resources, mountains, and rivers altogether. In this real world, creativity and stupidity are equally evident, and everyone plays his or her own game with all the rules open to modification, either for good or ill. This dynamic reality is the home of comparative
politics.
What is comparative politics? It is two things, first a world, second a discipline.
As a "world," comparative politics encompasses political behavior and institutions in alt parts of the earth, in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, as well as North America. The "world" of comparative politics includes the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of the European Union; includes economic growth in East Asia, and economic stagnation in many parts of Africa; includes war in the former Yugoslavia, and the beginnings of peace in the Middle East; includes democraliz.ation in Latin America and militarization in Southeast Asia; includes hope and despair, failure and success, mixed everywhere together in what we know as the contemporary political
world.
The "discipline" of comparative politics is a field of study that desperately tries
to keep up with, to encompass, to understand, totxplain, and perhaps to influence the fascinating and often riotous world of comparative politics. Comparative politics as an area of study goes back to Greek antiquity, and has continued sporadically throughout history, but has achieved a special importance at the close of the twentieth century, when economics, technology, travel, and communications have brought all areas of the world into deep interdependence. Faraway countries are no longer far away; differences of culture can no longer be ignored; the cheerful hope that economic development will occur painlessly has long since faded away; and the desperate hope that national self-interests can be kept under peaceful contro! seems of questionable validity. The social sciences might be expected to be of assistance in
such a period, but rarely fulfill that promise.
Comparative politics is unusual among the social sciences in the degree to which its progress has been driven by a confrontation with hard facts, indeed, recalcitrant facts- Many social science theories survive largely because they cannot be tested; but in comparative politics there are lest situations in every direction one looks, and across every border one steps. It is perhaps for this reason that modern comparative politics has, since the 1950s, made real progress in both theory and research. The present work seeks to chart some aspects of that progress.
The study of comparative politics, like the study of the other sciences, has had a logic of its own. a developmental paltern that combined specific questions about the various nations and peoples in the world, specific data, and specific problems, all within a learning process lhat has taken a specific direction and reached a working synthesis of its own past. One interesting aspect of this developmental process within comparative politics is lhat it has not always followed the various maps set out for it, but has taken its own course, has been lo a large degree self-organizing. Comparative politics, in other word-s. has learned from its own practical experiences in the field, experiences strongly shaped by the need to cope with Ihc facts of daily political life in an array of very diverse societies.

Comparative politics, as an object of study, often presents serious difficulties to its students (and its teachers) because of the conceptual level it must seek lo achieve in order to fulfill its purpose of acquiring an understanding of diverse societies. Human beings are not usually born with an innate talent for theoretical thinking, which requires high levels of abstraction combined with a concrete grasp of interesting practical facts- Yet because of the importance, in an increasingly multicultural world, of the subject areas covered by comparative politics, if is desirable for those who have such interests to acquire a belter sense of theory, its goals and its practices, and its hazards, One way to achieve conceptual skills is to watch experts in a given field as they struggle, over time, to develop their science.
This book traces out a logic of the recent history of comparative politics by studying a selection of comparative works, classics either in themselves or in relation to the development of the field, that are grouped in four basic periods: behavioralism, development theory, the return to the state, and Ihe discovery of analytic institution-alism, the individual pohlical actor embedded in surrounding social institutions. Rather than attempting comprehensive coverage of every tree in the comparative politics forest, this classics approach focuses on those major writings that served at various periods to exert independent force in defining the comparative field. The selection of scholars has been kept reasonably small in order to facilitate an overall understanding of where modern comparative politics started, what paths it took and what roadblocks it encountered, what it learned along the way. and where it finds itself in the present. As an analysis (his essay does not claim to be decisive, but to suggest a coherent interpretation of the comparative politics field, with the hope that it might stimulate other such efforts, and might be useful in defining future research.
A major thesis of the present work is that comparative politics has in recent decades indeed defined for itselfa real and fruitful direction. Starting from the behavioral period, which comparativisis have never fully accepted but from which they can never quite escape; through the development-dependency period with all its conflicts and disillusionments; and into the study of the dissolving monolith oflhe state, comparative politics today shows signs of settling on a viable research model, that of the individual actor embedded in social institutions and acting strategically within that political basis- While not as yet fully defined, this approach emphasizes a micro-analytic approach to political behavior, centering on real people, not grand abstractions, on the individuals' surrounding social, political, and economic constraints, and o" the sometimes creative activity of individuals to avoid, avert, outdistance, or overthrow their institutions. This new model does not by any means solve all the problems of comparative politics, bul it opens up specific questions and routes of research, which are perhaps more interesting than final answers would be.
Comparative politics is a constantly evolving discipline, taking more seriously "an some other subfields wilhin political science the scientific mandate to combine "eory and facts into a scientific synthesis lhat will make itself useful in a complex ^'orld.The better we understand the history of this quest, Ihe more likely it is that we "n contribute to its future.

