1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Comparative historical research is a method of social science 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.
[3] 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,[4] Karl Marx,[5] Emile Durkheim,[6] Max Weber,[7] and W.E.B.
[8] 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.
[9] Notable authors of this wave include Reinhard Bendix,[10] Barrington Moore, Jr.,[11] Stein Rokkan, Theda Skocpol,[12] Charles Tilly,[13] Michael Mann,[14] and Mark Gould.
Influential current authors include Julia Adams,[17] Ann Laura Stoler,[18] Philip Gorski,[19] and James Mahoney.
[21] 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.
Often historical comparative research is a broad and wide reaching topic such as how democracy evolved in three specific regions.
Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers argued that there were three types of comparative history research:[23][24] A lot of comparative historical research uses inductive iteration (as opposed to purely deductive methods) whereby scholars assess the data first and reformulate internally valid explanations to account for the data.
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.
[22] John Stuart Mill devised five methods for systematically analyzing observations and making more accurate assumptions about causality.
[27] She argues that those contests produced the political institutions that became the modern Dutch state, by frequently making reference to England and France.