The state and direction of asian comparative politics: Who, what, where, how?

In this article we explore the state of the discipline of comparative Asian politics. In particular we analyze five aspects of research on Asia: whether the empirical scope of research is largely noncomparative; the extent to which that research is empirical rather than theory-generative; whether it pertains to public or foreign policy; if it relies on qualitative rather than quantitative methods; and the gender and geographic concentration of those conducting the research. After coding and analyzing data from 461 articles from eight different journals, we demonstrate that research on comparative Asian politics is more likely to be empirical, qualitative, focused on the country as unit of analysis, and disproportionately written by male academics educated and/or working in North America, Western Europe, or Australia.