如何比较国家（节选）（how to compare nations）(Mattei Dogan) 3

如何比较国家（节选）（how to compare nations）(Mattei Dogan) 3 FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION This book discusses strategies of comparison and explores some new perspectives in comparative research. The importance of the problems we are raising led us to renounce voluntarily dealing with methodological and technical issues, the exploration of which would require another book. We are focusing instead on the general strategy of comparative research. We do not intend to make an inventory of all the accumulated knowledge on political parties, pressure groups, parliaments, bureaucracies, electoral behavior, and so on. Rather, our aim is to present a critical appraisal, a "state of the art." Our American readers will find in this book many authors familiar to them. Indeed, the field of comparative politics is dominated by Americans. But the perceptions and perspectives of European scholars differ somewhat from those widely accepted on the other side of the Atlantic river. In the second edition we have introduced recent critical reflections, new approaches, and developments in the literature, without discarding the classical works that continue to inspire comparative political science and comparative political sociology. Today as much as yesterday, we have preferred to ask questions rather than give answers. Part I. The Compass of the Comparativist 3 1. Comparing to Escape from Ethnocentrism 5 2. Comparing to Find Sociological Rules 15 3. Operational Concepts 24 4. Theoretical Frameworks 32 5. Functional Equivalences 37 Part 2. The Internationalization of Analytical Categories 45 6. Social Classes: Different in Each Continent 47 7. Cultural Pluralism: Vertically Divided Societies 59 8. Political Culture: From Nation to Nation 68 9. Political Socialization: From Generation to Generation 78 10. Political Clientelism: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon 87 11. Consociational Democracy: An Elitist Model for Fragmented Societies 95 12. Political Crises: Historical Events or Stages of Development 105 Part 3. The Choice of Countries 111 13. On the Need to Segment Before Comparing 113 14. The Case Study in Comparative Perspective 120 15. The Binary Analysis 126 16. Comparing Similar Countries 132 17. Comparing Contrasting Countries 144 18. The Conceptual Homogenization of a Heterogeneous Field 151 Part 4. How to Structure the Results of the Comparison 161 19. The Dichotomy as Clarification 163 20. CrossNational Typologies of Social Actors 169 21. Typologies of Political Regimes 178 22. The Dynamics of Models 184 23. From Comparison to Synthesis 193 24. From Comparison to Prediction 197 Index of Names 205 Index of Subjects 213 About the Authors 216 PART 1— THE COMPASS OF THE COMPARATIVIST To Compare is a common way of thinking. Nothing is more natural than to consider people, ideas, or institutions in relation to other people, ideas, or institutions. We gain knowledge through reference. Scientific comparison is not of a different nature, even if it requires more sophisticated intellectual tools. We compare to evaluate more objectively our situation as individuals, as a community, or as a nation. A sociologist who compares discovers the pitfall of ethnocentrism, and by the same token may find a way to overcome it. But the comparativist does not seek a better understanding only of his or her own environment. By enlarging the field of observation, the comparativist searches for rules and tries to bring to light the general causes of social phenomena. Today there are about one hundred sixty independent nations in the world, each one presenting characteristics that can be viewed from different perspectives and combined in multiple configurations. In this kaleidoscope appear hundreds of questions that invite all kinds of analyses—descriptive or theoretical, limited or ambitious. This challenge to human intelligence provides the social sciences with the possibility of becoming real "sciences." Cogito, ergo sum, proclaimed René Descartes?paraphrasing him, we can say, "I think, consequently I am comparing." International comparison requires an articulated conceptual framework. Social scientists who analyze only one country may proceed step by step, without structured hypotheses, building analytical categories as they go. Comparativists have no such freedom. They cannot advance without tools. Confronted with a variety of contexts, they are obliged to rely on abstractions, to master concepts general enough to cope with the diversity of the cases under consideration. When concentrating on a single country, a single culture, a single system, one may possibly grope. Comparativists, on the contrary, need a compass thatwill allow them to pass from one context to another, to select in each country the differences or similarities that can be integrated into their general scheme. Every researcher decants reality. But such a decanting is a primary task for the comparativist, who must have a theoretical orientation from the start—with the understanding that it is precisely the purpose of the research to permit a refinement, a remodeling of the initial scheme. Even in the absence of a wellstructured theoretical framework, the specialist on one country is not in danger of getting lost. But the comparativist may well go astray, and efforts to garner information may cruelly prove to have been in vain. Perhaps there is no basic difference between the approach of the specialist and the approach of the comparativist. But there is an essential difference of degree. What is here latent is there bright?so much so that methodological and conceptual problems raised by international comparison appear to be specific. We agree with Charles C. Ragin: "There are important differences between the orientations of most comparativists and most noncomparativists and these differences have important methodological consequences." 1 Notes 1. Charles C. Ragin, The Comparative Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). Chapter 1— Comparing to Escape from Ethnocentrism An ageold idea of philosophers is that knowledge of the self is gained through knowledge of others. The ego affirms itself by the roundabout way of multiple comparisons. The child develops by imitating or opposing. The very stature of a person, original and unique, exists only in a relative sense. Hegel clearly states that consciousness recognizes itself in others, and knows the other in itself. What is true for the individual is even more so for societies. There is no nation without other nations. This diversity, which actually contributes to the awakening of contrasting national identities, is the only element that permits the perception of what characterizes people and systems. Let us imagine a country encircled for centuries by an unbreachable wall. Which of its inhabitants would be in a position to describe such a confined nation? What could be the reference point? how could one measure what is perceived? moreover, what could be perceived? Limited to a superficial and episodic chronicle, the observer would be incapable of understanding most of the fundamental and pertinent traits of the environment. With what rigidity are social groups constituted, what features characterize the mentality of the populace, to what degree is power centralized? The simple formulation of these questions presupposes comparison? denied the possibility of looking beyond his or her own world, the analyst is virtually blind. Observers who cultivate a distance between themselves and the society in which they live will find new perspectives opening. It is not by accident that among the finest studies on so many countries, we inevitably find the work of a surprisingly perspicacious "stranger." We can illustrate this proposition by many examples. A Frenchman, André Siegfried, half a century ago perceived how the mentality of the British ruling class could create a Crise Britannique au XXe Siècle. An Englishman, James Bryce, at the beginning of the century showed in The American Commonwealth how the system of candidate selection for the Presidency of the United States could discard firstclass talents. An American, Edward Banfield, during a relatively brief sojourn in the south of Italy, recorded the rules of behavior for a population distrusting the central power? later, Italian sociologistsconfirmed the main features of this analysis, at a moment when "amoral familism" was already in rapid decline. The existence of 450,000 municipal councilors in France is a fact not given great importance by French political scientists. But for a foreigner like Sidney Tarrow, it constitutes an extraordinary phenomenon that demands the revision of certain clichés nourished by many Frenchmen. To speak of a lack of participation in a country where one out of every sixty citizens is a member of a municipal council may seem a rapid and somewhat superficial judgment, especially if we look to rural areas. The decay of a majority of large American cities was first perceived by nonAmerican observers. Even before World War II, books written by Europeans analyzed this decline, which scholars from the Western side of the Atlantic were so late in discovering. Australian geographers, for their part, marvel at the existence of villages in Europe. Thus sociologists and political scientists seem to have taken up the torch of a phalanx of illustrious writers, such as Kant or Goethe, Stendhal or Châeaubriand, Byron or Shelley, who in their time discovered at least one country: Italy. Expatriation has always been perceived as a key to more objective judgment. "Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on the other," commented first Montaigne, then Pascal. The most commonly accepted values, the most uncontested social structures or political institutions, are not necessarily universal. Throughout the eighteenth century, the pioneering comparativists appear to have been in search of models. Beyond the Channel, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot discover a political regime that they contrast to monarchical absolutism. With Tocqueville, the analysis turns purer?no longer does the observer look outside to polish weapons for his political combat. Rather, it is to sharpen his insight, to refine his perspectives by contrasting them. Some time later, the comparativist penetrates a new universe with the aid of anthropologists, reconsidering some accepted generalizations and even asking new questions of the most familiar environment. Each foray out of his own country resounds like a revelation. He finally understands that there exists a plurality of values, structures, and systems, which are not simply products of nature. Such a revelation contains an explosive potential. There would not have been a French Revolution without the British example, or a Meiji era without the shock represented by the discovery of the Western world. Behind what they called the "big noses," the Japanese did see the vitality of another civilization, built on other ideas, other behaviors and technologies, all possibly worthy of imitation. The historian has underlined how confrontations with other societies impose the burden of sometimes dramatically premature collective aspirations in wellestablished regimes. The Old Europe offers multiple illustrations of thesedisruptive pressures, and it is not surprising that so many countries in the Third World now try to protect themselves from what they feel to be dangerous contamination. The contemporary totalitarian states, of course, have more ways to fight contagions that the monarchies had during the first part of the nineteenth century when they tried in vain to protect themselves against the virulent ideas of the French Revolution. The logic of isolation, however, remains the same. The leaders of a wellknown empire in the East have managed for a long time to restrict not only abstract communication but also the actual movement of people. They knew that certain contacts can be dangerous. Any comparative knowledge risks becoming a factor of change simply because it contains the idea that what was originally perceived as proceeding from Reason or Providence is not a unique and absolute truth. Translated in terms of political demands, the perception of difference is one of the most important levers in history, as powerful perhaps as social conflicts within nations. At a more prosaic level, it would be easy to provide instances of demands and solutions based on foreign examples that are diffused by contagion. We think, for example, of the institution of the ombudsman or the creation of a ministry of environment. Considered from a distance, the entire political and social history of Western Europe seems marked by congruence, as if the entire European continent periodically took the time from the same Big Ben. During the nineteenth century, many European countries wavered between the British and French models. But soon all countries tended to move to the same beat, voicing parallel demands for more freedom, more justice, more participation. Universal suffrage was extended at the moment the unions became powerful organizations. Women in eight countries simultaneously obtained the right to vote. A French student of labor legislation, Paul Louis, noted that "if we examine the historical evolution of labor law, we are struck by the fact that it proceeded in all countries along the same successive stages." In the aftermath of World War II, the nations of Western Europe built similar institutions for social security, welfare, retirement, family allocations? they gave the state increased means of intervention in economic life. For nearly half a century, Western democracies on both sides of the Atlantic have used fiscal means to increase progressively that part of the GNP controlled by the government. By the early 1980s, most "liberal" governments of the West collected and redistributed about 40 percent of the national product. The crisis of social security became a political issue at about the same time in almost all nations of Western Europe. As international communication develops, so does synchronization. Agitation in one country awakens public opinion in the next, and ideas make their way. One country drops the voting age to eighteen, and five or six others seizeupon the change. Legislation to protect the natural environment, to ease restrictions on birth control, and to adopt laws on divorce by consent was formulated and implemented at about the same time in France and Germany. The social reforms enacted in Italy during the first postwar decade were modeled on those of France. Political leaders are themselves vectors of this imitation. This is obvious in Third World countries where an entire generation of rulers tried to impose upon the masses ideas and models forged in advanced countries, whether Eastern or Western. But it is even more true for European nations. Tied together by strikingly similar economic and social problems, they tend to adopt solutions that are apparently beneficial in neighboring countries. The process of comparison becomes heuristic. It suggests political platforms—being clear that such mimicry does not guarantee that worthy solutions in one place are necessarily appropriate in another. A similar cure of liberalism will not result in the same benefits in Great Britain and in Japan?the capacity of the French social structures and organizations to regularize the functioning of the free market is probably not equal to that of the German system. A marvelous prescription here does not necessarily provide good results elsewhere. But an essential contribution of scientific comparison is precisely to shed light on the importance of original contexts, which actively assimilate the variable introduced. Comparison is the engine of knowledge. Because the comprehension of a single case is linked to the understanding of many cases, because we perceive the particular better in the light of generalities, international comparison increases tenfold the possibility of explaining political phenomena. The observer who studies just one country could interpret as normal what in fact appears to the comparativist as abnormal. Even that which is most familiar can escape perception. Was ist bekannt, ist nicht underlined Hegel. ''Live in London for a year," the French historian F. Braudel wrote, "and erkannt, you will not get to know much about England. But through comparison, in the light of your surprise, you will suddenly come to understand some of the more profound and individual characteristics of France, which you did not previously understand because you knew them too well." 1 Braudel made use of space and time for providing this distance that enlightens understanding. So does the political scientist who criticizes the system he belongs to on the basis of foreign experiences he knows well. S. Finer emphasizes that it is no longer possible to consider the English system of government as ideal. And he accuses the British electoral system of producing an "alternative singleparty" government with exaggerated conflicts and damaging discontinuity. His critical appraisal is clearly enhanced by the light of other European experiences—those nations that bear witness to the fact that proportional representation is also reconcilable withstable and effective government. 