Jämförande politik - vad är det?

Abstract

Comparative ";Politics- What'Is It? Comparative politics is the only one of the political science subdisciplines that is defined in methodological rather than substantive terms. Since, however, scientific enterprises are always and unavoidable comparative, any emphasis on comparison and comparative method is certainly less than helpful in attempts to grasp the meaning of the term ";comparative politics";. According to general usage in political science, comparativists are engrossed in political similarities and differences between countries; this lexical definition, however, corresponds poorly with stipulative definitions embedded in the practice of research. For one thing, by performing important hypothesis-generating and similar tasks, studies of one case form a central and integrated feature of comparative politics. Furthermore, much comparative research moves on the levels of individuals and groups, and makes use of countries as contexts rather than units. As political science has matured to be a nomotetic discipline, aiming at the building of empirically falsifiable explanatory theory, the crossing of borders in space and time has become a necessity, and comparative politics is today much more than an isolated political science compartment only.