WEEK 1

TOPIC: MEANING AND INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE POLITICS

Comparative politics is the science of politics that seeks to obtain knowledge through comparing

two (2) or more countries or places or political events. Comparative politics seeks to make

generalizations about politics through comparison generalization is the utilization of facts that

are known to learn something about facts that we do not know; thus, the main purpose of

comparative politics is the development of theories about political life (Theories are laws which

provides systematic explanation of some area of knowledge or body of observations and which

may be used to predict events or prescribe conducts). The main purpose of comparative politics

is to theorize about politics i.e. theories of politics behaviour about a particular aspect or aspects

of political science in order to use these theories to predict future behaviours. Theories are used

basically to explain, to predict and to prescribe conducts for future behaviour. Comparative

politics is also the systematic study and comparison of the world’s politics system it seeks to

explain differences as well as similarities between countries, places and events around the global.

Comparative politics is a part of political science with its own peculiarities and it compares

things like elections, government, people of different countries etc. It also observes events and

uses more than one case to study political behaviour to have more generalized laws.

SCOPE AND ACTORS OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS

SCOPE OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS: Comparison is at the root of all human thoughts.

Comparing our past with our present and with that of others has always deepened our very

knowledge. According to “LANDMAN” (2003), making comparisons is a natural human activity

as from the ancient times to the present, humans have sought to understand and explain the

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similarities and differences they perceive between themselves and others. Individuals and regions

in all countries regularly compare their positions in the society to those of others in specific

terms. This means that the idea of comparison is natural as people tends to compare at all times

and even countries do the same, it gives us the idea of what should have been. Comparative

politics thus helps us to appreciate the possibilities of politics. “Comparative political analysis

helps us to develop explanations and test theories of the ways in which political change occurs”

(Landman 2003).

ACTORS IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS

Basically, the actors in comparative politics are

 States &

 Their political parties

These states cover the entire surface of the world; they are the subjects on which we conduct

comparative political study (almond, Powell and Mundt 1996). Some of these staes are old while

others are new, some are big, while others are small, some are rich while others are poor. It is

these differences and similarities within and among states that form the focus of comparative

politics.

It is thus possible to describe and explain the different process and institutions (and their

combinations) found in the politics of different states. In this wise, comparative politics can be

seen as an old discipline dating back to about 2000 years ago, when “ARISTOLE” in his

POLITICS compared the economies and social structures of several Greek city states roughly

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about 28 in number. In order to determine their effect on the societies-political institutions and

politics some of these cities he compared are; Athens, Sparta, Penepolecia, Thebes, Corinth,

Argos, Olympics, Delphi, Sicyon, Mycenae, etc. Other has since conducted comparative study of

democracies and of democracies authoritarian regime, as well as of party systems, political

violence, and all areas of politics ever since Aristotle wrote his politics.

WEEK 2

OBJECTIVE OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS

There are four (4) major objectives for engaging in comparative political study, namely:-

 Description

 Classification

 Explanation

 Prediction

Description – comparative politics helps us to describe adequately the issues under study, it also

enables us to describe political phenomena and events in a particular country or group of

countries. Description is the lowest level of knowledge as almost everyone can describe what

they can see. Thus, the first objective of Comparative Politics is to describe and, no meaning is

usually put on what it described.

The objective description allows us to know what the countries being studied are like. Usually,

the researches proceed from the known to the unknown. This method means that countries or

areas studied will normally include the researchers own country and others foreign to them. It

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also means that established facts must be the basis for our initial assumption. By engaging in

detailed contextual description of phenomena in the countries or areas under study, the

researcher ultimately gains more knowledge about his own country and also about the other

countries studied.

Classification: This objective refers to the categorization of countries or areas according to

identifiable characteristics. Classification enables the researcher to discover CONTAINER into

which observed data are organized. Classification can be done in simple dichotomies like, tall,

short, black or white or in more complex typologies like short, tooshort, very short, tall, very

tall, or very very tall. involving defined concept or themes. Countries are then grouped on the

basis of the qualities or characteristics that they share or that they do not share. Through

classification, we can simply say which political system is better than the other, or which regime

is better than the other.