COMPARATIVE POLITICS AS PRACTICE
The study of comparative politics is particularly appropriate today because it is the study of what we see all around us-the differences in social behavior among people of different cultures, nations, and places. Comparative politics begins where many inquiries stop: with the richness and diversity of human experience, experience that ranges from everyday customs to the deep-seated notions of how the world should be organized-those ideas that we sometimes call justice. Because the study of these human differences extends even to the different ways different people think-the ways they cognitively organize their lives-comparative politics may even be seen as an adjunct of philosophy. The old philosophers sought the meaning of truth; the new comparative politics seeks to understand what different kinds of people define as truth and how that definition influences their lives and interactions with one another. This does not necessarily mean, it should be noted, that there are no universal truths;
but it is something that can no longer be taken for granted, and must be subjected to
empirical tests.
Comparative political science starts us down this road. It is concerned with
trying to understand people from "the other side of the globe," whichever side you happen to be on. But it is equally concerned with understanding neighbors, peoples who live next door but whom one has never gotten to know well enough to understand them in their own terms- Comparative politics in its most general sense is the essence of political science, because comparative politics forces its students to do what all political scientists should do but often do not, to "compare" people and political institutions with an open mind, and to appreciate the relativity of human ways and institutions. If the customs of people in other lands seem alien, comparative politics teaches us lo bear in mind that "they" also think "we" are barbarians, "foreigners." The first lesson of comparative politics is that, very often, nobody admires anyone but him- or herself. Remembering this rule "puts us in our place" and allows inquiry to begin with an open mind. If later on, evaluations of different customs and institutions are to be made, much study is necessary before one is entitled to make judgments on which forms of government are desirable, and for
whom.
All this is quite different from "multiculturalism" or "political correctness," both
of which generally involve adopting determinedly favorable attitudes to people different from oneself, or at least of being very careful not to offend people even though one may think their ways of life are quite dreadful. Whatever one thinks of this approach, it is not science but an ethical program. Science is concerned not with telling people how to run their lives but with studying and comprehending facts. A comparative politics that aspires to be a science is concerned with understanding people, not with judging them. Comparative politics may hope to be relevant to how we feel about other people, but those feelings are not a proper part of comparative politics. Complete neutrality may be beyond the strength of most human beings, but the study of comparative politics at least asks us to make the effort to be objective.

To advocate the "art" of comparative politics many seem inconsistent, for it is a major theme of the present work that political science can be a science, and that comparative politics will continue to pla^ a major role in developing such a science. Any inconsistency between the two terms is however only superficial, stemming from a very narrow interpretation of both the terms science and art. If art is putting oil on canvas in ways intended to be aesthetically interesting, and if science is test tubes and cyclotrons, then art and science are indeed two very different occupations- But if art is seen as the creative approach to reality, and science is seen as the discipline of inquiry into the real world, then the distinction disappears and art becomes an integral part ofscience-
"COMPARED TO WHAT?"
Comparative politics is a difficult business. All science is, of course, difficult, but comparative politics is difficult in a deeper way- The physical sciences as we encounter them in school are all well developed. The physicists, chemists, biologists of the past set their sciences on their proper course, decades or even centuries ago, by defining basic approaches, concepts, and methods. Finding the appropriate conceptual frameworks is not easy- Apples had been falling on people's heads for years before Newton took the event seriously enough to begin the systematic inquiry into gravity. The chemical elements had existed since about the time of creation, but were only ordered into the periodic table by Mendeleyev in the nineteenth century. The study of social and political institutions has proceeded more slowly, since while physical phenomena have a regularity and stability that invites scientific inquiry, social phenomena are harder to get a grip on. Perhaps more important, in the physical sciences explanations can be falsified more promptly. People can put your ideas into their own test tubes and it may often happen that your results do not happen as predicted.
In the social sciences, however, it is different. So many complex factors are involved in every human event, and it is so difficult to focus inquiry only on specific concepts, that weak explanations or theories are hard to disprove and last longer than they ought. If you think a rain dance will bring rain, and yet rain does not occur after the dance is celebrated, then the "theorist" can always argue, "you didn't do the dance r'yni. Since bad theories are hard to recognize, it is often true that good theories are n0' given the preference they deserve but are lumped promiscuously with approaches thai lack either clarity or rigor.
theories-defined roughly as statements that order, define, and explain the real
are important because they identify for us what concepts are to be seen as reliant, how the concepts are related, and what processes are at work in whatever it is lir ^are studyl^8-(Jood theories are more than important, they are vital to scien-lion ' elecause ^ey give guidance about what are the best concepts, inlerac-act^..' P'^'^sses to study. A bad theory, conversely, can lead investigators widely as^. sometimes for generations.

Tradition has it that once, when Socrates was asked "How's your wife?", he responded "Compared to what?" This exchange has frequently been interpreted as a commentary on Socrates' marriage. Bul the question is relevant here because it captures in a nutshell the central problem of comparative politics. The French and the English arc different . . . "Compared to what?" The Chinese and the Indians arc different . . - "Compared to what?" The Venezuelans and the Uruguayans are different . . . "Compared to what?" The Hausa and the Igbo.... "Compared to what?"
Tourists and travelers, challenged to say exactly what is different about the nations they have visited, will pick superficial comparisons-what the people eat, how they dress, whether their streets are safe to walk after dark. Media reports are similarly superficial, as commentators select out such momentous events as the Russians' newly discovered enthusiasm for baseball! Even where serious events are reported, the discussion stays firmly on the surface; faced with a civil war somewhere, the emphasis is on "Who is winning?" or "Are Americans in danger?" or "Do civilians need aid?" Very rarely does anyone ask why they are fighting in (he first place. Perhaps we assume we already know the answer: The parties are fighting because they are different. And i( always therefore comes back to Socrates' question, different "compared
to what?"
Faced with this problem, in the past many comparativists have adopted a practice that seems obvious, and yet is vigorously and terribly wrong. They have said in essence, "compared to us." Alt the diversity of culture, history, and experience has thus been obliterated by the dumb question, How do these people stack up against ourselves-against the most progressive, enlightened, virtuous, indeed most lovable people in the world? This is such a blockheaded approach that once recognized it collapses of its own absurdity. But it has not always been recognized.
THE NEED FOR BASIC PRINCIPLES
What then is the proper way to compare different groups or nations or cultures? That is what we do not know. Comparative politics to date is the history of the search. Ideally, comparative political scientists would have a general outline of "things that are important in defining a political society." They could then begin their study of a given society with the guidance of this general outline. It would tell them what aspects of the society they should study in order to understand how it works, how its various practices fit together, what principles are involved in its operation. Then when some passerby asks. "How's Bangladesh?", one would not have to wonder "compared to what" but would have real theory to work with in explaining how the Bangladeshi
system works.
If the iheory were a satisfactory one. such explanations might be reasonably compact. One would not have to say "to fully understand the English one must look at their history since 1066." and go on to fill this out in ten or more bulky volumes. Instead one could say, "English society at present operates according to several basic

