Making Sense of Complexity: Comparative Perspectives and Conclusions

Abstract

For many decades, it seemed, the favourite writer and poet of most Anglo-Saxon political comparativists was Rudyard Kipling — if only for the legitimacy and dignity that his eagerly-quoted observation about the impossibility of understanding England from a purely English view added to their own work. Times have changed, though. There is no longer any need to buttress, or justify, comparative ambitions in political science by citing patron saints from outside the discipline. Today, it would seem, there is a greater burden on those who are unwilling to shed at least some comparative light on their subjects.