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Author(s): Atul Kohli, Peter Evans, Peter J. Katzenstein, Adam Przeworski, Susanne Hoeber
Rudolph, James C. Scott, Theda Skocpol
Source: World Politics, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Oct., 1995), pp. 1-49
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25053951
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THE ROLE OF THEORY IN
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
A Symposium
ByATUL KOHLI, PETER EVANS, PETER J.KATZENSTEIN,
ADAM PRZEWORSKI, SUSANNE HOEBER RUDOLPH,
JAMESC. SCOTT, andTHEDA SKOCPOL*
*
The symposium was organized under the auspices of the Center of International Studies, Prince
ton University. Symposium seminars were all held at Princeton University during 1993-94. Thanks
are due to John Waterbury, the director of the Center of International Studies, for his encouragement
and support. This edited and condensed version of the proceedings was prepared for publication in
World Politics.
extreme is defined
methodological by nomothetic claims: because all
social actors, including actors, are rational
political utility maximizers,
deductive logic and modeling, inspired by microeconomics and/or
game theory, can uncover the coherence that underlies the appar
help
ent chaos of life. In between these two extremes?that is, to
political
ward the "center"?remain the majority of comparative politics
scholars. Too "social sciency" for some and too much of "storytellers" for
others, are the ones who informed em
they mainly pursue theoretically
on one or more countries,
pirical analysis,
political focusing through di
verse a or
conceptual lenses and utilizing variety of data, contemporary
historical, or
qualitative quantitative.
The at Princeton the
elucidate these
symposium helped competing
oretical debates: should the "center" hold? If so, why? If not, why not?
The invited scholars were asked to address these broad issues. Instead
of giving formal papers, theywere additionally asked to (1) characterize
their own approach
to
comparative politics; (2) discuss why their ap
Peter Evans
The central of this symposium, as I understand it, is whether
question
the eclectic messy center that has constituted the traditional core of the
is in danger of being overrun. My bottom
study of comparative politics
line response is
simple:
the study of comparative politics will neither
descend into a swamp of impenetrable jargon that purports to be about
discourse and symbols nor turn into a desert of ahistorical formal mod
els that purport to describe the microfoundations of behavior.
political
There are reasons
why the core of
comparative politics is as it
powerful
is and those reasons have not disappeared. Obviously the study of pol
itics must deal with values and symbols and how people understand
them. Likewise, it should make use of the tools
conceptual currently
theorists. Nonetheless, the eclectic messy cen
being generated by game
ter will not be overrun.
Since this conviction stems in part from my view of the generic
1
The talks were recorded and then transcribed. I took considerable license in condensing and adapt
ing the talks for publication. The published version has been approved for publication by each indi
vidual participant.
SYMPOSIUM 3
forces that shape the evolution of social science Iwill begin
paradigms,
my discussion there. Iwould then like to explain more clearly what I
mean center, using my own work as an
by the eclectic messy example.
This done, I will discuss why ahistoric, asocial versions of rational
choice or game-theoretic are to overrun the center.
analysis unlikely
Finally, Iwill talk about why I see the role of cultural theories as inher
ently partial.
In thinking about the evolution of social science it is use
paradigms,
ful to ask about microfoundations. What motivates us to undertake the
kind of research and writing that we do?Most scholars would agree
that part of the answer is that we care about cases. If Iwere to
particular
do a study of inflation, for example, it might be in part because I was
interested in its general parameters, but itwould also be because I hap
pen to have live in a country where
friends who inflation has run at 30
as we care about par
percent a month, tearing apart their lives. As long
ticular cases, we are compelled to do
history,
to try to understand spe
cific sequences of events and to acquire the ideographic knowledge that
helped explain how these actors behaved. The result was eclectic
and
51 say "parasitically" because Imake no claim to be a contributor to the development of this body of
theory.
6 WORLD POLITICS
friendly
to the kind of work which goes on in the messy eclectic center.
But what about new forms of cultural analysis? Like rational choice
and game-theoretic cultural approaches have certainly ex
approaches,
a boom in recent years. Might overrun the eclectic
perienced they
messy center? Anyone who doubted that culturally oriented approaches
be used to address core issues of comparative was cer
might politics
to reassess his or her views when confronted with a recent
tainly forced
article veteran of the field, Samuel in
by that hard-nosed Huntington,
which he argued that world politics was entering a new wherein
phase,
7
See, for example, Paul R. Krugman, Rethinking International Trade (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990);
Paul Romer, "The Origins of Endogenous Growth,"JournalofEconomic Perspectives 8 (Winter 1994);
in the Economy,"
and Brian W. Arthur, "Positive Feedbacks Scientific American (February 1990),
92-99.
