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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]