Period

Substantive Focus

Comparative Method

Public law phase

Inter-war period

Institutional design and political order  

Objects of inquiry: presidential vs. parliamentary regimes, federal vs. unitary systems, political party organizations, legal and legislative instruments, democratic, fascist, and socialist regimes     

Descriptive history

Formal and configurative analysis

Basic unit of analysis: individual countries (mostly in Europe and North America)

Behavioral Revolution of  1940s-1960s

Political behavior

Explaining patterns of political development, including democracy, political instability, and political violence

Objects of inquiry: interest groups, parties, elections, decision making, rules of the game, the military, peasants, students, and workers

Many-country comparisons Cross-national indicators Quantitative analysis

Search for covering laws

and universal generalizations

Basic unit of analysis: individuals and individual countries (global and regional samples)

Institutional revival

Relationship between institutions and political actors 

Objects of inquiry: democracy and democratic transition, revolution, economic and political dependency, political protest, public policy mechanisms and outcomes, and the welfare state

Qualitative and quantitative techniques

Inferences limited to similar countries outside scope of comparison

Basic unit of analysis: individuals and individual countries (global and regional samples)

New eclecticism – 1990s

Individual, institutional, and cultural foundations of politics

Objects of inquiry: democratic transition, institutional design,

social movements, globalization, transnational networks, political and cultural diffusion

Many-, few-, and single-country studies

Qualitative and quantitative techniques

Universal generalizations, as well as regional and country-specific inferences

Basic unit of analysis: individuals and individual countries (global and regional samples)