Determinacy-Choice, Stability-Change: Some Thoughts on a Contemporary Polemic in Political Theory

Abstract

A MOOD OF DISILLUSIONMENT APPEARS TO BE SWEEPING THE FIELD of comparative politics and political development. This comes after almost two decades of rather impressive accomplishment, both from a qualitative and quantitative point of view. From small beginnings in the first years after the second world war, there is now a quite impressive literature in this field. Each area of the world has something like a ‘five-foot shelf’ of monographic studies of political processes, patterns and developmental tendencies. Some of these shelves are smaller than others. The Latin American shelf, for example, has lagged in growth but is in process of rapid improvement. The Middle Eastern shelf leaves much to be desired, but even here there are signs of stirring and of potential productivity. In addition to these ‘area shelves’ which show increasing signs of cumulativeness, of drawing on each other for perspective and for hypotheses, there is a ‘super shelf’ of comparative and theoretical studies which draws upon the area shelves and which contributes frameworks, approaches and hypotheses for monographic studies.