DOING COMPARATIVE POLITICS

Comparative Politics: Understanding and Asking Questions

Scholars in comparative politics, like all researchers, aim to answer important questions
about the world. To find answers, we first need to ask the right questions. In comparative
politics, these questions often focus on big changes within countries, like revolutions (e.g.,
the French Revolution), nation-building, economic development (like moving from farming to
industry), and political changes, such as democratization.

Some typical questions in this field include:

● Why do revolutions happen, and why do some succeed while others fail?
● Why did some countries industrialize earlier than others?
● Why have some nations become democratic while others remain undemocratic?

Asking these kinds of questions is a key part of studying comparative politics.

Different Types of Questions in Comparative Politics

Here are some more examples, covering big and small issues:

● Why does the U.S. have more gun homicides than other industrialized countries?
● Why are so many people and countries still very poor? How did some countries
become wealthy quickly?
● Why do some mass protests succeed while others fail?
● Why do American high school students struggle with math and science compared to
students in other countries?

While some of these questions seem specific to the U.S., they highlight that comparative
politics can address a variety of issues, not just about foreign countries.

Finding Answers in Comparative Politics

There can be many possible answers to these questions. For example, filmmaker Michael
Moore suggested in his film Bowling for Columbine that gun violence in the U.S. is largely
due to a "culture of fear." He argued that fear leads to violence, which then creates more fear
and violence. Is Moore’s argument correct? How can we know if any explanation is valid?
This book aims to help you learn how to evaluate such arguments and better understand
complex social, political, and economic issues.

The Role of Comparative Politics

Comparative politics gives us tools to understand and answer a wide range of questions, like
why there is so much gun violence in the U.S. It helps us make sense of events happening
around us, whether locally or globally. The field is not just about studying other countries; it
can be applied to many problems, such as:

● Can a single-payer healthcare system work in the U.S.?

● Are religious beliefs and democracy always in conflict?
● Is economic inequality an inevitable part of capitalism?
● Would legalizing all drugs reduce crime and make drug use safer?

Using a comparative politics approach helps in answering these questions, but it’s not the
only method available. Still, learning about comparative politics can benefit anyone, from
students to policymakers.

What Is Comparative Politics?

Comparative politics studies the politics of different countries. It focuses on understanding

political events, issues, and processes that occur within a state, society, or political system.
Comparative politics is both a method of study (comparison) and a subject of study
(political phenomena within countries).

Key Points

1. Comparison-Based Study: Uses comparison to analyze political events in different

countries.
2. Domestic Focus: Primarily concerned with internal political dynamics, making it
distinct from international relations, which deals with foreign policies.
3. Political Phenomena: Focuses on events and processes considered political.

Important Questions Raised

● Can comparative politics only focus on what happens inside a country, or must it
consider outside influences?
● What counts as "political phenomena"? Do social, economic, and cultural aspects fall
under politics?
● Why compare, and what’s the benefit?

Comparative politics isn't just limited to studying foreign countries; it can also analyze
domestic politics using comparison methods.

The Importance of Definitions

Why Definitions Matter

Definitions in comparative politics are crucial for several reasons:

● Inclusion and Exclusion: They clarify what is studied and what is not. For example,
defining comparative politics as the study of politics in foreign countries may
unintentionally exclude the United States.
 ● Complexity of Politics: The definition raises questions about whether economic,
social, or cultural issues should also be included in the study of politics.

Key Concepts in Comparative Politics

1. State vs. Nation vs. Nation-State:

○ State: A legal entity with a permanent population, defined territory, and a
government that has control over its territory and a monopoly on legitimate
violence.
○ Nation: A group of people sharing a common identity, often based on culture,
language, or religion, and does not require a defined territory.
○ Nation-State: A political entity where a single nation is organized within a
state. True nation-states are rare, and the term is often used interchangeably
with "national state."
2. Government: The agency through which authority is exercised; it can exist at
multiple levels (e.g., local governments, tribal councils).
3. Country: A generic term that refers to a distinct political system of people sharing
common values in a defined geographic area.

Complexity in Definitions

Definitions of comparative politics vary but generally aim to explain the similarities and
differences between political systems. Some notable definitions include:

● Systematic Study: Comparative politics involves a systematic comparison of

political systems to identify patterns and regularities.
● Domestic Politics: It focuses on domestic politics across countries, unlike
international relations (IR), which primarily examines relationships between states.

Comparative Politics vs. International Relations

● Distinct Focus: Comparative politics concentrates on internal political dynamics,

while IR typically examines interactions between states.
● Assumptions in IR: Many IR scholars view states as functionally similar, often
neglecting internal factors that influence external behavior. This leads to a lack of
focus on domestic politics.
● Division of Labor: Comparative politics has emerged to fill the gaps left by IR, using
an inside-out approach to understand political phenomena, while IR often relies on
an outside-in perspective.

Defining comparative politics is essential for understanding its scope and significance within
political science. By recognizing the nuances in definitions and the distinctions between
comparative politics and international relations, scholars can better explore the complexities
of political systems and their interactions.

Understanding Internal Politics and External Forces

The text asserts that it is impossible to fully understand a country's internal politics without
considering the impact of external forces. This interconnectedness has been evident since
the era of colonialism and has intensified with globalization.

Perspectives on Internal vs. External Factors

Scholars debate the importance of internal versus external factors in shaping political
dynamics:

● External Factors: Some argue that global economic structures and relationships
between developed and developing nations significantly influence internal politics.
● Internal Attributes: Others emphasize the importance of a country's unique
historical experiences, culture, and institutional arrangements.

While there is general agreement among comparativists that external influences must be
considered, there is no consensus on their relative importance compared to internal factors.

Amended Definition of Comparative Politics

To reflect this understanding, comparative politics can be defined as the study of the
interaction between domestic and external forces affecting a country's politics. However, this
revised definition still does not clarify how to separate political studies from other fields like
economics and culture, which will be addressed in the following sections.

Traditional vs. Modern Definitions of Politics

Traditional Perspective

Before the 1950s, comparative politics primarily focused on the formal aspects of political
systems, such as governmental institutions (e.g., parliaments, congresses) and the legal
framework (e.g., constitutions, judicial rules). This narrow definition led to superficial
analyses that often excluded critical political processes and actors, reducing politics to a
limited view of formal governance.

Shift in Understanding

The 1950s marked a pivotal shift in the field, as scholars began advocating for a broader
understanding of politics. Influential works by Roy Macridis and Richard Cox argued that
politics encompasses more than formal institutions, highlighting the role of informal rules and
power dynamics in society. Despite this progress, the discipline still grappled with separating
politics from other social sciences.

Process-Oriented Definition

The text introduces a process-oriented definition of politics, viewing it as intertwined with

the broader social context. Politics is understood as the struggle over power and resources,
affecting individuals' life chances and well-being. This definition challenges rigid disciplinary
boundaries, acknowledging that political phenomena are influenced by historical, economic,
cultural, and geographical factors.

Implications of the Process-Oriented View

1. Broad Scope of Politics: Politics extends beyond governmental institutions to

include all societal domains, such as corporations, religious organizations, and ethnic
groups.
2. Interconnectedness of Domestic and External Forces: Politics cannot be easily
separated into domestic and international spheres, as power struggles and resource
distributions often transcend national boundaries.

Overall, the text emphasizes that a comprehensive understanding of politics requires

recognizing its complexity and interconnectedness with various social forces.

Losing Focus?

