COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY

Explicit analytic attention to time and space as the context, cause, or outcome of fundamental social processes distinguishes comparative-historical analysis from other forms of social research. Historical processes occurring in or across geographic, political, or economic units (e.g., regions, nation-states, multi-state alliances, or entire world systems) are systematically compared for the purposes 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 societies 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 instances of the geographic division of labor, and especially the increasing bifurcation of global economic activity into "core" and "peripheral" areas, Wallerstein suggested that the economic interdependence of nation-states likely conditions their developmental trajectories.

Third is the analysis of social revolutions by Theda Skocpol (1979). Skocpol compared the histories of revolution in three ancient regime states: pre-1789 France, czarist Russia, and imperial China, and found that revolutionary situations emerged in these states because international crises exacerbated problems induced by their agrarian class structures and political institutions. She then buttressed her causal generalizations by comparing similar agrarian societies—Meiji Japan, Germany in 1806 and 1848, and seventeenth century England—that witnessed failed revolutions.

Each of these influential studies combined theoretical concepts and nonexperimental research methods to compare and contrast historical processes occurring within and across a number of geographic cases or instances. By using such research methods, Bendix, Wallerstein, Skocpol, and many others are following in the footsteps of the founders of sociology. In their attempts to understand 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 1982). Comparative-historical analysis in sociology—and, as we shall see, debate over how it should be conducted—thus is as old as sociology itself.

PURPOSES, PROMISE, ACHIEVEMENTS

The analytic power of comparative-historical strategies stems from the uniquely paradoxical quality of the perspectives, data, and procedures in comparative-historical research. On the one hand, historical comparisons have the potential to harness and exploit the huge variation in social processes and institutions. Some scholars believe this essential to the development of truly general theory and to transcultural/transhistorical explanation (Przeworski and Tuene 1970; Kiser and Hechter 1991). On the other hand, historical comparisons have the potential to exploit the "time-space boundedness" of social life and its historical antecedents and specificity. Others view this as equally essential to theoretical development and to concrete, "real world" explanation (Moore 1966; Skocpol 1984b; Tilly 1984; Stryker 1996). Most comparative-historical sociologists capitalize in some fashion on this paradox, finding diversity in the midst of uniformity and producing regularities from differences.

One of the great advantages of historical comparisons is that they reduce bias induced by culturally and historically limited analyses and interpretations of the social world. Social structures and processes in the past were generally quite different from those observed today, and contemporary institutional arrangements and social relations differ substantially across cultures, regions, and states. Patterns of historical change and continuity, moreover, have varied from one country or culture to another. Some scholars, such as Bendix (1963, [1956] 1974), relish this diversity and use historical comparisons to emphasize and interpret the peculiarities of each case. Even seeming uniformities across cases may mask important differences, and comparative-historical inquiry may be used to detect these "false similarities" (Bloch [1928] 1969).

Examination of historical or national differences also can lead to the detection of previously unknown facts that may suggest a research problem or pose a hypothesis amenable to empirical exploration. Marc Bloch ([1928] 1969), for example, tells of how his knowledge of the English land enclosures led him to discover similar events in France. Comparing histories also aids in the formation of concepts and the construction of "ideal types" (Weber 1949; Bendix 1963; Smelser 1976). For example, Weber's ([1904] 1958) concepts of "the Protestant ethic" and "the spirit of capitalism" and Wallerstein's (1974) notion of the "world system" derive from comparative-historical inquiry. Linking apparently disparate historical and geographical phenomena, as Karl Polanyi ([1944] 1957) does when he relates the gold standard to the relative geopolitical tranquility throughout much of the nineteenth century, also is one of the fruits of comparative-historical analysis. New information, conceptual development and the discovery of unlikely commonalties, linkages, and previously unappreciated differences are necessary for the generation, elaboration, and historical grounding of social theory.

The analysis of comparative-historical patterns can allow for more adequate testing of established theory than does study of a single nation, culture, or time period. Plausible theories of large-scale social change, for example, are intrinsically processual and so require historical analysis for a genuine elaboration or examination of their hypotheses (Tilly 1984). Historical comparisons also can be used to assess the generality of putative "universal" explanations for social structure and social action (e.g., functionalism, Marxism). Abstract propositions thought operative across time and space, for example, can be directly confronted through the analysis of parallel cases that should display the same theoretical process (Skocpol and Summers 1980), thereby specifying a theory's generality and empirical scope.

