A Closer Look at Comparative Politics

World Politics, also called world political science, refers to the field which studies the interaction of world political systems and the various processes that drive political globalization. In the broad scope of this field are the many different processes of global political globalization as a result of questions of national social relevance. These processes include economic globalization, political globalization, technological globalization, environmental globalization, international trade globalization, information globalization and cultural globalization. One can easily find a common thread running through all these different processes which is that they attempt to bring into focus the important role of human beings in the processes of global politics. Some of the most important areas in world politics which are being researched by world political science include international terrorism, international trade, environmental policy and environmental regulation, world energy strategy, global governance, global health and climate change, diplomacy and global terrorism.

Comparative politics: Comparative politics is a process of global politics in which various political theories are examined and compared with each other. The main feature of comparative politics is that it compares nations within a region, nation states or political units within regions. There are many different types of comparative politics including cartesian polity, global polity, horizontal International politics, global citizenship, and topological political theory. Comparative political theory has also been used extensively in social science and anthropology as a research program. It helps us to understand complex phenomena and brings out the analogies between diverse phenomena.

Metaphysical globalization: Metaphysical globalization is one of the major emerging trends in the study of world politics. This trend is concerned with the question of how political borders and identity affect the processes of global governance. Emphasis is placed on the idea that borders are political constructs and thus are subject to the same political processes as other political concepts and indeed as social constructions. The major areas of interest in this emerging area of world politics are philosophy, sociology, history, geography, literature, technology and political science.

Economic globalization: In the early years of the twenty first century there were two broad approaches to economic globalization. One was classical anti globalization efforts which argued that there would be a tendency towards economic sclerosis in the advanced industrial societies and that international trade would be effectively dead because there would be no trade. The other approach was that of liberal internationalism, which saw open market economies as a bulwark against protectionist policies of governments. In order to understand the emergence of these two different approaches in the study of world politics one needs to have a detailed knowledge of comparative politics. However, this does not mean that one needs to completely reject the idea of globalization altogether.

Politics and International Business: The other emerging area of comparative political science is the study of international business. Unlike classical international relations, in which there was a predominant role for diplomacy, in the early years of the twenty first century there was a tendency towards globalization. This was epitomized by the Asian economic colapidity which succeeded in removing the last vestiges of nation states from the global scene. In the process the role of diplomacy and the power behind it were reduced to insignificance. This created a situation where there emerged a new breed of politicians who were able to comprehend the changes in global politics and were able to translate them into national and regional interests.

Comparative political science provides a rich background for understanding world politics. The present era is characterised by a bipolar expansion of the bipolar poles of world politics. This is largely due to the multipolarity of the international system and its ability to deal with the changing global economic and social context. Comparative political science helps us to understand these international relations phenomena and offers us with a glimpse into the process of global integration and globalization. In the past, comparative political science used to be the province of world leaders. Today, it has become much more widespread and is used extensively in national as well as international settings.

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