Many political scientists argue against a broad definition of politics, claiming it risks
becoming too inclusive, leading to the idea that we are studying both "everything and
nothing." For example, Zahariadis suggests we should distinguish politics from corporate
decisions, which he believes impact only specific entities. However, this perspective
overlooks the significant public impact that many corporate decisions can have, especially in
the context of large corporations.

Consider Wal-Mart, whose 2015 total revenue was $486 billion, exceeding the GDP of many
countries. This example highlights how corporate decisions can influence resource
distribution and have far-reaching political consequences. Thus, the distinction between
public and private decisions becomes increasingly blurred.

The table below shows where Wal-Mart would rank, based on total revenue compared to
GDP, if it were a country. The comparison, of course, is overly and perhaps fatally simplistic,
but nonetheless gives a rough indication of the economic size and power of the company
relative to a range of countries.

Figure 1.3 Wal-Mart vs. the World, 2015 Estimates

Purchasing Power–Adjusted Country GDP ($ billions)

Rank

1 United States 18,125

10 France 2,634

20 Taiwan 1,125

30 South Africa 725

— Wal-Mart 486
 40 Singapore 471

50 Qatar 346

60 Ireland 238

70 New Zealand 165

80 Libya 103

90 Côte d’Ivoire 77

100 Democratic Republic of Congo 62

Sources: Figure for Wal-Mart based on the 2015 fiscal year, and includes total revenues for
Wal-Mart US, Wal-Mart International, and Sam’s Club (Wal-Mart 2015 Annual Report,
Wal-Mart Annual Report). GDP figures cited in KNOEMA 2015.
Note: a. Total sales

While it is essential not to define politics as "everything, including the kitchen sink," clear
definitions are crucial for formulating arguments and hypotheses. If a concept is poorly
defined—like democracy or terrorism—meaningful analysis becomes challenging. Therefore,
the goal is to develop a definition that is neither too narrow nor too vague.

A pragmatic approach suggested by Gerry Stoker and David Marsh is to focus on collective
political interactions rather than interpersonal ones. This includes interactions within the
public arena (government or state) and between that arena and social actors or institutions.
While this qualification may not satisfy all political scientists, it reflects a common basis for
research among comparativists.

What Does It Mean to Compare?

In thinking about what it means to compare, let us first consider what Charles Ragin, a
prominent social scientist, has to say: “Thinking without comparison is unthinkable. And, in
the absence of comparison, so is all scientific thought and scientific research” (Ragin 1987,
p. 1, citing Swanson 1971, p. 141). Ragin’s statement underscores that comparison is
fundamental in all sciences—both social and natural. Researchers and scholars consistently
engage in some form of comparison, indicating that comparative politics isn't fundamentally
different from other fields of study. However, one significant aspect that distinguishes
comparative politics is its explicit focus on the comparative method rather than informal
comparison.

The comparative method involves two main predispositions. First, it favors qualitative
analysis, where comparativists look at whole cases and compare them (e.g., Germany vs.
Japan or the United States vs. Canada). This approach tends to prioritize qualitative analysis
over quantitative, statistical approaches. Second, comparativists value interpretation and
context, operating under the belief that "history matters." This means they seek to
understand how historical processes and institutional arrangements shape contemporary
political environments.
Understanding these predispositions is crucial, but defining what it means to compare goes
beyond merely identifying differences and similarities between countries. For instance,
simply stating that “China has a Confucian heritage, whereas the United States does not”
does not constitute deep comparative analysis. True comparative analysis requires moving
beyond superficial descriptions to uncover meaningful insights about political phenomena.

THE PAST VS THE PRESENT

The “Past” vs. "the Present": The diagram visually represents the connection
between historical events (the past) and contemporary events (the present),
reinforcing the idea that understanding history is crucial for analyzing current
political phenomena.

WHY COMPARE?

Comparing different political situations is crucial for several reasons. It helps researchers
test their ideas, understand unique cases better, and build stronger theories. Giovanni
Sartori explains that comparison allows us to check if our claims are valid by looking at
different examples and controlling for certain factors. This means we can see if our theories
hold true across various situations or if they need to be adjusted.

Explanation of the Three Purposes

1. Comparing to Control:
○ This purpose is about testing specific claims. For example, if someone claims
that high gun ownership leads to more gun-related deaths, researchers can
look at various countries. They can see if countries with high gun ownership
actually have high homicide rates. If not, the original claim might be incorrect.
This approach helps verify or falsify ideas based on real-world evidence.
2. Comparing to Understand:
○ This purpose focuses on learning more about a specific case. For example, if
researchers are interested in high homicide rates in South Africa, they can
explore different theories about violence. By looking at other cases, they can
gain insights into why South Africa has such high violence rates. This
approach allows researchers to deepen their understanding of unique
situations.
3. Comparing to Explain:
○ This purpose involves building stronger theories. Researchers may start with
a general idea, such as how countries become democratic. They can then
look at various cases, like Mexico, Taiwan, Poland, and Ukraine, to see how
well the theory holds up. Each case adds to the overall understanding and
helps refine the theory based on real-world examples.

What Is Comparable?
When we talk about comparison in politics, it’s important to understand what we can
compare. At first, it seems obvious that we can compare countries, since they all share
certain features, like having a defined territory, a government, and recognition by other
states. However, differences between countries are also significant. If every country were
identical, comparing them would be pointless because there would be nothing to learn.

Basic Understanding:

● We can compare entities that share some traits (like countries) but also have
important differences. This means we can look at countries, states, cities, and other
groups, provided they share some common characteristics.

Key Considerations for Comparison

1. Shared and Unique Attributes:

○ Countries or entities must have some similarities (like political structures) and
differences (like culture or economic status) to be comparable.
2. Choosing Comparison Units:
○ The appropriateness of comparing countries depends on the goals of the
researcher. For example, comparing the United States to Japan may be
relevant if the focus is on economic policies, while comparing it to Côte
d’Ivoire might be suitable for studying governance styles.
3. Comparing Beyond Countries:
○ It's not just about countries; comparisons can include states, provinces, cities,
and other social units. Single-country studies can also be comparative if the
researcher keeps a broader comparative context in mind.
4. Implicit Comparisons:
○ Researchers often implicitly compare their chosen case to another country or
an ideal model. For instance, when studying South Africa, a researcher might
compare its situation to the ideal of a successful democracy.
5. Within-Case Comparisons:
○ A special type of analysis looks at changes within a single case over time. For
example, examining how political attitudes in a country change following a
significant event can be seen as a comparative study.

Advantages of the Comparative Method

Understanding Complexity: One big advantage of the comparative method is that it helps
us understand complicated situations. Many different things can affect political events. For
example, when looking at political violence, we can see that many factors like money issues
(like poverty), cultural beliefs (like religion), politics (like how democratic a country is), and
social issues (like class differences) all work together. This method lets researchers look at
all these factors at once to understand why something happens.
Three Important Points About Causes:

1. Many Causes: Things in social science rarely happen for just one reason. For
example, many reasons can cause strikes, and no single reason can explain why
they happen everywhere.
2. Causes Work Together: Usually, different reasons combine to cause an event. The
mix of various factors at a specific time and place often leads to a certain outcome.
3. Context Matters: The same cause can have different effects depending on the
situation. For example, better living conditions might cause more strikes in one place
but fewer in another.

Why Comparative Analysis is Effective: Comparative analysis is great for understanding

social events because it looks at whole cases. This means researchers can consider all
important factors together. This way of studying can explain unusual situations, like why
some poorer countries are democratic even when studies might suggest otherwise.

