The branch of political science called “comparative government,” whose lineage reaches back through De Tocqueville, Montesquieu, Machiavelli, and Polybius to Aristotle himself, always knew this: before generalizing about government, we must make ourselves familiar with particular governments. That branch has at present fallen on evil days; we have no contemporary Bryce, and the monographic literature about particular governments that a contemporary Bryce would use as his raw materials is in a sickly state. But the books it produced remain; and they are, apart from the literature of political philosophy itself, the nearest thing we have to a “science of politics” that students can be required to master without, for the most part, wasting their time.
Who Governs? by Robert A. Dahl. Yale, $7.50
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