Newsletter Staff Guest Letterpages.ucsd.edu/~mnaoi/page4/POLI227/files/page1_2./APSA...Newsletter...

Volume 16, Issue 1 Winter 2005 Newsletter APSA - CP

The Organized Section in Comparative Politics of the American Political Science Association

Newsletter StaffUniversity of Notre Dame

Editors

Michael [email protected]

Anthony M. [email protected]

Assistant Editor

Claudia [email protected]

Book Review Editor

Naunihal [email protected]

Editorial Board

Kathleen Collins

Andrew Gould

Frances Hagopian

Donald Kommers

Scott Mainwaring

A. James McAdams

Guillermo O’Donnell

ContactDecio Hall, Box “D”University of Notre DameNotre Dame, Indiana 46556Tel. 574-631-5681http://www.nd.edu/~apsacp

Guest Letter

Comparative Politics: A View from Britain

Archie BrownOxford Universityarchie.brown@st-antonys. oxford.ac.uk

As we informed our readers in thelast winter issue of APSA-CP, thePresident of the Section will nowwrite an opening letter only for thesummer issue. For this winter issue,we invited Archie Brown, Professor ofPolitics at Oxford University, to reflectupon the strengths and weaknessesof American-style comparative poli-tics from the vantage point of a politi-cal scientist working within the intel-lectual traditions of the British aca-demic community. Professor Brown,a Fellow of the British Academy anda Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts andSciences, is one of the most distin-guished political scientists in Britainand a highly regarded Russia spe-cialist internationally. He is perhapsbest known for his prize-winningbook The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford,1996) and (with Michael Kaser andGerald S. Smith) The CambridgeEncyclopedia of Russia and theFormer Soviet Union. His mostrecent edited book is The Demise ofMarxism-Leninism in Russia(Palgrave/St. Antony’s, 2004). Inaddition to his deep knowledge ofAmerican comparative politics schol-arship, Professor Brown has exten-sive first-hand knowledge of compar-ative political science in the UnitedStates from his past visiting appoint-ments at Yale University, ColumbiaUniversity, the University of Texas atAustin, the University of Connecticut,and the University of Notre Dame.

The Editors

It goes almost without saying thatmuch of the best work in the world incomparative politics emanates fromthe United States. Although it is a bitinvidious to single out particular indi-viduals, the names of Robert A. Dahl,Juan Linz, Alfred Stepan, RobertPutnam, Peter Hall and GuillermoO’Donnell are among those thatcome immediately to mind. RichardRose’s contribution has also beenremarkable, but he is an Americanwho has lived for so long in Britainthat we are inclined to count him as“one of us.”

Along with outstanding work, howev-er, there is much in contemporarypolitical science that is trivial. A worry-ing trend on both sides of the Atlanticis the elevation of technique oversubstance. It is sad that young schol-ars should adopt – or, for the sake ofcareer advancement, go along with –the view that, when faced by a prob-lem in the real world of politics, theheight of their ambition should be toformulate a falsifiable hypothesis thatmay be somewhat related to theissue, however tangentially. Theimportance of the problem counts forless than the falsifiability of thehypothesis as demanded by the posi-tivistic norms of quantitative socialscience.

(Continued on page 2)

LetterAPSA-CP Vol 16, No. 12

Section OfficersPresident

Peter A. HallHarvard [email protected]

Vice President, President-Elect

Sidney TarrowCornell [email protected]

Secretary-Treasurer

Karen RemmerDuke [email protected]

2005 APSA Program Coordinator

Carles BoixUniversity of [email protected]

At-Large Committee Members

Jeffrey HerbstPrinceton [email protected]

Torben IversenHarvard [email protected]

Mathew ShugartUniversity of California, San [email protected]

Susan StokesUniversity of [email protected]

That this cast of mind skews researchand, particularly, publication ofresearch in the most mainstream jour-nals is clear. Let us take the case ofauthoritarianism. More people liveunder authoritarian regimes or inhybrid regimes than in democracies.The assessment of Freedom in theWorld 2004 is that 46 percent of theworld’s population live in free coun-tries, 25 percent in countries that are

observed, optimism about the spreadof democracy and normative commit-ment to its advance has led to con-ceptual confusion. Instead of “adjecti-val democracy,” the qualifiers wouldbe better attached to “authoritarian-ism.” Indeed, “electoral authoritarian-ism” should be seen as a significantregime type among (thus far) failedtransitions to democracy (Linz 2000,p. 34).

If we take the latest Freedom Housefigures as a rough guide, then theleast that can be said is that a quarterof the world’s population live underauthoritarian rule, but if we includehybrid regimes that are closer toauthoritarianism than to democracythe figure would be not much short ofhalf the people alive today. For any-one interested in world politics, thereis no reason why analyses of thepower structure within authoritariansystems, comparison of the differenttypes of authoritarian and totalitariansystems, and examination of the vari-ety of ways in which authoritarianregimes evolve, liberalize and evendemocratize should be less significantobjects of research than, for example,the scrutiny of legislative behavior inWestern democracies.

In some ways, of course, studyingauthoritarian regimes is more difficultthan studying democracies. The for-mer do not readily lend themselves topositivistic research. Uncovering andinterpreting the workings of the sys-tem and analyzing the sources ofpotential change involve, for the mostpart, qualitative rather than quantita-tive analysis. The findings of politicalscientists working in this area are, ina very broad sense, falsifiable, butnot in the narrow, positivistic manner.They can be discredited and super-seded only by the accumulation ofmore solid evidence and more cogentarguments. It is hard to resist the con-clusion that authoritarian political sys-tems do not get the attention they

(Continued from page 1)

“... there is much in contem-

porary political science that

is trivial. A worrying trend on

both sides of the Atlantic is

the elevation of technique

over substance.”

“not free” – i.e. unambiguouslyauthoritarian – while 29 percent live in“partly free” countries.1 Not many ofthe “partly free” would count asdemocracies when measured againstsuch modest and meaningful criteriaas the existence of effective institu-tions for making government policiesdepend on votes, and on the ability ofthe governed to hold governmentsaccountable (Dahl 1971; Linz 2000;on the latter point, see also Brown2001). The language of political sci-entists often brings regimes rhetori-cally closer to the democratic end ofthe political spectrum than they meritwith the use of such terms as “elec-toral democracy,” “illiberal democra-cy,” or even O’Donnell’s “delegativedemocracy.” In many instances, thenoun, however qualified, is a mis-nomer, as democratic forms are faroutweighed by arbitrary application ofthe rules and by authoritarian leader-ship. Accordingly, as Juan Linz has

3APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1

deserve in leading journals, or inbooks that aspire to provide anoverview of the discipline of politicalscience, mainly because some of themore fashionable modes of analysiscannot usefully be applied to theirstudy.

tained many fine contributions, allo-cated just a single chapter to totalitari-an and authoritarian regimes.Fortunately, Juan Linz surmountedthat problem by writing a “chapter”that comprised 234 printed pages(Greenstein and Polsby, Vol. 3,Macropolitical Theory). To their credit,Greenstein and Polsby recognizedthe significance of this contributionand were accommodating editors.When, a quarter of a century after itsoriginal publication, Linz republishedthat piece as a separate book, ampli-fied by almost fifty pages of “FurtherReflections” (Linz, 2000), he notedthat his main bargaining counter withhis 1975 editors was that, though “amajority of the world’s population wasliving under nondemocratic rule,” theremainder of the multi-volumeHandbook contained no discussion ofany aspects of these regimes.

Though I cannot claim a close famil-iarity with the “perestroika” movementin American political science, thechoice of name appears apt. Theremarkable political phenomenon thatput perestroika into the English lan-guage saw the pluralization of Sovietand Russian politics. It is understand-able, then, that the term should beappropriated by those whose goalappears to be the promotion of agreater pluralism in American politicalscience. Fewer concerns have beenraised in Britain where a pluralism ofapproaches to the study of politics ismore strongly entrenched than in theUnited States (Barry 1999; Hayward1999; but for a somewhat differentview, see Marsh and Savigny 2004).However, even in the USA, as BrianBarry has argued, political sciencehas not followed the example of eco-nomics by defining itself in terms ofmethod rather than subject matter(Barry 1999). The limits of integrationof the discipline, for the foreseeablefuture, are, Barry suggests, “the limitsof institutional rational choice.” Sincethose limits are very real, a pluralism

of approaches to the study of politicswill surely prevail unless political sci-entists – collectively, narrowly, andabsurdly – decide to define the signifi-cance of a problem by the degree towhich it is amenable to a particularform of analysis.

Letter

“The state did not have to be

‘brought back into’ political

science in Britain [...]

because it was never out.

[...] This underlies the wis-

dom of Oscar Wilde’s remark

that the trouble with being

fashionable is that ‘one

becomes so quickly out of

date’.”

David Marsh and Heather Savigny,however, dispute the Goodin andKlingemann view that political scienceis at present “a broad, pluralistchurch” (Marsh and Savigny 2004;Goodin and Klingemann 1996).Rather, they contend, “it is still domi-nated by positivism and, more specifi-cally, by behaviouralism and rationalchoice theory.” The surveys of differ-ent branches of The British Study ofPolitics in the Twentieth Century(Hayward, Barry and Brown 1999)suggest that in the U.K. at least this isnot so, although Marsh and Savignydraw evidence to support their con-tention from the methodological orien-tation of the majority of articles pub-lished in Political Studies and espe-cially the British Journal of PoliticalScience. As the same authorsobserve, “pluralism involves acknowl-edging that there are different ways to

A case in point is A New Handbook ofPolitical Science, edited by Robert E.Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann(1996). In many respects an excellentwork, this 845-page volume all butignores the study of authoritarian gov-ernment. The partial exception is ashort chapter on “DemocratizationStudies” (Whitehead, 1996a). The rel-ative neglect of non-democratic sys-tems in mainstream political scienceoccurred even before the “FourthWave” of democratization during thesecond half of the 1980s (on theFourth Wave, see Whitehead 1996b;von Beyme 1996; Brown 2000;McFaul 2002) – consisting, above all,of the demise of Communist systemsin Europe – that saw a significantreduction in the extent of authoritarianrule. The 8-volume Handbook ofPolitical Science of Fred Greensteinand Nelson Polsby (1975), which con-

“It is sad that young scholars

should [...] go along with the

view that, when faced by a

problem in the real world of

politics, the height of their

ambition should be to formu-

late a falsifiable hypothesis

that may be somewhat relat-

ed to the issue, however tan-

gentially.”

APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 14

do political science.” While thisshould be obvious, it needs reitera-tion. When journal editors act asgatekeepers and “establish positivistcriteria of what is good work,” then itfollows that they will tend to “judgepositivist work as good and non-posi-tivist as bad” (Marsh and Savigny2004). Even when journal editorsare, in principle, open to a variety ofapproaches to the study of politics(true in the case of the BJPS and,perhaps, increasingly of the APSR)the traditions of recent decades willgreatly influence what is submitted tothem. As a result – to take an exam-ple from a field I know – far moreinteresting articles on post-Communist politics (representing awide variety of approaches) are to befound in Post-Soviet Affairs, editedby George Breslauer, the Dean ofSocial Sciences at Berkeley, than inmost of the mainstream political sci-ence journals combined.

It is both significant, and encourag-ing, to find in a recent issue ofAPSA-CP (Summer 2004) several ofthe leading figures in comparativepolitics, whose own work embraces avariety of methodological stand-points, emphasizing the need for agenuine pluralism of approaches,and pointing to the neglect of issuesof fundamental importance for theworld we live in because falsifying ahypothesis (often a highly artificialone) may, for a young scholar, con-tribute more to professional accept-ance. The broadly positivist PeterHall sees the field “not as one thatmakes preeminent use of a compara-tive method but as one that utilizesmany methods to compare politicsacross nations” (2004). Juan Linzand Samuel Huntington, who differon many things, are at one inbemoaning the paucity of seriouscomparative study of political leader-ship (Munck and Snyder 2004).Adam Przeworski notes that gradu-ate students and assistant professors

“learn to package their intellectualambitions into articles publishable bya few journals and to shy away fromanything that might look like a politicalstance,” and are encouraged to thinkthat “professionalism” involves findinganswers to “narrowly formulated ques-tions” (ibid.).

Przeworski notes also the need forfurther study of the institutions ofauthoritarian regimes. This is onearea where what Barry has called thedistinctive trait in the British study ofpolitics, “resistance to intellectualfashion,” was seen to advantage. Thestate did not have to be “brought backinto” political science in Britain (evenin the study of democracies) becauseit was never out. The study of politicalinstitutions did not become as unfash-ionable as it was for a couple ofdecades in the United States. Thetwenty years since March and Olsen(1984) have witnessed an about-turnin the USA on the significance of insti-tutional analysis. This underlines thewisdom of Oscar Wilde’s remark thatthe trouble with being fashionable isthat “one becomes so quickly out ofdate” (Bogdanor 1999).

Although there have been a numberof attempts to provide parsimoniousexplanations of the end of Communistrule in Europe, none of them arewholly satisfactory. Nor are they likelyto be, for too many crucial factorswere at work. While the partial devel-opment of civil society was importantin a very few cases (most notably thatof Poland), in others changes of andwithin state institutions were of fargreater significance.2 In the SovietUnion, as in China, what X.L. Dingcalled “institutional amphibiousness”(Ding 1994) was more important forpolitical change than any putativedevelopment of civil society. The latterwas a consequence, not a cause, ofthe pluralization of Soviet politicsunder Gorbachev. By “institutionalamphibiousness” Ding means, inter

alia, an institution “used for purposescontrary to those it is supposed to ful-fill.” Institutions, which were meant tobe citadels of ideological orthodoxy, ina number of cases led a double life.Ding sees this in terms of institutionsset up by Communist regimes being“gradually co-opted by critical forcesfor counter purposes, all the whilekeeping up the protective façade thatthese were still party-state institu-tions.” The latter part of that state-ment is quite widely generalizable, butthe first part of the statement shouldinclude also the evolution of the think-ing of people who entered those insti-tutions without any heterodox inten-tions, but whose views underwentradical, albeit gradual, change. Ideaswere critically important, but ideasneeded institutional bearers. A minori-ty of relatively open-minded party offi-cials and party intellectualsentrenched in powerful positions hadfar greater opportunities to effecttransformative change than wereavailable in the broader society. Thatkind of “institutional amphibiousness”is an important part of the explanationof the origins and early years of pere-stroika in the Soviet Union, of thereform movement in Czech commu-nism in the second half of the 1960s,and, if Ding is right, of a processunderway in China.

Finally, though there is no space toelaborate the point, comparative poli-tics needs to be open not only to avariety of approaches to understand-ing political change and continuity, butalso to be constantly open to insightsfrom other disciplines (not just eco-nomics) and other branches of politi-cal science. In particular, the mutualisolation of comparative politics andinternational relations is both intellec-tually and politically damaging.Although lip service is sometimespaid to the undesirability of this, thesetwo important areas of political sci-ence have their separate journals(with the notable and laudable excep-

Letter

5APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1 Controversies

tion of World Politics), separate litera-tures, and separate “gurus.” If we areto understand some of the moreimportant developments in the lastdecades of the twentieth century andthe early decades of the twenty-first –from the fall of Communism to may-hem in the Middle East to the politicsof environmental survival – that willhave to change.

