International records / OpenAlex research

Postscript: How and what to compare?

Many things are clear without comparisons. For example, to accept that India is a democracy or that democratisation follows several stages needs no comparison of countries. In fact, you can spend a lot of interesting and fruitful time analysing the democratic characteristics and explanations of its success in India alone, so why make everything even more complicated by comparing it with other countries? What can be gained from comparisons? In the first place, it widens and deepens our knowledge of the political world. A comparison of India and Canada would show not only that both countries are…