Piero Tortola (Collegio Carlo Alberto)

“N=2: The comparative study of the EU and the US as a research programme”

abstract

EU-US comparisons have proliferated in the past two decades or so. Yet by and large this scholarship so far has proceeded without a serious reflection on its own nature, raison d’être, and key characteristics—a lack of ‘self-awareness’ which in turn hampers mutual communication and cumulation. Employing an original dataset of 90 publications, this paper aims to fill this gap by examining the substantive and methodological traits of the EU-US literature, analyzing its evolution over time, and reflecting on its possible future developments. A central conclusion of the paper is that, consistent with EU studies as a whole, EU-US comparisons have become increasingly normal vis-à-vis the paradigm of positive political science. I argue, however, that this normalization is only partly good news, and that a more desirable direction for the future is for EU-US research to be centred on the notion of a ‘dual mission’ (theoretical and empirical), whereby comparative work should aim to explain politics in these two federal systems (and possibly beyond) while at the same time acknowledging the two polities as interesting per seowing to their relevance and the strong political value of their comparison.