principles, which inanifcsl themselves in all major institutional areas," and then summarize these principles. This may sound like an unrcalisticalty rigorous goal, yet one must note that physical scientists do it all the lime. To understand why eggshells dissolve in lemon juice you need not have a history of the egg or the lemon, but need only the relevant properties of each.
Critics greet such a claim with the argument that human societies are far more complex than the physical world- This argument may have a whiffof truth in it, but it is based largely on the misapprehension common to nonscientists of thinking the physical world is "easy" to understand- Pick up any physics textbook and it will cure this delusion. Everything, physical and social alike, is complicated. The difference between the physical and the social sciences is largely one of courage. Faced with unknown territory, physical scientists rush out to investigate it. Social scientists, on the other hand, are likely (o sit on the frontier fence and admire the difficulties.
The search for theoretically useful conceptual structures is long but not without discoveries, although whatever is found is but a stage in the further inquiry. It is possible today to argue that comparative politics has reached a plateau in its search. After decades, or centuries if one wants to extend the history back to its founding fathers, comparative politics may have achieved the kind ofmicroanaiytic basis that Democritus bestowed on physics in the beginning period of that science.
To affirm that societies, political systems, and institutions are at bottom composed of human individuals does not seem difficult. However, comparativists had first to wrestle with other approaches, looking at societies as wholes, before it was concluded that political systems do not exist in abstract grandeur but are made up of people who vote, people who are voted for, people who claim expertise for certain roles, and so on; and that societies work in certain ways because young individuals are taught by older individuals to follow certain rules and practices. These common patterns are called institutions, and the current focus in comparative politics is on individual persons as created by, yet constantly recreating, their institutions.
Institutions that have seemed in the past to be more powerful and more enduring than individuals are now often recognized to be only as strong as the beliefs individual people have in the institutions' rightness. If the collapse' of the USSR taught us nothing else, it did make a vivid illustration of the truth that even apparently monolithic institutions may dissolve like the mountain mists. It should give all political scientists, including students of comparative politics, cause for thought.
How does the student of comparative politics analyze whole societies from an individual or microanalytic level? The first step is to understand that societies, polities, and their institutions must, if they are to exist, be operative principles in the minds of real men and women- The Pentagon building, set like a monument overlooking the lotomac. has no independent existence as an institution apart from (1) the people w ° work ^ere and believe they have the right or the abiiily to make certain decisions or the American republic, and (2) the people who don't work there but who also
ttle P^ple who do work there have certain rights. Without the people we could paint the Pentagon pink and convert it to a shopping mall. Without people and their

beliefs, values, and institutional roles, buildings have no meaning. Buildings are not institutions but only means of keeping the rain off the heads of the people who are the real institutions.
THE "SOCIAL" NATURE OF REALITY
To understand human behavior as both individual and institutional, as the student of comparative politics must do in order to study whole societies without getting misled by abstractions, a brief consultation with the social psychologists is helpful. A classic text dealing with the issues of institution formation is the book with the almost humorous title. The Social Construction of Reality, by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1967). They are not however joking. Their point is exactly that "reality," that is, what we all think of as reality, is created in the course of human interactions. "Surely not!" one may protest; "if I drive my automobile directly at that tree at 50 MPH, a real reality will result, and 1 will be really, not socially, injured." True, but hear them out before deciding if this is the norm.
Berger and Luckmann begin with the idea long since noticed by social philosophers such as Montesquieu and Rousseau that human beings are distinguished from others in the animal world by their learning flexibility. Where birds and animals are from birth programmed by their genetic composition to behave in particular ways, human beings require a long period of learning before they are able to make their way in the world, it is during this long period of learning that human beings become "institutionalized."
The meaning of the term institution as Berger and Luckmann use it is wider than the definitions we commonly use, which very often imply large complex sociopolitical structures operating within four walls, such as educational institutions, penal institutions, or menial institutions. Other everyday definitions of institutions emphasize that an institution is a formal or "official" grouping of people, such as the U.S. Congress, the welfare department, or the sheriff's office.
Berger and Luckmann enlarge these ideas. For them an institution is any patterned human interaction combining mutual expectations in respect to the behavior of the participants. So, if you have been hiring someone to mow your lawn all summer, and if you expect him to turn up at regular intervals, and he expects you to pay promptly with a check that does not bounce; and if he does in fact turn up regularly to mow the lawn;
and you do properly pay, then you two have an informal but real institutional bond. And if the mower decides he should be paid more, or you decide he should mow more often, then you both negotiate and modify the institution. "Negotiation" is, of course, only an abstract term to describe much more intuitive behavior. He may look cross every time he comes by, and you may begin to wonder if you arc paying enough; you offer more money, he snaps it up and henceforth looks more cheerful. The result is that the institution has been changed: Not all the rules have been changed, but some aredu-fcrenl. Thus, institutions have continuity but are not necessarily rigid.

