ABSTRACT
The idea that the politics and policies of states and nations are distinctively clustered in terms of enduring affinities is as old as type construction in comparative political inquiry. The clustering concept has two strong variants: one where policy affinities are seen as being closely associated with aspects of territoriality – a shared language, a common geography or a common culture – and another where the basis of commonality is manifested in a logic of policy coherence deriving from relatively unchanging structural characteristics, often, but not exclusively, of a socio-economic nature. In other words, national policy profiles are seen as being clustered into different and distinctive ‘worlds’ either because they share distinct ‘family’ resemblances – they have similar territorial origins – or because common structures give rise to distinct types of policy ‘regime’ – they are informed by qualitatively different policy logics. In what follows, the technical term ‘clusters’ is often preferred to the more metaphorical ‘worlds’.