2 In their diagnoses of the "French Malaise," during the Fourth Republic several French observers took advantage of their intimate knowledge of the Swedish and American policymaking processes. Only by comparison did the French weaknesses become salient. But the problem here is not merely to evaluate the banality or singularity of the phenomena observed. The discovery of the extraordinary urges the observer to explain why the rule that exists here is absent there, and vice versa. The historian would seek the reason for this or that uncommon delay in mobilization? the demographer would ask why fertility, here or there, is not affected by urbanization. The political scientist seeks the reason for instability in a particular context by progressively eliminating variables that do not produce instability elsewhere. The juxtaposition of cases is useful not only to situate each one in relation to others but also because it calls for generalizations, those wide melting pots that turn each particular experience into an exemplar, a deviant or a clinical "case," allowing in return a better understanding even of what is specific. Although comparison may initially appear to be a quest for information, it also represents a quest for enlightenment. And that is what makes it one of the most fruitful ways of thinking. It helps to rid us of inherited fossilized notions, obliges us to reconsider the validity of undiscussed interpretations, and enlarges our visual field. Every researcher, even a comparativist researcher, belongs to a culture, and that can limit his or her capacity to perceive. These blinkers have not been easily recognized. Sociologists from the West have been slow to realize that they were taking their own measures for universal ones. For a long time, classic comparisons have implicitly incorporated the idea of progress, tending to consider each political system according to the place it occupied on an imaginary scale leading inexorably to "development," "democracy," or even "Westernization." It is a natural risk, when one compares, to fall into ethnocentrism? but comparison may be the best antidote to this danger. Irresistibly, the perception of contrasts makes researchers sensitive to the relativity of knowledge and consequently helps liberate them from cultural shells. Indeed, the very concept of ethnocentrism simply cannot exist without the comparative exercise. Only with exposure to other cultures does one become conscious of possible intellectual occlusion. As Elie Halévy noted long ago, the differences between France and England, enormous for the European, are minimal indeed to the inhabitant of Peking or Calcutta. The perception of differences is a function of the proximity of the observer—a fact that can raise problems. When researchers succeed in establishing a close relationship with a subject culture, the only dimensionthey really value is often that of specificity. For example, the works of Jacques Berque, who studied the Arab world from within, offer the reader an exceptional panorama of an original reality—but it is so original that a comparison becomes unattainable. As Edward Said asserts, a difficulty with most writings about Islamic countries is that they overemphasize their peculiarities, with the result that these writings deal more with the specificity of the culture than with comparisons. The intimate perception of a social universe, even if by a "foreigner," thus results in one precious quality—a lifelike knowledge—obtained through subjective complicity. But it is not always useful for generating comparisons and does not facilitate the induction from specific to general, which alone allows knowledge to progress. Studying the Arab world, and considering the same transition to modernity, Daniel Lerner, in his book The Passing 3 perhaps commits the sin of excessive of Traditional Society, generalization? but such a sin could be considered minor in comparison to the overspecificity of so many experts. The opposition between area studies and worldwide analyses should be considered from this point of view of the contrasted benefits of proximity and distance. Anytime a disaffection develops toward largescale comparisons, based on highly abstract hypotheses, renewed attention is devoted to more parsimonious approximations of reality. As a matter of fact, enlightened international comparisons resulted from their focus on some area. Latin America appeared, for example, prone to elitism, corporatism,4 centralization,5 and authoritarianism.6 Other regional studies pointed to tribalism or caste systems, religious fervor and fundamentalism, military rules or oneparty regimes. By and large, an understanding of developing countries was deepened? by the same token, new or more refined categories and theories were introduced in the field of comparative politics. It is precisely the objective of comparative sociology and political science, in their efforts to become more explanatory than descriptive, to insert each study—partial, regional, sectoral—into a larger context. The historian Paul Veyne went so far as to say, paradoxically, that even specific and individual knowledge passes through conceptual generalizations. It is necessary to conceive of imperialism in general in order to perceive what is particular about Roman imperialism, British colonial imperialism, Soviet imperialism by satellites, or American economic imperialism. "Only what remains constant individualizes, no matter how abstract and general it be."7 Put differently, one needs the concept of a Gothic cathedral to appreciate what is original about the cathedrals of Burgos, Milan, Marburg, Strasbourg, or Cologne. We need the concept of development, as defined on the base of Western experience, to approach the reality of the developing world. On the other hand, it was quite natural that the rising attention given this world would shed lighton the defects of the hypotheses we started with. Confronting empirical experiences gave a natural and healthy stimulus to the recognition of ethnocentrism. It brought about a better understanding of what "development" means: not a oneway process, but a process actively molded by different and vivid cultures and traditional institutions. Not an irreversible process, but a process including detours not to be interpreted as plain setbacks or lags. Not a process toward one universal liberaldemocratic model, but a process leading to different political and social forms, with differentiation and rationalization possibly producing forms of statism or authoritarianism. The analysts from the West expected the whole world to follow the path they were familiar with. What they did "was to generalize inappropriately from the sociopolitical institutional concomitants of modernization in Western Europe, which they knew best and assumed to be desireable to other nations which they knew less well." 8 Indeed, H.J. Wiarda insists, the transition experienced in the West toward industrialization, urbanization, occupational differentiation, and the like has brought about changes in familial, religious, and political areas of social organization. But are these changes universal? The Japanese evidence suggests that "the forms of Western social and political organization are not the inevitable consequence of the replacement of feudalism, traditionalism, and agriculturalism by a modern industrial technology. Instead, the capitalistic individualism, secularism, the particular role of the middle classes and middle classness, the growth of liberalism and interestgroup pluralism, and a host of other features that are so much a part of the Northwest European and United States religious, familial, social, and political system and order should be seen as only one of the numberous possible alternatives in the urbanindustrial transition, and not necessarily a more developed or ethically superior one."9 The idea that alternative routes to alternative modernized types exist is widely admitted today. One would no longer attempt to define a universal succession of universal stages of economic or politial development.10 One would no longer undertake field inquiries to measure how far local populations in Turkey or elsewhere are on the great avenue leading modernizing people from ascription to achievement.11 But it is certainly thanks to the development of international comparison that further researches were conducted, and resulted in the perception and correction of previous inadequacies. The fact that comparative politics became a true movement in the 1960s clearly accelerated the processes of scientific exchange, leading theories to be confronted with contextual analyses and hence periodically updated or reshaped. In their search for pertinent categories, social scientists have tried to rid themselves of the normative visions peculiar to their societies. How are we to measure "participation," "democracy," or "freedom" if we retain criteria thatare particular to a certain political system? Some researchers from Eastern Europe, for example Jerzy Wiatr, have cited the difficulties of communication between Western scholars and their colleagues from the East. This normative bias is manifested even among Western comparativists. Charles Moskos and Wendell Bell have denounced some pernicious ideas—that democracy is inappropriate for poor people, for instance, or that military governments are more efficient than others at a given stage of development. 12 But how to conceive of a totally objective researcher? To be conscious of the values one holds may be more fruitful than to pretend to be totally free from preconceptions. The contribution of anthropology to the "release" of political science from narrow cultural limits should be mentioned here. The study of primitive societies has permitted social scientists to comprehend their own universe in a different light. The integration of primitive groups into the recognized corpus of social systems has obliged them to draw back and elaborate more universal categories. It is not by accident that functionalism descends directly from anthropology. Some authors, such as Jean Ziegler, have even proposed starting from the "nonWestern" in order to return to the "Western" equipped with new concepts. This strategy has been criticized as excessive by Giovanni Sartori. It is as risky to speak of political participation in Uganda or Yemen as it is to explain the functioning of advanced pluralistic democracies in terms of mobilization. One should not attempt to overcome one ethnocentrism by falling into another. In the best of hypotheses, the concepts will be swollen out of all proportion? they will be softened to such a degree that they will lose their accuracy even for the particular countries in which they were born. "All in all, it can hardly be held that our 'losses of specificity' are compensated by gains in inclusiveness. I would rather say that our gains in travelling capacity, or in universal inclusiveness, are verbal (and deceptive) while our 'gains in obfuscation' are very substantial."13 Sartori's critique is addressed to those who make indiscriminate use of what we have learned from nonWestern societies. Nevertheless, one should not neglect how much some pages from anthropology have animated comparative political science. Parallels developed by Claude LéviStrauss between myths and ideologies in Anthropologie structurale have fertilized the analysis of both myths and ideologies. The research of Wilhelm Mühlmann and his colleagues on "nativism"14 has nourished the comprehension of nationalism? in the same way, an analysis of "messianism" cannot be ignored by those interested in charismatic or revolutionary phenomena. Georges Balandier has rightly stressed how much the debate over power and politics in general has been stimulated by the anthropological approach.15 Sociology has also played an important role in pointing out the dangers of ethnocentrism. Societies across the world are infinitely varied. To account for the contrasts they observed between the behavior of Poles and Italians, Irish and black people, sociologists from the Chicago School, at the beginning of the century, gave birth to the concept of culture. 16 They were among the first to emphasize how diverse societies are, how resistant and significant are the psychological frontiers imposed on them by history. A few decades later, Western social scientists, American and European, began invading the four corners of the world armed with erudite questionnaires? they rapidly discovered with bitterness the inefficiency of their "universal" concepts. Questions that were full of meaning in England or Scandinavia would shock the Japanese and could not be translated into Arabic. But these obstacles have stimulated serious reflection and have undeniably favored progress and maturation. To warn that a question or a research tool "does not fit," as Erwin Scheuch does, signifies "that the researcher from a foreign culture is usually unaware of the existential basis of his own thinking. Thus the 'pains' involved in doing crosscultural research are reflections of the very corrective that crosscultural research is supposed to provide for a social science developing within a particular social system."17 Comparative studies point out and denounce ethnocentrism, and in this way they certainly contribute to its lessening. One must test one's own limits in order to transcend them. Like any scientific discipline, international comparison will progress by correcting a series of errors progressively revealed. Notes 1. Fernand Braudel, "History and Social Science," in Economy and Society in Early Modern Europe: Essays ed. P. Burke (New York: Harper & from Annales, Row, 1972), 24. 2. See S.E. Finer in Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform (London: Anthony Wigram, 1975). 3. Third ed. New York: Free Press, 1963. 4. Cf. Howard J. Wiarda, Politics and Social Change in Latin America: The Distinct Tradition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974). 5. Cf. Claudio Veliz, The Centralist Tradition of Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 6. Cf. David Collier, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)? James Malloy, ed., Authoritarianism and (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977). Corporatism in Latin America 7. Paul Veyne, L'inventaire des Différences (Paris: Seuil, 1976), 18. 8. Howard J. Wiarda, "The Ethnocentrism of Social Science," Review of Politics, April 1981. 9. Ibid. 10. As W.W. Rostow did for economics in The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960)? and Dankwart A. Rustow for politics in "Transitions to Democracy: Towards a Dynamic Model," Comparative Politics, no. 2 (1970): 33763. 11. As did David McClelland in The Achieving Society (New York: Free Press, 1967). 12. In "Emerging Nations and Ideologies of American Social Scientists," American Sociologist 2, no. 2 (May 1967). 13. Giovanni Sartori, "Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics," American Political Science Review 64, no. 4 (December 1970): 1052. 14. (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). Messianismes révolutionnaires du Tiers monde 15. In Anthropologie politique, 2d ed. (Paris: PUF, 1967), foreword. 16. See infra, chapter 8. 17. Erwin Scheuch, "Society as a Context in CrossNational Comparisons," Social Science Information 6, no. 5 (October 1967): 15. Comparing to Find Sociological Rules Political phenomena are not the object of an experimental science? that is all too clear. Social theories can sometimes be tested successfully. But the passage from microto macroanalysis is always risky, and the most important actors in political life are not those who can be manipulated for experimentation. Anyway, one cannot test the manner in which a social system regularizes itself under contradictory influences, the manner in which groups are formed or conflicts mature. The first sociologists rapidly understood how they could overcome these difficulties by using comparisons. The comparative method was perceived by John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, and Émile Durkheim as the best substitute for the experimental method in the social sciences. In reality, it is not entirely satisfactory to speak of opposition between comparison and experimentation because the comparative approach is present in experimentation. It is the systematic comparison of the results of repeated experiments that constitutes the implicit key to the experimental method. The difference lies in the fact that the chemist or the bacteriologist has the means to provoke, in a closed setting, the phenomenon he wants to study. He can assure that no environmental variation interferes?by keeping constant those variables he does not want to study, he can eliminate them from his field. This kind of manipulation is clearly impossible in a human environment. The sociologist and the political scientist can study only phenomena that they have not provoked. In other words, in domains where experimentation cannot be applied, comparison is synonymous not only with an intellectual approach searching to make an inventory of similarities and differences between two or more situations?it is also they only way of collecting information and data in sufficient number to approximate a scientific approach. Comparison here means both description and thought. One cannot really know whether various electoral techniques have an impact on party systems without considering a sufficiently large series of concrete examples?in the same way, a study of different social contexts is needed for an analysis of socialization, modernization, or party alignment. "We have only one means of demonstrating that one phenomenon is the cause of another: it is to compare the cases where they are simultaneously present or absent." So wrote Émile Durkheim in The Rule of Sociological Method, emphasizing the difference between experimentation and comparison. "Whenthe phenomenon can be artificially produced by the observer, the method is experimentation in its proper sense. When, on the contrary, the production of facts is out of reach, when we can thus only bring them together as they are spontaneously produced, the method we use is that of indirect experimentation, or comparative method." Comparison is a universal method in the social sciences? it is worthwhile not only to those who study an international field. Even if we intend to study electoral participation in a single country, we proceed by comparisons: between men and women, young and old, city dwellers and rural villagers, and so on. For this kind of study, international comparisons only provide supplementary support. One would better understand the behavior of French workers if one were to establish points of reference in some neighboring countries. It is easier to identify trends in the British economic development by analyzing what happened at the same time in Germany or France. It is not surprising that the historical method is so often combined with the comparative method. All theories are syntheses. But the best ones find inspiration in multiple and contradictory analyses. The nature of totalitarian leadership or the process of military intervention in politics will become clearer if the study encompasses a series of cases in a variety of contexts. For the social scientist, comparing remains the main way of approaching the causes of observed phenomena, that is, of elaborating sociological rules. Naturally, international comparison does not guarantee the validity of the induced conclusions. The application of the methods of "difference" or "concomitant variation," as proposed by Mill, has its limits. Never will the context of the compared situations be sufficiently similar to permit considering as null the influence of the environment? never will the researcher be in a position to validly exclude from his conclusions those contextual variables that he cannot keep constant. Against the extreme consequences of such possible "overconscious" thinking, Giovanni Sartori has rightly reacted: What the researcher in social science should seek is not paralyzing perfection, but the most satisfying approximation to it. In search of causal relationships, the comparativist encounters an additional obstacle: the relatively limited number of cases that can be treated. There are some 160 independent nations in the world, but it is evident that we cannot rely on a large enough sample to study phenomena such as charismatic power, the decline of parliament, or the political role of top civil servants. Is it sensible to compare 56,000 squarekilometer Togo with the Soviet Union? desert Libya with overcrowded Japan? poor Gabon with a hundredtimesricher Switzerland? yound Chad or Bangladesh with more than twothousandyearold China? Is there any meaning to ask whether a Tzolil peasant feels politicallycompetent when he hardly feels Mexican? At what level of generalization must we be to compare sensibly Burmese and West German bureaucracies, articulation processes in England and Fiji? However abstract they may sound, these questions have true relevance, clear particularly in quantitative studies that deduce flaws from numbers. It is certainly true that for some issues, differences in size, age, organization, or responsibilities are of little importance? it is true also that for other issues the differences in size make it impossible to treat the many nations of the world as comparable units. Most of the time, the main problem confronting the comparativist is to increase the number of relevant cases he can study. In order to maximize the statistical significance of the analysis, several approaches are possible. Arend Lijphart has made some proposals. 