ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief overview of the political science field and of its major shifts of emphasis and direction as a way of putting current issues into better perspective. It assesses the claims made by the several approaches presented and attempts to indicate where the field of comparative politics goes. Comparative politics has long been thought of as one of the leading fields within political science—maybe the leading field. The chapter covers a vast research terrain—literally, the entire world. As its subject matter, comparative politics deals with all of the world's diverse and fascinating political systems—and with such critical, recent, overarching themes as democratization, integration, and globalization. The chapter describes the two-party versus multi-party systems, unitary versus federal systems, and dictatorships versus democracy. It begins to scratch the surface of the long list of subject matters to which comparative politics turns its attention.
