ABSTRACT
Among the several fields or subdisciplines into which the discipline of poli-
tical science is usually divided, comparative politics is the only one that
carries a methodological instead of a substantive label. The term ‘‘com-
parative politics’’ indicates the how but does not specify the what of the
analysis. The label is somewhat misleading because both explicit methodo-
logical concern and implicit methodological awareness among students of
comparative politics have generally not been very high.1 Indeed, too many
students of the field have been what Giovanni Sartori calls ‘‘unconscious thinkers’’ – unaware of and not guided by the logic and methods of
empirical science, although perhaps well versed in quantitative research
techniques. One reason for this unconscious thinking is undoubtedly that
the comparative method is such a basic, and basically simple, approach,
that a methodology of comparative political analysis does not really exist.
As Sartori points out, the other extreme – that of the ‘‘overconscious thin-
kers,’’ whose ‘‘standards of method and theory are drawn from the physical
paradigmatic sciences’’ – is equally unsound.2 The purpose of this paper is to contribute to ‘‘conscious thinking’’ in comparative politics by focusing on
comparison as a method of political inquiry. The paper will attempt to
analyze not only the inevitable weaknesses and limitations of the compara-
tive method but also its great strengths and potentialities.