1 A first possibility could be to multiply the number of situations by taking historical examples into consideration. Thus, one could study bureaucratization by integrating empires from ancient times into the comparative analysis, or study the process of urbanization by retrospectively looking at the experiences of historical Europe. A comparison of state formation in contemporary Africa and premodern Europe was undertaken on the basis of a "striking parallelism" between the two situations.2 Such a strategy nevertheless has two limits: (1) the fragmentary character of the information at hand, even for the most recent past? (2) the distortions imposed by history, and the fundamental differences that often exist between identically labeled phenomena. It is certainly useful to study the contemporary development of literacy in Africa or Asia, its modes and political consequences, in the light of what happened in Europe during previous centuries. But it would be a mistake not to consider the essential differences between the spread of literacy by print media at the time of Bismarck and the spread of literacy in an era of audiovisual media. Generally speaking, the lesson of history consists precisely of warning against toohasty comparisons. To expect an economic miracle from the exportation of capitalism to Third World countries while forgetting the stages of economic development in Europe is to build a model of development on sand. How can we forget the enormous facilities offered to Western countries since the nineteenth century by colonization and the appropriation of resources from these colonized areas? The asynchronic comparison could offer many erroneous perspectives. One way of multiplying the cases available for comparison is to identify different areas in each country. They may be delineated along relatively stable sociological characteristics, or according to ad hoc changing criteria. A student interested in comparative public policy, for example, may be at liberty to identify contrasting municipalities, regions, or even states, in nations where federalism exists, in order to weigh the significance of ideological orientationsas a determinant of policy. In a more stable way, Juan Linz has delineated eight Spains, Erik Allardt four Finlands, and Stein Rokkan as many Norways. Everyone knows that there are three Belgiums, four Italys, and five or six Frances. Those who are considering all of Western Europe might succeed in counting forty units, being clear that such a multiplication is valid only for problems that are sufficiently independent of the national polity. A supplementary advantage is that the internal homogeneity of each of the eight Spains or the four Italys will undoubtedly be greater than that of Spain or Italy in its entirety. A different strategy consists of sketching operational concepts large enough to encompass slightly different situations. One can thus contrast a number of oneparty systems with multiparty systems, without regard for all that may differentiate the many kinds of multipartism? one can broadly confront free market economies with planned economies, federal states with unitary ones, and so on. In this way, the number of cases grouped in each category necessarily increases. But what we gain statistically, we risk losing by reducing the incisiveness of the utilized concepts. Another much advocated and practiced strategy consists of reserving comparisons for countries that present analogies sealed by history or geography. This strategy, known as ''area study," 3 seems to ensure in a natural manner the control of those environmental variables the observer would like to keep constant in order better to analyze the fluctuation of others. We will better understand the influence of electoral techniques on political behavior or the structure of parties if the comparison is carried out in a culturally or structurally homogeneous universe. Douglas W. Rae proceeded in this manner in studying the political impact of electoral techniques. Taking up the problem formulated by Maurice Duverger, Rae extended the analysis to twenty pluralist democracies that could be considered relatively similar? his conclusions, which essentially confirm those of Duverger, clearly reveal the effects of the majority ballot and proportional representation.4 Lawrence C. Dodd, for his part, tested in the context of contemporary parliamentary systems the general hypothesis developed by William Riker5 and pointed to situations where the "minimum size principle" posited by Riker was not verified. Dodd proposed an explanation of these "oversized cabinet" situations, which he related to parliamentary systems "characterized by high a priori willingness to bargain combined with low information certainty."6 Here we see how parsimonious studies may bring about improvement in our own perception of causality and "laws." And by conducting a longitudinal comparative study on the development of the welfare state in Europe and the United States, it was possible to show the shortcomings of prevalent hypotheses, granting left governments the strongest tendency to increase social expenditures. In fact, "the overall pattern—center and centerrightcoalitions—suggests that the dynamics of coalition governments override left and right differences." 7 On how many cases should analysis rest to test theoretical proposals sensibly? Clearly, there is nothing resembling an absolute ideal number. But when general laws are based on the comparison of only two or three countries, the conclusion induced may be subject to question. In fact, in such cases, the best authors claim only to formulate hypotheses that need to be tested further in other countries. One cannot establish the conditions required for a stable democracy just by analyzing Norway in the light of British and German experiences. Harry Eckstein knew that.8 Only when the original propositions are confirmed or refined by other studies do hypotheses crystallize into rules. One method of maximizing the accuracy of the results of a comparison is to isolate carefully the sectors on which the analysis will focus.9 This "segmentation" of the political system usually precedes the selection of countries to be compared. It permits the researcher to "forget," to a certain degree, those contextual variables that make comparison so difficult. In concentrating attention on bureaucracies, unions, or women's votes, the analyst lessens the significance of environmental differences between countries, societies, or political systems. Researchers seek the most stable and invariant factors amid a profusion of forms and events. That is why they look more for similarities than for differences. Wasn't it in the most trivial, persistent, and universal phenomena that Newton and others discovered the greatest scientific principles? "The same thing could be said about political phenomena," says LaPalombara. "Not only are the persistent and enduring political patterns evidence of significant regularities in human behavior or organization, they constitute as well an enormously important backdrop against which we can better interpret momentary deviations, as well as unusual or seemingly esoteric patterns that may imply longrange, more permanent changes."10 Comparison helps separate the accidental from the inevitable, the occasional from the regular. An accumulation of knowledge is achieved through this movement, which shifts from particular to general, then back from general to particular, with new hypotheses and progressively refined concepts. Only by examining multiple cases can we locate, rank, and build a hierarchy. Only by comparing can we order reality according to conceptual axes that will perhaps become as many explanations. But comparison also permits the induction of laws and the elaboration, sometimes slow, of generalizations. We might even say that the very spirit of comparison involves the quest for universals. The search is painful most of the time, with provisional bridges joining apparently irreconcilable universes. Louis Dumont proposed to see inoldfashioned evolutionism one of those respectable constructions designed to fuse together "us" and "the others," "civilized" and "barbarian,'' into one single species. 11 He praised the comparative attitude of anthropologists and sociologists. "If I am right, truly scientific categories are all born from the contradiction between our categories and the categories of others, from a conflict between theory raised at home and data collected on the ground." The result is that "there is a parcel of universal value contained in every concept with which the anthropologist passes from one society to another."12 The organization of concepts is what we call theories, aiming at explaining the multiform reality in universal terms. "There is no science if there is no generalization" proclaims an Aristotelian maxim. But what level of generalization should we adopt? The history of sociology is marked by laws discovered through more or less explicit comparisons. The political scientist has often tried to elucidate the relation between the social and the political spheres, as well as to establish correspondences between strictly political variables. Xenophon early inquired as to the intrinsic logic of tyranny. The AngloSaxon theorists of nascent parliamentarianism later found the key to balanced power in the system of checks and balances. In a more empirical manner, Roberto Michels investigated the internal organization of parties in order to formulate his "iron law of oligarchy." Karl Marx, for his part, found strong infrastructural determinants of all domination phenomena. The analysis of behaviors has fostered a series of hypotheses, from the most general to the most specific. Max Weber has investigated the link between the Protestant ethic and the dynamic of a social system. Other sociologists have tried to understand the determinants of social mobility. While some authors have looked to the modes of socialization for an explanation of the adult's political attitudes, others have proposed sociological models that, for example, shed light on the moderating potential of crosscutting or overlapping cleavages. As these few examples show, conceptualization can be performed at several levels. Considered at the highest degree of abstraction, political instability seems to involve variables as general as the distribution of ownership (an old hypothesis originally formulated by Tocqueville)? the issue of legitimacy can involve the relationship between socioeconomic and political development, the extent of cultural consensus, the burden of political demands. A similar question asked of parliamentary democracies would allow the identification of other decisive factors, such as the constitutional framework, the nature of governmental coalitions, the number and cohesion of political parties. It is possible to analyze the authoritarian systems from various points of view, emphasizing for some countries the weakness of the middle classes and for others the poorly developed communication technologies, urbanization, and education. Are we now to decide which type of explanation is more accurate? They certainly all are valuable and at the same time partly blind. Highly abstract theses often neglect facts that contextual studies bring to light? but contextual studies lose information on largescale or longterm phenomena. Stefan Nowak pointed to these discrepancies, which may open a gap between basic comparison and applied research: "The more we look for variables and for the relationships which seem to be valid on an international scale, the greater is the possibility that the diagnostic statements and the theoretical generalizations established in our study will be of little importance from the point of view of the specific problems of any single nation." 13 Politicians will not be interested in the kinds of discoveries arrived at by highly abstract studies? but scientists are denied the right to neglect any level of inquiry, because all points of view are useful and complementary. Depending on the objective of the scholar who formulates the rule, its scope may vary greatly. At midpoint between the two extremes—on one side the paradigm and on the other the description without interpretation—are located those constructive propositions that Robert Merton calls "theories of the middle range": "theories intermediate to the minor working hypotheses evolved in abundance during the daybyday routines of research and the allinclusive speculations comprising a master conceptual scheme from which it is hoped to derive a very large number of empirically observed uniformities of social behavior."14 Each method available to the social sciences for establishing rules has its particular limits. For a long time, political scientists, particularly in Europe, remained enclosed in legalistic frameworks that undoubtedly did permit them to evaluate the impact of institutions. But the reverse should also be noted: By neglecting the social forces that influence the exercise of power, those scholars "proved to be relatively insensitive to the nonpolitical determinants of political behavior and hence to the nonpolitical bases of governmental institutions."15 On the other hand, the behavioral approach to political phenomena has tended to neglect the decisive role that institutions play. Those who have given priority to the social forces at work in history have sometimes drifted into pure theory. The sclerosis of a certain Marxist school is, from this point of view, a sad example. But there certainly are criticisms to formulate against functionalists as well? they too are subject to the temptation to down the multiplicity of events in unverifiable abstractions. The historical method has proved capable of demonstrating how political institutions have crystallized over time—in how many stages and under the pressure of what factors. But historical analysis must be transformed into asynchronic comparisons in order to be able to comprehend the essential originality, for instance, of the development of Europe in the nineteenth century. By quantification, it is possible to analyze rigorously the relations between political phenomena that were, for a long time, only presupposed. But quantitative methods have their own faults. The need for hard data may bias the questions asked and confine the researcher's capabilities to perceive. Bertrand de Jouvenel has rightly denounced this "new fatalism," which deduces everything from GNP per capita. To give maximum consistency to results, the social scientist is obviously preoccupied with transcending the trivial comparison. In practice, this implies a constant effort to give more precision to the information and data used, to quantify all that appears to be quantifiable. But the social scientist must keep in mind that technical sophistication cannot be an end in itself. The development of technological means of investigation and the extension of the field of comparison should be accompanied by improvements in comparative methodology, by epistemological thinking, and by a careful formulation of concepts capable of absorbing, regularizing, and giving meaning to the stream of information. Without this, all technical progress achieved at the level of collection or treatment by computer of data will be in vain. Notes 1. In "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method," American Political Science Review 65, no. 3 (September 1971). 2. Cf. Joshua B. Forrest, "State Formation in Contemporary Africa and Medieval Europe" (paper presented at American Political Science Association meeting, Washington, D.C., 1988). 3. See infra, chapter 16. 4. Cf. The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 87103. 5. William Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962). 6. Lawrence C. Dodd, Coalitions in Parliamentary Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 208. 7. See Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer, eds., The Development of Welfare States in Europe and (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, America 1981), 32527. 8. Division and Cohesion in Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). 9. See infra, chapter 13. 10. Politics within Nations (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1974), 9. 11. Louis Dumont, Essais sur l'individualisme: une perspective anthropologigue sur l'ideologie moderne (Paris: Seuil, 1983), 175. 12. Ibid., 18485. 13. Stefan Nowak, "The Strategy of CrossNational Survey Research," in CrossNational ed. A. Szalai and Comparative Survey Research: Theory and Practice, R. Petrella (Oxford: Pergamon, 1977), 78. 14. Social Theory and Social Structure, 2d ed. (New York: Free Press, 1968), 56. 15. Roy Macridis, The Study of Comparative Government (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), 15. Chapter 3— Operational Concepts Concepts have always been recognized as essential to knowledge. For a long time now, philosphers have argued about the origin of concepts and have debated whether they come down from a transcendent ideal world or up from real experiences. Today, such a debate would be futile, since it is generally admitted that there is an unending dialectic between the a priori and the a posteriori. All knowledge, as Kant has shown, results from the indissoluble coupling of sensitive intuition and concept: "intuitions without concepts are blind, concepts without intuitions are empty." Applied to comparative analysis, the point could be briefly stated as follows: Without abstraction and intellectual construction, there are no common denominators between the several objects submitted to comparison. Because the concept is this very abstraction, there can be no comparisons without concepts. "Whereas the image is the representation of a particular object," posits the Grande Encyclopédie, "the concept represents all the objects of a given generis. The concept is an abstract idea, in that it considers only certain characteristics of the objects? and it is a general idea, in that it extends the considered characteristics to all objects of the same class." Abstraction first, then generalization—this is the natural behavior of the comparativist. Comparative political science progresses with the help of conceptual instruments. Its path is marked by "buoys": participation, legitimacy, authority, anomie, integration, exclusion, alienation, populism, and so on. Social scientists have elaborated a lengthy list of concepts in order to dissect and master better the prolific diversity of reality. These logical categories are useful devices?they help researchers to represent intelligibly the phenomena they study. But they are as unobservable as the first microscopic particles imagined by Democritus or Anaxagoras. You cannot see social classes ? you cannot see charisma. You cannot decide just by opening your eyes whether you should analyze "power" in terms of domination, as Weber did, or in terms of exchange, as Parsons did. In fact, as R.T. Holt and J.M. Richardson state, ''concepts are judged not by their truth or falsity, but by their theoretical utility." 1 They add that there would be little sense in arguing, for example, "whether or not there are such things as demands, supports and functional requisites." The only important thing is to know how useful the concepts are in understanding Reality. The number of concepts that could be analyzed in a work dealing with international comparisons necessarily exceeds the size of any book. Nevertheless, numerous neighboring concepts are differentiated only by their label. In their search for originality and precision, sculptors of neologisms do not always make inventive contributions. It would be easy to denounce the amalgamation under one rubric of characteristics or processes that do not necessarily belong to a single analytical category. The concept of secularization, for instance, as utilized by Gino Germani to study the transition from the old to the modern, in fact covers a great variety of traits. Indeed, they concern the political system as well as the family, social reforms as well as demographic trends. Secularization is explicitly conceived by Germani as a complex process, implying three fundamental modifications of the social structure. They encompass, first, a transformation in behavior and models of action? second, the passage from the institutionalization of tradition to the institutionalization of change? and third, the shifting from undifferentiated structures to differentiation, specialization, and a growing autonomy of structures. 