European Political Science

, Volume 14, Issue 3, pp 318–339 | Cite as

scaling down: subnational comparative case studies in comparative politics and chinese politics

  • cai (vera) zuo
Research
First Online:

Abstract

This article contributes to our understanding of merits and weaknesses associated with the subnational comparative case study. Despite its methodological strengths and the increasing importance of subnational units in politics, the subnational comparative case study remains underutilized in comparative politics. The root cause of the method’s merits lies in the substantive importance of subnational units in politics; at the same time, however, the difficulty of abstracting theory from local specificities hinders the wide utilization of this method. Through examining some important studies in comparative politics and Chinese politics that use comparative case studies, I identify problems in case selection and in achieving generalizability in research design of subnational comparative case studies.

Keywords

subnational comparison methods subnational units decentralization 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Melanie Manion, Samantha Vortherms, David Weimer, and participants in the Chinese Politics Workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for helpful comments. Financial support from the University of Wisconsin-Madison is gratefully acknowledged. All errors remain my own.

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Copyright information

© European Consortium for Political Research 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • cai (vera) zuo
    • 1
    • 2
  1. 1.Division of Social SciencesHong Kong University of Science and TechnologyKowloonHong Kong
  2. 2.Department of Political ScienceSchool of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan UniversityShanghai

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