Content uploaded by Anna Kuteleva
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Anna Kuteleva on Jul 24, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
85
A CRITICAL SURVEY OF THE FIELD
OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS
A.V. Kuteleva
Department of Political Science
University of Alberta
10-16 Henry Marshall Tory Building, T6G 2H4 Edmonton, Canada
The aim of this paper is to sketch an overview of Comparative Politics and discuss the major
analytical and conceptual systems under which comparativists conduct their research. It presents
some of the basic problems one has to face in attempting to understand evolution of key overarching
generalized dichotomies established by problem-solving and critical Comparative Politics (developed-
developing and North-South).
Key words: Comparative Politics, development, South-North divide, poststructuralist turn in
Comparative Politics.
The aim of this paper is to sketch an overview of Comparative Politics and discuss
the major analytical and conceptual systems under which comparativists conduct their
research. Inasmuch as development of Comparative Politics is largely driven by research
conducted by scholars associated with the US academia, the significant part of the paper
is devoted to critical analysis of mainstream US-led scholarship. The paper starts with
a brief history of Comparative Politics as an independent subfield of political science.
Further, I describe and assess the predominant analytical perspectives of mainstream
US-led Comparative Politics: systemic functional approach, rational choice approach,
and the four new institutionalisms. Drawing on Robert Cox’s ideas, I suggest that main-
stream US-led Comparative Politics can be characterized in terms of problem-solving
theorizing and discuss the comparative method and its implications for problem-solving
theorizing. Focusing on the concept of development and categories related to it, I outline
essential challenges of problem-solving Comparative Politics and what it will take for
scholars to address these challenges.
In the second part of the paper the discussion points to the poststructuralist turn
in Comparative Politics. I argue that diverse poststructuralist scholarship has much to
offer Comparative Politics in terms of overcoming the major setbacks of the problem-
solving theorizing by questioning the way certain problems are framed and how these
framings may entrench existing power structures. Inevitably, poststructuralist scholarship
problematizes the role of comparison and generalizations: Do major analytical and con-
ceptual systems of Comparative Politics travel well across diverse nations and cultures,
across time, or across different individuals and social categories?
Mainstream USQled Comparative Politics
Over much of the 20th century, political science was “in many ways a peculiarly
American discipline” [53. P. 987] and played a minor role in European academia and
none in the rest of the world. In 1950, the American Political Science Association had
amongst its ranks more than 5,000 political scientists, whereas there were only 50 poli-
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
86
tical scientists in the UK, 37 in Belgium, 30 in Canada, 10 in Netherlands, and 2 in Swit-
zerland [136. P. 182]. In the countries of socialist orientation, political scientists did not
exist until the late 1980s because political science was not recognized as an independent
area of social science inquiry [123; 70]. Development of global political science as an
autonomous field of study with relatively definite analytical boundaries started in the mid
1940s. Over the next decades, intellectual traditions of US political science diffused
to other countries. Consequently, globalization of political science has in fact meant its
Americanization. In particular, global political science inherited from US academia its
idiosyncratic cleavages: inter-disciplinary separations between International Relations
and Comparative Politics.
Mainstream International Relations scholars emphasize how international factors
affect states and other political actors constraining or driving their actions and choices.
The international realm is perceived as “a catchall category for all actors and influences
emanating from beyond a country’s borders” [81. P. 5]. In contrast, the majority of Com-
parative Politics scholars focus on the study of institutional and structural differences
of domestic politics. Scholars of Comparative Politics recognize that external influences
infringe on domestic politics, yet their attention is more on differences in national res-
ponses to these influences rather than on these influences per se. A fair amount of re-
search overlaps International Relations and Comparative Politics, and many scholars
claim that the inter-disciplinary separation is artificial and misleading [113; 122; 81].
However, over the last decades the attempts to overcome the divide between domestic
and international within the discipline go no farther than to launch an appeal to “reinte-
grate” the two major subfields of political science [111] and enhance the dialogue be-
tween them in the context of particular research questions (1), while the separation bet-
ween domestic and international remains an essential part of the identity of the discipline
and its subfields.
Comparative Politics became the major locus of theory building about domestic
dimensions of politics in the US from the 1960s to 1980s. Richard Snyder argues that
the most fruitful studies in the realm of political science of the 20th century were inspired,
motivated, and guided by comparison [123]. Discussing the human dimension of com-
parative research, Snyder demonstrates that leading political scientists, such as Gabriel
A. Almond, Barrington Moore, Robert A. Dahl, Juan J. Linz, Samuel P. Huntington,
Adam Przeworski, David D. Latin, and Theda Skocpol, were asking questions encour-
aged by comparison and were looking for the answers through comparison. Tracing the
history of Comparative Politics, Gerardo L. Munck indicates that although by the end
of the 20th century Comparative Politics became “a truly international enterprise,” the do-
minance of “scholarship produced in the US, by US- and foreign-born scholars, and
by US-trained scholars around the world,” still persists [99. P. 32]. The US academic
community quantitatively dominates the literature in the field of Comparative Politics
[100], which allows it to set standards of research.
Thinking Theoretically
Munck tells a linear story of Comparative Politics, distinguishing four stages in its
evolution: the constitution of political science as a discipline (1880—1920), the beha-
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
87
vioral revolution (1921—1966), the post-behavioral period (1967—1988), and the second
scientific revolution (1989 — present) [99]. Such an approach is very problematic,
insofar as it is based on the notion of paradigms. Even though the major analytical pers-
pectives of Comparative Politics are products of paradigms, they themselves are not
paradigms by Kuhn’s definition (2). This implies that even though a number of impor-
tant elements in the major analytical perspectives of Comparative Politics cannot be
synthesized, they are not mutually exclusive and incommensurable. They clearly are
competing and can be compared by establishing testable differences.
As Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink rightly note, comparativists do not
feel obligated to preserve “a consistent theoretical identity” or to strengthen an “ism”
“in the paradigm trench wars,” and thus their research is often aimed at solving a par-
ticular problem rather than at testing a particular theoretical model [43. P. 404]. In
other words, the choice of logic of inquiry is contextual and depends on the object
under study: seeking to deepen their knowledge about a particular case, comparativists
appeal to “a mélange of theoretical traditions” [74. P. 4]. In this sense, the vast majority
of comparativists are pragmatic “opportunists” who use whatever tools that work best
for framing and explaining a particular case [74. P. 46]. Therefore, most often scholars
classify intellectual divisions within Comparative Politics in terms of long-standing re-
search traditions through the agency-structure lens (3) or using the threefold classifi-
cation offered by Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman that is based on ra-
tionality, structure, and culture [83].
While these two approaches to classifying theorizing in the field of Comparative
Politics are useful for understanding intellectual divisions within it, I want to avoid ge-
neralizations and focus on the three particular analytical perspectives that, in my opinion,
have the most significant impact on the general logic of comparison: systemic functional
approach, rational choice approach, and the four institutionalisms.
Systemic functionalist approach. The behavioralist movement that arose in Com-
parative Politics during the late 1950s and the 1960s was intended to professionalize
and universalize the discipline by grounding it in a scientific method. Supporters of
behavioralist movement, in the words of Robert Dahl, were united by “a strong sense
of dissatisfaction with the achievements of conventional political science” and “a belief
that additional methods and approaches either existed or could be developed that would
help to provide political science with empirical propositions and theories” [23. P. 76].
In Comparative Politics, behavioralist movement brought about a rapid shift from the
study of formal political institutions and their interrelations to almost exclusive em-
phasis on observable individual behavior. It represented a turn from “naïve empiricism”
to “naïve scientism” [58. P. 115] and is better understood not as a revolution but as “a re-
commitment to the visions of both the scientific study of politics and liberal democra-
cy” [61. P. 1283].
The systems approach developed by sociologist Talcott Parsons on the basis of
works of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim became an important source of inspiration
for comparativists who were searching for more general and universal categories of
analysis [88]. The central starting point for Parsons is to ask the question: What
makes a society stable? He suggests a framework that is based on such concepts as
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
88
equilibrium, evolutionary universals, and identification of properties. A stable society,
according to Parsons, exhibits the same characteristics as a stable biological system, and
thus survives by fulfilling four “functional imperatives”: adaptation, goal-attainment,
integration, and latent pattern-maintenance. As Nils Gilman indicates, contributors to
behavioralist movement in Comparative Politics perceived themselves “as creating
intermediate special theories useful for systematic empirical research,” but the vast ma-
jority of them were significantly drawing on Parsons’ systematic theoretical orienta-
tions [58. P. 117].
