Evolution of Comparative Politics

The evolution of comparative politics means the growth of the subject over time. At first, thinkers compared governments in a casual way. Later, the comparison became a disciplined branch of political science. It now has its own concepts, theories and methods. Aristotle compared the constitutions of Greek city-states. He wanted to find the best form of rule. Montesquieu compared climates, laws and governments to explain the “spirit” of laws. Bryce compared modern democracies to see how they worked in practice. After the Second World War, scholars such as Almond, Easton and Macridis tried to build a general science. It was meant to cover every country, old and new. Each stage corrected the weakness of the one before it. The subject we study today carries traces of all of them.

For a student, this history is not a list of dates to be learnt by heart. It explains why the subject has several approaches and not one. It explains why some terms, such as structure, function, system, culture and institution, appear again and again. It also explains why examinations often ask about the “shift from the traditional to the modern approach”. A candidate who understands the logic of the change can answer any question on this topic in an orderly way. The logic is simple. Each phase arose from dissatisfaction with an earlier one. This note is for UG and PG students and for those preparing for OPSC, UPSC and UGC NET. It follows the story from the Greeks to the present day. It gives special attention to the Indian contribution.

1. Meaning and definitions

The word “evolution” means the gradual development of a subject through stages. Each stage has its own concerns, concepts and methods. Evolution does not mean steady progress in a straight line. The history of comparative politics has some returns to older ideas. The revival of institutions in the 1980s is an example. There have also been quarrels between schools. And the subject has borrowed from sociology, economics and anthropology.

The word “comparative” also needs a clear meaning. In a loose sense, any study that mentions more than one country is comparative. In the strict sense used by political scientists, comparison is a method. Cases are chosen with a purpose. They are set against each other on defined variables. Conclusions are then drawn about causes. The meaning of comparative politics itself changed with each phase. So the definitions below belong to different periods.

Writer	Idea	How it is usually put
Roy C. Macridis	Criticised the old comparative government as descriptive, parochial and legalistic; asked for a broader and more analytical field	Comparative study should concern the whole range of political activity, not only the formal organs of the state
Gabriel Almond	Treated comparison as the study of political systems and their functions	Every political system can be compared by the functions that it performs and the structures that perform them
Jean Blondel	Stressed the study of governments as comparisons across countries	A systematic study of the patterns of government in different countries
Giovanni Sartori	Held that comparing is a way of controlling generalisations	The comparative method is a way to test whether statements hold beyond one case
Arend Lijphart	Described comparison as one of the basic methods of science	Comparison is a method of discovering empirical relations among variables, not a separate field
Rod Hague and Martin Harrop	Defined the purpose as explanation by comparison	Comparative government and politics seeks to explain differences and similarities between political systems

Definitions by scholars

Roy C. Macridis (The Study of Comparative Government, 1955). Macridis did not give a one-line definition. He argued that the older comparative government was formal, narrow and descriptive. He said the field should study the whole range of political activity, informal as well as formal. It should use a comparative and analytical method. Examiners usually expect this as his position. Comparison must move from the description of organs to the analysis of political processes.

Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell (Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach, 1966). Comparative politics is the study and comparison of political systems. Every system is compared by the functions it performs and the structures that perform them. The stress is on a common framework. It allows Western and non-Western systems to be set side by side.

Jean Blondel (An Introduction to Comparative Government, 1969). Comparative government is “concerned with the study of the patterns of national governments in the contemporary world”. The definition covers all national governments. It says that the aim is to find patterns.

Giovanni Sartori (“Comparing and Miscomparing”, 1991). Comparing is a method of control. It tests whether general statements hold beyond a single case. For Sartori, a comparison is sound only if the things compared are really comparable. For this reason he insisted on careful concepts.

Arend Lijphart (“Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method”, 1971). The comparative method is “a method of discovering empirical relationships among variables”. It is not a method of measurement. He treated comparison as one of the basic scientific methods, along with the experimental and statistical methods. It is not a separate subject.

Rod Hague and Martin Harrop (Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction). The purpose of comparative government and politics is to explain, by comparison, the likenesses and differences among political systems. It also draws general conclusions about how politics works.

Note for the student. Several of these are given in the form in which textbooks commonly report them. The words in quotation marks are the ones most often cited. The exact wording differs between editions. In the examination, write the scholar’s name, the work and the main idea. Quote only the short phrase you are sure of.

What the definitions share, and what they show about evolution. Every definition has three elements. These are the units compared (systems, institutions, processes or behaviour), the aim (to describe patterns and to explain them) and the method (systematic comparison with control over variables). The definitions also record the change in the subject. The older ones speak of governments and institutions. The mid-century ones speak of political systems, functions and processes. The later ones speak of explanation and method. A student who remembers units, aim and method can rebuild any definition. He can also place it in its period.

2. Nature of the evolution

1. It is gradual and cumulative. The subject did not appear all at once. Aristotle classified constitutions. Montesquieu studied laws. Bagehot described the English constitution. Almond listed the functions of political systems. Each added something that later writers kept, corrected or rejected. Almond’s list of functions would be hard to imagine without the older idea that governments perform different tasks. So a student should show the links between phases. The phases are not separate islands.

2. It moves by dissatisfaction and reaction. Each stage began as a criticism of the one before. Macridis and others attacked the traditional approach as descriptive and narrow. Easton’s post-behavioural call then criticised the behaviouralists. Dependency writers attacked the early theories of development. Scholars seldom give up a method until they see it fail. So the failure of a method is the best explanation of the next stage. In the examination, linking each phase with the criticism that ended it earns marks for analysis.

3. It moves from description to explanation. Older works told the reader how legislatures and courts were organised in a few countries. Later works asked why systems differ and what follows from the differences. Compare Bryce’s Modern Democracies (1921) with Lijphart’s Patterns of Democracy (1999). Bryce describes in detail. Lijphart explains and classifies by variables. This movement from “what” to “why” is the main thread of the whole story.

4. It moves from the formal to the informal. Early study dealt with constitutions, legislatures, executives and courts. Later study added parties, interest groups, elites, culture, the army and social movements. A constitution on paper may differ from the working of politics. The study of one-party regimes and post-colonial states showed this. The federal design of the Indian Constitution cannot be understood without the party system that works inside it.

5. It widens from the West to the world. Until the 1940s, comparative government meant mainly Britain, France, Germany and the United States. Sometimes the Soviet Union was added. After 1945 many new states appeared in Asia and Africa. The subject had to cover them. Almond and Coleman’s The Politics of the Developing Areas (1960) marks this widening. It also raised a question. Do Western concepts fit non-Western societies?

