Comparison is the engine of knowledge. Because the comprehension of a single case is linked to the understanding of many cases, because we perceive the particular better in the light of generalities, international comparison in-creases tenfold the possibility of explaining political phenomena. The observer who studies just one country could interpret as normal what in fact appears to the comparativist as abnormal. Even that which is most familiar can escape perception. Was ist bekannt, ist nicht erkannt, underlined Hegel. The problem is not merely to evaluate the banality or the singularity of these kinds of phe

Comparison is a universal method in the social sciences; it is worthwhile not only to those who study an international field. Even if we intend to study electoral participation in a single country, we proceed by comparisons: between men and women, young and old, city dwellers and rural villagers, and so on. Even for this kind of study, international comparisons might provide supple-mentary support. One would better understand the behavior of French workers if one were to establish points of reference in some neighboring countries. It is easier to identify trends in the British economic development by analyzing what happened at the same time in Germany or France. It is not surprising that the historical method is so often combined with the comparative method.

Functional equivalence is most useful when we consider highly contrasting countries. Functionalists have, in fact, purposefully designed it to make possicomparison between two countries when one is structured in an embryonic way and the other has reached a high level of structural differentiation. For example, it would be easier to compare Germany and Austria without the conof functional equivalence than it would be to compare Indonesia and Can

Necessarily, the more a system develops, the more it becomes differentiated; the specialization of structures tends to grow until each particular function is performed by a specific institution. It is incumbent upon the comparativist to bring to light the way in which various specialized political agencies have hiscrystallized—executive power, legislatures, bureaucrats, courts—and to indicate which different functions could be fulfilled by similar structures in various historic, cultural, or systemic contexts.

Advanced nations have largely eliminated vertical cleavages as a result of unified educational systems, mass media, and political party networks at the national level. In these countries, the significant cleavages are at the level of socioeconomic interests; even ideologies are rooted in these conflicting interests. Religious or regional allegiances, except in consociational democracies, have lost much of their weight; social stratification is primarily horizontal.

This is not true for most of the developing countries, which retain very important and deeply rooted vertical structures. One would certainly find, from this point of view, very great differences between Latin America and Black Af-rica, for instance. In the one area, there exists a tremendous amount of religious and linguistic homogeneity.

Anglo-Saxon nations are a good example of a discontinuous series of coununited by a common political culture. One can ask if what they have in common weighs heavier in the balance than what differentiates them. Thus geographical proximity is neither the sole nor necessarily the best way of defining a relatively homogeneous world. Some countries can be in different continents and yet present striking similarities. Cultural kinship or historical heritage can have more weight than proximity. But other characteristics can enable comparisons between countries that are at the four corners of the earth. One could thus choose France, Japan, and Austria for a study on state centralism; or Hong Kong, Sing-apore, Uruguay, and Luxembourg to form a series of mini-states; or Canada and Malaysia as multiethnic entities.

It is not always easy to make a distinction between socio-cultural context and political structure as the two intercommunicate, and an analogy at one of these levels generally leads to an analogy at the other. But the emphasis may be either on culture or on structure.

In the natural sciences it is easy to predict the results of an experiment carried out in a laboratory. History, by contrast, never repeats itself. The same causes will never produce the same results because they will never be recombined in the same way. Even if the scientific spirit is capable of identifying a large number of factors, "historical events result from a combination of factors which is unique."1

This does not impede social scientists from leaning toward prediction. This propensity is more visible in economics and demography, which are rich in curves of evolution that seem naturally to call for extrapolation. A birthrate or a production of steel or electric energy seems more predictable than the comfeatures of political institutions or behaviors. But the desire to forecast the future does not spare any discipline in the social sciences.

Contents:

Nation, state, nation-state.

National political systems in comparison.

Modern classifying systems in comparison.

Methods and approaches of nation-states comparison.