Charles Ragin argues, in addition, that ‘[m]any area specialists a thoroughly comparative because they implicitly compare their chose case to their own country’ (ibid.). Others reject claims that researching foreign country will automatically involve scholars in comparison. Hence, Peter Mair (1996: 310) criticizes the view that whilst ‘an American scholar working on, say, Italian politics is usually regarded be her national colleagues as a “comparativist” . . . an Italian scholar working on Italian politics is regarded by her national colleagues as “non-comparativist”, claiming that this ‘make nonsense of the definition’ of comparative research.