Abstract

The two quotes [see original], from Gabriel A. Almond, one of the founders of comparative politics after World War II, and from Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, William Benton Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Chicago and past president of the American Political Science Association, epitomize a fundamental, threefold tension at the heart of every comparison in social and political studies: the tension between the need of initial and hence necessarily universalized epistemological categories to start with, the risk of epistemological imperialism inherent on such categories and deduced concepts and methods, and the possibilities of indigenous categories, concepts, and maybe even methods. The problematic of this threefold tension manifests again in two kinds of comparative research, namely in intercultural comparison and in historical comparative perspectives.