Comparative Method

Proximate Goals

Textbook presentations of social research usually focus on the goal of documenting general patterns characterizing a large population of observations. If researchers can demonstrate a relationship between one or more independent variables and a dependent variable, then they can better predict cases' values on the dependent variable, given knowledge of their scores on the predictor variables. Typically, the study of general patterns is conducted with a sample of observations drawn from a large population. The researcher draws inferences about the larger population based on his or her analysis of the sample.

By contrast, comparative research focuses not on relationships between variables or on problems of inference and prediction but on the problem of making sense of a relatively small number of cases, selected because they are substantively or theoretically important in some way (Eckstein, 1975). For example, a researcher might use the comparative method to study a small number of guerilla movements in an in-depth manner. Suppose these movements were all thought to be especially successful in winning popular support. To find out how they did it, the researcher would conduct in-depth studies of the movements in question. This case-oriented comparative study would differ dramatically from a “textbook” study. In the latter, the researcher would sample guerilla movements from the population of such movements (assuming this could be established) and then characterize these movements in terms of generic variables and their relationships (e.g., the correlation between the extent of foreign financial backing and the degree of popular support).

As these examples show, the key contrast is the researcher's proximate goal: Does the researcher seek to understand specific cases or to document general patterns characterizing a population? This contrast follows a longstanding division in all of science, not just social science. Georg Henrik von Wright (1971, pp. 1–33) argues in Explanation and Understanding that there are two main traditions in the history of ideas regarding the conditions an explanation must satisfy to be considered scientifically respectable. One tradition, which he calls “finalistic,” is anchored in the problem of making facts understandable. The other, called “causal-mechanistic,” is anchored in the problem of prediction. The contrasting goals of comparative research and “textbook” social research closely parallel this fundamental division.

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