Notes

1 The annual surveys of FreedomHouse are as good a source of com-parative data on democracy world-wide as we have, in spite of the awk-ward fact that freedom and democra-cy, while related, are by no meanssynonymous.

2 Within the category of state institu-tions, I include, naturally, CommunistParty institutions. Notwithstanding thelegal fiction in Communist states thatthe party was a “public organization”rather than part of the state structure,the highest echelons of the party con-stituted the most authoritative andpowerful agencies of the state.

On “‘American’Methods,‘Comparative’Theories”

Note:

Complete citations for this issue areonline at http://www.nd.edu/~apsacp/backissues.html.

David SamuelsUniversity of [email protected]

I applaud the editors for devoting thewinter 2004 APSA-CP symposium to“The Confluence of American andComparative Politics.” However, Ibelieve that the symposium couldhave delved deeper into an explana-tion of the growing influence of ration-al choice theories in comparative poli-tics. Debate about “exporting” theepistemological and ontologicalassumptions underlying rationalchoice continues, and I believe thatour subfield would be well-served bya deeper critical appreciation of theconnection between the intellectualenvironment that gave birth to rationalchoice in the United States and theway in which rational choice hasexpanded beyond the boundaries of“American” politics.

I suggest that we can connect the riseof rational choice in the U.S. and itsgrowing influence in comparative poli-tics through the end of the Cold War,increased economic globalization,and the worldwide spread of democ-racy. Insight into this dynamic comesfrom S.M. Amadae’s RationalizingCapitalist Democracy, a book thatshould be required reading for politi-cal scientists. Amadae explores therise of rational choice in the U.S. andthus in explaining American politics.She argues that rational choiceembodies a theory of democracy, onethat differs in critical ways from

American versions of republicanism,for example. She suggests that“rational choice theory contributes toa modernist epistemology that sup-ports democratic liberalism by uphold-ing the values of free inquiry, univer-salism, individual autonomy, and gov-ernment by trade and negotiation, asopposed to autocratic tyranny or mobrule” (256). Support for such a way ofknowing the world gained widespreadcredence and support during the ColdWar, when science (including socialscience) and democracy partnered inthe battle against Soviet totalitarian-ism. This helps explain the rise ofrational choice in the U.S.

“The end of the Cold War left

rational choice ascendant in

the U.S., and left the U.S.

globally ascendant. [...]

This is the key to explaining

the growth of rational choice

in comparative politics.”

The end of the Cold War left rationalchoice ascendant in the U.S., and leftthe U.S. globally ascendant. At thattime, both government policy andacademic discourse (Fukuyama,Huntington, e.g.) sought to justify theexport of the U.S. version of capitalistdemocracy. This is the key to explain-ing the growth of rational choice incomparative politics. At a minimum,rational choice functionally fits withthe contemporary Zeitgeist, findinggreater relevance and applicability tostudies of democratization(Przeworski’s Democracy and theMarket comes to mind as a funda-mental text in this regard), legislativepolitics, party competition, and otherresearch topics of interest to compar-

6 APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1Controversies

Second, we reject the notion thatimmigration policy is uninterestingbecause it is reliably dominated bypro-immigration economic and ethnicinterest groups. While a number ofimportant policy outcomes have (attimes unintentionally) favored suchgroups, important exceptions to thisgeneralization exist, including thecases of U.S. immigration restrictionmeasures in the 1920s and 1990s,French immigration policies afterWorld War II and, during the currentdecade, and Japan’s highly restrictiveimmigration policy from the 1970s tothe present (despite frequent lobbyingby business groups). The “client poli-tics” model does not explain theseand other important cases.

Wayne A.CorneliusUniversity of California

at San [email protected].

Mark R.RosenblumUniversity of New

[email protected].

The APSA-CP Newsletter’s Winter2004 symposium on the intersectionsof American and comparative politicsoverlooks one of the most potentiallyfruitful confluences of these subfields:the study of immigration and immigra-tion policymaking. Transnational flowsof economic migrants and politicalrefugees have become a defining fea-ture of the global economy during thelast three decades. Sociologists,anthropologists, and economists havedeveloped sophisticated models ofthe causes and consequences ofthese international flows. Yet even aspolitical scientists devote increasingattention to a range of related issues -trade policy, the welfare state, ethnici-

ty, and nationalism - political sciencelags behind other social sciences inresearch on international populationmovements.

(Continued on page 30 )

ativists. In short, Amadae argues thatthe intellectual and ideological battlesof the Cold War explain the ascen-dance of rational choice in the U.S. Isuggest that the ongoing ideologicalbattles and political dynamics of thecontemporary era help explain thegrowth of this U.S. export into com-parative politics. I cannot do completejustice to the intellectual history of thisquestion here, but I hope that I havecontributed to the discussion.

“...many political scientists

assume that immigration pol-

icy does not vary in theoreti-

cally interesting ways.”

We believe that this inattentionreflects three common mispercep-tions. First, many political scientistsassume immigration policy does notvary in theoretically interesting ways.Yet our own and others’ researchreveals significant cross-national vari-ation in policy outputs, if not in policyoutcomes.1 Among developed states,a basic distinction divides “traditional”countries of immigration (the UnitedStates, Canada, and Australia) thathave long tolerated high levels oflegal permanent immigration, vs.newer labor-importing states thathave raised greater barriers to legalpermanent immigration. Among thelatter, a further distinction separatesEuropean states (which have movedtoward common refugee and asylumpolicies and nationality laws, whileoften liberalizing immigrant integrationpolicies in an effort to incorporateimmigrants into the body politic) fromstill newer immigration states in EastAsia (which continue to emphasizetemporary guestworker programswithout provisions for family reunifica-tion). While these inter-regional dis-tinctions provide a starting point, stillmore diversity exists in terms of spe-cific admissions criteria, immigrants’rights, and policy implementationstrategies. There is a need for better,theory-driven typologies of nationalimmigration regimes and the logics ofimmigration control that they embody.

“...to what extent does immi-

gration policymaking resem-

ble a “two-level game” rather

than strictly domestic political

pressures?”

A third misperception is that immigra-tion does not merit study becausestructural “pushes” and “pulls” in theglobal economy make it virtuallyimpossible for modern nation-statesto control immigration flows. Yetpotential migrants are rational individ-uals who calculate whether their utilitywill be enhanced by choosing to emi-grate - a calculation inherently subjectto policy manipulation, as states raisethe cost of migration and/or lower itsexpected benefits. Policy decisionsalso determine the rights each classof migrant enjoys, as well as howaggressively those rights areenforced. And to the extent that legalaccess to industrialized states is ascarce global resource, policymakers

The Neglect ofImmigration

7APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1Symposium

The Confluence of International Relations and Comparative Politics: Professional Dilemmas

IntroductionFor many if not most contemporaryscholars of political economy fewmeaningful intellectual boundariesnow exist between the subfields ofinternational relations and compara-tive politics. Inter-subfield boundarieshave conspicuously eroded too forstudents of contentious politics, ethnicconflict, foreign policy, globalization,immigration, revolution, the welfarestate, and the diffusion of institutions,regimes, norms, and culture.

Outside of these research streams,and especially administratively, thetwo subfields remain divided, howev-er. In the words of Duane Swankbelow, “conventional compartmental-ization and the ‘pigeonholing’ of facul-ty generally persist.” Indeed, in most,including many of the higher ranked,political science departments, interna-tional relations and comparative poli-tics remain distinct subfields, witheach retaining separate curricula, fac-ulty lines, student admissions quotas,and Ph.D. qualifying exams.

Whatever its origins or current ratio-nales, the continuing administrativedivide between international relationsand comparative politics raises multi-ple professional dilemmas for gradu-ate students and faculty whose schol-arship and teaching are organizedaround themes for which the two sub-fields are increasingly convergingintellectually. Among others, thesedilemmas are: Should a student whoworks at the intersection of interna-tional relations and comparative poli-tics claim intellectual citizenship in asingle subfield or self-identify explicit-ly with both? Is it practical to masteronly one subfield’s literature on agiven question, or is it necessary tobe equally conversant with both? To

which subfield’s journals should onesubmit one’s work? When job oppor-tunities arise, should one apply forpositions in international relations orcomparative politics? Will searchcommittees seriously consider one’scandidacy in both subfields?Moreover, once having joined a tradi-tionally organized department andbeen asked to mentor undergraduateand graduate students, serve onadministrative committees and con-tribute to curriculum planning, withwhich subfield should one be moreactively involved?

Each of the six scholars contributingto this issue’s symposium was askedto consider these and other, relatedquestions. Below, they offer theirinsights, insights grounded in theirunique and rich personal and profes-sional experiences. Prompted by ourinstructions, the essays generallydivide on the set of questions thatwere privileged. While Alison Bryskand Duane Swank’s contributions pri-marily, but not exclusively, focus onthe dilemmas posed by the currentdivide for young scholars, the essaysby Bernard Grofman and PeterGourevitch speak more broadly to theintellectual trends lines within andacross IR and comparative over time.The contributions by Helen Milner andLayna Mosley, on the other hand,address both subjects.

The alert reader certainly will not failto notice that our contributors share asimilar outlook on most of the afore-mentioned questions. Each of ourauthors, for example, echoes in onefashion or another Brysk’s prescrip-tion that we need to be asking how,rather than whether, to bridge the bor-ders between IR and comparative.Moreover, each waxes enthusiasticabout the growing confluence

between international relations andcomparative politics although, asGourevitch’s essay reminds us, this isnot an entirely recent trend.

They also agree that a rigid divisionof intellectual labor between the twosubfields is not only difficult to justifybut, more importantly, it is an impedi-ment to enlightened scholarship, fruit-ful hiring, and good teaching. On thelatter score, Grofman’s description ofthe organization of his home depart-ment’s graduate core curriculumaround three course pillars - micro-politics, macro-politics and politicaltheory – offers a provocative alterna-tive to the traditional model.

Agreed, too, are the contributors onthe functionality of retaining someboundaries between IR and compara-tive. Layna Mosley’s essay, for exam-ple, represents these boundaries in atwo-by-two table in which internation-al and domestic variables are eitherprimarily dependent or independentones. As Mosley’s survey of the arti-cles that have appeared inInternational Organization demon-strates, the majority are “pure” IR orcomparative in nature, despite thegrowing trend toward what she callsinternational-comparative politics(ICP).

Finally, on the whole, our authors arein accord that the growing confluencebetween international and compara-tive is unlikely to reverse itself. If theyare correct and given current trends,we can anticipate even greater cross-field hiring and a further intellectualintegration of the two subfields in thecoming years.

8 APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1Symposium

boundaries, then this, too, is obvious-ly a topic for comparative analysis –albeit a much bigger topic than whenwe confine ourselves just to states asthe sole (or key) agents. The distin-guished sociologist, Robin Williams(2003: 37), asserts that the use of thephrase “international relations” withinpolitical science was misleading,since the field’s primary focus, “atleast until the 1990s, was interstaterelations.” And he goes on to say that“if cultural homogeneity and commonancestry are the marks of a purenation-state, few cases exist today.”

“Political Participation,” “PoliticalParties,” “Interest Groups,”Constitutional Design,” “ElectoralSystems,” “Legislatures,” “Law andCourts,” “Representation andRedistricting,” “Race and Ethnicity,”“International Relations,” etc. In thisspirit, I tell my own students that theyshould pick loci of politics at differentlevels (at least one a country; at leastone a smaller unit, e.g., Ashtabula,Ohio, and at least one a person whois not a political scientist or other aca-demic) about which they will cultivatedeep personal knowledge from whichthey can draw research ideas, andagainst which they can test thebroader generalizations about politicsto which they are exposed.5 Ofcourse, individual faculty normallyteach such courses primarily by draw-ing on data from the countries whichthey know the best, but nonetheless,every such course is expected tohave at least some comparative con-tent.6

Not long after Harry’s arrival, DavidEaston also joined the UCI faculty,and he still teaches the required grad-uate course in political theory. In ourUniversity of Chicago days - I was anRA for Dave - I learned from him that,essentially, all political science iscomparative politics. My long-timecolleague, A. Wuffle, has formalizedthis maxim in terms of the “TNT prin-ciple”: analyses should be compara-tive across Time, and/or acrossNations and/or other entities,7 and/oracross Types of institutions or actors(quoted in Grofman, 1999).8

In this context, it seems to me tomake sense to view IR as a subset ofcomparative politics. If IR is only thestudy of relations between states,then what is that if not a topic forcomparative analysis - albeit a some-what narrowly delimited one?Moreover, if IR is what all kinds ofactors and entities do with and toeach other in ways that cross state

Ph.D.s withoutBorders? DrawingSubdisciplinaryBoundaries inPolitical Science1

Bernard GrofmanUniversity of California

at [email protected]

The late Harry Eckstein was thefounding chair of the Department ofPolitical Science at the University ofCalifornia at Irvine (UCI) fifteen yearsago.2 Harry had a unique vision forhow to do political science in a waythat didn’t divide us up into the usualseparate tables by things like whatcountry(ies) we happened to mostlystudy. The main component of thatvision was adapted from the distinc-tion in economics between micro-level and macro-level phenomena.The required graduate core curricu-lum in my department to this day con-sists of three courses: one in micro-politics (the comparative study of indi-vidual-level political behavior, and ofthe organization and behavior of inter-est groups and political parties), onein macro-politics (the comparativestudy of government organization andpublic policy outputs), and one inpolitical theory (both modern socialtheory and the classics).3

One norm that Harry instilled was thatno graduate course should ever betitled with the name of a country. Inparticular, in Harry’s view, the notionof American politics as a distinctivesubfield was the last vestige of anatheoretical area studies approachand was to be strongly resisted. 4

Rather, there should be courses like

“To ask these questions, in

my view, is to realize how

silly they are.”

Moreover, if IR deals only with rela-tions among states, what exactly arewe to make of the constantly evolvingEuropean Union, or devolution withinthe U.K.? Are these topics for com-parativists or for IR specialists?Indeed, even if we take the study ofwar as the topic that has preeminent-ly been a focus of IR theorizing, thenwhat are we to make of the fact thatmost “wars” in the past two decadesare internal to states,9 or that the U.S.is allegedly fighting a “war” with Al-Qaeda? On the other hand, if webroaden the net of what we mean byIR, are only those in IR allowed tostudy immigration and refugee flows,or resistance to the spread ofMcDonald’s franchises, or the spreadof norms of human rights, or cancomparativists be allowed to join thefun? To ask these questions, in myview, is to realize how silly they are.

