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CHAPTER ONE: Introduction

Study

Comparative politics is the study of power and decision making within national boundaries. The study of comparative politics helps us understand political events and developments in different countries, generate lessons from one place to apply in another, and develop broad theories. Five major areas of study within the field are political development, regime type and change, participation and representation, policymaking processes, and political economy. Three important questions run through these areas and help structure this comparative politics text: What explains political behavior? Who rules? Where and why?

There are three broad approaches to explaining political behavior that each focus on different explanatory factors. Some highlight individual motivation, with perspectives such as rational choice or psychological theories. Others emphasize culture and ideology, using approaches ranging from survey research to discourse analysis. A third group focuses on underlying socioeconomic or political structures. To answer the question "Who rules?" there are two broad categories of theory: pluralist and elite.

The question of "Where and why?" gets to the heart of comparative politics. Through the comparison of more than one place or time, it is possible to build theory-generalized understandings and explanations-regarding political life. Methods used to study comparative politics range from single case studies to multiple case studies to the quantitative analysis of large numbers of cases.