Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T08:05:19.302Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - KNOWLEDGE ACCUMULATION IN COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL RESEARCH

THE CASE OF DEMOCRACY AND AUTHORITARIANISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

By
James Mahoney
Edited by
James Mahoney  and
Dietrich Rueschemeyer
James Mahoney
Affiliation:
Brown University
James Mahoney
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Dietrich Rueschemeyer
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Get access

Summary

Surprisingly little attention has been devoted to thinking about knowledge accumulation in the social sciences. Although many social scientists agree that a basic purpose of their research is to produce cumulative knowledge about the world, they do not often reflect on the nature of such accumulation and how it takes place. Currently, we lack a clear answer to questions such as: What constitutes knowledge accumulation in the social sciences? How can it be measured and compared across different scholarly research programs? What promotes or inhibits knowledge accumulation in the social sciences? One might be inclined to see these questions as raising epistemological issues that cannot be resolved across disparate scholarly communities. However, I shall argue in this essay that most social scientists in fact agree on how to answer these questions, at least implicitly and in broad terms. In attempting to outline this shared position, I seek to initiate a larger discussion about how to study knowledge accumulation in social science analysis.

My immediate goal is to assess the extent of knowledge accumulation that has taken place in the field of comparative historical analysis, a research area that is sometimes criticized as having failed to achieve cumulative knowledge. I limit my discussion to studies of the origins of democratic and authoritarian national regimes.