6. It is influenced by events in the real world. Events in politics set the questions. The rise of fascism and the failure of Weimar democracy raised interest in institutions and political culture. Decolonisation led to the study of political development. Coups and breakdowns in the 1960s led Huntington to write on political order. The fall of communist regimes in 1989-91 produced the study of transitions and the “third wave”. So the subject mirrors the history it studies.

7. It borrows freely from other disciplines. Sociology gave the idea of structure and function. Economics gave rational choice and political economy. Psychology gave the survey method for studying attitudes. Anthropology gave the idea of culture. Systems theory gave the idea of a system with inputs and outputs. A student of comparative politics must therefore know the vocabulary of neighbouring subjects. Easton’s use of the systems idea is an example.

8. It is marked by changes in method. The method moved from legal and historical description to the behavioural and statistical study of large samples. Then it moved to a mixture of case studies, small-N comparison, formal models and experiments. Each method has its strengths. Almond and Verba’s The Civic Culture gave comparable data on attitudes through surveys. Barrington Moore’s historical comparison gave insight into long-term paths to modernity.

9. It has competing approaches and no single paradigm. In a natural science, one theory may replace another. In comparative politics, several approaches live side by side. These are the institutional, structural-functional, political economy, cultural and rational choice approaches. They persist because different questions need different tools. The subject has never fully agreed on the best method.

10. It is cyclical in some respects. The behaviouralists pushed institutions aside. In the 1980s institutions returned as the “new institutionalism”, now with sharper theory. The systems approach neglected the state. In 1985 Skocpol and others “brought the state back in”. A rejected idea may be revived at a higher level once its weaknesses are mended. So the history is a spiral and not a straight line.

11. It shows growing awareness of concepts and method. Sartori warned against concept stretching in 1970. Lijphart discussed the comparative method in 1971. Later debates on case selection involved Geddes and King, Keohane and Verba. The field increasingly examines its own tools. As the subject grew, careless comparison became costly. So thought about method became part of the subject.

12. It has a growing contribution from the global South. In the early phase, theory was made mostly in Western universities. India and other countries were only cases. Gradually, scholars such as Rajni Kothari in India produced concepts of their own. The “Congress system” is an example. They also questioned borrowed models. This matters for Indian candidates. It is a ready example of the move from receiving theory to making it.

13. It remains unfinished. New developments continue. These include large data sets, experiments, the study of democratic backsliding and populism, and the debate on regime classification. So the evolution is still going on. A good answer ends with the present. It does not treat the story as complete.

3. Phases of evolution: an overview

Scholars divide the growth of comparative politics into broad phases. The dates are only approximate, because ideas overlap in time. But the division gives a simple frame for the details in the later sections.

• Classical and early-modern roots (to the 18th century). Observation and classification of constitutions by Aristotle, Kautilya and Ibn Khaldun, followed by Machiavelli and Montesquieu. The aim was mainly practical and philosophical: which constitution is best and why states rise and fall.
• Nineteenth-century foundations. Tocqueville, Mill, Bagehot and Bryce compared countries with a historical and empirical eye, and the comparative method was named and discussed.
• The traditional phase (to the 1940s). Comparative government as a study of formal institutions, constitutions and legal rules, mostly in the West, with a descriptive and sometimes normative aim.
• The behavioural revolution (1950s and 1960s). A call for science: the study of actual behaviour, new concepts such as system, structure and function, surveys, and wide coverage of new states.
• Development, state and political economy (1960s and 1970s). Questions of modernisation, political order, revolutions, dependency and the role of classes and the state.
• Post-behavioural and new-institutional phase (from the late 1960s and 1980s). Relevance and values, return of the state and institutions, rational choice, culture, and the third wave of democracy.
• Contemporary trends (1990s to the present). Mixed methods, experiments, large data sets, democratic backsliding, populism, and a more global field.

The diagram below shows the order of the phases and what led from one to the next.

Read the diagram from top to bottom: the words on the arrows give the reason for each change, and the highlighted box marks the phase that gave the subject its modern form.

4. Ancient and classical roots

The habit of comparing political arrangements is as old as political thought. The early thinkers did not call it comparative politics. They also mixed description with advice about the best state. But they gave the first categories and questions that the subject still uses.

Aristotle: the first comparative student of constitutions. In the Politics, Aristotle asks which constitution is best, and which is best for particular peoples. For this he used the study of many city-states. Tradition says that he and his school collected the constitutions of 158 Greek states. Only the Constitution of Athens survives. The exact figure is traditional, so it should be quoted with care. Aristotle classified constitutions by two tests. The first is the number who rule: one, few or many. The second is the purpose of rule: the common good or the rulers’ own interest. Monarchy, aristocracy and polity are the true forms. Tyranny, oligarchy and democracy are their corrupt forms. He also linked classification to observation and to causes. In Book V he asked why constitutions change and revolutions occur. He recommended a mixed constitution resting on a large middle class. His method of collecting cases and then classifying them is the ancestor of the comparative method.

Plato: the decline of regimes. In the Republic (Books VIII and IX), Plato describes a sequence of regimes. It runs from rule by philosophers (aristocracy) to timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and finally tyranny. Each arises from the faults of the one before. This sequence is more philosophical than empirical. But it introduced three ideas: regimes are types, they can be ranked, and their changes follow patterns. In examinations, Plato is usually paired with Aristotle to show the idea of classification.

Polybius: the cycle and the mixed constitution. In Book VI of his Histories, the Greek historian Polybius describes a cycle of constitutional change, called anacyclosis. He argued that Rome was strong because it had a mixed constitution. The consuls were monarchic, the Senate was aristocratic and the assemblies were democratic. Each checked the others. His comparison of Rome with Sparta and Carthage is one of the earliest clear comparisons of states to explain stability and success. It influenced Machiavelli and Montesquieu.

Kautilya: comparative reasoning in the Indian tradition. The Arthashastra is traditionally ascribed to Kautilya (Chanakya) of the Mauryan age. Scholars still debate its date and authorship. It is a manual of statecraft. It lists the seven elements (saptanga) of the state: the king, ministers, territory, fortified capital, treasury, army and ally. Its mandala theory places a state at the centre of a circle of neighbours. It then asks which neighbours are likely to be friends and which are likely to be enemies. This is a form of comparative reasoning about the relations between states. The text also mentions republican polities (sanghas), which shows an awareness of constitutional variety. Indian students should treat Kautilya as proof that serious thought about the state is not only a Western story.

