.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
doi:10.1017/S104909651700110X	 © American Political Science Association, 2017	 PS • October 2017  979
The Profession
Trends in Political Science Research and
the Progress of Comparative Politics
Matthew Charles Wilson, WestVirginia University
ABSTRACT  This article illustrates major trends in political science research and frames the
progress of research agendas in comparative politics. Drawing on the titles and abstracts of
every article published in eight major political science journals between 1906 and 2015, the
study tracks the frequency of references to specific keywords over time.The analysis corresponds
to and complements extant descriptions of how the field has developed, providing
evidence of three ‘revolutions’ that shaped comparative politics—the divorce of political
science from history during its early years, a behavioral revolution that lasted until the late
1960s, and a second scientific revolution after 1989 characterized by greater empiricism.
Understanding the development of the subdiscipline, and viewing it through the research
published in political science over the last 100 years, provides useful context for teaching
future comparativists and encourages scholars to think more broadly about the research
traditions to which they are contributing.
A
s pointed out by Munck and Snyder (2007, 25),
“contentious debates about the direction of comparative
politics have raged since the 1980s [but]
they are rarely grounded in systematic evidence
about how research in the field is actually done.”
Munck (2007) also provided a comprehensive narrative of the
development of comparative politics, and other scholars elaborated
on the evolution of particular topics within its domain.1
Munck and Snyder (2007) and Sigelman (2006), among others,
quantified the scope and objectives of research published in a
restricted sample of journals and years.2 Still, to date, there has
not been an analysis that quantifies and visualizes the progression
of published research on different topics in comparative politics
across the span of the discipline’s development. This article
contributes to an expandedview by illustrating the progression of
research agendas pertinent to the study of comparative politics.
Although many of the major ideas that guide comparative
politics research are well known, their prevalence over time has
yet to be borne out by data from published research in the discipline.
Many introductory courses may not discuss the development
of concepts over time, and subject-specific courses do not
always explain the emergence of concepts relative to other topics
in the discipline. This can be problematic insofar as an ahistorical
view of research in the discipline can lead to an undervaluation
of eminent work of its time and make it difficult to understand
how the literature fits together. More important, ignoring the
history of published research risks overlooking the questions
and approaches to which scholars have already contributed and
obscuring the evolution of major concepts in the discipline. This
analysis complements characterizations of the development
of comparative politics research using data on the coverage of
specific topics (Boix and Stokes 2007; Lichbach and Zuckerman
2009; Munck 2007).
OUTLINE OF THE ANALYSIS
To evaluate trends in the topics discussed in political science
research, I selected eight leading journals based on US political
scientists’ evaluation of political science journals in 2007 (McLean
et al. 2009). In decreasing order of relative impact, the top-rated
journalswere AmericanPoliticalScienceReview (APSR), American
Journal of Political Science (AJPS), Journal of Politics (JOP), British
Journal of Political Science (BJPS), International Organization
(IO), World Politics (WP), Comparative Political Studies (CPS),
and Comparative Politics (CP).3 Of these eight, the latter three
are considered journals specific to comparative politics (Munck
and Snyder 2007). My decision to search within these top eight
journals—which include four general-interest journals and one
largely devoted to international affairs—stems from the fact that,
in practice, the division of political science research into one of
three domains is not hard and fast.4 The topics that may be of
interest to comparativists overlap into other areas and researchers
frequently draw on work from the other subdisciplines. Moreover,
ignoring the research published in the top discipline-wide journals
would bias the analysis against some of the most prestigious
research on topics relevant to comparative politics research.
Matthew Charles Wilson is assistant professor in political science atWestVirginia
University. He can be reached at mhwilson1@mail.wvu.edu.
