Abstract
This contribution to the debate on the challenges to comparative politics largely focuses on the issue of differences versus similarities, the issue that has been raised by both authors: Caramani and Van Kersbergen. I share their concern that too much research focuses on differences between countries and I also join them in locating the sources of this bias in methodological considerations. I do not agree however with some of Caramani's points, in particular his fundamental claim that explanation necessarily demands variations across cases; a claim that seems also to be made at least implicitly by Van Kersbergen. I argue that the validity of an explanation rather depends on the degree to which empirical evidence is congruent with observable implications of this explanation and is not congruent with implications of rival explanations. It is irrelevant whether these theoretical expectations concern differences or similarities between countries. I therefore advocate a theory-driven rather than a case-driven analysis of national political systems in order to meet the challenge to explain similarities between them.
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Notes
In fact, almost all of my own research is informed by puzzles of variation.
Perhaps Przeworski and Teune's two level version of the mdsd get around this (1970). But in comparative politics, in particular in small ‘n’, the mdsd is used on one level of analysis only.
Empirically, the focus on national political systems distinguishes this empirical sub-discipline of political science from its counterpart, international relations.
Yin calls this ‘pattern matching’ (Yin, 2003).
To be sure, Allison splits the Cuban Missile Crisis into three decisions. The point here, however, is that these three decisions are not taken as three cases that are compared with each other following for instance a most similar system design. Rather, for each of the three decisions observable implications of the three models are compared with empirical reality. Rogowski (2004) runs through a number of very influential studies in comparative politics that show no variation in the dependent variable, including the single case study on the Netherlands by Lijphart (1968) and Katzenstein's study of small states all having the same outcome, economic success (1985).
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Haverland, M. If Similarity is the Challenge – Congruence Analysis Should be Part of the Answer. Eur Polit Sci 9, 68–73 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/eps.2009.47
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/eps.2009.47