National and Subnational Comparative Politics: Why, What and How

Published date01 December 2013
AuthorLouise Tillin
Date01 December 2013
DOI10.1177/2321023013509153
Subject MatterNotes on Methods
Military-Madrasa-Mullah Complex 235
India Quarterly, 66, 2 (2010): 133–149
A Global Threat 235
Notes on Methods*
National and Subnational
Comparative Politics: Why,
What and How
Louise Tillin
In this note, I present an overview of why comparative methods should be seen as useful for students of
Indian politics. I suggest that there are four overarching reasons why comparison is important: (a) it
helps to challenge ‘false’ exceptionalism; (b) it helps to challenge ‘false’ universalism (Rose, 1991;
Halperin and Heath 2012, p. 203); (c) it can contribute to theory development better than single case
studies; and (d) it helps to disaggregate the all-India picture in order to generate theories that are better
able to capture the variation that exists within India without getting too lost in the detail of individual
subnational cases.
The note takes cognizance of the increasing primacy of the states as critical actors in both the arena
of electoral politics from 1989 onwards (Yadav and Palshikar, 2003, 2008), as well as in the field of
policy-making and implementation. Much of the focus in this piece is therefore on national and
subnational comparisons, but this is not with the intention of reifying these political units as the sole or
primary units of comparison. There are other units of analysis that can be just as fruitful, depending
on the question under investigation: sub-regions of states (see, for example, Kumar, 2011); municipal
governments (see Ruet and Lama-Rewal, 2009); or organizations within different regions (business
associations, social movements, political parties, etc). The note will be organized around three questions:
why compare, what to compare and how to compare.
Why Compare?
The problem of ‘false’ exceptionalism relates to the assumption that a case or group of cases represent
exceptions to broader patterns or rules, and thus require special explanation. India, as a whole, has been
seen as an outlier in theories of democracy and development which posit a relationship between levels
of economic development and democratization. Over time, its outlier status has contributed to a sense
that it is a case unto itself, rather than a case that can be profitably compared—either with the more
established democracies (from whom it differs because of levels of economic development) or with
newer democracies in Latin America, Eastern Europe, parts of East Asia or sub-Saharan Africa (from
whom it differs because of the longevity of its democracy).
Many scholars have pushed against the idea of Indian exceptionalism in a bid to bring India closer
to the centre of theory-building exercises in comparative politics (Stepan et al., 2011), to broach conven-
tions as to which countries to compare India with (Chatterjee and Katznelson, 2012) and to offer
Louise Tillin, King’s India Institute, King’s College London. E-mail: Louise.Tillin@kcl.ac.uk
Studies in Indian Politics
1(2) 235–240
© 2013 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/2321023013509153
http://inp.sagepub.com
*This section is coordinated by Divya Vaid, divya.vaid.09@gmail.com

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