Example Of Comparative Politics Essay

806 Words4 Pages

Within political science, there are several subfields. One of these subfields is the study of comparative politics. The definition of comparative politics is in its name; that is, it compares the politics of different countries in an effort to test theories about how the world works. In political science, there are often theories without clear answers. However, if researchers are able to compare two countries, they are able draw conclusions in ways they wouldn’t otherwise be able to. It sounds simple but in reality it is difficult to accurately do. Comparative politics struggles to establish itself as a science due to multiple obstacles. In science, it is important to control for variables. When researchers study cause-and-effect, they want to be sure that the effect is not in fact being influenced by something else. If researchers wanted to study the …show more content…

The reasons researchers have for selecting their cases can often be flawed. While in other sciences case selection is randomized to varying extents, it is not possible in political science due the difficulty in controlling variables, limited number of cases, and difficulty in access. Researchers often choose to study a country they are already educated in or wish to travel to. There is also the problem in how cases are frequently selected; if a researcher is examining cause-and-effect, it is important they examine how the proposed cause affects many countries, not just the countries where it had the effect in question. In other words, using an example from “Essentials of Comparative Politics” by Patrick O’Neil, if a comparativist is studying revolutions and hypothesizes that the primary cause of revolutions is a rapid increase in inequality, they should examine a wide variety of places where a growth of inequality took place. They shouldn’t, as many researchers mistakenly do, study only the countries in which the growth of inequality led to a

Open Document