The Review of Politics 71 (2009), 567 –582.

# University of Notre Dame

doi:10.1017/S003467050999091X

Response to “What Is Comparative

Political Theory?”
Farah Godrej

Andrew March’s article represents a fine attempt to tackle urgent questions

arising from current developments within comparative political theory;
namely, questions pertaining to its identity, its scope, and its methodology.
While many have long argued for the inclusion of non-Western texts
as objects of analysis within political theorizing, few have argued as effectively
for a particular methodological task and a specific purpose for comparative pol-
itical theorizing as March has done in his article, “What Is Comparative Political
Theory?” For this, I applaud him. In principle, he and I share many common
concerns and goals. Like March, I, too, have been concerned that the desire
for a comparative political theory has not been thoroughly scrutinized or well
elaborated. I have also been concerned about elaborating a rigorous method-
ology that goes beyond the desire for inclusiveness in making the field of politi-
cal theory more global. However, despite these mutual interests, my admiration
for his scholarship, and my general sympathies with the project of comparative
political theory broadly conceived, I find myself taking issue with many of
March’s claims about an engaged comparative political theory. I also find
myself taking issue with the implications of his constructive proposal for reform-
ing the practice of comparative political theory as well as its relationship to the
overall field of political theory.
I have no quarrel with much of what March has to say about the vagueness
of scope and purpose in most current formulations of the comparative politi-
cal theory. However, his proposal has two main problems. First, it is unclear
whether and how seriously March is committed to the project of an engaged
and comparative political theory or whether his argument is actually meant to
demonstrate the implausibility of such a result. A lack of clarity in key
elements of his proposal—particularly regarding the centrality of the role of
doctrinal orthodoxy—leaves readers unsure of March’s own response to the
very motivating thrust of his essay, namely, the question of whether an
engaged political theory can be comparative in a meaningful way. This uncer-
tainty in turn leaves us with more puzzling aporiae than useful provocations.
Second, I worry that March’s arguments will reinforce the substantively and
methodologically Eurocentric focus of political theory. Although March expli-
citly disavows any commitment to the dislocation of Eurocentrism as the goal
of his project, the very structure of his proposal, as well as its implications,
makes it necessary to raise this question.
567
568 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

First, let me elucidate the implications of March’s proposal for restructuring

the field of political theory. The upshot of March’s proposal would seem to be
that a comparative subfield of political theory, if it is to be established with
any credibility, must focus primarily on principled value-conflict across tra-
ditions with distinctly autonomous moral doctrines. This comparative politi-
cal theory should reveal the contours of a deeply moral disagreement
between highly distinct modes of political thought, focusing on the most
orthodox and ideal-type representatives across this divide, and speaking to
a normative dispute that affects terms of social cooperation in public life.
What would happen to the remaining majority of nonideal-typical thinkers
and texts of all traditions, including thus far neglected non-Western texts
whose treatment cannot be strictly comparative by the standard March
posits? March does not directly address this question. However, everything
he says about political theory as an inherently comparative endeavor suggests
that all non-Western texts that shed important light on moral/political matters
(and, therefore, which should not be neglected), but are not ideal-typical or
orthodox enough to represent the mutually incompatible sources of authority
across distinct doctrinal truth claims or to speak to normative disputes about
terms of social cooperation, should be integrated into the existing studies of
political theory proper. Thus, March suggests that Ibn Khaldun, al-Farabi,
and certain kinds of Confucian doctrine would be read and studied as part
of an expanded canon of global political theory alongside Machiavelli and
Hobbes because they do not represent the orthodoxy and distinction that
underlie deep moral disagreement.1 Because they represent the authoritative
center of orthodox Islamic theology and jurisprudence, thinkers like
Al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, and Yusuf al-Qardawi could be appropriate
objects of comparative political theory thus redefined.2
I begin by taking issue with the very focus of March’s argument. March has
much to say about the redefinition and restructuring of comparative political
theory as an explicitly engaged and value-conflict-centered endeavor, but
little to say about what implications this has for the remaining overall field
of political theory, other than to suggest it would perhaps be more appropri-
ately global in its integration of Gandhi, Lao Tzu, Kautilya, and Ibn Khaldun
alongside Plato, Machiavelli, and Foucault.3 March openly suggests that
those who are not interested in (by his own admission) the seemingly pedan-
tic focus on the comparative moniker, or those who are simply concerned
about globalizing the field of political theory proper, might not find his recon-
structive proposal engaging. But in thus directing his argument to a restricted
audience, March ends up dismissing his most important interlocutors:

