Valtiot hajoavat ja yhdentyvät - mitä tapahtuu vertailevalle politiikan tutkimukselle?

Authors

• Erkki Berndtson

Abstract

Comparative politics as a recognized subfield of political science was a result of both the breakdown of colonialism and the rise of behavioralism in American political science after the Second World War. The formation of new nation states has continued to this very day, although the reverse trend of global integration (through the global economy, media and social interaction) has increased in importance. Developing the proper method for comparative politics in this situation, the problems of behavioralism (the emphasis on structural-functionalism and survey research, the narrow concept of political culture) must be avoided, although it is also possible to learn from them. Comparative politics must be based on the inherent processes in every society: politics, work and symbolic interaction. States are flexible political spaces which are continuously rearranged and which are to be understood as specific political cultures. Because of differences in size, population and internal fragmentation, the comparison of states can only be meaningfully carried out, however, in relation to their position in the world system.