Advantages And Disadvantages Of Comparative Methods

First of all, I need to clarify that there is no dominant method of comparison between countries. Every method has its own advantages and disadvantages involving the level of abstraction, the scope of covering, etc. (Landman & Carvalho, 2016).In the early days, Lijphart (1971) called comparing many countries when using quantitative analysis, the ‘statistical’ method and on the other hand, when comparing few countries with the use of qualitative analysis the ‘comparative’ method. But nowadays, comparative studies are conducted to compare similarities and differences across countries and within countries.

For each of those comparative methods there are strengths, weaknesses and solutions for those weaknesses. The first method of comparison I will discuss is the method of comparing many countries. This method is also called ‘large-n’ comparison, where n stands for the number of countries. It’s very suitable with qualitative analysis of aggregate data. The presence of statistical control makes this method most like an experimental design, which has control groups and treatment groups (Landman & Carvalho, 2016). 1

The discoveries of multi-national analysis are additionally domestically important, as they likewise have a tendency to be all the more intrinsically significant to the more extensive universal field. This is because the correlations of multi-national institutions and procedures that are practically grouped have an expanded worldwide validity and transferability than the examination of one single country (Keman,