1
Andrew F. March, “What Is Comparative Political Theory?” Review of Politics 71,
no. 4: xx–xx]
2
Ibid., xx.
3
Ibid., xx.
 RESPONSE TO “WHAT IS COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THEORY?” 569

namely, those who are interested in exactly how the overall field should be
restructured and who might, therefore, take issue with the narrow focus on
comparison. This is, in fact, a rather important question. We need to think
about whether and why March’s approach to the way political theory
ought to treat otherness—namely, ensuring that an engaged comparative pol-
itical theory focuses on those thinkers and texts who represent systematic
doctrinal conflict and speak to normative disputes, while leaving all other
treatments of non-Western thought to be incorporated into the existing disci-
plinary conventions and modes of inquiry—is the appropriate one.
Some of March’s own comments implicitly suggest that the demands and
imperatives of what we currently consider comparative political theory—
namely, the impetus to study thinkers and texts beyond the West—cannot
be confined to an internal discussion because they are inextricably connected
to the overall field of political theory. Why be concerned with pitching the
imperative of comparative political theory to the entire field, or with com-
manding the respect of other political theorists, if the goal is simply to
refine the internal methodological requirements of a subfield, most of
which are ultimately self-sufficient and self-contained? March himself
rightly reminds us of the centrifugal nature of political theory: adherents of
subfields as methodologically diverse as feminist theory, pragmatism,
Rawlsian pluralism, or hermeneutic theory often have nothing to say to
each other, and thus little interest in—or need for—justifying their existence
either to one another or to the field as a whole. However, in indicating that
it has to command the respect of those not interested in non-Western thinkers,
March’s proposal implies that discussions about comparative political
theory cannot continue to be internal ones. Meanwhile, the results of
the restructuring that March proposes also clearly have implications for the
field as a whole. This suggests, then, a need to examine the presuppositions
underlying political theory’s overall relationship to the otherness of
non-Western texts and ideas. March alludes to this larger question, but
chooses ultimately to bracket it entirely. I intend to argue, however, that the
particulars of his proposal have implications for this larger question that
cannot be ignored.

Engaged vs. Comparative: A Zero-Sum Game?

I turn now to the specifics of March’s proposal. To begin, I find troubling the
persistent ambiguity that runs through March’s argument about the genuine
possibility of an engaged comparative political theory, as he defines it. On the
one hand, March uses strongly encouraging and constructive language—par-
ticularly in his elaborations of theses 7, 8, and 10 and in the conclusion—to
suggest that an engaged comparative political theory centered around
public value-conflict between the doctrinal orthodoxy of autonomous and
distinct moral systems would be a rich, promising, and desirable
570 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

development for the field of political theory.4 Yet his essay strikes many a note
of pessimism about the possibility of a strictly comparative political theory as
he defines it, precisely because of what he acknowledges to be the irreducible
internal plurality of traditions and the porosity of boundaries between them.5
This uncertainty is further underscored by a lack of clarity about the central-
ity of doctrinal orthodoxy that March suggests should be the centerpiece of an
engaged political theory. On the one hand, March seems to be quite serious
about the focus on doctrinal orthodoxy, which he argues for most clearly
and in an impassioned fashion in theses 7 and 8. Reading what sounds like a
strong advocacy of the criterion of doctrinal orthodoxy in these sections, one
is easily led to worry that the focus on traditions of thought with conflicting
substantive moral commitments, mutually incompatible sources of authority,
and the insistence on deep moral distinction between traditions with stable
boundaries will have reifying, alienating, and radicalizing effects. That such
an approach will make it tempting to deny hybridity and reify non-Western
traditions by reducing them to a caricature of their most orthodox figures
and texts is only the most obvious objection. One starts to worry that the
sort of political theorizing March seeks to characterize as comparative
would bring into relief only the most orthodox representatives of a given reli-
gious tradition or doctrinal view, further alienating or perhaps radicalizing the
responses of their interlocutors from other traditions.
Soon, however, the reader is not quite sure whether—or how much—she
has to worry about this reification of orthodoxies. March is sophisticated
enough not only to acknowledge that examples of hybridity and nonideal-
types abound in all traditions, but to suggest that he is, in fact, quite deeply
concerned with the implications of this hybridity and pluralism. But what
March gives with one hand, he takes away with the other, for it becomes
less clear what sort of role March really does intend for the criterion of doc-
trinal orthodoxy to play in his argument. He now puts forth simultaneous
requirements for two different things that seem to be in conflict with one
another: namely, on the one hand, an engaged comparative political theory
that focuses on the first-order implications of normative disputes and has
the capacity to reveal important implications of such normative disputes
to the adherents of multiple traditions, and on the other, an engaged compara-
tive political theory that focuses on systematic conflict among deeply distinct
entities, each representing the orthodox center of a moral doctrine. In thesis 9,

4
See, for instance, March, page xx: “[A] patient, thorough and responsible exca-
vation of the contours of moral conflict itself is a creative and engaged way of genu-
inely comparing distinct ethical traditions”; as well as page xx: “[C]omparative
political theory will be richer and more interesting by moving further into the realm
of normative justification within multiple traditions.”
5
“It may of course be that the distinction I am drawing is incoherent or unsustain-
able. But then so might the idea of an engaged comparative political theory if it is to be
more than non-Western political theory” (xx –xx).
 RESPONSE TO “WHAT IS COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THEORY?” 571