In a groundbreaking work employing Parsons’ approach, An Approach to the
Analysis of Political Systems, David Easton suggests that for analytical purposes po-
litical processes should be isolated from the social context and examined as if they are
“a self-contained entity surrounded by, but clearly distinguishable from, the environ-
ment or setting in which it operates” [31. P. 384]. He focuses on tasks and functions
that a political system need to fulfill in order to survive, and examines relations between
the system and its environment. Following this logic, in his later writings Easton defines
political system as “a set of interactions, abstracted from the totality of social beha-
vior, through which values are authoritatively allocated for a society” [32. P. 57]. Accord-
ing to Easton, inputs (demand and support) stream into the system and are transformed
into outputs (decisions and actions) that constitute the authoritative allocation of values.
Gabriel A. Almond describes reading Easton’s article of 1957 as “one of those
moments of intellectual liberation, when a concept comes along that gives one’s thoughts
an ordered structure” [5. P. 225]. Following Parsons and Easton, he rejects the concept
of state and explores systemic functionalist perspective. Almond’s definition of political
system replicates the one suggested by Easton: political system is a “system of inter-
actions to be found in all independent societies which performs the functions of inte-
gration and adaptation by means of the employment or threat of employment, of more
or less legitimate force” [6. P. 7]. However, while Easton concentrates on how political
system reacts to challenges and maintains itself, Almond is more interested in examining
functions that are performed by different structures within the system. The inner work-
ing mechanisms of the system for Easton are located in a “black box” and, as a result,
remain largely invisible and undefined. In contrast, Almond pays close attention to
activities that he distinguish as essential for a policy to be enforceable in a political
system [8. P. 28]. In the study of political culture, Almond moves further away from
concentrating on total systems and turns to empirically orientated research, exploring
individual behavior patterns.
In The Civic Culture, Almond together with Sidney Verba survey five different
countries to examine perceptions of political system and “the role of the self” in it in or-
der to understand how these perceptions influence the type of political system and,
particularly, association with democracy [7. P. 12]. On the basis of an extensive survey
research, Almond and Verba distinguish three basic orientations toward political sys-
tem — parochial, subject, and participant — that originate corresponding “pure forms
of political culture” [7. P. 18]. They write: “A participant is assumed to be aware of
and informed about the political system in both its governmental and political aspects.
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
89
A subject tends to be cognitively oriented primarily to the output side of government:
the executive, bureaucracy, and judiciary. The parochial tends to be unaware, or only
dimly aware, of the political system in all its aspects” [7. P. 79].
The most favorable to development of democracy type of political culture is a “civic
culture” within which even those individuals who are active in politics still perform
the roles of subject and parochial [7. P. 339]. Although Almond and Verba do not ex-
plicitly suggest that civic culture and democracy are causally related, their conclusions
reveal that evolution of civic culture parallels development of democratic political
systems. In other words, behavior associated with civic culture is linked to the capacities
of political system to survive and effectively fulfill its basic functions, inasmuch as
this behavior supports formation of democratic institutions.
Rational choice approach. Munck describes emergence of rational choice ap-
proach as “the second scientific revolution” in political science [99. P. 52]. Rational
choice approach started its triumphant march in the field in the early 1980s and by the
end of the decade became for some political scientists “the beginning of political theory”
and “its culmination” for others [104. P. 291].
While supporters of behavioralist movement drew heavily on sociology, advocates
of rational choice approach drew inspiration from the works of economists such as
Anthony Downs [30] and William Riker [108] who demonstrated that individual pur-
suit of self-interest can explain significant elements of political life. The basic distin-
guished symbol of rational choice approach is the assumption that “individuals make
decisions that maximize the utility they expect to derive from making choices” [99.
P. 166]. Being driven by the logic of methodological individualism, rational choice ap-
proach reduces explanation of political phenomena to properties or interactions of inde-
pendent individuals [142; 41]. In other words, it connects micro-level interactions to
macro-level processes and events. Rational choice approach significantly changes the
logic of inquiry but, unlike supporters of behavioralist movement, advocates of rational
choice do not seek to redefine the subject matter of political science. As Munck indicates,
“while behavioralists proposed a general theory of politics, which had direct implications
for what should be studied by [political scientists], rational choice theorists advanced
what was, at its core, a general theory of action” [99. P. 53].
James M. Buchanan argues that the rapidly accumulating developments in rational
choice approach have transformed how we think about government and political pro-
cesses [16]. Along the same lines, Sonja M. Amadae in her historical account, Rationaliz-
ing Capitalist Democracy: the Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism, argues
that the key to understanding the success of rational choice approach in political science
is acknowledgment of the complex relations between “rational choice as a decision
tool for government policy initiatives and as an explanatory device for predicting the
outcomes of human action” [9. P. 28]. She discusses rational choice approach as a “re-
gime of knowledge production” designed to provide quantifiably objective analytical
categories and explanation frameworks for the US domestic and foreign policies during
the Cold War.
Howard J. Wiarda argues that the majority of comparativists are unconvinced in the
strength of rational choice approach. Although rational choice “explains some aspects
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
90
of American political behavior, the world is too diverse for all the world’s political
systems to be explained in this way” [143. P. 143]. Most advocates of rational choice ap-
proach within the field of Comparative Politics turned towards the institutional frame-
work. They try to capture the diversity within politics by examining the ways by which
institutions influence sequences of interactions, choices available to specific actors,
structures of information and beliefs, and costs and benefits of individuals and organ-
izations.
The new institutionalisms. Rational choice institutionalism should be distinguished
from the direct application of economic rationalization to political sphere, inasmuch
as it seeks to understand how different contextual and institutional factors influence
behaviors and choices of individual actors [82. P. 125]. Using deductive logic to define
and categorize actors and to specify their goals or preferences, rational choice institutio-
nalism examines individuals and organizations as intentional and purposive unitary
actors that can chose between options in order to maximize benefits [57].
For proponents of rational choice, institutions play a role of contextual factors that
pinpoint the options available to actors and identify the costs and benefits associated
with these options. Basically, institutions, according to the logic of rational choice, help
actors to stabilize relations and maintain commonality, and thus are subsumed together
with other structural characteristics that determine strategic choices of political actors
and shape their “second-order preferences” [57. P. 177].
Barbara Geddes stresses that while none of these features is idiosyncratic in its own
right, the combination of these features defines rational choice and distinguishes it from
the other new institutionalisms, bringing both novel and fruitful theoretical results
[57. P. 192]. For Geddes, rational choice approach premises on the assumption that pre-
ferences are stable only during the time it takes an actor to make its strategic choice,
and thus the claim that rational choice approach presuppose static preferences is “a mi-
sunderstanding born of a failure to distinguish everyday language from technical lan-
guage” [57. P. 182]. In addition, Geddes argues that insofar as rational choice approach
does not set any specific constrains to what actors’ goals may be, it can be applied to
explain a behavior that is conventionally perceived as irrational under the assumption
that “actors were rationally pursuing their own (peculiar) goals” [57. P. 181]. Along the
similar lines, Margaret Levi claims that rational choice goes beyond rigorous utility-
maximization assumptions and does not imply that individual actors are self-interested
[82. P. 128].
In contrast to rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism examines
how particular social systems transform, adapt, and adjust to the new equilibriums. Ana-
lytical tools of historical institutionalism are useful in determining the trajectory of
evolution punctuated by institutional transformation. Importantly, historical institutional-
ism allows scholars to explain how particular institutions came to existence, what fac-
tors promote their stability and continuity, and what initiates their transformation
through time.
Sven Steinmo believes that Comparative Politics can benefit from knowledge
and insights about evolutionary processes coming from such disciplines, as anthropology,
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
91
linguistics, psychology, economics, and biology. In The Evolution of Modern States,
he encourages scholars who subscribe to historical institutionalism to be more explicit
about how they understand evolution of human social institutions [130. P. 9]. Steinmo’s
major theoretical arguments are grounded on the assumption that “similar variables
can have very different effects in different contexts” [130. P. 11], and thus “random varia-
tion within complex systems can set development along totally new and unpredictable
paths” [P. 13]. Consequently, Steinmo places change in the center of analysis. In his
own words, rather than approaching history “as lurching between different equilibriums,”
scholars should think about it “as a continuous adaptive process,” where adaptation is
“an interactive, interdependent, and ongoing process between the individual, the popula-
tion, and the broader environment or ecology” [130. P. 15].