Ibn Khaldun: a comparative sociology of states. In the Muqaddimah (1377), Ibn Khaldun wrote from North Africa. He explained the rise and fall of dynasties through asabiyyah, the group solidarity that gives a ruling group its strength. As comfort and luxury spread, this solidarity weakens. By comparing Arab, Berber and other dynasties, he looked for regular patterns in social and political change. He treated politics as a subject to be explained, and not only as a matter for moral advice. Many scholars see him as an early forerunner of comparative-historical sociology.

What these thinkers contributed. The classical period left three lasting gifts. The first is the practice of classifying regimes by simple tests. The second is the habit of asking why regimes change or survive. The third is the idea that the study of many cases can lead to general statements. Their limits were also important. The evidence was small and mostly came from one city-state or one region. The aim was often to recommend the best state, and not to explain. Facts and values were not kept apart.

Link to later phases. The behavioural scholars of the twentieth century criticised this older tradition as speculative. Yet their questions were the same. What makes regimes stable? How do they change? Which type is best? These are the questions of Aristotle and Ibn Khaldun in modern form.

5. Early modern and nineteenth-century foundations

From the sixteenth century, modern states began to take shape. Comparison then moved closer to the observation of real governments and the search for laws behind them. By the nineteenth century, the comparative method had been given a name. It was used in history, law and sociology as well as in politics.

Machiavelli: power and the realistic study of states. In The Prince (1513) and the Discourses on Livy, Niccolo Machiavelli compared principalities and republics, ancient and modern. He wished to learn how states are won, kept and lost. His importance lies in separating political analysis from moral advice. He asked how rulers actually behave and succeed. This realism is a necessary base for an empirical science of politics.

Bodin: sovereignty. Jean Bodin’s Six Books of the Republic (1576) compared the constitutions of many countries. It developed the concept of sovereignty as the highest power in a state. A general concept was now used to compare states of different forms. This foreshadows modern concept-building.

Montesquieu: the spirit of laws. In The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu classified governments as republics, monarchies and despotisms. Each has its own driving principle: virtue, honour and fear. He tried to explain laws by climate, geography, religion, customs and commerce. He also described England’s constitution as one that secured liberty through the separation of powers. He is often called the first great modern comparativist. The reason is that he looked for causes, and related differences in political forms to differences in social conditions. He used examples from Europe, Asia and the ancient world.

Tocqueville: democracy compared. After visiting the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America (1835 and 1840). He used America as a lens on France and on the democratic future of Europe. He noted the force of equality, the role of voluntary associations and local self-government, and the danger of the tyranny of the majority. His work uses comparison to explain why democracy works differently in different societies. The same theme returned in Almond and Verba and in Putnam.

J. S. Mill: the logic of comparison and representative government. In A System of Logic (1843), John Stuart Mill described the methods of agreement and difference. Later comparativists adapted them. In Considerations on Representative Government (1861), he discussed which institutions suit which societies. So Mill gave both a logic of comparison and an example of institutional comparison.

Bagehot: the working constitution. Walter Bagehot, in The English Constitution (1867), separated the “dignified” parts of the constitution from the “efficient” parts. The dignified parts win popular respect. The efficient parts actually govern. He also compared the cabinet system of Britain with the presidential system of the United States. The book is an early example of looking beyond legal texts to the actual working of government. It pointed to the gap between formal rules and practice, which the behaviouralists later stressed.

Bryce: the great comparative surveys. James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth (1888) and Modern Democracies (1921) gave detailed accounts of how democratic governments worked in practice. The second book covers countries such as France, Switzerland, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It rests on long observation and a comparative eye. It is the high point of the older descriptive-comparative tradition. For this reason Bryce is a regular name in questions on the traditional approach.

Marx and Weber: class, state and authority. Karl Marx explained political forms through economic structure and class conflict. This idea returned later in the political economy approach, in the study of revolutions and in dependency theory. Max Weber compared civilisations. He described three types of legitimate authority: traditional, charismatic and legal-rational. He also analysed bureaucracy, and the state as the holder of the legitimate monopoly of force. Weber’s concepts underlie much twentieth-century comparative writing, from Almond’s political culture to Skocpol’s state-centred analysis.

Evolution at this stage. The nineteenth-century writers had richer evidence than the classical thinkers. They also had ideas of historical change and a stronger sense that political forms depend on social conditions. But they were individual scholars working without a shared framework. Their conclusions came from judgment more than from testing.

6. The traditional phase and its critics

From the late nineteenth century to about the Second World War, the subject was called comparative government. It grew with the teaching of political science in universities and with the spread of written constitutions. It became the standard way of studying foreign governments.

Main features. The traditional approach was formal and legal. It described constitutions, legislatures, executives, judiciaries, federal arrangements and electoral laws. It was institutional, because it took the organs of government as its unit of study. It was historical, because it traced the growth of institutions. It was also largely normative, since writers often judged which arrangement was good. It focused on a few Western states, mainly Britain, France, Germany and the United States. The Soviet Union and a few others were added later. For example, a chapter on the French Third Republic would describe the Chamber, the Senate, the President and the Council of Ministers in turn, with their legal powers.

Leading works. Several books defined this tradition.

• Woodrow Wilson’s The State (1889) surveyed governments historically and in many countries.
• A. Lawrence Lowell’s Governments and Parties in Continental Europe (1896) described European governments and parties.
• W. B. Munro’s The Governments of Europe (1925) was a standard text.
• Herman Finer’s Theory and Practice of Modern Government (1932) and Carl J. Friedrich’s Constitutional Government and Politics (1937) were large, scholarly surveys of institutions.
• K. C. Wheare’s Federal Government (1946) and Modern Constitutions (1951) were influential studies of federalism and constitutions.
• Ivor Jennings wrote on the British and Commonwealth constitutions. His work belongs to the same tradition and is useful for Indian students because of its links with the study of the Indian system.

Merits. The traditional approach should not be dismissed. It produced a great deal of reliable knowledge about constitutions and legal procedures. It trained generations of scholars to read documents and history with care. It also gave the comparative method its early vocabulary: presidential and parliamentary, unitary and federal, rigid and flexible constitutions. The distinctions of Wheare and Bryce, such as flexible and rigid constitutions, are still used in examination answers.

Criticisms. Roy Macridis, in The Study of Comparative Government (1955), summed up the weaknesses. They are often listed as follows.

• It was configurative and descriptive. Each country had its own account, instead of a comparison on shared questions. Macridis called such books “comparative” in name only.
• It was parochial, confined to a handful of Western countries.
• It was formal. It equated politics with institutions and law, and ignored parties, pressure groups, social forces and political behaviour.
• It was static, with little theory of change.
• It was monographic and lacked a common set of concepts.
• It often carried a normative bias, with Western liberal democracy as the standard of success.

