The Second Problem: Strategies

Abstract

Supposing progress were being made towards a suitable repertoire of concepts, there would be the problem of what to compare — which concepts should be selected at any level, and what level of conceptualisation to choose. Meaningful comparison being more than simply an identification of certain similarities or differences, there are major difficulties involved in the scope and strategy of comparison. Three problems in particular of this type seem central to the fundamental investigation of comparative politics:

• (i) The choice of central concepts is important in any complex or continuing comparative exercise; the four chosen by Macridis — decision-making, power, ideology and political institutions — form one set; those suggested by Blondel — structures, behaviour and the law — are another. This, as has been stated earlier, is a choice which, if explicit, cannot but be related to the theoretic basis of comparison which is selected (or unconsciously formed) by the comparative scientist.

• (ii) The‘normal’ unit of comparison. This has, traditionally, been the state, but may be (alternatively and more generally) the ‘system’, and thus retain a macro-political focus; as will be developed later in this section, the choice lies between this or the ‘structure’, which involves a micro-political focus. This choice is a strategic, not a dogmatic, one, and it is a vital proposition of this work that comparative politics must always involve at least two levels of comparison in any instance: comparison of systems as such, and comparison of some of their structures.46

• (iii) How ought ‘;the political’ to be treated? If political phenomena as ‘;ends’ are to be compared, the explanation of the variables which affect their ‘states’ will rarely be confined to ‘the political’ also (e.g. explanations of differential voting behaviour of women in several industrialised societies may well include consideration of, for instance, their religious behaviour, the economic status of women in those societies, patterns of inter-familial influence, differential demographic patterns, etc.). If, on the other hand, comparison is directed at the effects produced by political phenomena as ‘means’, then the range of ‘ends’ will surely take in the economic, socio-cultural, psychological and other aspects of social behaviour (e.g. the comparative study of the general effects of federal systems in Canada, Nigeria, West Germany and Switzerland, or of governmental control mechanisms over long-term economic planning in various socialist one-party states). In the first case, attempts to force all means or causes of political phenomena as ‘ends’ into a ‘political’ context will lead to reductionism. In the second case, concentration only on political results of political phenomena as ‘means’ will trivialise the discipline.