American Immigration through Comparativists' Eyes

Immigration and its challenge to national identities are unleashing political conflict throughout the world. Three of the founders of modem comparative politics-Samuel Huntington, Aristide Zolberg, and Jerry Hough-analyze this conflict in studies of the United States. Their books are exemplary. Although all are American, they each view America with a foreigner's eye. They bring America back in to comparative analysis, not as a data point for cross-sectional statistical testing, but as a country study, in the best area studies tradition. Still, these books would have benefited from greater analytic rigor, as well as adoption of a cultural equilibrium model to analyze the dynamics between immigrants and dominant social groups, suggested by Hough but not fully realized.