2 Those who speak about development or modernization are referring to the same processes as does Germani. These nuances in conceptual definition do not necessarily denote a substantial originality in approach. Trying to analyze change, the concept passes from the static to the dynamic. But how to integrate movement? The point is worthy of reflection, since the concept naturally tends to rigidify the reality it orders. The great sociologist Max Weber was highly conscious of this problem. Elaborating his analytical categories, he took care to indicate how much they were "ideal types," references serving to situate relatively the concrete cases under investigation. There is no rational authority that is not also founded on tradition—be this tradition "democratic" or "republican"—and any traditional authority admits some innovation. Isn't bon vouloir included in the definition of monarchical absolutism? Related to the idea of change are the problems of maturation and decay. Political systems, like societies, are living entities? they are constantly evolving. Charismatic power survives by weakening, since its routinization profoundly transforms its essence. Weber also imagined a certain number of dynamic concepts in introducing secularization between the sacred and the profane, Vergesellschaftung between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Today, it is possible to mention scores of concepts that are embedded in the idea of change, such as modernization, nation building, integration, legitimation. The concept of structural differentiation, embryonic in the writings of Weber and developed by Parsons, has known a notable success among functionalists, who use it as a classificatory axis to distinguish various kinds of political regimes.3 The sociologist Robert Marsh has applied this concept with a view to ranking the totality of known societies, from the Ibo tribe to the mastodonlike Soviet Union. Marsh's goal was to show that significant political and social phenomena change according to this fundamental variable of "structural differentiation." 4 But he did not really indicate how to measure it. To this difficult question, no one has yet brought a satisfactory reply. Here is an important lesson for the comparativist: The most general analytical categories, the most ambitious ones, are not necessarily the easiest to operationalize. In reality, under the façade of words like integration, socialization, politicization, and modernization, we find an extremely large number of complex phenomena, whose analysis would require refined models and subtle interpretations.5 The development of dynamic concepts has acted as an incentive to epistemological thinking. Reinhard Bendix, for example, proposes to see in each analytical category a complex of "contrastconceptions," taking a different meaning according to the context and the prospect of the analysis. The nascent bureaucracy, he says, was remarkable for features that are no longer remarkable today. What originally distinguished it from feudalism—its impersonal and rational characteristics—could not be considered as a satisfactory definition for those who study the American "imperial Presidency" or the French Fifth Republic.6 The argument could be extended widely. Is it possible to analyze, with concepts formulated in Europe in a completely different context, what is happening now in Burma or Zaire? What really is a "nation," a "social class," a ''political party" in subSaharan Africa? Are not the words that we use surreptitiously leading us to misinterpretation? announced the scholastic philosophers. But words do more than capture reality? Verbum dat esse rei they reveal or even enhance it. We see what we are looking for. That is why many comparativists have advocated and continue to defend the necessity for precise conceptual instruments. If everyone is to include a different content under words such as "dictatorship" or "freedom," no theoretical debate can progress. Giovanni Sartori became the passionate adversary of these dangerous approximations, engaging in a fierce battle against this Tower of Babel open to all historical connotations, to all bastards of interdisciplinarity, where the definition of concepts finally gets lost. "Our purpose," Sartori wrote with Fred W. Riggs and Henry Teune, "is to find a strategy that favors cumulative innovations precisely because it impedes the endless regression toward anarchic disruption and confusion."7 To his plea for precision, Sartori adds an exhortation for finding labels that are not chosen arbitrarily. "As we are prisoner of the words we pick, we had better pick them well. . . . It does matter the word we choose: The 'terming' of a concept is a decision of central consequence."8 The concept of political development is based on the Western model taken by comparativists as its implicit reference. If, instead, another concept is chosen, for instance political change, as suggested by S. Huntington, it will gain in clarity not only because it will avoid referring to volutions that "do not have to go together and, in fact, often do not." 9 Here the importance of choice of terms appears because if a toovague or inappropriately formulated concept is rejected, as a consequence of declining interest in fundamental problems, the progress of knowledge will have gained nothing. In advocating clearer definitions, Fred Riggs admits that the utilization of the expression "political development" as a "powerword and catchword has provoked the growth of a substantial literature that has surely contributed significantly to our knowledge about politics, especially in countries of the Third World."10 To coin a terminology both neutral and precise has been the goal of many researchers, a goal often pursued and sometimes achieved. But Stanislav Andreski has rightly pointed out how it may be in vain to "fabricate neologisms to eliminate normative nuances whereas the psychological and sociological vocabulary, as soon as it begins to be diffused, becomes the object of gross simplifications and deformations."11 As he has stated in another place, "terminological confusion cannot be dispelled by convening committees to legislate on the matter, but only by adjusting and inventing terms whilst constructing theories which genuinely explain real events. Terminological confusion is just an aspect of the general lack of understanding."12 The search for neutral and incisive concepts is frequently the result of exchange and collaboration. The concept of political pluralism, for instance, marks a progress in relation to that of liberal democracy. That of polyarchy, imagined by Robert Dahl,13 opens still different perspectives. Undoubtedly these categories fill a function that cannot be ensured by the concept of democracy, more ideal and prescriptive. But how much energy has been lost in this quest for neutrality and precision! And why not admit that a certain amount of ambiguity is not necessarily conducive to intellectual sclerosis? "Equivocity," noted Roger Caillois, "an imperfection for a code of signals, is for the language, on the contrary, a symptom of richness, the source of a greater variety of possible combinations among signs."14 The analytic capacity of social scientists is often proportional to their capacity to imagine a series of hypotheses that they constantly refine to carve out "operational" concepts oriented toward practical efficiency rather than abstract beauty or philosophical coherence. W.J. Goode is certainly right when he says that the success of such an instrument does not depend only on its clarity or etymological precision "but on how much fruitful research a new concept generates. Most concepts new or old are not killed by attack but by neglect."15 There are imperfectly defined concepts around which an entire literature has grown. Power has rightly been defined as a "semantic puzzle"? 16 but this puzzle has proved capable of fertilizing the critical thought of Max Weber, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Talcott Parsons, and, more recently, Daniel Bell, Ralf Dahrendorf, or Amitai Etzioni.17 Some concepts have provoked lengthy polemics, even though they may have been conceived as neutral instruments by their "inventors"—an example is the notion of workingclass authoritarianism formulated by Seymour Martin Lipset.18 There are concepts that continuously occupy the front of the stage, like the concept of power, and others that have cyclical fortunes, such as the notion of social movement.19 Not all are instruments of equal value? but they all foster a continual process of conceptual adjustment in the social sciences. None of them is sufficiently perfected to escape the need for constant revision. One reformulates the concept of social class or "revisits" the civic culture?20 one critically reconsiders the notions of revolution or counterrevolution. The theory of democracy is revisited in view of disillusionment in Black Africa or Latin America. "Can we afford a universe of discourse whose terms no longer stand as carriers of experience?" asks Giovanni Sartori.21 The comparative perspective favors an endless process of refinement and reformulation. The definition of political participation, originally conceived of as a behavior designed to affect the choice of governmental personnel and policies,22 was progressively enlarged by comparison. Research in various countries enriched our perception of the phenomenon.23 Violence and disobedience were considered normal forms of participation in studies dealing with developing countries.24 Finally, we had to rethink the concept of political participation even for many pluralist democracies. That comparison needs concepts has already been sufficiently argued. What is equally important to emphasize is the determinant role played by comparative analysis in the elaboration of concepts that rapidly appear indispensable even in noncomparative studies. The concepts of culture or political socialization stem from comparison.25 The same could be said about the articulation or aggregation of interests. Comparative paternity is clear as well in the concept of underdevelopment. Raymond Aron put it perfectly: "The notion of underdevelopment was born from a comparison. It qualifies what certain societies are not (i.e., developed), and does not characterize what they are. The concept of underdevelopment, indeed, applies to old civilizations (India), as well as to tribal areas (some parts of Africa), or even to backward regions within developed countries. I will go further: it is not reasonable to expect a direct and positive definition of underdevelopment, because this concept is comparative in its very nature."26 International comparisons sometimes engender very general and vague concepts. The distance that the comparativist must maintain between himself and the field of investigation multiplies these kinds of risks and demands critical vigilance on the part of even the best analysts. Good concepts are needed to open the door of comparison. But in this primary quest, the social scientist is confronted with many obstacles and temptations. He must avoid the trap of conceptual imperialism, which pushes some to explain everything in terms of culture, class, profit, personality, and so on. In the social sciences, there is never one single determining factor that can explain all historical trends? there are always several or many causes involved. 27 Social scientists should guard against slipping from theory to doctrine, from clarifying caricatures to distortion, from concept to myth. The temptation of oversimplification does not spare the scientific spirit? nor does the temptation of irrationality. Aron once accused certain intellectuals of also having their opium.28 Reality is to be discovered beyond ideologies, common ideas, and the too obvious "evidence." In his Règles de la méthode sociologique, Durkheim exhorted researchers to protect themselves against these recurrent elements of pseudo knowledge. Illusionary knowledge and false truths often appear, in the field of international comparisons, as prejudice, cliché, and national stereotype. Notes 1. "Competing Paradigms in Comparative Politics," in The Methodology of Comparative Research, ed. R.T. Holt and J.E. Turner (New York: Free Press, 1970), 24. 2. Gino Germani, The Sociology of Modernization: Studies on Its Historical and Theoretical Aspects, (New with Special Regard to the Latin American Case Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1981). 3. See infra, chapter 23. 4. Cf. Comparative Sociology: A Codification of CrossSocietal (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1967). Analysis 5. See Mattei Dogan and Robert Pahre, Creative Marginality: Innovation at the Intersections of Social (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), chap. 4. Sciences 6. Cf. "Concepts in Comparative Historical Analysis," in Comparative Research across Cultures and ed. Stein Rokkan (Paris: Mouton, 1968), 7072. Nations, 7. Tower of Babel: On the Definition and Analysis of Concepts in the Social Sciences (International Studies Association 1975), 1. 8. Giovanni Sartori, "Guidelines for Concept Analysis," in Social Science Concepts: A Systematic , ed. G. Sartori (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1984), 60. Analysis 9. Samuel P. Huntington, "The Change to Change," Comparative Politics, no. 3 (1977): 3034. 10. Fred W. Riggs, "The Rise and Fall of 'Political Development,'" in Handbook of Political Behavior, ed. Samuel L. Long (New York: Plenum, 1981), 338. 11. Stanislav Andreski, "Classifications et terminologies: des outils à manier avec circonspection," Revue Internationale des Sciences Sociales 3 (1974): 525. 12. Stanislav Andreski, Elements of Comparative Sociology (London: Cox and Wyman, 1964), 8586. 13. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy, Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971). 14. In R. Caillois et al., Le robot, la bête et l'homme (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1965), 20. 15. In Peter M. Blau, ed., Approaches to the Study of Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1975), 67. 16. J.E. Lane and H. Stenlund, "Power," in Sartori, Social Science Concepts, 396. 17. See the selection of their theoretical writings by Marvin E. Olsen in Power in Societies (New York: Macmillan, 1970). 18. In a famous article, reprinted in Political Man: The Social Basis of Politics, expanded ed. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1981), 87ff. 19. Besides the classic book by Rudolf Heberle, Social Movements: An Introduction to Political Sociology (New York: AppletonCenturyCrofts, 1951), a large literature has been devoted to the concept of social movements. See, for an encompassing view of the subject, Louis Kriesberg, ed., Research in Social Movements: (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1979). Conflicts and Change 20. See infra, chapters 6 and 8. 21. Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1987), 1:13. 22. See Norman H. Nie and Sidney Verba, Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). 23. Lucian Pye and Sidney Verba, The Citizen and Politics: A Comparative Perspective (Stanford, Calif.: Greylock, 1978), introduction. 24. See Joan M. Nelson, Access to Power: Politics and the Urban Poor in Developing Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 9 et passim? John A. Booth and Mitchell A. Seligson, Political Participation in Latin America (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978), 6. 25. In fact, the pioneering work of Charles Merriam has taken a comparative look at socializing processes. Cf. The Making of Citizens: A Comparative Study of 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935). Methods of Civic Training, 26. Raymond Aron, "La théorie du développement et l'interprétation historique de l'époque contemporaine," in Le développement social, ed. Raymond Aron and Bert Hoselitz (Paris: Mouton, 1965), 89. 27. Against that illusion du trait dominant, see Léo Hamon, Acteurs et données de l'histoire (Paris: PUF, 1970), 1:41. 28. Cf. L'opium des intellectuels (Paris: CalmannLévy, 1955). Chapter 4— Theoretical Frameworks Concepts are indispensable but not sufficient for the comparativist, who must not only analyze and dissect reality but also coherently structure data. It is in the creation of logical frameworks that the comparativist can make knowledge cumulative. Thomas Kuhn, in his classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 1 has shed light on the role of paradigms in scientific progress. This role is significant not just for the physical sciences.2 A great variety of theoretical constructions interest comparativists. While some models can be tested, others are highly abstract paradigms that borrow their theoretical components from cybernetics, biology, or mechanics. Some theories are imbedded in reality and do not claim to explain everything? other, more generous ones sometimes have the tendency to lose themselves in the stratosphere. Joseph LaPalombara called the comparativist's attention to the "widening chasm" he observed between theories too general to ever be tested and empirical research without direction. Comparative political science, he argued, lacks theories at a median level of abstraction, which would permit a translation of the accumulated findings into effective and testable knowledge. Taking up Robert K. Merton's ideas, LaPalombara called for a return to greater empiricism and segmentation. "It strikes me as enormously telling," he said, "that at precisely that moment in the profession's development when methodological tools will permit the rigorous comparative testing of hypotheses the distance between hypotheses and general theory should be widening, and that the linkage between hypotheses and macrotheory is either terribly obscure or of such problematical logical construction that theory itself cannot be falsified."3 If the conceptual scheme escapes verification, how can it be refined or remodeled? If the distance between theory and social reality is too great to be bridged, is there not a risk of a comfortable intellectual sterility? The critical remarks by LaPalombara should be heeded. There is much that could be said about the proliferation of ambitious schemes, while our knowledge of so many fields remains incredibly poor. "I find it instructive, for example, that political scientists are loath to make highflown generalizations about the American political system (the one about which we have the greatest amount of information) while they will at the slightest stimulus generalize about largescale societies in Africa, Asia and Latin America, concerning which our lack of historical and contemporary information is perhaps the most striking thing we can say." 4 It would be dangerous to turn the theoretical construction into a means of filling lacunae in our empirical knowledge. In his Governmental Process,5 David Truman long ago advocated the formulation of a conceptual framework that would help us master the flux of gathered information? afterward, however, theoretical frameworks themselves tended to proliferate in such a way that a new generation of researchers discarded those broad constructions. They preferred parsimonious studies to world generalizations, field studies to theory, inspection to prediction. They turned toward the Islamic world or Black Africa, striving for detailed understanding of a particular country in order to escape the trap of undue generalization. Will comparison suffer from this rising mood? It probably will be strengthened instead, with cautious reformulation of concepts and theorizing rising again from the grass roots. This is not to deny a positive contribution to holistic theories. Whatever problems they pose, they have certainly helped comparative political science face the enormous problems raised by the emergence of so many new and independent nations since the late 1950s. One could probably take issue with the utility of including in the same analysis countries such as Indonesia and Britain, or India and the USSR. But when the comparativist proposes such a heterogeneous field, when he claims to compare American and Chinese political systems, he is naturally led to adopt notions whose degree of abstraction is related to the immense gaps existing in the reality. The farther apart the compared countries are, and the more sharply contrasting, the greater the need to rise on the scale of abstraction. There is an inescapable link between comparison and theories. To establish a common matrix is precisely to find the means of comparing, of locating in the same diagram, the multiplicity of national political systems. That is why all great paradigms, whatever they may be, have attracted comparativists' attention: Hegel's or Marx's dialectical schemes, Easton's mechanical model, Deutsch's cybernetic paradigm, Almond's pseudobiological or Parsons's psychological models. The theoretical construction is more than a mere temptation to the scientific spirit? it is a necessity, since only the bouquet of hypotheses proposed by a researcher gives meaning to facts, events, and figures. Order is intellectual, and it imposes itself more stringently as the volume of unorganized data increases. The need to systematize grows in relation to the accumulation of information, the problem being to master its anarchical spreading. Do we not see today even the world of signs and symbols reduced to "systems," and the profusion of literature to "theories"? Unfortunately, this propensity is full of danger. Theory orders, but it also guides. If perception influences theory, the opposite is equally true. "In order for an object to be accessible to analysis, it is not enough to perceive it," noted the Nobel prizewinner François Jacob. "It is also necessary that a theory be ready to accommodate it. In the exchange between theory and experience, it is always the former that initiates the dialogue." 