CONCEPTUAL "STRETCHING" REVISITED: ADAPTING CATEGORIES IN COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

I A Then scholars extend their models and hypotheses to encompass additional cases, they /fj\f commonly need to adapt their analytic categories to fit the new contexts. Giovanni T v Sartori's work on conceptual "traveling" and conceptual "stretching" provides helpful guidance in addressing this fundamental task of comparative analysis. Yet Sartori's framework draws upon what may be called classical categorization, which views the relation among categories in terms of a taxonomic hierarchy, with each category having clear boundaries and defining properties shared by all members. We examine the challenge to this framework presented by two types of nonclassical categories: family resemblances and radial categories. With such categories, the overly strict application of a classical framework can lead to abandoning to category prematurely or to modifying it inappropriately. We discuss solutions to these problems, using examples of how scholars have adapted their categories in comparative research on democracy and authoritarianism. table concepts and a shared understanding of categories are routinely viewed as a foundation of any research community. Yet ambiguity, confusion, and disputes about categories are common in the social sciences. A major source of this difficulty is the perpetual quest for generalization. As scholars seek to apply their models and hypotheses to more cases in the effort to achieve broader knowledge, they must often adapt their categories to fit new contexts. One of the most incisive treatments of this problem of adapting categories is Giovanni Sartori's (1970, 1984) work on conceptual traveling (the application of concepts to new cases) and conceptual stretching (the distortion that occurs when a concept does not fit the new cases). This is an old debate, and it might appear that this problem of categorization has been superseded by new analytic and statistical approaches. However, this is not the case. Scholars accustomed to the language of "variables" will recognize that issues raised here are closely related to problems of establishing the validity of observation and measurement across cases. For example, analysts who have carefully derived and tested a set of hypotheses about political participation in one set of cases will commonly wish to probe the generality of their findings by examining the same hypotheses in additional cases. To do so, they must first establish that political participation has a sufficiently similar meaning in the new cases. An excessive concern with the difficulties of establishing equivalence among contexts of analysis could, of course, lead to the abandonment of the comparative enterprise altogether. The merit of Sartori's approach is that it encourages the scholar to be attentive to context, but without abandoning broad comparison. In recent years, new interest in the problem of applying categories across diverse contexts has been generated by the rise of a school of comparativehistorical analysis,2 as well as by the comparative politics literature on authoritarianism and corporatism in the 1970s and on democratization in the 1980s and 1990s.3 It is evident from these bodies of scholarship that broad comparison requires a use of categories that is sensitive to context. Further, the historical depth in many of these studies offers a useful reminder that the problem of conceptual stretching can arise not only from movement across cases but also from change over time within cases. Hence, the challenge of achieving the virtue of conceptual traveling without committing the vice of conceptual stretching remains very much with us today. We shall examine how categories change-or should change-as they are applied to new cases. Sartori's original framework is based on the assumptions of what is sometimes called classical categorization, in which the relation among categories is understood in terms of a taxonomic hierarchy of successively more general categories (1970, 1038). Each category possesses clear boundaries and defining properties that are shared by all members and that serve to locate it in the hierarchy. Yet twentiethcentury linguistic philosophy and contemporary cognitive science have presented a fundamental challenge to this understanding of categories by claiming that many types of categories do not possess these attributes (Lakoff 1987). This challenge might seem to undermine Sartori's approach. However, we show that these alternative types of categories can be treated in a way that is distinct from, yet complementary to, Sartori's perspective. To provide a base line against which alternative perspectives on categories can be evaluated, we first review Sartori's procedure for modifying categories. We then explore the distinctive problems that arise in dealing with types of categories that do not fit the classical pattern, which is the basis of Sartori's approach. First, we examine the issues that arise with