The (un)lucky country: the problem of the single antipodean case study and what to do about it

Single-case studies, though once the foundation of political science, have become a high-risk strategy in the discipline. The risk is especially acute for scholars who do rich qualitative work about New Zealand and Australia. There is a double bind. On the one hand, the community studying Antipodean politics is not large enough or sufficiently well-defined to ignore trends and mores overseas. On the other hand, Antipodean politics is not exotic or important enough to command the attention of the larger discipline. The danger lies in ‘falling off the map’. We consider the problem this poses for academic careers. We then outline a menu of strategies for surviving this double bind using the practices of comparative interpretive research. We posit that a more clear-eyed acknowledgement of the problem can lead to the conscious embracing of these strategies and the potential they offer for immersive case research.