The Travelling problem in comparative politics

1. The Travelling problem in comparative politics Alistair Cole

2. Introduction and context • Text an excerpt from Comparative Politics: theory and Methods, by Guy Peters, one of the leading US political scientists • Interesting especially insofar as it deals with how to translate concepts – the real politics of translation in comparative politics.

3. General context and introduction • Researchers engaged in comparative research practice face the challenge of establishing the equivalence of both the theoretical concepts applied across a range of cases and the indicators or variables identified that relate to these concepts. • There are various conventions... that some, like Sartori, would see as rules.

4. Q. Levels of the travelling problem? • One is conceptual: does a specific measure mean the same things in different cultural contexts? • This is important in carrying out quantitative empirical analysis, e.g. On democracy or culture or symbols • Concepts mean different things in different contexts. • The example used by Peters is that of bureaucracy. The standard definition of bureaucracy is drawn from Max Weber. • But bureaucracy can be accepted as neutral is some contexts (Germany), but pejorative in others (UK)

5. Defining Democracy • Peters gives the example of Schmitter’s attempt to define a cross-national explanation of democracy. • This can be done either in terms of an ideal type (Weber: what features correspond to an ideal type of model); or by defining sub-types that each contain some element of the phenomenon, but differ in other respects. • Democracy? Schmitter and Mahon qualify the generic terms by the use of the adjective: Corporatist Democracy, Populist Democracy, Consociational Democracy, Electoralist democracy... • The concept of democracy is essentially contestable

6. Varieties of.... • Comparative politics addresses the idea of variation. • The theme mentioned here is that of varieties of democracy • But there is also a recent debate about varieties of capitalism: coordinated market, liberal market, or state market (Schmidt). • Another example – not in the text – that of institutionalism.

7. The ladder of abstraction (Sartori) • Sartori’s (1970) ‘ladder of abstraction’ identified two complimentary strategies in tacking equivalence: • moving ‘down’ the ladder to generate further differentiation of concepts with more defined attributes applied to fewer cases • or alternatively moving ‘up’ the ladder to avoid ‘conceptual stretching’, whereby concepts have fewer defined attributes but can be applied to more cases. • Sartori’s analysis has provided a useful foundation for a range of contributions to the challenges of concept formation within the comparative context (see for example Collier & Mahon, 1993; Collier & Levitsky, 1997; Collier & Adcock, 1999).

8. The ladder of abstraction as continuum • The ladder of abstraction allows similar concepts to be applied to distinctive contexts. • Hence ‘corporate pluralism’ might make sense in Norway (bottom of the ladder) • but be more akin to Corporatism in Germany (i.e. iron triangle ) or to pluralism in the UK. (mid-way up the ladder) • In the higher level of abstraction, it might just refer to state-society relations. (top of the ladder) • However, comparing policy contexts across national boundaries continues to present conceptual challenges, with some responses to the development of conceptual equivalence critiqued for potentially generating too many concepts or sub-types, leading to confusion and stifling comparison (Collier & Levitsky, 1997)

9. The ladder of abstraction as continuum... continued • More general concepts allow wider comparison, but they lose their sharpness. • The more abstract concepts become…. the wider their coverage, but the more meaningless they can also be. • Contenders for this are: institutionalism, governance, Europeanisation… • Does a concept need an adjective? If so, is its weight lessened? • Can a concept logically be opposed with another concept? This is key to the idea of falsification (Parsons). If a theory can include all cases, then it can not be falsified, hence it is meaningless.

10. Intension • Sartori also uses the idea of intension. How many attributes are used in a concept? • The more detailed the concept, the less likely it is to be widely applicable. • Hence ‘corporate pluralism’: requires a system to contain both these elements, that is, competition between interests, and the influence of interests.

11. Less positivist approaches • The other approach is to adopt more interpretative frames; not literally to measure/falsify, but to understand and interpret. • Literally, the Sartori model is too limiting. • Collier and Mahon prefer the idea of sharing some attributes, or radial categories. • A case has either a family resemblance (sharing most categories of a concept), or shares one dominant characteristic (radial categories). • Hence, corporatism remains useful because it describes a dominant characteristic: though it might be defined in different ways in distinct countries, it refers to organised patterns of state-society relations

12. Concept stretching and trade-offs • Prezeworski and Teune argues in favour of a systems-specific approach...allowing different measures to define the same category or concept. • The idea of functional equivalence goes in the same direction. Concepts need to be adapted and treated flexibly, if they are to be meaningful. • There are trade-offs in comparative research

13. A continuum • The key point about the ladder of abstraction is this is a continuum, or a spectrum; there are ways of positioning oneself depending upon where one is situated along the spectrum. • A single case study will allow a high degree of ‘intension’ - which might be appropriate for a single or binary case study. But a quantitative mass survey needs ‘extension’ – a concept that can travel, hence is relatively simple, with few characteristics.

14. Empirical travelling problems: • Peters gives the examples of the Welfare State and low voter participation: and how crude cross-country measurement will be likely to distort the reality in the setting of the US. • This means that contextual case studies, with all of their detail, can help to elaborate key concepts. • And that all cases are context specific... but this lies beyond the canon on measurement that preoccupies American political science.