8 WORLD POLITICS
compelling.
The global political economy includes regions inwhich states and
markets are and regions in which are not. To
delivering they analyze
such aworld, one must combine conventional political economy kinds
of analysis, which focus on how people get what they want, with cul
tural approaches, which us understand the nature of the prefer
help
ences themselves. And, of course, this of conventional
combining
that on the nature
political economy with approaches focus origin and
of preferences themselves is precisely the sort of eclectic work that the
center of has for a time.
comparative politics practiced long
Let me sum up. First, individual and societal incentives us to
push
ward the detailed examination of individual cases, toward history. At
the same time, they demand to future outcomes?that is,
guidelines
The character of work in the messy eclectic center is an ef
prediction.
fective response to these pressures. Second, rational choice and game
theoretic are less to the messy eclectic center
approaches threatening
10 WORLD POLITICS
Peter J. Katzenstein
Iwish to argue here that neither specific subfields of political science
nor deserve any intellectual
particular analytical perspectives special
standing. Instead Iwelcome the blurring of distinctions. This is true for
the distinction between comparative and international but it
politics,
holds, as well,
for different in these subfields, such as ra
approaches
tional choice, cultural studies, or institutionalism. None of these pro
fessional "flags" is in my view particularly useful. You will therefore not
hear from me about the color of the flag under which we must or
rally
the size of the we must I am interested in when
dragons slay. questions:
all is said and done, scholars do their best research because of the
polit
ical problems and the intellectual that engage them, not be
puzzles
cause of the In a similar vein,
sage advice of prophets of the
profession.
I also hold that professors do their best teaching not by initiating stu
dents to their sect but
favored the students' sense of
by honing prob
lem-focused research and by preaching the virtues of eclectic
theorizing. Hence I leave to others the giving of advice about what "the
field" should do.
at the of comparative and international has
Working margins politics
SYMPOSIUM 11
me with a distinctive research on
provided perspective. Contemporary
comparative and international issues increasingly calls for blurring the
distinctions between political economy, security, and culture. And there
is a growing need to erase the barriers between comparative politics?
of which American politics is a part?international relations, and polit
ical theory. My own research has taught me that the state is not a
actor and that of political
the origin hence
unitary preferences?and
history?matters. But most importantly, I have learned that you have
to ask and interesting That is the hardest to
important questions. thing
do and the hardest to teach. We can teach
thing paradigms, analytical
perspectives, and methods by taking them off the professional shelf and
them we cannot teach so
to the classroom. What
transporting readily is
how to ask important and interesting the hallmark of supe
questions,
rior research and great teaching.
What do we mean by comparative research? To this question I offer
the answer I learned in graduate school, for it is still useful and plausi
ble: comparative research is a focus on analytical relationships among
variables validated by social science, a focus that ismodified by differ
ences in the context in which we observe and measure those variables.
sociology.
The debates between realism and idealism in the 1940s and 1950s
and between quantitative-behavioral and qualitative-historical ap
proaches in the 1960s were followed in the 1980s and 1990s by the
"third debate" in international relations. It has raised ontological, epis
and methodological issues that make mainstream realist
temological,
and liberal scholars uncomfortable becauseare not
they particularly
well equipped to handle them. Typically, such discussions occur at
only
the margins of the field of comparative politics. Scholars of comparative
politics have by and large shied away from
extreme versions of a nomo
thetic and typically rational choice approach, as in some spe
practiced
cialized subfields of international studies. Similarly, comparative
has taken a centrist to cultural studies, ac
politics scholarship approach
14 WORLD POLITICS
Adam Przeworski
I was to about
approaches,
not about the world. I resisted
urged speak
this invitation I am a methodological
because opportunist who believes
in doing or If game I use
using whatever works. theory works, it. If
what is called for is a historical account, I do that. If deconstruction is
needed, Iwill even try deconstruction. So I have no
principles.
