The Enduring Indispensability of the Controlled Comparison

Abstract

Do controlled comparisons still have a place in comparative politics? Long criticized by quantitatively oriented methodologists, this canonical approach has increasingly been critiqued by qualitative methodologists who recommend greater focus on within-case analysis and the confinement of causal explanations to particular cases. Such advice accords with a welcome shift from a combative “tale of two cultures” toward mutual respect for research combining qualitative and quantitative methods in the simultaneous pursuit of internal and external validity. This article argues that controlled comparisons remain indispensable amid this “multimethod turn,” explicating how they too can generate both internal and external validity when their practitioners (a) craft arguments with general variables or mechanisms, (b) seek out representative variation, and (c) select cases that maximize control over alternative explanations. When controlled comparisons meet these standards, they continue to illuminate the world’s great convergences and divergences across nation-states in a manner that no other methods can surpass.