Historical and Comparative Theory

Historical and comparative theory seeks to identify patterns and causal relationships in long-term social processes, such as the rise of democracy, industrialization, the expansion of the working class, the development of welfare states, or national revolutions.

Patterns and relationships are sought and tested through the detailed study of historical narratives and by examining long-run data describing economic, social, political, cultural, demographic, or other social features over time. Historical and comparative theory thus differs from deductive social theory, which draws conclusions from formal models of social behavior. It also differs from branches of social theory focusing on data from experimental or field observations of social behavior and from theory resting mainly on statistical analysis of survey, demographic, or other data drawn from relatively narrow time frames.

Historical and comparative theory relies heavily on the work of historians and often draws upon archival materials. Yet it does not simply seek to generalize from historical data. Rather, historical and comparative theory is as often concerned with the key differences among various social contexts—seeking explanations of why democracy arose in some places but not others or why revolutions are relatively rare—as with broad similarities. Historical and comparative theory seeks to combine an understanding of the social behavior of individuals, groups, and organizations and their responses to various social conditions with identification of specific, contingent, historical facts regarding particular societies and time periods, in order to explain long-term trajectories of social change.

Comparative and historical theory developed with the beginnings of sociology in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the birth of sociology was largely motivated by a problem in comparative and historical theory: How do industrial societies—with their factories, extensive wage labor, representative government, and financial capital—differ in their organization and dynamics from earlier societies dominated by agriculture, peasant labor, aristocratic and monarchical government, and landed wealth, and what is the likely future trajectory of industrial societies?

Historical and comparative analysis of critical historical events, or of issues in politics, economy, and religion, was not new in the nineteenth century. Such comparisons stretch back to the earliest systemic reflections on human societies. Herodotus pointed to differences in the Greek versus Persian political systems and culture to explain the outcome of the Persian Wars; Thucydides similarly explored the fundamental differences between the history and political systems of Sparta and Athens in his history of their great conflict. One can find historical and comparative analysis in the works of later Roman historians, in the social analysis of the fourteenth century Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun, in the political analysis of Machiavelli and Montesquieu, the economic analysis of Adam Smith, and in the political theory of James Madison. Yet none of these thinkers, nor any before them, had a clear sense of social change as making an unprecedented break with the past. For them, historical and comparative analysis was used to illustrate the variety of organizational forms and their differences, or to identify unchanging characteristics of the human condition and seek solutions to universal problems. The historical and comparative theory launched in the nineteenth century differed from all prior social analysis in seeing history as having a long-term trajectory, in which certain social forms and organizations would permanently give way to others. The task of the new historical and comparative theory, and its distinctive contribution to social theory, was to describe this long-term trajectory, to identify its key motors and turning points, and to project, as best as one could, its future direction.

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