Explaining Relationships Between Factors: Another benefit of comparative analysis is

that it helps explain how different factors are connected. While numbers and statistics can
show that two things are related (like economic growth and democracy), they often don’t
explain why or how they are linked. Using an airplane example, just as investigators need to
dig deeper to find out what caused a plane crash, political analysts need to look closely at
how different social factors interact to fully understand their relationships.

The Importance of Method and Theory

The concept of the black box is a helpful metaphor in understanding comparative analysis.
However, it's important to remember that comparative analysis involves more than just
looking inside the box and examining its contents. It also requires careful planning and
consideration of what we want to study. Here’s a breakdown of why method and theory are
important in comparative politics.

Selecting Cases Thoughtfully

When choosing which cases to study, researchers shouldn’t just pick randomly. There should
be specific reasons or criteria guiding these choices. These criteria are often based on the
research design we decide to use. But before we even think about research design, we need
to determine which factors (or variables) are important to our study. This is where theory
comes into play.

The Role of Theory

Theory often gets a bad reputation among students. Many people think theory is boring or
irrelevant. However, it’s crucial for understanding both academic subjects and everyday life.
We all make theories about the world around us, whether we realize it or not. The issue is
that not everyone is good at theorizing. Some people think that just stating the facts is
enough to explain something, as in the saying, “Let the facts speak for themselves.”
But simply relying on facts can lead to incomplete or misleading conclusions. A better
approach is to think carefully and openly about theory. This helps us become better thinkers,
allowing us to analyze situations more effectively.

Understanding Comparative Politics

In summary, doing comparative politics effectively requires:

1. A Clear Understanding of Comparative Politics: Know what it means to compare

different political situations.
2. The Importance of Theory: Recognize that theory helps guide our analysis and
understanding of political events.
3. Awareness of Methodology: Be conscious of the methods we use to compare and
analyze different cases.

While these three points are just the basics, they are essential for building a strong
foundation for further study in comparative politics.
I
Paradigms and Pragmatism
Comparative Politics during the
Past Decade
Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S.
Zuckerman
INTRODUCTION
Students of comparative politics explain electoral behavior, political networks, political
institutions, contentious politics, comparative political economies, welfare states,
international-comparative linkages, and the state. Their interest in the pragmatic and causal
analysis of these critical political questions defines the "messy center" of comparative
politics. The first edition of this volume emphasized the field's research paradigms, placing
rationality, culture, and structure in the subtitle. In the decade or so since the first edition was
published, tension between these two perspectives on the field has persisted. Contrasts
between research paradigms and pragmatic causal accounts provide the intel- lectual friction
that drives much of our research. These alternative foci structure this edition's themes and
problems.
Aiming to transcend a battle of the paradigms, Alan Zuckerman's chapter advances an
explanatory strategy that is one such way forward. Explanations in comparative politics, he
maintains, must meet clear standards: The more that are met, the better the results. The
criteria include social mechanisms (a particular form of causal mechanism) that are derived
from strong theoretical propositions. Convincing explanations also require empirical
evidence of the specified explanatory processes. Because the ontology of politics demands
that the explanations apply to stochastic, multilevel, and endogenous phenomena, simple
causal claims are insufficient.
Applying social mechanisms with high prior probabilities of explanatory power and employing
appropriate statistical techniques transforms the language of explanation from imprecise
verbal accounts into clear and specific arguments. The results move explanation along a
scale from the mistaken to the demon- strated. As an attempt to convince by doing,
Zuckerman applies his message
to research on partisanship and on political violence. In his view, research paradigms are a
source of strong explanatory hypotheses, but they are not the sum total of scholarship in
comparative politics.
Mark Lichbach's chapter advances a somewhat different perspective on contemporary
comparative politics: While overt paradigm wars have been dampened, paradigm-driven
teaching and thinking persists. In the field's tool- boxes and cookbooks, paradigms continue
to provide the content and direction-- the underlying purpose and logic - for many
contemporary comparativists. Most importantly, they fuel the field's creative impetus.
The second edition of Comparative Politics assesses the role that research paradigms and
pragmatic explanatory strategies currently play in the field. In order to bring assessments of
the debate among the paradigms up-to-date, we asked our authors to address several
questions:
How have the dynamics among rationality-culture-structure played out? What are the
different types of responses to the battle of the para- digms? How do scholars currently treat
the approaches? Are rationality-culture- structure comparisons no longer central to the field?
Do researchers still begin their research with an interparadigmatic dialogue in mind? Do they
still use the debate to evaluate existing theories? When developing new theories, do they
still return to the debate? Have the paradigms converged or do they remain distinct? Which
met- aphor best characterizes the field: separate tables, a messy center of convergence, or
a mixed bag of partial synergisms? Is there a new paradigm war, with culturalists and
constructivists as today's paradigm warriors, on the horizon?
Do multiple perspectives shed more light than heat? Are creative research moves often
based on appeals to ideal-type paradigms? Does compe-- tition among paradigms move the
field and promote progress by gen- erating critical reflection, fashioning significant evidence,
and improving important concepts?
While the authors of our theoretical chapters on rationality, culture, and structure and of our
substantive chapters organize their contributions in their own ways, all examine the field's
paradigms and pragmatic strategies of explanation.
THE CHAPTERS
We begin with two general chapters, Lichbach's assessment of efforts to move past the
debate about research schools and Zuckerman's attempt to improve explanations in
comparative politics. Both highlight the volume's links between paradigms and causal
analyses. Structural and rationalist analyses applied to the messy center follow. Ira
Katznelson and Margaret Levi provide theoretical overviews of structure and rationality,
respectively, that demonstrate an
emerging consortium. We then turn to movements against the mainstream. Marc Ross offers
a theoretical overview of culture. Joel Migdal's discussion of the state indirectly points to, and
Mark Blyth's analysis of comparative political economy more directly discusses, the growing
significance of constructivism. Two chapters then illustrate the center's dialogue between
research paradigms and causal pragmatism: Etel Solingen considers global-domestic
linkages and Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly analyze the field of con-
tentious politics. The volume then considers ways that comparativists fortify the field's center
by elaborating causal explanations. Robert Huckfeldt's analysis of political networks and
Christopher J. Anderson's review of the literature on mass political behavior emphasize
macro-micro connections and the need for mul- tilevel analyses. Uncovering endogenous
causal relationships provides the theme of Jonathan Rodden's review of institutions and
political economy. Isabela Mares delves deeply into causal analyses of welfare states.
Finally, Kanchan Chandra discusses the problem of making causal claims about ethnicity
and politics, the research domain in comparative politics that has been most affected by
recent constructivist thought.
The Messy Center: Big-Picture Pragmatism
"Now we political economists have a pedantic custom," writes Max Weber in his classic
essay "Science as a Vocation" (1946: 129), "which I should like to follow, of always
beginning with the external conditions." Following Weber, Ira Katznelson would have
comparativists begin with the contemporary world's major force - modern liberalism, as it
developed in the West. Katznelson sug- gests that robust problem-solving scholarship and
the revival of large-scale studies have renewed the prospects of institutional studies that
combine strong theory, a configurational approach to causality, and respect for history's
variety. These efforts continue established research programs on the dominant struc- tures
of modernity - capitalism, civil society, the state, and the state system. A close critical focus
on liberalism offers comparative politics a similarly energetic focus.
Even as Katznelson sees the biggest of pictures, he adopts an eclectic research strategy. In
a theme that reappears in many of the chapters, Katznelson demonstrates a "pragmatic
attitude about method." Displaying a "healthy dis- respect for overly stylized battles about
paradigms," he wants to employ "a range of analytical traditions to answer tough and
meaningful questions" about "important problems."Katznelson urges "problem-focused
writing that exhibits little respect for traditional divisions within comparative politics" such as
political economy, contentious politics, and electoral studies. Utilizing multiple methods
archives, surveys, ethnography, experiments, and cross-national sta- tistics helps the field
transcend "inductive variable-centered strategies." He also urges comparativists to "refuse to
choose between positive and normative orientations." Believing that many "intersecting
modes of investigation" can produce findings that illuminate questions that are empirically
grounded, ones
rich in knowledge of time and place, Katznelson advocates a style of comparative inquiry
that is "realist and concrete rather than nominal and abstract, [one] aimed at discerning a
'sweet spot' located in the zone between high abstraction and particular specification."
Even so, Katznelson cautions against excessive pragmatism. Following ideas he advanced
in his chapter for the volume's first edition, Katznelson has little use for "highly targeted
studies" of limited ambition that produce "substantive and conceptual retrenchment" from the
great works of the past. Without the sort of larger project focused on Western liberalism that
he advocates, "thematic lit- eratures threaten to remain confined within specialized
conversations, and possibilities for integrating findings across a range of discoveries are
likely to stay artificially abridged." Katznelson thus worries about the decentering of com-
parative politics - the heterogeneity and diversity in subjects, questions, and studies that
inevitably accompany a diverse toolkit. Katznelson seeks a big- picture pragmatism that can
contain the field's tensions and contradictions.
Applying a rational choice approach, Margaret Levi also advocates research pragmatism
that aims at big questions. Her chapter details significant substan- tive, methodological, and
theoretical advances in rational choice analysis that allows rationalists to employ
manageable research strategies to probe the big picture. Levi discusses how, over the past
decade, rational choice comparativists have indeed helped to redirect comparative politics
toward goals that she shares with Katznelson.
The successes of the comparative and historical mode of rational choice theory derive in
part from debates with culturalists and structuralists. Even as convergence across the
research schools grows, Levi maintains, paradigms remain: "While the paradigm wars...
have certainly subsided, they have not disappeared entirely. Paradigmatic distinctions
remain relevant both to training and to research." She further notes, "what divides
[paradigms] is method in the sense of how to construct theory and organize research
findings. Rationalists continue to emphasize methodological individualism and strategic
interaction." While some debates remain, the best comparative work, Levi claims, now uses
many sophisticated methods, involving some mix of field work, interviews, surveys, archival
work, experiments, and statistics in addition to formal logic. She thus advocates a
"multiplicity of methods as well as approaches" that "blurs the lines among approaches" and
is "methodologically pluralistic." As Levi puts it, "not everyone does everything, but everyone
seems to do several things."
By urging comparativists to "combine a nuanced understanding of the complexity of a
particular (often unique) situation or set of events with a general theoretical understanding,"
Levi echoes Katznelson's big-picture pragmatism. Rational choice theory ensures that
research has microfoundations, paying attention to the constraints on and the strategic
interactions among the actors whose aggregated choices produce significant outcomes. A
comparative and historical sensibility ensures that research respects context, which means
that comparativists address important empirical and normative concerns. From their
different starting points, Katznelson and Levi place historical and rational choice
institutionalism at the very attractive messy center of comparative politics.

