Comparative Politics

- contextual description
- classification
- hypothesis-testing
- prediction

- mico-political: focus on political activity of individuals
- macro-political: focus on groups of individuals, structures of power, social classes

- macro-historical comparison
- in-depth interviews and participant observation
- interpretivism/hermeneutics/"thick description"

- the higher the level of abstraction, the more potential there is for the inclusion of a large number of countries in the study.

- large-n: comparing many countries
- small-n: few countries

- quantitative analysis of aggregate data collected on different measures that vary across many countries
- higher level of abstraction

- researcher can use statistical controls to rule out rival explanations
- extensive coverage of countries over time & space
- strong inferences that hold for many cases
- ability to identify "outliers"

- limited availability of data for many countries & time periods
- validity of measurements
- mathematical & computing skills needed

- between 2 and 20 countries are being compared
- intentional selection of countries from the universe of possible cases
- middle level of conceptual abstraction
- more intensive, less extensive

- if it uses concepts that are applicable to other countries and/or seeks to make larger inferences that stretch beyond the single country used in the study

- inferences from single-country studies are necessarily less secure than those made from few or many country studies

- problem of too many variables, not enough cases
- if a study has too many unknowns, solving for the unknown becomes problematic
- the number of variables must be less than the number of countries being studied

1) raise number of observations to allow the key factors of the study greater overall variation
---> adding countries/historical analysis
2) MSSD
3) MDSD

- universalist position: if theoretical concepts and their indicators are to have any explanatory power, they must be able to travel to all parts of the globe
- relativist position: all meaning is locally determined. A general "science" of comparative politics is necessarily limited if not impossible.
- middle position: comparativists must not abandon all their concepts, but should modify them to be sensitive to cutural specificities of the contexts they are studying

- raising level of abstraction
- focusing on smaller numbers of countries for which the comparativist has thorough, substantive knowledge
- identification of functional equivalence of concepts and indicators (if 2 entities share the same function, they are functionally equivalent)