(a) Discuss the main limitations of the comparative method to the study of Political Science. (10 marks) (b) What are the main…

(a) Limitations of the Comparative Method

The comparative method is central to political science, yet its limits are structural.

1. Ethnocentrism: early comparative politics (Almond and Coleman, The Politics of the Developing Areas, 1960) took Western liberal democracy as the benchmark and read non-Western systems as deviations.
2. Equivalence: Giovanni Sartori (1970) warned of “conceptual stretching”. “Federalism” or “parliament” in India, France and the United States performs different functions in different histories.
3. Many variables, small N: Arend Lijphart (1971) showed that too few cases and too many variables weaken causal inference and invite over-generalisation.
4. Galton’s problem: cases are not independent because states borrow institutions from one another, so a correlation may only reflect diffusion.
5. Value-loading: the choice of cases, variables and indicators reflects the researcher’s normative commitments.
6. Selection bias: studying only successful democracies or completed revolutions skews conclusions.

The method works best when paired with historical depth, process tracing and explicit criteria of comparability.

(b) Challenges for Developing Countries under Globalisation

1. Shrinking policy space: IMF conditionalities, WTO rules and investment treaties constrain fiscal, industrial and regulatory choices, as in India’s 1991 stabilisation programme and its long WTO dispute over public stockholding for food security.
2. Unequal terms of trade: commodity exporters face volatile prices while importing high-value goods and technology.
3. Premature deindustrialisation (Dani Rodrik): manufacturing peaks at lower income levels, limiting job creation.
4. Debt and capital volatility: sudden capital outflows and a strong dollar raise debt burdens, as Sri Lanka’s 2022 default showed.
5. Technology divide: data, platforms, semiconductors and AI capacity are concentrated in a few economies.
6. Asymmetric mobility: capital moves freely, labour does not, while skilled workers emigrate (brain drain).
7. Cultural homogenisation and identity backlash.
8. Environmental asymmetry: developing states bear climate impacts they did little to cause and now face carbon border measures such as the EU CBAM.

Responses include industrial policy (India’s PLI schemes), South–South cooperation and the push to reform global institutions through the G20 and BRICS.

(c) Commonalities between Marxist and Realist Approaches

1. Materialism: both explain international politics through material power and economic capacity rather than ideas, law or morality.
2. Conflict as structural: realists derive rivalry from anarchy and the security dilemma, Marxists from class antagonism and uneven capitalist development (Lenin, Imperialism, 1916).
3. Scepticism of idealism: E.H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939), influenced by the Marxist critique of ideology, exposed the liberal “harmony of interests” as the ideology of satisfied powers. Marxists likewise treat international law and institutions as reflecting dominant interests.
4. Hierarchy: realist hegemonic stability theory (Gilpin) and Wallerstein’s core–periphery world-system both describe an unequal, ordered hierarchy among states.
5. Pessimism about perpetual peace: both doubt that trade or institutions alone can end conflict.

They differ on the unit of analysis: realism is state-centric, Marxism class-centric and transnational.

(d) Bipolarity versus Multipolarity

Case for bipolarity: Kenneth Waltz (“The Stability of a Bipolar World”, 1964, Theory of International Politics, 1979) argued that with two great powers threats are clear, responsibility cannot be passed and miscalculation is less likely. Nuclear deterrence reinforced this, and John Lewis Gaddis called the Cold War the “Long Peace”. Mearsheimer (“Back to the Future”, 1990) warned that a multipolar post-Cold War Europe would be less stable. The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) showed two rivals managing a crisis directly.

Case for multipolarity: Karl Deutsch and J. David Singer (1964) argued that more powers create cross-cutting ties that dilute hostility. The Concert of Europe largely kept great-power peace from 1815 to the Crimean War. Bipolarity also displaced violence into proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan and squeezed smaller states, prompting India’s non-alignment.

Bipolarity reduced the risk of direct great-power war in the nuclear age, but it did not bring peace to the global South. Stability depends as much on nuclear deterrence and institutions as on the number of poles.

(e) National Interest as an Essentially Contested Concept

W.B. Gallie (1956) called a concept essentially contested when its proper use involves endless dispute among its users. Arnold Wolfers (1952) similarly described national security as “an ambiguous symbol”.

1. Theoretical disagreement: Morgenthau’s “interest defined in terms of power” treats it as objective. Liberals add prosperity, democracy and rules, constructivists (Wendt) see interests as products of identity, and Marxists see a dominant class interest presented as national.
2. Who defines it: governments, bureaucracies, parties, business and civil society compete to define it, so domestic politics shapes it.
3. Vital versus secondary interests: survival and territorial integrity are widely shared, but priorities beyond them are disputed.
4. Change over time: India moved from non-alignment to strategic autonomy and multi-alignment, as in its simultaneous membership of the Quad and the SCO.

A core of survival and security commands broad consensus, so the concept is contested more at the margins than at the core.