(a) Discuss the interpretive approach to the study of comparative politics. (10 marks) (b) Explain the central tenets of the…

(a) Interpretive Approach to Comparative Politics

The interpretive approach to comparative politics prioritises meaning-centric analysis over deterministic causal models. Rooted in Max Weber’s concept of Verstehen (interpretive understanding) and elaborated through Clifford Geertz’s ethnographic method of ‘thick description’, it posits that political action cannot be understood without unpacking the subjective beliefs, symbols, and values that actors assign to their practices.

Scholars such as Mark Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes advance this approach through decentred governance, showing that political institutions are social constructs continuously renegotiated through contextual traditions and narratives. Consequently, the approach rejects positivist claims of value-neutrality and universal behavioural causality.

However, critics contend that its idiographic focus undermines generalisability and empirical predictability across different political systems. Despite these limitations, the interpretive approach remains indispensable for deconstructing Eurocentric institutional models and comprehending the varied cultural matrices of non-Western democracies.

(b) Central Tenets of World-Systems Theory

Formulated by Immanuel Wallerstein in The Modern World-System (1974), World-Systems Theory adopts the capitalist world-economy as its primary unit of analysis rather than the individual nation-state. Originating during the ‘long sixteenth century’ through European colonial expansion, this world-system is defined by a global division of labour and structural inequality.

The theory articulates a tripartite spatial hierarchy. The core controls high-skill, capital-intensive production and extracts global surplus. The periphery provides raw materials and low-wage, labour-intensive production. The semi-periphery exhibits features of both, acting as a political buffer against systemic destabilisation.

Unequal exchange perpetually transfers surplus value from the periphery to the core. The system reproduces itself through cyclical Kondratiev long waves of capital accumulation and shifting hegemonic transitions. Thus, development and underdevelopment are structurally relational processes within a unified global capitalist framework.

(c) Russian Expansionism and the "Greater Russia" Thesis

Contemporary Russian foreign policy, marked by the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, highlights Moscow's determination to re-establish hegemony across its declared "near abroad". Earlier signals included Vladimir Putin's 2005 description of the Soviet collapse as a major geopolitical catastrophe, the 2008 war in Georgia, his July 2021 essay on the "historical unity" of Russians and Ukrainians, and the claimed annexation of four Ukrainian regions in September 2022. By promoting Russkiy Mir (Russian World) ideology and spearheading regional integration via the Eurasian Economic Union, the Kremlin seeks an exclusive geopolitical sphere of influence reminiscent of the Soviet bloc.

However, viewing this purely as a restoration of the Soviet era overlooks key ideological and geopolitical shifts. Current Russian expansionism draws more on Tsarist imperial traditions, Orthodox conservative nationalism, and defensive realism against NATO’s eastward expansion than on Marxist-Leninist internationalism; indeed, in February 2022 Putin blamed Lenin for having created Ukraine, which points to an imperial rather than a Soviet template.

Furthermore, structural limitations—including prolonged Western sanctions, severe demographic decline, economic over-reliance on hydrocarbons, and the assertive sovereignty of post-Soviet states—severely constrain Moscow’s capacity to institutionalise a Soviet-style empire, making a full reconstitution of the Soviet space unviable.

(d) Facets and Relevance of the Idealist Approach

The idealist approach to international relations is grounded in the premise that human nature is rational and improvable, with roots in Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795) and Norman Angell's The Great Illusion (1910), which argued that economic interdependence made war irrational. Popularised through Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the establishment of the League of Nations, it rejects balance-of-power realpolitik in favour of international law, morality, collective security, the outlawing of war in the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), and what later became the democratic peace thesis (Michael Doyle, 1983), which posits that representative democracies rarely fight one another. E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939) dismissed this interwar thinking as "utopianism" that ignored power, and the League's failure seemed to prove him right.

In the contemporary global order, idealism remains highly relevant across multiple institutional architectures. The United Nations Charter system, the codification of universal human rights regimes, and the norm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) reflect idealist commitments to global justice and state accountability.

Furthermore, global public goods governance—exemplified by the Paris Climate Agreement and multilateral pandemic response mechanisms—demonstrates that survival requires institutionalised international cooperation, showing that idealist norms remain essential despite the resurgence of power politics.

(e) Changing Global Order and the Disarmament Deficit

The breakdown of the post-Cold War multilateral consensus and intensifying great-power rivalry have jeopardised decades of progress in nuclear and conventional disarmament. Heightened strategic friction among the United States, Russia, and China has dismantled critical bilateral arms control architectures, evidenced by the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty after the US withdrawal in 2019, Russia's suspension of New START in February 2023 and the treaty's expiry on 5 February 2026 without a legally binding successor, and Russia's withdrawal of its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in November 2023.

Simultaneously, major powers have embarked on extensive nuclear modernization programs and an unconstrained hypersonic weapons race, lowering the threshold for strategic stability. Minilateral security alignments such as the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal have raised proliferation concerns in the Indo-Pacific.

These developments have repeatedly deadlocked Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conferences, which failed to adopt consensus final documents in 2015, 2022 and again in May 2026. The one counter-current, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (in force since January 2021), has been rejected by every nuclear-armed state. As regional proxy conflicts escalate, strategic deterrence has overridden disarmament diplomacy, reversing past non-proliferation gains and initiating a volatile, multipolar arms race.