ABSTRACT
Despite having been a subject of intellectual curiosity for centuries, com-
parative politics did not begin to attract serious scholarly attention until the
closing years of the nineteenth century. It was only then that a growing
number of scholars began studying and comparing politics on a cross-
national basis. Most of these early comparativists were English speaking,
and a majority American. Not surprisingly, their early writings did not
extend far beyond comparative examinations of American and European
politics. Over the years and decades since, the schools of thought and the approaches employed by these and other comparativists, as well as the areas
of their focus, have undergone a number of substantive changes. The scope,
direction, and focus of comparative politics has been-and continues to
be-influenced by a variety of diverse and disparate phenomena, a devel-
opment not unlike that experienced by most other disciplines. Variables
such as the evolving international system, the growth of the modern nation-
state and its far-reaching social and political ramifications, diplomatic alliances
and hostilities, prevailing prejudices and preferences, and ideological predispositions and biases have all contributed to the ways in which compar-
ativists interpret politics and develop methodological approaches to the
subject. In more ways than comparativists like to admit, the study of com-
parative politics has been captive to perspectives of its principal scholarly
interpreters, as well as, at times, the changing beats of history. That shifts in
the major theoretical and methodological approaches to comparative poli-
tics happen to correspond loosely with changing historical eras is more than
simply coincidental. In fact, such changes in the study of comparative politics have in most instances been, even if indirectly, a result of evolving
historical, national, or international circumstances. It is with this under-
standing that the different approaches to comparative politics need to be
examined. Some of these key theoretical and methodological changes to the
study of comparative politics form the focus of the present chapter.