Pushing against the Mainstream: Culture and Constructivism

Marc Ross is less willing to accept the field's current configuration. He reminds
comparativists how culture is important to the study of politics: It provides a framework for
organizing people's daily worlds - locating the self and others in them and making sense of
the actions and motives of others - for grounding an analysis of interests, for linking identities
to political action, and for predisposing people and groups toward specific actions and away
from others. Moreover, "placing the concept of culture at the center of analysis," Ross
maintains, "affects the questions asked about political life." Culture organizes meanings and
meaning-making, defining social and political identity, structuring collective actions, and
imposing a normative order on politics and social life.
Taking culture seriously means moving toward "a strong view of culture," one that entails an
"intersubjective understanding of culture." Ross believes that "reducing culture to the sum of
individual attitudes," as is found in survey research, "is hardly adequate... culture is not a
property of single individuals. Rather, it is an emergent property rooted in social practices
and shared under- standings that cannot be uncovered through survey data alone." Even
though many comparativists may be unfamiliar with the "interactive, constructed nature of
culture," he believes that this approach can make a significant contribution to the study of
comparative politics.
Ross's research pragmatism draws him close to Katznelson and Levi at the field's center, as
it distances him from culturalists whose postmodern relativism stresses the highly
constructed nature of reality. Like all the authors in this volume, he agrees that "comparison
is central to the social science enterprise" and that it employs many different sorts of
evidence: "The most successful work linking culture and politics will not rely on only one
source of data or a single tool for data analysis." Applying a full range of evidence in the
pursuit of causal analyses draws Ross's approach toward the field's messy center.
Joel Migdal places the "comparative politics of the state" at the field's center, even as he also
respectfully moves apart from the mainstream. Migdal suggests that comparisons have
relied heavily on a universal template or image of what the state is and does. This universal
standard has strained under the widening diversity of states, especially those formed after
World War II. Appreciating the effects of globalization, his chapter offers an alternative
understanding of this critical concept.
Studying the state, Migdal suggests, involves probing a multilayered, multi- purpose entity
whose parts frequently work at cross-purposes. This political institution operates in a
similarly complex multitiered environment, which deeply affects the state and, in turn, is
affected by the state. "All this complexity has turned the experience of researching the state
into an eclectic enterprise. It demands a full toolkit an amalgamation of culturalist,
structuralist, and rationalist tools and of historical, case, and quantitative methods" because
"different perspectives highlight the variegated visages of the state and their interactions with
their domestic, regional, and global environments." Appro- priate research combines
quantitative large-N research and qualitative single- case analysis and new forms of
historical analysis, charting new directions in comparative research. Good research
contextualizes the state, seeking to "combine specialized country or area knowledge (which
usually is focused on the different practices of diverse states) with more general theories of
state forma- tion and behavior." Furthermore, research is most valuable when it moves from
linear, causal models toward process-oriented analysis and from comparative statics to
historical analysis, emphasizing the importance of temporality and of sequencing.
How does Migdal relate to the field's paradigms? Consistent with his explanatory
pragmatism, he recognizes the importance of rational choice anal- yses of the state: "States'
political trajectories [are] deeply influenced by the give- and-take, negotiation, collaboration,
and contestation between central state authorities (themselves sometimes fragmented) and
dispersed, but locally pow- erful, social forces." However, Migdal expresses reservations
about rationalist theorizing: "The population is not simply an aggregate of diverse rational
individuals but a collective that transcends those individuals and that gives birth to, and then
loyally engages and stands behind, the state." While recognizing the "actual baffling diversity
of states," Migdal is not interested in the rationalist program of exploring how institutions
aggregate this variation into state policies and practices. His references to the
"transcendental unity of the people," to "transcending aggregated individual preferences,"
and to the "general will, legitimacy, social solidarity, and unity of allegiance" are likely to
make ratio- nalists uneasy. Interested in the convergence of history and institutions, he
maintains that contemporary approaches are "neglecting culturalist factors" and that "the
cultural approach still seems generally to get short shrift." Migdal's stress on the significance
of culture as understood within institutions uncovers the fragile unity of the messy center of
comparative politics.
As Mark Blyth attempts to define the field of political economy, he offers another respectful
critique of the mainstream. His chapter begins by noting that "hard-won empirical research
showed that the economy was inseparable from politics. Modern political economy showed
that if one wanted to understand significant variations in economic outcomes, then
embracing the mutual implications of states and markets was a pretty good place to start."
One does not do political economy, according to Blyth, by beginning with the research
paradigms of rationality, culture, and structure, as if they contain toolboxes of foundational
heuristics. Rather, he suggests that political economists employ a "troika of "interests,'
'institutions,' and 'ideas"" in which "all three of these positions are vibrant research
programs."
Like Ross, Blyth advances constructivist claims about the importance of ideas. He contends
that "exogenous shocks to agents' material positions do not unproblematically translate into
new political preferences" because "exogenous
economic changes rarely, if ever, telegraph into agents' heads 'what has gone wrong' and
'what should be done."" Many political economists eventually rec- ognized that "ideas and
ideologies needed to be taken seriously as explanatory concepts in their own right." Put
differently, "ideas do not merely describe the world; they also help bring that world into
being." The "particular construction[s] of the political economy agents develop and deploy
help bring into being that which is described rather than simply describing an already
existing state of affairs." Comparativists thus should be "investigating how the action of
employing ideas that seek to represent or measure a given phenomenon brings the
phenomenon into being." "What globalization 'is,"" for example, "is itself constructed
differentially across nations" by different sets of actors.
If "agents" subjectivities and interests can be reconstructed despite their ostensible structural
positions," constructivists wonder whether materialist theories of history reinterpret history as
per their theories, "sacrificing historical accuracy for theoretical fit." Do actual political actors
ever think the way that the theories say they do? In other words, "can one really link actors'
intentions to outcomes via their material interests, as this literature presumes"? As
"ideational approaches drop below the level of the possible to investigate what real actors
thought and, did," they challenge mainstream thinking about interests and institutions. Once
'let out of the box,' ideas 'have a life of their own' and can take interests in new and
unexpected directions." Blyth thus warns, "if contin- gency, construction, and interdependent
effects are as replete as at least some of these [constructivist] scholars say they are, then
the question of whether political economy can aspire to the status of a predictive science is
questionable at best."
During the past 10-12 years, these chapters suggest, comparativists have responded to the
field's research paradigms in alternative ways. While Katznelson and Levi depict a
convergence around the study of history and institutions, Migdal introduces and Ross and
Blyth deepen a culturalist critique of this perspective. Katznelson and Migdal offer big
concepts: liberalism and the state, respectively, as unifying themes for future scholarship.
All, however, share a vision of research that pragmatically draws on an eclectic array of
tools.

