Comparative politics concerns itself with politics within specific countries and political systems. To facilitate comparison, comparative politics attempts to define the substance or topics of interest that define or characterize political systems; and influence movements and dynamics within a system. Regime types, social actors, extra-national processes and institutions are some of the more basic interests comparative politics delve into. With the continuing growth of the discipline, more and more topics that define political systems are being explored.
At the core of comparative politics are descriptive studies of different political systems emphasizing similarities and differences. As a social science, comparative politics is concerned more with explaining how systems and current situations came to be and much less with rendering judgment on merits, advantages and disadvantages of different political systems.
Understanding how countries developed the way they did, how and why they transitioned from one political system to another and the forces and circumstances that drove the changes may provide some insights on how similar political systems can develop. More inductive than deductive, comparative politics contribute to policy formulation based on analysis of what had actually transpired.
As with other disciplines, comparative politics seeks to expand itself through the creation of related knowledge. A 2005 paper by Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder on the direction of comparative politics showed almost equal achievements by comparativists in the creation of both causal - defining causes of political developments - and descriptive knowledge on the state of political systems. Hypothesizing from empirical knowledge mainly through induction, theories generated through comparative politics relate to political trends as influenced by political forces. Although traditional comparativists lean more toward empirical analysis rather than on developing theories, the study conducted by Munck and Snyder showed increasing focus on theory generation.