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Comparative politics is a subfield of political science, characterized by an empirical approach based on the comparative method. In fact, comparative politics does not have a substantive focus in itself, but rather a methodological one it focuses on "the how but does not specify the what of the analysis".^[1] In other words, comparative politics is not defined by the object of its study, but rather by the method it applies to study political phenomena. When applied to specific fields of study, comparative politics may be referred to by other names, such as for example comparative government (the comparative study of forms of government) or comparative foreign policy (comparing the foreign policies of different States in order to establish general empirical connections between the characteristics of the State and the characteristics of its foreign policy).

Sometimes, especially in the United States, the term "comparative politics" is used to refer to "the politics of foreign countries". This usage of the term however should be considered incorrect.^[2]

The comparative method is - together with the experimental method, the statistical method and the case study approach - one of the four fundamental scientific methods which can be used to test the validity of general empirical propositions,^[3] i.e. to establish empirical relationships among two or more variables while all other variables are held constant.^[4] In particular, the comparative method is generally used when neither the experimental nor the statistical method can be employed on the one hand, experiments can only rarely be conducted in political science;^[5] on the other hand the statistical method implies the mathematical manipulation of quantitative data about a large number of cases, while sometimes political research must be conducted by analysing the behaviour of qualitative variables in a small number of cases.^[6] The case study approach cannot be considered a scientific method according to the above definition, however it can be useful to gain knowledge about single cases, which can then be put to comparison according to the comparative method.^[7]

Several different strategies can be used in comparative research.^[8]

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