Nevertheless, I do have a message concerns
to share. This
message
the role of theory in comparative research; I spread it because I think
that it has consequences for comparative research that are not fully rec
9
This project is conducted jointly with Mike Alvarez (DePaul University), Jos? Antonio Cheibub
(University of Pennsylvania), and Fernando Limongi (University of S?o Paulo).
SYMPOSIUM 17
mentally, to look for a case that is exactly like Chile in all aspects
other than its regime and, possibly, its rate of economic growth?a
"Chile 1985" that is democratic?and then to compare the authoritar
ianChile with the democratic "Chile." Ifwe then find that this demo
cratic "Chile1985" has a positive rate of
growth,
we conclude that
is for If is more we discover
democracy good growth. decay profound,
that democracy is bad for growth.
And this is indeed what we do.We try to emulate experiments by
cases
that are "comparable." same
finding "matches," The logic is the
whether we have one such or many. When
just pair doing comparative
research, we are told that one should find cases that are as similar as
in as many aspects
as and then find a crucial differ
possible, possible,
ence that can explain what one wants
to
explain. We have this notion of
as if were an intrinsic charac
things being "comparable" comparability
teristic of our objects of investigation rather than a result of our judg
ments. A of Sweden and Denmark is acceptable. However,
comparison
ifwe compare Sweden with Chile or Kenya with Argentina, we are told
that this is not a legitimate operation, that this is like comparing apples
and pears. Note that the entire organization of our discipline?the in
stitutional structureof political science departments, of professional as
people in pursuit of their ends, then the social world which we observe
around usis not given, that is, is not of our actions, and
independent
not
independent of various outcomes that we try to explain. We thus
must treat the observable world as
having been produced by "us," that
is, as having been generated endogenously. More specifically,
an addi
tional powerful intuition is that the world nurtures successes and elimi
nates If so, one suspects that there should be more
failures. successes to
be observed than failures. I want to that I am
emphasize immediately
not about here; this is not a of from
talking samples question sampling
available observations. Sampling by the dependent variable is elemen
tary textbook material and it is not what is at stake. The issue rather is
that the observable world is not a random un
sample of the possible
conditions. If we want to compare, we must process the im
derlying
pact of independent variables?in my case, democracy and dictatorship,
or in other cases, and presidential or
parliamentary systems, revolution
no revolution, landlord domination versus domination?
bourgeois
SYMPOSIUM 19
likely to die when they do badly. Pause to thinkwhat we are then going
to observe in the real world if these two hold: regimes have
assumptions
no effect on die when
but democracies
growth they perform poorly.
The answer is that ifwe take the observations as
they
are
given and
calculate the average rates of growth for democracies and dictatorships,
we will find that democracies do better in promoting economic growth.
face bad economic we do
When democracies conditions, they die, and
not observe them anymore: if a democracy does poorly, it becomes a
so that in the observed we are to observe
dictatorship, population going
that democracies do better. Yet this finding results not because democ
they chosen the alternative strategies. Suppose that South Korea chose
the export-oriented strategy because it had access to the U.S. market:
let this be the selection mechanism. Had Brazil had equal access to the
U.S. market and had it chosen the same strategy, what would its per
formance have been?
Since this procedure entails filling tails of distributions, the methods
for correcting selection bias are not robust even when many observa
tions are available. But with many observations, there are standard sta
tistical techniques that we can use: we assume a distribution (and test if
it fits), model the selection mechanism, and use the predicted values to
fill in the parts of the distribution we do not observe. The counterfac
tuals we generate provide the "matches" we have been looking for: they
are freed from selection bias. We then compare the actual observations
with the counterfactual conjectures.
The problem we face is the same in small-sample research. Let me
one s observation that revolutions do
provide just example: Tocqueville
not result in social transformations. that revolutions
major Suppose
occur in which it is hard to
only under situations change things: this is
the selection mechanism. We can then guess that the
immediately
causes of revolution and its outcomes are not and we can
independent,
conclude that the conservative outcomes are due to selection,
intuitively
not to "treatment." Had revolutions occurred in situations where change
is easy, they would have generated revolutionary transformations.