Why it declined. Events in the world exposed its limits. Between the wars, democratic constitutions collapsed in Germany, Italy and elsewhere. This showed that a well-drafted constitution did not guarantee a working democracy. The rise of totalitarian regimes could not be understood by a study of legal forms. After 1945, the new states of Asia and Africa had constitutions borrowed from the West but very different societies. They could not be fitted into the old categories. A subject that could not explain why the Weimar constitution failed, or why India’s Constitution worked while others did not, was open to attack.

Link to the next phase. Macridis and his contemporaries asked for three shifts: from the description of institutions to the study of politics as a whole, from a few countries to the world, and from narration to analysis with a common set of concepts. This was the programme that the behavioural revolution then tried to carry out.

7. The behavioural revolution and the modern approach

The period from the late 1940s to the 1960s changed the subject so deeply that it is often called the “revolution” in comparative politics. It rested on a view of politics as human behaviour. This behaviour can be observed, measured and explained, much as natural science treats its own subject.

Causes of the change. Several developments came together.

• The Second World War showed the failure of institutional study. It also brought many political scientists into government service, where practical knowledge of foreign societies was needed.
• The decolonisation of Asia and Africa created many new states that the old categories could not describe.
• American universities and foundations, notably the Social Science Research Council, funded large research programmes.
• Advances in survey research, statistics and later computing made it possible to collect and analyse data on attitudes and behaviour.
• Sociology (Talcott Parsons, Max Weber), psychology and anthropology encouraged political scientists to borrow concepts and methods.

Characteristics of the behavioural approach. David Easton listed what he called the intellectual foundations of behaviouralism. They are commonly summarised as follows.

• Regularities: political behaviour shows uniformities that can be stated as generalisations.
• Verification: such generalisations must be tested against evidence.
• Techniques: data should be collected and analysed with careful methods.
• Quantification: measurement should be used where it is possible.
• Values: ethical evaluation is distinct from empirical explanation.
• Systematisation: theory and research should be linked.
• Pure science: understanding comes before application.
• Integration: political science should draw on the other social sciences.

In practice, this meant a shift from asking what the constitution says to asking what people actually do.

The Social Science Research Council’s Committee on Comparative Politics. The Committee was set up in 1954, with Gabriel Almond as its first chairman. It became the organising centre of the new subject. It sponsored studies on political development, bureaucracy, education, communications, political culture and parties. Its work is the institutional side of the intellectual change.

Almond and structural-functionalism. In his introduction to The Politics of the Developing Areas (1960), edited with James Coleman, Almond made a bold claim. All political systems, Western and non-Western, perform the same set of functions. They can therefore be compared by the structures that carry out those functions. He listed input functions: political socialisation and recruitment, interest articulation, interest aggregation and political communication. He also listed output functions: rule-making, rule application and rule adjudication. The approach was borrowed from sociology and anthropology. It gave comparativists a single vocabulary. It can be used for any country. For instance, “interest aggregation” can be studied in India’s coalition governments or in the American two-party system.

Easton and systems analysis. In The Political System (1953) and A Systems Analysis of Political Life (1965), David Easton defined politics as the “authoritative allocation of values” for a society. He saw the political system as a set of interactions. It receives inputs (demands and supports) from its environment. It converts them into outputs (decisions and policies). It then returns feedback to the environment. The approach helped to explain the stability and persistence of systems. It was criticised as too abstract and as favouring equilibrium.

Almond and Verba: political culture. The Civic Culture (1963) was based on surveys in five countries: the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy and Mexico. It described parochial, subject and participant orientations. It argued that stable democracy needs a mixed “civic culture”. It was among the first large cross-national surveys of political attitudes, and it opened the culture approach.

Other contributions. Several other writers belong to this wave. Karl Deutsch wrote on communication and nationalism. David Apter wrote The Politics of Modernization (1965). Lucian Pye wrote on political development. Edward Shils studied intellectuals and elites in new states. Robert Dahl’s Who Governs? (1961) studied community power. Together they widened the subject beyond formal institutions.

Achievements. The behavioural revolution brought empirical rigour and new data. It gave a common language that made comparison across countries possible. It covered many non-Western countries. It saw politics as a whole process that includes parties, groups and culture. It made comparative politics a scientific branch of political science, and no longer a mere description of constitutions.

Weaknesses. Critics made several points.

• The structural-functional framework was static. It tended to assume that all systems move toward a Western model.
• It was weak in explaining conflict and change.
• Its claim to be value-free hid an American, liberal bias.
• Survey methods favoured what could be counted over what was important.
• The grand frameworks produced more concepts than tested explanations.

These criticisms led to the next phases, which are the subject of the following sections.

8. Development, the state and political economy

In the 1960s and 1970s a new body of work appeared alongside the behavioural wave. It later challenged parts of it. It moved from describing how systems work to explaining change. The main questions were these. How do societies become modern? Why does political order break down? How do revolutions arise? Why do some countries remain poor?

The modernisation and political development approach. Daniel Lerner (The Passing of Traditional Society, 1958), Seymour Martin Lipset (Political Man, 1960) and W. W. Rostow (The Stages of Economic Growth, 1960) wrote on this theme. So did the members of the SSRC Committee, such as Lucian Pye, Sidney Verba and Myron Weiner. They argued that societies move from traditional to modern forms. Economic growth, urbanisation, literacy and mass communication, they said, lead to democratic politics. Lipset’s claim that economic development supports democracy became one of the best-known generalisations. The reasoning was attractive. But it assumed that the Western route would be followed everywhere. Events in the post-colonial world often contradicted this.

Huntington on political order. Samuel Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) was a sharp challenge to this optimism. He argued that rapid social change and mobilisation, without strong institutions, produce instability and violence. So the main question is not the form of government but the degree of government. By this he meant the capacity of institutions to absorb demands. He stressed political institutionalisation, which he measured by adaptability, complexity, autonomy and coherence. This put institutions back at the centre, but with a new theoretical purpose. For Indian students, the argument helps to explain the role of the Congress party and the Constitution in handling popular demands after independence.

Comparative-historical sociology. Barrington Moore Jr.’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966) compared countries such as England, France, the United States, Japan, China, Russia and India. He identified three routes to the modern world: the liberal-democratic route, the fascist route and the communist route. The route depended on the relations of landlords, peasants and the middle class. His study showed that a small number of cases, compared over a long period, can support causal claims. It set the pattern for later work on revolutions and regimes, including Theda Skocpol’s States and Social Revolutions (1979).