he suggests that value conflict has to be more than simply irreconcilable as a

result of orthodoxy in order to bring to the fore normative disputes and that
searching for the terms of consensus and the first-order implications of
genuinely knotty moral problems has to involve something more than a confron-
tation between the most simple and basic doctrinal commitments of two parties.
But the real problem seems to be that the requirement for orthodoxy and doc-
trinal conflict—namely, the comparative portion of the project—would make it
less possible to say anything interesting or relevant about the implications of nor-
mative conflict for the grounds of consensus or the first-order implications of the
conflict—namely, the engaged part of the project. The reader is now led to
wonder: Is it March’s contention that the two key requirements of an engaged
comparative political theory are inherently in conflict with one another or that
the one must come at the expense of the other? March needs to offer far more clar-
ification than he currently does about how centrally his argument can rely on the
criterion of doctrinal orthodoxy.
There are many different reasons why the requirement of doctrinal ortho-
doxy could potentially be the key stumbling block to an engaged and com-
parative political theory. March also needs to clarify which—if any—of
these he finds the most problematic. First, is it possible that the more doctrin-
ally orthodox the text or thinker, the more likely it is to be attached to the
internal concerns of a tradition, and, therefore, less likely to be able to
provide guidance on a value-conflict that could matter to the terms of social
cooperation between multiple groups? Let us take the Brahminical formu-
lation of caste-based hierarchy within Hinduism as an example of a central,
orthodox doctrine. This caste hierarchy divided human forms of life into
four classes or varnas, based on natural superiority or inferiority and on past
karmic credit and debit.6 Interpersonal social, professional, and religious inter-
action among Hindus was long said to be heavily regulated by rigid injunc-
tions in the Manusmriti (The Laws of Manu), prescribing all ritual behaviors
and social intercourse from birth, including marriage, occupation, and so
on. Many orthodox Hindus would cite the Manusmriti and its rigorous codifi-
cation, ritualization, and stratification of Hindu spiritual, political, and social
life as the most central of doctrines. It may certainly be the case that an ortho-
dox text like the Manusmriti provides a more challenging expression of a core
conflict between two traditions, the moral problem in question presumably
being the normative commitment to the absolutely free and equal status of
human beings in a democratic society, with the Hindu tradition calling into
question the dominant liberal Western commitment on this issue. For the

6
For more details on the origins of the caste system, Vedic philosophy, and other
classical Hindu texts, see U. N. Ghoshal, A History of Indian Political Ideas (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1959); Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore,
eds., A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957);
and John B. Chethimattam, Patterns of Indian Thought: Indian Religions and
Philosophies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1971).
572 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

very same reason, it is unclear whether this value-conflict alone could provide
any insights pertaining to the terms of cooperation between the adherents of
respective doctrines. After all, the stratification and regulation of social and
political life through the caste system could only be said to be the deepest of
internal concerns within a tradition, and in its most orthodox form, has little
ability to speak beyond those concerns and contexts.
Another version of this problem could be the following: If hybridity, plur-
ality, and dissent from ideal-types are, in fact, the conditions that tend more
commonly to characterize adherence to traditions, then is the choice of ortho-
dox or ideal-type figures and texts faced with the potential problem of irrele-
vance or disjuncture from the range of available existential realities within a
tradition and thus from any real insight on the terms of social cooperation?
“I myself doubt very much,” March acknowledges, “that any person thinks
and acts solely in terms of what their authoritative doctrine or ideology pre-
scribes. Certainly, in the postcolonial world it is difficult to find non-Western
thinkers who have been utterly unaffected (unpolluted?) by Western ideas,
norms, and expectations” (xx). This suggests that it is often equally difficult
to find actual practices—the realities of lived lives and practices by those
who adhere existentially to the doctrinal truths being investigated—that cor-
respond to the most doctrinally orthodox or central positions within that
tradition. To revert to my previous example, one is less and less likely to
find among Hindu believers a concern for adherence to caste-based hierarchy
in its most orthodox doctrinal form. While many modern-day Hindus are
content loosely to follow caste-based prescriptions for endogamy, the most
orthodox doctrinal prescriptions of texts, such as the Laws of Manu pertaining
to social interactions, employment status, and political rule, are increasingly
irrelevant. If an engaged comparative political theory is to focus on genuinely
knotty moral questions about public life on which only the most orthodox
figures or texts can be consulted, then these problems may often not have
much connection to the existential realities of lived lives within that doctrinal
tradition. The purchase of orthodoxy or doctrinal centrality may have to come
at the cost of relevance to public discourse about social cooperation.
Finally, could it also be the case that the most interesting and relevant gui-
dance on matters of public life involving multiple traditions comes not from
the orthodox doctrinal center of any given tradition but rather from thinkers
and texts that dissent from orthodoxy, formulating hybrid and synthetic doc-
trines that lie at the blurry intersections of boundaries between traditions? For
instance, March makes repeated reference to Gandhi—including, most
kindly, to my own work on Gandhi. But Gandhi was neither orthodox nor
ideal-typical as a representative of the Hindu tradition of political thought,
as March himself acknowledges.7 And Gandhi’s capacity to provide

