ABSTRACT
The previous two chapters have demonstrated the advantages, disadvantages, and challenges associated with the comparison of many ( Chapter 3 ) and few ( Chapter 4 ) countries. This chapter turns its attention to the use of single-country studies in comparative politics. By a single-country study, we refer primarily to any study in which a single country forms the basic unit of analysis but which may also be broken down into smaller units across time and space by examining sub-national variation across states in federal countries, other administrative units in unitary systems, as well as other appropriate units of analysis, such as individuals, groups, and institutions. As argued in the other chapters, it is entirely possible to raise the number of observations and bolster the inferences that one wishes to make even in single-country studies by including analysis across such units and over time. You will recall from Chapter 2 that the methodological trade-offs between the scope of countries under comparison and the level of abstraction includes the single-country study (see the lower-left corner of Figure 2.1 ). Within the framework adopted here, single-country studies are necessarily more intensive (i.e. have a lower level of abstraction) and less extensive (i.e. only examine one country) where it is possible to focus on the particular features of a country while at the same time relating those features to broader sets of research questions in the field of comparative politics.
