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Comparing political systems: Establishing similarities and dissimilarities
Author(s) -
MEUR GISÉLE,
BERGSCHLOSSER DIRK
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1994.tb00440.x
Subject(s) - terminology , dilemma , politics , matching (statistics) , positive economics , political system , democracy , econometrics , macro , epistemology , sociology , mathematical economics , computer science , political science , economics , statistics , mathematics , linguistics , law , philosophy , programming language
. Comparative political analysis at the macro‐level of political systems can reduce the inevitably high complexity of such comparisons by the systematic matching or contrasting of cases, depending on the particular problem. Such ‘most similar systems’ or ‘most different systems’ designs, in Przeworski & Teune's terminology, thus constitute one of the major ways out of the usual ‘small N—many variables’ dilemma. This paper proposes a detailed and comprehensive method to establish such similarities and dissimilarities in a systematic and at all stages transparent way. The examples chosen refer to an analysis of the conditions of survival or breakdown of democratic systems in the inter‐war period in Europe.