Introduction

Досліджено способи та форми систематизації результатів порівняльного історико-правового аналізу. Окреслено основні висновки, що можуть бути отримані у ході зіставлення історико-правових об’єктів. Охарактеризовано багатомірність організації та подання інформації в ході проведення компаративного дослідження. Проаналізовано значення типологізації на стадії упорядкування результатів порівняльної роботи та її співвідношення з класифікацією. Зроблено висновки про нові способи узагальнення даних, отриманих у процесі здійснення порівняльного історико-правового дослідження.

Summary This article aims at contributing to a systematisation of comparative social work research with regard to reflection on its purpose, object, and methodology. On one hand, models and approaches from comparative welfare and education are presented and applied to comparative social work research. On the other hand, a theoretical and methodological framework model is suggested which develops comparative social work research from a life course perspective which allows to contextualise social work practice in terms of the functions and meanings it takes in different societies. This model of life course regimes is based on a series of comparative studies on young people's transitions to adulthood and the public policy and practice addressing them. Findings The model of life course regimes provides a framework of contextual knowledge which enables interpretation by relating comparative findings with regard to social work to the respective societal contexts. It represents a framework for clustering different constellations of social integration and normality providing social work with specific functions and meanings. Application The model of life course regimes may inform the sampling of comparative studies as well as guiding the process of interpretation and analysis. Apart from this it represents a source of critical reflexivity both for theory and practice.

This inaugural issue marks the launch of the new journal Comparative Migration Studies (CMS). Over the past decades, and especially since the 1970s and 1980s, migration studies has evolved rapidly as a research fij ield rooted in various disciplines. Like the phenomenon of migration itself, migration research has become increasingly globalized, which is manifested by the many migration research institutes across the world where academics from various disciplines work together. CMS will promote comparative migration research based on the fij irm belief that comparative work will promote the theoretical development of migration research as only through comparison can we discover what is specifij ic to a case. We understand comparative research in a broad sense and is involving four main areas (a point developed by Marco Martiniello in his contribution to this issue). One type compares people, which can be groups or categories of migrants in a particular situation. Another compares places, which could, for instance, be nations but also supranational entities, regions, cities, municipalities or neighbourhoods. A third type involves comparisons between diffferent (historic) periods, adding a historical dimension to comparative research. Finally, as migration research is a multi-disciplinary fij ield drawing from various disciplines and competing theoretical perspectives, the fourth type involves comparisons between these diffferent disciplines and theoretical perspectives. CMS will promote engagement by scholars in all these areas of comparative research across disciplines and diffferent theoretical perspectives. CMS has no preferred geographical focus and intends to adopt a global approach to its search for the best comparative research on international COMPARATIVE MIGRATION STUDIES

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This paper synthesizes methodological knowledge derived from comparative survey research and comparative politics and aims to enable researches to make prudent research decisions. Starting from the data structure that can occur in international comparisons at different levels, it suggests basic definitions for cases and contexts, i. e. the main ingredients of international comparison. The paper then goes on to discuss the full variety of case selection strategies in order to highlight their relative advantages and disadvantages. Finally, it presents the limitations of internationally comparative social science research. Overall, the paper suggests that comparative research designs must be crafted cautiously, with careful regard to a variety of issues, and emphasizes the idea that there can be no one-fits-all solution.

Introduction - focus on Western Europe, Richard F. Tomasson. Part 1 The south and the north: from corporation to neo-syndicalism - the state, organized labour, and the changing industrial relations systems of Southern Europe, Howard J. Wiarda. Part 2 Status and power: working class power and the political economy of western capitalist societies, J. Rogers Hollingsworth and Robert A. Hanneman problems and prospects in comparative status attainment research in Great Britain and the United States, Alan C. Kerckhoff. Part 3 The economies: the European Monetary System and national policy constraints, Hugo M. Kaufmann economic policy and election cycles - constraints in nine OECD countries, John D. Robertson the tax revolt in Britain, Canada and the United States, Kenneth Woodside transaction trends in Western Europe and the Nordic area, Peter R. Manoogian and Bengt Sundelius. Part 4 Welfare and education: the sequential development of social programmes in 18 welfare states, Saundra K. Schneider equality of educational opportunities in Western Europe, Maurice A. Garnier American and English student values, H. Wesley Perkins and James L. Spates. Part 5 Cities: British and French new towns programmes, Luther A. Allen class, politics, mass transit and the city - Frankfurt/Main and Chicago, Glenn Yago. Part 6 Social movements: the modern women's movement in Italy, France and Great Britain - differences in life cycles, Jane Jenson.