7
On p. xx, March recognizes that Gandhi’s thought was never distinct or radically
alien enough from Western thought as to form a distinct community of moral
 RESPONSE TO “WHAT IS COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THEORY?” 573

challenging insights on an interesting and meaningful normative dispute

between traditions was hardly a result of his centrality, orthodoxy, or repre-
sentativeness within the Hindu tradition; rather it arose precisely at the
point of hybridized contact between the fuzzy, porous boundaries of tra-
ditions that had already been somewhat intertwined with one another. For
instance, his most fundamental metaphysical and epistemic views may
have relied almost entirely on Vedic claims about the status of humans in
relation to the divine, while the role of self-suffering within nonviolent politi-
cal action was distinctly influenced by the ancient Hindu concept of tapasya,
the purifying effects of ascetic discipline and self-mortification.8 But these
were also deeply fused with a commitment to the human capacity for
moral reasoning as well as a role for the autonomy of the human conscience
that was clearly influenced by Western Enlightenment ideals. His reading of
the Bhagavad-Gita, for instance, celebrates the individual’s capacity for moral
autonomy while deliberately rejecting some of the communitarian, hierarch-
ical, and caste-based implications that other thinkers take from the same text.9
This, combined with the influence of liberal Enlightenment views on freedom
and equality in political life, made Gandhi’s social and political thought a
creative fusion of early Vedic/Brahminical metaphysics, later folk political
practices, and modern Western liberal influences. Moreover, the capacity of
Gandhi’s thought to dislodge and problematize the liberal Rawlsian commit-
ment to toleration through what I have called his “civic virtue of nonviolence”
is a result not only of Gandhi’s creative and synthetic capacity to reinterpret
the orthodoxy of inherited doctrines, but also of our own ability to reread
and reinterpret Gandhi himself.10
What, then, are the implications of this Gandhian fusion for the possibility
of a justificatory comparative political theory? If anything, my own treatment
of Gandhi implies that many meaningful and challenging disputes over

argumentation. On Gandhi’s reinterpretation of orthodox Hindu doctrines, see Bhikhu

Parekh, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political Discourse
(New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1989); Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical
Examination (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989); Raghavan
Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (New York, Oxford
University Press, 1973); Anthony Parel, Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest for
Harmony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
8
See Farah Godrej “Nonviolence and Gandhi’s Truth: A Method for Moral and
Political Arbitration,” The Review of Politics, 68, no. 2.
9
On Gandhi’s interpretations of the Gita, see Parel, Gandhi’s Philosophy and the Quest
for Harmony; M. K. Gandhi, “Anasaktiyoga,” in Anasaktiyoga or the Gospel of Selfless
Action: the Gita According to Gandhi, ed. Mahadev Desai (Ahmedabad: Navajivan
Press, 1956); M. K. Gandhi, “The Meaning of the Gita,” in Gita the Mother, ed. Jag
Parvesh Chander (Lahore: Indian Printing Works, 1947).
10
Godrej, “Nonviolence and Gandhi’s Truth.”
574 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

interesting value-conflicts affecting multiple traditions rarely occur through

confrontation with the deep distinction, alienation, and orthodoxy of one’s
counterpart from another systematic autonomous doctrine, through the influ-
ence of distinct coherent wholes or ideal-type doctrines. They tend to occur in
hybrid and piecemeal fashion, at the confluence of porous borders between
autonomous doctrines, rather than through the influence of their orthodox
central thinkers, beliefs, or themes. Yet at the end of his article, March
suggests that my work on Gandhi may provide a good example of the sort
of engaged and justificatory comparative political theory he advocates.11
Thus, there is an ambiguity here that leaves me puzzled about whether
work such as my own could be considered engaged and comparative, in
March’s terms. It is clear what would make it engaged: it challenges and dis-
locates a particular Western normative commitment and shows why the
implications of this normative dispute should matter to us. However, is
there something that continues to make it comparative, as he seems to
suggest in thesis 10, if it does not represent the orthodoxy of an autonomous
moral doctrine constructed in its ideal-typical form? If not, are there other
examples of thinkers, texts, or ideas that could satisfy both the engaged
and the comparative criteria in different ways? Or is this criterion simply
impossible to fulfill?12
March implies that treatment of thinkers outside the Western tradition will
probably have to yield on the comparative element in order to deliver well on
the engaged element of a justificatory comparative political theory. But he
needs to do something beyond simply alluding to this problem: he must
tell us exactly why this might be the case. Moreover, what does this imply
for the task of the justificatory comparative political theory that he advocates
in thesis 10? Certainly, March does raise the question of whether political
theory can be both engaged and comparative in method and purpose, and
he puts this forth as the central question driving his investigation. But
the reader is left wondering where exactly he stands on the question. The
picture of a justificatory comparative political theory that he provides in
thesis 10 (and beyond) reveals what seems like a ringing endorsement of
the project. However, it provides no clarification on the precise role of doc-
trinal orthodoxy therein or on whether its centrality might have to be
rethought in the pursuit of an engaged comparative political theory.

11
See footnote no. 47 on p. xx.
12
Indeed, March makes fleeting references to Islamic thinkers such as Ibn Taymiyya,
Al-Ghazali, and Al-Qardawi as orthodox representatives of Islamic doctrine, as well as
to the possibility of a problem-driven investigation of the Danish cartoon controversy.
But absent a more detailed example, one is left wondering what distinguishes these
particular cases as good examples of systematic value conflict based on doctrinal
orthodoxy or distinction, with no way to judge what other cases from traditions
outside Islam might fulfill similar requirements.
 RESPONSE TO “WHAT IS COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THEORY?” 575

Absent further clarification, one is left wondering how seriously to take the
pessimistic remarks March makes about the possibility of a truly engaged
comparative political theory and how—if at all—to reconcile these with his
keen advocacy of the project and of the centrality of doctrinal orthodoxy
therein. As a result, which of the alternatives he truly endorses also
remains unclear throughout March’s article. Should we have a comparative
political theory focused purely on value-conflict among autonomous moral
doctrines as a subfield of a global umbrella of political theory in which
Gandhi and Qutb are taught alongside Plato and Hobbes? Or are the require-
ments for an engaged comparative political theory, if we understand them
properly, so unrealistic—given the preponderance of hybridity, plurality,
and synthesis—that it seems implausible that we could ever fulfill them
and still have something interesting to say about value conflict, as, in fact,
the very last words of the essay tell us?13 We are left wondering, then,
whether March endorses the project of a distinct subdiscipline of comparative
political theory organized around the pursuit of problem-driven value con-
flict, or whether his argument is intended to demonstrate the implausibility
of such reform, and to endorse the alternative he implies, namely, that all
non-Western texts are subsumed into the existing canons and methods of pol-
itical theory proper, both scholarly and engaged. The reader is left puzzling
over the goal of March’s project: Does he simply intend to pose the question
of the viability of an engaged comparative political theory as an unanswer-
able one? Or does he intend to answer it? If the latter, one does not know
which of March’s possible conclusions most accurately describes his position.

The Alternative: The Already Comparative Nature

of Political Theory
If March’s pessimism regarding the possibility of an engaged and compara-
tive political theory is to be taken seriously, then shifting the focus to the

13
His final paragraph suggests that hybridity and synthesis, rather than orthodoxy
or authoritative doctrinal centrality, are the conditions that tend more commonly to
characterize relationships between traditions, and that the project of building a sub-
field focused on problem-driven value-conflicts between autonomous, moral doctrines
is, therefore, a tenuous one because the distinction of entities and sharpness of bound-
aries defining those distinctions is rather more blurred in the case of political theory
than in other fields. “As it turns out, it might not be so easy for any form of
‘engaged’ political theory to follow political science, law, and other disciplines in inau-
gurating comparative methods. For unlike fields where the object of study is a well-
contained entity . . . political theory has a special burden. In dealing with the realm
of thoughts, ideas, and truth-claims, it is not always clear when the boundary
between ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’ obtains and when that boundary per se is generative of
compelling questions” (xx).
576 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

question of what remaining alternative is implied in the field of political

theory to account for its relationship to non-Western texts seems appropriate.
The response to this problem, rather than merely denying that an engaged
comparative political theory defined in this manner is almost implausible,
should be to think more carefully about what option is left. March may
not have set himself this task, but I want to follow through on it and to
show that the implications of his argument are neither insignificant nor
unproblematic. March’s argument implies that if an engaged and compara-
tive political theory is not a possibility, then our remaining alternative
would be to go with the adequacy of our existing structures, that is, to inte-
grate the study of non-Western texts and thinkers into the existing canons
and methods of political theory proper, both scholarly and engaged. This
would be the case for one of two reasons. Either any treatment of
non-Western texts/thinkers/ideas that was scholarly rather than engaged
would be nothing different from political theory proper, since political
theory as it is currently practiced is already comparative in some sense;14 or
the nebulousness of boundaries between civilizations and their products,
and the ensuing hybridity, synthesis, and porosity of boundaries suggest
that a focus on non-Western texts that is engaged but not strictly comparative
is also to be subsumed into political theory proper. What is being compared is
no longer the deep distinction of autonomous doctrines stemming from reli-
gious or doctrinal difference, but simply the specific ideas of each thinker, a
difference that already exists within political theory as we know it.15
(Notice that we would still have to think about this question even if March
is serious about the possibility of an engaged comparative political theory:
March still implies that the treatment of most nonideal-type and unorthodox
thinkers from all traditions should be integrated into the existing study of pol-
itical theory.)
In principle, I have no objection to March’s vision of a political theory in
which Ibn Khaldun—as well as Gandhi, Confucius, and many others—
would be studied and taught alongside Thucydides, Hobbes, and Weber, as
he suggests on page xx. Indeed, I have called elsewhere for a cosmopolitan pol-
itical thought and argued precisely against the ghettoization of thinkers by

14
“Of course, there is no denying that non-Western traditions are rich and have other
interesting things to say besides those which bear on justification or value conflict.
However . . . there would be nothing particularly comparative about the study of
non-Western traditions that focus purely on the internal concerns of those traditions.
There is no reason not to have a scholarship devoted to the noncomparative study of
non-Western political thought (as, of course, we do)” (xx).
15
See March’s elaboration of thesis 2 on pp. xx –xx. See also p. x: “Comparative
methods are thus already assumed to be part of the wide, variable, and diverse
forms of activity which for disciplinary-organization purposes go under the name
political theory.”
 RESPONSE TO “WHAT IS COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THEORY?” 577

tradition.16 But the particular way in which March makes this argument relies
heavily on the idea that the practice of political theory has always been com-
parative in some senses, which in turn leaves intact the existing structures and
methods of political theory, implying that there is no need to reorganize its
disciplinary practices or its methods of inquiry.17 Suggesting that the treat-
ment of most non-Western thinkers, texts, and ideas can unproblematically
be assimilated into the existing and available practices of political theory
may unwittingly end up reaffirming the hegemony of Western categories if
it implies (as March’s argument currently does) that Gandhi can simply be
studied and taught alongside Plato and Machiavelli without any rethinking
of the very categories of inquiry that structure our treatment of these texts.
To suggest that political theory as it now exists is and always has been com-
parative is quite right in one sense. But this focus on comparison as an
inherent feature of all political theory obscures important nuances. It obscures
the fact that the dominance of Western political theory arises not only from its
substantive foci but also from the dominance of its structures of inquiry,
its practices, and methods. It also ends up denying the parochial specificity
of those structures, practices, and methods by leaving them intact, rather
than problematizing them. It suggests that the existing substantive and meth-
odological canons of political theory require no reform or rethinking, and that
the very ways in which political theory has thus far conducted its compara-
tive inquiries are satisfactory to the task at hand, well-structured enough to
subsume the category of a whole new kind of distinction that confronts its
practitioners in new ways.
This in turn reveals another assumption embedded within the claim,
namely that what is required to do good scholarly work on Gandhi or
Confucius is, in the end, not any different from what is required to do
good scholarly work on Aristotle, Machiavelli, or Kant. The claim that the
alienness that separates us from our own ancients is no more or less mystify-
ing than the alienness that confronts us when we read Gandhi, Kautilya, or
Ibn Khaldun also lends implicit support to the hegemony and subsumptive
zeal of Western categories of inquiry, and to its propensity cheerfully to
engulf all other kinds of knowledge into its own tent. It suggests that most
kinds of otherness can be studied as though they were, in the end, no different
from the internal othernesses cleaving the category of West itself, and that
political theory is comparative enough to absorb the cultural difference of

16
See Godrej, “Toward a Cosmopolitan Political Thought: The Hermeneutics of
Interpreting the Other,” Polity 41, no. 2 (April 2009): 135–65. I do not claim that
March explicitly embraces the agenda of a global or cosmopolitan political thought,
but rather that some global or cosmopolitan structure is implied in his argument.
17
I am deeply indebted to Leigh Jenco for pushing me to think about the most radical
implications of decentering the parochialism of Western political theory. See also Leigh
Jenco, “What Does Heaven Ever Say?: A Methods-Centered Approach to
Cross-Cultural Engagement,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 4 (2007).
578 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

non-Western otherness as just another category of difference. Recently, in my

own work, I have argued strenuously against such a view.18 While it may be
true that Machiavelli and Aristotle confront certain kinds of Western readers
with some amount of otherness, the very movement of that Western reader
within the Western tradition of political theory—her training in the tradition;
her immersion in its languages, conventions, and protocols; her awareness of
its history—places her in a certain kind of relationship to these texts and may
subsequently place her in conversation with Machiavelli in a way that is
qualitatively different from her encounter with Kautilya. This placement
involves practices and methods of inquiry as well as substantive understand-
ings, and to presume that we can unproblematically situate ourselves simi-
larly with respect to texts and ideas from traditions beyond our own masks
several important issues. To think in new ways about how to structure our
inquiry into texts from other traditions requires a radical scrutiny and even
rethinking of this location, at a minimum, examining carefully our own pos-
ition in relationship to these texts, ideas, and traditions,19 and perhaps even
resituating ourselves in terms of the other tradition’s practices of inquiry in
order to understand these texts and ideas at all.20 March’s focus on the inher-
ently comparative nature of political theorizing contains an impetus neither
to recognize the centrality of these issues nor to address them.
Another important consequence of the approach March advocates is that it
tends to eclipse the important fact that any thinker’s placement within a tra-
dition is a complex and tricky issue, and that this should be a central proble-
matic within the globalizing of a political theory that may now have to
account for its encounters with more than one dominant tradition of political
thought. Being deeply situated within one tradition of political thought does
not preclude any thinker or text from reaching conclusions that are either
entirely at odds with those of her own tradition and, as a result, have a
kind of transcultural resonance, whether intentionally or otherwise. This
makes it (misleadingly) easy to attribute a kind of familiarity to them, but
on the other hand, makes it more difficult to grapple with their position
within a non-Western tradition, along with their often simultaneous place-
ment at the confluence of various traditions (particularly in the case of
more modern thinkers). In the case of someone like Gandhi, for instance, it
is easy to assume that the message of nonviolence is intentionally a univer-
sally familiar one, precisely because Gandhi writes in English, using refer-
ences, concepts, and idioms that are an inevitable result of his immersion in
the English language, his placement as a colonial subject educated in
Britain, and his resulting absorption of some Enlightenment ideals. To
assume, however, that this alone makes crucial elements of his thought