Comparative-historical analysis sometimes is directed toward developing explanations that explicitly are "relative" to space and time (Beer 1963) or that represent historically or culturally "limited generalizations" (Joynt and Rescher 1960). Skocpol's (1979) analysis of social revolutions in France, Russia, and China, for example, resulted in limited causal generalizations deemed valid for these three cases only. Exceptions to theoretical and empirical generality, moreover, can be conceptualized as deviant cases—anomalies or puzzles. For example, Werner Sombart ([1906] 1976) posed the question "Why is there no socialism in the United States?" precisely because the United States, when contrasted to the European experience and stacked up against available explanations for the development of class-conscious labor politics, appeared both historically and theoretically anomalous. To explain such puzzles, the original theory is modified and new concepts and theories with greater explanatory power are formulated. The improved theory then serves as the new starting point for subsequent inquiry, so that cumulation of knowledge is facilitated (Stryker 1996). Thus historical patterns are comparatively situated, the "inexplicable" residue of time and place therefore is potentially "explicable" (Sewell 1967), and sociological theory is further developed.

ANALYTIC TYPES OF HISTORICAL COMPARISONS

Contemporary comparative-historical research practice rests upon diverse, even contradictory, epistemologies and research strategies (Bonnell 1980, Skocpol 1984b, Tilly 1984; Ragin 1987; McMichael 1990; Kiser and Hechter 1991; Griffin 1992; Sewell 1996; Stryker 1996; Mahoney 1999). These can be initially grouped into two basic approaches, labeled here "analytical formalism" and "interpretivism." Each displays considerable internal diversity, and the two can overlap and be combined in practice. Moreover, they can be synthesized in creative ways, thereby capitalizing on the strengths of each approach and reducing their respective weaknesses. The synthesis, "causal interpretivism," is sufficiently distinct as to constitute a third approach to the analysis of comparative history.

Analytically formal comparison. Formal comparison conforms generally to conventional scientific practice in that causal explanation is the goal. It is therefore generally characterized by the development and empirical examination or testing of falsifiable theory of wide historical scope, by the assumption of the preexistence of discrete and identifiable cases, and by the use of formal logical or statistical tools and replicable analytic procedures. Historical narration and the "unities of time and place" (Skocpol 1984b, p. 383) are deliberately replaced by the language of causal analysis. Analytic formal comparison can be used to generalize across time and space, to uncover or produce limited causal regularities among a set of carefully chosen cases, and to establish a theory's scope conditions. There are two major procedural subtypes in this genre, statistical comparisons and formal qualitative comparisons.

Statistical analyses of comparative-historical phenomena are logically and inferentially identical to statistical analyses of any other social phenomena. Thus, they rely on numerical counts, theoretical models, and techniques of statistical inference to assess the effects of theoretically salient variables, to test the validity of causal arguments, and to develop parsimonious, mathematically precise generalizations and explanations. One important way in which the statistical method appears in comparative-historical inquiry is in the form of "comparative time-series" analysis, in which statistical series charting historical change are systematically compared across countries. Charles, Louise, and Richard Tilly (1978) and Bruce Western (1994), for example, first use statistical time-series procedures to map and explain historical variation in working-class activity within European nations. They then compare, either qualitatively (the Tillys) or quantitatively (Western), these national statistical patterns to detect and explain historical differences and similarities across these countries. The second major use of statistical procedures relies on quantitative data from many social units for only one or a few time points. Emphasis in this "cross-national" tradition (e.g., Chase-Dunn 1979; Jackman 1984; Korpi 1989) is on detecting causal generalizations that are valid for a large sample or even an entire population of countries. Though the results of such studies typically resemble a static, cross sectional snapshot of historical process, this analytic strategy sometimes is necessitated because complete time-series data do not exist for very many nations, especially those now undergoing economic and social development (e.g., Pampel and Williamson 1989). Due both to their data limitations and to their focus on statistical regularities and theory testing, cross-national studies typically slight historical processes and homogenize cultural differences across cases. The understanding of cases as real social units deserving of explanation in their own right consequently is sometimes lost (Tilly 1984; Skocpol 1984b; Ragin 1987; Stryker 1996). In the 1990s, however, some cross-national statistical analysts, though continuing their search for general patterns, began to incorporate a more thorough appreciation of history and cultural difference into their analyses (e.g., Western 1994).

