History edit
Early Comparative Politics edit
Establishing the Study of Politics as a Social-Scientific Discipline (1880-1920) edit
Modern Comparative Politics edit
Modern comparative politics can be organised into three paradigms, or as Mark Blyth refers to them, punctuations. Within each
First Punctuation: Behavioural Revolution (1921-1966) edit
Second Punctuation: Post-Behavioural Period (1967-1988) edit
Third Punctuation: the Second Social-Scientific Revolution (1989-present) edit
Traditional qualitative research produce highly contextualised and interesting historical narratives that address big-picture questions of comparative politics. However, this came at the expense of scientific rigour and generalisability. Traditional quantitative research produced rigorous and high quality results which addressed narrow questions with well-defined concepts. However, the work they produced was so specialised, it was not
For example, for all the departments of political science of Canada's U15 group of top research universities, it is required that undergraduates take at least one statistics or quantitative methods course in order to complete their programme.[1][2] This is in contrast to qualitative methods, where for a majority of U15 universities, this methodology is not even offered as a course option.
Giovanni Sartori described the field as divided between "overconscious thinker" who. For Sartori, the "unconscious thinker" relie , while the "overconscious thinker" with her sophisticated methods, produces highly rigorous yet uninteresting research.
This debate was ignited by Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba's (1994) seminal work, Designing Social Inquiry – often shortened to KKV for the authors' initials. KKV argued that comparative research needs to use a single line of inquiry employed by quantitative research. In order to increase their leverage, small-N qualitative researchers must increase their number of cases (large-N).
The 1980s and 1990s represented a reinvigoration of qualitative methods. This was partly due to the criticisms posed by quantitative researchers over the validity and academic rigour of qualitative research. For example, Giovanni Sartori's classical piece, "Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics," criticised quantitative researchers for inappropriately imposing the same experimental methods and logic of inquiry as that of the natural sciences.[3] introduced the terms "conceptual travelling" ( "conceptual stretching,"
- ^ "Academic Calendar, Political Science 2020-2021". University of Toronto. University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science. 2020.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Political Science Programs Guide 2020 (PDF). Montreal: McGill University. 2020. pp. 19–20.
- ^ Sartori, Giovanni (December 1970). "Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics". The American Political Science Review. 64 (4): 1040 – via JSTOR.