When case studies, we cannot on the prop that is avail
doing rely
able when the number of observations is large: we cannot use a statisti
SYMPOSIUM 21
cal distribution to the counterfactuals. We must less
generate proceed
formally. But I offer a suggestion that I have found fruitful in playing
mental experiments: Write up your cases, say South Korea and Brazil,
and then use the "search and replace" function on your word processor to
transpose the names of countries. Does the story still make sense? Brazil
now has access to the U.S. markets. Does it adopt the export-oriented
port even if the U.S. market were open, the protected sectors were too
to tolerate a neutral exchange so on.
entrenched politically regime, and
Clearly, this is nothing but amental experiment guided by intuition. But
I think this procedure should be a standard protocol for case studies: we
must worry about selection and this is at a
least way of coping with it.
To conclude, if the observed world is not a random sample of the pos
sible worlds, then inferences from the observable cases, one or all, will be
invalid. Comparisons must then entail counterfactuals. We must worry
about selection mechanisms, identify their effects, and correct for them.
These conclusions add up to an antiexperimental posture. Our effort
should not be to match, since we cannot match when the world does
not generate all the pairs we
need. Indeed, the observable
matching
cases may exacerbate the selection bias. Instead, we must theorize
just
about the mechanisms which the observations are and
by generated
then use this knowledge to compensate for the nonrandom nature of
the observable world.
And Foucault:
The project of a total history is one that seeks to reconstitute the overall form of
a civilization, the material or of a society, the
principle, spiritual, significance
common to all the of a the law that accounts for their cohe
phenomena period,
sion ... [but] the of a total to In of
possibility history begins disappear.... place
the continuous of reason, which was traced back to some
chronology invariably
inaccessible origin, there have scales that are sometimes very brief, dis
appeared
tinct from one another, irreducible to a law.11
single
10
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York:
Charles Scribner's, 1958), 13.
11 on
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology and the Discourse (New York: Pan
ofKnowledge Language
theon Books, 1972), 8-9.
SYMPOSIUM 23
favored so much of nineteenth-century social science,
ing projects by
especially inGermany. Despite the deep differences between Weber,
Marx, Durkheim, and others, their projects were energized
a com
by
mon It was the world on an
enlightenment perspective. moving upward
toward its future, driven an inner reason that moved
trajectory by
straight or dialectically toward a climactic condition, with theWest in
the vanguard.12
The Foucault quote is the marker of a contrary tendency, to disman
tle wholes, to the consistency of
disrupt large schemes and powerful de
terminacies; to focus on anomalies; to cut up wholes into discontinuous
can be examined,
pieces whose opposing tendencies rather than sub
sumed as anomalies in holistic schemes; to that
prefer representatives
build in their own contestation rather than offering a smooth,
impene
trable face to the world.
The tendencies highlighted in theWeber quote were picked up, ra
tionalized, amplified, and systematized by the structural-functionalism
that animated the comparativists of the 1950s and 1960s. Moderniza
tion elaborated to deal with and economic
theory paradigms political
development that would allow the field to move from, as Gabriel Al
put it, "an 'area studies' approach to the
mond study of foreign political
to a and one."13
systems genuinely comparative analytical
It was Talcott Parsons who led the new analytic; he more any than
other occasioned the reception ofWeber in the United States. The so
cial world, he affirmed, could be understood through the pattern vari
ables, a series of oppositional diads: ascription/achievement; affectivity/
affective neutrality; collectivity orientation/self-orientation; particular
ism/universalism; diffuseness/specificity. As the usage of the pattern
variables evolved, the items on each side of this dichotomous construc
tion were seen to be
systemically related. Thus, affectivity, collectivity
orientation, were an inner and were mu
particularism joined by logic
to be oriented toward human was to be ori
tually constrained; beings
ented toward collective and to care about
obligations particular persons
or rather than general and so forth.14 And affective
objects principles
12 on the modern see
For an illuminating philosophical and historical perspective project, Stephen
Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda ofModernity (New York: Free Press, 1990).
13
Gabriel Almond and James Coleman, The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1960), vii. Parenthetically, this quotation was characteristic of most comparative stud
ies in the way it conceived the project as something carried on by a community ofWestern viewers
looking at the "foreign." The creation of multinational and transnational social science communities in
the 1990s, as "native" social scientists have broken theWestern monopoly, compromises the idea of the
"foreign" and has softened the imperialism of categories typical of the 1960s.