Dependency and world-system theories. Andre Gunder Frank, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Enzo Faletto and later Immanuel Wallerstein wrote from Latin America and elsewhere. They argued that the poverty and political weakness of developing countries come from their position in the world capitalist economy. They are not due only to internal backwardness. This was a direct attack on modernisation theory and its idea that every country can follow the same path. The approach brought economics, class and international relations into comparative politics. It also influenced the Third World’s own analysis of its condition.

Bureaucratic-authoritarianism and corporatism. Guillermo O’Donnell studied the regimes of Latin America. Philippe Schmitter studied corporatism. Their work showed that authoritarian regimes could appear in fairly modern societies. It also showed that patterns of interest representation differ among countries. These studies were a step away from the optimism of the earlier decade, which saw history as moving in one direction.

Political economy. In the same period, scholars such as Peter Evans and Atul Kohli studied the relation of the state to markets and classes. A central question was why some states promoted industrial growth, like the East Asian “developmental states”, while others did not. The old separation of politics and economics was weakened.

Indian illustrations. India served as a major test case. Rudolph and Rudolph’s The Modernity of Tradition (1967) argued that traditional institutions such as caste could adapt to modern democratic politics and even serve it. This contradicted the simple opposition of tradition and modernity. Rajni Kothari wrote on the “Congress system” and the politics of accommodation. He tried to explain how a poor and diverse society sustained democracy.

What this phase added. It moved the subject from how systems operate to how they change. It brought in history, class, economy and the international context. It also challenged Western assumptions. Its weakness was that the grand theories, whether of modernisation or dependency, often ignored the variety of cases. Each school was criticised in turn as too simple. The call for a closer study of the state and institutions, and for relevance to real problems, grew from this dissatisfaction.

9. Post-behavioural, new institutional and later trends

From the late 1960s the subject entered a phase of self-criticism and variety. No single approach replaced the behavioural one. Instead, several streams grew side by side.

The post-behavioural revolution. In his presidential address to the American Political Science Association in 1969, David Easton announced a “new revolution” in political science. He said that the subject had become so concerned with method that it had lost touch with the urgent problems of the time. These included the Vietnam War, racial conflict and inequality. He asked for relevance, which means substance before technique, and for action. He also asked for a recognition that values cannot be kept out of inquiry. The movement did not reject science. It asked that science serve human needs.

Bringing the state back in. Theda Skocpol, with Peter Evans and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, edited Bringing the State Back In (1985). They argued that the state is an actor with its own interests and capacities, and not just an arena for social groups. The reason is that the behavioural and systems approaches had dissolved the state into a system. A state-centred analysis was needed to explain revolutions, policy and development. Skocpol’s own States and Social Revolutions (1979) is the model.

The new institutionalism. James March and Johan Olsen’s article “The New Institutionalism” (1984) revived the study of rules, but with new theory. So did Douglass North’s work on institutions and economic performance. Hall and Taylor later separated three versions: historical, rational choice and sociological institutionalism. The institutions studied now included informal norms as well as formal rules. The interest was in how institutions shape incentives and outcomes. In India, studies of the electoral system, federalism and the judiciary use this approach.

Rational choice. Anthony Downs (An Economic Theory of Democracy, 1957), Mancur Olson (The Logic of Collective Action, 1965) and William Riker led this approach. Rational-choice analysts assume that actors pursue their goals in a strategic way, within limits. They used game theory and formal models to explain voting, coalition-building, party competition and institutional design. The approach brought precision and deductive reasoning. But it was criticised for unrealistic assumptions about individuals, and for neglecting culture and history.

Culture and social capital. The cultural approach was revived by Ronald Inglehart’s studies of values and “postmaterialism”. It was also revived by Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work (1993). Putnam traced the better performance of regional governments in northern Italy to a long tradition of civic engagement, which he called social capital. His work showed that history and culture can be built into careful comparison. It has been widely used in discussions of Indian states.

Democratic transitions and the third wave. From the 1970s a wave of democratisation began in Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain and Greece). It spread through Latin America and parts of Asia. It was followed by the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989–91. Huntington’s The Third Wave (1991) described it. O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead’s Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (1986) analysed how regimes change. Linz and Stepan’s Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (1996) added the idea of democratic consolidation. These studies shifted attention from the preconditions of democracy to the strategic choices of leaders and the design of institutions.

Institutional design and types of democracy. Arend Lijphart’s Democracies (1984) and Patterns of Democracy (1999) classified democracies as majoritarian or consensus. Juan Linz argued that presidentialism is less stable than parliamentarism for new democracies. Giovanni Sartori’s Parties and Party Systems (1976) gave a standard typology of party systems. This work marks a mature phase, in which classification and theory are tied to evidence.

Methodological reflection. Method became a subject of debate. Important works include Sartori’s “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics” (1970), Lijphart’s article on the comparative method (1971), Przeworski and Teune’s The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry (1970), and later King, Keohane and Verba’s Designing Social Inquiry (1994). Some scholars favour the statistical study of many cases. Others prefer the detailed study of a few. The debate continues, but many now see the two as complementary.

Why the phase matters. It brought institutions, the state, culture and history back into a subject that general frameworks had dominated. It linked comparative politics with economics through rational choice and political economy. It made the field more thoughtful about method. At the same time, its variety means that no single approach commands general agreement. Critical answers often end on this point.

10. Contemporary trends and the Indian contribution

Mixed methods and better research design. The old contrast between statistics and case studies has softened. Many studies now test a pattern statistically across many countries. They then add an in-depth case to show how the cause works. Techniques such as process tracing, qualitative comparative analysis (Charles Ragin) and natural experiments are common. The reasoning is that no single method can both establish a pattern and explain how it works.

Experiments and big data. Field experiments, survey experiments and large cross-national data sets are now common. Projects such as V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) and the World Values Survey give measures of democracy and attitudes for many countries over long periods. They allow tests that earlier comparativists could not carry out. But questions about the quality and comparability of the data remain.

Democratic backsliding, populism and autocratisation. After the optimism of the third wave, attention has turned to the weakening of democracy from within. Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die (2018) and other works study how elected leaders weaken checks and balances. Populism, polarisation and competitive authoritarianism have also risen, as in Levitsky and Way’s study of hybrid regimes. The classification of regimes and the quality of democracy have become leading topics.

Identity, ethnicity and conflict. Research on ethnic politics, nationalism, civil war and state capacity has grown. Examples are Horowitz’s Ethnic Groups in Conflict (1985) and Varshney’s Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life (2002). The second is based on a comparison of Indian cities.

Political economy, inequality and welfare. Comparative research on varieties of capitalism, welfare states, inequality and the effects of globalisation links politics and economics. Work on the developmental state and on the comparison of India and China is widely used by Indian students.

