Comparative Politics: Method or Field?

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - General and Comparisons, grade: 2,0, Southern Connecticut State University (Department of Political Science), course: Proseminar: Comparative Politics, 5 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: 'Comparativists want to understand the critical events of the day, a position that ensures that dreams of theory address the political world as it exists, not formal abstractions or utopias.' (Lichbach/Zuckerman 1997: 3-4) These are ambitious goals of comparativists. The aim of this paper is to further expose the goals and the methods of the field of comparative politics. In order to do so, one has to define 'field' to begin with and then go on with defining the subfield of political science. What is comparative politics, how did the field emerge and what are its methods? These are questions to be answered by this paper.