Why the study of comparative politics is important

Agar Adamson



During the McCarthy era in the United States, the only individual in the U.S. State Department who could speak Vietnamese and who had a good knowledge of that country was forced to resign because of the witch hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy. How might history have evolved if that individual had remained in place?

More recently, and closer to home, herring ishers found that their Japanese sales plummeted to almost zero. Why? Because then Emperor Showa was close to death and as a mark of respect the Japanese cancelled most of their entertaining and thus there was no market for Maritime herring roe.

These two examples illustrate the need for both diplomats and citizens to have a sound knowledge of the world around them. To be blunt, they illustrate why it is necessary to study comparative political economy, world history and comparative religions. On this last point, I wonder if the Americans would be in Iraq today if the president and vice president had a good knowledge of religion in Iraq.

Globalization is a now a fact of life. Even if, like the little boy with his finger in the dyke, we wanted to stop it, we would be overwhelmed by the tsunami. True, things seldom stay constant, but we must live in the here and now in order to survive. Consequently, we must educate our children and ourselves to do the same.

Several years ago while still on staff at Acadia, I became interested in many things Japanese and taught a course on Japan. Why? Because at the time Japan was the world’s number two economy and was one of our major trading partners. It still is. Just look at the cars on the road, or your television set.

At that time at least one in four Canadian workers was in one way or another involved with a Japanese company. Japan held more American debt than did Americans themselves. It was Japanese inventions that were the 'wonder weapons' of the first Gulf War.

It was Henry Kissinger who commented that American sovereignty was in danger when people had to depend on Japanese banks to finance the government and Japanese industry to give the military the upper hand in any armed conflict.

Yes, things have changed: the Japanese bubble economy burst and China became an economic juggernaut. Today, one would place more emphasis on China than Japan in any course on the Asian countries of the Pacific Rim.

It is unfortunate that today so many political science departments in this region of Canada, as well as history departments, do not cross the Pacific but stop at British Columbia!

However, it is not just our universities that are lax on this issue. Our media spend far too much time 'navel gazing' and do not give sufficient coverage to the world around us. The American media gives even less coverage than does the Canadian media. Watch one of the major U.S. network’s evening news and count the number of non-domestic U.S. issues covered.

We get upset when our elected politicians visit Japan, India or other nations. Yet, how can our MPs ask intelligent questions - no that's not a joke - if they do not have a good knowledge of the world? Would our attitude toward the Afghanistan war be altered if we had a sound knowledge of that country, its history, political culture and agriculture, if we had a better background knowledge of its past present and future?

Are we in the West correct when we try to enforce our values on other regions of the world? President Bush wanted to introduce American-style democracy to Iraq. Who is to say that American democracy is a fit example to shower on any nation? Military power is not the same as the power of democracy.

The old cliché that, 'knowledge is power' is still true today. Nationalism is nice, but it has caused far too many wars. Knowledge of others is far more important. The current Ontario referendum campaign on electoral reform is a good example of this as one has seldom read so much tripe on both sides of the issue as one finds today. How can the voters educate themselves on the issue when reading these articles? We all might be better informed if we had the opportunity to study and debate comparative topics like electoral systems, economic policies or religious philosophy.

The world cannot afford more errors like the invasion of Iraq or the Vietnam War, let alone the cancellation of income trusts.

We cannot only learn from the mistakes of others, we can benefit from knowledge of other nations, particularly other federations. Do you know from which country we learned of the GST? New Zealand, but they did a better job of introducing it than we did.