A “Renaissance” in Comparative Historical Analysis? The Disjuncture Between Quantitative Methods and Macro-Structural Ontology in Asian Political History

Nhu Truong, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Social science research rooted in history has been indispensable to knowledge accumulation. Within the discipline of political science, the emergence of historical work using new quantitative and mixed methods has generated momentum for what has been called a “renaissance” in comparative political historical studies. Engaging with a burgeoning literature in Asian political history, this paper probes deeper into the nature of this renaissance by contrasting it with the work of key scholars widely considered to be central to comparative historical research, including Benedict Anderson, Theda Skocpol, Kathleen Thelen, and Paul Pierson. The paper asks, what constitutes the “historical” in comparative historical analysis? The historical dimension valued by researchers combining comparative historical analysis with econometrics and mixed-method approaches primarily resides in the robustness and originality of the dataset excavated from the past. In this analytical model, history performs a subsidiary function to theory by providing “stories” and “descriptive materials” (Bates et al. 1998). This marks a sharp disjuncture from the value of comparative historical analysis anchored in macro-structural ontology that looks to overarching historical forces and patterns located in temporal processes for developing causal theories to explain political outcomes. This paper proposes that what is emerging is a type of comparative historical analysis driven by an overriding focus on history as largely a methodological tool as opposed to history as macro-structural ontology within political science. This reflection has important implications that pertain to persistent debates on ideal forms of comparative research and political inquiry as well as pragmatic research decisions.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 140. Historical Forces in Comparative and Methodological Phenomena