mparative government, noting that after World War II there was widespread dissatisfaction with the state of comparative politics. The traditional approach had several shortcomings which were then much discussed:
1) It dealt primarily with a single-culture configuration.
2) Comparative study within this culture configuration dealt mainly with representative democracies and treated nondemocratic systems as aberrations from the democratic norm.
3) The student was thus prevented from dealing systematically not only with nondemocratic Western political systems but with colonial systems and other "backward" areas.
4) Research was founded on the study of isolated aspects of the governmental process within specific countries, so it was comparative in name only.
The authors also find that the comparative study of politics was excessively formalistic in its approach to political institutions because it focused on the formal institutions of government and neglected important informal arrangements. The study of politics was largely descriptive rather than problem-solving, explanatory, or analytic in method (Macridis and Brown, 1977, pp. 2-4).
Macridis and Brown present a series of readings on various subjects under the heading of comparative politics. They note that the authors they present represent only a small effort in the larger body of work in the field: "There is no common theory, no generally accepted or acceptable proposition for further research, no cumulative effort in the form of data-collection, data-sorting, and hypothesizing. no common body of theory and knowledge has evolved to which the student of comparative politics can be directed" (p. 6). What Macridis and Brown do offer in their analysis is a sense of what a theory of comparative government should be like and what requirements should be fulfilled. They state that a theory should be both comprehensive and parsimonious. They state that it should be ...