Introduction

Abstract

Since the time of Aristotle, comparative politics and the comparative method have been considered by many authors to be the “royal way” of political science (for an assessment of the venerable history of this field, see, e.g., Eckstein and Apter 1963). These were to provide the discipline with a method and a perspective which would lead to scientifically valid, testable propositions with a high explanatory power both in space and time. Yet, as one other major practitioner noted, much of what was written under this rubric remained “essentially non-comparative, essentially descriptive, essentially parochial, essentially static, and essentially monographic” (Macridis 1955: 7). In the meantime, our substantive body of knowledge has been further expanded, now comprising many important aspects of practically all countries and regions of the world (the various editions of the “World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators” — see Taylor and Jodice 1982 — constituted, for example, a major effort in this regard). Major socio-economic and political data collections, which have significantly improved over time, are now also regularly compiled by such institutions as the World Bank (World Development Report since 1978; “good governance” indicators since 1996), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP; Human Development Report since 1990) and Freedom House (Freedom in the World since 1972; see also Munck and Verkuilen 2002, Berg-Schlosser 2007).