The methodological legacies of Theda Skocpol’s State and Social Revolutions: Locating the three pillars of comparative historical analysis
| Published date | 01 November 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241245893 |
| Author | Marcus Kreuzer |
| Date | 01 November 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Article - States and Social Revolutions at 40: A Symposium |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241245893
Politics
2024, Vol. 44(4) 530 –542
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957241245893
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The methodological legacies
of Theda Skocpol’s State and
Social Revolutions: Locating
the three pillars of comparative
historical analysis
Marcus Kreuzer
Villanova University, USA
Abstract
Stein Rokkan and Barrington Moore revived comparative historical analysis (CHA) in Europe and
the United States, respectively, during the 1960s without, however, elaborating its methodological
underpinnings. Theda Skocpol’s State and Social Revolutions as well as her Visions and Methods
Historical Sociology filled this gap. In her important essay with Margaret Somers, she identified
three distinct strands of CHA that tackled macro-historical question in distinct but ultimately also
complimentary ways. In doing so, she established the foundation for subsequent work on CHA
methodology. The article elaborates the subsequent elaborations of Skopol and Somer’s CHA
typology and the factors contributing to this evolution. It also underscores how many of those
innovations were already implicit in Skocpol’s State and Social Revolutions even though she herself
did not highlight it in her own methodological writings. Skocpol the empirical scholar thus turns
out to have been methodologically more advanced than Skocpol the methodologist.
Keywords
comparative historical analysis, methodology, revolutions, Skocpol, states, time
Received: 28th February 2024; Accepted: 13th March 2024
How things changed! Today’s PhD students get to choose from an ever-growing menu of
methodological choices while also gasping for enough intellectual oxygen to ask interest-
ing questions. One source for this asphyxiation is the ontological strictures that the latest
techniques – typically imported from economics – impose on exploring the social world
and identifying new questions. Forty years ago, Theda Skocpol’s training involved little
more than rudimentary statistics and Barrington Moore’s spartan advice to ‘read a lot and
look for interesting pattern’. Moore considered any methodological advice more specific
Corresponding author:
Marcus Kreuzer, Villanova University, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19066, USA.
Email: Markus.Kreuzer@villanova.edu
1245893POL0010.1177/02633957241245893PoliticsKreuzer
research-article2024
Special Issue Article - States and Social
Revolutions at 40: A Symposium
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