14
Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils, Toward a General Theory ofAction (Cambridge: Harvard Uni
in this essay, saw the
versity Press, 1951), 77. It is not self-evident that Parsons and Shils themselves,
24 WORLD POLITICS
"growing" and "developing" meant moving from the left side of the di
to the cast of the framework man
chotomies right. The ideological
dated movement toward a necessary future. The march of history
offered only two possible routes: one the one a cul-de
high road and
sac. drove this agentless process. The clo
Nobody analytic promised
sure, confidence that all of the possible permutations of action had been
accounted for: "We maintain that there are only five basic pattern vari
ables, that, in the sense that they are all of the pattern variables
and
so derive, a
which they constitute system."15
Parsons (and Shils) set out to a more more
produce parsimonious,
consistent summary of the theoretical oppositions of tradition and ra
left and right side of pattern variables as displayed above systematically related. However, the examples
in the essays?which are
few?suggest such a grouping (p. 79). Francis Sutton and Fred W. Riggs de
veloped systematic models, complete with presumptions that history was moving from one set of char
acteristics to another. Sutton is so cited in Almond. For Riggs, see "Agraria and Industria: Toward a
Typology of Comparative Administration," inW. J. Siffin, ed., Toward a Comparative Study of Public
Administration 1957), 23-116. Almond, in his introduction to The Politics of theDevel
(Bloomington,
oping Areas (fn. 13), explicitly avoids such "unfortunate theoretical polarization" and stresses the em
beddedness of traditional in modern structures
(p. 23).
15
Parsons and Shils (fn. 14), 77.
16
Report by the Faculty Committee, The Behavioral Sciences atHarvard (Cambridge: Harvard Uni
versity, June 1954), 114.
SYMPOSIUM 25
17
We did so in Rudolph and Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967,1984,1996).
26 WORLD POLITICS
projects of the 1960s were holistic, theywere under a logical and intel
lectual to suppress alternative truths, to thatWest
compulsion imagine
ern history was world history and suppress the possibility of multiple
Those a mirror
histories. projects prepared culturally narcissistic for the
West. such a for scholars to
Disrupting perspective prepares the ground
as agents in the field of an open
operate history.
James C. Scott
I am not very good at
capturing in the abstract how I practice theoret
icalwork in comparative politics. I am better at doing it than at dis
cussing how to do it.With a figurative pistol to my temple, I did
sit down and write an maxim of comparative work
actually important
that derives from the way I do comparative politics. Iwill be happy to
SYMPOSIUM 29
compress it into cubes so that it could be measured to get the exact vol
ume of wood. Or they would throw the wood into in large bins filled
with water; based on the amount of water that was displaced, they
could determine the exact volume of wood in one of these trees. The
achievements of German forestry science in standardizing techniques
to calculate sustainable yield of commercial timber were very impres
sive in this respect.
What is decisivefor our purposes is the next logical step in forest
to was and
management. That
create, through careful seeding, planting,
a forest that was easier for state foresters to count,
cutting, manipulate,
measure, and assess. The fact is that forest science and geometry,
backed by the state, had the capacity to transform the disorderly and
chaotic real forest into a forest more
closely resembling the administra
tive grid of its techniques. Thus the underbrush was cleared, a number
of plant species were reduced, often to monoculture, was done
planting
and in rows for tracts. went some
simultaneously straight large They
distance toward creating a "normal" forest and aNormalbaum in these
forests.
The creation of a simplified, legible forest was only the imminent
logic of its techniques. It was not and could not ever be realized in
because both nature and the human factor intervened. The ex
practice,
isting the vagaries of fire, storms, blights, climatic changes,
topography,
32 WORLD POLITICS
insect populations, and disease to thwart foresters
obviously conspired
in their efforts to
shape the actual forest. Also not insignificant were the
insurmountable difficulties of policing large forests; for 250 years the
most popular crime in England was poaching. And by popular, Imean
in both senses of the word: most common and most beloved. Given the
difficulties of policing
large forests, therefore, adjacent popula human
tions also continued to graze animals, firewood and
typically poach
use of the forest in ways
kindling, make charcoal, and generally make
that thwarted the realization of forest management plans.
The administrators forest cannot be the naturalist s forest. Even if all
the ecological interactions play
at in the forest were
known, they would
constitute a so and as to shorthand de
reality complex variegated defy
The intellectual filter necessary to reduce this to
scription. complexity
dimensions was in this case the state's interest
manageable provided by
in commercial timber and in revenue.
