Comparative historical research is a

method Method (, methodos, from μετά/meta "in pursuit or quest of" + ὁδός/hodos "a method, system; a way or manner" of doing, saying, etc.), literally means a pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting such inquiry, or system. In re ...

social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

that examines historical events in order to create explanations that are valid beyond a particular time and place, either by direct comparison to other historical events, theory building, or reference to the present day. Generally, it involves comparisons of social processes across times and places. It overlaps with

historical sociology Historical sociology is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field of research that combines Sociology, sociological and History, historical methods to understand the past, how societies have developed over time, and the impact this has on ...

. While the disciplines of

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

and

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

have always been connected, they have connected in different ways at different times. This form of research may use any of several theoretical orientations. It is distinguished by the types of questions it asks, not the theoretical framework it employs.

Major researchers

Some commentators have identified three waves of historical comparative research. The first wave of historical comparative research concerned how societies came to be modern, i.e. based on individual and rational action, with exact definitions varying widely. Some of the major researchers in this mode were

Alexis de Tocqueville Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville (29 July 180516 April 1859), was a French Aristocracy (class), aristocrat, diplomat, political philosopher, and historian. He is best known for his works ''Democracy in America'' (appearing in t ...

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

Emile Durkheim Emile or Émile may refer to: * Émile (novel) (1827), autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life * Emile, Canadian film made in 2003 by Carl Bessai * '' Emile: or, On Education'' (1762) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a treatise o ...

Max Weber Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...

, and W.E.B. Du Bois. The second wave reacted to a perceived ahistorical body of theory and sought to show how social systems were not static, but developed over time. Notable authors of this wave include Reinhard Bendix, Barrington Moore, Jr., Stein Rokkan,

Theda Skocpol Theda Skocpol (née Barron; May 4, 1947) is an American sociologist and political scientist, who is currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. She is best known as an advocate of the historical- ...

Charles Tilly Charles Tilly (May 27, 1929 – April 29, 2008) was an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian who wrote on the relationship between politics and society. He was a professor of history, sociology, and social science at the Uni ...

Michael Mann Michael Kenneth Mann (born February 5, 1943) is an American film director, screenwriter, author and producer, best known for his stylized crime dramas. He has received a BAFTA Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards as well as nominations for four ...

, and Mark Gould. Some have placed the Annales school and Pierre Bourdieu in this general group, despite their stylistic differences. The current wave of historical comparative research sociology is often but not exclusively post-structural in its theoretical orientation. Influential current authors include Julia Adams, Ann Laura Stoler, Philip Gorski, and James Mahoney. Moore's '' Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy'' influenced

Daron Acemoglu Kamer Daron Acemoğlu (;, ; born September 3, 1967) is a Turkish Americans, Turkish-American economist of Armenians in Turkey, Armenian descent who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1993, where he is currently the Ja ...

and James A. Robinson to apply comparative methods to

economic history Economic history is the study of history using methodological tools from economics or with a special attention to economic phenomena. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the Applied economics ...

in a 2006 book called ''Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy''. In 2024, Acemoglu, Robinson, and Simon Johnson won the

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (), commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics(), is an award in the field of economic sciences adminis ...

for their work.