980  PS • October 2017
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The Profession: The Pr o g r e ss o f C o m pa ra tiv e Politics
Thus, whereas the approach presented in this article is suitable
for examining trends in the discipline as a whole, its focus frames
the discussion of topics in the context of comparative politics
research. This focus is justified, in part, by the occurrence of three
journals among the top eight that are devoted primarily to comparative
politics research, whereas only one may be considered exclusive
to international relations and none specializes inAmerican politics
research.Although it may be beneficial, it is beyond the scope of this
article to elucidate onvarious research agendas across the entire dis-
cipline.
For each journal, I downloaded citation information for all
articles published from the date of the journal’s founding until
2015. I omitted from the sample any citation for which there was
neither author nor title. This eliminated front and back matter,
volume information, and letters from the editor, as well as the
voluminous notices and messages published during the early
decades of APSR. This omission nevertheless retained errata and
book reviews, culminating in a sample that contained 25,845
citations and represented 521 published issues between 1906 and
2015.
Figure 1 lists the number of titles and abstracts available by
year for each of the eight journals. The first journal to emerge was
APSR, which was first published in 1906. For the first few decades
of APSR’s existence, the journal published numerous reports
and briefings related to political matters that ran the gamut
from recent court decisions to trade disputes. With the outbreak
of World War II, additional political science journals began to
emerge. The first issue of JOP was published in 1939, followed by
IO and WP in 1947 and 1948, respectively. Correspondingly, the
number of items published in APSR precipitously declined. AJPS,
which assumed its current name in 1973, was initially published
as the Midwest Journal of Political Science in 1957. A decade later,
two journals emerged that focused on comparative politics—CPS
and CP, both in 1968; BJPS began publication in 1971. As figure 1
indicates, the publication of abstracts that summarized the content
of articles occurred much later, accelerating in the 1970s and
1980s. Previously, “abstracts” provided by the publisher consisted
of preliminary content.
TRENDS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
The turn of the twentieth century marked the birth of political
science in the United States: the American Political Science Association
was founded in 1903; its flagship publication, American
Political Science Review, was first published in 1906; and the Social
Science Research Council was formed in 1923. In addition to the
many bulletins on political functions, much of the research published
in APSR in the first few decades was concerned primarily
with discussing American political institutions. During the first
20 years of research published in APSR, roughly 1 in 10 articles
concerned Congress, whereas about 1 in 20 concerned the courts.
Following the end of World War II, epistemological change
occurred in the form of behavioralism, a philosophy influenced
by sociology that called for broadening political science to include
the study of informal procedures and behaviors (Dryzek 2006).
As Munck (2007) noted, the development of a behavioral focus
began in American politics as early as the 1920s, when scholars
including Charles Merriam opposed historical and descriptive
approaches to political science; however, comparative politicswas
not affected until after the war.
During the 1950s and 1960s, behavioralism was concerned with
constructing an overarching theory of politics based on observations
about the relationships among social institutions, embodied
by a prominent theory in sociology called “structural functionalism”
(Boix and Stokes 2007).5 Behavioralism also encouraged a more
scientific approach to theory and methods called “positivism”
(Lane 1996). The result was a greater emphasis on cross-national
statistics and an expanded focus beyond big countries in Europe
(Munck 2007). An example of the culmination of behavioralism
is in Almond and Verba (1963), who analyzed mass attitudes and
values across five countries to explain the role of culture in supporting
democratic institutions (Sabetti 2007).
As criticism of the behavioralist approach to political science
grew, a new generation began to reshape the field and introduce
a variety of new ideas. Although the research that comprised the
“post-behavioralist” periodwas not unified, Munck (2007) argued
that it was characterized by a focus on mid-range theory—that is,
developing and testing hypotheses that did not aim to identify an
overarching causal factor—and an emphasis on political determinants
and instruments of politics. The methods associated with
behavioralism continued, however; comparativists remained
wedded to qualitative and small-N studies, due in part to issues
of data availability. The result, therefore, was a division among
comparativists over the relative merits of qualitative and quantitative
research and the gradual distancing of comparative politics
research from American politics (Munck 2007).