18
See Godrej, “Toward a Cosmopolitan Political Thought,” 139.
19
Ibid., 153.
20
Jenco, “What Does Heaven Ever Say?”
 RESPONSE TO “WHAT IS COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THEORY?” 579

either easily transcultural or intuitively more familiar to Western readers

would be a mistake. The messages of ahimsa (nonviolence) and satyagraha
(civil disobedience) may be universal, and certainly Gandhi himself may
have intended for them to be so—this in itself is not a terribly novel claim
to make. But any decontextualized assumption about this familiarity or trans-
culturality that ignores how deeply these messages are situated within the
Vedic language of dharma and Hindu metaphysical assumptions about
human nature risks misunderstanding Gandhi’s thought. Elsewhere, I have
argued that Gandhian nonviolence can scarcely be understood without at
least a basic familiarity with the hermeneutic struggle over the meaning of
the term dharma—variously translated as sacred duty, or alignment with
cosmic force of moral law—as it appears in the Bhagavad-Gita.21 In fact,
most of Gandhi’s thought is so deeply rooted in Vedic metaphysics that at
least a cursory reading of the Bhagavad-Gita and Gandhi’s own interpretive
relationship to it are crucial for a complete understanding of Gandhian non-
violence. But at the same time, I have also argued that Gandhi’s thought can
be creatively reinterpreted to produce a new way of thinking about conflict
resolution in multireligious democracies, a transcultural application that he
himself never explicitly intended for the theories of ahimsa or satyagraha.22
Such rereadings of Gandhi’s thought, however, must emerge from a deep
understanding of his placement within a tradition, locating the continuities
and the fissures that simultaneously bind him to and make him a critical out-
sider to this tradition. If we understand Gandhi simply as an advocate of non-
violence and universally apply his view to any understanding of political life,
we miss something, we detach it from his deeply religious and virtue-based
concept of dharma and its role within the Vedic tradition. Nor do we get the
entire picture if we see Gandhi as simply providing an internal critique of
that tradition, and acting as its critical transcultural voice.23
In the end, of course, Gandhi is neither utterly alien to us nor utterly fam-
iliar. Nor is his work easily categorized as utterly situated or utterly transcul-
turally intended. Seen through either Western or non-Western lenses, the
encounter with otherness is rarely either utterly mystifying or entirely com-
prehensible. For the same reason, civilizational representation and transcul-
tural resonance are hardly mutually exclusive. The challenge, then, is to
strike a delicate balance between seeking to subsume all otherness by explain-
ing it in terms of the familiar, suggesting, therefore, that a familiar or transcul-
tural message is implicitly contained within the works of a given thinker, or

21
Godrej, “Toward a Cosmopolitan Political Thought.”
22
See Godrej, “Nonviolence and Gandhi’s Truth,” as well as “Gandhi’s Civic Ahimsa:
A Standard for Public Justification in Multicultural Democracies,” International Journal
of Gandhian Studies (forthcoming).
23
Ashis Nandy uses the term critical traditionalist to refer to Gandhi’s unique relation-
ship to the Indian tradition. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: The Loss and Recovery of
Self under Colonialism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988).
580 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

insisting that otherness is recognizable only to those embedded in its context

and that transcultural knowledge is, therefore, impossible. It is precisely the
recognition of this complexity that is obscured by the claim that we can
treat Gandhi as though he were no more or less alien to us than Plato, and
that we can, therefore, carry on with business as usual. Such a claim
ignores the complex question of Gandhi’s placement within a tradition and
what meaning this placement may or may not have for his thought. More
problematically, it decenters the crucial question of what the complexity of
this placement means to how—or even whether—we think about our
relationship to the otherness of Gandhi’s thought, and indeed, of all
non-Western texts and ideas.
One may claim (as March perhaps would) that any good scholarly expo-
sition of a thinker should recognize and be able to deal internally with
these problems. March’s own work on Islam is, in fact, a wonderful
example of such rigorous scholarly work.24 But the problem is that the exist-
ing canons, methods, and practices of inquiry within political theory are not
structured in any way that makes such a recognition central. Any reform of
the field of political theory that seeks to include texts from all traditions
must center these problematics and address them as crucial methodological
questions, rather than leave them implicitly to the imagination of rigorous
scholars. What may seem utterly self-evident to someone as highly trained
in the methods of inquiry and practices of another tradition—as March no
doubt is—requires far more explicit and fundamental recognition as a
general methodological question pertaining to the field at large. In order to
treat Ibn Khaldun or Confucius as worthy of study alongside Thucydides
and Hobbes without sustaining the domination of Western categories, a
more inclusive and global—and, indeed cosmopolitan—political theory
must focus on the dilemma that many non-Western texts are placed at a
crucial intersection of alienness and familiarity. Moreover this alienness and
familiarity may not map neatly onto the ways in which our own thinkers
are both alien and familiar to us; Gandhi is alien to us in a different way
than Machiavelli is, and Plato’s works may present us with a sense of famili-
arity that is entirely different from that which we feel when we encounter, say,
Confucius. This in turn presents unique challenges to how we might structure
our study of these texts, challenges that cannot be addressed by straightfor-
wardly integrating them into existing models of inquiry. Unfortunately, the
picture of a globalizing political theory that March leaves us with does no
justice to the centrality of these problems, for it suggests that all that is