Many proponents of historical intuitionalism employ Peter Hall’s definition of
institutions: “the formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating practices
that structure the relations between individuals in various units of the polity and the
economy” [64. P. 19]. Hall examines institutional change in the context of “social learn-
ing” which he defines as “a deliberate attempt to adjust the goals or techniques of policy
in the light of consequences of past policy and new information so as to better obtain
the ultimate objects of governance” [65. P. 278]. Following Hall’s logic, institutions are
“historically specific and ontologically prior to the agents who occupy them” [14. P. 197].
Hence, institutions are conceptualized in the same fashion as in the framework of rational
choice institutionalism: one of many “intervening variables (or structural variables)
through which battles over interest, ideas, and power occur” [128. P. 7556]. However,
this does not mean that institutions play the same role in the analysis of historical path
as they do in the analysis of incentives and constrains for strategic behavior of actors
from the perspective of rational choice.
In the words of Steinmo, institutions are “the points of critical juncture” because
“political battles are fought inside institutions and over the design of institutions”
[128. P. 7556]. In a similar vein, Ira Katznelson claims that institutions do more “than
confer categories and organizations,” insofar as they “embody asymmetries that assert
a new structure for distribution of money, information, access, and other key assets of
power in tandem with the naturalization of categories” [72. P. 297]. Consequently, al-
though historical institutionalism does not challenge the assumption of rational choice
that actors are rational and motivated by self-interest, it leaves a room for constructivist
analysis (4) and questions about norms and identities. This bridges historical institutio-
nalism with sociological institutionalism [135; 129].
The basic concept of sociological institutionalism is logic of appropriateness that
is understood as acceptance of norms and practices by agents [93; 94; 95]. Proponents
of sociological institutionalism define institutions as relatively stable collections of norms
and practices that are rooted in “structures of resources that make action possible”
and “structures of meaning that explain and justify behavior” [94. P. 691]. This defini-
tion implies that institutions are socially constructed and represent collective outcomes
rather than a product of individual preferences [135. P. 386]. James G. March and Johan
P. Olsen suggest that institutions join together diverse social constructions in a way
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
92
that “clear prescriptions” can be distinguished [94. P. 693]. Simply put, agents make
choices according to the logic of appropriateness that correspond best with their iden-
tities.
In the attempt to give a new insight into the role of social constructions in the con-
text of institutional change, Vivien Schmidt [117; 118; 119; 120] proposes to add to
the three established variants of institutionalism a fourth one: discursive institutional-
ism. Much like proponents of sociological institutionalism, Schmidt sees institutions
as a structure of shared knowledge that influence the way actors formulate their goals
and by what means they choose to achieve those goals. However, she argues that in-
stitutional continuity and change are endogenously driven and focuses on the “expla-
natory power of ideas and discourses” in a dynamic perspective, raising the questions
of how, when, and why ideas and discourses matter [118].
Schmidt findings lend support to the claim that institutions are not “the external
rule-following structures” that set limits for actors as it is argued by the proponents of
the three other institutionalisms [119. P. 4]. She criticizes rational choice and historical
institutionalism for perceiving power as “a function of position” [119. P. 18]. She de-
monstrates that because of “the deliberative nature of discourse” agents can approach
institutions as “object at a distance,” and thus can transform institutions by interacting
with them [118. P. 316]. On these grounds, she propounds basic assumptions of ra-
tional choice and historical institutionalism arguing that even actors with a low power
position are able to obtain power from their ideas [119. P. 18].
Schmidt’s approach also advances understanding of agency and structure offered
by sociological institutionalism. As Schmidt explains it, while scholars working with-
in the framework of sociological institutionalism focus on “how interests develop from
state identities to structure national perceptions of defense and security issues,” scholars
who subscribe to discursive institutionalism draw on a more dynamic conception of
ideas that allows them to examine “norms, frames, and narratives that not only establish
how actors conceptualize the world but also enable them to reconceptualize the world,
serving as a resource to promote change” [119. P. 13]. In sum, discursive institutionalism
embraces a more broad view of institutions and navigates a wider political environment
than each of the three other institutionalisms taken separately. According Schmidt, actors
seek to define their goals in a way that links generalized ideas and agenda shared by
a particular slice of the population. In practice this means that in the process of policy
making governments and political parties have to be able to bridge broad public dis-
courses with narrow policy solutions.
The four new institutionalisms — rational choice, historical, sociological, and dis-
cursive — are fairly independent from each other. Each approach has its own context
specific limits and internal biases. As Schmidt notes, all four approaches may be overly
deterministic with regard to their central category [120]. Enthusiastic proponents of
rational choice approach tend to see instrumental rationality everywhere, whereas their
counterparts from the sociological institutionalism camp limit explanations to only
socially constructed rationality. Historical institutionalists sometimes simplify explana-
tions down to the path dependency. Finally, devoted discursive institutionalists might
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
93
fall into shortcoming because they see the influence of ideas everywhere. At the same
time, as Guy Peters accurately points out, all variations of institutionalism are tightly
bound together, inasmuch as they all “consider institutions the central component of
political life” [103. P. 164]. In other words, rational choice, historical, sociological, and
discursive institutionalisms are not conflated but neither are they to be mutually exclu-
sive. There is a number of important borrowings and ongoing cross-fertilization between
the four approaches. For instance, historical institutionalism creates links between de-
ductive logic of calculation and culturally contingent and socially constructed logic of
appropriateness, while discursive institutionalism allows scholars to bring agency into
the three other institutionalisms. To quote Peters again, “[a] discussion of one of the
approaches naturally [leads] to a discussion of some aspects of another” [103. P. 164].
ProblemQsolving Nature of Mainstream
Comparative Politics Theorizing
The three analytical perspectives of Comparative Politics discussed above are
best understood as approaches to the study of politics or competing logics of inquiry
rather than as theories or methods, and thus should be treated as tools or means, rather
than ends of analysis. The overarching intellectual agenda behind these analytical pers-
pectives is to study the world we currently live in. To portray the issue in Robert Cox’s
terms, these approaches accept the existing power structures as given and concentrate
on examining the problems that exist within these structures [22]. As tools and means
of analysis these, approaches are not designated to produce scholarship that will be
“standing apart from the prevailing order of the world” [22. P. 88]. In other words,
these approaches are not supposed to capture internal challenges of existing power
structures, and thus cannot help a scholar to contemplate possibilities of transformation
and propose admissible alternatives. Even sociological and discursive institutional-
isms that embrace constructivist ontology do not have a critical potential to provide
“a guide to strategic action for bringing about an alternative order” [22. P. 90]. Conse-
quently, mainstream US-led Comparative Politics can be characterized in terms of
problem-solving theorizing. In the next section, I explore the use of comparison as a me-
thod and implications of comparison in the framework of problem-solving theorizing,
focusing on analytical and conceptual systems under which mainstream comparativists
conduct their research.
ProblemQsolving Comparison
As Giovanni Satori rightly points out, Comparative Politics as a study of politics
in foreign countries does not make any sense [116]. Following Satori’s logic, it is not
the subject (what politics do we study?) but the method (how do we study politics?)
that defines Comparative Politics. The field is characterized and constituted by com-
parison as the major analytical orientation and explorative tool. Through comparison,
scholars obtain evidence necessary for making generalizations that reinforce under-
standing of political phenomena. Consequently, comparison allows scholars to con-
textualize and classify political phenomena, build general theories by means of hypo-
thesis-testing, and make predictions about the possible outcomes [78. P. 4].
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
94
Nevertheless, US Comparative Politics was initially developed in opposition to
studying one’s own country. This means that comparative analysis of politics was
originally motivated by the pursuit of the US academic community to explain “the other”
from the standpoint of enlightened self-interest and expand the understanding of “the
self” through comparison with “the other.” For example, Gabriel A. Almond and
G. Bingham Powell state that comparison “deepens our understanding of our own institu-
tions”, insofar as it permits uncovering “a wider range of political alternatives” and
“the virtues and shortcomings in our own political life” [8. P. 21, emphasis added].
Elsewhere, Almond formulates this even more clearly, claiming that comparative analysis
of non-Western systems has led to “an extraordinary enrichment of the discipline”
because distinctive features of the West “stand out more clearly in primitive and non-
Western contexts” [6. P. 165].