In the late 1980s and 1990s, comparative politics research took
another turn that Munck (2007) called the “second scientific revolution,”
so named because behavioralism was also concerned
with the scientific method. Like the behavioralists of the 1950s
and 1960s, advocates of this new approach shared the goal of constructing
unified theories, but they drew on concepts and tools
from economics.6 Figure 2 compares references that might appear
to characterize the “behavioral” and “second scientific” revolutions
in comparative politics. Between 1950 and 1990, the predominant
focus was on political behavior, which was surpassed after 1990 by
a change in focus to political institutions. The rise of institutionalism
in political science entailed the contemporaneous emergence
of three different strands of “institutionalism”—historical, rational
choice, and sociological—each with a slightly different take on the
role of political institutions (Hall and Taylor 1996). The 2000s also
The turn of the twentieth century marked the birth of political science in the United States:
theAmerican Political ScienceAssociationwas founded in 1903; its flagship publication,
American Political Science Review, was first published in 1906; and the Social Science
ResearchCouncilwas formed in 1923.
PS • October 2017  981
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
witnessed the extension of the institutional “paradigm” to the
study of comparative authoritarianism (Pepinsky 2014). A comparison
of all journal citations to those in comparative politics–
specific journals (i.e., CP, CPS, and WP) is quite similar (see the
online appendix).
The research that comprised the behavioral revolution in
comparative politics tended to treat the role of the state as a
“black box,” which prompted a renewed effort to “bring the
state back in” in the 1970s (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol
1985; Munck 2007). As figure 3 shows, the second scientific
revolution constituted a renewed interest in the state and a
shift in focus to political institutions, as well as the adoption
of frameworks common to economics.7 The trends are roughly
the same among comparative politics journals, consistent
with the timing of their publication (see the online appendix).
Concurrent with increasing references to the state, scholars
adopted game-theoretic and rational-choice models that were
commonplace in economics—the growth of which was notable in
the 1980s and 1990s. The late 1960s also witnessed an increasing
interest in political methodology and the use of data to
test theory (Boix and Stokes 2007; Lichbach and Zuckerman
2009).8
According to Dalton (2000), models of cleavage- and partisanbased
voting began to be challenged in the 1980s. A wave of
democratization in the developing world that began in the mid-
1970s also spurred an interest in the linkages between citizens
and elites (Kitschelt 2000). Questions stemming from the growth
in electoral research included the effects of electoral rules on the
size and number of parties, the motivations and behavior of candidates
in elections, and the determinants of vote choice. Along
with the increasing focus on elections and electoral choice, there
was a shift in focus to individual voters and candidates, as evidenced
in figure 4. Thus, as scholars moved away from thinking
about group-based models ofvoting, they turned their attention to
Figure 1
Number of Citations by Journal
Thus, as scholars moved away from thinking about group-based models ofvoting, they turned
their attention to greater theorizing about the effect of elections on individual decision making.
982  PS • October 2017
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The Profession: The Pr o g r e ss o f C o m pa ra tiv e Politics
greater theorizing about the effect of elections on individual decision
making.
In the comparative politics journals that Munck and Snyder
(2007) analyzed between 1989 and 2004, research on economic
policy and reform constituted the largest share of articles. As
a result, figure 4 also illustrates references to specific policies
and issues, demonstrating a sharp increase that occurred in
the 1970s. The uptick in research on policy and reform resulted
from growing concern about making political science research
more accessible to policy makers. The Policy Studies Organization
emerged in the early 1970s, and the first issue of the Policy
Studies Journal was published in 1972.
Given the increased attention given to individuals, the turn
of the twenty-first century also was characterized by an increase
in research on identity politics, as exemplified in figure 5.