Now if that kind of very immediate behavior is seen as within the idea of insti-tutionatization, it becomes clearer how Berger and Luckmann can say we are institutional creatures. Since learning is the process that teaches us our roles in institutions, the question becomes who does ihe teaching. Berger and Luckmann stay at a very local level in order to make their point clear, and their answer to "who teaches?" is that the people who get there first teach those who come after. Usually this means the elder teach the younger, and in Berger and Luckmann's example the lessons may be quite arbitrary.
If the "society" into which a person is born consists of three people, each of whom has different habits, tastes, and values, then the "truths" that are passed on to the new member will not be truths at all but will reflect the various compromises the three people have made in order to live conveniently together. Rules that were originally made merely to suit the proclivities of the first generation (Peter will hunt game, Paul will plant potatoes) may become for succeeding generations absolute mandates;
this "kind" of person does this "kind" of work. When children consent to these preexisting principles, institutions continue; when children do not consent, institutions are revised or overthrown.
TO WHAT EXTENT IS BEHAVIOR INSTITUTIONALLY DEFINED?
Most people tend to think of their own actions as personally motivated, if those actions are not overtly or directly coerced; that is, unless some other person is visibly forcing us to do something, we assume our action is freely taken. What is less obvious is the type of action that is neither quite free nor quite forced, that is, "institutional" behavior that we have internalized. It is this institutionalized range of behavior that embeds individuals in groups and nations, embeds them in the different groups that are the source of that type of behavior. It is vital to the study of comparative politics in realize how very comprehensive is this type of institutionalized behavior, because n is through institutionalized behavior that social scientists are able to summarize and study the behavior of national and other social groups.
As a homely example, take an action as mundane and apparently personal as y"ur brushing your teeth. Surely this cannot be anything but private choice? In fact, \ .'s.lolally '"^"t'onal. First of all, your parents taught you to do it, giving plausible
has lime and money to worry about dental hygiene. Fourth, the medical profession and .social classes arc bolh influenced by (he larger surrounding culture, and their advice and customs as transmitted to individuals are marked by membership in cultural institutions. If asked why one brushes one's leeth one gives various "rational" reasons for doing so, but Ihe real reason is that "people like myself lend to do it." In other words, the behavior is institutionalized.
That behavior is institutional does not preclude ils being rational-brushing does decrease decay-but whal is considered rational changes over time. It also changes in different societies: Eating a healthy diet with no refined sugars, for instance, is also a way to have healthy leelh, but is not a solution the modem American usually finds compatible with his or her institutionalized tasies. So if you did brush your teeth this morning, it was not a persona! act bill one that marked you as a person of a particular lime, particular group, particular class, and so on. And if such an apparently personal kind of behavior is actually not personal but institutional, then even more must it be said that more interesting human behavior is institutional-including the norms suggested by religion, ethnic identity, class, gender, or occupation.
INSTITUTIONAL ALTERNATIVES AND CHANGE
The main point remains both simple and important: a very large percentage of each human individual's behavior is institutionally based. Each individual is like the center of a series of nested boxes, each of which guides her or his behavior in the various circumstances in which each is located. Sometimes the boxes are not nested but competing, and where this is the case the individual must make choices between the alternatives offered by differeni institutions. But notice that even the alternatives are controlled by institutions. Mary may choose not to go to law school, as her parents had hoped; and instead chooses to become a musician, as her friends have urged. But until very recently neither her parents nor her friends suggested she might become an electrical engineer; This was an alternative that did not exist in the options available to women until someone made an issue of it. So influences trickle down from higher level institutions to lower level ones, and influences bubble up from lower level institutions to higher level ones. To study institutions, therefore, the comparativist must focus on the nuts and bolts of individual actions, hopes, fears, and expectations; for that is where institutions manifest themselves.
THE PRACTICE OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS
The model of individuals created by their institutions and yet continually recreating those institutions is an important one for modern comparative politics because it allows the researcher to grasp Ihe operation of whole societies without losing the concrete basis upon which theories become testable. In (he past, comparalivisis have tneo

to develop theories of sufficient generality so that all countries and cultures might be subsumed under them. While the intention was good because il was an attempt to follow, in comparative politics, positivist standards for scientific research, the result of these abstractions tended to be unsatisfactory because they did not lead to the vigorous testing and evaluation necessary if science is lo separate good from bad theories. But the microinstitutional model currently popular in comparative politics research is closely tied to observable behavior, both at the grassroots citizen level and at the elite political level.
Ifcomparativists have reached some consensus on the model ofmicroinstitu-tionalism, then why not simply go out and practice comparative politics without studying its past at all? The reason is that knowledge of the past is necessary in order to be able intelligently to practice comparative politics in the present. As is said of history, those who do not study comparative politics are condemned to repeat it. For comparative politics, as for all new sciences, the history of the discipline educates its students not only into the causes of practices that must at least occasionally seem to be "damn-foolishness," it also reminds students of the good ideas that do not deserve to be thrown out with the rest of the bathwater. Moreover, the history of comparative politics offers many enduring ideas, concerns, and problems with which the current comparativist needs to be acquainted.
Some day it would be desirable to understand the range of political systems, cultures, and alternative options sufficiently weil to be of some use to nations or peoples who themselves come looking for help. Giving advice without being asked is the last form of colonialism and is properly looked upon with disapproval. But suppose a beleaguered leader from some distant country, or even perhaps from your own country, took the "political science" label on comparative politics seriously and asked your advice about some severe problem. What if Gorbachev had come by? Wha! if the Nigerians turn up? What if Vermont really wants to secede? The possibilities should give considerable food for thought about our comparativist responsibilities.
In the practice of comparative politics, research and theory are equally important, and should always be combined: Actual research must parallel (he study of concepts and theories; and (he study of theories must proceed in the context of actual research problems. Every abstract idea needs to be applied rigorously to real situations in real countries, and every country should be sludied with abstract ideas in 'nind. Too much emphasis is often given in comparative politics to the sometimes mindless comparison of at least two countries, so that the "comparative" mandate is mechanically fulfilled. But often we do no! know enough at the start to know which countries are suitable for comparison.
I he use of conceptual frameworks thai broaden the student's perspective on any !v] ua! "^"try being investigated is what raises the study to a comparative level,
merely the rote comparison of "in Brazil <hey do if this way, in Argentina, that Y- uch an approach will be slerile unless combined with conceptual intelligence.
portant to realize constiinlly thai comparison is a means, not an end. The end ''Pose is the understanding of different systems and societies in rich. rigorous,

