Was soll und wie betreibt man vergleichende Diktaturforschung? Ein forschungsprogrammatischer Essay in evolutorischer Perspektive
TD: Jahrgang 6, Heft 2009, 2, Seite 167–207
Abstract / Volltext
Es folgt die Zusammenfassung in englischer Sprache following the article short description
Comparative research on authoritarian regimes is at the core of political science. But it must cope with some serious problems : unclear conceptions of the topic itself, insufficient cooperation between political scientists and historians, linkages with political interests that are too close for comfort, an uncontrolled “democracy bias” when defining the research agenda, typologies without historical depth, unclear conceptions of similarity and dissimilarity, and missing “algorithms” of pattern recognition with respect to authoritarian structures and institutional developments. After discussions on these issues from the angles of both epistemology and the sociology of science, handles for more systematic, cumulative, and interdisciplinary comparative research on authoritarian regimes in an historical perspective are derived from evolutionary institutionalism, a recent variant of historical institutionalism. In particular, its approaches towards an analysis of “institutional architecture”, “institutional evolution”, and “institutional morphology” are linked by many examples, with comparative research on authoritarian regimes.