Arguably, Comparative Politics has a habitual preoccupation with alterity, tremend-
ously impacting on the trajectory of its development. First, mainstream US-led Com-
parative Politics reduces the “non-Western” into an object of study and a source of
comparable data sets. The field of Comparative Politics is delineated by comparisons
to Western norms that are institutionalized, homogenized, and universalized by the US
academic community. It is defined by variables, conceptualizations, and pervasive shifts
in the approaches to the study of politics that have been developed by the US academic
community and applied in a testing manner to non-Western politics. Second, mainstream
US-led Comparative Politics reproduces as abnormal the voices of those who perceive
their evolutionary trajectory and modernity differently, inasmuch as it assumes that
the discourse of rational and measurable (quantifiable) neoliberal development is the
only one meaningful in an attempt to achieve a certain level of equality and prosperity
within the borders of a national state. As a result, the mainstream discourses of Com-
parative Politics become submerged in hegemonic and supposedly universal categories.
One of the most illustrative examples of this is the idea of development.
Development and modernization theory. Early mainstream development think-
ing was dominated by the idea of modernization with emphasis on economic growth
and democratic transition. Seymour Martin Lipset’s extremely influential article Some
Social Requisites of Democracy [87] is among basic modernization theory texts. This
article is one of the ten most cited articles published in the American Political Science
Review [24. P. 675]. Importantly, as Larry Diamond points out, “if we include citations
to it as it was reproduced in Political Man (published the following year), we would
surely find it to be one of the most influential political science essays of the past half-
century” [24. P. 675]. Starting with a rather simple thesis — “the more well-to-do a na-
tion, the greater the chances it will sustain democracy” [87. P. 75] — Lipset claims
that modernization manifests itself through social changes that foster “the historic insti-
tutionalization of the values of legitimacy and tolerance” [P. 98], whereas economic
development plays the role of a mediating variable and is part of a larger set of condi-
tions favorable to democratization.
Another quasi-canonical text of modernization theory is Walt W. Rostow’s book
The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto that examines factors
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
95
needed for a country to reach the path to modernization and “take-off.” According to
Rostow, take-off is “an industrial revolution, tied directly to radical change in methods
of production, having their decisive consequences over relatively short periods of
time” [112. P. 57]. He emphasizes that take-off is preceded not only by “the build-up
of social overhead capital and a surge of technological development in industry and
agriculture” but also by “the emergence to political power of a group prepared to regard
the modernization of the economy as serious, high-order political business” [112. P. 8].
Consequently, for Rostow economic modernization and democratic transition are linear
and inevitable and stand in a one-to-one relationship to each other.
The majority of Lipset’s and Rostow’s followers use the terms “development”
and “modernization” synonymously, considering the difference between the two concepts
too marginal to make distinctions. Such conceptual blending is extremely problematic,
inasmuch as it leads to “a distinct notion of linear ‘progress’ as measured in terms of the
industrialized nations’ standards” [137. P. 9]. While development aims at infrastructure,
modernization is about “social organization and is thus more heavily interventionist
and reliant on social engineering and planning” [137. P. 9]. Consequently, discarding
“the world as it has been” and putting forward “the resolution to change” [11. P. 23],
modernization theory absorbs the concept of development and sees it as a transitory
period from a pre-modern or traditional to a modern society. Indeed, designations of
the “modern” that shape modernization theory were created to match the standards of
Western experience and Western evaluations of modernity, and thereby fail to describe
the actual development of diverse non-Western societies and cultures. In such a frame-
work, modernity became a discourse that forces non-Western societies to copy the aspira-
tions and cultural manifestations of Western development. As Margaret R. Somers puts
it, [modernization theory] deceptively concealed the truth of Western capitalist in-
equalities and racism (among other failures) and instead invented and help up for the
rest of the world to emulate a fictitious model of freedom and equality for all, unified
not by hegemonic political ideologies but by a democratic ‘political culture’ — itself
defined as a set of psychological values committed not to any one set of political visions
of the good but to political moderation and the procedural rule of law [126. P. 458].
Following initial widespread acceptance of modernization theory, sharp criticism
began to emerge in the late 1960s. (5). In the 1980s, modernization theory was replaced
by neoliberal conception of development. Neoliberal vision of development constitutes
a set of diverse ideas that emphasize market forces as having strong catalytic influence
on development process and restrict the role of the state to creating framework conditions
for development. The quintessence of neoliberal thinking in terms of development poli-
cies is the ten points of the Washington Consensus which represent the agreement
among the community of developed countries regarding reforms that should be car-
ried out in developing countries. The Washington Consensus can be simplified to the
belief that intensified globalization is itself development, and thus state intervention
in economics should be limited because the global free market is both the means and
the end of development. There is no decisive ontological and theoretical discontinuity
between modernization theory and neoliberal thinking. As Uma Kothari and Martin Mi-
nogue convincingly demonstrate, “neoliberalism is simply a reformulation of moder-
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
96
nization theory”, even though the two approaches “propound different roles of the state
and the market and view the relationship between them differently” [75. P. 7].
A neoliberal view of development is built upon the same universalistic ideas of
a singular Western-centric path to modernity as modernization theory. Francis Fukuyama
argues in his essay The End of History? [55] and later in his book The End of History
and the Last Man [56] that the neoliberal model is the only available paradigm of de-
velopment. For Fukuyama, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the more general sys-
temic demise of state socialism resulted in “the end of history as such: that is the end
point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal
democracy as the final form of human government” [55. P. 271]. As Mojtaba Mahdavi
and W. Andy Knight rightly note, Fukuyama’s logic of “the end of history” presupposes
that “the West is the best and the Rest, lacking its own models of development, should
and will follow the West” [91. P. 4].
The West versus the Rest. From the 1950s to 1970s, “the West” was subsumed
under the category of the “First World,” while “the Rest” was divided on the “Second
World” and the “Third World” (6). The concept of the Third World is related to the
momentous anti-colonial responses to the remaking of the global politico-economic
and social order after World War II. By the 1950s, Third Worldism was widely con-
ceived as a source of political identification in the context of nationalist resistance to
colonialism and the struggle for decolonization. As Peter Worsley notes, in the 1970s
the Third World “was the non-aligned world” and “a world of poor countries,” where
poverty, however, was “the outcome of a more fundamental identity: that they had all
been colonized” [146. P. 102]. Worsley further argues that “the economic sense” of
the concept of Third World was emphasized later as a direct response to the failure of
the vast majority of the nation-states of the Third World to achieve the development
goals set out between the 1940s and the 1970s [146. P. 103]. As a result, the Third
World acquired a definition by reference not to what it was but by reference to what it
was not. By the early 1980s, the concept of the Third World was used as a designa-
tion of diverse societies that faced difficulties in achieving the economic and political
goals of either capitalist modernity of the First World or socialist modernity of the
Second World [28. P. 13]. As Aijaz Ahmad notes, the First and Second Worlds are
defined in terms of their production systems (capitalism and socialism, respectively)
whereas the third category — the Third World — is defined purely in terms of experience
of externally inserted phenomena. That which is constitutive of human history itself is
present in the first two cases, absent in the third case. [1. P. 100].
During the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the Second World disappeared leaving
behind “one hegemonic power, and one hegemonic ideology: neoliberalism” [28. P. 13].
The concept of the three worlds was replaced by the idea of one globalized world that
is increasingly coordinated and homogenized yet divided into developed and developing
countries.
The term “developing countries” is used in a broad generic sense to represent all
countries other than highly industrialized societies that are referred to as “developed
countries.” In addition, it presupposes a linear and uniform model of development. As
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
97
Marcin Wojciech Solarz shows, the adjective “developing” suggests “the existence of
a scale, the extremes of which are defined by the adjectives ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘de-
veloped’,” and thus implies that all countries move along the same path [125. P. 108].
Although many scholars emphasize that “developing countries” does not refer to a ho-
mogeneous set (7), Solarz demonstrates that the term implicitly constructs “a favorable
image of [‘developing’] segment of the international community as a whole” and insi-
nuates a political message that the neoliberal path of free markets will eventually lead
to peace and prosperity of all [125. P. 107]. Importantly, in terms of comparison the
designation of “developing countries” replaces more controversial terms such as “less
developed countries” that provokes the question: Less developed compared to whom
or what? Inasmuch as the term “developing countries” has less negative connotations
and allows scholars to rank countries along a continuum, comparison with the devel-
oped Western countries becomes less implicit.