scientific form. Rut nothing so completely shows us how little we know as Ihe attempt to compare. So if comparison is only a means, il is a very important means both for the generation, testing, and evaluation of theories, and for keeping our noses ever closer to the scientific grindstone.
HOW TO GET STARTED
Comparative politics can seem to be a difficult topic, especially for beginners, because it abounds with conceptual structures bearing opaque names such as "political sociology" or "structural-functionalism"; and the student despairs of keeping everything straight, of figuring out where to classify the various writers. The best antidote to such problems is to renounce the idea that comparative politics is an orderly, timeless conceptual whole, and to accept the common sense notion that comparative politics, like everything else, developed over time in a kind of dialectical challenge and response. One author developed a theoretical idea, others criticized it. or perhaps events undermined some of its main precepts, and the original idea turned into a modified form of itself, or if the critics were very vociferous, turned into its apparent opposite.
Thomas Kuhn (1962) has argued that all science is thus, that certain clusters of ideas and practices called paradigms exist in the scientific community only until they are replaced, after a political battle, with a more acceptable paradigm. Some political scientists have accepted this argument at the philosophical level as an escape from constricting rules of scientific procedure, but surprisingly few have actually applied the approach to their own history- Instead of accepting the push and pull of revolutionaries against the status quo, as vividly defined by Kuhn, there is often a tendency to try to fit everyone into a single smooth curve of history. This is a misleading picture for new students of the comparative field, because it suggests a degree of organization that never existed. Kuhn's more realistic image suggests that science is an ongoing battle, based on sharp differences and odd alliances. This political process is unified only across time, as ideas sort themselves out through active conflict. To understand comparative politics, in this view, the student must study the intellectual arguments of which it has been composed. This is the approach taken here.
GENERAL ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK
The present analysis of the recent history of comparative politics divides it into four major periods, each sharing common themes within its diversity. The first of these periods, discussed in Chapter 2, weni under the militant name of the Behavioral Revolution, and, however people felt about the prospect of making comparative politics a "real science," the behavioral era made a permanent impression on all the field3

wilhin political science. Behavioralists presented a methodological argument that emphasized above all things the collection of numerical data on actual human political behavior, and the organization of these data into correlational patterns thai would allow political scientists to predict political outcomes. Even in the 1990s the student of comparative politics can hear behavioral themes in current debates, as scholars argue over theories, criticize one another for methodological failures, and seek to justify their conclusions on grounds of the data upon which those conclusions were based.
The second period that defined itself within comparative politics, the subject of Chapter 3, was the development movement that grew parallel with behavioralism;
this period was by far the more coherent of the two movements, and was far less quantitative in its commitment. The topic of development, as is often the case in science and scholarship, was forced on comparative politics by current events, here the political changes of the years after the Second World War, when new nations offered challenge and hope to a whole generation ofcomparativists. In an attempt to bring all different types of societies, old and new, under a single common umbrella, development theorists centered their attention on the highest conceptual levels, expanding their science's scope to societies and economies as well as political systems. The period was marked by exceptional progress in many areas of comparative politics, yet" in the course of time the original optimism sank into disillusionment because of the widespread failures of both societies and theories-
This situation led, in the mid-1970s, to a collective reassertion of tradition, but tradition in a new form shaped by behavioratism and developmentalism, as compar-ativists reasserted the importance of political institutions and launched the third of the four major movements within the discipline, the "bringing back in" of the state. This is the subject area covered by Chapter 4. Where earlier periods had sent comparative politics students out among sociologists, anthropologists, and economists in the search for advice, the stale-centered approach sent scholars back to European sources in political economy and political sociology, taking from these writings the important conclusion that governments were of vital importance in national development. State theorists also found that the state could sometimes be very weak and very strong simultaneously; and that it was difficult to generalize about "the state" at all, because " was made up of so many different actual people and agencies with so many different agendas and opportunities, all acting in disparate ways.
This "dissolution" of the state led directly, in the late 1980s and early 1990s to ' tw0 "rands that together mark the last of the four periods here defined, which is mussed in Chapter 5. In this latest stage, inquiry is directed towards concrete indi-
' s who make choices and carry out actions in specific institutional contexts, and wh i, d^' ^casion arises, change the formal and inform;il institutions within m-in r^ ^^''P0!'1"-^ li^s. The latest stage has encompassed in a novel way
the concerns of earlier periods: the individualism and attention to data of the Dcnaviora ist'-;' ih talists' A Y' concer" with social organization and change of the developmen-
the emphasis on the role of institutions of Ihe state iheorists.

The latest stage can also be defined as one of disillusionment with the earlier three stages: disillusion with the behavioralists' reductionism, lack of context and shallowness of explanation; disillusion with the developmentalists' idealism, abstraction. and ambiguity; disillusion with Ihe statists' assumption lhat "the" state existed and that it could or should be strong. Tliat combination of lessons learned from the past and disillusions with the past form the logic of comparative politics as it is traced here.
THE MIXED BEHAVIORAL REVOLUTION
The behavioral period lhat is the subject of Chapter 2 was wider than comparative politics proper, although it contained comparative works of major importance; and this wider context, because it provided a background to events in comparative politics then and now, is important to understanding its history. The chapter begins with Roy Macridis' (1955} complaint against the "traditionalists" of the past, a complaint representative of what others in other fields were expressing, that the old timers had been parochial, impractical, unsystematic, and inattentive to real-world politics. Like other behavioralists' complaints, Macridis' criticisms of the past were vigorous without as yet providing much guidance on what the up-to-date critic should do to improve upon the past.
The behavioralist shot heard round the discipline, which provided a methodological model for the discipline for many years, was The American ^/e/-(Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes, 1960), included in Chapter 2 because of its strong research influence on all fields of political science, including comparative politics. Surveys were a two-edged sword. On the one hand, they taught political scientists more facts than they had ever wanted to know about citizens' indifference to politics. In addition to this unhappy lesson, survey techniques had a methodological mandate as well, that henceforth political scientists, including comparativists, must add courses in methodology and statistical techniques to their repertoires. Shock waves from this campaign are still regularly observed in contemporary political science and comparative politics.
The survey-oriented approach was brought particularly home to students of comparative politics in The Civic Culture (Almond andVerba. 1963), which studied civic attitudes in Germany, Britain, Italy, Mexico, and the United Slates. Chapter 2 argues that this five-nation study had a wide impact in comparative politics, an impact that was both positive and negative. The new techniques were put in service of some very traditional issues of citizenship behavior, and the results cleared away many illusions about the nature of democratic culture; all this was positive for further research. On the other hand, more negatively, the technical virtuosity of (he book set a discourag-ingly high standard for others to emulate, and nurtured a latent hostility in the discipline to large-scale bchavioralist research.
Because Chapter 2 seeks to provide a realistic background to behavioral ism's impact on comparative politics, it emphasizes the lack ofcoherence in the actual behav'