6 That is to say, theory may also be a source of biased perceptions or erroneous interpretations. Recall how some theoreticians explain as "false consciousness" the discrepancy between the attitudes they observe and their scientific models. If peasants from the Andes are reluctant to engage in revolutionary action, they are proletarians with blinders. Developmentalists that urged the U.S. government in the 1960s to pour money into Latin America in order to breed ''true" democrats eager to follow the American model of citizenship were equally submitted to the tyranny of theory. Max Weber presented himself ostensibly as an "antimetaphysician." In this manner, stressed Julien Freund, "he intended to manifest his dislike for these broad romantic syntheses, which claim to systematically explain the world, life or society, on the basis of some unique element or concept. Weber was an adversary of the philosophers of history, who like Hegel, Marx or Comte, have attempted to give one complete and holistic explanation of reality."7 No sociologist and no political scientist involved in comparative research can avoid becoming, at a certain point, a theorist? but both should resist becoming prisoners of "grand explanations" that are all too encompassing not to arouse doubts. The temptation is often great to imagine theoretical frameworks that are capable of integrating, like a splendid puzzle, all the findings and data accumulated in pieces. Indeed, the development of statistical techniques, made excessively simple by the computer, has rendered more pressing the need for articulated logical schemes. The refinement of these theoretical and conceptual tools is the point at issue if we are to prevent the progress of data collection from resulting in a grandiose void. "One of the greatest difficulties in cumulative research," writes Alfred Grosser, "is precisely to find the level of generalization which permits the simultaneous avoiding of sterile theory on the one hand, of useless accumulation on the other hand."8 The inability to integrate the accumulated materials in a constructive manner can also result from too much inertia in the explanatory schemes. The most brilliant models often become pallid as soon as one tries to move beyond static description in order to comprehend movement. It is symptomatic that structuralism, for instance, found it difficult to pass from "synchronic" to "diachronic," although Claude LéviStrauss did recognize the importance of this historical dimension. It is also a fact that the "epistemological basements" of each epoch described by Michel Foucault in Les mots et les choses communicate between themselves rather badly across time. The confrontation of theoretical schemes with changing reality frequently and cruelly marks their limits. Critiques against the "overly static" characteristics of many theoretical frameworks, functionalist or systemic, are in a sense paradoxical, since most promoters of these paradigms are sensitive to problems of change and development. Karl Deutsch summarized these grievances: "Altogether, in the world of equilibrium theory, there is no growth, no evolution? there are no sudden changes? and there is no efficient prediction of the consequences of 'friction' (between parts of the system) over time." 9 In reality, theorists of the "political system" generally include the idea of change in that concept.10 But their perspective leads them to represent the political body as naturally tending to restore its equilibrium indefinitely. This remark is as valid for the extremely rigid scheme of David Easton as for the theories of Talcott Parsons, whose concern with change is indisputable and who passionately sought out the axes around which societies tend to revolve. Those who tried to theorize explicitly about change had difficulty escaping the trap of determinism. Marx or Schumpeter yesterday, Rostow or Olson later, have been equally led to see the causes they have identified as irresistible. The cybernetic approach has permitted Karl Deutsch to propose a model specifically designed to integrate movement, making room for the idea of autonomous goals, of reaction to information from outside, of internal adjustments or transformations.11 Curiously enough, this audacious scheme, perhaps too abstract, has hardly found an audience to date among comparativists. Its application has remained limited to the domain of international relations. One could not make this kind of reservation in regard to functionalism, as elaborated by Gabriel Almond and others from ideas developed by Merton, Parsons, and Easton. To identify the universal functions that should be filled by any social or political system is to provide the analyst with the means of making significant global comparisons. In fact, this approach has permitted a notable development in the comparison between advanced and developing countries. For the comparativist, undoubtedly, functionalism is the most useful of all theoretical frameworks. By liberating comparative analysis from its formal shackles, it permits progress that remains above criticism. Notes 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. 2. See Mattei Dogan and Robert Pahre, Creative Marginality: Innovation at the Intersections of Social (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990). Sciences 3. J. LaPalombara, "Macrotheories and Microapplications in Comparative Politics: A Widening Chasm," Comparative Politics 1, no. 1 (October 1968): 56. 4. Ibid, 163. 5. David Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951). 6. François Jacob, La logique du vivant (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 24. 7. Julien Freund, Max Weber (Paris: PUF, 1969), 14? see also, by the same author, The Sociology of (New York: Random House, 1968). Max Weber 8. Alfred Grosser, L'explication politique: Une introduction à l'analyse comparative (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972), 55. 9. Karl Deutsch, The Nerves of Government (New York: Free Press, 1963), 8990. 10. See, on that aspect, John McKinney, "Social Change: Theoretical Problems," in Constructive Typology (New York: Irvington, 1966), 14055. and Social Theory 11. Deutsch, Nerves of Government. Chapter 5— Functional Equivalences The notion of functional equivalence descends directly from the concept of "function." 1 The idea that a political system necessarily fulfills certain fundamental tasks helped functionalists move to an important stage. They have indeed emphasized with particular clarity, first, the different structures may perform the same function, and second, that the same structure may perform several different functions. The search for functional equivalences passes through this analytical disassociation of roles and functions. The same performance may be accomplished in various countries by different organs? and similar or comparable institutions may fulfill, in various countries, different tasks. In some places a tribe can assume the function of political recruitment that a wellorganized political party performs elsewhere, while what is labeled "party" is only the nominal equivalent of what a party may represent elsewhere. Now, the organization of modern political parties does not impede other organs from contributing to the recruitment of political elites, as do, for example, unions in Great Britain or Catholic Action in Italy. The higher administration not only plays an executive function? it is well known that it also intervenes in the legislative process upstream, although to varying degrees. This intervention is particularly important in France, Austria, Sweden, Norway? it is much less so in Belgium, Italy, or the Netherlands.2 By way of simplification, one could say that the president of the French Republic, in his role as supreme magistrate, fulfills three functions: a symbolic one, which makes him the representative of the nation? an executive one, which makes him the chief executive? and a partisan one, which makes him the leader of the majority coalition. If one asks who fulfills these three functions in Great Britain, one finds two officials: the monarch for the symbolic function and the prime minister for the two others. In Italy, these three functions are distributed among three persons: one for the symbolic function (the president of the Republic), one for the executive function (the president of the Council of Ministers), and one for the partisan function (the general secretary of the dominant Christian Democratic party). A similar division occurred in Germany in 1974 when Helmut Schmidt succeeded Willy Brandt to the Chancellory, leaving Brandt with the effective presidency of the Social Democratic party. Once the comparativist has identified the person who fulfills the various functions, he can tackle the field, however large, that he wishes to investigate, asking identical questions of systems that are as different as the Japanese, the Dutch, and the Albanian. For the comparativist, functionalism starts with the search for equivalences. But it is necessary to emphasize here how much this concept is a tributary of functionalist theory and systems analysis. Only the universal matrix of the political "system," such as Easton in particular has imagined it for the study of political phenomena and processes, has rendered possible the development of comparisons in terms of functions. Recognition of these functions did not exist prior to the discovery of this allegorical system. This fact alone testifies to the usefulness of theoretical elaboration? without it, it would have been impossible to construct the marvelous "instrument" of functional equivalence. No one is obliged to accept the parable of the "black box" in which the energy of demands and supports is transformed into legislative texts, governmental orders, or symbols? still, everyone would agree that all political systems engender decisions. Who makes them? The parliament, as under the French Third Republic? party headquarters, as in Italy? a military nucleus, as yesterday in the Argentina of the colonels? the high bureaucracy, as in Austria at the time of the Habsburgs? powerful groups like Opus Dei in Spain under Franco? a tyrant like Idi Amin Dada in Uganda? a dictator resting on a solid party? or the crowds in the street, as in revolutionary Saint Petersburg or Teheran? To identify these organs across a diversity of situations is a primary duty for the comparativist. Indeed, by locating the site where political decisions are made, the comparativist will not only differentiate between various political systems but will also bring to light the specificity of certain problems. LaPalombara stressed in his introduction to Bureaucracy and Political Development 3 that the seizure of power by bureaucracy brings about significant consequences. Its intrusion signifies that decisions will be taken according to processes marked as much by obscurity as by expertise? furthermore, its growth may also represent a serious obstacle to the development of an autonomous political authority. In this example, we see how the functional perspective can elucidate even the history of political institutions. One could make the same observations about communication. The existence of a network of mass communication, as Daniel Lerner showed in The Passing of 4 naturally brings about political processes that are very different from those Traditional Society, engendered by the old mediated and fragmented system of oral communication. It is true that in both cases, functions of communication are fulfilled. But they are performed so differently that the political scientist has come to explain on that basis a part of the enormous contrast that exists between political systems in the age of audiovisual media and those that rely on mouthtoear relays. These observations bring us to the question of the nature of "equivalence," which should never be confused with similarity. Most vital functions of a political system can be treated in the same way? socialization, for instance, may be fulfilled by the family, the church, the public school, or a political youth organization? and to these different patterns will correspond different political consequences. Comparing as a functionalist has the advantage of getting rid of misleading labels. Comparing "White House and Whitehall," 5 Richard E. Neustadt suggests that the American and British machines are not at opposite poles, but rather "near the center of a spectrum stretching between ideal types, from collective leadership to one man rule." But the similarities between the two systems are not to be detected by conventional comparison: "We [Americans] have counterparts for their top civil servants—but not in our own civil service. . . . We have counterparts for their Cabinet ministers—but not exclusively or even mainly in our Cabinet. . . . We make ourselves much trouble, analytically, by letting nomenclature dictate our analogies.'' Functional equivalence is not a trivial equivalence?it implies conceptualization, that is to say, it appears only after an indepth analysis of the political processes. Who articulates demands in Poland and Italy? By what channels is information transmitted? How much independence is enjoyed by the courts or the socializing agencies? Functional equivalence allows for a comparison that automatically sheds light on the manner in which the political system "functions" in general and in its various sectors. This conceptual matrix calls for generalization. Because each function is conceived of as a part of a living complex, even the most empirically oriented research eventually nourishes theoretical thinking. The accumulation of knowledge seems to be naturally promised by an approach that does not recognize "function" outside the organizing matrix of the "system." Among the universal and fundamental functions, two in particular attract the attention of the comparativist interested in a great variety of political systems because they permit a significant differentiation between them. They are (1) the articulation of interests, which consists of the translation of diffuse interests into explicit demands (claims, petitions, proposals, amendments, etc.)?(2) the aggregation of interests, which consists of converting these demands into global and coherent alternatives (party programs, congressional platforms, parliamentary majorities, etc.) For example, the interests of winegrowers from southern France, or those of metalworkers ings, or demonstrate in order to arouse public opinion. These interests can also reach the ears of those in power by more diffuse means, by mass media, or even by direct contact. But those different means are certainly no plain equivalents. Those who are familiar with the problem of governability know well that stronger mediation structures may alleviate more of the pressures on government. 6 If we consider the Western European countries, for instance, we observe not only some common trends but also differences between these countries.7 It is consequently useful to look to the behavior of privileged actors in the articulation of political demands. Once articulated, the interests need to be aggregated, that is, integrated or included in wider programs capable of winning a majority with various ideally compatible goals. The institutions or organizations that fulfill this aggregating function could be unions at national or regional levels, political parties or a coalition of parties, or some conciliatory committee. Let us imagine, in various countries, interests already articulated by feminist, ecologist, or consumer movements. These interests will not be integrated in the same manner in a multiparty system, in a twoparty system, or in a onedominantparty system. In the first case, several majorities are possible simultaneously, according to whether the issues of the day concern foreign policy or legislation on birth control, taxation, unemployment, and so no. Usually, a party will have to take the initiative in defending this or that particular interest, but its minority position will oblige it to find allies through a series of negotiations and compromises. The process of interest aggregation will find its final stage in the parliament, or during negotiations among leaders of parties representing a virtual majority. In a twoparty system, on the contrary, the site of aggregation will normally be the leadership of the party in power, after debates and even fights among factions. In a onedominantparty system, the aggregation is still fulfilled within the party? but, sometimes, external interventions such as those by the higher administration, the church, or the army make themselves strongly felt. This happened, for example, in Franco's Spain. In a political regime with strong personalized power, it may be the leader himself who reconciles divergent interests. That is to say that according to the context, the same function could be fulfilled by structures as specialized as parties, unions, parliaments, and so forth? whereas elsewhere it could fall to the hands of a single man or to his immediate entourage, according to ethnic, tribal, clientele, or familial ramifications. Functional equivalence is most useful when we consider highly contrasting countries. Functionalists have, in fact, purposefully designed it to make possible comparison between two countries when one is structured in an embryonic way and the other has reached a high level of structural differentiation. For example, it would be easier to compare Germany and Austria without the concept of functional equivalence than it would be to compare Indonesia and Canada. Necessarily, the more a system develops, the more it becomes differentiated? the specialization of structures tends to grow until each particular function is performed by a specific institution. It is incumbent upon the comparativist to bring to light the way in which various specialized political agencies have historically crystallized— executive power, legislatures, bureaucrats, courts—and to indicate which different functions could be fulfilled by similar structures in various historic, cultural, or systemic contexts. The function of mobilization, for instance, frequently escapes the central political structures. It is well known that this role may be played by institutions outside the political sphere, such as religious ones (we think of the Hussites in the past or, more recently, of the Ayatollahs)?newspapers (the name of Al Ahram should suffice)? universities (from Al Azhar in Cairo to Teheran)? unions? the army? or even sports associations. In the same way, it could be admitted that no one institution is limited to a single function. A union, for instance, may depart from its normal role (i.e., to articulate specific interests) in order to become the representative and symbol of an entire population, as has happened in Poland since 1980. These substitutions occur with particular frequency in certain specific situations. A fascinating task for comparativists would consist in pinpointing the link that exists between various contexts and the probability of such substitutions. When the English dissolved the party of Kenyatta in 1955, the trade union of Tom Mboya took up the banner. Similarly, in Algeria or Cameroon the union became the flagship of nationalist claims at the moment when French authorities forbade their political expression. Religious organizations may compete with political channels everywhere. Nevertheless, as Guy Hermet noted, the political presence and activity of the hierarchy, the clergy, and the organized Catholic militants are notable "especially in regimes characterized at the same time by an authoritarian exercise of power, and by the incapacity or refusal to implement a sufficient and generalized participation of the citizen in the political system. . . . In these countries, religious organizations are the only ones capable of offering host structures, leadership, and means of expression distinct from those controlled by the power or dominating oligarchy." 