I start from the premise that the stan-dard “field” divisions within politicalscience are not very helpful from thestandpoint of creating a climate inwhich we will be doing the best possi-


ble research.10 I think that, if you aregoing to slice up political science, itoften makes more sense to do so bytopic than by unit of analysis, ratherthan having states and the interna-tional sphere be somehow sui gener-is. I recognize the existence of theo-ries that ascribe uniqueness to inter-national politics due to the absence ofan overarching (legitimate) authority,but anarchic phenomena are notfound only in the international arena,on the one hand, and, on the other, itis disputable that anarchy is a goodportrait of the present internationalsystem.

Alternatively, the knowledge and ana-lytic tools you need to make sense ofthe political economy of cities, or ofpolitical economy at the national level,is very close to what you need tomake sense of international politicaleconomy. Similarly, the same kinds oftechnical skills commonly used tomake sense of voting processes innational parliaments also applies tovoting processes in city councils orstate or provincial legislatures, andcarries over to voting patterns in theUN. And making sense of the struc-ture of (domestic) interest groups,and attempting to evaluate theireffects on public policy decisions, isconceptually very similar to makingsense of the structure of NGOs andINGOs and attempting to evaluatetheir effects on international policies.Treating similar topics in similar wayswould, I think, help the training ofgraduate students.

As pointed out earlier, I am not tryingto argue for contentless training; thereare certainly key features of the inter-national environment and its historicalevolution that anyone who is interest-ed in international relations mustknow and understand. But there alsois training in statistical techniques, inresearch design and the philosophyof social science explanation, and ingame theory and formal modeling

skills, that cuts across lots of substan-tive domains. In this respect, we alsohave to be careful to keep in mind thedistinction between teaching particu-lar methods as tools and teachingparticular methods as answers.11

Second, while we do have a moduleof six courses in IR that graduate stu-dents with IR interests are encour-aged to take, such IR courses onlyconstitute one-third of the requiredgraduate course load, and studentswith IR interests are strongly encour-aged to take courses in other areas –not just in mainstream comparativetopics but in areas like political psy-chology, methodology, etc. Also, UCIhas a relatively unusual way of han-dling breadth requirements for gradu-ate training. Rather than the usualmulti-hour preliminary exams in someor all of the discipline’s major fields,we require students to complete threepapers of potentially publishable qual-ity in at least two different subfields ofthe discipline (broadly conceived),with at least one of these papers asynthetic literature review. This hashelped insure that students with IRinterests look to political science morebroadly.

Third, the School of Social Sciencesat UCI has a long tradition of fosteringinterdisciplinary work, going back toits first Dean, James March - some-one who, in his own work, bridged thedisciplines of political science andsociology. At the institutional level, thepresent Dean of the School of SocialSciences, a cognitive scientist; herpredecessor, William Schonfeld; andthe Associate Dean, CaesarSereseres, have pressed for the cre-ation of an interdisciplinary ResearchFocus in International Studies that notonly would include both “comparative”and “IR” faculty in political science,but also numerous faculty in othercognate disciplines.12 In seeking tofoster the growth of such a focus, forthe past several years the dean’soffice has allocated lines for multidis-ciplinary faculty searches, with an ini-tial vetting of candidates by a commit-tee with members from severaldepartments. The proposed finalorganization of that Research Focusis not set, but one idea is to pull

“My views are that empirical

political science is about

making sense of the world

[...] that methods are best

dictated by questions....”

UCI has grappled with the issues ofwhere IR fits within political science,as have many universities. While Imake no claim that we have defini-tively resolved them, we have madesome progress, and, at minimum, wehave not experienced the kinds ofschisms that give rise to thoughtsabout political science and IR goingtheir separate ways. I would first notethat, long before it was fashionable,colleagues of mine such as EtelSolingen and Wayne Sandholtz wererejecting hard and fast demarcationsbetween IR and comparative, anddemonstrating in their own work justhow arbitrary the boundaries were,while others of my colleagues, likePatrick Morgan, were writing aboutthe domestic roots of foreign policy.And this bridging effort has continuedin the hiring of new “IR” and “compar-ative” faculty at UCI, like Bob Uriu(industrial policy, foreign policy),Alison Brysk (human rights), CeciliaLynch (domestic roots of foreign poli-cy, religion and politics), and KamalSadiq (immigration and citizenship),whose work also undermines thenotion of a fence separating the top-ics of concern to students of IR andthose of concern to students of com-parative.

APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 110Symposium

together the considerable concentra-tions of faculty strength in UCI’sSchool of Social Sciences such asthose in conflict and security studiesand human rights (linked to theInstitute of Global Peace and ConflictStudies), in immigration studies(linked to the Center for Research inImmigration and Public Policy), indemocratization (linked to the Centerfor the Study of Democracy), and incross-cultural studies, to create amulti-track program.

I think there are compelling reasonsto integrate IR and comparative. Iview this integration in the context ofa belief that the real fault lines inpolitical science are not based on dif-ferences among scholars in the topicsunder investigation. As I have writtenelsewhere (Grofman 1997), the realdivisions within political science arenot those across subfields but interms of more fundamental differ-ences in orientation, e.g. betweenthose who see political science as abranch of moral philosophy, andthose who see it as a search forempirical understanding/explanation;between those who wish to immersethemselves in insider’s knowledge ofa delimited domain and detaileddescription and those whose firstreaction is to look for comparativeanalysis to shed explanatory light onparticular cases; between thosewhose first recourse to any questionposed is to go about amassing dataand those whose first recourse isthinking the question through fromfirst principles; between those whosearch for certain answers to relative-ly small and manageable questionsand those who would be willing tosettle for not-so-certain answers aslong as the questions were big ones;between those who think that boththe important questions and theimportant answers have already beenwritten down by great minds of thepast, and those who think that theprocess of knowledge gathering is

ongoing and cumulative; betweenthose who think that political scienceis the study of governmental institu-tions and those who think that politi-cal science is the study of power andoutcomes, especially in terms of “whogets what, when, and how”; andbetween those who wish to under-stand the world and those who wishto change it.

My views are that empirical politicalscience is about making sense of theworld of political behavior, interac-tions, and institutions; that methodsare best dictated by questions; andthat arguments about what conceptu-al approaches, explanatory variables,etc., are best cannot ever beanswered in the abstract, but onlywith reference to comparisons ofcompeting answers to concrete puz-zles. In my own work (2001) I suggestthat good social science can be a lotlike uncovering clues to solve acrime,13 but that, in classifying typesof mysteries to solve, it is helpful todistinguish between whodunits, how-dunits, and whydunits. This threefolddistinction allows us to recognize thatthere are different important questionsto ask without privileging any oneapproach to truth.

I would also insist that one should notconfuse the simple question of whatlevel of measurement you have (qual-itative versus quantitative) in a partic-ular dependent or independent vari-able with the much deeper epistemo-logical question of what we mean bya satisfactory explanation. The needto go beyond merely establishingempirical findings about correlationsor time lines so as to specify a plausi-ble mechanism capable of producingthe observed linkages/correlations isan issue for every scholar, regardlessof whether they are doing quantitativeor qualitative work. Relatedly, claimsto explanatory superiority of the form“My explanation is better than yoursbecause my explanation had truly ele-

gant and incomprehensible (at leastto you) mathematical theorems in itabout Nash-Zelten perfect game-the-oretic equilibria/made use of the con-cept of social agency/rests on myown deep, personal and nontransfer-able understanding of the otherwiseinscrutable characteristics ofJavanese politics/is based on time-series analyses with multi-skedaddlederror structure corrected for pageproofs,” don’t really get us very far.

When I judge scholarly work, my lit-mus tests are always “Have I learnedsomething new and interesting? Do Ihave reason to believe what hasbeen claimed is correct? And, have Ibeen given insights that I can apply inother domains? From this perspec-tive, worrying about what field of thediscipline something fits in is muchado about nothing.

Notes

1 I am indebted to helpful conversa-tions about this paper with A Wuffle,now an Associate to Professor atUCI.

2 Before that, political scientists oper-ated more informally within a non-departmentalized School of SocialSciences, and trained a half-dozen orso political scientists before depart-mentalization, including quite distin-guished ones such as MichaelCohen, Lynn Mather, and MatthewShugart. Nevertheless, it has beenonly since departmentalization thatUCI has had a formalized graduatecurriculum.

3 However, the undergraduate politicalscience curriculum at UCI remainsmuch more traditionally organized.

4 Let me be clear: this was nevertaken to demean the importance ofdeveloping country-specific or area-specific knowledge, language skills,etc. Harry himself had a deep under-


standing of politics and history in sev-eral countries, including his nativeGermany, Britain and Norway, and agrounding in philosophy, literature,and classic works in political scienceand sociology.

5 For example, in the past, in studyingvoting behavior in the U.S., I oftenpracticed the Fannie Grofman test,i.e., I asked myself whether I thoughtthat the theory I was being exposedto could satisfactorily explain thebehavior of my mother.

6 I consider myself a comparativistwhose primary realm of expertise isthe U.S., although I have also writtenabout electoral politics in other coun-tries and about general topics likecoalition formation and electoral engi-neering from a broadly comparativeperspective. (Of course, on days ofthe week that include a y, I have alsobeen known to work on topics inbehavioral social choice, or constitu-tional jurisprudence, or researchmethodology, or political cartooningand satire.) But, as a founding mem-ber of the California Drive-in Churchof the Incorrigibly Eclectic, and as theleading (and almost only) member ofthe “reasonable choice modeling”school of political theory (see Wuffle,1999 for an elucidation of the credo ofthis sect), such diversity is perhapsde rigueur.

7 Here I follow the common politicalscience convention of using “nation”and “state” and “country” interchange-ably, but recognize the distinction thatcan usefully be drawn between thetwo concepts (see e.g., Williams,2003: 36-37).

8 My colleague Mark Petracca beginshis introductory undergraduate classin political theory by proclaiming that,from the beginning (Plato andAristotle), the study of politics wasintrinsically comparative and macro-analytical in nature. As he further

pointed out to me, (personal commu-nication, November, 2004), “it is diffi-cult to think of a ‘great’ political theo-rist through the end of the 19th centu-ry who was not a comparativist and,of course, so many of America’sfounding fathers were likewise stu-dents of comparative governance.”

9 Williamson (2003: 80) notes, forexample, that in 1993 “every one ofthe thirty-four major armed conflictsthen underway were within, notbetween states.”

10 I have already alluded to theunhelpfulness of making Americanpolitics a field within the discipline,although I will confess that the pres-sures of the marketplace force UCI tolabel some its graduate students asAmericanists in order to find a fitbetween their interests and the posi-tions that are being advertised.

11 For example, I’ve previously writtenthat “game theory is to political sci-ence as calculus is to physics,”(1997), but that doesn’t make everyapplication of calculus a contributionto physics, or every application ofgame theory a contribution to politicalscience.

12 If the lines between IR and compar-ative are hard to demarcate, andsomewhat meaningless, then so, too,often are the lines between whatpolitical scientists study and whatsociologists study (see e.g., Williams2003, a superb work on ethnic conflictby a sociologist to which political sci-ence should definitely lay claim), orbetween what political scientists whodo political economy study and whatis done by economists working in thesame area.

13 My colleague Wuffle has advocatedsimilar views in terms of the so-calledFirst Law of Epistemioincology,namely, that truth is like a truffle: “First you have to figure out where to

BlurredBoundaries -Hurray!: ShiftingLines inComparative andInternationalPolitics

Peter GourevitchUniversity of California

at San [email protected]

The confluence between IR and com-parative is to some as old as the hillsand to others quite new. In fact it isboth. If you thought of these fields asvery different, then certainly some-thing new is happening in our disci-pline; but if you worked on problemsthat linked them, then it is old. Ibegan my career working onFrench/European politics and com-parative political economy. It wasimpossible to examine the politicalcleavages within the FrenchParliament in the period after 1945without seeing that foreign policy cutthrough other divisions. ShouldFrance join NATO and the CommonMarket and allow German rearma-ment? Should France cut its coloniesloose, giving up Indochina andAlgeria? These questions split thecommunists and the socialists, andthe Gaullists from other conserva-tives.

Similarly, it was impossible to thinkabout political economy within a

dig; then you have to dig around a lot,and, then, you have to get rid of allthe dirt that gets in the way.”


country without locating it in the inter-national economy. The politicalengagement of agriculture every-where turned on the world price of itscommodities. Local markets werenever adequate to explain what farm-ers wanted and how they would reactto policy options. Labor and capitalcertainly had largely domestic thingsto fight about (working conditions,wages, etc.) but these two were pro-foundly influenced by the relativeprices of labor and capital in theworld, interacting with their relativescarcity at home. Thus was bornopen economy macroeconomics.Economic interactions among coun-tries go back centuries: the demandfor grain by Western Europe fromEastern Europe from the XVthCentury on is seen as one of themain causes of the revival of serfdomin the East, leading to authoritarianpolitics there. Slavery was globalthen, and tariff conflicts go back sev-eral centuries.

trade and currency flows on the U.S.may objectively go up (as it has) anddown or be more or less compared toother countries, but that thenbecomes a question in comparativeand international political economy,and not an essentialist feature of lifein the U.S.

As the Americanists are drawn in tocomparative and international politics(comparing institutions, for example,has flourished, often withAmericanists leading the way), eventhat boundary is challenged. “Nodepartment can be top rank withoutleading Americanists,” I once heard afamous specialist say with whom Iserved on a departmental reviewcommittee. Was that a descriptivestatement (so influential wereAmericanists, they would never ranksuch a department highly) or a pre-scriptive one - Americanists were the-oretical and methodological pioneers,so that a department could not risewithout their input? Something ofboth, I think. Americanists continue toinfluence the field, in both IR andcomparative; think of principal agenttheory applied to legislative-executiverelationships around the world and todelegation in international institutions.Sometimes this produces sharp criti-cism: One colleague spoke scornfullyof comparativists deriving ideas fromthe study of U.S. politics - the coun-tries are so different, how can oneapply concepts from one to examineanother? But using concepts acrosscountries, or across the IR/compara-tive divide, does not mean allprocesses are the same; rather, itprovides a uniform metric for showinghow they differ.

Everyone talks about the fusionacross boundaries but distinctionsremain alive and important. The dis-tinction is less about “concepts” thansubject matter. Suppose all legisla-tures have properties in common.Does that mean a department should

“In my view, the actual inter-

action of international and

comparative politics is noth-

ing new. It is only the intel-

lectual awareness of it in the

field that is relatively

unprecedented, even in the

subfield of American politics.”

tributed to absolutism in Prussia/Germany. For Tilly, war-making was afundamental driver of the modernstate. Henrick Spruyt (1994) dissentsfrom this view with an argumentabout domestic social conflicts;crowns and rising merchant middleclasses, fueled by trade, among otherfactors, in alignment against the tradi-tional aristocracy to form the modernstate.

Thus, the grizzly greybeard finds thateveryone is now speaking prose.Globalization is not new, though it hasdistinguishing features in each epoch:in the heyday of trade before WWI,we traded commodities and finishedproducts, though even then intra-industry trade was emerging (special-ty steels for example). In the currentera, we may well have far more dis-aggregation of the “value chain” intodispersed pieces scattered aroundthe globe following price and locationadvantages, so that things are madeeverywhere, but nothing in any singlespot.

