All Chapters within this book are explicitly comparative, the contributors deal with various methodological problems in comparative research; the pitfalls of miscomparing; the use and abuse of statistics; the conceptual homogenization of a heterogeneous perspective; the strategy of comparing similar countries; asynchronic comparisions; and the pendulum between theory and substance. These methodological issues are illustrated by empirical studies of important subjects; the fragility of the presidential regimes; the Japanese exceptionalism; the comparability of Latin America countries; the pertinence of an asynchronic comparison between weak states in post-colonial Africa and Medieval Europe; the deviant case of high stateness in a Muslim country; the empirical testing of the concepts of legitimacy and trust; the limits to quantification; and the specificity of the comparative method.

All the contributors are outstanding comparativists, working at the forefront of the comparative field. The team includes Mattei Dogan, Joshua B. Forrest, Seymour Martin Lipset, Ali Kazancigil, John D. Martz, Fred W. Riggs and Giovanni Sartori.