The categories of the “developed” and “developing” are strictly divergent and pro-
vide contrasting formulation, and thus the diversity and heterogeneity within them is
habitually disregarded or underestimated. The term “developed countries” becomes a
substitute for the First World (countries that adopted entire neoliberal model of de-
velopment), while the term “developing countries” is used as an equivalent to the
Third World (countries that are neither fully liberal nor fully capitalist).
As Mark Irving Lichbach points out, Comparative Politics, in general, is “better
at ‘knowing that’ than in ‘knowing how’” [84. P. 22]. For two-thirds of the people on
earth, a positive meaning of the term “development” and the diversity of categories
related to it has become only “a reminder of what they are not” [38. P. 6]. To portray
the issue in Sara Ahmed’s terms [2; 3], the mainstream discourse of Comparative Politics
designates non-Western entities as willful disobedient subjects who will wrongly (8).
As willful subjects, non-Western societies are doomed always to be “developing” in
comparison to the West. In order to become “developed,” non-Western societies have
to subordinate their will to the Western rationality and emulate the Western model of
development.
In sum, since the idea of development is confined by uniform frameworks, answers
are ready before questions are formulated. Instead of exploring how a particular country
evolves, mainstream comparativists tend to examine how this country fits into the do-
minant neoliberal path of development and end up categorizing this country as excep-
tional or backward if it does not fit. Then, they focus on how this country might be
fixed according to a standard of neoliberal development and why it has not yet been
fixed. As a result, mainstream US-led Comparative Politics becomes integrated into
the project of universalization of Western norms and developmental experiences and
contributes to exertion of hegemonic intellectual domination over non-Western societies.
According to Syed Farid Alatas, the “political and economic structure of imperialism
generates a parallel structure in the way of thinking of the subjugated people” [4. P. 24].
As Kang Jung In demonstrates using the example of South Korea, even non-Western
political scientists end up trying “to fit the square peg of [non-Western] political ex-
perience into the round hole of Western theory” [71. P. 123]. Nevertheless, in mastering
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
98
and assimilating the mainstream US-led Comparative Politics not all non-Western schol-
ars remain uncritical of it. Likewise, it does not presuppose that all Western scholars
accept conventional boundaries of the field.
Critical Comparative Politics:
Poststructural turn and the idea of South
Under the influence of the economic and intellectual revival of formerly colonized
societies, new areas of academic inquiry that focus on examining the contestation and
interconnection between Western and non-Western started to develop within the field
of Comparative Politics. This challenges Eurocentrism, Western-centrism, and other
modes of parochialism of mainstream US-led Comparative Politics and encourages
scholars to question traditional canons of research and the routinely accepted or some-
times enforced boundaries of the field.
While mainstream comparativists seek to offer a better way to study politics within
existing epistemological frameworks, poststructural scholars strive for transforming
the way the field of Comparative Politics is constituted by calling into question the
underlying analytical and conceptual systems that frame comparison. Poststructural
turn in Comparative Politics gave rise to critical race [21; 54; 76; 107; 144] and identity
studies [102], “third wave feminism” [17; 40; 98; 131], postcolonial [13; 18; 19; 20; 91;
96; 115; 125] and postdevelopment approaches [12; 35; 36; 37; 86; 92; 114] (9).
This extremely diverse and heterogeneous scholarship embraces constructivist
ontological perspective and emphasizes the constitutive power and intrinsic forces of
ideas and pays close attention to intersubjective meanings and knowledge structures
that delineate and imbue political environment. Importantly, poststructural approaches
share critical epistemology inspired chiefly by writings of the Frankfurt school, spe-
cifically its leading representative Jürgen Habermas, and French poststructuralist phi-
losophers.
In The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of So-
ciety [62], Habermas argues that actors in society seek to communicate with each oth-
er in order to reach common understanding. He believes that actors seek to coordinate
their actions by reasoned argument, consensus, and cooperation rather than strategic
action strictly in pursuit of their own goals. In his later writings, Habermas develops
theory of communicative action further by applying its central concepts to the analysis
of politics [63]. Habermas’ major goal is to problematize mainstream meta-narratives
and expose the tension between the efforts to rationalize institutional structures and
the assumption that individual decisions might be open to free rational choice. Related
intentions inform works of French poststructuralist philosophers. However, French
poststructuralist philosophers are partly in agreement and partly in dispute with Ha-
bermas: Habermas focuses on forms of communication, whereas French poststructu-
ralist philosophers emphasize the power discourses [10; 105].
For example, for Michel Foucault political processes, institutions, and actors are
constructed through dominant discourses that are broadly understood not only in terms
of language and ideas but also in terms of practices representing by language and
ideas [46]. In his own works, Foucault explores the interplay of discourses and practices,
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
99
examining how particular social phenomena — mental illnesses and medicine [49; 50],
human science [47], penal system [48], and sexuality [45] — are colonized and regu-
lated by hierarchical structures. Foucault’s “archaeological method” [44] encourages
a philosophical-historical analysis that breaks through the structures of power. Similarly,
Jacques Derrida’s methodology of socio-linguistic deconstruction and Jean-François
Lyotard’s “skepticism of metanarratives” [90] inspire many scholars of Comparative
Politics to reject formal and rationalist approaches to politics.
Drawing on constructivist ontology and critical epistemology, poststructural scho-
larship not only enhances the number of analytical tools available for scholars but also
contests conceptual frameworks that are taken for granted by mainstream comparativists
and used as foundation for their theories, including the idea of one universal modernity
and development. Such conceptual categories as subaltern [60; 127] or Orientalism [115]
are not intended to travel across different disciplines, nations, diverse cultures, time,
or different individuals and social categories, inasmuch as their authors seek to pro-
duce not new meta-narratives but anti-foundations and contextualize their knowledge
linking it to a specific location. Nevertheless, these concepts were mobilized for in-
itiating useful discussions in the realm of Comparative Politics. The majority of com-
parativists inspired by poststructuralist ideas approach comparison with the objective
of determining explanatory variables for a phenomenon under study, taking a “position
of mild positivism” [59. P. 13], and use poststructuralist conceptual categories to create
as new generalizing references. One of the examples is the concept of North-South
fracture introduced to Comparative Politics by post-colonial and post-development
scholars.
The concept of North-South fracture connotes the conventional ideas of devel-
opment, inasmuch as it initially emerged as a replacement of an older ideological di-
chotomy between West (capitalist First World) and East (socialist Second World) and
was first used to describe drastic differences in the international economic develop-
ment in the so-called Brandt Report (10). However, poststructural understanding of
North-South divide does not imply scaling regions and their inhabitants between le-
vels of economic development as strictly as the concept of developing countries.
The center of the concept is South, whereas North is defined against it. The no-
tion of South implies acknowledgment of the failure of neoliberal ideas as a global
master narrative and “the mutual recognition among the world’s subaltern of their
shared condition at the margins of the brave new neoliberal world of globalization”
[89. P. 1]. As a synonym of subalterity, South transcends geographical frontiers. Arif
Dirlik points out that the geography of South is “much more complicated than the term
suggests, and is subject to change over time” [28. P. 13]. For him, as a “metaphoric
reference” South designates “the marginalized populations of the world, regardless of
their actual location” [25. P. 31]. Similarly, Walter Mignolo argues that the South should
be understood as “an ideological concept” that captures “the economic, political, and
epistemic dependency and unequal relations in the global world order, from a subaltern
perspective” [97. P. 166]. Thereby, the concept of South travels well across different
contexts. Importantly, South overlaps with North. As Mignolo explains it, South can in-
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
100
clude “portions” of countries that are located in North, whereas North can be represented
in South through political alliances [97. P. 184].
Within the poststructuralist epistemological framework, the concept of South al-
lows comparativists to reveal interpenetrations between actors and existing power struc-
tures on local, regional, transregional, and international levels. In this sense, the notion
of South is used to create a space for a context specific scholarship that examines expe-
riences of the world’s subaltern without labeling them as abnormal. This scholarship
moves away from homogenized dichotomist variations of “the West versus the Rest”
that reproduce designations of generalized otherness. At the same time, it goes beyond
the idea of infinitely “multiplied modernities” (11).
Insofar as the diversity within the category of South is treated in the context of
social structures that are understood as power structures, it renders possible the over-
coming the conventional history of development and the perception of linear evolu-
tion of a universal modernity without falling into the particularism of a set of endlessly
pluralized modernities. Therefore, the subject matter of the scholarship inspired by
the idea of South can be described as an entangled heterogeneous modernity or, as
Dirlik [26; 27] puts it, “global modernity”. To this effect, South is meant to represent
intertwined complex categories that point to ruptures and asymmetries in the construc-
tion of modernity, simultaneously including the experience of subalterns into the shared
history of modernity.
