There has been increasing interest in the past several years in the history of temperance and prohibition in both Canada and the United States. Researchers of women's history, religious history and social history have viewed the temperance movement as a key element in understanding developments in each of these areas. One of the organizations central to the temperance movement, and one which has been given credit as a catalyst in organizing the “anti-drink” campaign, was the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Until quite recently most of the studies related to the WCTU have been parts of much larger works on prohibition itself. Although this women's organization has been credited in these studies with an important role in the campaign, the essence of the WCTU, its philosophy, organization and methodology are lost in the ongoing rush to tell the story of the rise and fall of prohibition. Sinclair's Prohibition: An Era of Excess, Symbolic Crusade; Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement by Joseph Gusfield and James Timberlake's Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920 are examples of such work. Norman H. Clark's Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition shows the interest women took in the number of saloons and the problems associated with alcohol. In Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890–1913, James Blocker identifies prohibitionist leaders, both men and women, as “decent citizens.” What each of these works tells us is what women did for temperance.

Most works on Russian educational policy contain an underlying assumption: namely, that the size and shape of educational systems are largely determined by what sociologists of education call “corporate actors” organized groups united by shared commitment to specific goals such as egalitarian reform, economic growth, national integration or social controlor by the interplay of such groups; According to this interpretation, the major impetus for educational change comes from those directly responsible for education policy-making; in Russia, this included the central government and the educated Russian elite, acting through the zernstvos, municipal dumas, and after 1906, the national Duma. Influenced by trends in social history, however, some historians are beginning to argue that “primary actors,” or the population as a whole, playa major role in determining the scale and even structure of educational systems. In other words, these historians place exphasis upon social demand, rather than supply, as the major factor in educational growth.