In my view, the actual interaction ofinternational and comparative politicsis nothing new. It is only the intellectu-al awareness of it in the field that isrelatively unprecedented, even in thesubfield of American politics. I recallvividly a colleague’s reaction to apaper on American pork barrel abouttwenty years ago saying that we didnot have to look at the defense budg-et because that was “different,”expressing indignation that I chal-lenged the notion that the nationalinterest was a sufficient explanationof defense spending. My complaintwould seem archaic today, as it isnow assumed that national interest isitself a contested notion on whichpeople disagree, and thus the objectof politics. Another colleague thoughtit unnecessary to consider whetherthe Federal Reserve worried aboutthe exchange rate and foreign trade.So, reality may change - the impact of

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The literature on European develop-ment has long considered the impactof state rivalries and war-making as akey element. Otto Hintze suggestedthat the absence of a standing landarmy contributed to constitutionalismin the U.K., while its presence con-

APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1 13Symposium

not care if in hiring legislature special-ists it only gets people who knowabout the legislature of Michigan, ormore plausibly the U.S. Congress?Suppose that means having peoplewho know nothing about Japan,China, Brazil, or German. Economicsmade that move a while back - alleconomies are the same, there isnothing local at all. Therefore, no oneneed know anything about a foreigncountry. There is some backlash tothat radical doctrine going on amongsome subset of economics; macrocomparisons obscure importantmicro-institutional local details.Incentives do matter, but these varygreatly because precisely institutions(not only formal, but social and nor-mative ones) vary a lot.

In politics the radical version is to saywe don’t need country or regionalspecialists as they, it is often claimed,have weak theoretical training. Butthere is a backlash to that also: somethings about China are different from,say, Delaware, so some local skillsare needed, valuable, and important.And many research techniques turnprecisely on having local knowledge.

So there are specialized forms ofknowledge within the frame of politicalscience - not everything is the same.If a department puts up a “bestballplayer for any position” jobdescription, it could end up with peo-ple specializing in the same thing.That could work for some depart-ments – one of the virtues of the vastarray of institutions in the U.S. is thatwe can allow, indeed encourage, spe-cialization. Not all departments needto be comprehensive - hyperspecial-ization could be an effective strategyfor distinction and differentiation,though undergraduates may sufferfrom it. But if there is to be diversity,we need categories – subject matterswe think deserve attention, withinwhich we then look for the best candi-date. So what categories do help

organize our discipline?

IR is fighting internally over one ofthese: anarchy. Does the presence orabsence of anarchy really define theboundary with comparative, as manyin the field have traditionally argued?Well, there is a distinction between alawless world and one with authorita-tive government. But what is that dis-tinction? Indeed, this is one of theoldest issues in political science gen-erally: what is politics? “The authorita-tive allocation of value” (DavidEaston)? “The legitimate use of force”(Weber)? All our disputes are inthere: authoritative implies legitimate,and legitimate has to do with values,so whether you care more about insti-tutions or interest groups, it eventuallyboils down to values, but values arethemselves generated by institutionsand interest groups, so back we goup the causal chain.

“The arguments in depart-

ments should be about ques-

tions: what do we want to

know, what really matters ....”

So indeed, I am likely to behave dif-ferently if there is a reasonable policeforce and courts around to adjudicatedisputes than if I live in a lawlessenvironment a la Hobbes. But theboundaries between these twoextreme conditions are getting fuzzier.There is a lot of hierarchy and struc-ture in the relationship among states:the EU, WTO, all sorts of regimes likethe post office, airlines, and currency.Anarchy does not capture these, andyet they are not states. Furthermore,states range widely in their coherenceand stability. Some are so fragile asto border on lawlessness. Krasnerraises the issue of sovereignty andfailed states as a key problem in

state-centered theories of IR. In thestudy of civil war and conflict resolu-tions, scholars such as BarbaraWalter, Jim Fearon, and David Lakeapply concepts dealing with crediblecommitment, audience costs, and tip-ping points. These concepts are rele-vant in many conditions, regardless ofthe degree of anarchy.

IR is moving toward a stress onstrategic interaction - my behaviorinvolves calculations of what you arelikely to do - and there is strategicinteraction everywhere in politics.Those interactions contain elementsof both a domestic and internationalcontext. Lake (1996, 1999) developsa typology of degrees of anarchy andhierarchy that moves along an inter-action of tighter or looser bonds.According to evolutionary theories(Kahler 1999, 165-96), it is indeed theinteraction of states in the world thatshapes their internal characteristics(Spruyt 1994).

So we have a range of authority inthe interaction of countries and rangeof authority within states, and placeswhere the two overlap considerably.Concepts that apply to IR also applyto countries and vice versa. So arewe in a world of no boundaries? Well,no, we are not. The concepts may bethe same, but the applications arenot. Questions differ: how do weexplain differences in health policyseems about comparative domesticpolitics, while how do we explaintrade policy is not. An expert on com-parative welfare systems or compara-tive central banks, may know littleabout the origins of the World Wars,or the debate over the democraticpeace - are democracies really lesslikely to fight each other? (a superexample of the interpenetrability ofdomestic and international politics).

To say all countries’ politics have fea-tures in common which allow us touse similar methodologies and ques-


tions does not mean they can bestudied without detailed knowledge ofparticular cases. To say comparativeand international interact does notmean there are no subsets of cases:security issues, trade, the environ-ment, migration - all require expertise.Medicine is medicine, but we havespecialists. So the deeper issue fordepartments is why this specialist notthat one? If we got rid of all bound-aries, would we be sure we would stillhire people with specialties? Whatdiscourse could we adopt that is per-suasive on deciding the benefits of aChina specialist vs. a Brazil specialist,someone who does foreign policy orsomeone who does the politics ofeconomic growth? Could those whowant to get rid of boundaries make acredible commitment to everyone elsethat they respect the need for special-ists of different kinds, rather than hir-ing more people like themselves?

The arguments in departments shouldbe about questions: what do we wantto know, what really matters: worldpeace, prosperity, equality, justice,gender, racism, or growth? The ques-tions drive choices about methods,technique and region. That driveschoice - along with the market. Andwe do earn our living teaching, sowhat the students at all levels wantand need to learn matters as well!

The merging of comparative andinternational relations is exciting. Ihave always believed these to befused, so it is not new to me. What iswonderfully new is the extent of theappreciation of these interactions andthe impact that has on work: as morepeople bring experiences from onesubfield, country or region to the mix,they generate more ideas - andsometimes more confusion. But theeffect has been I think very positivefor the study of comparative (nowmore comparative than ever andmore internationally aware) and thestudy of IR (now more aware than

ICP: Mood Ring orNext Big Thing?

Layna MosleyUniversity of North

Carolina, Chapel [email protected]

In a recent graduate seminar, wespent a week discussing the impactof domestic interests and institutionson international trade relations. Inoted that, for many years, domesticpolitics was not central to the study ofinternational relations (IR); the workswe had read, written in the late 1970sand 1980s, were innovative in theirincorporation of domestic factors. Thestudents were less than impressed: ifwe wanted to understand internation-al economic relations, how could wenot draw insights from comparativepolitics? Did any scholar really think,for instance, that the breakdown ofthe interwar gold standard could beexplained only in terms of interstatecooperation? While I agreed with mystudents’ assessment, I also won-dered if times had changed in thedecade since my graduate schoolseminars. I recall debates about thenecessity of including domestic fac-tors in our analyses; once we (atleast, most of us) agreed that domes-tic politics played a role, we grappledwith how to treat them, and how to doso in a parsimonious but nuancedfashion. My students had skipped thedebate about the merits of lookinginside states and had moved immedi-ately to the question of how to do it.For graduate students of IR, the “howto” question is fundamental. It also isa central concern for anyone conduct-

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ing research at the intersection ofcomparative politics and IR, on issuesof economics, institutions, or humanrights, as well as conflict and security.And, particularly during the hiring sea-son, it is an issue with which depart-ments grapple. This essay addressesthree related issues: the increasingoverlap of IR with comparative poli-tics; the consequences of this overlapfor hiring decisions; and its implica-tions for graduate training.

The Intellectual Overlap

Few contemporary scholars of inter-national politics would contend thatdomestic political factors are inconse-quential. While we continue to debatethe relative import of domestic vari-ables, even scholars of conflict andsecurity (the old “high politics”) haveturned their attention to how nations’internal features affect their externalactions. For instance, the large “dem-ocratic peace” literature argues thatregime characteristics affect states’propensity for initiating conflicts andsettling disputes. In trade, finance, theenvironment and human rights, aswell, domestic politics plays a centralcausal role. Conversely, as nationalpolities are increasingly exposed toglobal trade and investment, multina-tional corporate activity, and transna-tional advocacy groups, comparativepolitics has turned its attention to theinfluence of external forces on nation-al and local politics - an “open econo-my politics.” Given current levels ofeconomic integration and culturalconnectedness, this is hardly surpris-ing.

In practical terms, then, how should -and to what extent can - we definethe boundary between comparativepolitics and IR? Creating a well-defined boundary is administrativelyexpedient. Field divisions in politicalscience are perhaps best suited forarranging undergraduate programsand courses, and for balancing

ever of the micro foundations ofnational interactions in domestic poli-tics).


“Were we to eliminate fields

entirely, we most likely would

replace them with another

set of equally problematic

categories.”

At the same time, however, there is arange of issues that draws on bothour knowledge of politics within coun-tries and our assessment of the rela-tions between them. When asked, Iresort to a two-by-two table (Table 1).This categorization draws on a con-versation with Bob Keohane. Therows in the table represent a givenstudy’s main dependent variable: is itdomestic or international in nature?Domestic dependent variables includepublic opinion, social security policies,or the rate of economic growth.

across student interests in graduatecohorts. Fields also are useful toolsfor organizing some sections of APSAand arranging book reviews inPerspectives on Politics. But when itcomes to research, field boundariesare increasingly artificial. Certainly,there are problems that remain large-ly the preserve of a given field, evenas they draw insights from acrosspolitical science. These include theformation of military alliances, thedesign of international institutions, theselection and consequences of elec-toral systems, and the impact of soci-etal cleavages on mass behavior.Scholars of IR always may have acomparative advantage in deterrence,the causes of interstate war, and theglobal trade regime, while compara-tivists dominate the study of democra-tization, political party systems, andsocial policy. Comparativists, particu-larly those with a qualitative orienta-tion, also are likely to retain country-and region-specific expertise.

Table 1: Field Boundaries in International Organization

International dependent variablesinclude interstate war, the level ofinterstate cooperation, the ratificationof international treaties or the forma-tion and functioning of various inter-national regimes. The columns classi-fy the central independent variable,again either international (e.g. pene-tration by transnational corporationsor intervention by multinationalpeacekeeping forces) or domestic(e.g. fiscal policy or civil war).

Where both the independent anddependent variables are international,the work falls in the traditional IR cat-egory; where both are domestic, thework is comparative (or American)politics. The two remaining categoriesrepresent the boundary region: theymix comparative and IR features in asort of international-comparative poli-tics (ICP). This overlap is most oftenacknowledged in “comparative andinternational political economy,” but italso holds in other substantive areas.This division is a simple one; manyanalyses have multiple independentvariables and perhaps more than onedependent variable. And some workis closer to one side of the boundarythan the other. An analysis of pensionreform that looks mostly at legislativeand interest group politics, but alsoconsiders pressures emanating fromglobal markets, is “more C than I,”while an analysis of the ways in whichinternational investors make deci-sions, and therefore create certainincentives for national policies, is“more I than C.”

With this classification in mind, I cate-

gorized all substantive articles pub-lished in International Organization,arguably the best journal in the fieldof IR, during the last five years. Asthe table indicates, a substantial pro-portion of recent IO article remainsfirmly in “traditional” IR. But themajority is either in the ICP boundaryarea (41%), or in the domain of com-parative politics (18%). While IO,given its historical focus on issuesother than conflict, may be more openthan other IR journals to cross-fieldscholarship, it is worth noting that thisboundary work occurs not only in thesubstantive field of political economy,but also in areas such as democrati-zation, security, and ideationalchange.

Recent “traditional” IR includes a vari-ety of contributions to the 2001 spe-cial issue (edited by BarbaraKoremenos, Charles Lipson andDuncan Snidal) on the rational designof international institutions. Articlesfalling in the upper right cell of thetable, one type of ICP, includeEdward Mansfield and Jack Snyder’sanalysis of the links between democ-racy and war (2002); David Singer’sdiscussion of how domestic pressuresaffect the nature of international finan-cial regulatory efforts (2004), andQuan Li and Adam Resnick’s (2003)exploration of the causal impact ofdemocracy on flows of foreign directinvestment. The other type of ICP, inthe lower left cell of the table, isexemplified by Aliciá Adserá andCarles Boix’s exploration of theeffects of trade openness (as well asregime type) on the size of the public

Main Independent Variable

Main Dependent Variable International Domestic

International International Relations

47 articles (41%)

Boundary (ICP)

27 articles (23%)

Domestic Boundary (ICP)

21 articles (18%)

Comparative Politics

21 articles (18%)


the strongest candidates for clearly-defined IR jobs employ domestic vari-ables to explain interstate activity, orwhen these candidates use externalvariables to understand politicalprocesses within countries, strict fieldboundaries become problematic.

Many of us have witnessed conversa-tions in which a candidate wasdeemed to be “too comparative” foran IR job, or “too IR” for a compara-tive job. Some IR faculty worry abouthiring a comparativist in IR clothing,while comparative faculty fret abouthiring a candidate who lacks sufficientknowledge about the intricacies ofvarious domestic political institutions.In both cases, faculty may worryabout “wasting a line” on someonewho does not fit firmly within theirfield, traditionally defined. Thesearguments may be strategic, or theymay reflect real concerns about losingresources and influence within adepartment. The focus on maintainingthe “purity” of the field seems particu-larly likely when the hiring field issmaller or weaker. The result may bea turf war pitting members of the IRfield against members of the compar-ative politics field. Such field divisionswill be replicated via new hires. Howdo we prevent such turf wars?

One solution is to define some posi-tions more broadly, to reflect intellec-tual trends in the discipline. Alongthese lines, some departments haverecognized the overlap across fields,and they have begun to hire in termsof broader substantive themes (“gov-ernance,” “political economy,” orYale’s recent searches along variousdimensions of “rethinking politicalorder in the emerging world”) ratherthan in terms of single fields. Otherdepartments cast an even wider net,simply advertising multiple openingsin all fields (as both Minnesota andNYU did in fall 2004), a “best athlete”approach. These shifts imply somerecognition that field boundaries are

sector (2002); Jon Pevehouse’s(2002) argument about the relation-ship between international organiza-tions and democratization; and myown work on the types of pressuresthat international bond markets put ongovernment policymaking (Mosley2000). Finally, work that falls into thecomparative cell includes MichaelRoss’s analysis of the links betweennatural resource endowments andcivil war (2004), and Ken Scheve’streatment of public inflation aversionand macroeconomic policy (2004).