ioralist movement and includes works that were important in ihcir influence but led in all possible directions, not easily subsumed under any neat definition. Anthony Downs' Economic Theory of Democracy (1957), for instance, would come to be part of an idea! model against which theories in comparative politics would be judged in later years, yet was thoroughly different in method and style from the survey-based approaches. By taking a simplified model of a political system and evaluating rational choice by leaders and citizens within that model. Downs showed the serious intellectual problems inherent in democratic government, and sharpened the discipline's appreciation of logical analysis- These seeds would not nourish in comparative politics until the fourth period defined above, based on the individual-in-institutions model.
Another example in Chapter 2 of the diversity in behavioraiism as it affected comparative politics was Seymour Martin Lipset's Political Man (1959), which used the traditions of class analysis to investigate the society-wide conditions of democratic government, in the search both for democracy and stability. This approach was rich in data, yet data of a type different from that provided by survey research; again illustrating how false it is to overstate the unity of behavioraiism. A work of similarly high status in the behavioral canon, yet equally unclassifiable, was Robert Dahl's Who Governs? (1961), a data-rich study of local government behavior, centered on the different patterns of government and the different social groups that supported them. The analysis emphasizes how diverse were Dahl 's tools and commitments, and how difficult it was to distil! from this famous work any useful guidelines for political research generally.
Chapter 2, having tried by illustration to show how rich a brew behavioraiism was, containing everything from survey research to aggregate statistics, from deductive economics to case-oriented sociology, concludes with David Easton's "behavioral creed," suggesting that this image of behavioraiism was not entirely in accord with its actuality, as shown in the work ofCampbell et al., Lipset, Almond and Verba. Downs, and Dahl; and that behavioraiism is not a unified approach to be rejected as too strict for comparative politics research, but a goldmine of possibilities.
THE DEVELOPMENT PERIOD
yam-it the diverse background of behavioraiism in political science, and compara-\\^ polnics' specific role in thai movement, research in the field took its primary di-^"on under the guidance of development, the topic of the second major period into ^-'hich comparative politics has been classified here. Chapter 3 looks back at the early s0 development theory from a position later in history, when hard lessons had <o orccd upon investigators about the political, social, and economic obstacles ipc^ cvelopment- Secause it is difficult today for students lo appreciate in retro-at the world looked like to comparalivists of the time, the discussion of the c opmem period begins with a tale from Daniel Lerncr's The Pii.^in^ of Trudi-

o
/;r;;n-//.S'(x-/t'n'(195y) recounting how the Turkish village ofBalgal weni from being dusty, isolated, poor, and stagnant, to achieving new roads, new transportation, electricity, and wells, alt as the result of the democratic political process. 1-or a while it
seemed blessedly simple, as indeed it may seem to students today who enter the field for the first time.
Another example in Chapter 3 of this early optimism was (he book that gave the new field its name, Gabriel Almond's and James Coleman's The Politics of the Developing Areas {I960), where the hopeful future connotations of "development" replaced the pessimistic connotations of "tradition," a term marked for modern scholars with associations of a dead hopeless past. One aspect of the Almond and Coleman book was simply to introduce the underdeveloped world to comparalivists who previously had looked only on the major European states as their proper purview. But Chapter 3's analysis emphasizes the major contribution of the book as the introduction of comparative polities' first major attempt at theory building in the new international world, the theory called, as was the sociological theory that inspired it, struciurat-functionalism. Because the theory postulated that in every society, no matter how distant, certain functions (needs) had to be fulfilled, this functional theory
promised to be truly comparative, bringing all countries under a single conceptual apparatus.
Chapter 3 includes other approaches to development, many of which made independent theoretical contributions, although not always recognized at the time. One of the classics of the early development period was Samuel Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies (1968), an iconoclastic series of studies that emphasized the difficulties faced by new societies not only in creating economic progress but merely in maintaining a modicum of social order, given the various warring groups in what Huntington called "praetorian" societies. Hunlington was unique in suggesting that politics, not economics, was the key to development; in being willing to entertain harsh government methods to ensure order; and in arguing that the United Slates was not a good model for new states to follow because its
whole history was an anomaly in Western political development, a kind ofTudor hangover-
Another major work of the period discussed in Chapter 3 was Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), which sought through the comparative historical analysis of many nations to determine the causal factors that led to national political outcomes, specifically to fascism, democracy, and communism. Moore's emphasis was on economic class analysis, and continued to bear analytic fruit well into later periods of the comparative politics literature.
The development school as a whole presents a major example of the ability o* comparativists lo learn from practical experience and intellectual criticism, because of its response to an important group of theorists who vehemently challenged its premises, iia assumptions, and its practices-the "dependency" critics. This "correction" was brought about largely by theorists from Latin America who spoke, in ihe name of the enlire underdeveloped world, for a perspective that saw development not