Methods

There are four major methods that researchers use to collect historical data. These are archival data, secondary sources, running records, and recollections. The archival data, or primary sources, are typically the resources that researchers rely most heavily on. Archival data includes official documents and other items that would be found in archives, museums, etc. Secondary sources are the works of other historians who have written history. Running records are ongoing series of statistical or other sorts of data, such as census data, ship's registries, property deeds, etc. Finally recollections include sources such as autobiographies, memoirs or diaries. There are four stages, as discussed by Schutt, to systematic qualitative comparative historical studies: (1) develop the premise of the investigation, identifying events, concepts, etc., that may explain the phenomena; (2) choose the case(s) (location- nation, region) to examine; (3) use what Theda Skocpol has termed as "interpretive historical sociology" and examine the similarities and the differences; and (4) based on the information gathered, propose a causal explanation for the phenomena. The key issues in methods for historical comparative research stem from the incomplete nature of historical data, the complexity and scale of the social systems, and the nature of the questions asked. Historical data is a difficult set of data to work with due to multiple factors. This data set can be very biased, such as diaries, memoirs, letters, which are all influenced not only by the person writing them, that person's world view but can also, logically, be linked to that individual's socioeconomic status. In this way the data can be corrupt/skewed. Historical data regardless or whether it may or may not be biased (diaries vs. official documents) is also vulnerable to time. Time can destroy fragile paper, fade ink until it is illegible, wars, environmental disasters can all destroy data and special interest groups can destroy mass amounts of data to serve a specific purpose at the time they lived, etc. Hence, data is naturally incomplete and can lead social scientists to many barriers in their research. Often historical comparative research is a broad and wide reaching topic such as how democracy evolved in three specific regions. Tracking how democracy developed is a daunting task for one country or region let alone three. Here the scale of the social system, which is attempting to be studied, is overwhelming but also the complexity is extreme. Within each case there are multiple different social systems that can affect the development of a society and its political system. The factors must be separated and analyzed so that causality can be attained. It is causality that brings us to yet another key issue in methods for historical comparative research, the nature of the questions which are asked is attempting to propose causal relationships between a set of variables. Determining causality alone is a difficult task; coupled with the incomplete nature of historical data and the complexity and scale of the social systems being used to examine causality the task becomes even more challenging. Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers argued that there were three types of comparative history research: * 1. comparative history as macro-causal analysis - the emphasis is on identifying both relevant differences and similarities across cases in an attempt to test hypotheses or build theory * 2. comparative history as parallel demonstration of theory – the emphasis is on identifying similarities across relevant cases * 3. comparative history as contrast of contexts – the emphasis is on the differences between cases and the uniqueness of each case. Scholars that use this approach tends to be wary of drawing broad generalizations. A lot of comparative historical research uses inductive iteration (as opposed to purely

deductive Deductive reasoning is the process of drawing valid inferences. An inference is valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, meaning that it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. For example, th ...

methods) whereby scholars assess the data first and reformulate internally valid explanations to account for the data.

Identifying features

The three identifying issues of historical comparative research are causal relationships, processes over time, and comparisons. As mentioned above causal relationships are difficult to support although we make causal assumptions daily. Schutt discusses the five criteria, which must be met in order to have a causal relationship. Of the five the first three are the most important: association, time order and nonspuriousness. Association simply means that between two variables; the change in one variable is related to the change in another variable. Time order refers to the fact that the cause (the independent variable) must be shown to have occurred first and the effect (the dependent variable) to have occurred second. Nonspuriousness says that the association between two variables is not because of a third variable. The final two criteria are; identifying a causal mechanism- how the connection/association among variables is thought to have occurred- and the context in which this association occurs. The deterministic causal approach requires that in every study, the independent and dependent variable have an association, and within that study every case (nation, region) the independent variable has an effect on the dependent variable.

John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to s ...

devised five methods for systematically analyzing observations and making more accurate assumptions about causality. Mill's Methods discusses; direct method of agreement, method of difference, joint method of agreement and difference, method of residues and method of concomitant variations. Mill's methods are typically the most useful when the causal relationship is already suspected and can therefore be a tool for eliminating other explanations. Some methodologists contend Mill's methods cannot provide proof that the variation in one variable was caused by the variation of another variable. The comparative-historical method can be seen in ''The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe''. Researcher Julia Adams draws on both original archival work and secondary sources to analyze how merchant families contested with noble families for influence in the early modern

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...

. She argues that those contests produced the political institutions that became the modern Dutch state, by frequently making reference to

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

and

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. Her use of feminist theory to account for elements of the Dutch Republic, such as patriarchal kinship structures in the ruling families, expanded on earlier theories of how modern states came to be. This is an illustration of how comparative-historical analysis uses cases and theories together.

Difficulties

There are several difficulties that historical comparative research faces. James Mahoney, one of the current leading figures in historical comparative research, identifies several of these in his book "Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences." Mahoney highlights key issues such as how micro level studies can be incorporated into the macro level field of historical comparative research, issues ripe for historical comparative research that continue to remain overlooked, such as law, and the issue of whether historical comparative research should be approached as a science or approached as a history. This is one of the more prevalent debates today, often debated between Theda Skocpol, who sides with the historical approach, and Kiser and Hechter, who are proponents of the scientific view that should search for general causal principles. Both Kiser and Hechter employ models within

Rational Choice Theory Rational choice modeling refers to the use of decision theory (the theory of rational choice) as a set of guidelines to help understand economic and social behavior. The theory tries to approximate, predict, or mathematically model human behav ...

for their general causal principles. Historical researchers that oppose them (Skocpol, Summers, others) argue that Kiser and Hechter do not suggest many other plausible general theories, and thus it seems as though their advocacy for general theories is actually advocacy for their preferred general theory. They also raise other criticisms of using rational choice theory in historical comparative research.

Major researchers

Methods

Identifying features

Difficulties

See also

References

Further reading