Comparative Politics
Rationality, Culture, and Structure

This revised edition of Comparative Politics offers an assessment of the past decade of scholarship in comparative politics.

Mark Irving Lichbach (Author), Alan S. Zuckerman (Author)

9780521885157, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 February 2009

520 pages, 5 tables
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.9 cm, 0.9 kg

'Assembling an impressive array of key players in contemporary theory and research of the various subfields of Comparative Politics (from institutionalism to political behavior and political economy), this book is a timely and highly welcome update of one of the best treatments of central issues of contemporary political science. Organized along the distinction between the rational choice paradigm with its emphasis on reasoned agency, the cultural paradigm, with its emphasis on rules, norms, and identities, and the structural paradigm which focuses on institutions, the book not only carves out the major positions that inform today's theoretical debate in Comparative Politics; it also evaluates their respective merits and problems, and identifies their complementarities. It is unique in that it highlights not only the big theoretical issues of the discipline, but also delves deeply into their epistemological and methodological implications and ramifications. Most remarkable is the understanding of politics as a multi-level phenomenon that guides many of the volume's chapters.' Rudiger Schmitt-Beck, University of Manheim, Germany

Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure is a revised second edition of the volume that guided students and scholars through the intellectual demands of comparative politics. Retaining a focus on the field's research schools, it now pays parallel attention to the pragmatics of causal research. Mark Lichbach begins with a review of discovery, explanation and evidence and Alan Zuckerman argues for explanations with social mechanisms. Ira Katznelson, writing on structuralist analyses, Margaret Levi on rational choice theory, and Marc Ross on culturalist analyses, assess developments in the field's research schools. Subsequent chapters explore the relationship among the paradigms and current research: the state, culturalist themes and political economy, the international context of comparative politics, contentious politics, multi-level analyses, nested voters, endogenous institutions, welfare states, and ethnic politics. The volume offers a rigorous and exciting assessment of the past decade of scholarship in comparative politics.

1. Paradigms and pragmatism: comparative politics during the past decade Mark I. Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman
2. Thinking and working: discovery, explanation, and evidence in comparative politics Mark Irving Lichbach
3. Advancing explanation in comparative politics: social mechanisms, endogenous processes, and empirical rigor Alan S. Zuckerman
4. Strong theory, complex history: structure and configuration in comparative politics revisited Ira Katznelson
5. Reconsiderations of rational choice in comparative and historical analysis Margaret Levi
6. Culture in comparative political analysis Marc Ross
7. Researching the state Joel S. Migdal
8. An approach to comparative analysis, or a sub-field within a sub-field? Political economy Mark Blyth
9. The global context of comparative politics Etel Solingen
10. Comparative perspectives on contentious politics Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly
11. Citizenship in democratic politics: density dependence and the micro-macro divide Robert Huckfeldt
12. Macropolitics and microbehavior in comparative politics Christopher J. Anderson
13. Back to the future: endogenous institutions and comparative politics Jonathan Rodden
14. The comparative political economy of the welfare state Isabela Mares
15. Making causal claims about the effect of 'ethnicity' Kanchan Chandra.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB], Political science & theory [JPA]