The Consequences for Hiring

Given the intellectual questions thatscholars of IR and comparative poli-tics currently seek to answer, an over-lap between the fields is inevitable -and useful. How do we square thisintellectual overlap with practical con-siderations? At the individual level, inwhich journals and in which bookseries should scholars aim to pub-lish? At the collective level, howshould we modify our hiring practicesand our graduate programs in orderto reflect the rise of ICP scholarship?

The hiring process is the arena inwhich tensions over ICP are mostlikely to come to the fore. The sourceof these tensions is the continuedorganization of departments - and,often, the allocation of job lines -according to the four (or five) mainfields within political science. Whilefuture hires usually are discussed andvoted upon at the department level,the ultimate ownership of lines oftenrests within fields. Members of thegiven field tend to make up a majorityof members of the search committee,although this varies across institu-tions. The field-centric system worksreasonably well provided that job can-didates’ profiles - and the substantivearea on which the search is focused -fit the job definition, or provided thatfield members are comfortable withwork in boundary regions. But when

not always useful and that cross-fieldsearch committees may better serveoverall department interests. Ofcourse, substantive themes alsoleave room for interpretation. (Forinstance, a debate about this issueappeared in the APSA PoliticalEconomy section newsletter in 2003).

Another approach is to consider theadministrative utility of field distinc-tions. Field divisions are useful forinsuring balance across faculty andgraduate student interests, organizinggraduate courses and qualifyingexams, and designing undergraduatecurricula. Were we to eliminate fieldsentirely, we most likely would replacethem with another set of equally prob-lematic categories. And some work inIR and comparative continues to fallwithin the purview of traditionallydefined fields. But field divisions alsocan be obstacles to hiring scholarsworking at the ICP boundary, or atother field boundaries in political sci-ence.

Symposium

“When hiring at the ICP

boundary [...] we must be

reasonable in our expecta-

tions: a single ICP person

will not be both 100% com-

parativist and 100% IR.”

This shift would not eliminate tensionsover resources; rather, it would movedebates from the field or search com-mittee to the department. Anddebates would be more likely to occuras the position is defined, rather thanas the candidates are selected forinterviews or job offers. Some tasksare best accomplished at the fieldlevel; there is no need to consultcomparative scholars when schedul-


ing next semester’s IR courses. Othertasks, however, should be done at thedepartment level, because what isdone by a single field has externali-ties for other fields. Defining positionsand searching for individuals to fillthem is one such task, especiallywhen the positions - and the interest-ing research questions - are in theboundary area.

Data from the APSA E-Jobs service(as of mid-October 2004) indicatesthat, at least to some extent, somejobs are defined at the ICP boundary.The smallest departments oftenadvertise for “IR or Comparative,” notas a signal of interest in the ICPboundary, but in an effort to hire asingle faculty member who can covercourses in both fields. But it is alsotrue that Ph.D.-granting institutionssometimes advertise at the intersec-tion. Of the 30 tenure-track assistantprofessor-level jobs advertised in the“international relations” category, 13of the postings also mentioned “com-parative politics.” In some cases, jobswere for the international relations orcomparative politics of a particularregion (Asia, post-Communist coun-tries). In other cases, jobs were overt-ly ICP; the University of Virginia, forinstance, explicitly mentioned thoseworking at the border of internationaland comparative politics. And ArizonaState’s posting targeted scholarsworking at the intersection of compar-ative and international political econo-my. Similarly, of the 41 tenure-trackassistant jobs listed as “comparativepolitics,” 12 also mentioned “interna-tional relations” (and an additional 11mentioned other fields, such asAmerican politics and methods).

Once departments commit them-selves to defining some lines toinclude (or, at least, not to exclude)the ICP boundary area, the next taskis to think carefully about our expec-tations of those who apply. Manyscholars of comparative politics want

exams, do we do our graduate stu-dents a disservice by maintaininghard and fast distinctions between IRand Comparative? Alternatively, dowe hurt students’ professionalprospects by encouraging them towork in the messy border area? Myown graduate experience (at Duke,1993-1999) involved substantial expo-sure to the ICP boundary: fieldboundaries were not reified and stu-dents were encouraged to draw onfaculty across fields. The prevailingnorm was that talks by visiting speak-ers, job candidates, and graduate stu-dents were attended by wide swath ofpeople, with little regard for field.Priority was placed on exploring inter-esting social scientific questions,rather than conforming to field bound-aries. When it came time to assemblemy dissertation committee, I chose asco-chairs a comparativist and an IRscholar. This worked very well, aseach had different expertise, andeach was excited to learn from theother.

The positive side of training studentsto work at the international-compara-tive boundary is that it is a fruitfularea for research. Given this fact,perhaps we should encourage stu-dents to choose “two main fields” ofpolitical science (IR and compara-tive), rather than “main” and “second”fields. While this may buck the trendtoward increasing specialization inpolitical science, it also facilitatescross-field work. Similarly, studentsshould expect that some questions ontheir IR comprehensive exams willmake reference to domestic politics,while some questions on comparativeexams will make reference to interna-tional factors (economic globalization,international institutions, global diffu-sion of ideas).

The possible downside is that stu-dents may face an “identity crisis”when they go on the job market orwhen they attempt to publish their

job applicants to have expertise - andto have conducted intensive fieldworkin - a particular country or region.These scholars shudder (justifiably,sometimes) at the way in which thosewith a stronger footing in IR useshortcut measures of “democracy” or“veto points.” Similarly, IR scholarsoften expect that those working inICP, even those with a more compar-ative bent, are conversant in theoriesof war, peace and intervention, aswell as in approaches to internationaleconomics and institutions. When hir-ing at the ICP boundary, though, wemust be reasonable in our expecta-tions: a single ICP person will not beboth 100% comparativist and 100%IR. Graduate students make trade-offs, and some will tilt more heavilytoward comparative, while others leanmore strongly toward IR. In morepractical terms, and particularly atresearch-oriented institutions, a newhire’s ability to teach an introductorycomparative politics or IR class maynot be the right litmus test for hiring.

Finally, a department’s commitment tomaking some boundary hires mustpersist through the renewal andtenure stages. Junior faculty alwaysworry about the tenure process. Butthey ought not to have to wonderwhether, by virtue of publishing in cer-tain places or of doing more compara-tive (or more IR) work in later proj-ects, they will appear disloyal to IRscholars or to comparativists. Theyought not to feel pressure to avoidinteresting intellectual questionsbecause they stray too far into onefield or another. Rather, their workought to be evaluated by the samesort of colleagues who hired them -scholars from both IR and compara-tive, or others working at the ICPboundary.

The Implications for GraduateStudents

When it comes to coursework and

18 APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1

work. In my five years as a facultymember at Notre Dame, where therewere strong distinctions between theIR and comparative fields, I was notalways sure where my work fit in. Inorder to avoid this problem, but towork at the ICP boundary, studentsmay feel compelled to acquire expert-ise in both fields. This is a colossaltask, especially in an era when gradu-ate students must master far more lit-erature than scholars did thirty yearsago, and at a time when we alsoexpect graduate students to be well-informed consumers (perhaps evenproducers) of statistical and formalmethods. How do we address thisproblem?

First, we should encourage studentsworking on “boundary topics” to use avariety of methods in their work. Thisis good practice generally, as differenttypes of evidence help to triangulateone’s case. But it’s also good forthose working on ICP topics. If IR stu-dents do fieldwork (using interviews,surveys, or archives), they may havean easier time gaining acceptanceamong qualitatively-oriented compar-ativists. While we might discourageICP students from spending too muchtime developing single-country expert-ise, some graduate research fellow-ships (such as the SSRC’sInternational Dissertation ResearchFellowships) allow for short researchstints in several countries - possibly anice compromise. Similarly, if stu-dents master quantitative methods,they may have an easier time gainingacceptance from both fields, at leastamong those scholars using large-Napproaches. This does not exemptstudents from paying attention to theappropriate operationalizations oftheir variables, but it may allow themto capitalize on the relative fungibilityof methods skills across political sci-ence.

Second, we can make studentsaware of the tradeoffs they face in

Symposium

IntegratingInternationalRelations andComparativePolitics:ProfessionalDilemmas

Helen V. MilnerPrinceton [email protected]

Recognition of the increasing interac-tion between international anddomestic politics has become wide-spread. While there is still a tendencyfor some in international relationssimply to assume a well-functioningstate and a black box for what goeson within it, many are aware that for-eign relations are inextricably linkedto domestic politics. Civil wars, anar-chy within states, regime type andchange, as well as economic changesare harder and harder to divorce froma country’s international behavior.How aggressive or pacific countriesare often depends much on their

internal dynamics (e.g., Doyle 1986;Mansfield and Snyder 2002; Buenode Mesquita et al. 2003). In compara-tive politics, numerous forces, includ-ing increasing globalization, haveforced scholars to consider the inter-national environment surrounding acountry as an essential part of anyexplanation of domestic politics.Research on domestic topics like thewelfare state and inequality now usu-ally includes references to the impactof international factors (e.g., Garrett1998; Swank 2002; Mahler 2004).Studies of democratization havebroadened to include internationalinfluences, such as the extent of capi-tal mobility or of trade dependence, orthe degree to which countries in theneighborhood are democratic (e.g.,Boix 2003; Gleditsch and Ward2004).

These changes in the world and inscholarship have not been matchedby changes in the structure ofAmerican political science depart-ments. Most American departmentsremain organized around the fourcentral subfields that developed in themid-twentieth century: American, the-ory, comparative and internationalpolitics. As I have argued elsewhere,this division reflects a rather parochialand dated organization of the intellec-tual landscape (Milner 1998).American politics should be consid-ered a part of comparative, thusinducing students of the Americanpolity to better integrate their researchwith broad comparative themes andpushing those who research othercountries to react to theories initiatedin American politics and vice versa.1Moreover, the administrative bound-aries that artificially separate compar-ative and international politics areoften wide and costly, inhibiting thefree interchange of ideas.Departments tend to hire faculty, trainstudents, and offer courses withinthese subfield boundaries. And thehigher the degree of subfield autono-

specializing too heavily or in fallingbetween fields. Over the long run,training graduate students to worksuccessfully at the intersection of IRand comparative will facilitate cross-field hiring, and may reduce someinstitutions’ tendency to rely too heav-ily on field distinctions. But, in themeantime, graduate students oftenface pressure to privilege one field atthe expense of the other, and theyought to do so with good informationabout their choices.

19APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1 Symposium

my within a department, the more dif-ficult will be any exchange acrossthose boundaries, as the jealousguarding of that autonomy ofteninduces even higher barriers. As withtrade barriers between countries,these boundaries raise the costs ofexchanging ideas and researchbetween the two subfields and thusinhibit the development of a moreintegrated political science. Such aunified science of politics should beour aim. Devising general theories orpropositions about politics is essen-tial, but discovering where and underwhat conditions they do and do notapply is just as valuable. Comparativeand international research allows bet-ter specification of those conditions.More integration of the subfields, Iclaim, would lead to greater progressin the discipline.

A common objection to this position ispractical. Subfields, it is argued, use-fully organize or segregate knowledgeso that students and researchers canmore easily find their way in an area.Without such boundaries, political sci-entists would be expected to knowtoo much and could never get on withnew research. All disciplines havesuch subfields, and most have arisenfrom the historical evolution of thediscipline. This practical advantage isnot to be discounted. However, aswith most path-dependent processes,these subfield identities tend tobecome rigid, natural-seeming anddifficult to breach or alter. Thus thequestion must be posed whether thisintellectual organization of the disci-pline continues to serve it well, orwhether its intellectual costs nowexceed its benefits. Many of the natu-ral sciences have been reorganized inrecent years as intellectual develop-ments have demanded a differenttraining for and orientation to the dis-cipline. Change is thus not impossi-ble, but merely difficult and usuallydriven by exogenous factors.2

“As with trade barriers

between countries, these

boundaries raise the cost of

exchanging ideas and

research between the sub-

fields and thus inhibit the

development of a more inte-

grated political science.”

Without a total reorganization ofdepartments, can the discipline stillmake progress with the current sub-field categorization? The centralquestion is how we train our studentsto develop cross-subfield expertiseand to find top-notch jobs. Publishingnew research that crosses subfieldboundaries does not seem to bemuch of a problem; plenty of journalsdo this and do not worry about thesubfield designation. The problems liein the extent to which there exist rigidsubfield boundaries for accepting newPh.D. students, training them, offeringcourses and hiring new faculty. In allof these areas, the higher the barriersto inter-subfield exchange, the lesslikely are students to pursue suchpotentially innovative research. Tomake matters worse, there now existsa fair amount of research that over-comes these boundaries so studentsfind it harder to learn this body ofresearch on their own.

A number of factors can help to lowerthese subfield boundaries. First, stu-dents can be trained in more thanone subfield. Most American depart-ments now require students to takecourses in more than one subfieldand often to take general exams inseveral areas. This graduate studentprogram is an improvement upon

those that encourage students only towork in one subfield. Many programs,however, encourage students todeclare a major and minor field, thuscompromising the goal of knowingsubstantial amounts about at leasttwo subfields. Departments shouldmake substantial knowledge in atleast two of the four main subfieldsmandatory for all students.

A second step would be to reorganizeteaching slightly. Even if students dowork in two subfields, their knowledgeof the intersection of the two may belimited. If courses remain hermeticallysealed within subfield boundaries,even this plan leaves large voids.Students on their own initiative haveto recognize and develop the connec-tions between the subfields since syl-labi and teaching often remain balka-nized. Furthermore, with the growingliterature that examines such cross-subfield issues, it has become harderfor students to develop this knowl-edge on their own. Team teachingacross the subfields would also behelpful. Bringing a comparative poli-tics and an international relations fac-ulty member together to teach acourse would have large advantagesfor the faculty and students. This typeof team teaching, however, seemsrare. Most faculty members are cate-gorized into a subfield when theyarrive in a department, usually as partof the search process. Subfields thenjealously guard their faculty andcourse offerings, especially at thegraduate level. To the extent that jobsearches tend to be defined by sub-field, the problem of teaching acrossthe fields becomes more difficult.Opening up space in the graduatecurriculum for courses in the intersec-tion of comparative and internationalrelations would help, as would allow-ing team teaching of cross-subfieldcourses.

