COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGYthat it is ‘‘eventful:’’ Any given moment in a histori-
cal chain of unfolding sequences is both a reposi-
tory of past actions and a harbinger of future
possibilities (Thompson 1978). Temporal order
and the causal relationships among actions that
make up events therefore become the major ob-
ject of inquiry in comparative narrative analysis.
Narrative focuses squarely on the import of
human agency in reproducing or changing socie-
tal arrangements, thereby complementing the at-
tentiveness comparative-historical sociologists have
traditionally given social structural constraints and
opportunities (Stryker 1996). Channeling analyti-
cal attention in this fashion directs narrativists
both to transformative historical happenings (the
French Revolution, for instance [Sewell 1996])
and to the development and deployment of decid-
edly temporal concepts, such as path dependence,
sequential unfolding, temporally cumulative cau-
sation, and the pace of social action (Abrams 1982;
Aminzade 1992). The structure of action under-
pinning particular historical narratives, moreover,
can also be strictly compared with an eye toward
both showing general patterns across events and
individual exceptions to those generalizations
(Abbott 1992; Griffin 1993). Dietrich Rueschemeyer
and John Stephens (1997), for example, demon-
strate how ‘‘eventful time, including the order and
sequence of key actions, can both be incorporated
into causal generalizations for such large scale
processes as democratization and capitalist eco-
nomic development and [be] exploited to ascer-
tain where those generalizations break down.
Comparative narrativists have developed a va-
riety of procedures to enhance the theoretical
payoff and replicability of their research: (1) event-
structure analysis (Griffin 1993), which allows ex-
plicit codification of reasons for inferences and for
cross-level generalization; (2) semantic grammar
analysis, which uses linguistic rules to convert text,
such as newspaper accounts of strikes In Italy, into
numbers for subsequent statistical analysis (Franzosi
1995, 1998); and (3) systematizing electronic means
to collect, store, code, and analyze diverse types of
historical texts, from newspaper articles to court
opinions and legislative hearings (Stryker 1996;
Pedriana and Stryker 1997). Robin Stryker (1996)
has also developed the useful notion of ‘‘strategic
narrative’’ as a guide to case selection in compara-
tive-historical analysis: Strategic narrative suggests
that some historical events and ways of construct-
ing stories will promote theory-building more than
will others, thus facilitating cumulation of knowledge.Regardless of precisely how analytical formal-
ism is incorporated, unpacking a narrative and
reconstituting it as an explicit causal account—
that is, comprehending and explaining the logical
within the chronological, and the general within
the particular—often requires that analysts imagi-
natively reconstruct participants’ cultural under-
standings (interpretation), as well as systematically
harness theoretical abstractions, comparative gen-
eralizations, and replicable research methods. In
effect, then, analysts explain because they are com-
pelled to interpret, and they interpret because
causal explanation is demanded (Beer 1963; Grif-
fin 1993; Mahoney 1999).METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES AND
DIFFICULTIESThough comparative-historical analysis is neither
necessarily cross-national or cross-cultural, nor al-
ways confronting the same obstacles as narrative
history, it does share many of the methodological
problems (and solutions) and dilemmas tradition-
ally associated with both types of research. These
include, among others: (1) defining and selecting
comparable analytical units; (2) case interdepend-
ence; (3) the nonrepresentativeness of cases; (4)
determining conceptual equivalence and meas-
urement reliability and validity across time and
space; (5) the paucity of data, especially that which
is quantitative, over long periods of time, and for
newly emerging nations; (6) the selectivity and
general unsoundness of the historical record; (7)
the use of spatially and temporally aggregated
data, and, more generally, the distance between
what can be collected and systematically measured
and what the theory or research question actually
calls for; and (8) fruitful ways to wed historical
narration and cultural specificity, on the one hand,
to the development of general sociological theory
and cumulative, replicable results, on the other.
Some of these difficulties especially plague analyti-
cally formal comparisons (e.g., the artificiality and
interdependence of cases; the paucity of systemat-
ic, quantifiable data at the proper theoretical level
of analysis; and the excessive generality at the cost
of important historical and cultural specificity);