Shakespeare’s Dogberry, moving as usual beyond conventional platitude, roundly condemned all comparisons as odorous. Although this book consists entirely of essays in comparison, one need approach it with no Dogberrian apprehensions. Indeed it is one more manifestation of a recent and surely healthy tendency in the academic study of politics, namely, the willingness to take seriously political theories and ideas rather than merely engage in the ‘scientific’ study of political behaviour, itself often the excuse for an arid pursuit of near-meaningless statistics.