Another way to approach the problemis to try to redefine the job search

Opportunities to pursue research inthe interstices between comparativeand international politics do exist.Once a graduate student is throughthe general exams, s/he can pickher/his advisors to promote an inte-grated research program for the dis-sertation. Most American departmentsnow encourage (or require) studentsto have more than one advisor andthis gives them the opportunity tochoose ones from different subfields.A further step would be to recom-mend or require that dissertationcommittees contain faculty membersfrom at least two subfields. Doing sowould encourage students to takecourses from faculty in other subfieldsand try to work with them before thedissertation began. Publishingresearch that crosses over the sub-field divide is also not difficult. Themajor research journals are very opento such work and many actively seekit out.4 University presses also seemacceptant of such cross subfieldresearch, even though many retainparticular series that sometimes rep-resent the subfields.5

In sum, all is not bleak for scholarsdesiring to research questions thatinvolve the interaction of comparativeand international politics. While prob-lems still exist within departments dueto the often rigid and high subfieldboundaries, scholars can overcomethese and develop ways to bringtogether the two areas. It is importantto remember that progress has beenmade. In the 1950s and 1960s, someuniversities in the U.S., includingYale, had separate doctoral programsin international relations and politicalscience, and some in the U.K. still do.This total separation of internationalpolitics from political science hasbeen overcome, and many of the the-ories and tools from the rest of politi-cal science now are applied to thesubfield. As I have argued elsewhere,this integration has been a major ben-efit to the discipline. Taking courses in


“The problems lie in the

extent to which there exist

rigid subfield boundaries for

accepting new Ph.D. stu-

dents, training them, offering

courses and hiring new fac-

ulty.”

process. A modest step would be torequire that search committeesalways include at least one memberwho is not in the subfield, althoughpreferably these members from out-side the subfield would have interestswithin it. Searching outside the sub-field boundaries, something that theYale Political Science department hasrecently attempted, may be a strongerway to erode subfield boundaries.3This process in turn can help youngscholars redefine themselves outsidethe traditional boundaries and encour-age them to pursue such research.

the international and comparative pol-itics subfields, identifying faculty whodo research in both, and designing adissertation and doctoral committeeto include both areas are short-termsolutions to the problems internal todepartments. Longer-term ones prob-ably rely on reorganizing the disci-pline by adding or completely modify-ing the subfield boundaries. Once acritical mass of scholars and researchexists in this area, pressure for suchdisciplinary change will grow andmake it more likely.

Notes

1 I would also argue that political sci-ence would benefit if the theory sub-field were much more integrated intothe rest of the discipline. Its separa-tion from American, comparative andinternational detracts from theorybuilding in those areas and in turnhurts theory by detaching it from themore empirical sides of political sci-ence. Note that one of the mostimportant theories in internationalrelations in the past two decades, theDemocratic Peace, arose out in partof political theory and Kant’s ideas(Doyle 1986).

2 An interesting question is what sucha reorganization of political sciencewould look like. What new subfieldswould emerge? How would the disci-pline be reconfigured? And wouldthere be a consensus among depart-ments so that one type of new organi-zation would prevail nationally?

3 Yale’s five areas are 1. Crafting andOperating Institutions, 2. Identities,Affiliations, and Allegiances, 3.Distributive Politics, 4. Representationand Popular Rule, and 5. Order,Conflict, and Violence. Interestingly,however, courses, general exams andfield surveys are still organized large-ly along the lines of the four tradition-al subfields.

But the curriculum is also important. Ifone hires outside the traditional sub-fields, but then organizes teachingwithin them, little positive effect maybe noticed. Offering courses on broadtopics - like political economy, institu-tions, or conflict and cooperation -where comparative and internationalpolitics meet is probably more usefulfor fostering cross-field linkages thanthe more traditional survey courses ofthe subfields. Some universities haveadded new subfields like politicaleconomy in order to develop a curric-ular space for new areas that crossthe traditional boundaries. This stephas the benefit of encouragingresearch, training, and hiring in thenew area, but it also may further bal-kanize the discipline as new subfieldsbecome as hermetic as the old ones.


Real Worlds ofPolitical Scienceand the Structureof the Discipline:Some Thoughts onContemporaryProfessionalDilemmas1

Duane SwankMarquette [email protected]

There is little doubt that the realboundaries between comparative andinternational politics have partially,

are more likely than in the past toexplain changes in cleavage struc-tures and party systems in developedand newly democratic political sys-tems, the widespread adoption ofsimilar policy reforms and institutionsaround the globe (e.g., neoliberalism),or the character and operation of newand established supra-national politi-cal institutions on the basis of theoryand analysis that truly spans the con-ventional subfield lines.

“... young scholars whose

research significantly bridges

comparative and internation-

al politics and are seeking

jobs [...] have at least three

viable strategies - flexible

specialization, generaliza-

tion, or the non-traditional

approach.”

That said, it is equally true that disci-plinary organization lags significantlybehind the real worlds of politics andpolitical analysis. As to the depart-mental construction of the disciplineand the distribution of faculty acrosssubfields, conventional compartmen-talization and the “pigeonholing” offaculty generally persist. For instance,if one examines the published sub-field breakdowns of the faculty of thetop-25 political science departmentsin the United States, one finds thatthe traditional four-fold divisionbetween political theory, Americanpolitics, comparative politics, andinternational relations - supplementedvariously with public policy, politicaleconomy, and methodology - domi-nates disciplinary structure.2

4 A quick perusal of the major journalsseems to bear this out. The APSR,World Politics, InternationalOrganization, International StudiesQuarterly and Comparative PoliticalStudies at least tend to publish a sig-nificant number of articles concerningthe interaction of international anddomestic politics. For instance, threeof the five main articles in IO Fall2004 combine the two subfields; twoof the three main ones in WorldPolitics April 2004 do so; ComparativePolitical Studies December 2004 hasat least three of its five main articles(depending on how one counts stud-ies of the EU) blur the boundaries.

5 Cambridge University Press, forinstance, has a series dedicated tocomparative politics but it also hasone for political economy and one forpolitical psychology, topics that maycross the subfield boundaries easily.

and in some cases completely, bro-ken down in recent years.Comparativists who study politicalbehavior, institutions, public policyand political economy in nationalstates increasingly build theoreticaland empirical models that incorporatesophisticated specifications of interna-tional variables; international relationsscholars in many areas of inquiryincreasingly ground theory and analy-sis in domestic politics. Both groupsalso focus more and more on politicalphenomena that occur at the nexus ofthe traditional subfields.

There are two reasons for this conflu-ence of comparative and internationalpolitics that are worth thinking aboutfor the purposes of this symposium.First, and most obvious, substantivechanges in the real world of politicsforce us to develop theory thataccounts for ever more complexforces that determine those thingsworth explaining. Simultaneousprocesses of economic, cultural, andpolitical globalization, the political andsocio-cultural mobilization of regionsaround the globe, and the continuingand dramatic evolution of the charac-ter and form of national political sys-tems pose real and often insurmount-able challenges for traditional theoryand analysis in comparative politicsand international relations.

Second, new advances in theory andanalysis that have occurred simulta-neously and broadly in internationaland comparative politics – especiallythe development of rational choice,institutionalist, and constructivist/ideational approaches to politics inboth subfields – have led traditionalcomparative and international rela-tions scholars to draw upon oneanother more readily and to expandanalytical frameworks to account for aconfluence of domestic and interna-tional causal processes. Thus, to takethree examples of things worthexplaining, political scientists today


Moreover, of those faculty designatedas comparative politics specialists,only 11.6 percent are listed as inter-national relations scholars. Further,this longstanding compartmentalizedconceptualization of the discipline isreflected well in numerous AmericanPolitical Science Association publica-tions that characterize what politicalscientists purportedly do. Forinstance, a perusal of a couple ofyears of PS suggests that job seek-ing, submissions to the AmericanPolitical Science Review, and manyother activities largely take place with-in the four major and three or sominor subfields that typically structurepolitical science departments. Giventhis disconnect between much of realworld political science and formal dis-ciplinary structure, what should theyoung scholars whose work bridgessubfield lines do when contemplating“going on the market” and buildingcareers?

What is To Be Done?, or Why theDependent Variable Matters

For all intents and purposes, youngscholars whose research significantlybridges comparative and internationalpolitics and are seeking jobs, estab-lishing intellectual identities, andbuilding careers have at least threeviable strategies - flexible specializa-tion, generalization, or the non-tradi-tional approach. The optimal strategy,in my view, is almost always deter-mined by the focus of the dissertationand early research projects. If thedependent variable is, at its essence,a national or subnational political phe-nomenon, the best strategy is proba-bly to specialize and to pursue jobsand initial career building primarily incomparative politics. This is prudentdespite the likely substantive connec-tions to, or extensive theoretical inte-gration of, international forces in theo-retical and empirical models. In sucha case, the research question has inall likelihood been framed by the tra-

ditional questions of comparative poli-tics and influenced most heavily bythe theoretical and analytical modelsand methods of the comparative sub-field. The distribution of graduatecourse work is also likely to beshaped by “the choice of dependentvariable.” Thus, the great likelihood isthat one’s position is strongest if onefocuses on the comparative politicsjob market and lands in the compara-tive politics faculty list during the earlycareer years of annual departmentalreviews and promotion and tenure.The same strategy can, of course, berecommended to those whoseresearch leads them to focus princi-pally on explanation of inter- or supra-national phenomena. It is important topoint out, however, that with the spe-cialization strategy, young scholarsare increasingly likely - given the realworld substantive and theoreticalchanges noted above - to branch outin subsequent years from compara-tive (international) to internationalrelations- (comparative-) orientedresearch projects. Such a pattern offlexible specialization, always presentto a degree within the discipline, willbe an increasingly acceptable and,indeed, a rewarding scholarly careerpath.

In contrast to flexible specialization,young scholars whose dissertationand related early research seek tounderstand an interrelated set ofnational and supranational politicalphenomena have two additionalcareer strategies that should provesuccessful in market and intellectualterms. For instance, illustrative of anincreasingly common research pro-gram, imagine a dissertation, or a dis-sertation and a consciously linked setof articles, that seeks to explain thedomestic and international sources ofa set of polities’ immigration policies,the impact of these policies on inter-national and regional flows as well asthe politics and content of immigrationpolicies of supranational institutions,

and, perhaps, how these internationaloutcomes feed back on the domesticpolitics of the focal set of political sys-tems. Such a research program islikely to draw heavily from the tradi-tional subfield literatures and the con-temporary research streams thatbridge traditional boundaries. Thisresearch program is also likely tonecessitate extensive graduatecourse work in comparative and inter-national politics and cognate fields.

“... professional practices

and formal structures of the

discipline should gradually

catch up with the real worlds

of politics and political analy-

sis.”

I would argue that there are two plau-sible job market/early career strate-gies that make sense for youngscholars whose work fits this model.First, one can legitimately apply forboth comparative and internationalpolitics jobs where the substantiveand area/regional requisites of thepositions mesh with the expertise ofthe candidate. This generalist strate-gy, perhaps modestly tweaked toaccommodate the nature of the facul-ty line one ultimately fills, can ofcourse also guide the research pro-gram in early career years as onemight focus on both traditional com-parative politics and international rela-tions questions or on substantiveproblems at the nexus of the twofields. If one’s research significantlycontributes to both fields and/or emer-gent “bridge research streams,” annu-al review and tenure promotionprocesses will in all likelihood goquite well. The viability of this gener-alization strategy will increase in the


future as more and more faculty col-leagues bridge the subfield divide andreorient the criteria for judging suc-cessful work in comparative and inter-national politics.

Finally, young scholars whose workspans traditional subfield divides maychoose a non-traditional strategy ofapplying for positions outside the coresubfields or for positions whose mainteaching and research componentsare in interdisciplinary programs andinstitutes. That is, one might seekdepartmentally based, tenure-trackpositions that avoid traditional sub-field pigeonholing (e.g., political econ-omy, public policy, political behavior,global politics and a variety of com-monly listed specialized positions) orseek tenure-track appointments ininterdisciplinary programs or institutesthat avoid traditional subfield biasesand constraints (e.g., substantivearea and regional studies programsand institutes). These faculty lines,where scholars working across theold boundaries of comparative andinternational politics may well beadvantaged, are probably most com-mon for political economists and forscholars of regions. In the long term,however, professional practices andformal structures of the disciplineshould gradually catch up with thereal worlds of politics and politicalanalysis discussed above. If thisoccurs, choices between job-seekingand career-building strategies andassociated professional dilemmas willproportionally diminish, to notablebetterment of the discipline.

Notes

1 I would like to thank my colleaguesat Marquette, especially LowellBarrington, Michael Fleet, and H.Richard Friman, as well as AndyMartin at Harvard’s Minda deGunzburg Center of EuropeanStudies, for helpful discussions on theissues at hand.

2 I use the U.S. News and WorldReport, “Best Graduate Schools”(2003 Edition), ranking of political sci-ence departments and official depart-ment websites for the data discussedin this article. Much of what I sayassumes, correctly I believe, that thevast majority of large and moderatelysized graduate degree-grantingdepartments follow this disciplinarydivision.

sat down to write my second book, acomparison of Indian rights move-ments in five Latin American countries(Brysk 2000), I realized that myresearch had carried me beyond thelogic of case comparison I hadlearned from Alexander George(Eckstein 1975). My comparativecases were all “contaminated” bytransnational diffusion of social move-ment frames, repertoires, resources,and arenas - and that turned out tobe the main finding and theoreticalinnovation of that study. Bridging the Divide

BetweenComparativePolitics andInternationalRelations

Alison BryskUniversity of California

at [email protected]

In graduate school during the mid-1980s, I remember memorizing inter-national relations’ “levels of analysis”as if they were skeletal structures,and preparing comparative politicssub-fields for the qualifying exam thatturned out to bear little relevance tomy dissertation research on humanrights in Argentina. A few years later,as a beginning scholar, transnationalinfluence on democratization andsocial movements had become socentral that my first article dealingwith this insufficiently explored vari-able, “From Above and Below,” (Brysk1993) was cited widely - perhapseven more than the well-received butmore classically comparative casestudy from which it derived (Brysk1994). By the end of that decade, as I

“My comparative cases were

all ‘contaminated’ by transna-

tional diffusion of social

movements frames, reper-

toires, resources, and arenas

- that turned out to be the

main finding and theoretical

innovations of that study.”

My own confluence of internationalrelations and comparative politics wasdictated by both the structure andcontent of my professional develop-ment: coming of age along with theera of globalization, and my researchinterest in human rights. Grapplingwith globalization was a pedagogicalas well as a research imperative; Itaught my first course in comparativepolitics shortly after the fall of theBerlin Wall (the text I had ordered stillcompared “three systems”), and myfirst course in international relationscoincided with the outbreak of the firstGulf War - my grad school notes on“the state” didn’t quite cover the situa-tion. Since my field of interest, humanrights, is a universal norm promotedby global actors that seek to change


state behavior and institutions, mostresearch questions naturally trans-verse levels of analysis - and manyargue that the most fruitful researchon this topic is precisely that whichsynthesizes comparative and transna-tional perspectives (Landman 2002).Even my initial regional specializationin Latin American politics encouragedme to “think globally,” since it is theregion whose political and economicdevelopment has been most exten-sively analyzed as a function of itsinternational relations - from depend-ency theory onwards. And you can’tteach either human rights or LatinAmerican politics (well) without draw-ing on both international and compar-ative literature.

Symposium

was the ability to help build a newlyestablished International Studies pro-gram. In this sense, one way I havebridged the divide is to transcend itvia interdisciplinary identification.