Fortifying the Center: Research Paradigms and Causal Analysis

Given the disparate research tools in comparative politics, comparativists con- front thorny
questions about research schools and causal explanations. As the volume proceeds, the
chapters move more deeply into these issues. The next two chapters, Etel Solingen's
analysis of global-domestic linkages and McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly's exploration of
contentious politics, highlight the efforts to speak both to paradigms and to pragmatic
demands of causal research.
The relationship between comparative and international politics has a long intellectual
pedigree - indeed, the distinction between the two fields confuses laypeople. Etel Solingen
brings the literature on the international sources of domestic politics into the era of
globalization. Focusing primarily on work published since the volume's first edition, she
examines comparative politics as
it has become increasingly global in scope and interest. Her chapter relates both
international influences on domestic politics (Type A effects) and domestic influences on
international politics (Type B effects) to representative work in the structural, rational, and
cultural traditions. States, political parties, social movements, peak associations, labor
unions, policy networks, armed forces, and other collective and individual actors respond to
global opportu- nities and constraints in various ways, suggesting far more contingency than
determinacy.
As the field advances, Solingen argues, comparative and international politics draw together.
Relatively simplistic understandings have given way to more nuanced and sophisticated
explanations of Type A and B effects, backed by various forms of evidence. Neither purely
structural nor methodological-individualist reductionisms have become modal forms of
analysis, as "hybridism and mutually profitable intellectual exchange" have become
dominant. Studies avoid procrus- tean temptations to reduce politics to rigid paradigms. As
complexity deposes Occam razor's (lex parsimoniae) as a standard for studies of
globalization, the advantages of theoretical frugality in pure paradigmatic research seem to
be progressively exchanged for the virtues of completeness and empirical validity.
Lauding "the conceptual and methodological diversity [that] comparative politics has
exhibited in the past decade," as well as the "greater creativity [that] accrues from working at
the interstices of different disciplines or subfields," Solingen echoes the field's pragmatism.
Yet, continued debates over concepts and findings suggest that comparativists remain
uncertain about the immediate and long-term effects of globalization. The consequence is
that "studies holding on to paradigms as foundational heuristic devices have far from
disappeared." Solingen thus reminds the reader that "asking big questions forces us to distill
broad important features and rely on ideal types or heuristic devices that transcended
historical or 'true' realities."
While analytical debates might persist, Solingen argues that the way forward employs
explanatory strategies aimed at discerning causality. Siding with Katznelson, Levi, and
Migdal, her proposed methodology involves "contextualized comparisons of different cases."
As an illustration of this approach, Solingen traces the divergent paths of development of
Middle Eastern and East Asian countries back to their origins in domestic coalitional grand
strategies. Her pragmatic use of causal explanatory strategies unites compar- ativists of
different theoretical and methodological stripes.
Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, who are affectionately known as McTT,
offer more than a review of recent scholarship on contentious politics. Like Migdal and Blyth,
they define a domain of inquiry. Nonroutine, or contentious, politics is a thriving but
fragmented interdisciplinary field of study, divided across a confusing patchwork of
disciplinary boundaries, geographic areas, historical periods, and nominally different types of
contention. Changes in the "real world" of contentious politics have forced scholars to
broaden their attention from social movements in Europe and the United States to newer,
more wide-ranging, and more violent forms of conflict; to contention against
nonstate targets; and to transnational contention. Their chapter traces some of these
changes and puts forward a sketch of an integrated approach to a field that the authors
admit is "more imagined than real."
Research paradigms once drove the study of contentious politics. The roots of contentious
politics are found in "a structurally rooted political process model," "a rational choice
perspective and its related resource mobilization variant," and "a constructivist approach that
draws, first, on an older 'collective behavior' tradition and, second, on the more general
cultural turn in the social sciences." Similar to what happened in comparative politics writ
large, paradigm warfare led to attempts at synthesis. Navigating between Theda Skocpol's
material structuralism and Mark Lichbach's rationalist micro- foundations, McTT's synthesis
is highly relational, dynamic, and process oriented. They prefer to study episodes rather than
events and mechanisms rather than variables. Moreover, the field of contentious politics is at
the forefront of the "culturalist turn" in the social sciences and comparative pol- itics. What
goes on in the contentious politics literature foreshadows the future of comparative politics.
The chapter also contributes directly to our appreciation of different pat- terns of explanation
in comparative politics. Eschewing "general covering laws of the type 'all collective action is
aimed at producing improvements in indi- viduals' material situations,"" McTT offer
mechanisms as a way of unpeeling larger political processes: "Mechanisms are the causal
links between inde- pendent and dependent variables, which we define as events that
produce the same immediate effects over a wide range of circumstances." The mechanisms
of brokerage, identity shift, co-optation, diffusion, and repression relate to larger processes
of political mobilization and demobilization. Assembling these mechanisms and processes,
McTT argue, is the way to create the field called contentious politics.
They also suggest that "contentious politics is a causally coherent domain with distinctive
properties. It is causally coherent in the sense that similar cause- effect relationships apply
throughout the domain." Though they hope that "a more thoroughgoing search for
cause-effect relations spanning multiple forms of contention will be fruitful," they believe that
the successes to date have been meager. Nevertheless, viewing McTT's research program
in causal terms sug- gests that students of contentious politics should adopt a three-part
strategy." First, "construct analytic narratives of episodes of contention." Second, "break
them down into the mechanisms and processes that drive them." Finally, "connect them to
their origins and outcomes" in particular contexts." This last step, "delineating types of
regimes and their combination of capacities and degrees of democracy... analyzing the
interactions between regimes and forms of contention would take us far toward the
construction of a comparative political science of contentious politics."
The members of this research team think of themselves as "pragmatists" who are "catholic in
our methodological judgments." Pragmatists explore empirical causes and consequences,
not transcendental foundations and
essences, and so McTT join the mainstream of comparative politics even as this research
program moves beyond the boundaries of political science.