Frontiers of research move with history, although often with a lag. Two decades ago, most comparative research on revolutions remained focused on the classical great revolutions of the West: those of England, France, and Russia. Occasionally, a bold scholar included non-European revolutions (particularly the Chinese and Mexican) in broader comparative studies. It was not until the mid-1970s, however, that comparative scholars began to focus on the features distinctive to Third World social revolutions – the social and political upheavals in smaller, dependent states outside of Europe. At first, perhaps, scholars supposed that such social revolutions would happen only occasionally during decolonization such as those that played themselves out after World War II. Yet modern world history has continued to be punctuated by social revolutions, not only in postcolonial Southeast Asia, Algeria, and Portuguese Africa, but also in formally independent states such as Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, and Nicaragua. As new social revolutions have continued to occur, scholars have been challenged to broaden their scope of comparative studies beyond the classical revolutions of Europe, and they have entertained models of causation applicable across many smaller non-Western nations in the twentieth-century world context. In this article, we point to what we consider the most promising avenues for comparative analyses of contemporary Third World revolutions. In particular, we shall offer some working hypotheses about the distinctively political conditions that have encouraged revolutionary movements and transfers of power in some, but not all, Third World countries.

This article explores issues of concern to payers evaluating the hypothetical comparative effectiveness case study of two fictitious migraine treatments in this month's Health Affairs. The case study presents the seemingly paradoxical situation in which randomized controlled trials produce one result, and real-world observational comparative effectiveness research produces another. For the payer making coverage decisions, this scenario raises three major themes related to interpretation and communication. First, there is a need for a well-considered set of criteria that weigh evidence across comparative effectiveness studies to determine whether enough evidence exists to communicate or enact new health care policies. Second, emphasis should be placed on studies that are published or presented in peer-reviewed settings. Third, access to raw comparative effectiveness research data would enable payers to more deeply explore research interests relevant to their particular constituencies. Payers' involvement in comparative effectiveness research should be encouraged, not discouraged, to advance our understanding of what works best and for whom.

Previous articleNext article No AccessSome Discussion of Methods in Comparative EducationGeorge Z. F. BeredayGeorge Z. F. Bereday Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 1, Number 1Jun., 1957 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/444747 Views: 45Total views on this site Citations: 10Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Peter B. Easton Comparative Education Review Bibliography 2015: Galloping Growth and Concluding Reflections, Comparative Education Review 60, no.44 (Sep 2016): 833–843.https://doi.org/10.1086/688766Qiang Zha, Derrick Tu Doing Mixed Methods Research in Comparative Education: Some Reflections on the Fit and a Survey of the Literature, (Jan 2016): 165–191.https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-367920150000028014Petr Vlček Srovnávací výzkum v pedagogice: některé úvahy o metodologii problémového přístupu, Pedagogická orientace 25, no.33 (Jul 2015): 394.https://doi.org/10.5817/PedOr2015-3-394Bjorn H. Nordtveit Knowledge production in a constructed field: reflections on comparative and international education, Asia Pacific Education Review 16, no.11 (Feb 2015): 1–11.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-015-9354-0Dimitris Mattheou The Scientific Paradigm in Comparative Education, (Jan 2009): 59–71.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6_5C.C. Wolhuter Review of the Review: Constructing the Identity of Comparative Education, Research in Comparative and International Education 3, no.44 (Jan 2008): 323–344.https://doi.org/10.2304/rcie.2008.3.4.323Claire Planel The rise and fall of comparative education in teacher training; should it rise again as comparative pedagogy?, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 38, no.44 (Aug 2008): 385–399.https://doi.org/10.1080/03057920701467867Jussi VÄlimaa On Comparative Research In Higher Education, (Jan 2008): 141–155.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8994-7_11Jason Beech The Theme of Educational Transfer in Comparative Education: A View over Time, Research in Comparative and International Education 1, no.11 (Jul 2016): 2–13.https://doi.org/10.2304/rcie.2006.1.1.2 Michael M. Henry Methodology in Comparative Education: An Annotated Bibliography, Comparative Education Review 17, no.22 (Oct 2015): 231–244.https://doi.org/10.1086/445696

There has been relatively little comparative research undertaken on sub‐national cultural policy. This article aims to contribute to the development of sub‐national comparative studies by assessing the utility of national cultural policy approaches for comparative research at the sub‐national level in Canada. Drawing on studies of national cultural policy, the authors develop three main approaches to cultural policy and administration – the French, British and hybrid approaches – and explore their applicability to the origin and evolution of cultural policy and administration in the Canadian provinces of Québec and Ontario. This exploratory research suggests there is room for optimism in drawing on national‐level experiences to undertake sub‐national comparative cultural policy research, particularly for comparisons over broad time periods. The study also suggests that it will be important in subsequent research to further elaborate the models for present‐day comparative analysis and to refine and adapt them to reflect specificities at the provincial level of analysis.

This paper deals with exchanges and misunderstandings between the German school of social history (most prominently represented by scholars from the University of Bielefeld (such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler) and Anglo-American trends in historical sociology (exemplified by the works of Barrington Moore, Theda Skocpol and Michael Mann). The social historians tended to dismiss historical sociology as too dependent on modernization theory, without taking into account the critique of that tradition by authors who brought processes of state formation and revolutionary change into the debate. On the other side, mainstream historical sociology worked with assumptions that limited its ability to change the terms and directions of sociological discourse, and to assimilate lessons from history. Among these inbuilt biases, organizational realism and materialism – particularly pronounced in the work of Michael Mann – stand out as particularly important. The paper closes with arguments in favour of bringing more history into historical sociology, with particular emphasis on three sets of problems. There is a need for more historical approaches to differentiation, less dependent on functionalist premises than the hitherto prevalent paradigm. A more explicit thematization of temporality in history and society would, among other things, help to clarify issues linked to the notion of path dependency. Finally, a reconsideration of the models and types of explanation in historical sociology would place more emphasis on their interpretive dimension.