My main caveat in this regard, how-ever, is that all three institutionshoused me in political science, andthe more traditional members of thesedepartments regularly insisted that Iestablish my bona fides within thediscipline. I have learned that toestablish credibility and gain employ-ment, members of multiple sub-fieldsmust emphasize readily recognizabledisciplinary debates, vocabulary, andliterature even more than more con-ventionally situated peers. For exam-ple, I made sure to cite Weber onlegitimacy before plunging into anexegesis of symbolic politics (Weber1964). I am active in the APSA, ISA,and LASA, but until tenure alwayssent my work first to disciplinary jour-nals and presses with strong recogni-tion in Political Science. Even withinpolitical science, international rela-tions colleagues generally press theyoung scholar seeking employment ortenure for more grand theory anddemand sweeping, “parsimonious”propositions, while simultaneouslycomparativists contest broader stud-ies’ command of every permutation ofeach case - and question the compe-tence of any short-term interloper ontheir lifelong turf.

As I have ascended the academichierarchy, I now find that I am calledupon often as an interpreter of inter-disciplinary and cross-field trainingand publication in publication, recruit-ment and promotion processes. Iattempt to translate thematic, areastudies, and transnational researchand venues to anxious colleagues onthesis, search and tenure commit-tees; I remember reassuring a verysenior comparativist colleague overdinner that a candidate’s construc-tivist approach was an emerging and

widely shared alternative researchtradition, not an idiosyncratic method-ology beyond post-modernism. Iadvise my own students and juniorcolleagues that it is still critical toframe boundary-crossing research indisciplinary and sub-disciplinary terms- and to network with sympatheticmid-level and senior colleagues whowill vet your contribution to the disci-pline.

“... international relations col-

leagues generally press [...]

for more grand theory and

demand sweeping, ‘parsimo-

nious’ propositions, while [...]

comparativists contest

broader studies’ command of

every permutation of each

case - and question the com-

petence of any short-term

interloper on their lifelong

turf.”

“...one way I have bridged

the divide is to transcend it

via interdisciplinary identifica-

tion.”

Despite the limitations describedabove, it is the logic of comparativeinquiry - rather than the concepts of aparticular sub-field of comparativepolitics - that has contributed mostconstructively to my research andability to train graduate students.Moreover, I have found it salutary toapply a comparative mode of analysisto topics conventionally consideredthe province of international relations.Every book or article I write, everydissertation or honors thesis I super-vise, as well as students in the gradu-ate research design courses I have

In terms of employment opportunities,straddling the divide has meant ademanding short-term stretch thatbrings long-term flexibility. Although I“majored” in comparative and“minored” in IR, my first job was actu-ally in the hybrid field of “Inter-American relations” (I prepared threedifferent job talks that year!). Mysearch for my next position, inspiredby personal needs rather than profes-sional growth, called for a return toLatin American Politics (I also carriedreference letters from scholars in sev-eral sub-fields, which I highly recom-mend to job-seekers). At both ofthese institutions, I participatedactively in the Latin American Studiesprograms - and these interdisciplinaryregional studies ties proved valuablebackground for my current affiliationin International Studies; one of myqualifications for my current position


taught must answer the question: Ofwhat is this a case? “A case” canmean anything from a country studyto a transnational social movement toa foreign policy decision to a shift inthe international system. No matterwhat the methodology, all good socialscience must tell us the context andboundary conditions for the phenome-non/a analyzed, how that problem fitsinto a broader class of questions, andwhat any relationships revealed implyfor the family of cases. If the researchstrategy is positivist, this will alsogenerate testable hypotheses aboutthe relationships - whether causal,genealogical, typological, or other.

The logic of comparison has alsoguided my forays (and mentoring)“outside the box” of regional studies.After editing several volumes onhuman rights and globalization, I real-ized that my next research puzzle -the emergence and impact oftransnational private authority—wasgenerated from the international sys-tem level, and reflected a confluenceof responses differentiated more bysector and issue - type than nationalor even regional identity. This led meto follow issues like financial respon-sibility for human rights violationsacross time and space fromHolocaust-era lawsuits in Europe toconflict diamonds in Africa to financialseizures of deposed dictators fromFerdinand Marcos to SlobodanMilosevic (Brysk 2005). Similarly,studying the comparative influence oftransnational factors has inspired adiverse agenda for my current workcomparing positive human rights for-eign policies (so far, in Costa Rica,Sweden, and Canada), the disserta-tion I just supervised comparinghumanitarian intervention in Rwandaand Kosovo, and the best manu-scripts I am reading for universitypresses. However, the professionalchallenges of gaining access to andmastering literature from multipleregions are enormous, especially at

the entry level. By mid-career, theprofessional security of tenure, theestablishment of transnational colle-gial networks, and increased accessto research assistance make this kindof cutting-edge but high-risk cross-regional research much more feasi-ble.

On the other side of the bridge, vari-ous concepts of transnationalismhave nurtured my comparativeresearch. In From Tribal Village toGlobal Village, I needed a way tocompare the influence of foreign andtransnational civic actors on politicaloutcomes in my country cases. I havefound some sort of qualified conceptof “global civil society” essential tocapture the power and politicalresources of groups like missionaries,environmentalists, and academics(Keane 2003). Similarly, as I attemptto compare human rights foreign poli-cies in my current work, the globalsocialization of national policy-makersto redefine national interest requires anotion of “international society” (Bull1995). Overall, I am inspired by anemerging research agenda and intel-lectual network in transnationalism,which provides and analyzes empiri-cal, methodological, theoretical, andnormative uses of the concept acrossdiverse fields of inquiry (Khagram andLevitt 2004).

The question we need to be askingand teaching is not whether, but how,to bridge these borders. For at least ageneration, we have known about themutual influences between the stateand global levels (Gourevitch 1978),as well as the existence of issues anddynamics that transcend nationalboundaries (Keohane and Nye 1971).Yet despite the proliferation of usefulresearch on these vertical and hori-zontal dynamics of world politics, aswell as the ubiquitous discussion ofglobalization, we still know far too lit-tle about the relationship between lev-els and the corresponding modes of

inquiry. Are the relationships betweenthe local, national, and internationalnested? Competitive? Issue-specific?Regionally-based? What does itmean to carry a concept like “democ-ratization” across levels of analysis -and what gets lost in translation?When do we need “local knowledge”to understand the impact or even thelimits of global phenomena, and whenwill conventional comparison misssomething that is more than the sumof its parts? At this point, the best wecan do may be simply to keepreminding ourselves and our studentsof these questions, and to readbroadly beyond our sub-fields so asto avoid reinventing the wheel.

Fortunately for our careers, the worldkeeps changing, thus presenting newpuzzles that will require constantlyevolving frameworks of analysis.Standing at the borders, straddlingthe bridge between comparative poli-tics and international relations, affordsa privileged and fascinating view ofsome of the most consequential phe-nomena of our era: from migration toreligion, from military conflict to devel-opment crisis. Some of the borderposts are still manned (usually) bydisciplinary police, whose legitimateinterest in orderly traffic must beweighed against the potential forreactionary parochialism. We cannegotiate a constructive flow thatyields benefits for both sides, if westand together - and if our papers arein order.

APSA-CP Vol 16 No. 126Review Essay

ComparativePolitics Textbooks:A Review

Gerhard LoewenbergThe University of [email protected]

Gabriel A. Almond, G. BinghamPowell, Kaare Strøm, and Russell J.Dalton, Comparative Politics Today: AWorld View, 8th ed. (Longman, 2003).832 pp. $87.40

David P. Conradt, The German Polity,8th ed. (Pearson Longman, 2005).364 pp.

Michael Gallagher, Michael Laver,Peter Mair, RepresentativeGovernment in Modern Europe, 3rd

ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2000). 480 pp.$58.75

Charles Hauss, Comparative Politics:Domestic Responses to GlobalChallenges (Wadsworth, 2002). 560pp. $83.95

Mark Kesselman, Joel Krieger,Christopher S. Allen, StephenHellman, David Ost, and GeorgeRoss, European Politics in Transition,4th ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 2002). 663pp. $76.76

Jeffrey Kopstein and Mark Lichbacheds. Comparative Politics: Interests,Identities and Institutions in ChangingGlobal Order (Cambridge, 2000). 447pp. $55.00

Philip Norton, The British Polity, 4thed. (Longman, 2004). 494 pp.

Michael G. Roskin, Countries andConcepts: Politics, Geography, and

Culture, 8th ed. (Prentice-Hall, 2003).592 pp. $72.00

William Safran, The French Polity, 6thed. (Longman, 2003) 415 pp.

Michael J. Sodaro, ComparativePolitics: A Global Introduction withPowerWeb, 2nd ed. (McGraw-Hill,2004). 766 pp. $93.75

W. Phillips Shively, ComparativeGovernance (McGraw-Hill Primis,2005). This is a custom-made volumewhose price and number of pagesvary depending on how many of theavailable modules a teacher choosesto adopt. Seehttp://www.mhhe.com/primis/catalog/pcatalog/D19-1.htm.

Textbooks in comparative politicsreflect the dilemma that faces thesubfield as a scholarly enterprise. Onthe one hand, research in compara-tive politics seeks to deepen knowl-edge about individual political sys-tems outside the United States. Onthe other hand, it seeks broad gener-alizations about politics based on evi-dence from a large number of politicalsystems. The first requires detailedknowledge of the political systems ofparticular countries including contex-tual information about their geogra-phy, culture, and history. The secondrequires knowledge of the methods ofcomparison and of conceptual frame-works and theories. For the under-graduate with little or no knowledge ofany but the U.S. political system, thefirst enterprise - learning about indi-vidual political systems - is prerequi-site for the second - drawing compar-isons. However, textbook authors try-ing to organize their material aretempted to put conceptual frameworkand method of comparison first, asequence that threatens to lose stu-dents in abstractions before theyhave empirical referents.

Since comparative politics textbooksaim to impart information about somenumber of countries and also intro-duce methods of comparison, themost successful ones do both. Toaccomplish that, most of them rely ona number of country experts whosecountry chapters are tied together bya conceptual framework provided bythe textbook editor or co-editors. Thelarge volumes edited by Gabriel A.Almond, G. Bingham Powell Jr.,Kaare Strom and Russell J. Dalton(Comparative Politics Today); by MarkKesselman and Joel Krieger(European Politics in Transition); andby Michael J. Sodaro (ComparativePolitics: A Global Introduction) are theleading examples of that approach,Sodaro’s being the newest andmethodologically the most current.Although reliable sales figures areunavailable, these three (plus the lesstheoretical volume by Charles Hauss,see below) seem to be the mostwidely adopted texts.

W. Phillips Shively’s ComparativeGovernance is similarly conceived asa collection of country studies by vari-ous authors, tied together by an edi-tor who supplies the theoreticalframe, but it is distinctive because it isavailable as a series of modules fromwhich instructors can choose coun-tries and theoretical sections to createa customized volume. JeffreyKopstein and Mark Lichbach’sComparative Politics is the most theo-retically unified of the texts combiningcountry studies with a conceptualframework. The ten relatively briefcountry chapters describe politicalsystems from the perspective of politi-cal development. The editors return tothe theme of comparison after eachset of countries.

A few texts take a different tack,organizing information about a set ofcountries into a comparative frame-work without having separate chap-ters on individual countries. Michael

APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1 27Review Essay

Gallagher, Michael Laver and PeterMair’s Representative Government inModern Europe is the best exampleof that approach. Then there aremany single-authored textbooks,exemplified in my review by the vol-umes by Michael J. Roskin and byCharles Hauss. They have a unitythat multi-authored volumes lack butthe country studies in them have asecondary-source flavor that isinevitable when a single scholardescribes up to a dozen different sys-tems. Finally, there are the countrystudies in separate volumes that haveno single organizing framework, typi-fied by the Pearson Longman series(The British Polity, The French Polity,The German Polity). They offerdetailed descriptions on each countryand give the instructor the advantageand the challenge of drawing compar-isons. Table 1 summarizes the fea-tures of the comparative politics textsthat I have chosen to discuss fromamong the numerous volumes avail-able for the introductory course.

Comparative Politics Today, edited bythe late Gabriel A. Almond and contin-ued by Powell, Strom and Dalton, isthe standard by which the first type oftext - conceptual framework pluscountry studies - must be judged. It isthe longest established, boastsamong its collaborators outstandingsenior researchers in the field, andtraces its ancestry to the influentialseries, “Studies in PoliticalDevelopment,” sponsored by theCommittee on Comparative Politics ofthe Social Science Research Councilin the early 1960s. Its greatest virtueis a large array of country studies thatare succinct, reasonably parallel inorganization, and each is the authori-tative product of a scholar activelyengaged in research on that country.But pedagogically this volume posesan obstacle. The editors precede theexcellent country studies with a 150-page conceptual and theoreticalframework that introduces an enor-

Author/Editor Title Number of authors

Conceptual and theoretical framework

Number of countries

Number of continents

Almond, Powell, Strom, Dalton eds.

Comparative Politics Today: A World View

18 Structural- functional

12 including U.S.

5

Kesselman and Krieger eds.

European Politics In Transition

6 Continuity and change; the postwar European model and its demise

4 plus EU plus East- Central Europe

1

Sodaro ed. Comparative Politics: A Global Introduction

5 Concepts and methods of political science

10 5

Shively ed. Comparative Governance

30 Power, the state, conflict management

26 plus U.S. plus EU

5

Kopstein and Lichbach eds.

Comparative Politics

12 How political development shapes interests, identities, and institutions

10 4

Gallagher, Laver, Mair

Representative Government in Modern Europe

3 Institutions, parties, elections, policies

23 plus EU

1

Roskin Countries and Concepts

1 History, institutions, political culture, issues

5 major plus 4 brief third world

4

Hauss Comparative Politics: Domestic Responses to Global Challenges

1 Democratization and global interdependence

10 plus EU and U.S.

5

Conradt, Norton, Safran

German Polity, British Polity, French Polity

1 each various 1 each 1

Table 1: Characteristics of Comparative Politics Textbooks

mous array of terms and that, despitemany revisions over the decades, stillbears the marks of its origins: thestructural/functional approach of the1950s and 1960s. As an organizingframework it has the advantage ofproviding a template for the countrystudies. The authors of these studiesuse it faithfully enough to facilitatecomparison among political systems,though the text does not explicitlydraw comparisons after the introduc-tory section. But although the authorsprovide examples of comparativeresearch in their introductory section,structural-functionalism has notturned out to facilitate comparativeresearch. By leading undergraduatesthrough this framework, the editors donot introduce students to currentresearch approaches. This is a short-coming of nearly all of these texts, a

point to which I will return at the endof this review.