Fortifying the Center: Linking Structure and Action and Exploring

Causal Patterns

The next set of chapters emphasizes the relative importance of causal analysis over
research paradigms. As Solingen's chapter indicates, causal accounts in comparative
politics cross levels. Huckfeldt's chapter on political networks and Anderson's review of the
literature on electoral behavior highlight the linkages between context and individual choice.
The second pair of chapters raises the puzzle of how endogenous political institutions
become causal forces. Rodden confronts the problem of endogeneity in causal claims about
institutions, and Mares show how causal accounts lie at the heart of research on welfare
state institutions and policies.
Robert Huckfeldt addresses issues in democratic politics that are part of Katznelson's
research agenda on modern liberalism. Suggesting that the role of the purposefully engaged
citizen is central to the vitality of democratic politics, he denies that citizens are atomized
individuals. To the contrary, patterns of political communication produce networks of political
interdependence - people whose preferences, choices, and levels of political involvement
are jointly determined by one another. Lying beyond the proximate reach of individual
citizens, these patterns of communication are contingent on the distribution of beliefs and
habits, as well as on the institutions and structures specific to concrete social life and
particular political systems. As a consequence, both the exercise of individual citizenship
and the performance of aggregate electorates are subject to institutional, cultural, and
structural variations that produce important con- tinuities, as well as discontinuities, in
democratic politics.
This big problem of democratic politics is based on a simple but fundamental principle:
"Politics is not reducible to the sum of its parts." In order to dem- onstrate the complexities of
social networks and political communication, Huckfeldt highlights perhaps the first stylized
statistical fact adduced in com- parative politics: "When Tingsten plots the socialist
proportion of the vote in Stockholm precincts on the working-class proportion of the precinct
popula- tion, the resulting scatter follows a pronounced nonlinear s-curve pattern. At low
working-class densities, the socialist parties' share of the vote falls below the working-class
proportion of the population, but the vote share exceeds the working-class proportion at high
work class densities. The nearly inescapable conclusion that arises on the basis of
Tingsten's analysis is that the probability that individual workers (and perhaps individual
nonworkers) supported the socialists varied as a function of the population composition."
Joining structure and agency in multilevel models allows Huckfeldt to study interdependent
citizens. In contrast to Ross and Migdal, he constructs social structures out of individual
choices and behavior. Huckfeldt thus suggests that "patterns of interdependence produce
consequences for levels of
analysis problems that lie near the core of comparative political inquiry." However, the
approach is not indifferent to research schools. By tackling issues of causality, multilevel
statistical models can be coupled to many of the ways of addressing the structure-action
problem advocated by culturalists and constructivists.
"The comparative study of mass politics," writes Christopher J. Anderson, "is in the process
of becoming the study of nested citizens." Stressing the direct and indirect effects of
structures on behavior identified by Huckfeldt, Anderson also proposes multilevel models.
He suggests that comparative mass politics should study "variations within populations
rather than across countries."
In this view, contexts are contingent effects and "a country's democratic design matters for
how voters behave."As an example of how democratic structures influence behavior via
incentives, Anderson suggests a problem at the heart of Katznelson's liberalism: "The nature
of a country's representative structures interacts with voters' willingness to punish
governments for bad economic performance to produce different election outcomes." While
voters seek to affix credit and blame for the economy, this task is easier in countries with
clear levels of responsibility. It is also more feasible where there exist credible alternatives to
voting incumbents out of office. An interesting paradox results: "For high-information voters,
participation in elections rises as the number of parties in the system increases. Thus,
among these voters, more choices improve participation rates. However, for citizens with
more limited political information, increases in the number of parties in party systems
depresses voting turnout. This leads to the ironic conclusion that [proportional
representation], which is normally intended to lead to a more fair represen- tation system,
increases the information gap by complicated political choices and thus disenfranchises the
less informed relative to the better informed."
More generally, Anderson explores the intellectual foundations and evolution of the
behavioral study of politics. Our methods for studying comparative mass politics have been
transformed, he argues, because of changes in technology, new intellectual trends, and
emerging real-world events. As a result, the study of mass politics has become more central
to the study of comparative politics, a pattern reinforced by its ecumenical relations with
different theoretical tradi- tions in the social sciences. Anderson thus hopes to "integrate
behavioral politics within institutional politics across a wider range of theoretical concerns in
comparative politics." He suggests that "the comparative study of mass politics is in the
position of playing an important bridging role across theoretical and substantive islands."
While multilevel models can make an important contribution, Anderson recognizes that the
models treat contexts as variables: "Behavioral politics, as currently practiced, is weak on
process and mechanisms, but it explicitly recognizes that contexts matter." In order to meet
Zuckerman's explanatory criteria, research on context must overcome this trade-off and
study context as both causal processes and causal variables. As Anderson pragmatically
suggests, "the key question is whether a different theoretical [and, one assumes,
methodological] perspective produces a compelling alternative story that can be validated
with solid data." His chapter suggests that providing causal accounts of the electoral
behavior of "nested citizens" permits analysts to draw on explanatory propositions from
different research schools.
Jonathan Rodden's chapter, challenges the literature that relates political institutions to
policy and regime outcomes. Studies have located robust correla- tions between outcomes
and institutions: welfare states and proportional repre- sentation, the number of political
parties and electoral rules, economic development and democratic government, and lower
welfare expenditures and federalism. If institutions are causes, what causes the causes? In
statistical lan- guage, the endogeneity of causes leads researchers to supplement the study
of the causes of effects with the study of the effects of causes. If institutions are endog-
enous and if "history assigns countries to institutional categories," there might be an
unobserved historical process - omitted variables - that generates both insti- tutions and
outcomes, selecting and assigning cases to both structures and poli- cies. This means that
institutions and the error term might be correlated. Operating with the equation, outcomes = f
(institutions + error term), is then suspect. Rodden understands that technical solutions in
the form of instrumental variables are inadequate quick fixes for this problem. "Rather, in
order to come up with believable exclusion restrictions, one must essentially become an
analytical historian. This requires more than a passing glance at the secondary literature."
Progress requires analytical histories of particular processes.
Researchers also need to employ theory, because all causal research requires assumptions.
If different analytical histories lead to different choices of instru- ments, however, how does
one know which theory to use? Comparativists try out different ones, looking for an
instrument that drives the institution but not the outcome (and hence the error term). Rodden
demonstrates how this is an art and not a science. For example, in order to discern the
causal impact of proportional representation on the welfare state, he turns to many
candidate causes of proportion representation - partisan fragmentation, a multi-round
electoral format, a "strong and organized leftist workers' movement with organizational
