The role of "area studies" in the comparative politics sub-field has been the subject of a prolonged and acrimonious debate. On one hand, advocates of a more deductive approach to social science inference have railed against area specialists for their presumed hostility to both generalizable theory and quantitative methodology. As Robert Bates warned in his initial "Letter from the President" in the APSA Comparative Politics Newsletter: Within the academy, the consensus has formed that area studies has failed to generate scientific knowledge. Many see area specialists as having defected from the social sciences to the camp of the humanists….They tend to lag behind others in terms of their knowledge of statistics, their commitment to theory, and their familiarity with mathematical approaches to the study of politics (Bates 1996).
Professor Kling of Washington University in St. Louis reviews the history, accomplishments, and future of comparative political research on Latin America. What scholars choose to study and how they go at it are described. Real progress in Latin American studies, says the author, depends on blending the traditional and modern versions of area studies.
The author defines an area study as the study of a region presenting a certain politico-social unity with a view to understanding and explaining its place and role in international society. This result can only be obtained by the systematic use of all branches of study that may provide valid explanations. This approach is not new, but the originality of US area studies lies in their systematic character, the number and variety of disciplines on which they draw and the novelty of the aim in view. 3 aspects of area research methodology are considered. (1) Place of area studies in the study of international relations. The scientific examination of the factors in the situation of a given country or group of countries implies that the chief aim is to assess the relationship between a geographical area and the rest of the world. (2) When can a region be considered an area and submitted to systematic study? The first case suitable for an area study is that of a dependent or independent territory with sufficiently pronounced individuality to enable it to play its own part in international relations. It is expedient to group a number of territories for an area study when (a) this group presents some unity of character (geographical, ethnic, linguistic, etc.) leading to common features in international relations or (b) when none of the elements in the group has pronounced individuality. (3) What are the elements of a systematic study and how is it possible to determine the disciplines to be employed? It is felt that history, geography and sociology should form the core of any area study . Other disciplines are used as required in particular geographic areas. The director will play an important role in choosing the area to be studied and in selecting the sciences that may be profitably used. The study must be made by a team, each member a specialist in a given area, the director being a specialist in international relations. M. Morris.
Although there are many problems in development research that can be adequately analysed along the lines of traditional single disciplinary research, these studies frequently reach the boundaries of each discipline and require some way of combining with the knowledge of neighbouring sciences to further the analysis. This combination of knowledge may be encyclopaedic only in the sense that the various inquiries into the same or related problems by various disciplines are simultaneously attempted and their conclusions are arranged in parallel or cumulative fashion so as to facilitate a synthetical understanding of the different aspects of the development process. Such a type of research may be called multidisciplinary.
