Encyclopedia of Sociology

COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY

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MARY KO ZIMMERMAN

COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL

SOCIOLOGY

Explicit analytic attention to time and space as the
context, cause, or outcome of fundamental social
processes distinguishes comparative-historical analy-
sis from other forms of social research. Historical
processes occurring in or across geographic, po-
litical, or economic units (e.g., regions, nation-
states, multi-state alliances, or entire world sys-
tems) are systematically compared for the purpos-
es of more generally understanding patterns of
social stability and social change (Abrams 1982;
Skocpol 1984a; Tilly 1984; Mahoney 1999). Three
very different and influential studies illustrate both

the kinds of questions comparative-historical

sociolgists address and the approaches they use.

First is the classic study by Reinhard Bendix

([1956] 1974) on work and authority in industry.

Bendix initially observed that all industrial socie-

ties must authoritatively coordinate productive

activities. Yet by systematically comparing how

this was done in four countries during particular

historical periods—pre-1917 Russia, post-World

War II East Germany, and England and United

States during epochs of intense industrialization—

he showed that national variation in ideologies of

workplace dominance were related to differences

in the social structures of the countries studied.

Second is the analysis of the historical origins

and development of the modern world system by

Immanuel Wallerstein (1974). Wallerstein took as

his unit of analysis the entire sixteenth-century

capitalist world economy. Through comparing in-

stances of the geographic division of labor, and

especially the increasing bifurcation of global eco-

nomic activity into ‘‘core’’ and ‘‘peripheral’’ areas,

Wallerstein suggested that the economic interde-

pendence of nation-states likely conditions their

developmental trajectories.

Third is the analysis of social revolutions by

Theda Skocpol (1979). Skocpol compared the his-

tories of revolution in three ancient regime states:

pre-1789 France, czarist Russia, and imperial Chi-

na, and found that revolutionary situations emerged

in these states because international crises exacer-

bated problems induced by their agrarian class

structures and political institutions. She then but-

tressed her causal generalizations by comparing

similar agrarian societies—Meiji Japan, Germany

in 1806 and 1848, and seventeenth century Eng-

land—that witnessed failed revolutions.

Each of these influential studies combined

theoretical concepts and nonexperimental research

methods to compare and contrast historical proc-

esses occurring within and across a number of

geographic cases or instances. By using such re-

search methods, Bendix, Wallerstein, Skocpol, and

many others are following in the footsteps of the

founders of sociology. In their attempts to under-

stand and explain the sweeping transformations of

nineteenth-century Europe, Alexis de Tocqueville,

Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber all

employed and contributed to the formulation of

this broad analytic frame (Smelser 1976; Abrams