support from labor unions," initial income distribution, the structure of the late-
nineteenth-century economy, particularly the local economic coordination produced by guilds
- but without much luck. Rodden suggests that these arguments are plagued by weak
microfoundations. When studies assume the presence of fully informed actors who can
easily solve problems of collective action, they exude functionalist inevitability. In spite of
these difficulties, Rod- den does not want to "give up on the whole enterprise" and move on.
He admits, however, that there are now more methods than results.
As Rodden unpacks the relationship between statistical analyses of political institutions and
fundamental theoretical problems, he draws on classical struc- turalist concerns. While
slicing and dicing reality into variables led this literature to uncover important theoretical
controversies and fundamental comparative and historical puzzles, it is easy to see how
constructivists might look askance at
suggests, "the key question is whether a different theoretical [and, one assumes,
methodological] perspective produces a compelling alternative story that can be validated
with solid data." His chapter suggests that providing causal accounts of the electoral
behavior of "nested citizens" permits analysts to draw on explanatory propositions from
different research schools.
Jonathan Rodden's chapter, challenges the literature that relates political institutions to
policy and regime outcomes. Studies have located robust correla- tions between outcomes
and institutions: welfare states and proportional repre- sentation, the number of political
parties and electoral rules, economic development and democratic government, and lower
welfare expenditures and federalism. If institutions are causes, what causes the causes? In
statistical lan- guage, the endogeneity of causes leads researchers to supplement the study
of the causes of effects with the study of the effects of causes. If institutions are endog-
enous and if "history assigns countries to institutional categories," there might be an
unobserved historical process - omitted variables - that generates both insti- tutions and
outcomes, selecting and assigning cases to both structures and poli- cies. This means that
institutions and the error term might be correlated. Operating with the equation, outcomes = f
(institutions + error term), is then suspect. Rodden understands that technical solutions in
the form of instrumental variables are inadequate quick fixes for this problem. "Rather, in
order to come up with believable exclusion restrictions, one must essentially become an
analytical historian. This requires more than a passing glance at the secondary literature."
Progress requires analytical histories of particular processes.
Researchers also need to employ theory, because all causal research requires assumptions.
If different analytical histories lead to different choices of instru- ments, however, how does
one know which theory to use? Comparativists try out different ones, looking for an
instrument that drives the institution but not the outcome (and hence the error term). Rodden
demonstrates how this is an art and not a science. For example, in order to discern the
causal impact of proportional representation on the welfare state, he turns to many
candidate causes of proportion representation - partisan fragmentation, a multi-round
electoral format, a "strong and organized leftist workers' movement with organizational
support from labor unions," initial income distribution, the structure of the late-
nineteenth-century economy, particularly the local economic coordination produced by guilds
- but without much luck. Rodden suggests that these arguments are plagued by weak
microfoundations. When studies assume the presence of fully informed actors who can
easily solve problems of collective action, they exude functionalist inevitability. In spite of
these difficulties, Rod- den does not want to "give up on the whole enterprise" and move on.
He admits, however, that there are now more methods than results.
As Rodden unpacks the relationship between statistical analyses of political institutions and
fundamental theoretical problems, he draws on classical struc- turalist concerns. While
slicing and dicing reality into variables led this literature to uncover important theoretical
controversies and fundamental comparative and historical puzzles, it is easy to see how
constructivists might look askance at
this search for causality. When Rodden notes that the "analysis of culture as a determinant
of electoral institutions has lagged behind," one suspects that Ross, Migdal, and Blyth would
agree.
Isabela Mares shows how thinking and working with causal mechanisms have generated
valuable research on the welfare state. Early work in this field -- statistical analyses of the
relationships among economic development, openness to international trade, and the size of
the welfare state displayed strong but contrasting findings. It also began with powerful
discursive analyses that linked the reaction against unregulated markets to the foundations
of contemporary political economy. Following these initial claims, the literature explored
many causal structures behind the welfare state: levels of income/economic develop- ment;
trade openness aggregate levels and volatility; labor market transfor- mations associated
with industrialization; electoral institutions; size of the labor force in industry; domestic
market size; relative abundance or scarcity of labor; asset inequality; and developmental
model/strategy - import substitution industrialization versus export expansion.
Research into the causal mechanisms behind these relationships led researchers to
disaggregate the dependent and independent variables. Scholars moved from studying
aggregate levels of welfare state spending to studying spending categories across
programs. They also began to look more closely at the design, content, and implementation
of programs - for example, levels and types of coverage and modes of financing. Along the
way, the field developed important typologies of systems of social protection: liberal,
conservative, and social democratic welfare states/regimes; and coordinated market
economies and liberal market economies. Researchers also probed dynamics: the origin or
onset of the welfare state, its endurance and persistence, and the state's adjust- ment,
retrenchment, and reform. Furthermore, the research domain expanded to include the study
of welfare politics and polities in developing countries.
Focusing on critical causal mechanisms also led comparativists to "trace out the causal
processes that are implied by existing theoretical explanations." Scholars puzzled over "the
leap of faith" between independent and dependent variables and hence concluded that
"more studies exploring the intermediate steps of this causal relationship are needed."
Researchers often suggested that more than one long causal pathway lies behind
regression equations, and so observable implications of competing causal processes were
examined. Causal relationships thus led researchers to explore underlying causal
mechanisms and processes, and under- lying mechanisms and processes led them to new
causal statistical analyses.
Thinking and working with causal mechanisms has also induced researchers to present
more precise accounts of the political processes that produce policy outputs. The literature
explores how "preexisting policies and institutions mediate demands for social protection
resulting from higher levels of insecurity." The literature also investigates the causal agency
of pivotal socio- political groups, especially the working, middle, and business classes
(firms). Hence, comparison need not begin with a causal hypothesis; it can also begin with a
causal agent. In studying the mechanisms by which a group influences the
adoption of social policies, researchers have explored the sources of its policy preferences
and interests, ideas and beliefs, organization and coherence, and the critical cross-class
coalitions and alignments that generate political action.
Indeed, these chapters underline that uncovering causal mechanisms and processes now
defines the center of comparative politics. At the same time, they show that ideas and
methods taken from rationalist, culturalist, and structuralist paradigms help comparativists
propose new causal mechanisms and pathways and help fashion new statistical studies of
causal relationships. While compar- ativists are taking causality and constructivism more
seriously, one wonders whether these two trends will be reconciled. To address this
question, we turn to the study of ethnicity, the field of comparative politics where the two
trends have most clearly met.

The Future of the Center: Constructivism and Causality

Is ethnicity causally relevant to political violence, patronage politics, the destabilization of
regimes, the decomposition of states, and a dozen other phenomena that interest
comparativists? It depends on what you mean by "ethnicity," suggests Kanchan Chandra.
Arguing that "we cannot make rea- sonable causal claims about ethnic identity without first
defining the concept of an ethnic identity," Chandra maintains that "without a definition, we
cannot justify the inference to the role of ethnicity. Indeed, without a definition, the inference
that ethnicity matters is as (un)justifiable as the inference that ethnicity does not matter."
Suppose we could locate what Chandra calls the "intrinsic properties of ethnic identities," the
"implicit defining principles" and "primary properties" or char- acteristics of "ethnicity" that
distinguish it from "nonethnicity." Comparativists could then agree on which identities to
classify as "ethnic" and which to label "nonethnic." After we use the definition of ethnicity to
create a relevant universe of cases, causal mechanisms that are thought to bring about
dependent variables can be attributed to one category (ethnicity) rather than the other
(nonethnicity). Moreover, the definition of ethnicity would help us establish which causal
mechanisms ethnicity sets in motion: A well-defined concept of ethnicity entails the start-up
conditions that produce dependent variables. A defining property or principle of ethnic
identity is thus causally relevant, via the appropriate mechanisms, to some dependent
variable; that which is not a defining property or principle of ethnic identity, but rather a
property of "any identity, ethnic or otherwise." and hence is a contingent and thus secondary
property, is not causally relevant to the dependent variables of concern. In short, conceptual
analysis offers a fertile heuristic for generating and sorting causal claims.
Chandra attempts to discover a generative definition of ethnicity by combing the literature:
"[C]onstructing a definition that captures previous usage as far as possible is essential to
moving ahead in a cumulative fashion." Since she believes that the "essential" properties of
ethnicity are "conventional" to the community of comparativists, ethnicity in both the "real"
and the academic worlds are
constructed. Since she believes that there is no "objective" meaning of ethnicity, any
"classification between ethnic and nonethnic identities is arbitrary."
Chandra's mining of the literature yields a sample of diverse causal claims. For example,
ethnicity-violence, via the security dilemma; ethnicity→→→ patronage politics, via exclusive
coalitions; and ethnicity-decomposition of states, via territorial concentration. Explanation
sketches of the claims reveal that each assumes that ethnicity is characterized by a
particular defining prop- erty. For example, if we look at the set of explanation sketches for
internal wars, we find that violence has been associated with the following characteristics of
ethnicity: fixedness, the high costs of changing group membership, the visibility of group
membership, distinct emotional responses, dense social networks, territorial concentration,
common history, shared norms, and joint institutional affiliations, as well as, more generally,
traditions, myths, and cultures. Since these properties have also been associated with the
internal wars and violence of all identity groups, including women, workers, and students,
they cannot underlie the specific ethnicity-violence proposition, only a general identity-
violence hypothesis. To show that ethnicity matters to violence and internal wars,
comparativists need a definition of ethnicity that posits a set of properties that set causal
mechanisms in ethnic groups in motion, not causal mechanisms that operate in all identity
groups. This definition would allow researchers to create a sample of cases that fit the
definition-mechanism linkage, where we expect to find ethnicity and violence, and to create
another set of cases that do not fit the definition-mechanism linkage, where neither ethnicity
nor violence is expected.
After reviewing nearly a dozen explanation sketches of different dependent variables,
Chandra sorts through the possible properties of ethnicity. Is the eth- nicity (E) that produces
E-Y,, E-Y,, and E-Y, the same ethnicity (E)? What is the common core of ethnicity that,
perhaps in combination with secondary properties - E+E,→Y,, E+E, Y, and E+E,→Y, -
produces the set of dependent variables? She concludes that "there are so far only two
intrinsic properties that we can associate with ethnic identities, on average: (1) the property
of constrained change in the short term and (2) the property of visibility." Chandra thus
settles on two descent-based attributes of ethnicity that "capture the conventional
classification of ethnic identities" in the discipline. These are con- stitutive properties - they
construct ethnicity rather than presume it--and they are distinguishing properties they
separate ethnicities from other identities. To further establish whether these defining
characteristics of ethnicity match com- parativists' conventional understandings of the
concept, Chandra assembles another set of cases. Using "a sample of identities that most
comparative political scientists agree are ethnic," for example blacks and whites in the
United States and Serbs and Croats in the former Yugoslavia, she "show[s] that her
definition captures" the elements in her sample.
Confident in the conventional validity of her definition, Chandra uses the definition to
conclude: "Only a handful of our causal claims rest on the intrinsic properties of ethnic
identity." Rather, "by far the largest number of explanatory claims about ethnicity rest on
properties that I have argued are not intrinsic
to ethnic identities," for example fixedness, common history, dense social networks, distinct
emotional responses, institutional ties, and spatial concen- tration. "As such, they cannot be
taken as reasonable claims about the effects of ethnic identities in general. They should be
reformulated as claims about a specific subset of ethnic identities, or claims about the effects
of ethnic identities combined with some additional variable." For example, territorially
concen- trated ethnic identities -- not all ethnic identities - generate patronage politics and
internal wars.
Chandra's insights into causality were stimulated by constructivist challenges to mainstream
studies of ethnic politics. To Chandra, an essential property of eth- nicity is a conventional
property as seen by scholars. To others, if ethnicity - defined by constrained change and
visibility-is not something real and concrete in the world, if the definition does not distinguish
between ethnic/nonethnic identity dichotomy "at the joints," but only synthesizes current
social scientific thinking; and if the ethnic category does not have the "intrinsic" properties of
a natural or social kind, then "ethnicity" contains an arbitrary collection of cases that does not
constitute a coherent research domain. If one manages to create a sample of ethnic and
nonethnic groups based on an academically conventional principle, one will find that the
ethnic/nonethnic distinction has no causal impact on internal wars, public good provision,
and so on, because the independent variable is too causally heterogeneous. In other words,
if they are to serve as the basis of causal claims, definitions must point to what has been
"really" constructed by social actors. As Blyth indicates, ideas have real impacts. And
perhaps it is the ideas associated with ethnic groups- their values and beliefs-that are the
key causal mechanisms. If so, a general "guideline" for an ethnicity/nonethnicity
categorization "closes the door on some" significant causal claims even as the
disaggregation of ethnicity into multiple properties reveals "many tens of precise" causal
pathways.
In popular and journalistic parlance, ethnicity includes "religion, sect, lan- guage, dialect,
tribe, clan, race, physical differences, nationality, region and caste." Chandra's important
contribution to the literature on ethnicity is to demonstrate that this heterogeneous set of
categories may not generate the causal mechanisms required to make effective causal
claims that ethnicity mat- ters. In "placing causal theorizing about ethnic identity on a [firm]
conceptual foundation," and in showing how analytical classifications and causal theories are
connected, Chandra foretells the next decade of research in which comparativists attempt to
connect constructivism and causality.

FINAL WORDS
Our chapters recognize that comparative politics is a field of many paradigms and methods.
"Creative thievery" between different theoretical accounts, as Anderson calls it, or their
"productive friction," in Rodden's words, invigorates contemporary comparative inquiry.
Statisticians pay attention to case studies and field workers to stylized regressions.
Rationalists learn from structuralists who read culturalists who consume what rationalists
produce.
Reviewing our chapters shows that during the past decade or so, causal analysis has
pushed the research paradigms from the center of comparative politics. The science of
comparative politics is causality all the way down and all the way across. Comparativists
always compare, and comparison leads them to causal mechanisms and processes that fill
the gap between independent and dependent variables. The conceptual analysis of terms,
observable implications of ideas, plausibility probes into arguments, multiple outcroppings of
hypoth- eses, and the triangulation of methods on concrete cases lead comparativists to
ever-more-causal grittiness. Comparativists want to read about intellectual debates, but not
at the cost of advancing causal explanations of the world.
Our chapters thus tell a story about comparativists moving beyond the paradigm wars
Lichbach describes and pragmatically engaging the issues of causality that Zuckerman
discusses. As comparativists drill down from tran- scendent concepts, timeless and
spaceless claims, and abstract assumptions about human nature, causal pragmatism seems
to dominate. As comparativists move away from concrete comparisons, the role of
paradigms looms larger. Big-picture pragmatism holds the ideographic and nomothetic
threads together, encouraging vitalizing frictions among approaches. In spite of challenges
from specialists in quantitative and qualitative methods; in spite of demands from rationalists
and structuralists, and especially from culturalists and constructivists; and in spite of having
more methods than results, for now at least, the messy center of comparative politics holds.
"The founders of the SSRC [Social Science Research Council] Committee on Comparative
Politics more than a half-century ago have reason to smile," writes Katznelson. Optimism
and excitement indeed pervade our chapters. We do have a single field of inquiry.
Contemporary comparativists find their field a fruitful and exciting mixture of grand vision and
pragmatic explanation.
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