This symposium brings together ten essays that explore hypotheses about critical junctures, understood as major episodes of institutional innovation that generate an enduring legacy. Scholars routinely focus on episodes of innovation that occur in contrasting ways across cases, which in turn yields distinct trajectories of change and produces different legacies. These contrasts readily lend themselves to analysis based on the comparative method, generally combined with process tracing. For the analysis of single cases, the comparison is typically focused on explicit or implicit counterfactual alternatives that might have produced different trajectories of change. The critical juncture framework is seen as offering a set of hypotheses that may or may not fit a given historical situation, and whose actual fit must be demonstrated with great care.
The symposium builds on Lipset and Rokkan’s (1967) classic study of cleavage structures and party systems, as well as Collier and Collier’s (1991) Shaping the Political Arena. The introduction by the coeditors provides an overall framework for studying critical junctures and the essays apply this framework, while at same time moving the discussion in new directions. The substantive domains explored include state-formation, party systems, neoliberal transformation, religion, law, economic growth, and colonial rebellion. Most essays focus on Latin America, while two discuss Europe and the United States; some analyze developments since the 1980s, whereas others reach back to the 19th century. Given that a critical juncture hypothesis inherently focuses on trajectories of change that extend over a substantial period of time, a key issue debated in the symposium is the amount of historical perspective required to establish that a critical juncture has in fact occurred. Contributors to the symposium, in addition to the coeditors, are Sidney Tarrow, Kenneth M. Roberts, Robert R. Kaufman, Taylor C. Boas, Timothy R. Scully, Jorge I. Dominguez, Sebastian L. Mazzuca, Andrew C. Gould, and Thad Dunning.
This chapter begins by presenting a definition of Rational choice theory (RCT). It assesses the claims about the central benefits of RCT and discusses basic trends in the use of RCT in comparative politics. The chapter suggests that students of comparative politics should strive to assimilate the emphasis on actors and instrumental rationality that are a characteristic of RCT, but go beyond RCT and built a broader, more encompassing theory of action. Indeed, efforts to use game theory in comparative politics have for all practical purposes ignored the entire debate about the expected utility model and proceeded to use the rational actor model without giving much thought to its significant limitations. Game theorists in comparative politics have tended to adopt a purist response in the face of challenges to the theoretical principles of game theory. The key theoretical contribution of traditional game theory, as has long been recognized, is its emphasis on strategic choice.
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This article contributes to ongoing debates about the direction of comparative politics through an analysis of new data on the scope, objectives, and methods of research in the field. The results of the analysis are as follows: Comparative politics is a rich and diverse field that cannot be accurately characterized on the basis of just one dimension or even summarized in simple terms. In turn, the tendency to frame choices about the direction of the field in terms of a stark alternative between an old area studies approach and a new economic approach relies on largely unsupported assumptions. It is therefore advisable to focus on problematic methodological practices that, as this study shows, are widespread in comparative research and thus pose serious impediments to the production of knowledge.
Author(s): Collier, David; Munck, Gerardo L | Abstract: This article presents a framework for studying critical junctures, understood as major episodes of institutional innovation that generate an enduring legacy. Scholars routinely focus on episodes of innovation that occur in contrasting ways across cases, which in turn yields distinct trajectories of change and produces different legacies. These contrasts readily lend themselves to analysis based on the comparative method, generally combined with process tracing. For the analysis of single cases, comparison is typically focused on explicit or implicit counterfactual alternatives that might have produced different trajectories of change. The critical juncture framework is seen as offering a set of hypotheses that may or may not fit a given historical situation, and whose actual fit must be demonstrated with great care.This framework builds on Lipset and Rokkan’s (1967) classic study of cleavage structures and party systems, as well as Collier and Collier’s (1991) