Design Strategies For Comparative International Studies of Community Power

Comparative international community power research reintroduces and intensifies the problem of research design and method with which the researcher is confronted in comparative research within the United States. A number of design problems must be confronted in order to ensure accumulative findings: (1) selection of hypotheses and propositions for test; (2) construction of cross-sectional designs such that the researcher or others can use his concepts and methods for longitudinal study at a later time; (3) selection of cities appropriate for the design; (4) a standardization of methodology to include some combination of the positional, reputational, and decisional approaches; (5) a complementary standardization of power structure models. These problems are illustrated by original research experiences in Seattle, Washington; Bristol, England; Cordoba, Argentina; and Lima, Peru. Comparative international community power research reintroduces and intensifies the prob[em of research design and method with which the researcher is confronted in comparative studies within the United States. Research in the United States presents many models of design (Aiken and Alford, 1970; Field, 1970; Friedman, 1970; Swanson, 1962). In contrast, comparative international research is very limited (D'Antonio and Form, 1965; Rabinovitz et al., 1967; Walton, 1970; 1971b). The researcher must rely heavily on what he has learned in his own country. There are no more methodologies or instruments of measurement available to the researcher simply because he has expanded the number of communities in his research universe either at home or abroad. Comparative research which requires field work invites a greater expenditure of time, money, and manpower. And the problem of determining what knowledge is of most worth to a growing scientific base becomes more important. The social scientist is pledged to a search for those aspects of social structure which are relatively stable and exhibit recurring regularities or patterns. In community power phenomena much of the data are ephemeral: the current issues, the political party in power, the current leaders and interpersonal relations between them, and sometimes even the economic and social composition of the community is in rapid flux. Of what value are these transitory data to a scientific commitment which seeks to build a base of knowledge characterized by persistence in time and wide scope in social space? The answer is very little unless the collection of data is guided by concepts, models, patterns, or processes that may be compared and related (Bonjean, 1971; Kadushin, 1968; Lehman, 1969; Perrucci and Pilisuk, 1970:1040-1051; Walton, 1971 a). The comparative researcher knows that he must have a design which makes comparability possible between his international communities. Once undertaken, the central core of his design must be frozen. If he chooses cross-sectional analysis, then he must ask himself if he or other researchers can use his concepts and methods for future longitudinal study. And more than that, it is important to anticipate whether he and future researchers can utilize the findings in the task of accumulating research knowledge. John Walton, Claire Gilbert, and Michael Aiken who independently have made strenuous efforts to compare large numbers of community power studies can attest to the difficulty of classifying previous work (Aiken, 1970; Gilbert, 1967; Walton, 1966b). Such an apparently simple demand as the classification of a community as monolithic or pluralistic through data reported by different observers can bedevil the most careful research compilation. Currently, we have two opposing statements each carefully documented about the