Let us begin this book with a few basic, but very big questions:

• Why are there so many gun-related homicides in the United States?

• Why do so many peoples and countries around the world remain 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?
• Is the expansion of “democracy” inevitable? Will it necessarily reach all countries over
time?
• Why do people and groups resort to “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 Movement in the United States and
prodemocracy movements in the Ukraine, Burma (Myanmar), and Iran—emerge, and why do
some succeed while others fail?
There are, of course, many answers to these questions. Some answers may sound very
persuasive, whereas others may seem far less convincing, even absurd. On the first question,
for example, the controversial director Michael Moore argued in his Oscar-winning 2002 film
Bowling for Columbine that the high level of gun violence in the United States is largely due
to a “culture of fear” that has been created and constantly reproduced through policies and
practices that exacerbate insecurity throughout US society. This culture of fear, Moore
suggested, pushes Americans to resolve problems and interpersonal conflict through violence,
a reaction that, in turn, creates a self-confirming cycle: fear begets violence, which begets
more fear, which begets even more violence, and so on. A culture of fear may not explain
everything we need to know about gun violence in the United States, but according to Moore,
it is almost certainly a major element—perhaps the major element—of any explanation that
purports to tell us why Americans are so prone to shooting each other. Is Moore right? Or is
his argument completely baseless? How do we know? More broadly, how do we know if any
argument—especially one that deals with complex social, political, or economic phenomena
—is valid or even plausible? This book is designed, in part, to help you answer this question.
Learning how to evaluate specific arguments, however, is secondary to the overarching goal
of this book, which is to enable you to better understand and explain social, political, or
economic processes, events, and outcomes on your own.
So, what does all this have to do with comparative politics? The answer is fairly simple:
comparative politics, as a field of study, provides us with a ready array of conceptual and
analytical tools that we can use to address and answer a wide range of questions about the
social world. I will talk about exactly what this means shortly; for now, though, let me just
add that comparative politics provides a systematic, coherent, and practical way to
understand and make better sense of the things that happen in the world around us. In a
broader sense, moreover, comparative politics is relevant to almost anyone, even those not
interested in “studying foreign countries.” A “comparative politics approach” can be applied
to a huge variety of problems, from the mundane to the sublime, in a wide variety of areas.
Explaining gun violence is just one example, but there are many others. Consider the
following potpourri of questions and issues: Can a single-payer national health care system
work in the United States? Are fundamentalist religious beliefs and democracy compatible?
Is vast economic inequality a necessary by-product of a capitalist system? What encourages
people to save and invest? If marijuana use is legalzed, will such use necessarily lead to the
abuse of “harder” drugs? What can be done to improve the performance of US students in
science, reading, and math? A comparative politics approach is well suited for addressing all
these questions and many others. At this point, of course, the reasons may not be clear, but
they will become much clearer as we proceed. It is also important to say, at this early
juncture, that comparative politics is not the only, nor is it always the best, approach one can
use. Nonetheless, virtually any student or concerned citizen (not to mention scholar or
policymaker) will benefit tremendously from cultivating and developing a “comparative
politics approach.” With all this in mind, the next important step we need to take is to clarify
what the term “comparative politics” means and what it implies. As we will see, this is easier
said than done.
What Is Comparative Politics?
Many textbooks on comparative politics provide a clear, seemingly simple answer to the
question, what is comparative politics? Perhaps the simplest is this: comparative politics is
the study of politics in foreign countries. Few texts, though, stop here. Most also emphasize
that comparative politics, in slightly more formal terms, involves both a method of study and
a subject of study. As a method of study, comparative politics is—not surprisingly—premised
on comparison. As a subject of study, comparative politics focuses on understanding and
explaining political phenomena that take place within a state, society, country, or political
system. This slightly more detailed definition of the field gives us a better sense of what
comparative politics is and how it may differ from other fields of inquiry, although it is a
definition that raises far more questions than it answers. Still, defining comparative politics as
a method of study based on comparison and a subject of study based on an examination of
political phenomena in a country (or other “ macrosocial” unit) highlights several important
points. First, it immediately tells us that the field is primarily concerned with internal or
domestic dynamics, which helps to distinguish comparative politics from international
relations (IR)—a field of study largely, though not exclusively, concerned with the external
relations or foreign policies of states. Second, it tells us that comparative politics is,
appropriately enough, concerned with political phenomena. Third, and perhaps most
important, it tells us that the field is not only characterized but defined by a comparative
method of analysis. In here might also be pointed out that this second definition does not
automatically exclude your country (as the first does) from the field of comparative politics:
your country is a state or country in exactly the same sense that France, Japan, India, Mexico,
South Korea, Zimbabwe, or Russia is.
