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The Role of Theory in Comparative Politics: A Symposium
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2011
Abstract
The Center of International Studies at Princeton University organized a symposium during 1993—94 on the role of theory in comparative politics. Presented here is an edited and condensed version of the proceedings. In light of recent challenges posed by both rational choice and post-modern cultural approaches, the symposium helped elucidate the merits of competing theoretical approaches. A group of distinguished scholars presented a variety of views on the subject. In spite of recent intellectual developments, a diverse group of symposium participants adhered to a loosely defined “core,” or to what one participant characterized as the “eclectic center” of comparative politics.
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References
1 The talks were recorded and then transcribed. I took considerable license in condensing and adapting the talks for publication. The published version has been approved for publication by each individual participant.
2 In this sense my vision of the evolution of scientific paradigms is distinctly “un-Kuhnian.” Cf. Kuhn, , The Structure ofScientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962Google Scholar).
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5 I say “parasitically” because I make no claim to be a contributor to the development of this body of theory.
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8 The reference is to Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993).
9 This project is conducted jointly with Mike Alvarez (DePaul University), Jose Antonio Cheibub (University of Pennsylvania), and Fernando Limongi (University of Sāo Paulo).
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14 Parsons, Talcott and Shils, Edward, Toward a General Theory of Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is not self-evident that Parsons and Shils themselves, in this essay, saw the left and right side of pattern variables as displayed above systematically related. However, the examples in the essay—which are few—suggest such a grouping (p. 79). Francis Sutton and Fred W. Riggs developed systematic models, complete with presumptions that history was moving from one set of characteristics to another. Sutton is so cited in Almond. For Riggs, see “Agraria and Industria: Toward a Typology of Comparative Administration,” in Siffin, W. J., ed., Toward a Comparative Study of Public Administration (Bloomington, 1957), 23–116Google Scholar. Almond, in his introduction to The Politics ofthe Developing Areas (fn. 13), explicitly avoids such “unfortunate theoretical polarization” and stresses the em-beddedness of traditional in modern structures (p. 23).
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22 Ibid.
23 The career of the inverted comma in academic disciplines is worth a biography. It is the caution light on the road to cognition, warning the unwary that a word may not be what it seems, telling the leader that she should walk all around “sovereignty” or “growth” and have a conversation with it about its provenance before incorporating it. Note that Weber does put inverted commas around “Objectivity” in the above-cited article (fn. 19).
24 Weber (fa. 10), 183.
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