Comparing Nations: Concepts, Strategies, Substance - Hardcover

DOGAN

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0631186441 ISBN 13: 9780631186441

Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell, 1994

Synopsis

This work suggests that comparative politics and sociology have not always been good examples of the successful combination of abstract theory and empirical data. In this contribution to these fields, a group of distinguished scholars address the theoretical, methodological, epistemological and substantive problems involved in cross-national research.

About this title

Review

"The extraordinary political changes of the last few years, East and West, North and South, make obsolete virtually all the conventional approaches to comparative politics. In this book a distinguished group of theorists literally reconceptualize the field with remarkable originality, daring, and imagination. So successfully do they examine cases for comparison, history and the contemporary, similarities and differences, quantitative and qualitative strategies, that the volume is essential reading for anyone studying politics in today′s world." David E. Apter, Yale University

From the Back Cover

All Chapters within this book are explicitly comparative, the contributors deal with various methodological problems in comparative research; the pitfalls of miscomparing; the use and abuse of statistics; the conceptual homogenization of a heterogeneous perspective; the strategy of comparing similar countries; asynchronic comparisions; and the pendulum between theory and substance.

These methodological issues are illustrated by empirical studies of important subjects; the fragility of the presidential regimes; the Japanese exceptionalism; the comparability of Latin America countries; the pertinence of an asynchronic comparison between weak states in post–colonial Africa and Medieval Europe; the deviant case of high stateness in a Muslim country; the empirical testing of the concepts of legitimacy and trust; the limits to quantification; and the specificity of the comparative method.

All the contributors are outstanding comparativists, working at the forefront of the comparative field. The team includes Mattei Dogan, Joshua B. Forrest, Seymour Martin Lipset, Ali Kazancigil, John D. Martz, Fred W. Riggs and Giovanni Sartori.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0631186441
• ISBN 13: 9780631186441
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256