8 The political role of religious organizations seems thus to correspond to a particular systemic situation. In the same way, in the particular setting of Eastern Europe discontent was manifested through various specific channels. It was expressed through magazines and intellectual circles (as in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring)? in the universities (in Budapest in the 1950s and in Bucharest in 1989)? around religious leaders (and not only in Poland and Hungary)? through the army, which was often less subservient to Moscow than the party? around factions, particularly when the classic opposition crystallized between "dogmatics" and "Muscovites" or "revisionists" and ''nationalists"? or around strong personalities. The significance of functional equivalences may vary not only according to the distance existing between the countries compared but also in relation to the place and importance of the observed function within the political system. To pose the equivalence of the modernizing bourgeoisie in nineteenthcentury Europe with the bureaucracy studied by Eisenstadt, or with the army in certain Third World nations, is certainly more difficult than to note the equivalence between the secretary of state in France and the senior minister outside the Cabinet in Great Britain. On the other hand, the search for equivalence should not be limited to the most important functions. It could be enlightening, for instance, to consider primary elections in the United States as accomplishing a function similar to the first round in French elections. In the same way, it would be possible to see in the practice of surveys, as introduced in Great Britain, an equivalent to this first electoral round. If one fails to consider these equivalences, one comprehends neither how electoral behaviors are formed nor how the selection of political leaders is accomplished. The utility of the concept of functional equivalence is obvious but its empirical application is sometimes difficult. The idea, theoretically precious, that certain vital functions are fulfilled everywhere has certainly helped the comparativist in perceiving the importance of certain structures, in discovering their hidden tasks, their secondary roles. At the same time, certain shortcomings should also be mentioned. It is not certain, in fact, that all the functions considered crucial to the existence of a political system are really performed everywhere. Obviously, it will always be possible to maintain that interests all over the world are necessarily filtered, articulated, or aggregated? but how far can we go in this direction? What "interests" really exist in the Yemenite or Afghan political arena? It would certainly be fruitful to trace a parallel between the electoral participation of, say, the English or Dutch citizen and that, more symbolic, of the Argentine decamisado or Algerian fellah. These kinds of comparisons would lead the researcher to reconsider the significance of the electoral act even in the context of polyarchies and to point out, for example, its universal symbolic dimension. But one will not discover grand truths by advancing very far along this road. As noted, Giovanni Sartori has contested the utility of applying such concepts as "participation" to systems in which it is not practiced in reality. An evident risk of the use of functionalism would be the dilution of concepts, which might lose their analytical power as efforts are made to have them cover the greatest variety of political regimes. Functional equivalence as a device forged by Westerners to understand nonWestern countries has certainly contributed to a lessening of ethnocentrism. This sometimes had the side effect of transforming the comparativist into an insightful witness. No longer a crusader for democracy, he may have gained sufficient broadness of sight to understand, for example, some positive functions of authoritarian regimes. We are told that our "antimilitary bias" and "favoritism toward civilian government" prevent us from seeing military coups "neutrally and scientifically,'' that is, not as irregular, dysfunctional, unconstitutional aberrations, but as inevitable events. We ignore their "legalconstitutional basis, the reasons for them, their functional similarity to elections." 9 There is some truth in these statements. Open to every cynical interpretation, they may also constitute an incentive to question reality further. To ask objectively about the functional role of political corruption may sound scandalous. But it certainly helps us understand why certain phenomena recur in certain contexts. The problem with functionalism is that rarely have such theoretical conclusions been formulated. The identification of universal functions, accuses Henry Teune, has not helped very much in answering the question of "how do societies meet these problems or needs. . . . Although certain research questions were and can be formulated within such schemes, they do not assert relationships, which are the foundation for building theoretical explanations."10 To the question "how" must be added the question "why," Teune argues rightfully. We would suggest that by "making some order," the structuralfunctional categories might at least accurately orient theoretical Questioning. Notes 1. See Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966). 2. See Mattei Dogan, ed., The Mandarins of Western Europe (New York: Halsted, 1975). 3. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963. 4. Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (New York: Free Press, 1958). 5. Richard Neustadt, "White House and Whitehall" in The Public Interest 2 (1966). 6. See Harold L. Wilensky, The New Corporatism: Centralization and the Welfare State (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976). 7. See M. Dogan and D. Pelassy, Le Moloch en Europe: Etatisation et Corporatisation (Paris: Economica, 1987), 114ff. 8. Cf. "Les fonctions politiques des organisations religieuses dans les régimes à pluralisme limit é," Revue Française de Science Politique 23, no. 3 (June 1973): 440. 9. Howard Wiarda, "The Ethnocentrism of the Social Sciences," Review of Politics, April 1981. 10. Henry Teune, "Comparing Nations: What Have We Learned?" (paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., April 1987), 12. Chapter 21— Typologies of Political Regimes Typologies of social actors are often elaborated in a single national context, whereas typologies concerning systems, regimes, and societies are from the outset conceived of in an international framework. Someone who observes individuals or groups can compare them without looking beyond national frontiers. He can do a noninternational comparison, build a typology of leaders or voters considering just a single country, or even one city. This becomes difficult, if not impossible, when the analysis deals with groups, institutions, or structures existing in limited numbers only. International comparisons become more valuable when the objects of analysis are classes or parties than when the study deals with families or individuals? they are more useful for understanding pressure groups and unions than for distinguishing among the leaders of these groups. Typologies require an extension of the field across national boundaries when the number of cases is insufficient within one nation. The typology of political systems falls naturally into the hands of the comparativist. Like typologies of social actors, typologies of regimes can be valued according to the amount of debate they generate. It is essential that a certain consensus mature in order to see the typology become a real instrument for comparisons. The way the reflection on authoritarian types of government gradually emerged from discussions and confrontations illustrates the point. The dichotomy democracytotalitarianism lost most of its analytical interest from the moment the number of "hybrid" countries increased. As so many countries of the Third World became independent, comparativists studying these new countries rapidly found that the concept of totalitarianism was inadequate, if only because of the absence of a technical infrastructure permitting the control of individuals. There was little real analogy between this or that African or Asian country and Stalinist or Nazi regimes. Leo Strauss has rightly defined totalitarianism by two elements. Contrary to the classical tyranny, he wrote, the totalitarian regime of today possesses technology and ideology. 1 This means that the will to mobilize the population totally—the ideological factor—is not sufficient to transform the new state into a totalitarian state. For that, the development of the country must be at a level that permits the penetration of the political apparatus deep within the society. It is necessary that the central government be in possession of the channels, means, and mechanisms such as the media, educational system, planning devices for effectively controlling employment, incomes, travel, violent repression, and important military or police forces. Idi Amin, Batista, Bokassa—even Nkrumah, Sukarno, or Sekou Touré, to mention leaders whose revolutionary commitment was beyond doubt—clearly did not possess such means. To these technical weaknesses are added ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural cleavages that may sustain an embryonic pluralism. Recall that these countries sometimes manifested a wish to imitate the institutions of Western democracies. The new leaders who had assimilated the pluralistic models in London, Paris, Brussels, the Hague, and more recently in American universities tried to adapt such institutions. At the same time, leaders who had chosen to follow the socialist model insisted that their "socialism" was specific. Kenyatta as well as Nyerere argued that there were no social classes in Black Africa?they pretended to find in traditional clan or family solidarities the inspiration of original new political forms. Looking toward South America, comparativists observed that urbanization and education were developing new social forces, eager to participate in the political process along new formulas. At first, the concepts of charisma and populism were used to fill the void left by the inadequacy of the concept of totalitarianism. But these explanations rapidly became unsatisfactory. The persistent void soon gave rise to many field investigations that resulted in the elaboration of numerous new typologies. Nothing is more stimulating than the empty space on a table. We all know that the lacunae in a classification are not less significant than the full boxes. The multiplication of studies on these previously nonexplored areas eloquently attests to this. The great diversity of newly independent states engendered many typologies that often overlapped. What is remarkable is the consensus that has been finally reached among the greatest comparativists. The typology elaborated by Edward Shils 2 marked a pioneering stage in this clarifying direction. Shils distinguished two intermediary types between the extreme poles of democratic and totalitarian regimes—the tutelary democracies characterized by the hypertrophy of the executive, and the modernizing oligarchies marked by the domination of a military or bureaucratic group unconcerned with democratizing the country. To these four types, Shils added a fifth, which is rapidly disappearing: the traditional oligarchy. In 1960 James S. Coleman distinguished between three types of developing countries: competitive, semicompetitive, and authoritarian?the orientation toward modernization introduced a second axis that permitted the elaboration of five types. Finally, the typology was refined by an indepth analysis that took into consideration the roles of the army, bureaucracy, party, religion, and so on. 3 In the following years, many studies were published that covered one continent or even the entire range of Third World countries and that culminated in various typologies. We could mention one proposed by Almond and Powell in 1966.4 It was based on two classificatory axes concerning the structural differentiation of roles and cultural secularization. A third axis, borrowed from Robert Dahl and considering the autonomy of subsystems, came into view. The relatively complex typology that resulted from these crossed perspectives distinguished between three types of authoritarian regimes: premobilized, conservative, and modernizing. A consensus was slowly engendered around the concept of authoritarianism, which Juan Linz later refined in the Weberian tradition. Confronted with the problem of finding an analytical axis to distinguish among the different forms of authoritarianism, Linz rejected the content of ideology as not really significant. He gave priority to the structural forms of what he called "limited pluralism." The participation of groups in political power, he said, is controlled by certain social forces and channeled by various organizations. Along this line of the different groups' acceding to power, he identified eight types of authoritarian regimes.5 By focusing on the authoritarian type, comparativists have refined the types. In some cases by reducing the field of observation to a particular geographical area, they have succeeded in emphasizing the existence of varieties within each type. Looking to Africa, Richard Sklar has distinguished between three types of nascent democracies: "guided, social, and participatory."6 Michael Hudson has enlightened several varieties of legitimacy in the Arab countries. So, by enlargement of the field, they have succeeded in elaborating more refined typologies. Significantly, prominent analysts of oneparty systems have arrived at the common conclusion that it is necessary to stress the diversity of those regimes. It was interesting to see how three comparativists—Giovanni Sartori, Juan Linz, and Jerzy Wiatr—finally agreed to distinguish between real oneparty systems and systems characterized by a dominant or hegemonic party.7 Socialist Poland was not Franco's Spain. Other comparativists sought to introduce new distinctions between oneparty systems according to whether or not they were dominated by the military. Thus, Samuel Huntington proposed a distinction between revolutionary single party systems and exclusionary single party systems (a term designating political regimes that exclude from the political arena entire segments of the population, such as ethnic minorities).8 He also proposed distinguishing between revolutionary and established parties according to whether the revolutionary power is institutionalized or not. The establishment of typologies dealing with political regimes requires the introduction of numerous variables into the analysis. The number of parties is not enough to characterize a political system? it is also necessary to take into account the structure of parties (rigid or supple) and their nature (mass parties or cadre parties). Naturally, the configuration is more difficult to capture than its diverse elements. This is visible when one passes from the identification of types of parties to the formalization of a typology of party systems. Giovanni Sartori holds also that numerical criteria will never suffice to differentiate political systems. There are everywhere parties that are so small that they are politically insignificant. But no universal threshold could permit the separation of those that should be retained from those that should be excluded. To know the number of parties is not sufficient for deciding whether a regime belongs to a twoparty system. Austria, for instance, divided between "blacks" and "reds," functioned until 1966 according to a model that had nothing in common with the classical alternation, since populists and socialists shared power. Political systems cannot be analyzed according to simple criteria. To elaborate his typology, Sartori added an ideological dimension (doctrinal rigidity) to the numerical dimension. This crossing permitted him to reveal the essential differences behind misleading "identities"? within the broad category of oneparty systems, he contrasted the totalitarian, authoritarian, and pragmatic types. 9 The ideologicalpragmatic dimension had been used already by Myron Weiner and Joseph LaPalombara.10 But Sartori extended its significance from competitive to noncompetitive contexts. Whatever the parliamentary representation of Liberals or Welsh or Scottish nationalists, Great Britain had for a long time more accurately illustrated a twoparty system than West Germany, where coalitions have nearly always proved indispensable. What remains indisputable is that strategic and cultural elements always contribute in deciding the real significance and importance of small parties. It would be easy to illustrate the way in which a typology of political regimes is constructed by the crosscutting of two variables. Consider here again Lijphart's typology of democratic systems. As we have seen (supra chapter 11) by retaining on one axis the political culture and on the other the behavior of the elite, Lijphart identifies four types, which he labels "centripetal," "centrifugal," ''depoliticized," and "consociational." What we must stress here is the key role played by the classificatory scheme. The logical pattern clearly contributes to stress important differences that might otherwise have been neglected. The category "depoliticized democracy" invites Lijphart to throw a new light on the experience of the Austrian "great coalition," for example. "There are crucial differences between depoliticized and consociational democracy, . . . (but) the two types may be fruitfully compared. The abandonment of strictly competitive politics in consociational democracies is a deliberate response to the tensions of a fragmented society, whereas the adoption of grand coalition politics in depoliticized democracies is in response to the convergence of ideologies. In the latter, depoliticization occurs as a natural consequence of growing consensus, whereas it has to be imposed on an inherently highly politicized system in the former. An even more important, though closely related, difference is that grand coalition patterns in consociational democracies typically occur at the highest level? the party leaders are the pivotal actors. In the depoliticized type of democracy, on the other hand, decisionmaking takes place in grand coalitions at lower levels: interest group representatives and bureaucrats are now the principal actors.'' 11 It may also happen that an author, in trying to refine his analysis, retains more than two dimensions. Samuel E. Finer, for example, proposes to distinguish political regimes along three axes: "(a) how far the mass of the public are involved in or excluded from this governing process—this is the participationexclusion dimension? (b) how far the mass of the public obey their rulers out of commitment or how far out of fear—what may be called the coercionpersuasion dimension? and (c) how far the arrangements are designed to cause the rulers to reflect the actual and current values of the mass of the public or how far they may disregard these for the sake of continuity and future values—what may be called the orderrepresentativeness dimension."12 Each dimension retained permits the author to design a series of possibilities: going from the greatest submission of a subjectindividual to an active control by the citizen, from physical coercion to emotional manipulation or even rational persuasion, from an absolute rule of the majority to a system of checks and balances granting the minority a certain autonomy. In progression along the main coercionpersuasion axis, Finer distinguishes five types of regimes. Besides liberal democracies and totalitarian systems, they include military regimes based on fear rather than regimentation, façade where the oligarchy retains the reality of power, and democracies quasi democracies that rely on a sentimental involvement of the masses. More complex, more ambitious, and more abstract than typologies of actors, the global typologies have a crucial place in comparative research. From Aristotle to Max Weber, history has been marked by these constructions, the best of which were true tools in the progress of sociological knowledge. It is because the analyst tries to fill the voids left by conceptual instruments that Page 183 he is led to formulate new ones. There is no better generator of concepts than a good typology. Notes 1. De la tyrannie (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 42. 