics in a scientific manner?

Ruth Lane: Comparative Politics, an Art & a Discipline Politics ≈ a chessboard “…that tries to maintain its organization in squares but keeps changing shape, from flat plains into mountains and valleys, while new rivers spring up or old ones overflow. The pieces are no longer orderly but dynamic and self-defined: Some may jump off the official playing field into areas they have just discovered or invented.” (1)

“Both natural and political sciences seek to make inferences based on the empirical world they observe, and both seek to maximize the certainty of these inferences. Despite these general similarities between natural science and political science, there remain two important differences: experimentation and the generation of scientific ‘laws’.” (Landman 13)

Natural and political sciences Similarities Make inferences about the empirical world Seek to maximize the certainty of these inferences Differences Experiments Scientific Laws (we humans are free and learning beings who change rules all the time, like the pieces in Lane’s crazy Chessboard)

Methodological Progress coexists with Perennial Questions

Three Precursors: Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Machiavelli (1469-1527) De Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Aristotle: Empirical study of Constitutions of 158 Greek cities, of which the only recovered is his work on the Constitution of Athens. Historical comparative work. Written in different pieces Aristotle and members of his School used for both research and teaching. Aristotle kept adding different pieces

Aristotle: classification of Constitutions Agent Form of rule One Few Many Good Monarchy (kingship) Aristocracy Polity Corrupt Tyranny (monarch) Oligarchy (the wealthy) Democracy (the needy)