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PS1132 (Prelim Paper) By Poll Anthony R.

Santillan

INTRODUCTION To examine why countries develop and act in the way they do, there are methods used by Comparative Political Scientists. As years go by, more and more theories or approaches are being created. These are considered to be causal arguments for they make specific arguments about what exactly is needed in order for a country to develop and progress. These theories are called frameworks of analysis; they offer ways of examining countries and each theory offers elements, or factors, which are important to look at when studying countries. This paper describes or examines rational choice theory, cultural analysis, and structural approaches. It answers the question, Why each theory or approach is important to study comparative politics? I. Rational Choice Theory Economic assumption has successfully claimed that people are motivated by the possibility of making a profit, and this has authorized it to construct vigorous, and regularly predictive, models of human behavior. As its achievement has long appeared to be the most flourishing among other social sciences, it has led many other socialist scholars to shed their research interests in its path. They have considered that if they could only tag on the methods of economics, they could attain similar successes in their own field of studies. Consequently, political theorists, and other social scientists, have made an effort to develop theories around the idea that all action is fundamentally 'rational' in nature and that people calculate the possible costs and benefits of any action before making decision of what to do (Elster 1986; Coleman 1992; Scott 2000). This political analysis approach is widely known as a rational choice theory and is considered to be among the most influential and most discussed theories in Politics. It claims to predict the political outcome in the future and shadow the past of the world. According to Margaret Levi, the strengths of the rational choice approach includes: (a) it has the capacity to produce testable theory; (b) its ability to make sense of a correlation or a set of events by providing a story that indentifies the causal mechanisms linking independent and

PS1132 dependent variables; (c) its universalism that allows us to make generalization that are applicable to cases beyond those cases of immediate investigation. Among the weaknesses of this approach are: (a) the approach seems inadequately sensitive to the historical, political, and cultural contexts (Levi 1997). As a matter of fact, political culture scholars argue that the conceptual weakness of rational choice theory can be corrected through the use of political cultures; political culture when conceptually clear and empirically defined is able to specify the whole range of human objectives or goals (Lane 1992). In Rational Choice Theory, as we have discussed, individuals are rational and tend to make choices that are expected to maximize their utilities. It has the ability to help us explain and understand the social world. It is valuable in cross- national studies because of its commitment to scientific progress by means of hypothesis-generating, fact-finding, testability, and partial universalism. II. Cultural Analysis As a discipline, cultural analysis is based on using qualitative research methods of the social sciences, in particular ethnography and anthropology, to collect data on cultural phenomena; in an effort to gain new knowledge or understanding through analysis of that data. This is particularly useful for understanding and mapping trends, influences, effects, and affects within cultures. However, significant problems arise over methodological issues with this kind of analysis to study politics. First is the lack of precision about culture as a unit of analysis. The biggest obstacle cultural research faces is the question of how it should be observed, recorded, and interpreted. Cultural Studies is not a unified theory, but a diverse field of study encompassing many different approaches, methods and academic perspectives. Culture is important to the study of comparative politics because it provides a framework for organizing peoples daily worlds. Others are related to the concept of culture itself and the difficulty of distinguishing culture from related concepts such as social organization, political behavior, and values. Problems also arise because of the mechanisms linking culture and political action.

PS1132 III. Structural Approaches Structuralism, from which Structural Analysis derives, is the methodological principle that human culture is made up of systems in which a change in any element produces changes in the others. "An analysis is structural if, and only if, it displays the content as a model, i.e., if it can isolate a formal set of elements and relations in terms of which it is possible to argue without entering upon the significance of the given content" (Benoist, 8). In other words, Structuralism is not concerned with the content of a text or any other kind of system; rather, it analyzes and explores the structures underlying the text or system, which make the content possible. One of the leading principles of Structuralism is that the form defines the content ("form is content"). That is that the underlying structure of a text or system, which presents and organizes the content, determines the nature of that content as well as its message or communicated information. Thus Structuralism analyzes how meaning is possible and how it is transmitted - regardless of the actual meaning. CONCLUSION My grand theory about the three theories is, perchance, derived from their ontological differences. Rationalists study how actors employ reason to satisfy their interests. Culturalists study rules that constitute individual and group identities. Structuralists explore relations among actors in an institutional context. These three discussed approaches have dominated the field of comparative politics. They all have the same aim, explain social phenomena they just have different assumptions and use different methods. As long as the theory used is an empirical approach, studying comparative politics can somehow be successful. I think that these three approaches are more useful if seen as complimentary rather than as antagonistic. As Zuckerman and Lichbach indicate, no approach displays rigid and uniform orthodoxy; and they share an ontological and epistemological symmetry. (1997). In order to improve theory in our field we should embrace creative confrontations and try to absorb the best out of each school of thought.

PS1132 BIBLIOGRAPHY Rational Choice Theory. (n.d.). University of Regina, personal web server. Retrieved July 28, 2013, from http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/f1000.htm Cultural analysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved July 28, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_analysis Cultural studies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved July 29, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure - Google Books. (n.d.).Google Books. Retrieved July 29, 2013, from http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politicsinternational-relations/comparative-politics/comparative-politics-rationality-culture-andstructure

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