caliphate of man
US VERSUS THEM = OTHER VERSUS SELF = YOU VS ME = ALIENATED VERSUS INCLUSION
What is comparative political theory?
Andrew March in What Is Comparative Political Theory? locates the unclear boundary between “ours” and “theirs” to be the general burden of comparative political theory. This founding assertion undergirds his 10 theses on the methodologies that should be employed in this new subfield. March’s discussion places a heavy emphasis on criticizing scholarship that engenders a sense of “alien-ness” and “Otherness” of non-Western thinking, which is inimical to the supposed “rehabilitative” nature of comparative exercises. He suggests that in order for comparative political theory to be legitimized as a field, there must be something that is truly outside the realm of Western knowledge that can be studied within non-Western knowledge- in other words, comparative political theory must have epistemic ramifications in order for the field to create a meaningful distinction from that of anthropology or area studies. Thus, March suggests, the focus of comparative political theorists should be in answering specific normative questions. In The Caliphate of Man, March demonstrates the use of his framework in a case study of the idea of popular sovereignty in Islam.
In theses 3 and 5, March identifies epistemic dialogue and religion as particular areas of interest to comparative theorists. The benefit of studying religious thought to comparative theorists is twofold. First, religion is where boundaries regarding thought are most distinct, so comparative theorists may find religious thinking useful in comparing ideas. Second, examining religion circumvents the “Othering” of non-Western thinkers by sidestepping the question of “cultural mysticism”. In The Caliphate of Man, March explicitly uses Islam as the “differentiation factor” for his analysis. This is important because March is using Islam as his justification of “comparative analysis”, insofar as he believes that the idea of sovereignty is conceptualized differently between Western thinkers and Islamist thinkers.
In thesis 8, March states that comparative theory involves comparing responses to specific problems.This draws on the idea found in Thesis 3, that good comparative analysis should involve a rigorous discussion of epistemic and normative claims. The problems March thinks are worth investigative merit typically should have a high degree of relevancy and moral interest, yet must delineate themselves from a kind of “radical disagreement”. March is skeptical of disagreement that is considered to be fundamentally irreconcilable, as this radical argumentation is often founded in the logic of differences that “Otherize”.To March, a universal elucidation is both possible and necessary in response to such problems. This is, to some extent, the aim of The Caliphate of Man, which attempts to reconcile the Western “democratic” conception of popular sovereignty with the role of sovereignty in Islam, which is “fractured” (as opposed to “centralized”) amongst various institutions under Islamic law. This is March identifying the question of “sovereignty” as his specific high-importance problem.
In thesis 10, March outlines the main guiding idea that should define comparative theoretical inquiry, which is that it should explore normative implications. The dispute of norms is regarded as the “high point” of comparative analysis. In The Caliphate of Man, March is challenging the Western perception of sovereignty through using an Islamic conception of authority. This can be seen occurring throughout The Caliphate of Man with sets of explicit comparisons between Western ideas and Islamic ones. For instance, March offers “Between a Hobbesian or Schmittian theory of sovereign prerogative and a Dworkinian theory of a master judge (“Hercules”) able to arrive at right answers, Islamic political jurisprudence contains a range of answers”(p.50, March), in making reference to Western theorists involved in normative discourses, but reframing that conception for and in the Islamic context.
New methodological innovations within The Caliphate of Man are difficult to pinpoint specifically, as March interchangeably uses a combination of several different methodological approaches throughout his analysis. One method that was not explicitly mentioned in his 10 theses is the method of examining historical contexts for political applications. March includes brief histories and contexts that introduce relevancy into his analysis, but once again, this can be interpreted as merely an extension of thesis 8, which insists that questions that are worth comparative evaluation will have a high degree of importance.
Overall, March successfully uses a variety of the methods laid out in the framework of What Is Comparative Political Theory? throughout The Caliphate of Man. Theses 3, 5, 8, and 10 are particularly salient in March’s comparative analyses. March’s focus on Islam and on sovereignty as an idea are two areas in which the methodological framework is deployed particularly well.