If you were a graduate student in political science between 1990 and 2010 or so, you probably experienced some heated debates about the future of area studies and its role in the discipline. This was a time of revolutionary entrepreneurs were advancing rational choice theory as a unified framework for the social sciences, and quantitatively-oriented scholars were developing a hegemonic language for understanding qualitative scholarship within the standard positivist template.
At the same time, area studies in the United States and around the world was under attack, the first in many “crises of area studies” since around 1990. Political scientists were some of the main participants in the so-called “area studies wars” (see here and here and here and many other pieces). As you click on those links, you can see how connected these two developments were: rational choice theory and quantification were part of the intellectual ferment of the area studies debates. And the language was one of not just tension or disagreement, but conflict: area studies wars, scholars and perspectives on the retreat or under siege, a rational choice revolution with an intellectual vanguard, and so forth.
Many early career researchers during this time faced pressures—either subtle or explicit—to declare their partisan loyalties either to social science or to area studies. At issue was not just what individual scholars would choose to do, but where they stood on the broader discipline’s commitment to creating knowledge of a particular form. My favorite illustration of this perspective is a point made by Gary King in 1996:
the professional goal of all scientists should be to attempt to demonstrate that context makes no difference whatsoever.
Read that piece in its entirety if you don’t believe me (PDF); King’s argument is sincere and thoughtfully articulated, and you cannot just dismiss it out of hand.
If you were a professional scientist, then, King is suggesting that your goal is not just to ask whether context matters, but to prove that it does not. What is the role of an area specialist in such a world? To demonstrate that their specialize knowledge of context is irrelevant for political science.
Time has marched on since the 1990s, and the discipline of political science has evolved. The rational choice revolution was mostly unsuccessful, with the revolutionaries putting down their weapons (just as the inclusion-moderation thesis would predict). The next intellectual revolution—the credibility revolution—has created its own revolutionary vanguard. Graduate students today do not face quite the same hostility towards area-specific knowledge. I do not know anyone who would argue in 2025 that the professional goal of the comparativist should be to demonstrate that context does not count.
So what of the relationship between comparative politics and area studies? In a new working paper just released as an APSA preprint, Jordan Gans-Morse, Daniel Gingerich, and I take up this question, revisiting old debates and arguments in light of these and other developments in the social sciences and in area studies itself. Our argument relies on a comprehensive analysis of article data from major journals in political science from 1980-2020, and an original survey of political scientists conducted in 2022-23. Here is the abstract:
We revisit the sharp divide that emerged in the 1990s between area studies advocates and methodologically oriented political scientists. We argue that tensions between political science and area studies are neither intrinsic nor static, but instead evolve in tandem with theoretical and methodological trends, as well as with broader political and technological developments. Drawing on an original survey of American Political Science Association members and analysis of roughly 4,500 articles in leading journals, we identify four shifts in the discipline: from a theoretical to an empirical orientation; from cross-national datasets to country- and region- specific studies; from macro- to micro-level analyses; and from descriptive to causal inference. We also document evolving patterns in language training, fieldwork, methods use, and data collection. Our findings suggest that political science and area studies are increasingly compatible and well-positioned for reconciliation, but that the state of area studies is fragile and the subfield of comparative politics must support it.
We began this research years ago, long before the current administration set out to dismantle area studies expertise in the United States.* Our argument, though, speaks to the current moment as well. We write,
As university models are being reevaluated around the world, the future vitality of area studies departments, programs, and infrastructure are in question; comparativists must recognize that the future of comparative politics as we currently know it depends on robust area studies institutions….
For area studies within comparative politics to thrive, though, the discipline as a whole must reward engagement with area studies, aligning comparativists’ professional incentives as political scientists with the needs of area studies communities. One concrete measure is for political science departments to reward scholars equally for their service to area studies as to political science. Another is for APSA and other political science associations to formally recognize scholars who help promote interdisciplinary collaboration or institution building that sustains or strengthens area studies…
Coauthoring is now the norm among quantitatively oriented scholars. But this model must be extended to reward collaboration with country experts, including local scholars from the region being studied, not as research assistants or informants or raw data collectors (as in some of the more extreme division-of-labor proposals from the 1990s) but as full and equal partners in the research enterprise. Rather than a hierarchical model of collaboration that privileges disciplinary expertise, the appropriate model is horizontal in nature, with all participants deserving of full credit for their contributions.
We hope that our perspective can renew scholarly focus on the essential role of area studies for research and policy, for political science and for other disciplines as well.
NOTE
* Non-U.S. scholars might want to tut-tut about the sorry state of higher education funding for area studies in the U.S., but area studies is under threat and facing major cuts in funding in the U.S., Europe, Australia, Japan, and every other advanced industrial democracy. Find me an exception; I’ll wait here.
Only China is expanding its area studies funding, as Gerhard Hoffstaedter argues in a recent piece. And note Hoffstaedter’s use of war terminology: “Continuing to cut area studies while China expands them amounts to intellectual disarmament.”
Tom Pepinsky 