You could say that the natural
world?or as Iwill go on to argue, the social world?is too un
simply
and too in its raw form for direct administrative
wieldy complex
manipulation. That is, in its natural or social context
reality is bureau
may fish by net or by hook and line from canals and streams. In flooded
fields, however, while anyone may fish with a hook and line for small
fish, the larger fish, taken usually when the field is drained (with wet
rice, for example), belong to the owner of the crop growing in the field.
I could on what to land to the dis
easily elaborate happens rights and
tribution of crops and their proceeds. That, however, is not necessary. I
could also make this description more elaborate because it is, in itself, a
ing them and representing them in positive law. The mind fairly
at the number of clauses and subclauses and sub-subclauses
boggles
that would be required to represent these practices. In principle, if they
could be codified, the result would necessarily sacrifice much of the
obliged to defend itwith a property deed and in the courts and tri
bunals created for that purpose. If you wish any standing in law, you
must have the documents?the birth certificate, passport, identity card,
and so on?that officials as of The
accept proof citizenship. categories
used state agents are not a means to make their environment
by merely
more are also an authoritative tune to which the popula
legible, they
tion has to dance, at least some of the time.
If I had more time, Iwould make the argument that these simplifi
cations become in combination with other factors. One of the
deadly
most important of these is an ideology of high modernism, that is, the
nineteenth-century worldview, with its supreme self-confidence about
the inevitability of linear progress, the development of scientific and
technical knowledge, the expansion of production, and, most impor
tant, the rational design of the social order, the growing satisfaction of
human needs, and, not least, an increasing control over nature, includ
nature commensurate
ing human (also including eugenics, with sci
entific of natural laws). It seems to me that
understanding high
modernism at its flood tide is an that requires an enormously
ideology
state?it has obviously and straightforwardly authoritarian as
powerful
pects to it. According to
high modernism, there is only one answer to
almost any social problem, and that is determined by the technicians,
and social who see these
engineers, analysts things correctly according
to the laws have devised. When state are married
they simplifications
to high modernist plans for the transformation of human life and its
and when these plans are on a that is
improvement, imposed society
weakened or war?so that it is relatively
by revolution prostrate and
easy to push around?then you have, I think, a recipe for the worst dis
asters of
high modernist planners.
In conclusion, the parallel I would draw is between how states sim
plify the societies they govern and how scholars simplify the societies
they study. Both types of simplications may well be necessary, but one
must never also have conse
forget they may profoundly negative
quences. I
personally have never been able to think my way through a
fourth-order extraction or without it in a
simplification embedding
concrete case. I cannot understand fourth-order extractions; once
just
there are four or five of them simultaneously in the air, I am
essentially
lost because I have no empirical reference. I have never been able to un
derstand abstract concepts unless I can run them through something
that I understand well. For this reason I find
the anthropologists' ap
as a if not as a
proach terribly important, certainly technique, theory:
a field site where a lot of time, and co
they have they spend observing
SYMPOSIUM 37
as if were a camera, as if were and
piously recording they they stupid
na?ve.When Iwas doing my dissertation, I had a colleague who was
influenced by Gabriel Almond. He was applying Almond's scheme to
and was a standardized survey. This scholar was
Malaysia, conducting
enormously subtle, widely read, and clever. He would tell me things
aboutMalaysian society that he had picked up on the bus or observed
in this little village, but when it came time to write his dissertation, all
these things that he knew and had taught me no longer seemed rele
vant. At that point, he saw Malaysia only through the instruments of
his survey. The great thing about anthropology, by contrast, is that you
are at work from the moment you open your eyes in the morning until
you close them at night; everything is grist for the mill. So itmay often
be fine to have instruments that will measure but if you see
carefully,
theworld only through your instruments, then it is likely to be aworld
that is hard to broaden that may very well be poverty
and stricken.
These instruments define the conclusions you can reach.
Now for that maxim, although I'm against maxims in principle be
cause they have a habit of hardening into doctrines: If half of your read
ing is
not outside the confines of political science, you are risking
extinction along with the rest of the subspecies. Most of the notable in
novations in the discipline have come in the form of insights, perspec
tives, concepts, and originating elsewhere. Reading
paradigms
exclusively within the discipline is to risk reproducing orthodoxies or,
at the very least, absorbing innovations far from the source. We would
do well to emulate the hybrid vigor of the plant and animal breeding
world.
