Home > Publications > Journal articles by author

Article by Werner J. Patzelt


Was soll und wie betreibt man vergleichende Diktaturforschung? Ein forschungsprogrammatischer Essay in evolutorischer Perspektive

TD: volume 6, issue 2009, 2, page 167–207

Abstract / Full text

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.

Full text