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Area Studies and the Discipline: a Useful Controversy?

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Area Studies and the Discipline: a Useful Controversy? Area Studies and the Discipline: A Useful Controversy? The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Bates, Robert H. 1997. Area studies and the discipline: A useful controversy? PS: Political Science and Politics 30, no. 2: 166-169. Published Version http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/420485 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3638435 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Controversy in the Discipline: Area Studies and Comparative Politics Area Studies and the Discipline: A Useful Controversy?* Robert H. Bates, Harvard University When arguments become polarized, the standard employed by the eth- The professional audience of social it often signals that divisions are nographer: serious scholarship, they scientists consists of other scholars falsely drawn. Such appears to be believe, must be based upon field from their discipline who share simi- the case with this controversy. Why research. The professional audience lar theoretical concerns-and who must one choose between area stud- of area specialists consists of re- draw their data from a variety of ies and the discipline? There are searchers from many disciplines, who regions of the world. strong reasons for endorsing both. In have devoted their scholarly life to Like all caricatures, these depic- this essay, I sketch the current de- work on the region or nation. tions distort in order to highlight bate and explore the ways in local Those who consider themselves important elements of reality. The knowledge can and is being incorpo- "social scientists" seek to identify implications of this reality have pro- rated into general analytic frame- lawful regularities, which, by implica- foundly unsettled our discipline. works. I conclude by stressing the tion, must not be context bound. Most immediately, the shift from work that lies ahead. In doing so, it Rather than seeking a deeper under- area studies to "social scientific" ap- should be stressed, I deal only with standing of a particular area, social proaches has influenced graduate political science. The dynamics in scientists strive to develop general training. Graduate students, whose other disciplines, I have found, differ theories and to identify, and test, resources of time and money are greatly from those within our own hypotheses derived from them. So- necessarily limited, increasingly shift (Bates et al. 1993). cial scientists will attack with confi- from the study of a region to in- dence political data extracted from struction in theory and methods. any region of the world. They will When confronted by a choice be- Caricaturing the Present Divide approach electoral data from South tween a course in African history or Within political science, area spe- Africa in the same manner as that one in econometrics, given their con- cialists are multidisciplinary by incli- from the United States and eagerly straints, many now choose the latter. nation and training. In addition to address cross-national data sets, The shift from area specialization knowing the politics of a region or thereby manifesting their rejection of to "social science" also alters the nation, they seek also to master its the presumption that political regu- balance of power within the acad- history, literature, and languages. larities are area-bound. Social scien- emy. Political science departments They not only absorb the work of tists do not seek to master the litera- have long resembled federations, humanists but also that of other so- ture on a region but rather to with their faculty in comparative pol- cial scientists. Area specialists invoke master the literature of a discipline. itics dwelling within semi-autono- 166 PS: Political Science & Politics Area Studies and the Discipline mous, area studies units. Possessing demics are being required to estab- acquired greater significance. On the access to resources for seminars, ad- lish new priorities, as we adjust to other, this trend will promote a ministrative support, fellowships, re- tighter constraints. transformation in the comparative search and travel independent of the study of politics; it will force those department, the comparative politics who have a command of local to the New Realities faculty has had little reason to defer Reacting knowledge to enter into dialogue to the demands of department Many departments were once with those who seek to understand heads. The move toward a disciplin- characterized by a core of techno- how institutional variation affects ary-oriented view of comparative crats, many of whom specialized in political outcomes or who see partic- politics, and the declining resource the study of American politics, and a ular political systems as specific real- base for area studies, has shifted the congery of others, many of whom izations of broader political pro- political center of gravity back to the studied foreign political systems. Stu- cesses. chairs, who can now apply disciplin- dents of American politics viewed Pressures from outside the disci- ary criteria, rather than area knowl- themselves as social scientists; but pline amplify these changes; they edge, in evaluating and rewarding the political system on which they emerge from trends that have af- professional contributions. concentrated, they came to realize, fected political systems throughout Change in the notions of profes- was singularly devoid of variation. the world. Following the recession of sional merit also alters the balance Even comparisons across states the 1980s, authoritarian governments of power between genera- fell, and the collapse of com- tions. Old field hands are munism in Eastern Europe giving way to young techni- further contributed to the cians. It is those in the mid- spread of democracy. This dle who are the most threat- < change underscored the ened. Like their elders, they < -~-., broader relevance of the & have trained as area special- ~ t Americanists' research into ists; but they are being eval- 1^, elections, legislatures and po- uated by a new set of stan- ~~ N Hs< litical parties. The spread of dards-ones by which they ||> market forces and the liberal- compare unfavorably with 1 K. ization of economic systems younger scholars. The mid- E highlighted the broader sig- career scholars now scram- nificance of research con- ble to master the new vocab- ducted on the advanced in- ulary and techniques; and dustrial democracies as well. departments that once would The impact of economic con- have readily promoted them ditions upon voting, the poli- too often decide to refrain tics of central banking, the from doing so, in the expec- within the greater federation failed effect of openness upon parti- tation of later filling the slots from to provide insight into differences, san cleavages and political institu- the best and brightest of the new say, between presidential and parlia- tions: long studied in the Western generation. mentary systems, much less between democracies, these subjects have re- The result of these changes is polities in market as opposed to cen- cently become important, and re- heightened tension within the field, trally planned economies. A vocal searchable, in the formerly socialist as the resonates with controversy minority within American politics systems in the North and in the de- divisions between scholars of differ- had long dismissed students of com- veloping nations of the South. As ent locations within the generations, parative politics as "mere area students of comparative have and in their ca- spe- politics university, stages but the more addressed have come in- reers. cialists;" sophisticated them, they increasingly realized that their hard creasingly to share intellectual orien- Clearly, the causes of these ten- won, cumulative, scientific knowl- tations, and a sense of sions lie outside the academy: they necessary about in the United skills and with their more lie in the rising concerns with gov- edge politics training, ernment deficits and the end of the States was itself area-bound. There "social scientific" colleagues in the cold war. The one has led to reduc- therefore arose among Americanists discipline. tions in spending for higher educa- a demand for comparative political The attention given to King, tion; the other, to a lower priority research, and some of the most the- Keohane, and Verba's Designing So- on area training. For reasons I do oretically ambitious among them cial Inquiry (1994) provides a mea- not fully understand, rather than sought to escape the confines im- sure of the impact of these trends. It cushioning the impact of these posed by the American political sys- suggests the urgency with which stu- changes, foundations have instead tem. dents of comparative politics feel a exacerbated them by moving in con- On the one hand, this trend cre- need for guidance, as they have cert with the government. Resources ates allies for comparativists who sought ways to move from the in for the study of foreign areas are seek to resist retrenchment; their depth study of cases, typical of area therefore declining, and we in aca- knowledge of political variation has studies, to sophisticated research June 1997 167 Controversy and the Discipline: Area Studies and Comparative Politics designs, required for scientific infer- Colson's well-known research into when this is the case formalization ence. the Plateau Tonga of Zambia inspires new insights as well. Others (1974). The lives of the Tonga, she might be crashingly obvious. But reports, resemble the Rousseauian even jejune propositions, if deduced Fusion Deeper myth, with people residing in peace- from a theory, are significant; for The field is thus undergoing signif- ful communities, sharing their be- when they are tested, it is the theory icant changes, and the increased longings, and legislating wisely in from which they derive that is put at stringency of funding strengthens village assemblies.
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