ABSTRACT
During recent decades, a new type of scholarly inquiry has emerged which, for better or worse, is called "comparative political theory" and which is an example of broader cross-cultural studies in our time. This chapter indicates the meaning and significance of this new inquiry, its possible contributions, and why it is necessarily a source of disturbance. As the name indicates, comparative political theory is a mode of political theory or philosophy and thus stands in a long and venerable tradition. Although there are many different conceptions of political theory/philosophy, it seems preferable at this point to start from common sense usage: whereby it means a thinking or mindfulness about political life. In the context of Western political thought, the contagion of Orientalism has surfaced most blatantly in the formula of "developmentalism". Comparative political thinking is appropriated or colonized for extrinsic purposes.