Explanation: The next objective of comparative politics is to explain what has been described

and classified. Explanation takes us almost to the highest level of knowledge, Explanation

basically helps us to understand what caused the issues under study and it thus leads us to the

knowledge of CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Explanation also allows the cross checking of data and makes for rival explanations to be ruled

out. It further allows for hypothesis to be tested thereby making for more complete theories of

politics, e.g. the iron law of oligarchy which says that leadership revolves around a few people

i.e. the elite and the followers who are the many or the masses etc. Explanation is important in

comparative politics as you need to exactly explain what you mean by the themes and typologies

that you have used for easy clarification and understanding.

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Prediction: The last objective of comparative politics is prediction which enables us to make

claims about future political outcomes based on available data. Prediction helps us to make

political predictions of possible outcomes of political events. These claims could be about future

political outcome. In the countries, or areas studied or they could be about political outcome in

other countries different from those studied. E.g. if Nigeria and Ghana are corrupt, that means

other West African countries are. Such predictions are “probabilistic statements” about likely

outcomes in the present or future, given the present of certain conditional factors.

In prediction, we do not predict like pastors or soothsayers, we make predictions after we have

described, classified and explained data collected and after we have measured the trend of data

collected for the research.

BASIC CONCEPTS IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS

In undertaking comparative political studies, there are some terms that we must be conversant

with. This includes;

 Hypothesis

 Generalisation

 Theory

 Case study

 Units of analysis

 Levels of analysis

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a. HYPOTHESIS:- Hypothesis is a probabilistic statement that hasn’t yet been proven. It is an

assumption or supposition about a political reality that needs to be tested against relevant

elements. A hypothesis can be descriptive or explanatory.

Hypothesis usually flows from data i.e. it does not fall from the sky and is gotten from data

gathered for the research. We must thus be careful in Comparative Politics as most times,

people bandy hypothesis about which doesn’t flow from data. Thus, hypothesis must be

based on data. A hypothesis must also be tested based on available data. The testing of

hypothesis can lead to it being disproved. However, when it is proved on the basis of data, it

becomes a generalisation. If you test hypothesis and it is not true, you have to automatically

discard it.

b. GENERALISATION:- This is a statement derived from the observation of regular

occurrences in politics for example, if every time there is a presidential election, there is a

candidate from the North and one from the South, and the one from the North always wins,

it can thus become a generalisation that all candidates for presidential elections from the

North usually win. This is a statement that has been tested and proven over time, and the

verification of such occurrence over time, leads to generalisations.

Generalisation is therefore the use of facts that are known to learn something about facts we

do not know or unknown. Comparative Politics seeks to make generalisations about politics

i.e. to reduce politics to a set of conditions. Generalisations always leads us to theory

building.

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c. THEORIES:- Theories are laws or confirmed generalisations which provides systematic

explanations of a body of observations about politics that may be used for explanation and

predictions. When a generalisation is confirmed overtime and across space, it can then be

acceptable as a dependable conclusion about a political reality at a point, generalisations

becomes theory. The main purpose of comparative politics is the development of theories

about political life.

The means by which a theory is derived and tested includes

-Collection of evidence or data

-Formulation and testing of hypothesis

-Formulation and confirmation of generalisation

-Formulation of theories

It is important to note that Comparative Politics is interested in empirical political theory

because it is scientific in nature. Theories in Political Science can however be Normative

or Empirical and these can be further classified into Inductive or Deductive.

A. Normative theories

B. Empirical theories

NORMATIVE THEORY: This specifies how things in society ought to be.

EMPIRICAL THEORY: Empirical theory seeks to establish causal relationships between two

or more concepts in order to explain observed political occurrences. This basically seeks to find

out how things are in the real world of politics.