This second definition raises a number of other questions and issues. Can comparative
politics, for example, focus only on what happens inside countries? In other words, is it
possible to understand the internal politics of a place without understanding and accounting
for the impact of external or transnational/international forces? This is a very important
question, but there are several others: What is meant by political phenomena—or by politics
more generally? Are economic, social, and cultural phenomena also political, or do they fall
into a completely different category? Regarding the question of method, we might also ask:
What does it mean to compare? Is comparison in comparative politics different from, say,
comparison in sociology or any other field of study? Even more basically, why do we
compare? That is, what’s the point of making comparisons in the first place? And, last, how
do we compare?
The Importance of Definitions
In asking so many questions, also might have raised a question in your mind, namely, why
can’t we be satisfied with the relatively short and easy-to-understand definition first
mentioned? One reason is clear: before we begin studying any field, we need to understand
what the field is really about. To do this, we typically start at the most basic level—with how
people define the field. Unfortunately, even seemingly simple and straightforward definitions
(or questions, such as what is comparative politics?) are often filled with complexities and
subtleties, many of which are not immediately apparent. As students generally you to keep
this firmly in mind. Moreover, you need to understand that few (social, political, or
economic) issues can be adequately understood or explained without taking the time for
careful and serious reflection. A second related reason is this: definitions are important. Very
important. This is partly because they tell us what is included in the field of study and what is
left out. Consider the definition offered at the beginning of this section: Comparative politics
is the study of politics in foreign countries. This definition (unlike the other we discussed),
quite clearly, leaves out your country. But, it is not clear why your country should receive
such “special” consideration. Is it because It is different from all other countries—literally
incomparable? Or, is there some other, less obvious, reason? We are left to wonder. Consider,
too, the notion of politics: Does a study of politics mean that we do not study economic,
social, or cultural forces? Does it mean we only examine those things that governments or
states do? What, in short, is included in and excluded from the notion of politics? (I will
return to these questions shortly.)
There are other closely related problems we need to address. One of the most important of
these is the generally unintentional, but still quite serious problem of bias. Bias was a
particularly serious problem in the early conceptualization of comparative politics as a field
of study. To put it bluntly, scholars and others who helped shape the field did so in a way that
suggested the world was divided into two basic categories: countries and peoples that
mattered and those that did not. In this regard, it would be fair to say that the early
development and conceptualization of the field were profoundly influenced by the
ethnocentric biases, values, and political domination of US scholars and leaders who saw the
United States as the guiding light for the rest of the world.
To see this (and to see the danger of this type of influence), consider the character of
comparative politics prior to World War II, when the field was almost entirely defined in
terms of western European affairs. During this period, the vast majority of research by
scholars in the west was devoted to a handful of countries: US, Britain, France, and Germany
(a little later, the Soviet Union and Japan were included). they were the only countries
deemed to matter. Even the notion of studying countries or states, it is important to add,
portrays an ethnocentric bias: prior to World War II, much of the world was colonized by
western powers. As such, those societies without a sovereign state were, almost
automatically, considered unworthy of study. Their histories, their cultures, their peoples,
their methods of governing, and so on were simply dismissed (by scholars western countries)
for lack of political sovereignty.
 Predictably, then, issues that are now considered especially important to researchers in
comparative politics and to other comparative social scientists (“comparativists” for short),
such as economic development and democratization, were also largely ignored by early
western scholars of comparative politics. These issues were not considered pressing or
worthy of study, because the West had already “solved” them. In other words, non-
democratic and economically “backward” countries were treated as anomalies or immature
versions of the West and of the United States specifically, “rather than as political systems
with distinct characteristics . . . worthy of examination on their own merits” . The tendency
for political scientists in the United States to ignore most of the rest of the world (even much
of western Europe), moreover, rested on the immodest assumption that the United States
simply had little or nothing to learn from anyone else. From this perspective, it is far easier to
understand why comparative politics remained so narrowly defined for the first half of the
twentieth century. “The reasons,” as Wiarda (1991) nicely put it,
go to the heart of the American experience, to the deeply held belief that the United States
is different [from] and superior to European and all other nations, the widespread conviction
at the popular level that the United States had little to learn from the rest of the world, the
near-universal belief of Americans in the superiority of their institutions and their attitudes
that the rest of the world must learn from the United States and never the other way around.
