1st Online Session

Why do we need to compare politics?

‘Making comparisons is a natural human activity’.
This sentence is from the book of ‘Todd Landman’ and I agree with it. Comparison, like eating chicken burger or cheese burger, wearing jeans or skirt and studying or meeting boyfriend, makes everyday life. We always compare two or more things and choose one that gives you better result. Even people compare themselves with others no matter if they recognize or not. I also see myself comparing to others in terms of fashion, group of friends, school grads and so on. If we see it in wider view, it will extend to states. States compare about economic status, cultural differences and finally politics. I think that it is natural behavior of human.

So, do we need to compare politics of different countries?
If we need, why?
Why do we have to compare them?

Simply, I answer to this question that we need to compare to know similarities and differences in order to develop our own politics of country. We can see ourselves by comparison. In this book, the author provides four objectives of comparison with concrete explanation. They are contextual description, classification, hypothesis-testing and prediction. They look pretty complex and difficult but actually it is very simple and easy to understand. In my understanding, we can predict or expect that how policies or government systems work in a particular situation without ‘doing it’ by comparing politics of different countries. The countries also can learn or adapt from others by comparison. Of course, all countries have different background and condition thus, we can not follow or do just same things even though they made a great outcome in other countries. However, at least we can predict the outcome from under particular policies or system by comparing many countries. From the comparing few countries, we can see the future based on past and present and find out our own problems. For example, Japan, Philippines and South Korea have similar condition so we can learn from what others did and prevent repeating same mistakes that others made. By comparing many countries, we can generalize theories or statements. Lastly, we can describe something by comparing single country.

Why study Japanese politics?

To answer this question, I need to go back when I chose this major, International Studies major in Japanese Studies. As I mentioned during the first class of JAGOPOL, I want to study about Japan and learn from it because Japan is one of the most influential country in the world. Japanese politics is a part of that I want to learn since it has lots of similarities with my country, Korea and Philippines too. Since Japan is high developed country and has similar condition with ours, we need to study its politics and adapt to it our own country to develop and avoid unnecessary failure that Japan experienced. The process of developing to democracy, policies making and even corruption, we have similar system and problems so it is meaningful to study it. We also need to be aware its position or status in global politics. We cannot disregard its role in the world regarding past and present since Japan is related with WWI and WWII. Shinzo Abe’s statement about the Comfort Women and War Criminals is one of the good examples. Nowadays, Japan moves to forward and starts to re-build. Whether we like or not, Japan and Japanese politics affect to us in many ways and we need to learn and be familiar to it order to ‘catch up’ Japan. I think that I am lucky because I am from Korea, living in the Philippines and studying about Japan. It is a good chance for me to learn more and wider using comparison method.