Suchergebnisse

This article analyses the representation and main characteristics of comparative politics articles published in the journal Politicka misao. Starting from the assumption that the political and academic fields are engaged in a process of 'reciprocal legitimation', we divided the period of analysis into two phases and research subsamples. The first encompasses articles published in the period 1964-1989, while the second covers articles published in the period 1990-2013. Content analysis reveals that during the first phase comparative politics articles were weakly represented in the journal. The few articles that belong to the field were mostly written from a Marxist perspective, and occasionally from the perspective of old normative institutionalism. Overall they were methodologically unreflective, descriptive and configurative. The most frequent topics were self-managing democracy, communist and revolutionary parties, anti-imperial movements and conflicts in Third World countries. The time period after 1990 is characterised by a strengthening of the field of comparative politics. First of all, there is a notable increase in the number of articles dedicated to elections, electoral systems, political parties and party systems, legislatures and governments, constitutionalism and the judiciary, political culture, nationalism, as well as European institutions and processes. Secondly, theoretical approaches are more diversified, ranging from new institutionalism, behavioralism and pluralism to rational choice theory and cultural theory. Though case studies and focused studies with a small-N are the most frequent empirical strategies, overall methodology remains the weakest element of domestic academic production in comparative politics, while explicitly methodological discussions remain extremely rare. Adapted from the source document.