Theories in political science, whether normative or empirical can further be classified into:

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 i. Deductive theory

ii. Inductive theory

DEDUCTIVE THEORY: deductive theories are theories that apply general reason in the

explanation of particular cases i.e. using everybody to explain one person.

INDUCTIVE THEORY: inductive theories use the facts of known individual cases to

explain general and unknown cases.

In all cases whether normative, empirical, deductive or inductive, comparison of evidence

from different countries or areas or events help us to confirm our generalizations and theory.

Comparative politics helps us basically to come up with more dependable laws in politics, it

is also what political scientists have done to make political science more scientific.

d. CASE STUDY: case study is the approach which focuses on the study of specific countries

or areas. Cases are then the countries that feature in a particular comparative study.. It is the

approach which focuses on the study of specific countries or areas or events.

e. UNITS OF ANALYSIS: units of analysis are the objects on which data are collected in a

study such as; individuals, groups, area of a country, countries, systems ( political systems,

electoral systems ), social groups, political parties etc. each unit of analysis will consist of variables

relevant to a study.

VARIABLES: these are concepts that assume changing values over a given sets of units, such as

income level, party membership and identification, etc. the values of the variables for each units

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can be expressed in numbers or verbally or visually/graphically. Variables can be independent or

dependent.

Independent variable: independent variable is the CAUSAL VARIABLE (or explanatory

variable or the explicandum) which explains the dependents variable, i.e. independent variable

explains the dependent variable.

Dependent variable: dependent variables is the outcome variable, i.e. the EFFECT

VARIABLE (endogenous variable or the explanandum) which the study is trying to explain.

E.g. in considering rigged elections, dependent variable as the rigged elections while the

explanation of why the election was rigged in the independent variable. Most political

phenomena however have more than one explanation, so it is possible to have more than one

independent variable for a given dependent variable. ( it is possible to have more than one

answer for a given.

f. LEVELS OF ANALYSIS: level of analysis in comparative politics refers to the categories

on which analysis is made. This is divided between MICRO and MACRO levels.

i. Micro level: this is the individual level and it examines the political activities of

individual level such as individual members of militant movements in the Niger delta,

for instance, or individual members in a political party.

ii. Macro level: this is the system level and it examines the political activities of groups,

classes and power structures in a political system.

Level of analysis is related to level observation, the latter being the category at which data

are collected (przeworski and Teune 1970).

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WEEK 4

TOPIC: PROBLEMS OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS

Comparative studied in political science faces a number of challenges, these are namely:-

1. THE PROBLEM OF RESEARCH DESIGN:

This is the problem of choosing the countries to study and the variables to observe. This

creates the problem of an indeterminate research design, in which often, a comparativist works

with too many variables and not enough countries i.e. too few countries or put in another way too

many generalizations and not enough observations. This problem is more associated with

single or few case studies where in more variables of explanation for a phenomenon is

identified than there are countries to be observed. If a study has too many possible

explanation of a phenomenon, and not enough countries to be observed, then arriving at the

correct explanation is problematic. Any solution to this problem must be based on the principle

that the number of variables must be less than the number of observed countries. In this regard, a

comparativist can raise the number of observations to allow for variation. This can be done by

adding more countries to the study or by comparing more sections of a country being studied or

still by comparing countries or sections of countries over a long period of time. E.g. comparing

elections in Nigeria from 1960-2010. This long period of time is called “TIME SERIES

ANALYSIS”.

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Another solution is to work with a research design that includes similar countries such that it

would be easy to explain for different outcome e.g. working with West African countries and

they are similar with the history, geographical terrain, colonialism, independence etc.

Yet a third solution will involve a research design of different countries i.e. countries that are

entirely different while focusing on the explanatory factors for similar outcomes e.g Nigeria and

Pakistan, Indian, Japan, Malaysia, or Ethiopia etc. a another example the study of countries that

have had revolution like, Germany, Russia, Cuba, China, Turkey, etc you will surely find a

similarity why they all had revolutions their countries.