2. Political Development in the New States (The Hague: Mouton, 1960). 3. "The Political Systems of the Developing Areas," in The Politics of the Developing Areas, ed. Gabriel Almond and James S. Coleman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960). 4. Comparative Politics, 2d ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 72ff. 5. Juan Linz, "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes," in Handbook of Political Science, ed. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby (Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley, 1975), 3:174411. 6. Richard Sklar, Democracy in Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). See also "Developmental Democracy in Comparative Studies," Society and 29, no. 4 (October 1987): 688714. History 7. Giovanni Sartori, "The Typology of Party Systems"? Jerzy Wiatr, "The Hegemonic Party System in Poland"? and Juan Linz, "An Authoritarian Regime, Spain"? in Mass Politics: Studies in Political Sociology, ed. Erik Allardt and Stein Rokkan (New York: Free Press, 1970). 8. "Social and Institutional Dynamics of OneParty Systems," in Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society, ed. Samuel P. Huntington and Clement H. Moore (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 347. 9. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds., Voter Alignments and Party Systems (New York: Free Press, 1967). 10. Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 36. 11. Arend Lijphart, "Typologies of Democratic Systems," Comparative Political Studies 1, no. 1 (April 1968): 39. 12. Samuel E. Finer, Comparative Government (Baltimore: Penguin, 1970), 39ff. Chapter 22— The Dynamics of Models Like the typology, the model is a synthesis, capable of taking an inventory in order to clarify and systematize the results of a comparison. To define the originality of models we have chosen to contrast them with typologies. The typology orders the universe, the model tends to explain it. In a way, the model is more incisive than the typology. The typology can rank all political systems? the model can clarify the movement from one system to another, in the sense of a progression or a regression. According to Jean Baechler, the role of the typology consists in constructing ideal types "by unilaterally developing one or more distinctive features. Such a proceeding will never explain the causes of the identified phenomena. It will just—but this is also important—present the objects for further inquiry." 1 In fact, the distinction proposed here is not always that clear. It happens that the dynamic of processes appears in the typology. All types get older or deformed. We have known this since Aristotle. It is a very current exercise for constitutionalists to determine the possible evolutions attached to each type of political regime. Jean Blondel, for example, stresses that pluralist democracies, under the constant pressure of their electorate, could prove unable to elaborate longterm policies.2 The communist systems have experienced other specific difficulties and were often confronted with a dramatic choice between liberalization and repression. The typology may also evoke the idea of filiation. For instance, when Fred Riggs contrasts regimes that have only an executive to those that have a bureaucracy as well, and also to those that have a legislature, and again to those with political parties, he notes that a kind of progression exists among these types. He supposes that "there is no polity with a bureaucracy that does not have an executive, no polity with a legislature that lacks a bureaucracy, and no polity with political parties that lacks a legislature."3 This means that he includes the idea of development in his scheme. Edward Shils and Gabriel Almond do the same, since they classify the regimes precisely as a function of the place they occupy on a certain number of significant axes. It has been said that typologies represent an insufficiently developed stage in a scientific discipline? this would correspond to the elaboration of a descriptive framework, with limited capacity for generalization. But one need only consider the best typologies in order to see their capacity to synthesize. The typology is also inventive. The typology will not explain the diversity of military regimes or why civil servants play different roles in France and Belgium, but it will make an inventory of possible behaviors, in the absence of which no statements about causality would be possible. The model orients itself specifically toward an analysis of causality. For this reason, it often implies a rigorous methodology based on formal logic or on mathematical analysis. 4 It brings to light movements of linear, curvilinear, or cybernetic causalities. A recourse to quantified data is thus more necessary for the elaboration of models than for that of typologies. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that this "rule" tolerates exceptions. Many typologies of social actors are formulated on the basis of survey results and use sophisticated methods of analysis. Conversely, some of the models do not rely on quantification. For instance, Dankwart Rustow,5 Samuel P. Huntington,6 and Reinhard Bendix,7 studying the processes of nation building, have utilized relatively few quantified data. It is in history, without statistics, that Stein Rokkan has found the significant "faultages" that explain political cleavages in Europe today: National integration has not met the same peripheral resistance everywhere, the rising state has not encountered the same defiance toward secularization, and the industrial revolution has not induced everywhere an equal decline of territorial disputes. Rokkan sought and found in the meanderings of history the elements of what became for sociologists a sophisticated tool, explaining in depth many of today's conflicts.8 He saw a great paradox in the fact that "so little has been done to develop unifying paradigms for the advanced regions of the world [while] so much of what we have in the way of theories of development bears exclusively on the systems with the shortest histories and the poorest documentary records." His ''conceptual map" of Europe was conceived as a device summarizing the crucial dimensions of the development of the political systems on the Continent. Later, the political configurations of Western Europe were to be compared with those of other regions of the world in order to pin down the decisive contrasts between early and postcolonial conditions for state and nation building. Model building normally tends to provide explanations. That is, sequences described in an analysis of development or modernization have no real interest if they are not related to the evolution of a few variables, which are considered essential by hypothesis or deduction. This exercise is difficult, as can be shown by the large number of models that slip into overly abstract theory. We think, for example, of the theory developed by Cyril E. Black,9 who philosophically explains "modernization" by the increased control men manage to take over nature. On the other hand, when the researcher tries a rigorous analysis of empirical data, his results are often hardly worth the effort, for the new information provided is often meager and deceiving. Examining the causes of civil unrest, Ted Gurr has shown that violence is related to social structures and to the degree of the population's discontent. 10 But we would be disappointed by the vagueness of the model as soon as we tried to locate hierarchies, significant thresholds, and so on. Donald J. McCrone and Charles F. Cnudde11 did a study very similar to that of Daniel Lerner, tracing a relationship between urbanization and education, the diffusion of which would spread participation through the media, thus contributing to democratic development. But their model is atemporal? it ignores historical experiences and social contexts, and it does not question the link between the new media and the form of "democracy" that could evolve. Because one can more easily measure electricity consumption or infant mortality than political violence or participation, the temptation is great to rely on an analysis in which political life becomes a dependent variable. A curious result for a science that calls itself political! Quantification permits a rigorous analysis of significant relationships that for centuries were supposed or presumed, but it would certainly be an error to orient research according to the hard data at our disposal. As David Apter alerts us, the expansion of quantitative research creates the risk of "inadequate conceptualization with adequate techniques."12 The precision of decimals does not substitute for the rigor of thought, especially when sophisticated models are elaborated on the basis of weak statistical data or when the correlation coefficients are not very significant. They appear to be so, either because the data are too "soft" to be translated into hard figures or because the regrouping into conceptual categories is too artificial or because of some combination of the two biases. Unfortunately, there are a number of examples to illustrate the slipping from a legitimate search for causes toward a sophisticated search for models that are removed from reality. The typology is more static, the model more dynamic. It is difficult to allow for change and maturation in a typology because types are exclusive. On the contrary, the model can include movement. Apter has rightly invited comparativists to step away from formal structures to focus on the comprehension of dynamic processes.13 Whereas the typology tends to freeze the reality it wants to synthesize, the model tends to perceive processes over time. The typology contrasts several stages of social and political development whereas the model attempts to film social change itself.A very interesting dimension from this point of view is the use of longitudinal analysis. One has a better chance of discovering priorities and significant phases by taking into consideration quantified data over a long period. Several authors, among them Dankwart Rustow, Arthur Banks, and Peter Flora, have advocated this strategy. The translation of frozen data into curves allows a direct and visual appreciation of the possibly multiple profiles and evolutions, as well as their points of inflection. Several studies on the development of the welfare state in European countries exemplify the possibilities of this strategy. In a book edited by Peter Flora and Arnold Heidenheimer, 14 the perspective has been extended to contrast the American and European experiences. With contributions by economists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians, the study promotes the view that the development of the welfare state is part of a secular modernization trend? but it also shows that its determinants have been different on the two sides of the Atlantic. Longitudinal analyses make it easier to ascertain the sequences of events and to test the key role played by this or that variable. The analysis by Banks, first of 36 South American states between 1835 and 1966,15 and later for 106 nations,16 calls into question the notion that socioeconomic development conditions political development. Historically, at least, such a causal relation is not obvious. On the contrary, the correlation between a "premature" political development and a subsequent development of communication, urbanization, and education is stronger than the correlation between an early socioeconomic development and a subsequent democratic development. Banks writes that "given the results of the timelag analysis, it is not evident that the ecological environment really 'explains' anything at all in a deterministic sense. Indeed, it is more plausible to hypothesize that variation in democratic performance is (or has been, historically) a major determinant of socioeconomic change."17 The longitudinal study can result in true asynchronic comparisons. The idea in such cases is, for instance, to compare the evolution of Europe in the nineteenth century with the recent development of some Third World countries. There is little doubt that an implicit comparative perspective has stimulated the interest retrospectively devoted to the processes of economic or political modernization in Western Europe? books by Charles Tilly18 and Raymond Grew19 well illustrate this growing interest. More limited in scope, the study by Ronald Dore20 explores the reasons why Great Britain and Japan experienced greatly contrasted industrial developments. According to the author, the main reason was not so much that the two countries were marked by different cultural models, but that, over time, "laissez faire" lost its efficiency. When Japan began to industrialize, the intervention of the state, a bureaucratic organization, and largescale industrial units promised to be more successful devices. Alexander Gershenkron argues in the same way that the technologies and the patterns of organization that today preside over industrialization are not identical to those that prevailed in the past. 21 Certainly this type of research arouses an interest beyond its historical meaning. The great success of the studies on early capitalism by Fernand Braudel22 or Immanuel Wallerstein23 attests to the point. It is through diachronic comparison that we can emphasize the originality of development in the twentieth century.24 The typology aims at exhaustivity, the model tends to be selective. The typology tries to cover and rank a multiplicity of cases. The model, to the extent that it clarifies processes, excludes from its field certain cases in order to illuminate others. It is not concerned with the spectrum of political attitudes, but with the agents of socialization. It is not concerned with the range of political forces, but with their genesis. The most incisive models are those that succeed in integrating the idea that factors of change are themselves changing. The same bureaucracy that was a cornerstone of modernization in the history of Europe may now be a cause of rigidity and slowness in development. The unions that permitted the working class to better its condition have been considered by Mancur Olson as a major factor of ingovernability, hence decay.25 Some political scientists of philosophical orientation would talk here of a dialectical movement. Other ones, prone to use statistical data, would talk of the intervening of new factors.26 Comparativists readily perceived that recipes for one country are not necessarily appropriate for other countries, that solutions adopted yesterday in Europe are not appropriate for the Third World countries today. It has finally been admitted that the modalities of economic development in the socalled underdeveloped universe are conditioned by the existence of the advanced countries. This contemporaneity affects the prospects of Third World countries, bringing them technical progress, but also the inconvenience of an illsuited technology? opening foreign markets, but at the cost of an often dramatic agricultural or industrial specialization. Among the authors who have stressed these problems is René Dumont. The progress of medicine and sanitary conditions raises demographic problems never experienced by the Western countries. The new nations are also inheriting ideologies that encourage them, for instance, to bypass the laissezfaire stage. The new countries have suddenly adopted a number of technologies that impinge directly on their political systems, such as radio and television in countries where the majority of the population is illiterate. The medium, says Marshall McLuhan, is the message. The transistor radio and television, for instance, do not create the same type of citizens as do newspapers.27 What significance does a parliament retain in countries catapulted from illiteracy to the era of audiovisual media? What can the place of nationalism be in an epoch where the economic vital space increases every day? These are issues that comparison could clarify, the pertinent question being whether the developed societies are the result of a particular historical gestation or a maturation along compulsory stages. Some authors have stressed the original aspects of what we are calling developed countries. Other authors denounce, not without some validity, the "linearity" that is implied by the concept of development. It is certainly easier to build a linear model than a retroactive one. But no sociologist would contest the fact that political events influence, and are influenced by, what happens in the economic or the cultural fields. For the analyst, however, the task is to ask not only how socioeconomic conditions might favor the intervention of the military into politics but also how political forces might, in their turn, influence the social and economic factors that initially determined their political role. 28 An evaluation of various influences becomes more difficult when the segments, artificially isolated, are not considered stable but in motion. How does politics intervene in the developmental process, and how does the achieved development influence the emergence of new political forms? This problem has not discouraged David Apter. His basic hypothesis is that as societies progressively become more differentiated, some social strata appear that favor certain types of participation. The predominance of peasants and landlords has not had the same consequences as the predominance of bureaucrats and the military or intellectuals and union leaders. Modernization creates aspirations that become explosive without a corresponding degree of industrialization. The question is to know what types of regimes may be created by increasing social differentiation. Apter's model brings a kind of dialectical scheme to light and outdates systems that have nonetheless proved their efficiency at a previous stage. When a society reaches a certain level of development, it is communication and not coercion that is the efficient means. "The modernization process creates such problems of coordination and control that democratic political systems, in the usual sense of that term, are not very relevant. Moreover, their relevance appears to decrease as a society moves closer to the transition to industrialization."29 On the one side, the highly industrialized societies, in contrast to those less developed, need multiple sources of information. This suggests a proposition that has not yet been tested empirically: A negative correlation at the world scale exists between the level of information and the level of coercion.30 The revolt of the younger generation in the major cities of Algeria in 1988 may have been partly due to the amount of information and consequent rising expectations that were engendered by the French radio and television broadcasts reaching the Algerian territory. The model of Apter is interesting in that he integrates economic, social, and psychological mutations into the concept of modernization. On the other hand, the immensity of the phenomenon studied sometimes results in excessively abstract analysis. A frequent risk for those who build models is to rise to such a level that empirical verification is no longer possible. It sometimes happens that the logical exigencies of the scholar's human spirit excessively deform processes that are not necessarily marked by logic. We have tried to point out the limits and advantages of dichotomies, typologies, and models. These formal constructions are nevertheless complementary. Not only do they enhance the perceptive capabilities of comparativists but they cohabit and even communicate in the work of all the more prominent social scientists. The typology summarizes the state of advancement of knowledge in a given field. The model works within this clarifying pattern, helping to solve puzzles identified by the typological ordering and possibly fostering the discovery of new, more accurate, classificatory axes. Notes 1. J. Baechler, Les phénomènes révolutionnaires (Paris: PUF, 1976), 57. See, in English, Revolution (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1972). 