ABSTRACT
For all its ancient lineage and wide-spread interest by academics and practitioners alike, the field of comparative government remains beset by unsolved problems. One is prejudice: too many think their own country “best.” If not, its critics look for “better examples” to other countries, mainly the larger ones, which come to figure as “pattern states.” Did not these larger countries traditionally inspire the best-known typologies used in comparative government writing such as the dichotomies of “presidential” versus “parliamentary government,” “cabinet government” versus “gouvernement d’assemblée,” “P.R. systems” versus “plurality systems,” “two-party systems” versus “multiparty systems,” “winner-takes-all systems” versus presumed “consensual systems,” etc.? Larger countries came to serve as measuring rods: whether positively for those reformers who sought to borrow specific institutions to make their own countries “better”; or negatively for those who sought arguments to resist unwelcome calls for change. Of course, our knowledge of other systems of government, rather than just the larger “pattern states,” has greatly expanded. But the impact of this has remained limited: after all, it is difficult enough to know more than a few countries sufficiently well. And as the main instrument to make these countries better known is presentation in the widest known languages, there is considerable chance for misinterpretation: attempts to “translate” the specific experiences of a lesser-known country to an international public often fall victim to the political preconceptions of the country or countries “owning” the language concerned.