There is another problem concerning research design, this is the problem of ecological and

individualistic data where an acceptable distinction is not made between individuals level data

and system or aggregate level data i.e. using data collected at one level to make analysis on data

collected at another level. Individual data refers to information collected about individual people

or units while system-level data consists of aggregate data for testing units. The problem of

ecological and individualist fallacy arises when generalizations are arrived at about one level of

analysis using data obtained from another level. This problem can be avoided by adopting the

‘principle of direct measurement’ (scheuch 1969:13) which provides that research questions at

one level should use data at that level and can only lead to generalisations about that level of

analysis.

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2. PROBLEM OF CONCEPTUAL EQUIVALENCE

The next problem of comparative studies in political science is that of defining concepts and

specifying indicators in such a way as to allow for shared meanings and thus, valid comparisons.

In other words, how can the comparativist assign equivalent values to his concepts across

multiple contexts such that this concept means the same thing across different countries

and times? For comparison to have meaning, it is not enough that the concepts are identical or

even similar but they must be same exactly the same across all the countries you are studying. In

this regard, two major arguments have been made, namely the Universalist and the Relativist

positions.

The Universalists argue that concepts must have the same meaning everywhere, while the

Relativist argue that the meaning of concepts must be locally determined. A middle position

however has argued that comparativists while striving for general conceptual definitions, should

also try to modify these meanings according to contextual and cultural specificities (Landman

2003). The solution to the problem of equivalence generally lies in the comparativist carefully

specifying his concepts, constructing models that operationalize these concepts in the various

contexts of his study, (while recognising limitations) (Landman 2003:45). E.g. studying poverty

in Nigeria and Benin if you are using N 20,000 as benchmark for poverty in Nigeria it must be

the equivalent of N 20,000 in the Benin currency so that somebody reading your work will easily

understand your work.

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3. PROBLEM OF RESEARCH BIAS

Comparative politics faces two (2) problem of bias namely, Selection Bias and Value Bias.

A. SELECTION BIAS: this is the problem of bias in selecting countries for study. Often,

comparative politics uses intentional selection instead of random selection of

respondents/countries for study. In other words, research bias in comparative studies in

political science refers to the non-random choice of countries or the deliberate selection of

respondents for study. This problem faces mainly those studies that compare few countries or

within a country. In this regard, this problem of ‘selection without reflection’ creates further

problems of generalizations. Often, countries are chosen because they exhibit the attribute

which the research wants to explain e.g. revolution, poverty, violence etc. choosing as this

based on the dependent variable, may lead to either an overestimation of relationships that do

not exist or an underestimations of relationships that actually exists. Both mean that the

analysis is arriving at false generalization. To control this situation, countries exhibiting an

attribute may be compared to offer that do not exhibit that attribute.

There is also selection bias in qualitative comparative study this arises when a study relies

on HISTORICAL SOURCES that fit the particular theory being tested Historiography (study

of historical records) itself is dependent on the disposition of the historians themselves. Thus,

generalizations obtained based on historical account may be biased. This can however be sowed

of relying on multiple historical sources at a time so as to arrive at a “MEAN” account of events.

There is a third form of selection bias, bias in time framing, arising from the time periods used

in the comparative study spanning a long period of time. This can manifest when a particular

time frame is used in a study but generalization are drawn covering a longer time frame.

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A final selection bias is spuriousness or the bias of “OMITTED VARIABLES”.

Spuriousness is an explanation in which some unidentified factors is responsible for an

outcome or phenomenon but which is attribute instead to an identified wrong factor. To

avoid this, the comparatives must look for identified only the variable that have identifiable

relationship to the phenomenon being studied.

The other problem of research bas in comparative politics is:

B. VALUE BIAS: This arises from the perspective of the researcher which often affects

analysis and interpretations. This can be resolved by the researcher admitting his perspective

and specifying in what ways this perspective have to come to the study.

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