Decolonising and globalising the field. Scholars from Asia, Africa and Latin America increasingly question the Western origin of concepts. They propose their own concepts and ask that the Global South be studied on its own terms. The related idea is that comparative politics should be less dominated by American and European categories.

The Indian contribution. Indian scholars, and the study of India, have shaped the subject at several points.

• Rajni Kothari’s “The Congress System in India” (1964) and Politics in India (1970) offered a concept drawn from Indian experience: the dominant-party system with internal competition. It has been widely used in comparison.
• Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph argued that tradition and modernity interact in Indian politics.
• Myron Weiner’s Party Building in a New Nation (1967) analysed the Congress party.
• Later work on Indian democracy has been important for theories of democratic survival, federalism (the “state-nation” idea of Stepan, Linz and Yadav), ethnic conflict (Varshney), and the role of caste and class in politics (Kothari, Yogendra Yadav and others).
• The Indian Constitution itself reflects a comparative approach, since its framers studied and adapted features of several constitutions.

Where the subject stands. Comparative politics today is a varied subject that is aware of its methods. It has strong links to economics, sociology and history. It still faces the old problems of few cases, many variables, concept stretching and bias. But it has better tools and a wider geographic base than at any earlier point in its history.

11. Importance and limitations of the evolutionary study

Importance

It explains why the subject looks as it does. Comparative politics today has many approaches, a rich vocabulary and many competing claims. Without the history, these look like an arbitrary heap. With it, each has a reason. For instance, the stress on institutions in the 1980s makes sense only when we know that behaviouralism had earlier pushed institutions aside. This helps a student to organise knowledge and to answer questions on approaches with understanding, and not by rote.

It shows how a social science makes progress. The history is a series of criticisms and rebuilding. Macridis’s critique led to the behavioural programme. Easton’s own address in 1969 criticised its excess. Dependency theory challenged modernisation theory. Seeing this pattern makes the learner more alert to the weaknesses of any theory, including those now in fashion.

It prevents the careless use of concepts. A concept such as “political development” or “political culture” carries the assumptions of the time in which it was made. The development literature arose during the Cold War and in American universities. Knowing this warns the student that it may carry a Western bias. It also encourages careful use of the concept in the Indian setting.

It connects the subject to world events. The phases follow decolonisation, the failure of the interwar democracies, the third wave and backsliding. So the history teaches the habit of reading theory against events. A student who follows the news on elections or constitutional crises can test the old theories on new cases.

It gives a frame for examination answers. Questions on “traditional versus modern approaches”, the “behavioural revolution”, “Macridis’s critique” or the “new institutionalism” are standard in UG, PG, OPSC, UPSC and UGC NET papers. A candidate who has the phases in mind can write a structured answer in order, with names and dates. The candidate can also link one phase to the next.

It helps in remembering authors and works. Each scholar can be placed in a period. Bryce belongs to the traditional phase, Almond to the behavioural, Huntington to the development phase and Putnam to the culture revival. This makes the long list of names for UGC NET easier to manage. The period works as a memory peg.

It builds respect for older traditions. The story shows that the classical and nineteenth-century writers laid the foundations. Later work stands on them. The Indian, Greek and Arab traditions all contributed. This guards against the view that the subject began in America in the 1950s. That view is both wrong and unhelpful.

It encourages awareness of method. The subject moved from legal description to surveys, formal models, historical comparison and experiments. By following these changes, the student learns that every method answers some questions and not others. This helps in choosing methods for a dissertation or a research paper.

It highlights the Indian side. The study shows how Indian experience affected theory. Examples are the Congress system, the modernity of tradition, consociational readings of Indian democracy and the state-nation. It also shows how Indian writers moved from using concepts to producing them. This supports answers that must mention Indian contributions.

It prepares for critical analysis. Marks in OPSC and UPSC answers are earned by evaluation. The history supplies evidence for judgments such as “no single approach is enough” or “each phase corrected the last but also created new problems”.

It points to the future. A subject that has changed often is likely to change again. Understanding the pattern prepares the reader for new developments, such as the use of big data or the study of democratic backsliding.

Limitations

The periods are approximate. The division into traditional, behavioural, development and post-behavioural phases is a teaching device. Traditional work continued after 1950. Behavioural methods began before it. A student who treats the dates as sharp boundaries gives a wrong picture of the history.

The story is often told from an American and European view. Most accounts of the “revolution” centre on American universities and foundations. They neglect work in other countries. As a result, Indian, African and Latin American contributions appear as case material and not as theory. A critical reader should add to the standard story.

It may suggest progress where there is only change. Calling later phases “modern” and earlier ones “traditional” implies improvement. But the return of institutions and of the state showed that some old insights were valuable. The new methods also lost something that the old ones had.

It can be reduced to a list of names and dates. Many learners memorise the sequence without understanding the arguments. Without the reason for each shift, this knowledge breaks down when an analytical question is asked.

Different writers describe the phases differently. Textbooks vary in the number of phases and in the labels they use. A student who learns one version may be confused by another. The remedy is to follow the logic and to state clearly the scheme being used.

The criticisms of early work can be overdrawn. Macridis’s attack on the traditional approach, and the behaviouralists’ attack on earlier study, sometimes turn them into caricatures. Many traditional scholars, such as Bryce and Finer, were not merely formal. They used wide knowledge and comparison.

The history does not tell which approach is best. Knowing how approaches arose does not settle whether they are true. A student must still judge each on its merits and for the question asked.

It may overstate the unity of each phase. Within the behavioural period, Almond’s structural-functionalism and Easton’s systems analysis were different. Dahl’s work on power did not fit either neatly. Treating a phase as one block hides these differences.

It gives little guidance on method in practice. An account of how the subject developed does not teach how to design a comparison, choose cases or analyse data. It must be supported by the study of methods.

It may lag behind current developments. Standard accounts end with the third wave or with the new institutionalism. They may not cover recent changes such as populism, data science or the decolonial critique.

Some of the history rests on secondary summaries. Dates, titles and attributions in textbooks sometimes differ. Candidates should rely on the original works or on authoritative histories for fine points.

