영국사회 연구를 위한 비교분석기법 - 비교지역연구를 위한 사례선택의 문제

Tools For The Comparative Analysis Of British Society

&nbsp;&nbsp;There are two research questions concerning the comparative analysis of British society in Western Europe: whether British society shares common attributes with West European countries; furthermore, what (or why) should be compared. This article aims to provide readers with a more plausible answer to those puzzles. Therefore, the guiding question in this article is to what extent similarity or difference between British society and West European countries can constrain a comparative analysis. The short answer to this question is that it is time for the dialectical comparison between British society and West European countries to be advanced as a significant explanatory category in contemporary comparative analysis. In this article, the attention has been paid to the matter of case selection. Although it is possible to witness differences between British society and West European countries, usually scholars in a comparative analysis have utilised the Most Similar Systems Design in comparing them.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;On the other hand, this study cannot tell us the full story of how we can obtain a mature comparative analysis. This is because there are many factors not covered in this article. First, we need to examine the methodological challenges to the time-honoured designs of a comparative analysis responding to the co-existence of similarity and difference in the attributes of cases. Second, we need also to combine the case-centric analysis with the variable-centric analysis. Without being accompanied by these explorations, this study cannot be perfect in providing readers with a full understanding of a comparative analysis. The author hopes this article will provide an impetus for other future researchers in which those missing factors are considered.