25 years of research in comparative policy analysis
Introduction: A review of comparative methods for policy analysis
As the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research & Practice (JCPA) turns 25 years old, this assembly of 25 articles focus primarily on methods. The contributions highlight achievements of the editorial mission: to contribute to theory development and testing whilst improving research methods, enhancing empirical policy research, and enabling identification of practice implications and lesson-drawing and extrapolation. Since its creation, the JCPA has published roughly 700 articles, half of which make explicit reference to the techniques and methods utilized by their authors. Needless to say the present selection is only a tiny sample of the wealth of available material.
The Collection is organized around four broad topics. Section 1 is dedicated to the epistemology of comparative policy analysis, with 6 articles presenting the historical perspectives of the field and contrasting interpretive and predictive logics of comparison. Section 2 addresses the problems of scale and scope through 4 articles adopting cross-country and sub-national levels of comparison. Section 3 includes 9 articles utilizing the most noticeable methods of small-N comparison and within-case study, namely configurational analysis (a.k.a. QCA), longitudinal analysis and randomized controlled trials. Section 4 delves into measurement problems, with 6 articles studying performance and state capacity.
Taken together, these articles provide a good account of the diversity of comparative methods applied to policy analysis for research and practice. They also confirm that comparative policy analysis, as a discipline, has reached the age of maturity. The selection demonstrates how comparative policy analysis benefits from more robust research designs, based on transparency and replicability, to produce the necessary cumulative knowledge for better policy design, underpinned by robust analytic procedures.
Edited by
Professor Guillaume Fontaine(The Comparative Policy Lab at FLACSO (Ecuador))
Dr Shawn Drake(School of Public Policy & Administration, Carleton University (Canada))
Sponsored by
