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40 Comp. Pol. Stud. 5 (2007)

handle is hein.journals/compls40 and id is 1 raw text is: Debating the Direction of 101 10010414006294815 http://cpsisagepub.com Comparative Politics http:/onlie.agepubxcom An Analysis of Leading Journals Gerardo L. Munck University of Southern California, Los Angeles Richard Snyder Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island This article contributes to ongoing debates about the direction of compara- tive politics through an analysis of new data on the scope, objectives, and methods of research in the field. The results of the analysis are as follows. Comparative politics is a rich and diverse field that cannot be accurately char- acterized on the basis of just one dimension or even summarized in simple terms. In turn, the tendency to frame choices about the direction of the field in terms of a stark alternative between an old area studies approach and a new economic approach relies on largely unsupported assumptions. It is therefore advisable to focus on problematic methodological practices that, as this study shows, are widespread in comparative research and thus pose serious imped- iments to the production of knowledge. Keywords: comparative politics; paradigm; scope; methods; area studies; rational choice S ince the late 1980s, scholars of comparative politics based in the United States have debated many fundamental issues concerning three broad dimensions of the research process: the scope and objectives of research, the methods of theory generation, and the methods of empirical analysis. In these discussions, conventional research practices and proposed alternatives have Authors' Note: We thank David Laitin for suggesting that we write this article and for orga- nizing a panel with the editors of Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, and World Politics at the 2005 APSA Annual Convention in Washington, DC. We are grateful to Angela Hawken for her advice on the construction of the data set and the analysis of the data and to Matthew Lieber for his assistance with data collection. In addition, we appreciate comments from Yitzhak Brudny, James Caporaso, John Londregan, Sebastian Mazzuca, David Samuels, Saika Uno, and three anonymous reviewers. 5

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