Although nowhere near the same levels as broader subjects—
including behavior and institutions, the state, and policy and
elections—aspects of identity (e.g., gender, ethnicity, and religion)
were most prominent in the 2000s. Specifically, the roles
of ethnicity—and identity, more broadly—became more salient
as scholars began to apply constructivist arguments to explain
outcomes related to conflict and political economy, which
treats identity as “fluid and endogenous to a set of social, economic,
and political processes” (Chandra 2001, 7). Ethnicity
was a topic that concerned roughly 1 in 10 articles in 2006,
which also was true of identity in 2013. As Munck and Snyder
(2007) noted, however, religious identity received far less
attention, which also is true of research on gender. Research
that included references to females or involved the topic of
gender represented roughly 1 in 20 articles in 2006, whereas
about 4% of references in 2013 concerned religion. Nevertheless,
the previous 40 years have witnessed more research than
ever before that addresses issues related to identity politics,
which is concurrent with growth in the focus on individuals
and policies.
DISCUSSION
Examining trends in political science research confirms scholars’
appraisals of how the discipline has progressed by illustrating
the development of specific research agendas pertinent to comparative
politics. Several points of interest can be gleaned from
this brief analysis. Consistent with the description provided by
Munck (2007), there is evidence confirming a “behavioral” and
“second scientific” revolution. Congruent with the turn to institutions,
references to the state also show a marked increase that
illustrates the resurgence of studies focusing on its role. Although
the growth of studies is not coterminous, the development of
a more empirical focus in political science came as a greater
number of scholars embraced theories of rational choice and
adopted frameworks from economics. Correspondingly, scholars
also shifted attention to individual decision making and collective
behavior and to issue- and policy-specific research. Finally,
research on the politics of ethnicity and identity has increased
considerably. Although less pronounced, the research on gender
and religion has been highest in the previous decade.
Figure 2
Article References to Institutions and
Behavior
Figure 3
Article References to the State, Rational
Choice, and Formal Models
Figure 4
Article References to Issues, Candidates, and
Elections
PS • October 2017  983
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
In terms of references to particular subjects, the discipline
has experienced several “‘revolutions.” As a whole, however,
a number of different research agendas have become pronounced.
Research in political science has become considerably more
empirical and, at the same time, more pluralist. Knowledge of
the progression of research in political science and its impact on
research agendas in comparative politics is important for understanding
the current shape of the field and for teaching about
the interrelation of different ideas. Furthermore, a broad overview
of the discipline reminds scholars of the larger traditions
and discussions to which they are contributing. Insofar as the
accumulation of research represents the development of how
scholars conceive of and measure politics, all political scientists
should be aware of how the discipline has emerged and how it
has been shaped by the dominant paradigms across the century.
CONCLUSION
This article sheds new light on the progression of comparative
politics research and the various research agendas that define it.
Focusing on specific topics in the titles and abstracts of published
research in eight major journals, it illustrates several dominant
trends in political science and confirmed descriptions of the “revolutions”
that shaped research in comparative politics (Munck
2007). The citations could be used to consider a host of other
questions and subjects. Nevertheless, the trends presented here
testify to a dynamic discipline and a coherent direction for the
development of comparative politics research.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
To view supplementary material for this article, please visit
https://doi.org/10.1017/S104909651700110X. n
NOTES
    1.       See, for example, the 2000 issue of
Comparative Political Studies dedicated
to summarizing research frontiers in the
discipline (Number 33, Issue 6/7), as well
as the 2006 centennial issue of APSR
(Number 100, Issue 4). Subject-specific
reviews include Hall and Taylor (1996)
and Geddes (1999).
    2.       Munck and Snyder (2007) examined
articles published in CPS, CP, and WP
between 1989 and 2004; Sigelman (2006)
analyzed the content of articles published
in APSR.
    3.       Hereinafter, I refer to each journal
using its corresponding abbreviation.
    4.       This is exemplified by the description
of IO—which self-identifies as covering
international affairs—the subject areas
of which include comparative political
economy.
    5.       “Structural functionalism” refers to a
sociological approach that focuses on the
relationships among social institutions to
explain how societies function.
