Limits of comparative research

A presupposition and a lacuna

Given the enormous diversity of conceptual frameworks, levels of analysis, and methodological techniques informing historical and comparative research, many studies may be found that are uncompromisingly critical of existing Western democracies. At one point, beginning in the early 1960s and extending through the 1970s, first prominent Latin American theorists and then American comparativists described basic institutions and practices of Western democracies as intrinsically repressive. They leveled specific criticisms at dependencia, or the impact that these institutions and practices were having, and had, on Latin America. Yet, their central thesis was much broader. They insisted that Western democracies perpetuate and exacerbate inequalities, cross-national and domestic alike, that are both unjustified and unnecessary.

Admittedly, it is far more common today for social scientists to attribute particular social problems to structural or institutional defects of capitalism, or of the welfare state, or, ultimately, of modernity itself. Yet, this too “radicalizes” these problems. It suggests (but by no means demonstrates) that these problems are beyond the scope of possible liberal reform because they are reflections of Western institutions’ structural defects. The cumulative effect of these studies is not much different, therefore, from that of the more strident dependencia school: Basic institutions and practices of existing Western democracies are portrayed as structurally, irreparably, defective. Interest group politics within the United States has been roundly criticized along these lines for now over three decades (chapter 4).