2. Jean Blondel, Comparing Political Systems (New York: Praeger, 1972). 3. Fred Riggs, "The Comparison of Whole Political Systems," in The Methodology of Comparative Research, ed. Robert Holt and John Turner (New York: Free Press, 1970), 90ff. See also the discussion of "bureaucratic power" in ''A Neoinstitutional Typology of Third World Politics" in Contemporary Political Systems, ed. A. Bebler and J. Seroka (Boulder: Rienner, 1990). 4. On model building, see the important contribution by Raymond Boudon, L'analyse mathématique des (Paris: Plon, 1967). faits sociaux 5. Dankwart Rustow, A World of Nations (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1967). 6. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)? see also, with special insight on the role of elites, Revolution and the Transformation of Society: A Comparative Study of Civilizations (New York: Free Press, 1978). 7. Reinhard Bendix, NationBuilding (New York: Wiley, 1964). and Citizenship 8. Stein Rokkan, "NationBuilding, Cleavage Formation, and the Structuring of Mass Politics," in Citizens Elections Parties (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970)? and Stein Rokkan, Derek Urwin, et al., CenterPeriphery (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1987). Structures in Europe 9. Cyril E. Black, The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (New York: Harper, 1967). 10. Ted Gurr, "A Causal Model of Civil Strife: A Comparative Analysis Using New Indices," American 62, no. 4 (December 1968): Political Science Review 110424. 11. Donald J. McCrone and Charles F. Cnudde, "Toward a Communication Theory of Democratic Political Development: A Causal Model," American Political 61, no. 1 (March 1967): 7279. Science Review 12. David E. Apter, Political Change (London: Frank Cass, 1973), 67. 13. David Apter, "Comparative Studies: A Review with Some Projections," in Comparative Methods in ed. Ivan Vallier (Berkeley: University of Sociology, California Press, 1971), 315. 14. Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer, eds., The Development of Welfare States in Europe and (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1981). America 15. Arthur Banks, "Modernization and Political Change: The Latin American and AmerEuropean Nations," Comparative Political Studies 2, no. 4 (January 1970): 40518. 16. Arthur Banks, "Correlates of Democratic Performance," Comparative Politics 4, no. 2 (January 1972): 21730. 17. Ibid. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 18. Charles Tilly,25. Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations 1982). 26. Cf. W.L. Oltmans, ed., On Growth, the Crisis of Exploding Population and Resource Depletion, 2 vols. (New York: Capricorn, 1974, 1975). 27. Cf. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding the Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964). 28. Claude E. Welch, "The Military: Product, Facilitator or Antagonist of Socioeconomic Development" (paper presented at the IPSA World Congress, Moscow, August 1979). 29. David Apter, "Political Systems and Development Change," in Methodology of Comparative Research, ed. Holt and Turner, 153ff. See also his The Politics of (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). Modernization 30. Ibid. Chapter 15— The Binary Analysis A binary analysis is a comparison limited to two countries that have been carefully selected according to the subject. Although it is the most natural method, the binary analysis is not necessarily the easiest. We can distinguish two kinds of binary comparison: implicit and explicit. Binary comparison is implicit in the perception of any "other," thought of as different, continually seen in relation to the observer's own culture. This implicit system of reference can throw light on our knowledge of a subject in a remarkable way. By a kind of dialectical process, the view from afar strengthens our reflections on ourselves, our own culture, and our own society. One knows one's own country better when one knows other countries too. Perhaps Ralf Dahrendorf's penetrating look at German society owes something to his having lived in England. By going abroad intellectually, one acquires points of reference. It is possible that certain specific features of French culture appeared clearly to Tocqueville only after he could see them in the light of his intimate knowledge of another culture, the American in this case. We could list several reference books on such and such a country that are the work of "foreigners." Written from a distance, they allow a more perceptive survey. Tocqueville's is one of the best studies of American society. Elie Halévy's contribution to the knowledge of nineteenthcentury England is well known. The American political scientist Richard Rose is today one of the scholars who has the most insightful views on Britain. Presenting a book on Britain: Progress and Decline, he and W.B. Gwyn notice that among the contributors to their book are Americans resident in Britain and Britons resident in America, as well as seasoned travelers. Louis Dumont's work on India, as well as Jacques Berque's on the Arab world, are famous in the very countries they describe. So are the study on Norway by Harry Eckstein, on Italy by Joseph LaPalombara, on Germany by Lewis Edinger, on Japan by Hans Baerwald, Bradley Richardson, and Edwin O. Reischauer—to exemplify how the American perspective has contributed to a better understanding of some countries. "There are people born to observe from outside," stated Stanley Hoffmann. "The distance they enjoy . . . tends to positively compensate for exile and uprooting." 1 Explicit binary comparison is on a different level of systematization. Frequently it makes use of the historical method, no doubt because this approach enables one most easily to find out what determines the uniqueness of each nation. As a matter of fact, binary comparison permits a kind of detailed confrontation that is almost impossible when the analysis encompasses too many cases. Thus its prime interest lies in that it makes possible a study in depth. Binary comparison sometimes seems the best way to undertake a study that leaves out neither the specific nor the general. Comparing two countries naturally enhances one's interest in each one? in particular, it stresses the main characteristics and the originality of each situation. But binary comparison can be used not only for increasing, through contrast, our knowledge of two different systems. In the best cases, it can also contribute to an understanding of general phenomena. In such cases, the two countries considered are thought of as contrasted illustrations for a broad, encompassing theoretical reflection. When Charles Kindleberger compares the British and French industrial revolutions, 2 he proposes an analysis worthy of consideration not only for those interested in France or Great Britain but also for those who study the dynamic of industrialization. When Duncan Gallie contrasts the political attitudes of the working class in Britain and France, he tries to identify variables that can explain the more or less developed propensity to radicalism in general terms. The political philosophy of parties, which in France value the political scene as the unique site where change is to be obtained, might be less important than the way in which work conflicts are settled. The British workingclass "pragmatism" could well be less native than acquired—inherited from the deep institutionalization and decentralization of conflictsettlement procedures, which gave union representatives a true, decisive role.3 Why did the Samurai in Japan become agents of the central power and modernization, whereas in Germany the Junkers became a conservative force? In attempting to answer this question, Reinhard Bendix4 was able to bring to light some phenomena of general significance. It was partly because Japan had withdrawn into itself that its aristocracy, unlike that of Germany, did not feel threatened? it was partly because the Samurai had been deprived of private lands that they so easily adapted to city and administrative life. Structural factors such as the openness of a country and the connections people have with the land can have important effects on the behavior of members of a society. In such cases, binary comparison may provide general illustrations of the way in which development, modernization, or national integration come about. Binary comparison is often used for countries that show contextual similarities, even if the aim of the analysis is to bring out differences in one or more specific fields. To analyze comparatively the recruitment and tenure of Cabinet ministers in France and Britain, considered as opposing systems, might show some analogies between the two countries, for instance in the stability of a "governmental nucleus." 5 In the same way, Donald R. Matthews has found many similarities in the selection of chief executives in Norway and the United States in spite of differences between the party systems of these two countries.6 Conversely, a study of political cleavages in France and Italy, in contexts considered similar, might demonstrate that various social strata do not distribute themselves similarly between political parties in the two countries.7 A pairing of France and Italy has the natural appeal of two countries sharing many features, but it may be difficult to find this elsewhere. The FranceItaly pairing has stimulated lots of comparisons on the two communist parties, which were the strongest ones in the pluralist world? on the attitudes of unions equally marked by the anarchist tradition,8 and on many actors at all levels of analysis. Britain and the United States share other rare characteristics, which have encouraged many comparisons on policymaking processes since Ostrogorski first contrasted them. It is more attractive to use pairs of countries like France and Italy, Morocco and Tunisia, Norway and Sweden, or Uruguay and Costa Rica than to compare Finland and Bolivia or Brazil and Pakistan. Some pairs will produce a great deal of interest, while others will give only meager results. A comparison of England and Japan, as two insular nations or two shipping powers, might be meaningful, but an attempt to compare Switzerland and Chad, as two countries having no direct access to the sea, would be of little interest. Of course, the comparativist has the liberty to establish original pairs based on his own conception of relevance. It would be relevant to compare India and China in the framework of a study of the choices available to overpopulated Asian countries as they try to solve problems connected with demography, underemployment, and famine. On the other hand, someone interested in power structures or mobilization of the masses in giant countries would no doubt find it more meaningful to compare China and the USSR. A comparison between Germany and Japan could be justified by the various institutions these two countries have in common, by historical period, by type of industrialization, by role of civil servants and the army, and so on. For those interested in European fascism, Germany could pair with Italy. With England, Germany forms a pair often used by those studying the industrial revolution. Germany and France can be studied together in the framework of an analysis of social stratification. These examples show the breadth of possibilities open to comparative studies. As the simplest form of comparison, the binary strategy normally provides an incentive to theoretical sophistication. Already, the mere confrontation of studies made on the same topic in two different contexts gives the analyst something that looks like a new horizon, a stimulus to refashion his questions in more general, scientifically relevant terms. This is all the more clear when the comparativist builds a systematic comparison on contrasting universes. One cannot compare Swedish and American societies without refining some operational devices such as "social classes" or social inequality. The same kind of refining is necessary when comparing Britain and Sweden. 9 One specific advantage of binary analysis is the possibility of covering political life as a whole, including institutions, structures, cultures, socialization, and recruitment processes. There are few studies of such magnitude, but they are feasible. A book on Japan and Turkey edited by Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow10 is a good example of the results that can be obtained by this kind of endeavor. At the same time it illustrates the almost inevitable fragmentary nature of these manysided comparisons. One cannot see at a glance just what makes Turkish and Japanese experiences unique. Only gradually, while reading chapters dealing with various aspects of development in each of the two countries, is the reader able to assemble the parts of a global knowledge and to reflect on it. One pitfall of such broad studies is that they normally imply contributions by a series of experts. To undertake research on the similarities and differences between Soviet and Chinese communism11 is no small task, and it is understandable that experts in one of these immense and hermetic worlds may not be specialists in the other. But there is always the danger that collaboration among many authors of different sensibilities may result in some loss of homogeneity in the collective work. Many books purporting to be comparative studies are in fact unintegrated series of monographs put side by side. Another serious risk attached to binary strategy is that the comparison may be based on a subject that is clearly more appropriate to one country than to the other, or at least expressed in a way that is difficult to apply to both cases. We can refer here to a book on the role of local administration in France and Italy, Tra centro e edited by Sidney Tarrow.12 It is interesting in detail but not very convincing in its synthesis. periferia, Its weaknesses are probably due to the diffuseness and equivocity of the concept used. In fact, the periphery is considerably more unwieldy and more isolated from the center in Italy than it is in France. Binary comparison may often throw light on certain key sectors of the political system. This appears clearly in The First New Nation.13 Here, Lipset was interested not only in the configuration of fundamental values in the United States and Great Britain, he also asked questions about the impact made by these values. His results, based on a historical analysis, have recently been contested? and it is interesting to consider that the argument was triggered by another binary comparison, this time based on surveys. By undertaking indepth surveys on samples of English and American citizens, Wendell Bell and Robert V. Robinson 14 were able to confirm the doubts of certain sociologists concerning the egalitarian nature of American society, which is rather frequently shown as being in opposition to the elitist British model. Differences in perception and judgment appear to be more striking between groups of different status within the same country than between the two countries. Opposing two strongly contrasting countries is often perceived as a way of more surely appreciating the relations existing between systemic variables? if the same factor produces the same effects in two very different situations, its influence tends to be confirmed. Such a strategy is of relatively low cost because the researcher takes only two countries into account. If social mobility tends to have common effects on partisan preferences in two contrasted countries, there is a chance that social mobility can be effectively considered as an autonomous factor. In comparing the English situation and the Italian situation, Paul R. Abramson has thus been able to state the importance of vertical social mobility on political behavior and to contradict the idea that such mobility essentially benefits the right wing.15 Despite its merits, the binary strategy is often powerless to make a distinction between what reflects the cultural context, the political system, or a particular variable. The boldest theoretical attempts to isolate what seems to be a result of the context have not met with great success. Henry Teune and Krzysztof Ostrowski tried this in studying local American and Polish communities.16 "The central problem of comparative analysis is to succeed in extracting what is true in a general way, from data influenced by the context," they stated. At the same time, they admitted they had reached a semideadlock. To eliminate variables affected by the context when almost all variables are affected leaves the research with a somewhat meager utility for understanding local American and Polish communities. The lesson for the comparativists' strategy is clear. In a binary comparison the two countries can be relatively similar or relatively contrasting. If they are contrasting, they can sometimes be considered prototypes of two series of countries. If they are relatively similar, the propensity of the researcher, at a certain moment, is to expand the analysis to other similar countries. Notes 1. Essais sur la France (Paris: Seuil, 1974), 14. 2. Economic Growth in France and Great Britain, 18511950 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964)? see also, on a similar issue, J.H. Clapham, Economic Development of France and Germany, 18151914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). 3. Duncan Gallie, Social Inequality and Class Radicalism in France and Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 4. NationBuilding (New York: Wiley, 1964), 177213. and Citizenship 5. M. Dogan and P. Campbell, "Le personnel ministeriel en France et en Grande Bretagne (19451957)," Revue Française de Science Politique 7, no. 2 (April 1957) and 7, no. 4 (October 1957): 31345 and 793824. 6. Donald R. Matthews, "Selecting Chief Executives in Norway and the United States," in Pathways to ed. M. Dogan (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 7598. Power, 7. Mattei Dogan, "Political Cleavage and Social Stratification in France and Italy," in Party Systems ed. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein and Voter Alignments, Rokkan (New York: Free Press, 1967), 12995. 8. Peter Lange, George Ross, and Maurizio Vannicelli, Unions, Change and Crisis: French and Italian Union Strategy and the Political Economy, 19451980 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982). 9. Richard Scase, Social Democracy in Capitalist Society: WorkingClass (London: Croom Helm, 1977). Politics in Britain and Sweden 10. Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964). 11. Cf. Donald W. Treadgold, ed., Soviet and Chinese Communism: Similarities and Differences (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967). 12. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979. 13. New York: Basic Books, 1963. 14. "Equality, Success and Social Justice in England and the United States," American Sociological 53 (April 1978): 12543. Review 15. "Intergenerational Social Mobility and Partisan Preference in Britain and Italy," Comparative 6, no. 2 (1973): 22134. Political Studies 16. "Political Systems as Residual Variables: Explaining Differences Within Systems," Comparative 6, no. 1 (April 1973): 321. Political Studies