LITRITURE REVIEW – COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
This review will examine three pieces of literature from the books; Comparative politics by J Blonde, Issues and methods in comparative politics by Todd Landman, and theories and methods in political science by David Marsh and Tom Mackie. It aims to summarise the authors views, discuss the merits and problems of comparative government and politics, examine whether the authors have accomplished what they are aiming to do and also scrutinize which piece of literature is most successful.
To begin with, this will show the authors initial purpose of the texts and summarise the main views; Landman believes that “comparisons are a natural human activity” or “to compare is natural”. Within his work, he attempts to show the natural human activity of comparing relating it to the political world, allowing a fuller understanding, and how it is possible to make it scientific. Mackie and Marsh believe that comparisons within political science are widespread and thus difficult to set boundaries. They modify Richard Roses’ definition, so not only do they explain the conventional form of comparisons between countries; they also look at how comparisons can be made intra-country. Blonde, however feels that there is little purpose of investigative into the framework of comparative politics as it is uncontroversial and has been studied by many “great classical writers of political science, from Aristotle onwards” but we should instead look towards the object of the study