as the benign care of the rich for their poorer relatives, but as capitalist exploitation that put the rest of the world into a state ofunderdevetopment and dependency, and kept it there. Chapter 3 analyzes Cardoso and Faletto's Dependency and Development in Latin America (1979) as illustrative of this argument. The claim that imperialism had disguised itself as development theory resonated in circles both inside and outside the scholarly community.
The dependency critique, along with internal criticism from developmentalists themselves, caused a rethinking of existing development theory; the depressing state of actual Third World nations, racked by poverty and tyranny, added to the decline of functional development approaches. In the vacuum that followed, particular attention settled on an outgrowth of the dependency movement, the world systems theory represented in the conclusion of Chapter 3 by Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World System (1974), with its conceptual emphasis on "core" and "periphery" and the uneven relationship between them. The chapter's analysis argues that Wallerstein's richly historical analytic approach is not merely a theory ofinter-nation behavior, but has major relevance to comparative politics in its detailed picture of how in history various nations flourished or declined, in pan as a result of world conditions but also in part because of the domestic forces of society and politics.
BACK TO THE STATE
!n Chapter 4 the third stage in recent comparative research history brings the observer to the movement colloquially known as "bringing the state back in," or, in other words, the first re-examination of the state since the behavioral revolution had cast it into the oblivion of being old-fashioned. The return to the state began with an attempt to develop theory about the state as a whole, as illustrated in the theoretic chapters of the book that gave the movement its name (Evans, Rueschmeyer, sind Skucpol, 1985), and Chapter 4 opens with these discussions. It was notable however that even in the early days, researchers discovered that "the state" did not exist, was instead a complex combination of different persons and groups with interesting connections to other parts of the societies in question. In one well-known Mudy, Lvans (1987) showed how the dependency relationship presupposed by the "cpcndcncistas turned out in reality to be a far more complex situation, a tangled mix of state officials engaged in often successful strategic negotiation with their supposed exploiters.
Also included in Chapter 4 is an analysis ofThcda SkocpoFs influential Slates tlmis{'c'al Evolutions (] 979), a book that directly attacked the functionalist per-^pcuive, arguing instead that economic (structural) factors were the major influence <L . E?'' a ^at '^eas an^ volitions were largely irrelevant to social progress.
f s analysis of the French and Russian Revolutions revealed unexpected simi-"rv s(? eaucratlc organization between the two, unlike the English revolution-' and ln a fine chapter on the long Chinese revolution, Skocpol analyzed those revolutionary years from a structural perspective lhal was as much political as economic.
The re-emphasis on the state also served an integrating function in comparative politics, bringing into tlie dialogue earlier works that had fallen outside the functionalist development paradigm, sucli as Guillermo O'Donncll's analysis of the bureaucratic authoritarian experience in Lulin America (1988) . Chapter 4 argues that like oilier state theorists. O'Donnetl's strength was in the method he employed of decomposing the elements of society and slate into social, economic, and political groups, of analyzing, their expectations about one another's behavior, and of showing how the complex interactive process could result in socioeconomic breakdown, with authoritarian rule the final result. The thrust of this analysis was an important force in educating developmentalists in the possibility that economic development might have serious negative outcomes; but the method itself deserved attention for its down-to-earth strategy of integrating disparate elements in a coherent, political model of explanation.
Finally. Chapter 4 takes up another dimension of state analysis, the synthesizing overview by Jan-Erik Lane and Svante Ersson (1991) based on a re-evaluation of the political sociology tradition in the context of its utility as a full theory of the state. Politics and Society in IVeslern Europe picked its way carefully through the basic assumptions about democracy and stability characteristic of the political sociology approach, and subjected each to rigorous comparison with data from throughout the European experience. This was behavioralism harnessed to the statist inquiry, and the result showed serious weaknesses in Western political scientists' understanding of the foundations of their own political systems. This striking result, in respect to democracy and stability and the assumptions about the representative nature of government, put into a new perspective the tasks of nation building and suggested a deeper affinity than might have been expected between the First and Third worlds. This same lesson is illustrated in Chapter 4 by a brief concluding look at a "deconstructionist" approach to the state (Milchell, 1991) that argues the stale is an illusory phenomenon and that no strict line exists between state and society.
BRINGING THE PEASANT IN
The final present period in this discussion of the stages through which compaf311^ politics has recently passed begins in Chapter 5 with. perhaps unexpectedly, the pe35' ant-or. to look at the matter more generally, with the discovery of politics at grassroots where real political struggles and accommodations occur. One of the studies to show this emphasis was James Scott's The Moral Economy of the Pe^ (1976). which might reasonably be described as the comparativisl's version o 1 ^ American Voter." in that it directed a spotlight of inquiry upon an area ofpolit10 ^

that had not previously been given close empirical attention. Scott postulated peasant life as violently confronted by physical challenges of drought or famine, and defined peasants' response as a moral community that provided a sort of safety net, The innovative phenomeno logical approach used by Scott to study peasant communities was sufficiently effective to create a lively dispute overjust what in fact was taking place in the previously ignored villages.
Another viewpoint on the peasant, discussed in Chapter 5, was Samuel Popkin's The Rational Peasant (1979), a work presenting a far bleaker picture than Scott's of the village as the locus of fierce self-interest, suspicion of others, conspiracies against the rich or poor, and outright social war. In such circumstances, Popkin argued, everyone was behaving as rational choice theory predicted, and the marketplace, where it existed, was the only source of at least partial hopes for the persons trapped by rural poverty. Chapter 5 argues that the debate between morality and rationality was overstated, because the two different behavior patterns .were created by the same human motives, intersecting with different conditions of land availability and fertility, or the predictability of rainfall, to produce different results. But (he confrontation is educational because it constitutes an almost laboratory example of how different theories create different realities as they are applied to real events, and what two competing paradigms look like in practice.
A major work in the state-society perspective discussed in Chapter 5 also began with peasants. Joel Migdal's Strwg Societies and Weak Stales (1988), built upon a variety of trends in comparative politics over past decades and suggested a full-scale inicroanalytic method for comparative research, the "melange" model of human behavior, defining an ongoing multi-sided political struggle for survival within economic, social, and state institutions. The book began, according to Migdal, with a paradox relative to the state, that its presence is observable everywhere even in the "xisi traditional societies, yet its impact is uncertain; this was explained, according to l"c study, by defining an inverse relationship between the strength of the society and me .stiilc. Strong societies, according to Migdal, prevent strong states from forming Pcciiuse no one is willing to give away sufficient power to allow the slate to develop;
"nd si;ne personnel are not independently able to seize such power.
lie result is not a standofTbut an ongoing battle in which all participants strug-Jtc to survive in the face of constant challenge. Chapter 5's analysis argues that
o M <il s model is particularly interesting because it does not privilege the powers of wiit' 411l'llv<i'^ soc'al Sroups but puts each on a roughly equal footing, although armed
> itlcrvnl resources-some with wealth, some with status, some with official ^"i-.iics, some with nothing but numerical strength. While Migdal describes his
**f con - ^^ essay' not a tneorv'Ine melange approach provides a useful balance ihcm J'T ^""on, giving space to all kinds of political actors and integrating ^"m a common framework.
^oca^^i draws a ^"^able example ofmicroanalylic technique from the a ist J. Gus Liebenow's African Polificx (19S6". where the author explains