    6.       See, for example, King et al. (1990),
Merrill III and Grofman (1999), and Medina
(2007).
    7.       The references shown in figure 3
exclude those that also include the words
America, United States, US, interstate,
southern state, and northern state.
    8.       On the increasing prominence of
quantitative methodology in several recent
decades, see King (1989) and King, Keohane,
and Verba (1994). On the debate between
quantitative and qualitative research
methods, see Brady and Collier (2004).
REFERENCES
Almond, Gabriel, and SidneyVerba. 1963. TheCivicCulture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Boix, Carles, and Susan C. Stokes. 2007. “Introduction.” In TheOxford Handbook of
Comparative Politics, ed. Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, 3–24. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Brady, Henry E., and David Collier. 2004. Rethinking Social Inquiry: DiverseTools,
Shared Standards. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Chandra, Kanchan. 2001. “Cumulative Findings in the Study of Ethnic Politics.”
Newsletter of the Organized Section in Comparative Politics of the American
Political ScienceAssociation 12 (1): 7–11.
Dalton, Russell J. 2000. “Citizen Attitudes and Political Behavior.” Comparative
Political Studies 33 (6/7): 912–40.
Dryzek, John S. 2006. “Revolutions without Enemies: Key Transformations in
Political Science.” American Political Science Review 100 (4): 487–92.
Evans, Peter B., Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol. 1985. Bringing the
State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Geddes, Barbara. 1999. “What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty
Years?” Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1): 115–44.
Hall, Peter A., and Rosemary C. R. Taylor. 1996. “Political Science and the Three
New Institutionalisms.” Political Studies 44 (4): 936–57.
King, Gary. 1989. Unifying Political Methodology: The Likelihood Theory of Statistical
Inference. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
King, Gary, James E. Alt, Nancy Elizabeth Burns, and Michael Laver. 1990. “A Unified
Model of Cabinet Dissolution in Parliamentary Democracies.” American Journal
of Political Science 34 (3): 846–71.
King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and SidneyVerba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific
Inference inQualitative Research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kitschelt, Herbert. 2000. “Linkages between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic
Polities.” Comparative Political Studies 33 (6/7): 845–79.
Lane, Ruth. 1996. “Positivism, Scientific Realism and Political Science: Recent Developments
in the Philosophy of Science.” Journal ofTheoretical Politics 8 (3): 361–82.
Lichbach, Mark Irving, and Alan S. Zuckerman. 2009. “Paradigms and Pragmatism:
Comparative Politics during the Past Decade.” In Comparative Politics: Rationality,
Culture, and Structure, ed. Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman, 1–17.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Figure 5
Article References to Identity Politics
984  PS • October 2017
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The Profession: The Pr o g r e ss o f C o m pa ra tiv e Politics
McLean, Iain, André Blais, James C. Garand, and Michael Giles. 2009. “Comparative
Journal Ratings: A Survey Report.” Political Studies Review 7: 18–38.
Medina, Luis Fernando. 2007. A Unified Theory of Collective Action and Social
Change. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Merrill, Samuel III, and Bernard Grofman. 1999. A Unified Theory of Voting.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Munck, Gerardo L. 2007. “The Past and Present of Comparative Politics.”
In Passion,Craft, and Method inComparative Politics, ed. Gerardo L. Munck and
Richard Snyder, 32–59. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Munck,Gerardo L., and Richard Snyder. 2007. “Debating the Direction ofComparative
Politics.” ComparativePoliticalStudies 40 (1): 5–31.
Pepinsky, Thomas. 2014. “The Institutional Turn in Comparative Authoritarianism.”
British Journal of Political Science 44 (3): 631–53.
Sabetti, Filippo. 2007. Democracy and Civic Culture. In The Oxford Handbook of
Comparative Politics, ed. Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, 340–362. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Sigelman, Lee. 2006. “TheCoevolution ofAmerican Political Science and the American
Political Science Review.” American Political Science Review 100 (4): 463–78.