Table Of ContentHistorical Sociology
Historical Sociology
A Rokkanian Approach to Eastern
European Development
Arne Kommisrud
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Kommisrud, Arne, 1952-
Historical sociology : a Rokkanian approach to Eastern European development / Arne
Kommisrud.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7391-2871-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-7391-3634-8 (electronic : alk. paper)
1. Europe, Eastern—Economic conditions. 2. Historical sociology.
3. Rokkan, Stein. I. Title.
HC244.K6336 2009
338.947—dc22 2008054835
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Contents
1 Stein Rokkan’s European Macro Model and the
Historical-Sociological Tradition 1
2 State-Building, Nationalities, and Conflict Dynamics in the
Soviet and Habsburg Empires: A Rokkanian Approach 55
3 East European Development in the Light of Stein Rokkan’s
European Macro Model
125
Bibliography 169
Index 187
About the Author 191
v
Chapter One
Stein Rokkan’s European
Macro Model and the
Historical-Sociological Tradition
The purpose of this chapter is to attempt a clarification of the main outline, or
the range of variation in research strategy, through a macro historical approach
to the study of politics. This will be done by presenting Stein Rokkan’s model
of European history and by attempting to place his macro historical research
strategy in relation to that applied by other scholars in this field.
In his later work—from the latter half of the 1960s until his death in
1979—Stein Rokkan returned to more basic issues in political science: the
basis of political legitimacy and nation building in Europe, which had been
his intellectual starting point, not through historical–philosophical specula-
tion, but by formulating meta-theoretical models of variations in the speed
and proliferation of the extension of rights in political history. He also wished
to explain disparities in the party system in Continental Europe. In his work
on these problems he also gradually turned away from the ahistorical, abstract
development formulas that form the starting point of the postwar moderniza-
tion theories, and adopted the view that all of the most important sets of vari-
ables in model building must be historically founded.1 The result of this was
his detailed conceptual maps of European development. The development of
these coincided with a renaissance of macro historical works within, or rather
on the periphery of, Western social sciences research.
Macro history makes relatively bold comparisons of structures and
processes in various societies and historical periods.2 Nevertheless the
historical forms, from an analytical perspective, are relatively limited: The
number of entities, such as states, empires and historical civilizations, are
comparatively few; the number of dependent variables, such as political
and economic systems, may be more numerous; but the empirically exist-
ing values that these may assume are far from indefinite in number. This,
logically enough, establishes some constraints on the choice of strategies
11
22 CChhaapptteerr OOnnee
and theoretical postulates in this branch of social sciences. Stein Rokkan
himself emphasized the astonishment he experienced on discovering the
morphology between his own attempt at explaining the variations in the
extension of suffrage in Western Europe and attempts by Barrington Moore
Jr., Perry Anderson and Immanuel Wallerstein to explain in macro historical
terms why different forms of political regime developed in the 20th century
(Moore); why the only workers’ revolution that succeeded in this century
did so precisely in Russia (Anderson), and the emergence of dependence
and exploitation structures at the global level in today’s world (Waller-
stein). This astonishment prompted the development of the conceptual maps
that Rokkan proposed in the 1970s.3 Although scholars who are Marxist or
Marxist-inspired, such as Perry Anderson and Immanuel Wallerstein, have
not developed their theoretical analyses in dialogue with Stein Rokkan, I
feel that a comparison may be of value. It can help identify some common
basic questions relating to the approach itself, and also, naturally, to reveal
some special characteristics of Rokkan’s thinking.
Macro history, as a genre in the social sciences, can be said in many ways
to continue the classic tradition in sociology and political science. Names
like Alexis de Toqueville, Max Weber and Karl Marx are associated with
problems and tentative solutions that, in social science research in general,
have often been overshadowed by more limited and frequently technocratized
hyphenated disciplines. Specialization in itself is no evil, of course, but the
kind of question the classics posed must often lead to an interdisciplinary
fundamental attitude to elicit an answer.
Questions important to macro history concern the relationship between various
social and economic processes of change which, at the transition from the middle
ages to early modern times, gave Europe special characteristics and an advantage
compared with other countries and continents. The unique thing in the European
political experience, the preconditions and consequences of the European break-
through, can be considered by looking at a number of mutually related topics: the
transition from feudalism to capitalism in its various phases; cultural conditions
(the Renaissance, the Reformation); state building and the superiority in military
technology from the late 16th century; the formation of a European system of na-
tion states; revolutions and nation-building processes; war and nationalism—and
not least the fascism of the 20th century, which Rokkan, encouraged by his pu-
pils, became concerned with toward the end of his life.4
Macro history, in grappling with such problems, finds itself in a field of
tension between, on the one hand, concrete historical research emphasizing
the characteristics of the sequences of development of certain countries and
regions and, on the other hand, generalizing research in the social sciences.
Elements from these two fields can be combined in a number of ways and
Stein Rokkan’s European Macro Model 3
constitutes different research strategies. The term research strategies is here
taken to mean the relationship between theories and scientific findings, and
differs from the methodical tools used to establish these findings, such as
a comparative method and historical source criticism. What distinguishes
different macro historical strategies from each other is how many of the
units studied and to how many of the values on the dependent variable the
researcher wishes to give a theoretically deduced explanation.5
At the methodological level there is no consistent opinion among various
macro historical researchers, and may not even be possible or desirable. The
debate on the basic issues will, however, have much in common with the dis-
cussion about such questions in social science research in general: the relation-
ship between actor-based and structure-based categories of explanation; func-
tionalism versus strategic thinking; independent empirical indicators as a test
of higher-level systems, etc. These are issues that will have to be treated seri-
ously to avoid the more speculative excrescences that macro history obviously
invites. Concept development and abstraction, the conceptual homogenization
of a highly heterogeneous empirical field, is the precondition of systematic re-
search through comparative methods. This raises the question of the fruitfulness
of different levels of generalization, and Rokkan’s macro historical approach
must be said to represent a rejection of the airiest theoretical strata. Macro
historical analysis is related to the study of development problems in today’s
non-Western world. The empirical foundation of the research is, however, con-
siderably wider and greater for macro history. This provides a better possibility
for theoretical continuity and cumulative results, and thus also for avoiding the
numerous crises and breakdown of paradigms that have characterized the rise
and fall of various schools in development studies. In contrast, Weber, as one of
the most prominent macro historical social scientists, worked with such a vast
background of material that his works on Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia,
India and China are still basic books for anyone wishing to study the history
and sociology of these societies even today.
Three sets of substantial questions will be highlighted in the following
comparison: 1) the development of capitalism, 2) state development, and 3)
nation building/nationalism. Each of the various authors emphasizes these
three questions differently; in discussing these authors, this work will follow
their individual focii.
STEIN ROKKAN AS MACRO HISTORIAN
As a starting point, however, I would like to dwell a little on Rokkan’s 1960s
comparative historical analyses. Two main phases in Rokkan’s theoretical
