Comparative Politics

Comparative politics is the systematic comparison of political systems across countries, regions, and historical periods — the attempt to discover what causes regimes to persist or collapse, democracies to consolidate or erode, and institutions to function or fail. The field's central methodological problem is causal heterogeneity: what causes democratization in South Korea may not cause democratization in Tunisia, because contexts differ in ways that defy generalization. The most productive responses have been most