The study of comparative politics is as old as Aristotle - the celebrated 'father of politics'. In recent times, it has assumed a significance of its own owing to remarkable developments in the spheres of national and international politics. The decline of the authoritarian and totalitarian systems and, instead, the spread of democracy around the world in several forms, transformation of the Westphalian model of the nation-state noticeable in the emergence of a vigorous civil society, and the establishment of a transnational state in Western Europe may be referred to in particular. Global comparisons have become the fashion of the day which reveal astonishing facts about the existence and role of many political and para-political institutions. Non-state actors demand proper attention to their role in the operation of politics of the developed as well as the developing countries. Comparing political institutions, as done by the old writers, is not so important now. What is needed is that the scope of such a venture should be widened so as to investigate and analyse the working of the states in the present age of democratisation, modernisation, liberalisation and globalisation. The changes in the domain of this subject are at once momentous and profound. One era of comparative politics has gone, and the other one has ushered in with it a new agenda of its own.

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