The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry
Theda Skocpol,Margaret R. Somers +1 more
TLDR
Comparative history is not new. As long as people have investigated social life, there has been recurrent fascination with juxtaposing historical patterns from two or more times or places as mentioned in this paper.Abstract:
Comparative history is not new. As long as people have investigated social life, there has been recurrent fascination with juxtaposing historical patterns from two or more times or places. Part of the appeal comes from the general usefulness of looking at historical trajectories in order to study social change. Indeed, practitioners of comparative history from Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber to Marc Bloch, Reinhard Bendix, and Barrington Moore, Jr. have typically been concerned with understanding societal dynamics and epochal transformations of cultures and social structures. Attention to historical sequences is indispensable to such understanding. Obviously, though, not all investigations of social change use explicit juxtapositions of distinct histories. We may wonder, therefore: What motivates the use of comparisons as opposed to focussing on single historical trajectories? What purposes are pursued—and how—through the specific modalities of comparative history?read more
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Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options
Jason Seawright,John Gerring +1 more
TL;DR: Seven case selection procedures are considered, each of which facilitates a different strategy for within-case analysis and discusses quantitative approaches that meet the goals of the approach, while still requiring information that can reasonably be gathered for a large number of cases.
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Common Property Institutions and Sustainable Governance of Resources
TL;DR: The authors examines the relative merits of statistical, comparative, and case study approaches to studying the commons and concludes that careful research design and sample selection, construction of causal mechanisms, and a shift toward comparative and statistical rather than single-case analyses are necessary for a coherent, empirically-relevant theory of the commons.
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Interpretation and Method : Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors demonstrate the relevance, rigor, and creativity of interpretive research methodologies for the social and human sciences, and discuss how research topics, evidence, and methods intertwine to produce knowledge.
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Rightful Resistance in Rural China
Kevin J. O'Brien,Lianjiang Li +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss rightful resistance and boundary-spanning claims in the context of China-US relations, and their implications for China's economic and political future.
Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science
Abstract: Al igual que el personaje en la obra de Moliere que habló en prosa durante toda su vida sin saberlo, los cientistas políticos contemporáneos están familiarizados con los ejemplos clásicos de la investigación del institucionalismo histórico sin por ello ser conscientes de que ejemplifican un género coherente, que cuenta con elementos que funcionan en forma similar al de los otros dos grandes enfoques de investigación de la ciencia política contemporánea, el conductismo basado en encuestas y los modelos de la elección racional. Los institucionalistas históricos analizan las configuraciones organizacionales mientras otros observan escenarios particulares aislados; ponen atención en coyunturas críticas y procesos de largo plazo, mientras que otros solamente consideran porciones de tiempo o maniobras de corto plazo. De este modo, al aproximarse a cuestiones importantes, los institucionalistas históricos hacen visibles y comprensibles contextos más amplios y procesos que interactúan, dan forma y reforman los estados, la política y el diseño de la política pública. El trabajo de Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make (1997), por ejemplo, revela ciclos recurrentes en la naturaleza y éxito del liderazgo presidencial a través de la historia de los Estados Unidos. Otro estudio de largo plazo en la política americana, Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981 (1991), de John Mark Hansen, desarrolla un modelo de interacción entre grupos de interés y el gobierno con el objetivo de explicar la emergencia, persistencia y eclipse final de la influencia nacional de las asociaciones rurales nacionales. Atravesando naciones y períodos de tiempo, Peter A. Hall, en su libro de 1986, Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France, explica como las instituciones y organizaciones se intersectan para dar forma no sólo a las políticas gubernamentales sino también a las estrategias y alianzas de los grupos de interés e intelectuales. Yendo aun más lejos, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America, escrito por Ruth Berins Collier y David Collier (1991) y Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Early Modern Europe, por Thomas Ertman (1997), explican las dinámicas de los regímenes y la variedad de formaciones de los estados nacionales modernos.
References
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States and social revolutions : a comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the causes of social revolutions in France, Russia and China, and present alternatives to existing theories to explain these social revolutions, including a focus on state building and the emergence of a dictatorship in Russia.
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Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method
TL;DR: This paper is a systematic analysis of the comparative method, and it is argued that the case study method is closely related to theComparison method.
Journal ArticleDOI
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Book
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World
David Lowenthal,Barrington Moore +1 more
TL;DR: Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: lord and peasant in the making of the modern world as discussed by the authors, Social origins of dictatorships and democracies: the lord and the peasant in making of modern world.