This text is not a research paper, nor an epistemological reflection about the field of comparative education. It is an essay in the literal meaning of the word—‘an attempt, trial, that needs to be put to test in order to understand if it is able to fulfil the expectations’—in which we introduce an interpretation of the current condition of the field of comparative education. In the introduction to this essay we discuss the current phenomenon of a regained popularity of comparative educational research. We believe that this situation has both positive and negative consequences: it can contribute to the renewal of the field or it may be no more than a brief fashion. Our reflections focus on the uses of comparative research in education, not on any precise research question. Even so, only for illustrative purposes, we present some examples related to the European Union. We then go on to discuss current comparative practices, arguing that comparative educational studies are used as a political tool creating educational policy, rather than a research method or an intellectual inquiry. In the two main sections of this text we define two extreme positions: comparison as a mode of governance and comparison as a historical journey. We do recognise that between these two extremes there is room enough to imagine different positions and dispositions. But our intention is to separate very different traditions of the comparative field analytically. Throughout the article we build a case in favour of a comparative-historical approach. Nevertheless, we argue that the reconciliation between ‘history’ and ‘comparison’ will only be possible if we adopt new conceptions of space and time, and of space-time relationship. This is a condition required for the understanding of comparative research in education as a historical journey.

Comparative and case study researchers have responded to critiques of their methods by developing formal procedures to validate theoretical claims through set theoretical logics of causal conditions. This ‘logico-formalist turn’ has involved the stricter application of the schemas of set theory and the philosophy of logic to raise validation standards of theoretical and causal claims in comparative historical research. This paper critiques these solutions from a critical realist standpoint. It argues that the cost of such a defense has been the retention of positivist assumptions of causal inference and the downplaying of the importance of interpretive and theory-building work in comparative and case study research. By contrast, critical realism’s process of retroduction sees causal analysis not as proceeding inductively from empirical observation to causal proposition, but rather points out the constant epistemic shift from the level of empirical observation to that of the theoretical description of intransitive causal powers. The paper highlights the ways in which the meta-theoretical perspective of critical realism makes possible a full break with both positivism and the implicit empiricism of the logico-formalist turn.

Comparative research on welfare states has most focused on social transfers as the depen dent variable. As demographic changes make social services increasingly important ingredi ents of welfare state production, however, it will be necessary to shift the research agenda accordingly, and to take servtces more system atically into account. Building on Stein Rok kan's approach to the study of European political development, this article specifies some tasks for the comparative study of social services. Following a short overview of the topics and phases of comparative welfare state research, it proposes a set of variables for the mapping of variations in service supply as well as a check-list of variables which might help to explain such variations. The new research per spective is then applied to a comparative analysis of services for elderly people in Euro pean countries, which is based on a re-analysis if the country reports for the European Com mission's Observatory on Older People in Europe. Denmark and the Netherlands are shown to have more highly developed levels of social service supply than Germany. Such cross-country variations are related to differ ences in the modes of regulation, of financing, and of service delivery, and to the degree that decision makers at these crucial points are related to consumer interests. A theoretical conclusion relates the proposed new perspec tive to the work of Stein Rokkan. It is argued that variations of social transfer provisions could be analysed in terms of the class cleavage and of the power relations between capital and labour, but that the study of social services requires a shift in the theoretical perspective which puts more emphasis on centre-periphery relations and on church-state relations.

Comparative research is generally defined either at the level of systems (often national), or as a process by assessing politics over time (often yearly). Both descriptions are generally considered to differentiate the comparative approach from other approaches within social science such as rational choice. In line with this definition of comparative research, this chapter focuses on comparative studies in which the nation-state is the unit of analysis and countries are researched at one point in time or over time. Both time and space are important dimensions in most research designs. Depending on the units of variation and the causal relationship under review, inter-temporal and/or cross-sectional variation will define the type of cases that are needed to organize the comparative data. This chapter discusses the strengths and weaknesses of two types of comparative research designs whose logic is closely related to the dimensions of time and/ or space: synchronic cross-sectional comparisons and diachronic (pooled) cross-time comparisons. We make an important restriction by focusing on quantitative research, in particular time series analysis and the use of pooled cross-section time series data sets. Global comparative methods enable us to compare many countries by using abstract concepts that can travel in order to discover universal factors that account for the phenomenon to be explained. These types of analyses are often characterized by a tradeoff between the level of abstraction and the scope (or number) of countries so that they have per definition both strengths and weaknesses attached to them. The focus on quantitative analysis might give the impression that theory is not considered to be important for comparative research. But the contrary is true. Theory, considered as a set of plausible research answers to a research question, always precedes comparative research. Often it consists of a number of causal relations that are to be confirmed by means of empirical evidence, which refute or confirm the tenability of the proposed relations. Without theory or by using flawed theory, quantitative comparative research becomes meaningless and cannot lead to valid results and insights. 2