Comparative Politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Comparative Politics - Essay Example But knowing the research involved in Comparative Politics, undoubtedly Empirical Approach is not only the most suitable, but also absolutely necessary. Comparative politics is considered to be an area of intense and continuous research, trying to keep up with the world politics, understanding intricacies of international relationships and foreign policies and diplomacies either leading to events or resulting from them. "The study of comparative politics, like the study of the other sciences, has had a logic of its own, a developmental pattern that combined specific questions about the various nations and peoples in the world, specific data, and specific problems, all within a learning process that has taken a specific direction and reached a working synthesis of its own past," Lane (1997, p.2). It is important as it is also the study of different cultures, ideologies, nations and diverse thinking processes. This is different from political correctness and it does not expect all administrations and policies of all countries to be uniform. Actually it celebrates the diversity, accepts peculiarities and the unknown and hence, more natural and less overbearing. It does not revel in terms like barbarians or foreigners. It involves comparing countries, their problems, economic development and democracy, monarchies, military and autocratic rules, violent political dissent and social revolutions, pure and hybrid regimes, predicting the democracies, non-violent political dissents and transitions to democracy, performances of such democracies, design of institutions, new challenges, and in the end, there is a process to compare the comparisons. It also involves in a linear relationship between economic development and democracies, explanations to democratic institutional performances, positive and negative relationships between ideologies and their institutions. Hard facts concerning history, economics, sociology and politics are found through empirism. It emphasizes the collection of empirical data and the rigorous testing of theoretical proposition against this data. "Empiricism: models or theory were non-existent in traditional comparative politics, at least at the level of intention and recognition. Concepts were often employed with little methodological discussion as to their definition and measurement," Bill and Hardgrave in Lane and Ersson (1994, p.2). As unanimity cannot be established in world governments, the interests and attitudes of influential groups that are running the administration in various countries have to be studied under 'Comparative Government' and for this process, there is no replacement of empirical approach. In studies concerning politics, empirical method provides all answers and offers insights to understand diversity. Aristotle, in his days, being disturbed by the infighting and instability of States around him, causing havoc, had studied those governments empirically, by classifying them into three groups and then, by subdividing them into further five groups, according to their wellbeing and wealth, legitimacy, monarchy and tyranny. This is exactly what the present day political scientist does by way of analysing through empirical methods, collecting data, enhancing or condensing the collected evidences and classifying them under various groups, according to their ideologies, forms, institutions, politica l religions, cultures, agendas and national

Hamas - Terrorist Organization, Popular Amongst Its Populace Case Study

Hamas - Terrorist Organization, Popular Amongst Its Populace - Case Study Example This case study will make an attempt to delineate the fundamental nature, reality, existence and objectives of an approach, popularly termed as â€Å"terrorism†, that is radically opposite to the Gandhian philosophy. In order to achieve the goal of this study, a terrorist group called â€Å"HAMAS† has been selected to be studied as the case. At the outset, it may be pertinent to understand the term â€Å"terrorism†. As per Federal Bureau of Investigation, Terrorism has been defined as the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. Usually, terrorists - the proponents and practitioners of terrorism, aim unlawful use of force to terrorise the group that, in normal conditions, does not endorse their ideologies. In recent times, organizational terrorism, one of the variants of terrorism has arisen in almost all parts of the globe and have remained in the spotlight from quite sometime. Majorly, terrorism is centred around the effort to draw the attention of the governments to the cause of these organizations. Universally it is believed that such terrorist groups or organizations lack political support or social backing. As per one of the Hadiths (utterances and practices/decisions of Prophet Mohammed, Hadiths were collected after his death and they help with respect to the interpretation and understanding of the Quran – the Holy Book): â€Å"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews, when Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, O Moslems, O Abdullah there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews† (Hamas Covenant 1988). Article Seven of 1988 covenant as per which the radical Islam group called Islamic Resistance Movement or Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya – Hamas in abbreviated form, was formed.