Formal qualitative comparison, by way of contrast, views cases "holistically," as qualitatively distinct and independent units that cannot (or should not) be decomposed into scores on quantitative variables as in statistical analysis. This strategy adopts a "case-oriented" approach that pervades the entire research process (Ragin 1987). The explanation of a few carefully chosen cases, for example, generally is the rationale for and product of the analysis, and explicit strategies have been designed to select proper instances to be compared and analyzed (Przeworski and Teune 1970; Frendreis 1983; Lijphart 1971; Stryker 1996). Detection of causal regularities is often inferred through the application of John Stuart Mill's ([1843] 1967) inductive canons or "method of agreement" and "method of difference" to comparative data (Skocpol 1984b; Ragin 1987). Using the method of agreement, analysts select cases that have positive outcomes on the phenomenon under study but that differ on putative explanatory conditions. These cases are then compared to see what causal factor they share. Alternative explanations are eliminated if antecedent conditions representing those claims do not occur in all cases with positive outcomes. The "method of difference" is used to guard against false inferences adduced from the method of agreement. Here analysis is conducted with cases instancing both positive and negative outcomes but that are as similar as possible on the putative causal factors. The objective of Mill's methods is to find the one condition that is present in all positive cases and absent in all negative cases (Skocpol 1984b; Ragin 1987).

Mill's methods are marred because they presuppose that one causal factor or configuration holds for all cases with positive instances. Historical patterns displaying "causal heterogeneity" or "multiple causal conjunctures"—two or more distinct combinations of causal forces generating the same outcome (Ragin 1987)—are therefore logically ruled out. This shortcoming results from the excessive weight Mill's canons give negative cases: Because exceptions exist to almost any general process, the inability to find causal universals that are doubly confirmed by the twin logics of agreement and difference can rule out virtually any nontrivial explanation (Lijphart 1971; Ragin 1987; Mahoney 1999). However, Charles Ragin's (1987) alternative comparative algorithm—"qualitative comparative analysis" (QCA)—allows for the detection of causal heterogeneity in a large number of cases. QCA uses a data reduction strategy rooted in Boolean algebra to search for similarities among positive instances and to exploit the inferential utility of negative cases. Negative or "deviant" cases may be explained by, or give rise to, an alternative causal process, but they are not allowed to invalidate all causal generalizations. Ragin argues that QCA's Boolean logic most closely approximates the mode of reasoning—including the use of logically possible "historical hypotheticals" and "historical counterfactuals"—employed by Weber (1949) and Barrington Moore (1966) in their powerful but less formalized comparative-historical studies.

Formal qualitative comparison can provide both historically grounded explanation and theoretical generalization. QCA is especially useful because it permits multiple causal configurations to emerge from comparative historical data and largely removes the inferential problems induced by the analysis of a small number of cases of unknown representativeness. Nonetheless, detractors—who otherwise disagree about preferred research strategies—believe that formal comparison via either Mill's methods or QCA often is fraught with hidden substantive assumptions, unable to exert sufficient analytical control over the multitude of competing explanations, and compromised by its roots in inductive logic (Burawoy 1989; Kiser and Hechter 1991). Moreover, formal comparisons rest on a key assumption that is seriously challenged by proponents of holistic interpretive comparison—that the historical cases themselves are not systematically interrelated (Wallerstein 1974; McMichael 1990).

Interpretive comparisons. . Interpretive comparisons are most concerned with developing a meaningful understanding of broad cultural or historical patterns (Skocpol 1984b). Two very different comparative logics, "holistic" and "individualizing," are used to construct historical interpretations. Although neither logic relies extensively on formal analytic procedures, nor is geared toward testing theory, interpretive comparisons are not necessarily atheoretical or lacking in rigor. Indeed, concepts and theories, often of sweeping scope and grandeur, are extensively developed and deployed, but for the most part as interpretive and organizing frames, or as lenses through which history is understood and represented. Interpretive comparisons often are thought impressive, but sometimes of questionable validity due either to their self-validating logic or to their lack of explicit scientific criteria for evaluating the truth content of the interpretation (Bonnell 1980; Skocpol 1984b; Tilly 1984; Stryker 1996; Mahoney 1999).

