Undertaking Comparative Housing Policy Studies

Abstract

Before approaching the task of examining housing policies across countries in more detail, the present chapter considers a number of prior issues, mainly methodological. It draws upon literature related to comparative policy studies in general in order to explore a number of areas, which can be reduced to three broad questions: what is entailed in the comparative study of policy; what is to be gained by doing so; and, what are the difficulties involved? In practice, these three questions are inter-related and this is reflected in the structure of the chapter.