Comparative Politics: Nature and Major Approaches

Comparative Politics: Nature and Major Approaches

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Comparative politics is the study and appraisal of domestic politics across countries. Comparative politics has a long and very eminent history dating back just before the origin of systematic political studies in ancient Greece and Rome. Even ancient people, compared their situations with those of other people's with whom they came in contact. The Bible is possibly one of the first written statements of comparative politics. The ancient Greeks performed the earliest systematic comparisons of a more modern and secular.

Comparative politics is key area in political science, pigeonholed by an empirical approach based on the comparative method. To put it in another way, comparative politics is the study of the domestic politics, political institutions, and conflicts of countries. It often encompasses comparisons among countries and through time within single countries, emphasizing major patterns of similarity and difference. Many political theorists like Arend Lijphart argued that comparative politics does not have a functional focus in itself, instead a methodological one (Lijphart, Arend,1971). In simple form, comparative politics is not defined by the object of its study, but by the method it applies to study political phenomena. Peter Mair and Richard Rose gave modern definition of comparative politics and stated that comparative politics is elaborated by a combination of a substantive focus on the study of countries' political systems and a method of recognising and explaining similarities and differences between these countries using common models (Peter, 1996). Rose mentioned that in comparative politics, "The focus is explicitly or implicitly upon more than one country, thus following familiar political science usage in excluding within-nation comparison. Methodologically, comparison is distinguished by its use of concepts that are applicable in more than one country"(Rose, Richard, 1991).

In the field of Comparative politics, the term politics has three connotation such as political activities, political process and political power. Political activity consists of the efforts by which the conditions of conflicts are created and resolved in a way pertaining to the interest of people as far as possible who play in their part in struggle for power. Political process is an extension of political activity. Political power is the major topic in comparative politics. The term power has been defined by different writers. Friedrich described power as a certain kind of human relationship. Whereas Tawney explained power as a capacity of an individual or group of individuals to modify the conduct of other individuals in a manner which he desires (J. C. Johari, 1982).

Comparative government studies were used by political researchers to get correct and valid conclusions regarding the nature and organisation of state and government. Their major objective was to discover the historical and legal similarities and dissimilarities among the various governments and their political institutions. A comparative- normative-prescriptive study of constitutions was conducted. It was an attempt to recognise the best political institutions.

When applied to particular fields of study, comparative politics denotes by other names, such as comparative government (the comparative study of forms of government) or comparative foreign policy (comparing the foreign policies of different States in order to establish general empirical connections between the characteristics of the State and the characteristics of its foreign policy).

Many theorists articulated that "Comparative political science" as a general term for an area of study, as opposed to a methodology of study, can be seen as redundant. The political only shows as political when either an overt or tacit comparison is being made. A study of a single political entity.