Type
Chapter
Information
Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences , pp. 131 - 174
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Angrist, Michele. 2000. “Political Parties and Regime Formation in the Middle East: Turkish Democratization in Comparative Perspective.” Ph. D. dissertation, Princeton University
Baloyra, Enrique, ed. 1987. Comparing New Democracies: Transition and Consolidation in Mediterranean Europe and the Southern Cone. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Bellin, Eva. 2000. “Contingent Democrats: Industrialists, Labor, and Democratization in Late-Developing Countries.” World Politics 52: 175–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bensel, Richard Franklin. 1990. Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877. New York: Cambridge University Press
Bermeo, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking Regime Change.” Comparative Politics 22: 359–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bermeo, Nancy 1997. “Myths of Moderation: Confrontation and Conflict during Democratic Transitions.” Comparative Politics 29: 305–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar
aBernhard, Michael. 2001. “Democratization in Germany: A Reappraisal.” Comparative Politics 33: 379–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bollen, Kenneth. 1979. “Political Democracy and the Timing of Development.” American Sociological Review 44: 572–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bova, Russell. 1991. “Political Dynamics of the Post-Communist Transition: A Comparative Perspective.” Pp. 113–38 in Liberalization and Democratization: Change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, edited by Nancy Bermeo. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Bowman, Kirk. 2002. Militarization, Democracy, and Development: The Perils of Praetorianism in Latin America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press
Bratton, Michael and Nicolas Van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transition in Comparative Perspective.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Brownlee, Jason M. 2001. “And Yet They Persist: Explaining Survival and Transitions in Patrimonial Regimes.” Manuscript, Princeton University
Bunce, Valerie. 2000. “Comparative Democratization: Big and Bounded Generalizations.” Comparative Political Studies 33: 703–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cammack, Paul. 1985. “The Political Economy of Contemporary Military Regimes in Latin America: From Bureaucratic Authoritarianism to Restructuring.” Pp. 1–36 in Generals in Retreat, edited by Philip O'Brien and Paul Cammack. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique. 1977. “The Consumption of Dependency Theory in the United States.” Latin American Research Review 12: 7–24Google Scholar
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique and Enzo Faletto. 1979. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press
Castles, Francis G. 1973. “Barrington Moore's Thesis and Swedish Political Development.” Government and Opposition 8: 313–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Bernard P. 1989. Developing Sociological Knowledge: Theory and Method. Chicago: Nelson-Hall
Cohen, Youssef. 1994. Radicals, Reformers, and Reactionaries: The Prisoner's Dilemma and the Collapse of Democracy in Latin America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Collier, David, ed. 1979a. The New Authoritarianism in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Collier, David 1979b. “Overview of the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Model.” Pp. 19–32 in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, edited by David Collier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Collier, David 1979c. “The Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Model: Synthesis and Priorities for Future Research.” Pp. 363–97 in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, edited by David Collier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Collier, David and Levitsky, Steven. 1997. “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research.” World Politics 49: 430–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, Ruth Berins. 1999. Paths Toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America. New York: Cambridge University Press
Collier, Ruth Berins and David Collier. 1991. Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Collier, Ruth Berins and Mahoney, James. 1997. “Adding Collective Actors to Collective Outcomes: Labor and Recent Democratization in South America and Southern Europe.” Comparative Politics 29: 285–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colomer, Josep M. 1991. “Transitions by Agreement: Modeling the Spanish Way.” American Political Science Review 85: 1283–1302CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coser, Lewis. 1975. “Presidential Address: Two Methods in Search of a Substance.” American Sociological Review 40: 691–700CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cutwright, Philips. 1963. “National Political Development: Measurement and Analysis.” American Sociological Review 28: 42–59Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
Di Palma, Giuseppe. 1990. To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions. Berkeley: University of California Press
Diamond, Larry. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Diamond, Larry, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds. 1988–9. Democracy in Developing Countries. Four volumes. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner
Doorenspleet, Renske. 2000. “Reassessing the Three Waves of Democratization.” World Politics 52: 384–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downing, Brian M. 1992. The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Ekiert, G. 1996. The State Against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Ertman, Thomas. 1997. Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Ertman, Thomas 1998. “Democracy and Dictatorship in Interwar Western Europe Revisited.” World Politics 50: 475–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Peter B. 1979. Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Freese, Lee. 1980. “The Problem of Cumulative Knowledge.” Pp. 13–69 in Theoretical Methods in Sociology: Seven Essays, edited by Lee Freese. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press
Gallie, W. B. 1956. “Essentially Contested Concepts.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56. London: Harrison and Sons
Gasiorowski, Mark and Power, Timothy J.. 1998. “The Structural Determinants of Democratic Consolidation: Evidence from the Third World.” Comparative Political Studies 31: 740–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geddes, Barbara. 1999. “What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years?” Annual Review of Political Science 2: 129–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, Andrew. 1999. Origins of Liberal Dominance: State, Church, and Party in Nineteenth Century Europe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Grzymala-Busse, Anna Maria. 2002. Redeeming the Communist Past: The Regeneration of Communist Parties in East Central Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press
Gudmundson, Lowell. 1995. “Lord and Peasant in the Making of Modern Central America.” Pp. 151–76 in Agrarian Structure and Political Power: Landlord and Peasant in the Making of Latin America, edited by Evelyne Huber and Frank Safford. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press
Haggard, Stephan and Robert R. Kaufman. 1995. The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Halperín Donghi, Tulio. 1995. “The Buenos Aires Landed Class and the Shape of Argentine Politics (1820–1930).” Pp. 39–66 in Agrarian Structure and Political Power: Landlord and Peasant in the Making of Latin America, edited by Evelyne Huber and Frank Safford. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press
Higley, John and Richard Gunther, eds. 1992. Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Hirschman, Albert O. 1979. “The Turn Toward Authoritarianism in Latin America and the Search for Its Determinants.” Pp. 61–98 in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, edited by David Collier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Huber, Evelyne and Frank Safford, eds. 1995. Agrarian Structure and Political Power: Landlord and Peasant in the Making of Latin America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press
Huber, Evelyne and John D. Stephens. 1995. “Conclusion: Agrarian Structure and Political Power in Comparative Perspective.” Pp. 183–232 in Agrarian Structure and Political Power: Landlord and Peasant in the Making of Latin America, edited by Evelyne Huber and Frank Safford. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press
Huber Stephens, Evelyne. 1989. “Capitalist Development and Democracy in South America.” Politics and Society 17: 281–352CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber Stephens, Evelyne 1990. “Democracy in Latin America: Recent Developments in Comparative-Historical Perspective.” Latin American Research Review 25: 157–76Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
Im, Hyug Baeg. 1987. “The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in South Korea.” World Politics 39: 231–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karl, Terry Lynn. 1990. “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America.” Comparative Politics 23: 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karl, Terry Lynn and Schmitter, Philippe. 1991. “Modes of Transition in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe.” International Social Science Journal 128: 269–84Google Scholar
