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Social scientists tend to accept lower standards of rigor in cross-national surveys than in national surveys, leading to heroic conclusions about differences between nations on the basis of obviously faulty data. Arising perhaps from a commendable wish to respect different cultural norms, even some of the most conscientious cross-national studies make the mistake of permitting considerable variations by country in the type and quality of the methods they deploy. Meanwhile, analysts of cross-national data frequently abandon offering explanations and interpretations in favor of league tables of distributions showing merely "gee whiz" national differences. This article acknowledges the formidable obstacles in the way of achieving rigor in large-scale comparative studies and offers 10 possible rules to mitigate the difficulties. It suggests that bigger is usually worse and recommends routine cross-national collaboration in analysis and interpretation—not just in design, development, and execution—among scholars in each of the nations under the microscope.

There has been a revolution in comparative politics. But as with X all revolutions, it is difficult to date its beginning, hard to chart its course, and now, when the revolution has become established, difficult to say what has been accomplished. The publication of Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, edited by Robert A. Dahl, provides a good occasion to reconsider the revolution and to review some of the problems that have emerged. It is a good occasion because the book is both a splendid comparative work and one that illustrates some of the dilemmas of comparative research.

Regression analysis in comparative research suffers from two distinct problems of statistical inference. First, because the data constitute all the available observations from a population, conventional inference based on the long-run behavior of a repeatable data mechanism is not appropriate. Second, the small and collinear data sets of comparative research yield imprecise estimates of the effects of explanatory variables. We describe a Bayesian approach to statistical inference that provides a unified solution to these two problems. This approach is illustrated in a comparative analysis of unionization.

The following material is excerpted from Chapter 1, "The Human Dimension of Comparative Research," of Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder's forthcoming book, Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics, which will be published in 2006 by The Johns Hopkins University Press (www.press.jhu.edu). The book consists of in-depth interviews with fifteen leading scholars in the field of comparative politics: Gabriel A. Almond, Robert H. Bates, David Collier, Rob-ert A. Dahl, Samuel P. Huntington, David D. Laitin, Arend Lijphart, Juan J. Linz, Barrington Moore, Jr., Guillermo O'Donnell, Adam Przeworski, Philippe C. Schmitter, James C. Scott, Theda Skocpol, and Alfred Stepan. These scholars discuss their intellectual formation, their major works and ideas, the nuts and bolts of the research process, their relationships with colleagues, collaborators, and students, and the evolution of the field. The excerpt addresses one of the most elusive aspects of scientific inquiry: the process of generating good ideas. All quoted material presented in this excerpt is taken from the interviews in Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics.

Comparative politics has traditionally not been one of the dominant sub‐fields of political science in the Nordic countries. Although early pioneering efforts were made by Herbert Tingsten and later by Stein Rokkan, this field of research led an obscure life in these countries until the late 1980s/early 1990s. This article gives a short overview of the development and present state of comparative research in the Nordic countries. It also gives a brief account of the comparative research profiles at the political science departments in Nordic universities. In order to give an empirical assessment of the status of comparative politics among Nordic political scientists, the article follows up an earlier study on publication patterns in five Nordic political science journals. In addition, a bibliographical analysis of Nordic contributions in international journals with a focus on comparative politics is undertaken. The results show, among other things, that there has been a marked increase in the share and number of comparative articles published by Danish, Swedish and Norwegian scholars. In Finland (and Iceland), however, no similar trend can be discerned. The conclusion is that the internationalization of political science is likely to stimulate cross‐country research and accordingly comparative politics is likely to consolidate its position as a major political science discipline in Scandinavia.

Although quantitative and qualitative approaches are sometimes presented as being in opposition to each other, it is argued that they can, more usefully, be viewed as complementary. Qualitative work can make an important contribution both to pan-European and country-specific comparative research. Most studies have capitalized on qualitative methods at the outset of projects (principally for their ability to develop survey instruments) and, perhaps, less frequently, in order to enhance cultural sensitivity of such tools. However, more imaginative sequencing of methods can pay enormous dividends. Qualitative methods can also furnish hypotheses for investigation in quantitative phases of research studies, and can also be employed in order to better understand the mechanisms linking variables as identified by quantitative work. In particular, qualitative methods can be used to advantage in exploring surprising or anomalous findings. Stand-alone qualitative studies are also valuable, and can address comparison, since they can be harnessed to study change over time or, even, cross-country comparisons. If we are to realize the full potential of qualitative studies in comparative research, however, we need to pay attention to research design issues, seeking to be more imaginative in our sequencing of methods and appreciating the potential of purposive sampling to illuminate comparisons.