Hence political science as it developed as a discipline in the United States was
predominantly the study of American politics, for that is where the overwhelming emphasis
and interest lay. . . . Those who studied and wrote about comparative politics were generally
believed to have little to offerintellectually to other areas of the discipline
The Changing Context of Comparative Politics
The relegation of comparative politics to the margins of political science changed
dramatically following the end of World War II—although it would be more accurate to say
that the deepest changes began during the war, when US policymakers recognized an urgent
need for area specialists, that is, people with a strong understanding of specific cultures,
languages, societies, and political systems, and not just in Western Europe. What sparked this
newfound interest in the rest of the world? The answer is easy to discern. Specifically, World
War II brought home the importance of knowing about other peoples so that the military-
strategic interests could be better protected. Certainly, in terms of funding and official
support, there is little doubt this was true. As Bruce Cumings (1997), a prominent area
specialist on Korea, pointed out, the first effort to create a systematic base of knowledge
about “foreign” countries (from the perspective of the United States) was carried out by the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
According to Cumings, in 1941, OSS director William “Wild Bill” Donovan established the
rationale for employing the nation’s best expertise to collect and analyze all information and
data that might bear upon national security. Once this rationale became policy, the future of
comparative and area studies in the United States brightened considerably.
The war not only broadened the perspective of the United States with regard to the list of
countries that mattered but also with regard to the issues that mattered. In particular, the rise
of fascism and militarism in Germany, Japan, and Italy and the rise of communism (and
Stalinism) in Russia and, later, China, had a profound impact on the field of comparative
politics and political science as a whole (Wiarda 1991). For good reason, scholars,
policymakers, and others wanted to understand these political phenomena, which differed so
much from the democratic and capitalist paths followed by the United States and most
Western European countries. They especially wanted to understand not only how and why
fascist or totalitarian rule emerged and developed but also how and why it seemed to thrive
in certain places (especially to the extent that it represented a serious and real threat to the
democracies of the West). The question was how to best accomplish this understanding. For
an increasing number of scholars and policymakers, the answer was to be found in a more
sophisticated approach to comparative study. One of the leading advocates of this view was
Roy Macridis (1955), who, in the mid-1950s, strongly criticized traditional comparative
politics as being overly parochial (with its near-exclusive focus on Western Europe), too
descriptive (as opposed to analytical), exceedingly formalistic, atheoretical, and even
noncomparative. Macridis’s critique helped lay the basis for a sea change in the field.
The Cold War and Comparative Politics
The impact of World War II on comparative politics, therefore, was immense; but it was
the onset of the Cold War that ensured the longer-term prominence of the field. It was the
conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States that compelled US policymakers to
pay sustained and systematic attention to “lesser” countries and regions—especially to a huge
number of former colonies, variously referred to as the “South,” the “developing world,” and
the “Third World” (see Figure 1.2). The reason is clear enough: since these hitherto neglected
countries were viewed, in strategic terms, as potentially important allies or enemies, it
behooved US policymakers to know more about the peoples they would now have to treat as
relatively independent players in world affairs. Significantly, it was not just any countries and
regions that were included: “Japan got favored placement as a success story of development,
and China got obsessive attention as a pathological example of abortive development”
(Cumings 1997). Latin and South American countries also became important foci of
attentionfor scholars and policymakers (starting in the 1960s), as did South Korea, Taiwan,
and a few other countries that showed “promise.” Much of the research during this time,
moreover, was driven by the desire to understand and confront the appeal of and potential
challenge posed by communism. In this regard, it is no coincidence that one of the most
influential academic books of the 1950s and 1960s was W. W. Rostow’s The Stages of
Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960). Although not strictly a work of
comparative politics, Rostow’s anticommunist sentiments were shared by the foremost
scholars of comparative political development of the time, including the likes of Gabriel
Almond, James Coleman, and Lucien Pye.
This bit of history, it is important to understand, is still relevant. It tells us, quite clearly,
that outwardly objective fields of study are not immune to a host of subjective, generally
hidden—but sometimes quite open—social and political forces. (See Figure 1.3 for a
contemporary example.) And what is true of the past is almost assuredly true of the present.
This means that we always need to be careful, and even a little skeptical, of the knowledge
that is produced in any context. This does not mean that all of today’s scholarship, even
more, the scholarship of the 1940s and 1950s, is irredeemably tainted and illegitimate. It is
not (although some parts may certainly be). Instead, we should never assume it is entirely or
even mostly “objective” or free of political, cultural, or social bias.
 This said, since the 1960s, the field has continued to change. Definitions of the field, too,
have changed. Today, in fact, the definition of comparative politics, except in a very broad or
generic sense, is characterized as much by divergence as by consensus. This is one reason
why the bulk of this chapter is devoted to the question, what is comparative politics? Unless
you can get an adequate grasp of this deceptively simple question, it will be exceedingly
difficult to develop a grasp of the field as a whole. Given the lack of consensus, my intention
is not to provide the definition of comparative politics in this chapter. Instead, my goal is,
first, to help you understand the complexities and subtleties of defining the field and, second,
to give you a basis for deciding how best to answer the question. One of the best ways to
accomplish this is by asking the type of questions I posed above. Next, of course, we need to
try to answer these questions, which is what we will endeavor to do in the remainder of this
chapter.