How is the modern comparative politics approach different from the traditional legal-institutional approach? (2010, 20 Marks)
Until 1945 the comparative study of politics was in substance comparative government: a legal-institutional study of Western constitutions by scholars such as James Bryce, A. V. Dicey, Herman Finer and Carl J. Friedrich. Decolonisation and the behavioural revolution produced modern comparative politics, which differs in its unit, scope, method and purpose.
The traditional approach
It studied written constitutions, statutes and the formal powers of legislatures, executives and courts, mostly in Britain, France, the United States and Germany, one country per chapter. Roy C. Macridis (The Study of Comparative Government, 1955) judged it essentially non-comparative, descriptive, parochial, static and monographic. Its legacy is still valuable: Dicey’s rule of law, Walter Bagehot’s dignified and efficient parts of the constitution (1867), and Finer’s genuinely comparative Theory and Practice of Modern Government (1932).
Points of difference
| Criterion | Traditional legal-institutional | Modern comparative politics |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | The state as formal institutions | The political system: structures and functions |
| Scope | Western Europe and the United States | Global, including post-colonial and authoritarian states |
| Focus | Constitutions, laws, formal powers | Parties, groups, elections, culture, socialisation, political economy |
| Method | Historical, legal, descriptive | Empirical, behavioural, quantitative |
| Values | Normative and prescriptive | Value-neutral in aim, explanatory |
| Theory | Little theory-building | Systems (David Easton), structural-functionalism (Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, 1966), development, political culture |
| Neighbours | Law, history, philosophy | Sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology |
| Character | Static | Dynamic: change, development, breakdown |
Why the shift occurred
- New states: written constitutions in Asia and Africa described little of how power worked. India’s text did not reveal the one-party dominance Rajni Kothari called the “Congress system” (1964), nor the modern, traditional and saintly idioms of politics that W. H. Morris-Jones (The Government and Politics of India, 1964) found operating beneath the constitution.
- Totalitarian experience: fascist and communist regimes kept constitutions that masked unconstrained power.
- Behavioural science: Charles E. Merriam and Harold D. Lasswell turned attention to behaviour, and Almond’s Committee on Comparative Politics (1954) and The Politics of the Developing Areas (1960, with James S. Coleman) built categories able to compare every kind of regime.
What the contrast reveals
The modern approach had its own failings. Grand systems theory explained too little; development theory equated progress with Westernisation; and its claimed value-neutrality hid normative choices, the charge Easton accepted when he announced a post-behavioural revolution of relevance and action in 1969. From the 1970s the pendulum swung back towards institutions: James G. March and Johan P. Olsen’s new institutionalism (1984) and Theda Skocpol’s call to bring the state back in (1985) showed that rules shape behaviour rather than merely housing it. India’s anti-defection law (Tenth Schedule, 1985) is a clear case: a formal rule that reorganised legislators’ conduct.
Current evidence confirms why text alone cannot suffice. The V-Dem Democracy Report 2026 downgraded the United States from liberal to electoral democracy although its constitution was unchanged, and it still classes India as an electoral autocracy while the EIU Democracy Index 2025 ranks it a flawed democracy. Only analysis of executive behaviour, courts and civil liberties in practice registers such erosion, and only an explicit definition explains why two indices disagree.
Conclusion
The modern approach replaced the description of legal forms with the explanation of political behaviour across the world. Its lasting lesson, however, is a synthesis: institutions without behaviour are empty, and behaviour without institutions is unanchored, which is why contemporary comparative politics is behavioural in method and institutional in focus.