Contesting and Comparison Based on Empirical States

The act of comparison is used frequently in many aspects of life and can inform us when making decisions, it can be useful in relatively serious scenarios such as whether to leave one job for another or less pressing matters such as which type of apples to buy. The qualities of comparison also feature within the world of politics, these qualities can help answer questions as to why things are the way they are within society and subsequently what may be done to maintain or change them, this may be deciding which UK political party suits a person's needs most or whether the North of England a receives fair share of resources when viewed alongside the South of England. While these examples provide a comparative approach within the UK cross national comparison too is a tool that may be used whereby data is collected from multiple countries. This essay will look at to what extent it is of use and relevance to compare across nations rather than one specific country of interest, it will aim to find out the advantages and disadvantages of doing so via empirical examples of how different states, systems and the elements that go into running a country operate.

Comparing is weighing up the similarities and differences of at least two things, comparing something with itself would produce no new information and hence would be a waste of time . In the political world this could mean the comparison of for example two or more governments ,regimes, economic models or the political participation of its citizens, meaning you can compare different elements of a country but you not a country with itself at least not from the same time period. Political comparatists search for equivalences and patterns that aim to seek out the most relevant variabl...

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...w for greater levels of predictions of future outcome, which can provide invaluable information in either promoting or avoiding similar scenarios. The comparative approach enables the testing of hypotheses in practical and ethical terms that would be otherwise difficult and could result in uproar if tested upon singular counties. It too does have drawbacks in that of selection bias and of contextual understanding of different countries ways but these can be remedied and even if it is not a perfect approach in that people can disrupt any hypothesi it is still of great value and worthwhile. A general but no less valuable reason for comparing across various nations can be to broaden a researchers horizons. Learning about different cultures and people can expand a person's knowledge from a narrower perspective that would be the case if they only studied one country.