The connections between comparative politics and political theory are
harder to summarize because many of the practitioners of the former are
area specialists with only a limited interest in theory. Those comparativists
who use either large-n quantitative studies or small-n comparative case
studies are often more interested in simple explanatory theory, one source
of which is rational choice theory. But there are also points of engagement
with political theory as understood in thisHandbook. The comparative study
of social movements and their relationships with the state has drawn upon
the idea of the public sphere in democratic political theory, and vice versa.
Accounts of the role of the state in political development have drawn upon
liberal constitutionalist political theory. More critical accounts of the state in
developing societies have drawn upon Marxist theory. In the last two decades
democratization has been an important theme in comparative politics, and
this work ought to have beneWted from a dialogue with democratic theory.
Unfortunately this has not happened. Studies of democratization generally
work with a minimalist account of democracy in terms of competitive
elections, developed in the 1940 s by Joseph Schumpeter ( 1942 ), ignoring the
subsequent sixty years of democratic theory. Recent work on race and dias-
pora studies in a comparative context is perhaps a more promising site of
connection, invoking Tocqueville (see also Bourdieu and Wacquant 1999 ;
Hanchard 2003 ). And theorists working on multiculturalism and race have
been especially attentive to comparative politics questions about the variety
of governmental forms and their interaction with cultural diVerence (Carens
2000 ; Kymlicka 2001 ; Taylor 1994 ; Gilroy 2000 ).
Methodology might seem the sub-Weld least likely to engage with political
theory, and if methodology is thought of in terms of quantitative techniques
alone, that might well be true. However, methodology is also home to
reXection on what particular sorts of methods can do. Here, political theorists
are in an especially good position to mediate between the philosophy of social
science on the one hand, and particular methods on the other. Taylor ( 1979 )
and Ball ( 1987 ) point to the inevitable moment of interpretation in the
application of all social science methods, questioning the positivist self-
image of many of those who deploy quantitative methods. The interdiscipli-
narity that characterizes so much political theory provides especially fruitful
material for methodological reXection.
Public policy is at the ‘‘applied’’ end of political science, but its focus
on the relationship between disciplinary knowledge and political practice
invites contribution from political theory; and many political theorists see
28 john s. dryzek, bonnie honig & anne phillips