Thematic issues covered during the Workshop
I.  Comparison is an analytical method – probably the best available one – for advancing valid and cumulative knowledge about politics. At least since Aristotle it has been argued that only by identifying and labeling the generic relations of power and then examining how they produce variable or invariable effects in otherwise different societies, can scholars claim that their discipline is scientific.
II.  We are usually condemned to take the world as it is, observe its myriad similarities and differences and, then, infer causality from patterns of simultaneous or sequential  events: the core of the method is really quite simple and it helps to explain why comparativists tend to be addicted to two things: (1) classification systems; and (2) the Latin expression, ceteris paribus. 
III.Comparison has always had a practical objective, namely, to produce useful descriptive information about how politics is conducted in countries other than one’s own.  
IV. Comparative Politics is area specialization. Thus, field research abroad is not just a rite de passage for most comparativists. It is an indispensable component of their method.
V.  Mixed Methods: with an initial large N comparison wielding relatively simple quantitative indicators to establish the broad parameters of association, followed by a small N analysis of carefully selected cases with sets of qualitative variables to search for specific sequences and complex interactions to demonstrate causality (as well as the impact of neglected or ‘accidental’ factors).  To use the imaginative vocabulary of Charles Tilly, such research combines the advantages of “lumping” and “splitting.”
VI. Formal Methods
VII. Three Distinctive Paths for Comparative Politics: (a) It can continue along the mainstream and very broad “institutionalist” trajectory it has been on for the last decades, presumably adding more “neo-neo-neo-“ prefixes as it permutes into more specialized approaches. (b) opting for ‘simplification.’  They will be led by those American colleagues who have already accepted the limited initial assumptions, exclusive reliance on individualistic “micro-foundations,” deductive presumptions about how these actors behave with regard to each other, and proof by ‘stylized facts’ or ‘mathematical formulae’ that characterize the path know as rational or public choice. (c) “complexification.”  They will follow the lead of a less well-defined and less self-confident group of scholars who (Schmitter’s advocacy):
       (1) Accept far fewer and less restrictive initial assumptions – indeed, who rely upon a calculated proliferation of assumptions about the identity and motives of actors and about the role of entrenched institutions and historical memories in determining seemingly ‘irrational’ behaviors;
        (2) Are convinced that adequate micro-foundations in the present world context cannot only be based on individual persons – indeed, they have to include collectivities that cannot be simply decomposed into the preferences or actions of individuals and to take more-and-more into consideration the composition effects generated by multiple levels of political power and authority;
       (3) Choose to rely upon ‘reasonableness’ rather than rationality, i.e. on ‘improvising’ and ‘avoiding the worst” in complex situations where optimal pursuit of marginal returns is virtually impossible given the number of actors involved, the plurality of sources of information and the unintended consequences generated by interdependent layers of political aggregation;
       (4) Consider that the usual fallacies of composition can be converted into novel “laws of composition” to explain outcomes in situations where multiple layers of different types of actors from a plurality of centers of power and authority bargain and deliberate with each other;
       (5) Have a healthy respect for ‘real’ data – whether generated by the normal operations of the polity or invented and gathered by themselves, coupled with an abiding suspicion of simple aggregative indices for measuring complex phenomena, so-called “stylized” facts that suppress confounding observations or simulations produced by impressive mathematical equations;
      (6) Insist upon endogenizing as many potentially causal variables as possible, even those notoriously difficult to measure such as “preferences” – rather than shoving them into the background, assuming them out of existence, presuming what values they take in a given situation or inserting new ones ex post in order to ‘prove’ the alleged rationality of observed outcomes.