Holistic comparisons usually are tied to particular theories and are used when a "social whole" such as a world system (Wallerstein 1974) is methodologically posited. Conceptualizing the entire world system in this manner suggests that there is but one theoretical unit of analysis, and that unit is the world system. What are considered to be separate "units of analysis" or "cases" in most comparative-historical strategies are, in the holistic methodological frame, really only interrelated and interdependent historical realizations of a singular emergent process or social system. Whether nation-states, regions, or cultures, these "moments" therefore are not the discrete and independent units demanded by analytic formalism. Analysts using holistic historical comparisons in this manner often depend on an "encompassing" functional logic that explains similarities or differences among parts of a whole by the relationship the parts have to the whole (Tilly 1984). Thus, Wallerstein's (1974) comparisons explain the differential development of temporally and spatially specific (though interdependent) economic units in the world system—the core, periphery, and semi-periphery—by their differential positions and roles in the world economy. Such explanations are often circular in their reasoning and always difficult to test, but they may serve as useful illustrations of the workings of a social whole or of the inner logic of a theory (Bonnell 1980; Skocpol 1984b).

Philip McMichael (1990) suggests "incorporated comparison" as an alternative to purge holistic comparison of its mechanistic and self-validating logic. Here a kind of social whole is posited, but it does not preexist and regulate its parts, as does the world system. Instead, it is analytically "reconstituted" by conceptualizing different historical instances as interdependent moments, which, when cumulated and connected through time and space, "form" the whole as a general but empirically diverse historical process. Thus the very definition and selection of "cases" becomes the object of theorizing and research and not its point of departure or merely the vehicle conveying data for analysis. Karl Polanyi's ([1944] 1957) analysis of the emergence and decline of laissez-faire capitalism is a compelling example of this form of holistic comparison.

Individualizing interpretive analysts use historical comparison to demonstrate the historical and cultural particularity of individual cases. Analysts in this tradition often choose research questions and cases on the basis of their recurrent moral and historical significance rather than scientific representativeness or comprehensiveness. They also tend self-consciously to eschew general theory, quantification, and the methodology of causal analysis. Rather, interpretation is grounded in rich historical narration, in anthropological sensitivity to the import of cultural practice, in the culturally embedded meanings in social action, and in the use of persuasive concepts that crystallize or resonate with significant social values and themes (Bendix 1963; Geertz 1973; Bonnell 1980; Tilly 1984; Skocpol 1984b). Bendix's ([1956] 1974) research on work and authority in industry is an exemplar of this strategy, and Daniel Goldhagen's (1996) recent study, Hitler's Willing Executioners, is another much more controversial example.

Casual Interpretivism. Historical comparisons rooted in causal interpretivism synthesize aspects of both analytical-formal and interpretive-historical comparisons. Inspired in part by Weber's (1949) formulation of "causal interpretation" (and anthropologist Clifford Geertz's [1980] similar idea of "interpretive explanation"), this strategy is stamped by explicit causal reasoning, the potential for explanatory generality across comparable instances, and the use of methodological procedures allowing for strict replication, on the one hand, and attention to historical narrative, cultural particularity, and subjective meaning, on the other.

Causal interpretivism has been most fruitfully developed and applied in the analysis of historical narratives (Sewell 1996; Griffin 1992, 1993; Quadagno and Knapp 1992; Somers 1998). Narratives are "sequential accounts" organizing information into "chronological order to tell stories about what happened. . ." and why it happened as it did, and, as such, are "tools for joining sequentiality, contingency, and generalizability" (Stryker 1996, p.305, 307). Narrativists conceptualize historical time so that it is "eventful:" Any given moment in a historical chain of unfolding sequences is both a repository 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 object of inquiry in comparative narrative analysis.

Narrative focuses squarely on the import of human agency in reproducing or changing societal arrangements, thereby complementing the attentiveness comparative-historical sociologists have traditionally given social structural constraints and opportunities (Stryker 1996). Channeling analytical 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 decidedly temporal concepts, such as path dependence, sequential unfolding, temporally cumulative causation, 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, demonstrate 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 economic development and [be] exploited to ascertain where those generalizations break down.

Comparative narrativists have developed a variety of procedures to enhance the theoretical payoff and replicability of their research: (1) event-structure analysis (Griffin 1993), which allows explicit 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 comparative-historical analysis: Strategic narrative suggests that some historical events and ways of constructing stories will promote theory-building more than will others, thus facilitating cumulation of knowledge.

