Measurement and Bias

Abstract

Perhaps the most fundamental barriers to good comparative research are measurement and the problems of comparability of measures. If comparative analysis is to be at all meaningful then we must be sure that the same terms mean the same things in the different contexts within which the research is conducted. In particular, the comparative analyst must be concerned with the problem of establishing equivalent meaning for concepts within different social and cultural contexts. Words that we use to describe political life in one country, or that have theoretical meaning in one context, may elsewhere have very a different meaning, or indeed be meaningless. Europeans conceptualise the ‘state’ (Dyson, 1980) as a real, yet also metaphysical, entity while for most Americans the term has little meaning beyond a component of the federal system. Similarly, for Europeans outside Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, the concept of federalism means little, or is simply misunderstood; while for Canadians or Americans (as well as the four European systems mentioned above) there is a rich conceptual and empirical literature on the subject (Wright, 1988; Fitzmaurice, 1996; McKenna, 1993; Gauger and Weigelt, 1993). Even in the four European cases the idea of federalism may be very different from that encountered in North America, Brazil, Nigeria or India (Tushnet, 1990; Mahler, 1987; Mukarji and Arora, 1992). The misconceptions around federalism begin to have a practical effect, as well as an academic one, because the European Union may have a federal future, but the nature of that potential is completely misunderstood in some unitary regimes.