Comparative Area Studies: Methodological Rationales and Empirical Applications

This Section is motivated by two fundamental convictions. First, sustained qualitative research on particular regions of the world remains indispensable for political science, both as a way to expand our fount of observations and as a source of new theoretical ideas. Second, this research remains at risk of being marginalised without concerted efforts to incorporate it into comparative frameworks intended to explore the potential relevance of regional contextual attributes. We argue that Comparative Area Studies (CAS) constitutes a promising new approach that can help to bridge political science and area studies. CAS refers to a broad approach consisting of any self-conscious effort to do two things: (i) balance unit context sensitivity with the use of some variant of the comparative method to surface causal linkages that are portable across world regions; and (ii) simultaneously engage ongoing research and scholarly discourse in two or more area studies communities against the backdrop of more general concepts and theoretical debates within political science (and other social sciences). While CAS is motivated by general questions that bear on cases from different areas, it calls for qualitative comparisons that value and engage ongoing research and scholarly discourse within area studies communities. Introductory Panels in this Section will discuss the rationales and potential pitfalls of CAS and highlight its connections to a global approach to scholarship. Panels will present current intra-, inter- and in particular cross-regional comparative research on political phenomena and processes in different issue areas, highlighting a range of empirical applications where the CAS approach has been fruitfully leveraged to yield distinctive insights that neither traditional area studies nor large-N or formal approaches are designed to deliver.