Abstract
Initially I thought of calling my contribution ‘I Am a Dependent Variable’, but quickly realised that the making of a comparative social scientist is a complex process that cannot be reduced to a single characteristic. Systems analysis offers an appropriate approach to joining up what has made me what I am. Most social scientists, having become identified with a country or a topic, have tended to stay within that area. Don Stokes made this point to me in 1964 when I asked him about choosing a new field of study. His recommendation was to devote my career to a single subject as he was doing. This struck me as boring. A year later when Rudolf Wildenmann invited me to give a seminar at Mannheim, I offered him a choice between a soon-to-be-published paper and a new idea I was starting to explore. He said, ‘Give us what’s new’. I found this congenial. It has guided me to research new subjects in places from Washington and Tokyo to Moscow and Belfast. The pages that follow identify six themes that together have influenced my career as a comparative social scientist (see also Rose 2014).
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Rose, R. (2023). Reflections of a Comparative Social Scientist. In: Keating, M., McAllister , I., Page, E.C., Peters, B.G. (eds) The Problem of Governing . Executive Politics and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40817-5_14
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