Conclusion
Regardless of the perspective one takes on the development of Comparative Poli-
tics as an independent subfield of political science, there is a general consensus that
Comparative Politics emerged largely as the result of a parochial focus on Western
versions of modernity. The early development of Comparative Politics owed much to
the efforts of US academia and was profoundly influenced by the ethnocentric biases
and political values of US scholars. As Charles Taylor rightly notes, “the unsurprising
result” of US domination in Comparative Politics was “a theory of political develop-
ment which places the Atlantic-type polity at the summit of human political achieve-
ment” [133. P. 34; 134]. Mainstream US-led Comparative Politics is focused on prob-
lem solving theorizing, and thus is not capable of overcoming its own ethnocentrism
and moving far beyond the study of foreign countries. Nevertheless, comparison as an
analytical perspective is a comprehensive and powerful tool of analysis and is always
open to new approaches. This represents the key strength of Comparative Politics as
a field of inquiry.
Comparative Politics has undergone important theoretical and normative transfor-
mations in recent decades, and its scope has been widening through the introduction
of new approaches. I contend that the most promising path forward for Comparative
Politics is the dialogue between problem-solving and critical theorizing. Critical post-
structuralist scholarship revamps and rejuvenates Comparative Politics, insofar as it
allows comparativists to reevaluate overarching analytical frameworks and generali-
zations of problem solving theorizing by capturing the great diversity and complexity
of relations of power, influence, and authority existing in the modern world.
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
101
NOTES
(1) Rapidly growing literature on the role of international factors in the process of democratizations is
a case in point [68; 73; 81; 109; 122; 145]. Another interesting example of inter-disciplinary
dialogue and rivalry is studies that examine how the international and domestic realms intersect
and interact in very peculiar social, cultural, economic, and political settings of the European
Union [66; 67; 106; 110; 111].
(2) According to Thomas Kuhn, a paradigm is an essential, grand theory that guides intellectual
inquiry and the accumulation of knowledge. In other words, paradigms constitute fundamental
assumptions on which a solution to a problem is attempted, as well as the tacit means of com-
municating existing knowledge to new members of the community. Kuhn argues that every
paradigm establishes “incommensurable ways of seeing the world and of practicing science
in it” [77. P. 4]. Accordingly, knowledge developed under one paradigm would be “incommen-
surable” with knowledge that belongs to another paradigm, and thus no common criterions
could be established for assessing and comparing theories [77. P. 5].
(3) Agency is understood as the capacity of actors to function independently from externally im-
posed constrains. In other words, “agency is the power of human beings to make choices and
to impose those choices on the world, rather than the way around” [85. P. 76]. As Daniel M.
Green points out, agency contains “discursively produced social spaces, continually being re-
negotiated through a myriad of complex transactions” [59. P. 257]. In his opinion, “if agency
if ignored, agents can be simply reduced to structure in explanation, leaving out the obvious
possibilities for interplay between the two” [59. P. 44]. Consequently, structure refers to a cen-
tral framework or context within which agents make choices and take actions. In this sense,
structure might designate features of political system and institutions that facilitate or con-
strain choices and actions of an actor.
(4) In the framework of International Relations, constructivism constitutes an independent body
of theory [15; 42; 101; 132; 140; 141; 142]. In contrast, in Comparative Politics constructivism
is represented by “eclectic scholars who at times make compelling arguments about discourses,
language, ideas, culture, or knowledge relevant to specific thematic areas, “yet do not “use the
term constructivism to refer to their own work” [43. P. 404—405].
(5) The critique of modernization theory is too massive to be covered in this paper. Among the most
significant and influential discussions of the late 1960s and the early 1970s are those that might
be subsumed under the umbrella of dependency theory [52; 29; 138; 139] and those that were
inspired by Samuel Huntington’s book Political Order in Changing Societies [69].
(6) The actual idea of the three worlds as designations of specific geographical and socio-political
locations is often associated with an article written by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy
in 1952. In his article, Sauvy uses the French concept of tiers monde to describe the social,
economic, and political condition of those nation-states not formally aligned with the capitalist
bloc (“First World” centered on the US) or the socialist bloc (“Second World” centered on
the USSR) during the Cold War.
(7) Considering GNI per capita, the World Bank uses the term “developing countries” for low-
income countries, lower-middle income countries, and upper-middle income countries.
(8) Sara Ahmed [2; 3] explores the ways in which will and willfulness are socially reconciled,
situated, negotiated, and constructed. Ahmed describes willful subject as a figure who wills
wrongly or wills too much, and thus its will is perceived a sign of deviance. Willfulness be-
comes charge made by some against others. Ahmed writes: “Some forms of political volition
are understood as willful because they pulse with desire, a desire that is not directed in the
right way; a willful will would have failed to acquire the right form, failed to have coordi-
nated and unified disparate impulses into a coherent intent” [2. P. 75]. Consequently, accord-
ing to Ahmed, willfulness can be a product of both intentional and unintentional desire.
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
102
(9) As it was already mentioned, many scholars of Comparative Politics do not “maintain a con-
sistent theoretical identity” [43. P. 404] and there is communication and active cross-fertilization
of ideas, viewpoints, and issues between different areas of research within the subfield. The cate-
gories I use are not mutually exclusive, oppositional, disjoint, or competing. Thus, I place di-
verse poststructuralist scholars into the categories that they might not use themselves.
(10) The Brandt Report is a report released in 1980 by the Independent Commission on Interna-
tional Development Issues of the World Bank chaired by Willy Brandt. The authors of the re-
port point out that wealthy countries are located mainly in North hemisphere, while poor
countries are located in South.
(11) The concept of the pluralization of modernity (“multiple modernities”) is developed by the
sociologist Shmuel N. Eisenstadt [33; 34]. According to him, there are other unique modernities
(for example, Asian modernity/modernities) that differ fundamentally from the Western mod-
ernity. Eisenstadt’s ideas are criticized from a number of different perspectives by European
sociologists [51; 79; 80; 121].
REFERENCES
[1] Ahmad A. In theory: Classes, nations, literatures. Bombay, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992.
[2] Ahmed S. Willful subjects. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
[3] Ahmed S. A willfulness archive // Theory and Event. 2012. 15(3). URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/
journals/theory_and_event/v015/15.3.ahmed.html.
[4] Alatas S.F. Academic dependency in social sciences: reflections on India and Malaysia // Ameri-
can Studies International. 2000. 38 (2).
[5] Almond G.A. The political system and comparative politics. The contribution of David Easton.
Ed. K.R. Monroe. Contemporary empirical political. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997.
[6] Almond G.A., Coleman J.S. The politics of the developing areas. Princeton University Press,
Princeton, N.J., 1960.
[7] Almond G.A., Verba S. The civic culture: Political attitudes and democracy in five nations. New-
bury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1989.
[8] Almond G.A., Powell G.P. Comparative politics today: a world view. Boston: Little, Brown,
1996.
[9] Amadae S.M. Rationalizing capitalist democracy: The Cold War origins of rational choice libe-
ralism. United States of America: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
[10] Ashenden S., Owen D. Foucault contra Habermas: Recasting the dialogue between genealogy
and critical theory. London, Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE, 1999.
[11] Bauman Z. Wasted lives: Modernity and its outcasts. Oxford: Polity; Malden, MA: Distributed
in the USA by Blackwell, 2004.
[12] Bennett C. Supporting the posts in development discourse: Underdevelopment, over-develop-
ment, post-development // Sociology Compass. 2012. 6.
[13] Bhabha H. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
[14] Blyth M. An approach to comparative analyses or a subfield within a subfield? Political Eco-
nomy. Lichbach M., Zuckerman A. (Eds.) Comparative politics: Rationality, culture, and struc-
ture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
[15] Booth K. Theory of world security. Cambridge; NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
[16] Buchanan J.M. Politics without romance: A sketch of positive public choice theory and its
normative implications. J.M. Buchanan, R.D. Tollison (Eds.) The Theory of public choice — II.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984.
[17] Butler J. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York and London:
Routledge, 1990.
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
103
[18] Chatterjee P. Empire and nation revisited: 50 years after Bandung // Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.
2005. 6 (4).