Regardless of precisely how analytical formalism 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 imaginatively reconstruct participants' cultural understandings (interpretation), as well as systematically harness theoretical abstractions, comparative generalizations, and replicable research methods. In effect, then, analysts explain because they are compelled to interpret, and they interpret because causal explanation is demanded (Beer 1963; Griffin 1993; Mahoney 1999).

METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES AND DIFFICULTIES

Though comparative-historical analysis is neither necessarily cross-national or cross-cultural, nor always confronting the same obstacles as narrative history, it does share many of the methodological problems (and solutions) and dilemmas traditionally associated with both types of research. These include, among others: (1) defining and selecting comparable analytical units; (2) case interdependence; (3) the nonrepresentativeness of cases; (4) determining conceptual equivalence and measurement 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 analytically formal comparisons (e.g., the artificiality and interdependence of cases; the paucity of systematic, quantifiable data at the proper theoretical level of analysis; and the excessive generality at the cost of important historical and cultural specificity); others haunt with more force interpretive comparisons (e.g., nonrepresentative cases; analytical looseness and non replicability; and excessive particularity at the expense of generalization and theoretical development).

Granting their very real import, these difficulties are not normally intractable. As we have shown, methodologically self-conscious comparative-historical scholars, both qualitative and quantitative, have devised strategies to: construct and select the most relevant cases for analysis; exploit cross-level data (e.g., within and between nation-states) and make causal inferences across levels of analysis; guard against logically false or self-validating inferences; infuse the analysis of historical narrative with greater theoretical and analytical rigor; and increase the number and representativeness of their cases. They have also devised or imported useful ways to ensure maximum measurement equivalence across cultures; sample historical records; estimate data missing from statistical series and to correct for truncated data; capitalize on case interdependence with new statistical methods; historically ground time-series analysis; etc. (see Bloch [1928] 1969; Carr 1961; Przeworski and Teune 1970; Zelditch 1971; Tuma and Hannan 1984; Skocpol 1984b; Ragin 1987; Kohn 1989; Isaac and Griffin 1989; McMichael 1990; Kiser and Hechter 1991; Griffin 1993; Western 1994; Deane, Beck, and Tolnay 1998).

Some problems, admittedly, have no satisfactory solution, and nothing can compensate for the utter dearth of valid information on particular happenings or variables. This, though, is hardly different from any other form of social research. The litany of methodological difficulties discussed above, in fact, afflict all social research. Survey analysts, for example, deal with questionnaire responses of dubious accuracy and unknown meaning taken from geographically and temporally limited samples, and scholars working with institutional records of any sort must deal with information collected by institutionally self-interested actors.

It is important to recognize that although comparative-historical inquiry is no more "error-prone" or unreliable than are other forms of social research, it often adopts a very different underlying "working philosophy" from most theory-driven quantitative analysis. Usually in highly deductive and statistical analysis (including comparative strategies), theory construction and theory testing are two clearly defined and quite separate phases of a research program (Kiser and Hechter 1991; Stryker 1996). Segmenting research practice in this way is thought necessary to ensure that hypothesis testing produces a fair empirical test, unbiased by prior analysis, or even intimate fore-knowledge of the data. Given these rules and objectives, then, concepts, indicators, hypotheses, and theory are not usually changed in the middle of analysis; that would invalidate the statistical or logical test.

In contrast, comparative-historical inquiry that is qualitative and inductive, though often also analytically formal, establishes a continual dialogue between social theory and empirical evidence, so that conceptual abstraction and comparative history are mutually defined and constructed in reference to each other. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, for example, Weber ([1904] 1958) used historical evidence on economic and religious practices and beliefs to refine his ideal types and his hypotheses and, simultaneously, conceptually frame that empirical data to render it intelligible and explicable. Many comparative-historical sociologists follow Weber's general strategy, that is, they start their inquiry with one set of concepts, indicators, or hypotheses, or all three, and end with another, modified set because they mutually adjust data and theory, ensuring a good "fit" between the two as analysis progresses. In their study of capitalist economic development and democratic political practice in many nations, for example, Rueschemeyer, John Stephens, and Evelyne Huber Stephens (1992) amended their theoretical definition of democracy, both broadening its historical scope and specifying more precisely its meaning, as they moved in their analysis from Europe to Latin America. Thus what may look like scientific "cheating" to a deductive or quantitative scholar is an appropriate, fruitful strategy for comparative-historical sociologists whose goals are concept formulation and reformulation, theory construction, and empirical understanding, rather than strict hypothesis testing.