the preponderance of military regimes in Africa through a complex interactive process between the colonial powers and the various indigenous elite groups who systematically misinterpreted their pre-independence experience and on that basis seriously miscalculated their future. Colonial experience, Liebenow argued, created an unrealistic set of expectations, and cast future leaders into political roles that ill-prepared them to govern. These problems meant lhat African elites used military resources in a way that led to conflict with military leaders, and led to cycles of government overthrow and restoration. This radically "political" view of development processes reaffirms the style of such earlier works as Huntington's.
The final set of scholars discussed in Chapter 5 includes the neo-institutional-ist or new institutionalist schools, whose work in the microanalysis of individual behavior within institutional environments was first formalized in James March's and Johan Olsen's "The New Institutionalism" (1984), bringing the dialogue in political science full circle by launching a strong attack against the assumptions and approaches first popularized by behavioralists. Yet the March and Olsen thesis was deeply rooted in the behavioral tradition it criticized (Lave and March 1975): The new institutionalism is "new" only because the behavioral period intervened. Following this textbook example of the dialogic quality of scientific progress. Chapter 5 discusses the two major variations of the new inslitutionalism that are employed in comparative politics research, the historical school and the rational choice school.
Historical, or sociological, new institutionalism is represented by a recent compilation edited by Steinmo.Thelen, and Longstreth (1992), in which contributors discussed the various ways in which political processes in many nations are influenced in major ways by the formal and informal institutions within which the political debate is contained. Such analyses focus usually on national political phenomena and are "story-telling" approaches rather than attempting to advance and test specific theoretical hypotheses. The economic or rational choice version of the new institulionalism takes a narrower track than does the historical form, but many achieve results of wide applicability even while focusing on smaller groups, as shown in Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons (1 990), a study of the self-organizing behavior of a wide variety of European, Asian, and North American societies- Study of small-scale communities enabled Ostrom to analyze the strategies of actors who must combine competition and cooperation in order to further their own and everyone else's interest in the sustainable utilization of common pool resources.
Since comparative politics is, as remarked earlier, an ongoing enterprise within which new developments are constantly taking place, ihe final Chapter 6 cannot come to permanent conclusions about the nature of contemporary comparative politics, but tries instead to provide guidance into the recognition and construction of workable theories in comparative research. In line with this purpose, the chapter evaluates the theory of oligarchy, a new form of functionalism, and a widened approach to rational choice theories.

POSTSCRIPT
Before starting the pursuit of comparative politics and the search for theoretic understanding of other societies and our own, a word of caution is relevani. This caution involves the term "democracy," which is sometimes used by the unwary as the conceptual core of political science and of comparative politics especially. Two dangers are inherent in this course of action, and both stem from the fact that when you look closely at the matter you find that no one is very clear about exactly what democracy is. All the definitions of democracy are either verbal or egocentric.
Verbal definitions involve rephrasing a term in different ways, such as that democracy involves "free and fair elections," bu( never facing the necessity for a thorough definition of "free and fair." Egocentric definitions solve problems of this sort with a self-centered syllogism: "We in the U.S. are a democracy, therefore, if country x is like us then it is a democracy." Ifwe took a hard look at our own society, as indeed political scientists specializing in the United Stales have done, this solution would seem less compelling. Rational choice theorists such as Downs have suggested that American democracy is built upon a combination of self-aggrandizing politicians and ignorant citizens; politics proceeds by office holders "buying" votes through giveaway programs that bankrupt the state. (If you doubt this, try to explain the current budget deficits in all advanced industrial nations in some other way.) Much about the United States is, of course, admirable, and many people in all parts of the world seek to participate in its freedoms; but it is not yet certain that the American model can or should be imposed uncritically on others.
Definitions that seek to select specific aspects of the American political system as criteria for good government often fail because, taken out of context, these specific institutions do not work properly. Multi-party elections in an underdeveloped country are likely to mean only, as one African academic has said, thai "we get to choose whicli people will oppress us." Ifwe wish to pass judgments on the relative success or failure of other governments, a more modest approach would be to ask if they are well-governed.
"Well-governed" is itself as slippery a term as democracy, hut at least it is sufficiently novel that we are aware of its ambiguities with a sharpness we do not notice in dealing with the too-familiar "democracy," Well-governed might mean, for a start. that the physical needs of the people (all of them) are reasonably well met in terms of food, housing, and health, and that their economic needs are also met in terms of remunerative productive employment. If this could be achieved under a benevolent despot, would anyone complain? Would anyone want democracy if everything was going well under some other method of government? If democracy involved severe general poverty, would anyone want it at all? The problem with benevolent despotism is not that it does not work well but tha( it is fragile: Despots turn from benevolence to malevolence, or their children or successors are fools. HIection-s ;irc a start (compare Nicaragua, Nigeria, Algeria) but not the whole answer,

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