[19] Chatterjee P. Lineages of political society: Studies in postcolonial democracy. New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 2011
[20] Chatterjee P. The black hole of empire: History of a global practice of power. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2012.
[21] Crenshaw K., Gotanda N., Peller G., Thomas K. Critical race theory: The key writings that
formed the movement. New York: New Press, 1995.
[22] Cox R.W. Social forces, states and world orders: Beyond International Relations theory
(1981) // Cox R.W. Approaches to World Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[23] Dahl R. The Behavioral approach in political science: Epitaph for a monument to a successful
protest. In H. Eulau (Ed.) // Behavioralism in political science. New York: Atherton Press, 1973.
[24] Diamond L. Some social requisites of democracy: Economic development and political legi-
timacy // American Political Science Review. 2006. 100(4).
[25] Dirlik A. The global in the local // R. Wilson and W. Dissanayake (Eds.) Global/Local: Cultural
production and the transnational imaginary. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.
[26] Dirlik A. Global modernity? Modernity in an age of global capitalism // European Journal of
Social Theory. 2003. 6(3).
[27] Dirlik A. Spectres of the Third World: Global modernity and the end of the three worlds // Third
World Quarterly. 2004. 25(1).
[28] Dirlik A. Global South: Predicament and promise // The Global South. 2007. 1(1).
[29] Dos Santos T. The Structure of dependence // The American Economic Review. 1970. 60 (2).
[30] Downs A. An Economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957.
[31] Easton D. An approach to the analysis of political systems // World Politics. 1957. 9 (3).
[32] Easton D. A systems analysis of political life. New York: Wiley, 1965.
[33] Eisenstadt S. Japanese civilization: A comparative view. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996.
[34] Eisenstadt S. Comparative civilizations and multiple modernities. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
[35] Escobar A. Imagining a Post-Development Era? Critical Thought, Development and Social
Movements // Social Text. 1992. 31 (32).
[36] Escobar A. Beyond the search for a paradigm? Post-Development and beyond // Development.
2000. 43(4). URL: http://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/text/eng/434escobar.pdf.
[37] Escobar A. Latin America at a crossroads: Alternative modernization, post-liberalism, or post-
development // Cultural Studies. 2010. 24(1).
[38] Estava G. Development // W. Sachs (Ed.) The development dictionary: a guide to knowledge
as power. London; New York: Zed Books, 2010.
[39] Fanon F. The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
[40] Feigenblatt O.F. Disciplinary ‘moratorium’: Post-colonial studies, third wave feminism, and
development studies // Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences. 2009. 1(3).
[41] Ferejohn J. Rational choice theory and social explanation // Economics and Philosophy.
2002. 18(2).
[42] Finnemore M. National interests in international society. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1996.
[43] Finnemore M., Sikkink K. Taking stock: The constructivist research program in international
relations and comparative politics // Annual Review of Political Science. 2001. 4.
[44] Foucault M. The archaeology of knowledge. London: Tavistock Publications, 1969.
[45] Foucault M. The history of sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
[46] Foucault M. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972—1977. Harve-
ster, London, 1980.
[47] Foucault M. The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. New York: Vintage
Books, 1994.
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
104
[48] Foucault M. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York, NY: Vintage Books,
1995.
[49] Foucault M. The birth of the clinic: An archaeology of medical perception. London: Routledge,
2003.
[50] Foucault M. History of madness. London; New York: Routledge, 2009.
[51] Fourie E. A future for the theory of multiple modernities: Insights from the new modernization
theory // Social Science Information. 2012. 51(1).
[52] Frank A.G. Latin America: underdevelopment or revolution Essays on the development of un-
derdevelopment and the immediate enemy. New York; London, 1969.
[53] Friedrich C.J. Instruction and research: Political science in the United States in War-time //
American Political Science Review. 1947. 41 (5).
[54] Fredrickson G.M. Racism: A short history. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
[55] Fukuyama F. The end of history? // Quadrant. 1989. 33(8).
[56] Fukuyama F. The end of history and the last man. New York: Free Press, 2006.
[57] Geddes B. Paradigms and sand castles: Theory building and research design in comparative
politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
[58] Gilman N. Mandarins of the future: Modernization theory in Cold War America. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
[59] Green D.M. Constructivism and comparative politics. M.E. Sharpe, 2002.
[60] Guha R. Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1983.
[61] Gunnell J.G. History of political science // B. Badie, D. Berg-Schlosser and L. Morlino (Eds.)
International encyclopedia of political science. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Pub-
lications, 2010.
[62] Habermas J. The theory of communicative action. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.
[63] Habermas J. Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory. London: Polity Press,
1996.
[64] Hall P. Governing the economy: The politics of state intervention in Britain and France. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
[65] Hall P. Policy paradigms, social learning, and the state: The case of economic policymaking
in Britain // Comparative Politics. 1993. 25(3).
[66] Hix S. The study of the European community: The challenge to Comparative Politics // West
European Politics. 1994. 17(1).
[67] Hix S. Comparative Politics, International Relations and the EU: A rejoinder to Hurrell and
Menon // West European Politics. 1996. 19(4).
[68] Huntington S.P. The Third Wave: democratization in the late twentieth century. University
of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
[69] Huntington S.P. Political order in changing societies. New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2006.
[70] Ilyin M., Malinova O. Political Science in Russia: Institutionalization of the Discipline and
Development of the Professional Community. Paper presented at the conference “International
Political Science: New Theoretical and Regional Perspectives,” IPSA, Montreal, Canada. 2008.
URL: http://paperroom.ipsa.org/papers/view/4068.
[71] Kang J.I. Academic dependency: Western-centrism in Korean political science // Korea Journal.
2006. 46 (4).
[72] Katznelson I. Periodization and Preferences: Reflections on purposive action in comparative
historical social science // J. Mahoney, D. Rueschemeyer (Eds.) Comparative historical analysis
in the social sciences. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
[73] Knack S. Does foreign aid promote democracy? // International Studies Quarterly. 2004. 48(1).
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
105
[74] Kohli A., Evans P., Katzenstein P.J., Przeworski A., Rudolph S.H., Scott J.C. et al. The role
of theory in comparative politics: A symposium // World Politics. 1995. 48(1).
[75] Kothari U., Minogue M. Critical perspectives on development: An introduction in development
theory and practice. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002.
[76] Kothari U. An agenda for thinking about “race” in development // Progress in Development
Studies. 2006. 6 (1).
[77] Kuhn T.S. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press, 1996.
[78] Landman T. Issues and methods in comparative politics. London; New York: Routledge, 2008.
[79] Lee R.L.M. Reinventing modernity reflexive modernization vs liquid modernity vs multiple
modernities // European Journal of Social Theory. 2006. 9(3).
[80] Lee R.L.M. Modernity, modernities and modernization: Tradition reappraised // Social Science
Information. 2013. 52 (3).
[81] Legler T., Lean S., Boniface D. Promoting democracy in the Americas. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2007.
[82] Levi M. Reconsiderations of rational choice in comparative and historical analyses // M.I. Lich-
bach and A.S. Zuckerman (Eds.) Comparative Politics: Rationality, culture, and structure.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
[83] Lichbach M.I., Zuckerman A.S. Comparative politics: Rationality, culture, and structure. Cam-
bridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
[84] Lichbach M.I. Thinking and working in the midst of things // M.I. Lichbach, A.S. Zuckerman
(Eds.) Comparative politics: Rationality, culture, and structure. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2009.
[85] Lim T.C. Doing comparative politics: An introduction to approaches and issues. Boulder, Colo.:
Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010.
[86] Lind A. Feminist post-development thought: ‘Women in development’ and the gendered para-
doxes of survival in Bolivia // Women’s Studies Quarterly. 2003. 31 (4).
[87] Lipset S.M. Some social requisites of democracy: Economic development and political legi-
timacy // American Political Science Review. 1959. 53 (1).
[88] Lipset S.M., Rokkan S. Cleavage structures, party systems, and voter alignments // P. Mair (Ed.),
The West European Party System. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
[89] Lopez A.J. Introduction: The (Post) global South // The Global South. 2007. 1 (1).
[90] Lyotard J.F. The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984.
[91] Mahdavi M., Knight W.A. Towards the dignity of difference? Neither ‘end of history’ nor ‘clash
of civilizations’. ASHGATE, 2012.
[92] Matthews S. Post-development theory and the question of alternatives: A view from Africa //
Third World Quarterly. 2004. 25 (2).