Illustrations

Illustration	What it shows
Aristotle’s classification and the study of constitutions	The first link between observation, classification and causes of change
Bryce’s Modern Democracies beside Lijphart’s Patterns of Democracy	The move from description to explanation by variables
Failure of the Weimar constitution	Why formal study of institutions was found insufficient
Almond and Coleman (1960)	Widening of coverage to developing areas through a common framework
Huntington (1968) against Lipset (1960)	Reaction against optimistic modernisation theory
Skocpol (1985) and March and Olsen (1984)	Return of the state and institutions at a higher level of theory
Kothari’s Congress system	A concept made from Indian experience and used in comparison

12. Use in examinations

What examiners expect

Level	Expectation	How to answer
UG (BA Political Science)	Phases in order, features of the traditional and behavioural approaches, main names	Clear headings, short paragraphs, 2 or 3 names per phase
PG (MA)	Causes of each shift, critiques, link between phases, methods	Argued essay with scholars, works, dates and evaluation
OPSC (Odisha civil services)	Overview of evolution, relevance to India, critical comment	Balanced answer with Indian examples and a conclusion
UPSC (optional and GS)	Analytical account, critical assessment of approaches, comparison with India	Structured, analytical, with a clear judgment
UGC NET	Authors, works, dates, concepts, who criticised whom	Accurate facts and correct matching

Practice questions

1. Trace the evolution of comparative politics from the classical period to the present.
2. Examine the features and limitations of the traditional approach, with reference to Macridis’s critique.
3. What was the behavioural revolution? Discuss its achievements and weaknesses.
4. “The evolution of comparative politics is a record of reaction and reconstruction.” Discuss.
5. Explain the shift from the study of institutions to the study of political development.
6. Write a note on the new institutionalism and the “return of the state”.
7. Assess the contribution of Indian scholars and the Indian experience to comparative politics.

Answer outline for question 1

Introduction. Define comparative politics in one line, quoting a scholar (Blondel, or Almond and Powell). Then state that the subject grew in stages, and each stage was a response to the weakness of the one before.

Body.

• Classical and early-modern roots: Aristotle’s classification of constitutions and study of change; Polybius; Kautilya’s saptanga and mandala; Ibn Khaldun; Machiavelli, Montesquieu.
• Nineteenth-century foundations: Tocqueville, Mill, Bagehot, Bryce; Marx and Weber.
• Traditional phase: formal-legal, descriptive, Western; Finer, Friedrich, Wheare; Macridis’s criticisms.
• Behavioural revolution: causes, Easton’s tenets, Almond’s structural-functionalism, systems analysis, political culture.
• Development and the state: modernisation, Huntington, Moore, dependency, Skocpol.
• Post-behavioural and later trends: Easton’s 1969 address, new institutionalism, rational choice, culture, third wave, mixed methods, backsliding.

Conclusion. State that no single approach prevails. The subject has become diverse and self-aware. Mention India’s place both as a case and as a source of concepts.

Sample answer, about two hundred words (question 2)

Introduction. The traditional approach was dominant until the Second World War. It studied comparative government through the formal and legal organs of the state. Writers such as Bryce, Finer, Friedrich and Wheare worked in this tradition.

Features and merits.

• It was institutional and legal, describing constitutions, legislatures, executives and courts.
• It was historical and often normative, treating Western liberal democracy as a standard.
• It produced reliable knowledge and useful classifications, such as unitary and federal, or flexible and rigid constitutions.

Limitations (Macridis, 1955).

• It was configurative and descriptive, giving separate accounts with no common framework.
• It was parochial, confined to a few Western states.
• It was formal and static, ignoring parties, groups, culture and change.
• The failure of the Weimar constitution and the problems of new states showed that it could not explain why institutions work or fail.

Conclusion. The traditional approach was not worthless. It gave data and concepts that later writers used. But its narrow focus led to the behavioural shift, which studied political processes and behaviour in all countries.

Quick check

• Who wrote The Study of Comparative Government (1955)? Roy Macridis.
• Who edited The Politics of the Developing Areas (1960)? Gabriel Almond and James Coleman.
• Who announced the post-behavioural revolution in 1969? David Easton.
• Which book of 1985 urged scholars to “bring the state back in”? Bringing the State Back In, edited by Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol.
• Who wrote Political Order in Changing Societies (1968)? Samuel Huntington.

Common mistakes

• Giving a list of names with no reason for each change of phase.
• Treating the traditional approach as useless and omitting its merits.
• Mixing up structural-functionalism (Almond) with systems analysis (Easton).
• Forgetting the classical and Indian roots (Kautilya, Ibn Khaldun) and starting in the 1950s.
• Ignoring the later phases (development, state, new institutionalism, third wave).
• Mentioning India only in the last line, without a concrete example.
• Ending with no conclusion or judgment.

13. Critical analysis

Progress or only change? The usual account presents the story as a movement from the unscientific to the scientific. This is partly true. The subject now has far more data, better methods and wider coverage than Bryce or Finer could command. But some older questions remain as unsettled as in Aristotle’s time. Which institutions suit which societies? Why do regimes fall? Progress is therefore real in method and evidence, and much less clear in final answers.

The “revolution” and its limits. The term “behavioural revolution” exaggerates the break. Many traditional works contained careful comparison. Many behavioural works returned to institutions and history. Easton’s own address of 1969 admitted that science had been over-valued. A balanced judgment is that the revolution changed the agenda and the standards of evidence. The older stress on institutions survived and later returned.

Western bias in the story and the theory. The early theories of development assumed that all societies would follow the Western path. The categories of structural-functionalism were drawn from Western experience. The dependency writers and later scholars from the South exposed this. Yet even critical work often takes its concepts from Western debates. So the decolonising of the subject is still incomplete.

Theory and events. Events have often overtaken the subject. It did not foresee the collapse of communism, the Arab uprisings or the wave of democratic erosion. This does not make it useless, since explanations after the event have improved our understanding of mechanisms. But it warns against claims of prediction.

Plurality of approaches. Some critics want a single paradigm. They see the coexistence of institutional, cultural, rational-choice and structural approaches as a weakness. Others say it is a strength, because politics is too complex for one lens. A candid answer states both views. It also suggests that the choice of approach should follow the question asked.

The Indian angle. The Indian case has repeatedly challenged theories. Democracy with poverty challenged modernisation theory. Caste in modern politics challenged the divide between tradition and modernity. The long survival of a federal union of diverse peoples challenged the nation-state model. At the same time, India’s own scholars have added concepts. The lesson for the Indian student is to treat theory as something to be tested on Indian evidence, and not simply applied.

Model concluding paragraph. In sum, the evolution of comparative politics shows a long movement. It began with the philosophical classification of constitutions by Aristotle and the historical comparisons of Montesquieu and Bryce. It passed through the formal and legal study of governments. It then reached the behavioural revolution, which made the subject a general and empirical science. The later phases corrected its weaknesses. They restored the state and institutions, took change, class, culture and rational choice seriously, and reflected more carefully on method. Each stage grew from dissatisfaction with the one before, and none has entirely displaced the others. Today the subject is diverse, more global and more self-critical. It is still troubled by few cases, many variables and Western assumptions. For India, which has been both a testing ground and a source of concepts, the history is a reminder that theory must be judged by evidence, and that comparison remains the best way of learning how political systems work.