24
See, for instance, Andrew March, “Islamic Foundations for a Social Contract in
Non-Muslim Liberal Democracies,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 2
(2007); “Sources of Moral Obligation to Non-Muslims in the ‘Jurisprudence of
Muslim Minorities’ (Fiqh al-aqalliyyat) Discourse,” Islamic Law and Society 16, no. 1
(2009).
 RESPONSE TO “WHAT IS COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THEORY?” 581

required is to incorporate the study of these thinkers into the existing prac-
tices and methods of a political theory that is, as yet, inadequately structured
for the complexities of the task at hand.
Finally, March’s implicit support for the hegemony of Western categories of
inquiry is also reinforced by the subtle privileging of engaged over noncom-
parative or scholarly political theory as the ultimate warrant for addressing
non-Western texts and thinkers. March insists that he does not wish to down-
grade the status of scholarly political theory, and in many places, he acknowl-
edges that it may be a richer and more rewarding kind of scholarship
than purely engaged comparative political theory.25 But he also suggests
that purely scholarly work pertaining to non-Western thinkers or ideas has
little capacity to add value to existing political theory by exciting the imagin-
ation of political theorists working in and on the West, or convincing them to
care about ideas and texts from other traditions.26 Comparative political
theory, he claims, must aspire to be engaged rather than to be scholarly if it
is to add value to what is already inherently a sufficiently comparative endea-
vor. But this claim fails to recognize an important potential contribution of
what March would call “scholarly” or “noncomparative” political theory;
namely, that scholarly treatments of a thinker, a text, or a set of ideas may
have the potential not only to challenge our normative commitments but
also to change entirely the sorts of questions we even ask and the problems
we seek to focus on. Western political theory’s dominance arises from more
than simply its focus on certain texts and methods of inquiry; it also involves
asking certain kinds of questions motivated by certain presuppositions and
preoccupations. Leigh Jenco has reminded us splendidly that thinking
within the categories of Western experience limits our ability to engage in
modes of knowing and being that are removed from these categories, and
that thinking within another tradition—immersing oneself in its categories
of experience and practices of inquiry—may be a more effective methodologi-
cal antidote to this problem of Eurocentrism.27 Deep immersion in the sorts of
things March might consider scholarly activity—immersing oneself in
another tradition, its practices of inquiry, its ways of knowing and under-
standing the political world, its modes of questioning, and the kinds of pro-
blems it seeks to focus on—has a potentially groundbreaking contribution
to make by bringing to light entirely new kinds of questions arising from

25
See March, “What Is Comparative Political Theory?”: “A scholarship devoted to
the noncomparative study of non-Western political thought . . . may indeed be richer
and more sophisticated than various forms of comparative political theory” (xx).
26
On p. xx, he calls it the “weaker” form of political theory. He also states that “the
interest in non-Western political thought . . . merely to decenter the canon or to frame
‘cross-cultural dialogue’ . . . without rigorous epistemic or normative standards . . .
would be nothing . . . for the broader disciplines of political science and political
theory to get too excited about” (xx).
27
Jenco, “What Does Heaven Ever Say?”
582 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

new preoccupations and new frames of inquiry. March suggests that texts
from outside the Western tradition should be able to excite the imagination
of political theorists trained and situated within the frameworks of the domi-
nant Western problematics and categories, making them care about
non-Western texts or ideas without having to dislodge their own frames of
thought. He thus implies that it is more important to make the treatment of
non-Western texts fit categories of Western inquiry and Western preoccupa-
tions than to shed critical light on or to problematize those categories and
preoccupations altogether.
March may respond (and, indeed, does suggest repeatedly) that he is less
interested in and/or committed to the political act of dismantling or troubling
the parochialism of settled Western understandings of political life and
methods of inquiry, as he is in the intellectual act of bringing rigor to the
project of comparative scholarship. But it is one thing to value rigorous scho-
larship over affirmative action, and quite another to provide a reforming
vision that implicitly contains the danger of reinforcing the intellectual and
methodological hegemony. This result seems especially awkward because
March suggests that the hegemony of Eurocentric categories is so obvious
that no one who chose to deny it would have a leg to stand on.28 My critiques
do not necessarily suggest that March should be more committed to the
project of dislocating the hegemony of Eurocentrism than he currently is,
but rather that he should be more attentive to the implications of his own
argument for acquiescing to—and perhaps reaffirming—that hegemony.
I have argued in this essay that Andrew March’s article, while presenting
an important contribution to the development of a crucial debate, leaves
the reader both somewhat puzzled about its actual goal and concerned
about its linkages to the dominant practices and methods of Western political
inquiry. In the end, of course, I am grateful to March for having started an
extremely important conversation, one that I hope to continue in spirited
fashion over time. I am also grateful to him for having done so in an interest-
ing and provocative way and for opening the door to a series of exchanges,
both with each other and with our other colleagues in the field. I believe
we are together in hoping for this to be the commencement, rather than the
finale, of such rich and challenging exchanges.

28
“Who today would assert with confidence that concepts and categories developed
in European and North American societies are necessarily applicable to other
societies? Who today would deny that European and North American societies
have defined for themselves and others the dominant normative understandings of
contemporary philosophical concepts?” (March, “What is Comparative Political
Theory?” xx).