[93] March J.G., Olsen J.P. Rediscovering institutions: The organizational basis of politics. New
York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1989.
[94] March J.G., Olsen J.P. The logic of appropriateness // M. Moran, M. Rein, R. Goodin (Eds.),
The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
[95] March J.G., Olsen J.P. The logic of appropriateness. ARENA Working Paper 04. 2009. URL:
https://www.sv.uio.no/arena/english/research/publications/arena-publications/workingpapers/
working-papers2004/wp04_9.pdf.
[96] Mignolo W.D. Geopolitics of sensing and knowing: On (de)coloniality, border thinking and
epistemic disobedience // Postcolonial Studies. 2011. 14 (3).
[97] Mignolo W.D. The Global South and world dis/order // Journal of Anthropological Research.
2011. 67 (2).
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
106
[98] Momsen J.D. (Ed.) Gender and development: Critical concepts in development studies. London:
Routledge, 2008.
[99] Munck G.L. The past and present of comparative politics // G.L. Munck and R. Snyder (Eds.) Pas-
sion, craft and method in comparative politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
[100] Munck G.L., Snyder R. Who publishes in comparative politics? Studying the world from the
United States // PS: Political Science and Politics. 2007. 40 (2).
[101] Onuf N. World of our making: Rules and rule in social theory and international relations. Co-
lumbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1989.
[102] Peeler J. Citizenship and difference in Latin American indigenous politics: Democratic
theory and comparative politics // J. Holmes (Ed.) New approaches to comparative politics. Lan-
ham: Lexingon Books, 2003.
[103] Peters B.G. Institutional theory in political science: The 'new institutionalism'. London; New
York: Continuum, 2005.
[104] Petracca M.P. The rational choice approach to politics: A challenge to democratic theory //
The Review of Politics. 1991. 53 (2).
[105] Peters M. Habermas, post-structuralism and the question of postmodernity: The defiant peri-
phery // The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice. 1994. 36.
[106] Pollack M. Theorizing the European Union: International organization, domestic polity, or
experiment in new governance? // Annual Review of Politics Science. 2005. 8 (1).
[107] Razack S., Smith M.S., Thobani S. States of race: Critical race feminism for the 21st century.
Toronto: Between the Lines, 2010.
[108] Riker W.H. The theory of political coalitions. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1962.
[109] Risse T., Ropp S.C., Sikkink K. The power of human rights: International norms and domestic
change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
[110] Rosamond B. European integration and the social science of EU studies: The disciplinary poli-
tics of a sub-field // International Affairs. 2007. 83(2).
[111] Rosamond B. The political sciences of European integration: Disciplinary history and EU
studies // K.E. Jørgensen, M. Pollack and B. Rosamond (Eds.) Handbook of European Union
politics. London: Sage, 2007.
[112] Rostow W.W. The stages of economic growth: A non-communist manifesto. Cambridge;
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
[113] Russett B. Reintegrating the subdisciplines of international and comparative politics // Interna-
tional Studies Review. 2003. 5 (4).
[114] Sachs W. The development dictionary: a guide to knowledge as power. London [Eng.]; New
York: Zed Books, 2010.
[115] Said E.W. Orientalism (2-nd ed.). New York: Vintage Books, 2003.
[116] Satori G. Compare: Why and how. Comparing, miscomparing and the comparative method //
M. Dogan and A. Kazancigil (Eds.) Comparing nations: Concepts, strategies, substance. Cam-
bridge: Blackwell, 1994.
[117] Schmidt V.A. Does discourse matter in the politics of welfare adjustment? // Comparative
Political Studies. 2002. 35(2).
[118] Schmidt V.A. Discursive institutionalism. The explanatory power of ideas and discourses //
Annual Review of Political Science. 2008. 11.
[119] Schmidt V.A. Taking ideas and discourse seriously: Explaining change through discursive insti-
tutionalism as the fourth ‘new institutionalism’ // European Political Science Review. 2010. 2 (1).
[120] Schmidt V.A. Reconciling ideas and institutions through discursive institutionalism // D. Béland
and R.H. Cox (Eds.) Ideas and politics in social science research. New York; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011.
[121] Schmidt V.H. Multiple modernities or varieties of modernity? // Current Sociology. 2006. 54(1).
[122] Schmitz H.P. Domestic and transnational perspectives on democratization // International Stu-
dies Review. 2004. 6 (3).
Kuteleva A.V. A Critical Survey of The Field of Comparative Politics
107
[123] Skilling G. In search of political science in the USSR // The Canadian Journal of Economics
and Political Science. 1963. 53 (4).
[124] Snyder R. The human dimension of Comparative Research // G.I. Munck and R. Snyder
(Eds.). Passion, craft, and method in comparative politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2007.
[125] Solarz M.W. The language of global development: A misleading geography. London: Routledge,
Taylor and Francis Group, 2014.
[126] Somers M.R. Citizenship troubles: Genealogies of struggle for the soul of the social // J. Adams,
E.S. Clemens, A.S. Orloff (Eds.) Remaking modernity [electronic resource]: politics, history,
and sociology. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
[127] Spivak G. Can the subaltern speak? // C. Nelson, L. Grossberg (Eds.) Marxism and the inter-
pretation of culture. Urbana University of Illinois Press, 1988.
[128] Steinmo S. Institutionalism // P.B. Baltes, N.J. Smelser. International encyclopedia of the social
and behavioral sciences. Amsterdam; New York: Elsevier, 2001.
[129] Steinmo S. What is historical institutionalism? // D. Porta, M. Keating (Eds.) Approaches in
the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2008.
[130] Steinmo S. The evolution of modern states: Sweden, Japan, and the United States. Cam-
bridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
[131] Syed J., Ali F. The white woman’s burden: From colonial civilisation to Third World devel-
opment // Third World Quarterly. 2011. 32 (2).
[132] Tannenwald N. Ideas and explanation: Advancing the theoretical agenda // Journal of Cold War
Studies. 2005. 7 (2).
[133] Taylor C. Interpretation and the sciences of man // Taylor C. Philosophical papers. Volume 2.
Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge University Press, 1985.
[134] Taylor C. Understanding and ethnocentricity // Taylor C. Philosophical papers. Volume 2. Phi-
losophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge University Press, 1985.
[135] Thelen K. Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics // Annual Review of Political
Science. 1999. 2 (1).
[136] Trent J.E. Political science beyond political boundaries: The international institutional devel-
opment of political science // S. Rokkan (Ed.) A quarter-century of international social science:
Papers and reports on development 1952—1977. New Delhi: Concept Publishing, 1979.
[137] Unger C.R. Histories of development and modernization: Findings, reflections, future research //
H-Soz-Kult. 09.12.2010. URL: http://www.hsozkult.de/literaturereview/id/forschungsberichte-
1130.
[138] Wallerstein I. The modern world-system. New York, Academic Press, 1974.
[139] Wallerstein I. World-systems analysis: An introduction. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
[140] Wendt A. Anarchy is what states make of it: The social construction of power politics // Inter-
national Organization. 1992. 46 (2).
[141] Wendt A. Constructing international politics // International Security. 1995. 20 (1).
[142] Wendt A. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
1999.
[143] Wiarda H.J. Comparative politics: Approaches and issues. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Little-
field Pub, 2007.
[144] Wilson K. Race, racism and development: Interrogating history, discourse and practice. London;
New York: Zed Books, 2012.
[145] Whitehead L. The International dimensions of democratization: Europe and the Americas. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
[146] Worsley P. The Third World: A vital new force in international affairs. The University of
Chicago Press, 1979.
Вестник РУДН, серия Политология, 2015, № 4
КРИТИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ ПОЛЯ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ
СРАВНИТЕЛЬНОЙ ПОЛИТОЛОГИИ
А.В. Кутелева
Департамент политологии
Университет Альберты
Генри Маршалл Тори Билдинг, 10-16, T6G 2H4, Эдмонтон, Канада
Представленная статья содержит обзорное исследование классической сравнительной по-
литологии и анализирует основные методологические и концептуальные системы, на основе
которых политологи осуществляют свои исследования. Автор поднимает основные проблемы,
необходимые для понимания эволюции ключевых дихотомий сравнительной политологии
(по линиям развитые — развивающиеся страны и Север — Юг).
Ключевые слова: сравнительная политология, политическое развитие, раскол между
Севером и Югом, постструктуралистский поворот в сравнительной политологии.