Analytic rigor does not rest with the mechanistic application of technique per se, but, instead, with a systematic and methodologically self-disciplined stance toward both data collection and analysis and the use of evidence to advance inferences. Most comparative-historical scholars adhere to explicit decision rules, permitting others to replicate, critically judge, and constructively critique the research. To help ensure the validity and reliability of measures in this sort of inquiry, and while also maintaining the needed flexibility to improve key concepts and measures during the analysis, for instance, Stryker (1996) has shown how researchers can adapt traditional content-analytic coding techniques to capture time and space as explanatory context. Context can be conceptualized and measured as a conjunction of "values" on general theoretical constructs, and, at the same time, researchers can develop what she terms "action coding" to construct more systematically the who, what, when, where, how, and why of action and event sequences. With enhanced systematization—that is, the use of precise concepts, measures, and coding techniques, and the clear communication of these—comes enhanced reliability and replicability (Stryker 1996).

THE FUTURE OF COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

Jack Goldstone (1997, p. 119) has stated that comparative-historical inquiry has produced "many of the greatest achievements of macro-sociological scholarship." At the end of the twentieth century, these achievements were severely tested by a series of interdependent, large-scale social transformations of every bit the historical magnitude and moral significance of those motivating sociology's founders: economic and cultural globalization; the growth of transnational "super states" brought about by strategic military and economic alliances among sovereign nation-states; post-communist marketization and democratization in former Soviet-bloc nations; and armed nationalist struggles and resurgent ethnic conflicts. Broad interest in, and need for, illuminating comparative-historical analysis therefore is only likely to increase.

The utility of research in this tradition rests more on the creative use of good theory than it does on its methodology. But "creative use" of theory is itself largely a matter of how theory is combined with research strategy. On this score, the future of comparative-historical sociology would seem bright.

One encouraging trend is the increasing use of statistical techniques developed explicitly to analyze temporal (Tuma and Hanna 1984; Isaac and Griffin 1989; Abbott 1992; McCammon 1998) and spatial processes (Deane et al. 1998). Time-series and spatial analyses are not always subject to the same limitations as are cross-national statistical analyses, and quantitative spatial techniques are particularly apt given heightened global interdependence. Spatial analysis, for instance, can uncover how historical processes move from place to place (country, region, etc.), and it can ascertain whether structures or practices in one country are diffused into other countries or deterred from entering them (Deane et al. 1998).

Another very positive trend that probably will become more widespread is combining and synthesizing different kinds of comparative logics. Both Jeffrey Paige (1975) and John Stephens (1980) combined cross-national quantitative analysis of a large number of nation-states with qualitative, case-oriented work on a small, but theoretically strategic subset of their cases. Paige combined his statistical generalizations with three parallel case studies, finding differences in the nature of agrarian revolts. Stephens, on the other hand, systematically compared a subset of four countries to show how the historical processes of welfare-state development differed from one nation to another. He therefore used both generalizing and individualizing comparative logics. Goldstone (1991) followed a similar strategy, combining "within-case" quantitative analyses with case-oriented comparisons to show how long-term population growth contributed to state breakdown in the early modern world. Combining diverse comparative-historical approaches in this way, and synthesizing analytical formalism and interpretation in causal interpretivism, yield insights that simply are not possible with any single methodological strategy.

Even if the differences among diverse approaches prove too great to overcome completely—a possibility suggested by the debate over the utility of highly deductive explanatory schemas such as rational choice theory in comparative-historical research (Quadagno and Knapp 1992; Kiser and Hechter 1991, 1998; Somers 1998)—diversity in goals, strategies, and procedures has spurred methodological innovation and the cross-fertilization of scholarship from divergent methodological strategies (Beer 1963; Rueschemeyer and Stephens 1997; Goldstone 1997). It thereby provides the continued promise of enhanced knowledge and richly textured, multi-voiced portrayals and understandings of perennial questions of fundamental human significance.

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Larry J. Griffin

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