14. UGC NET: authors and books

Author	Work	Phase and key idea
Aristotle	Politics	Classical: classification of constitutions; causes of revolution; mixed constitution
Kautilya	Arthashastra	Classical (Indian): seven elements of the state; circle (mandala) of states
Ibn Khaldun	Muqaddimah	Classical: group solidarity (asabiyyah) and the cycle of dynasties
Montesquieu	The Spirit of the Laws (1748)	Early modern: types of government; climate and laws; separation of powers
Alexis de Tocqueville	Democracy in America (1835, 1840)	Nineteenth century: equality, associations, danger of majority tyranny
J. S. Mill	A System of Logic (1843); Considerations on Representative Government (1861)	Methods of agreement and difference; representative institutions
Walter Bagehot	The English Constitution (1867)	Dignified and efficient parts; cabinet government
James Bryce	The American Commonwealth (1888); Modern Democracies (1921)	Traditional: large comparative surveys of democracies
Herman Finer	Theory and Practice of Modern Government (1932)	Traditional: institutional survey
Carl J. Friedrich	Constitutional Government and Politics (1937)	Traditional: constitutionalism
K. C. Wheare	Federal Government (1946); Modern Constitutions (1951)	Traditional: federalism and constitutions
Roy C. Macridis	The Study of Comparative Government (1955)	Critique of the traditional approach
Gabriel Almond and James Coleman	The Politics of the Developing Areas (1960)	Behavioural: structural-functional approach
Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba	The Civic Culture (1963)	Behavioural: political culture
David Easton	The Political System (1953); A Systems Analysis of Political Life (1965); “The New Revolution in Political Science” (1969)	Systems analysis; post-behavioural call
Samuel Huntington	Political Order in Changing Societies (1968); The Third Wave (1991)	Development: institutionalisation; democratic waves
Barrington Moore Jr.	Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966)	Comparative-historical routes to modernity
Theda Skocpol	States and Social Revolutions (1979); Bringing the State Back In (1985, co-edited)	State-centred analysis
March and Olsen	“The New Institutionalism” (1984)	Revival of institutional analysis
Robert Putnam	Making Democracy Work (1993)	Social capital and institutional performance
Giovanni Sartori	“Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics” (1970)	Ladder of abstraction; concept stretching
Arend Lijphart	“Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method” (1971); Patterns of Democracy (1999)	Comparative method; majoritarian and consensus democracy
Rajni Kothari	Politics in India (1970)	Indian contribution: Congress system

Revision tip. Copy this table onto one sheet and add a column marked “phase”. Cover the last column and recall the idea from the author and work. Then cover the work and recall it from the author. For NET, practise matching authors to phases in both directions. Pay special attention to pairs that are often confused. These are Almond (structural-functionalism) and Easton (systems analysis), and Macridis (critique) and Almond (programme).

15. Takeaways, sources and further reading

Key takeaways

• Comparative politics evolved in stages: classical and early-modern roots, nineteenth-century foundations, the traditional phase, the behavioural revolution, development and state-centred approaches, the post-behavioural and new-institutional phase, and contemporary trends.
• Each phase arose from dissatisfaction with the previous one: Macridis against the traditional approach, Easton against excess of method, the dependency school against modernisation theory, Skocpol and March and Olsen against the neglect of the state and institutions.
• The movement is from description to explanation, from formal to informal politics, from the West to the world, and from single methods to mixed methods.
• The traditional approach was formal, legal, descriptive, parochial and static, but it produced reliable knowledge and key distinctions.
• The behavioural revolution brought system, structure, function, culture and survey evidence, but was criticised for bias, conservatism and neglect of change.
• The subject remains plural, with no single paradigm, and India has been both a test case and a source of concepts.

Official and reliable sources

• Constitution of India, Legislative Department, legislative.gov.in
• Election Commission of India, eci.gov.in
• Parliament of India (Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha), sansad.in
• University Grants Commission and NTA: UGC NET Political Science syllabus, ugcnet.nta.ac.in
• Union Public Service Commission: syllabus for Political Science and International Relations, upsc.gov.in
• Odisha Public Service Commission, opsc.gov.in
• eGyanKosh (IGNOU study materials in political science), egyankosh.ac.in
• Comparative constitutions: constituteproject.org; democracy data: V-Dem Institute, v-dem.net

Twenty books for further reading

1. Roy C. Macridis, The Study of Comparative Government.
2. Gabriel Almond and James Coleman (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas.
3. Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach.
4. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture.
5. David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life.
6. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies.
7. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century.
8. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.
9. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions.
10. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In.
11. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems.
12. Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy.
13. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work.
14. James Bryce, Modern Democracies.
15. Herman Finer, Theory and Practice of Modern Government.
16. Rod Hague and Martin Harrop, Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction.
17. Jean Blondel, An Introduction to Comparative Government.
18. Mark Lichbach and Alan Zuckerman (eds.), Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure.
19. Rajni Kothari, Politics in India.
20. J. C. Johari, Comparative Politics.

Editorial note

This note was prepared by the PoliPrepHub editorial team for students of UG, PG, OPSC, UPSC and UGC NET. It summarises standard views and is meant as a study aid. Readers who find an error or want to suggest an improvement may write to us through the contact page. Please also read our disclaimer.

Frequently asked questions

How did comparative politics begin? It began with the comparison of constitutions by Aristotle and other ancient thinkers, and became more systematic with Montesquieu, Tocqueville and Bryce, before taking its modern form after the Second World War.

What is the traditional approach? It is the older study of comparative government through the formal and legal organs of the state, mostly in Western countries, which Macridis criticised as descriptive, parochial, formal and static.

What was the behavioural revolution? It was the mid-twentieth-century movement to study actual political behaviour by scientific methods, with new concepts such as system, structure and function, and wide coverage of non-Western countries.

Why did the post-behavioural phase arise? Easton argued in 1969 that the behavioural emphasis on method had made the subject irrelevant to urgent social problems, and called for relevance and attention to values.

What is the new institutionalism? It is the revived study of institutions, with theory about how rules and norms shape behaviour, in three main forms: historical, rational choice and sociological.

What is the Indian contribution? Indian experience and scholars supplied concepts such as the Congress system, the modernity of tradition and the state-nation, and made India a key case for theories of democracy.