Writing about Contrast beyond Typologies: The Contribution of “Entangled History” and International Comparison

Building on the author’s personal experience of international comparison, this article discusses the relevance of typologies to writing on the comparison of cases generally considered very different. Research on “entangled history” produces powerful insights that go beyond two classical pitfalls of typologies: their static nature in time, but also in space. Comparing the politics of the senior civil service in France and Great Britain, I have tried to take advantage of what are often considered obstacles for comparison—the initial asymmetry of the researcher’s relationship to the fieldwork and the non-independence of the cases under study—to build and write on a comparison that holds the specificity of each of the cases together with the “common issues” that pace their historical trajectories. The writing of the thesis follows a mixed outline, between systematic, transversal comparison and case-study-based restitution.