Discuss the subject matter of comparative politics. Outline the limitations of comparative political analysis. (UPSC CSE Mains 2020 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 2)
Comparative politics is about comparing political phenomena. The emphasis is on both the method of inquiry i.e., comparative, and the substance into which inquiry is directed i.e., political phenomena. We need to understand that comparative politics shares the subject matter and concerns of Political Science, i.e. democracy, constitutions, political parties, social movements etc. Within the discipline of Political Science thus the specificity of comparative political analysis is marked out by its conscious use of the comparative method to answer questions which might be of general interest to political scientists.
Merits
- Interdisciplinary nature helps in a better way of analysis of different constitutions, polities, countries, etc and helps us to differentiate and understand similarities.
- helps people understand the nature and working of political frameworks around the world.
- Started in true sense the study of developing societies after World War II and understand their indigenous political systems, eg. Political Development approach.
- Helps to Understand how countries evolve, discover patterns, and why they evolve in the way they do.
- Let us understand how certain political as well as social regimes work for purposes of international relations and foreign policy.
Limitations
- Mostly ethnocentric in nature – thus, it becomes impossible to compare drastically different or completely identical countries on a single monolithic European political system
- It favours status quoism and doesn’t favour much dynamic analysis.
- Too much emphasis on study of political institutions
- Too much data driven, methodological analysis kills the indigenous research models as well creativity in understanding diverse nations like that of India where ascriptive factors like caste, religion, etc play a larger impact in elections as compared to Western nations.
- It has been seen that political scientists in the comparative analysis rely too much on comparison that the basic premises on individuality of state or society is lost.
- Too much comparison based on data, studies, etc sometimes might be falsified by other set of data and studies, thus it can make the approach volatile to changing times.
- The study of developing societies that was targeted majorly by the Modern Comparative approach has inherent fallacies of Orientalism and Colonial understanding.
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