Kaufman, Robert R. 1979. “Industrial Change and Authoritarian Rule in Latin America: A Concrete Review of the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Model.” Pp. 165–254 in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, edited by David Collier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Kitschelt, Herbert. 1992. “Political Regime Change: Structure and Process-Driven Explanations?” American Political Science Review 86: 1028–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Lakatos, Imre and Alan Musgrave, eds. 1970. Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Linz, Juan J. 1975. “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes.” Pp. 175–373 in Handbook of Political Science, vol. 3, edited by Nelson Polsby and Fred Greenstein. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
Linz, Juan J. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Linz, Juan J. 1981. “Some Comparative Thoughts on the Transition to Democracy in Portugal and Spain.” Pp. 25–46 in Portugal since the Revolution: Economic and Political Perspectives, edited by Jorge Braga de Macedo and Simon Serfaty. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan, eds. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe.Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy.” American Political Science Review 53: 245–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Londregan, John B. and Poole, Keith T.. 1996. “Does High Income Promote Democracy?” World Politics 49: 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luebbert, Gregory M. 1991. Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe. New York: Oxford University Press
Luong, Pauline Jones. 2002. Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perception, and Pacts. New York: Cambridge University Press
Mahoney, James. 2001. The Legacies of Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in Central America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Mahoney, James and Snyder, Richard. 1999. “Rethinking Agency and Structure in the Study of Regime Change.” Studies in Comparative International Development 34: 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mainwaring, Scott and Matthew Soberg Shugart, eds. 1997. Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Markoff, John. 1996. Waves of Democracy: Social Movements and Political Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press
Moore, Barrington, Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World.Boston: Beacon Press
Mouzelis, Nicos P. 1986. Politics in the Semi-Periphery: Early Parliamentarism and Late Industrialisation in the Balkans and Latin America. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press
Munck, Gerardo L. 1994. “Democratic Transitions in Comparative Perspective.” Comparative Politics 26: 355–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munck, Gerardo L. 1998. Authoritarianism and Democratization: Soldiers and Workers in Argentina, 1976–1983. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press
O'Donnell, Guillermo. 1973. Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California
O'Donnell, Guillermo and Philippe Schmitter. 1986. Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Paige, Jeffery M. 1975. Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World. New York: Free Press
Paige, Jeffery M. 1997. Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Palma, Gabriel. 1978. “Dependency: A Formal Theory of Underdevelopment or a Methodology for the Analysis of Concrete Situations of Underdevelopment.” World Development 6: 881–924CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 2000. “Not Just What, But When: Issues of Timing and Sequence in Comparative Politics.” Studies in American Political Development 14: 72–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plumb, J. H. 1966. “How It Happened.” New York Times Book Review 71:11Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reform in Eastern Europe and Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press
Przeworski, Adam, Alvarez, M., Cheibub, J. A., and Limongi, Fernando. 1996. “What Makes Democracies Endure?” Journal of Democracy 7: 39–55Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam and Limongi, Fernando. 1997. “Modernization: Theories and Facts.” World Politics 49: 155–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Remmer, Karen L. 1989. Military Rule in Latin America. Boston: Unwin Hyman
Remmer, Karen L. 1991. “‘New Wine or Old Bottlenecks?’: The Study of Latin American Democracy.” Comparative Politics 23: 479–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Remmer, Karen L. and Merkx, Gilbert W., 1982. “Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism Revisited.” Latin American Research Review 17: 3–40Google Scholar
Richards, Alan and John Waterbury. 1990. A Political Economy of the Middle East: State, Class, and Economic Development. Boulder,CO: Westview Press
Roeder, Philip G. 1993. Red Sunset: The Failure of the Soviet Union. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Rule, James B. 1997. Theory and Progress in Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Schatz, Sara. 2001 “Democracy's Breakdown and the Rise of Fascism: The Case of the Spanish Second Republic, 1931–6.” Social History 26: 145–65Google Scholar
Scully, Timothy R. 1992. Rethinking the Center: Party Politics in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Chile. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Serra, José. 1979. “State and Regime: Comparative Notes on the Southern Cone and the ‘Enclave’ Societies.” Pp. 255–82 in The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, edited by David Collier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Share, Donald and Scott Mainwaring. 1986. “Transitions through Transaction: Democratization in Brazil and Spain.” Pp. 175–216 in Political Liberalization in Brazil: Dynamics, Dilemmas, and Future Prospects. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Shugart, Matthew S. and John M. Carey. 1992. Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press
Skocpol, Theda. 1973. “A Critical Review of Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.” Politics and Society 4: 1–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skocpol, Theda 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Skocpol, Theda ed. 1998. Democracy, Revolution, and History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press
Snyder, Richard. 1998. “Paths out of Sultanistic Regimes: Combining Structural and Voluntarist Perspectives.” Pp. 49–81 in Sultanistic Regimes, edited by H. E. Chehabi and Juan J. Linz. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Snyder, Richard and Mahoney, James. 1999. “The Missing Variable: Institutions and the Study of Regime Change.” Comparative Politics 32: 103–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stepan, Alfred. 1978. “Political Leadership and Regime Breakdown: Brazil.” Pp. 110–37 in The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, edited by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stepan, Alfred 1986. “Path Toward Redemocratization.” Pp. 64–84 in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stephens, John D. 1989. “Democratic Transition and Breakdown in Western Europe, 1870–1939: A Test of the Moore Thesis.” American Journal of Sociology 94: 1019–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stokes, Gale. 1989. “The Social Origins of East European Politics.” Pp. 210–51 in The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe: Economics and Politics from the Middle Ages Until the Early Twentieth Century, edited by Daniel Chirot. Berkeley: University of California Press
Stone, Lawrence. 1967. “News from Everywhere.” New York Review of Books 9: 32–4Google Scholar
Therborn, Göran. 1977. “The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy.” New Left Review 103: 3–41Google Scholar
Therborn, Göran 1979. “The Travail of Latin American Democracy.” New Left Review 113–14: 71–109Google Scholar
Tilton, Timothy A. 1974. “The Social Origins of Democracy: The Swedish Case.” American Political Science Review 68: 561–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valenzuela, Arturo. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
Valenzuela, J. Samuel. 2001. “Class Relations and Democratization: A Reassessment of Barrington Moore's Model.” Pp. 240–86 in The Other Mirror: Grand Theory Through the Lens of Latin America, edited by Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando López-Alves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Vanhanen, Tatu. 1997. Prospects of Democracy: A Study of 172 Countries. London: Routledge
Wagner, David G. and Berger, Joseph. 1985. “Do Sociological Theories Grow?” American Journal of Sociology 90: 697–728CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wickham-Crowley, Timothy P. 1992. Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes since 1956.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Wiener, Jonathan M. 1976. “Review of Reviews.” History and Theory 15: 146–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiener, Jonathan M. 1978. Social Origins of the New South: Alabama, 1860–1885. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press
Yashar, Deborah J. 1997. Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala, 1870s–1950s. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×