Theda Skocpol
For my contribution to this I draw on my 1994 essay "Re
symposium,
flections on Recent Scholarship about Social Revolutions and How to
as I revisited the field of the comparative
Study them," which Iwrote
study of revolution.25 It reallywas a revisiting because I had not done
more than an occasional in that area since the publication of
piece
States and SocialRevolutions (ssr) in 1979.261 used the occasion of gath
various of my own essays written before and after SSR as
ering together
an to review the other literature that has accumulated since
opportunity
27
Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents
and Regimes since 1956 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); and Goodwin, State and Revolu
tion in the Third World: A Comparative Analysis (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, forthcoming).
40 WORLD POLITICS
is therefore vulnerable to the accusation that it is
Comparative history
not theoretical of view, however,
enough. From another point this ap
involves across contexts that historians often con
proach comparisons
sider to be unique. So comparative can also be on
history challenged
the grounds that it does violence to the richness and uniqueness of each
case. Both were .
leveled at SSR The
types of challenges only appropri
ate answer to these is to show that important
polar-opposite objections
causal are
theoretical, questions being asked by those doing compara
tive macroanalysis, questions about substantive processes in the world.
The bestresponse is to show, substantively, that there has been progress
in answers to those
developing questions.
The analytical to SSR and other, similar books are of inter
challenges
est not care about the causes and outcomes of rev
only for people who
olutions. The same sorts of appear in many other literatures
challenges
about other substantive matters. That iswhy it isworthwhile in a sym
peasants were thinking back in 1789 and 1917) about how peasants
could have overcome obstacles to collective action
through network ties
and institutions?very much the sorts of relationships that I had dis
cussed in my analysis. Why, he asks, would ra
supposedly self-seeking
tional individuals have engaged in the inherently risky business of
state is very careful to say that he is
rebelling against authority? Taylor
reconstructing the arguments in SSR, and in no way contradicting them.
And indeed, he presumed the entire analysis in my book about the
breakdown of state power that made the peasant community rebellions
In short, Taylor s is partly a on mine and partly
possible. analysis gloss
a to it.
complement
This of interaction between is not so differ
type scholarly argument
ent from what I have seen in some other literatures, where there is a di
generate better theoretical ideas from them. At the same time, we can
use to
well-designed comparisons explore and better specify hypotheses
derived from whatever theories we have available as we launch into a
given investigation.
This historical macroanalytic approach to comparative politics has
flourished in quite a few substantive literatures beyond the one that I
have talked about today. I feel certain that people will carry comparative
into additional substantive areas, further developing an
macroanalysis
alytically powerful, yet historically grounded arguments about regimes,
social structures, and sociopolitical transformations in the modern
world. Those of us who do comparative history in the social sciences
46 WORLD POLITICS
explanation."
If the problem orientation of the field tends to relegate the role of
to that of a tool of research, the quest for causal
theory mainly empirical
moves its role to the forefront. This healthy
generalizations, by contrast,
tension, along with other scholarly preferences, inclines comparative
scholars to pursue a of intellectual aimed at
politics variety strategies
generating theoretically significant scholarship. The last concluding
theme thus concerns, not so much an area of among sympo
agreement
sium participants, as the
variety of their preferences.
The attempts to generate relevant scholarship may have
theoretically
more of either a macro or a microfocus, and also vary along
they may
the dimension of deductive to inductive. these dimen
Dichotomizing
sions and utilizing the conventional 2x2 matrix gives us four sets of the
oretical tendencies that infuse comparative politics scholarship (see
Figure 1).Most scholars of comparative politics reside in cell 2. This
follows from observations already noted above, namely, that problems
of interest to scholars are often macro in nature (for exam
comparative
revolutions, state and that attempts to
ple, democracy, performance)
discover or examine causal explanations of such phenomena lead schol
ars to one or more country cases.
study
Peter Evans captures the role of theory in such macro
eloquently
inductive scholarship: theory helps frame empirical puzzles, and it gen
erates causal hypotheses that are worth And one
plausible examining.
may add that inductive search for regularities generates additional new
Theda
Skocpol also strongly advocates something similar,
hypotheses.
an she labels "macroanalytical." In her contribution she goes
approach
further still, demonstrating how through such research ac
knowledge
cumulates over time.
48 WORLD POLITICS
Deductive Inductive
empirical foci
Figure 1
Dimensions of Theoretical Scholarship
34
See Neil J. Smelser, "The Rational Choice Perspective: A Theoretical Assessment," Rationality
and 4 (October 1992).
Society