Kesselman and Krieger’s EuropeanPolitics in Transition has a different,less abstract organizing framework,one that focuses on continuity andchange in the “European model” ofpolitics. It emphasizes the challengesof economic policy and social diversi-ty and offers fewer and somewhatmore detailed country studies than doAlmond et al. There is a parallelorganization across the country stud-ies and each draws explicit compar-isons at the end. The book is reminis-cent of the conventional texts on the“major foreign powers” of half a cen-tury ago in that it deals only withEuropean states, avoids theoreticalabstractions, and emphasizes classicissues of state and economy. The

APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 128 Review Essay

four country studies - on the U.K.,France, Germany and Italy - are solid,succinct, and comparable. They aresupplemented by a very substantialdescription of the institutions and poli-cies of the European Union, and by arelatively superficial and somewhatconfusing section on the new politicalsystems of East Central Europe.While Almond et al. offer instructors alarge set of country studies fromwhich to choose, instructors adoptingKesselman and Krieger are likely touse all of it. The special challenge ofKesselman and Krieger’s approach isthat the editors insist on interpretingEuropean political systems in terms of“transition.” This situates theiraccount in that continent’s awarenessof the profound changes it experi-enced after 1945 and again after1990. But it introduces a temporalvariable that is bound to be of sec-ondary interest to students trying tofocus on cross-national rather thanlongitudinal comparisons.

Sodaro’s Comparative Politics: AGlobal Introduction is really twobooks. The first half is a comprehen-sive introduction to political science,to the principal concepts andresearch methods in the field, withextensive examples of problems thatthe discipline addresses. The exam-ples give it concreteness. The secondhalf consists of eight relatively shortcountry studies covering ten coun-tries, each of which is stronger onparties and electoral systems than onthe basic institutions of government.What ties these country studiesloosely to the first half of the book arehypothesis-testing exercises, butthese seem contrived and are not inany case carried out as seriousresearch exercises. The book’s length- 744 double-columned text pages -and its ambitious attempt both tointroduce the entire discipline of politi-cal science as well as a set of non-American political systems, makes itdifficult to use in one-semester cours-

es. But it does offer instructors a setof choices among country studies andalso among the introductory sections.As a result, it could be used selective-ly much like the even larger volumeedited by Almond, Powell, Strom andDalton.

“The dilemma between

emphasizing concepts and

methods [...], and providing

detailed descriptions of a

variety of political systems is

unresolved.”

Choice is the impressive feature ofShively’s Comparative Governance.Its introductory framework is relativelyconcrete. After a succinct but luciddiscussion of the purpose of compari-son, it introduces the concept of thestate and its role in managing conflict,avoiding abstraction by frequent spe-cific examples. The framework servesto organize the 27 country studiesamong which instructors can choose.These have considerable parallelstructure but are brief and thereforeserve either as introductions to besupplemented by additional country-specific reading or as a survey of awide range of political systems onceover lightly.

The strength of the text edited byJeffrey Kopstein and Mark Lichbachis that it engages in systematic com-parison by focusing on the differentdevelopmental paths that states havetaken and by returning to that com-parison after each of four sets ofcountries. The editors have notimposed a straitjacket on the authorsof the country chapters, though theyhave stressed a unifying set ofaspects of politics: interests, identi-

ties, and institutions. The countrychapters are varied but also verybrief. Students will not come awaywith any detailed knowledge of theten political systems the book covers.But they will gain an interpretation ofthe differences among countries thatresult from their different develop-mental paths and will see the value ofcomparison more effectively than inany other text.

The most successful attempt to inte-grate a conceptual framework withinformation about a variety of politicalsystems is Gallagher, Laver andMair’s Representative Government inModern Europe. It is organized by tra-ditional institutional categories - con-stitutions, executives, parliaments,party systems, elections, and policy -and in each of these sections pro-vides a fair amount of factual descrip-tion. In attempting to cover most ofthe countries of Europe, at least in itstabular presentations, it risks mind-boggling variety, but it offsets this bygenerally focusing on a subset of fiveor six main examples. The bookimplicitly reflects the research inter-ests of its authors, who are eminentEuropean scholars, and is therefore asophisticated treatment, although theconceptual framework is entirely con-ventional. Indeed its advantage is thatstudents acquainted only with theU.S. political system will find the con-ceptual organization of this bookfamiliar.

The two single-authored works arebasically arranged as a sequence ofcountry studies. Roskin’s Countriesand Concepts is a heroic attempt by asingle author to describe nine politicalsystems. Five of them, today’s majorpowers - the U.K., France, Germany,Russia and Japan - are rendered inconsiderable detail, and four of them,categorized as “third world,” are treat-ed more lightly. The focus is onissues, or what the author calls “quar-rels,” and there is some parallel struc-

APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1 29Review Essay

ture guided by attention to history,political institutions, and political cul-ture. The book is peppered with “fea-ture boxes” that constantly interruptthe flow of the text with key concepts,factoids, maps, important events,examples of political culture, andbiographies of political leaders andhistoric figures. These may eitherprove distracting, or possibly engag-ing for students with short attentionspans. By contrast to all the othertexts I have discussed, this is themost concrete, and concludes with 50very specific “lessons” from the ninecountries covered. It is hard to knowhow students would organize theselessons, or whether they would mere-ly regard them as a traveler regardshis or her notes after a tour d’horizon:as a scrapbook to be filled.

Charles Hauss’s ComparativePolitics: Domestic Responses toGlobal Challenges consists principallyof 11 country studies plus a chapteron the European Union. Although itintroduces the concept of the politicalsystem, it does not use it as anorganizing framework but ratherreturns in each country section to thethemes of democratization, liberaliza-tion, globalization, and sources ofconflict. It also precedes each ofthree sets of country studies withgeneral chapters respectively on theindustrialized democracies, the cur-rent and former communist regimes,and the third world. An instructor whochooses to use the whole book mayfind that it introduces too many organ-izing principles and too many coun-tries, just the opposite of the volumeby Kopstein and Lichbach whosefocus may be too narrow for manyinstructors.

This review of the most widely usedcomparative politics textbooksdemonstrates the variety of approach-es that exist and the lack of consen-sus on what constitutes an introduc-tion to comparative politics. The trend

“It seems to me that rational

choice institutionalism, with

its attention to both the indi-

vidual political actor and col-

lective results, is well suited

to organizing information

about a set of political sys-

tems.”

seems to be toward books covering alarge number of political systems onall of the continents of the world. Thedilemma between emphasizing con-cepts and methods for comparison,and providing detailed descriptions ofa variety of political systems, is unre-solved. This dilemma occurs in gradu-ate education as well, but at that levelit is ultimately resolved in the conductof specific research projects. Is thereno way of accomplishing somethinglike that for undergraduates by organ-izing a set of country studies arounda current research paradigm? Itseems to me that rational choice insti-tutionalism, with its attention to boththe individual political actor and col-lective results, is well suited to organ-izing information about a set of politi-cal systems. It focuses on institutionswithout ignoring the political behaviorof the individual. It can make plainthat the comparative study of politicsenables us to see how system-leveldifferences - institutional arrange-ments - affect the political behavior ofindividuals conceptualized as rationalactors. Such an approach would freestudents from learning theoreticalframeworks that are forbiddingly com-plex and unrelated to how we doresearch today. At best, these olderframeworks serve to organize infor-mation about different political sys-

tems but they do so at the risk of los-ing student interest at the outset. Aframework inspired by rational choiceinstitutionalism would acquaint stu-dents with a research approach thatis actually in use. It would help themto recognize that politics is a meansof translating individual preferencesinto collective outcomes, a recogni-tion that might stay with them afterthe course is over to help them inter-pret the political world. Finally, anapproach inspired by a currentresearch paradigm would help over-come the troubling disconnectbetween undergraduate and graduateeducation in political science.

30 APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1... Controversies

also make decisions about how toallocate visas among differentmigrant-sending states.

(Continued from page 6 ) First, while considerable attention hasbeen devoted to cross-cutting interestgroup cleavages, efforts to develop acomprehensive model of immigrationpolicymaking have had limited suc-cess. Why do the same groupsdemonstrate variable influence overpolicy outcomes over time and acrossdifferent types of immigration issues(control, integration, asylum proce-dures, etc.)? How do policymakersweigh the competing demands ofeconomic growth, challenges tonational identity, threats to nationalsecurity, and general public restric-tionism?

Second, how do these domestic inter-est group battles play out in an era ofincreasing international economicintegration? Have relatively open (defacto) immigration policies strength-ened employers and/or contributed tothe declining power of labor move-ments in the U.S. and other industrial-ized states, as a Heckscher-Ohlinview of the world would suggest?More generally, given that immigra-tion control policies often have moreimmediate consequences for labor-exporting countries than for receivingstates, to what extent does immigra-tion policymaking resemble a “two-level game” rather than a strictlydomestic political process?

Third, in light of this latter question,what opportunities exist for the nego-tiation of cooperative approaches toimmigration control that combineexpanded access to legal immigrationwith greater cooperation on borderenforcement? Similarly, does thenegotiation of successful multilateralregimes governing trade and invest-ment (for example) offer templates forconstructing international migrationinstitutions?

Notes

1 See, for example, Wayne A.Cornelius, Takeyuki Tsuda, Philip L.

Martin, and James F. Hollifield, eds.,Controlling Immigration: A GlobalPerspective, 2nd ed. (Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press, 2004);Marc R. Rosenblum, TheTransnational Politics of U.S.Immigration Policy (La Jolla, CA:Center for Comparative ImmigrationStudies, University of California-SanDiego, 2004); and Patrick Ireland,Becoming Europe: Immigration,Integration, and the Welfare State(Pittsburgh, PA: University ofPittsburgh Press, 2004).

”[I]mmigration policy in the

United States and most

industrialized states has

been broadly regressive,

shifting the benefits of migra-

tion disproportionately to

migrant employers and

organized crime networks,

while penalizing migrants

and other workers.”

These choices have broad implica-tions for how the costs and benefits ofmigration are distributed among dif-ferent segments of immigrants,native-born workers, employers, con-sumers, and taxpayers. Indeed, immi-gration policy in the United States andmost industrialized states has beenbroadly regressive, shifting the bene-fits of migration disproportionately tomigrant employers and organizedcrime networks, while penalizingmigrants and other workers. Thesedistributional issues drive much of thecontemporary debate over immigra-tion in the U.S. and Europe, a debateoverlayed by fears of lax immigrationcontrol as a national security threat.

A priority research agenda for com-parativist (and Americanist) politicalscientists interested in internationalmigration would include the followingitems:

31APSA-CP Vol 16, No. 1Datasets

I have recently made availablerecorded vote data from 19 legislativechambers in 18 countries (Argentina,Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile,Costa Rica, Czech Republic,Ecuador, Israel, Mexico, NewZealand, Nicaragua, Peru,Philippines, Poland, Russia,Uruguay). In addition to the data andcodebook, also available on the siteare some files with STATA code toproduce the measures of party votingunity I employ in my research.

Also available on the site are tran-scripts from interviews with 61 legisla-tors and party leaders from 8 coun-tries (Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica,Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua,Peru, and Venezuela) from 2000-2001. The interviews follow a stableprotocol for the most part, regardinghow decisions are reached within par-ties and carried out (or not) in the leg-islative environment, and how legisla-tors interact with party leaders, theexecutive, and the citizens they repre-sent. The interviews frequently coverother topics, as well however, accord-ing to the subject’s train of thought.The transcripts are available in bothEnglish and Spanish.

Please feel free to use any of thedata - qualitative or quantitative -available on the site, and to directother users to it. If you have anyproblems, questions, or suggestions,don’t hesitate to let me know.

John CareyDarmouth [email protected]://www.dartmouth.edu/~jcarey

Recorded VoteData from JohnCarey

Pew GlobalAttitudes DatasetThe Pew Research Center For ThePeople and The Press has releasedits Global Attitudes dataset. In theforeword to the codebook, DirectorAndrew Kohut describes the projectas follows:

“In 44 national surveys, based oninterviews with more than 38,000people, we explore public views aboutthe rapid pace of change in modernlife; global interconnectednessthrough trade, foreign investment andimmigration; and people’s attitudestoward democracy and governance.The surveys’ themes range from eco-nomic globalization and the reach ofmultinational corporations to terrorismand the U.S. response. The resultsilluminate international attitudestoward the United States and showwhere U.S. and foreign opinions alignand collide.”

This report was widely covered in themedia for shedding light on publicopinion in both industrialized anddeveloping countries, and especiallyin Islamic societies. The countriessurveyed were Angola, Argentina,Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria,Canada, China, the Czech Republic,Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana,Great Britain, Guatemala, Honduras,India, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast,Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Mali,Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, thePhilippines, Poland, Russia, Senegal,the Slovak Republic, South Africa,South Korea, Tanzania, Turkey,Uganda, Ukraine, the United States,Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and Vietnam.The survey contained nearly 100questions, though some sensitivequestions were not asked in somecountries (especially China, Egypt,and Vietnam).

The datafile and codebook, along withthose for dozens of other surveys,can be downloaded at:http://people-press.org/dataarchive/.

Protest andRepression Datafrom RonFranciscoInterval daily and sub-daily data onEuropean countries’ protest andrepression are available at:http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~ronfran/data/index.html

There are data organized by countryfor 16 years, from 1980 through 1995.The variables/categories include date,day of the week, protest group,protest target, target agent, descrip-tion of the event, linked dates to theprotest event, time or duration of theevent, the number of protesters, thenumber arrested, injured and killed, adichotomous measure of propertydamage, the number of state agents,the number injured and number killed,an estimate of the protest group’sorganization strength, the source andthe source date.

The data are coded from 500sources. There are 26 countries onthe website at present, all fromWestern and East Central Europe.Eventually, 28 counties will be avail-able. There are also links at the web-site to similar data for Latin America(Colombia, Peru and El Salvador),Burma, and South Korea. A codebooklists the source codes, acronyms andprovides further information on coding methods.

Ron FranciscoUniversity of [email protected]

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In this Newsletter:

Guest Letter 1Comparative Politics: A View from Britain, Archie Brown

Controversies 5On “‘American’ Methods, ‘Comparative’ Theories”, David Samuels 5 On the Neglect of Immigration, Wayne Cornelius and Mark R. Rosenblum 6

Symposium: The Confluence of International Relationsand Comparative Politics: Professional Dilemmas 7Ph.D.s without Borders? Drawing Subdisciplinary Boundaries in Political Science, Bernard Grofman 8Blurred Boundaries - Hurray!: Shifting lines in Comparative Politicsand International Relations, Peter Gourevitch 11ICP: Mood Ring or Next Big Thing?, Layna Mosley 14Integrating International Relations and Comparative Politics:Professional Dilemmas, Helen V. Milner 18Real Worlds of Political Science and the Structure of the Discipline:Some Thoughts on Contemporary Professional Dilemmas, Duane Swank 21Bridging the Divide Between Comparative Politics and InternationalRelations, Alison Brysk 23

Review Essay 26Comparative Politics Textbooks: A Review, Gerhard Loewenberg 26

Datasets 31Recorded Vote Data from John Carey 31Global Attitudes Dataset 31Protest and Repression Data from Ron Francisco 31

Copyright 2005 American Political Science Association. Published with financial assistancefrom the members of the Organized Section in Comparative Politics of the AmericanPolitical Association and the College of Arts and Letters, the Helen Kellogg Institute forInternational Studies, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and the Graduate Schoolof Arts and Sciences of the University of Notre Dame du Lac.

Volume 16, Issue 1 Winter 2005

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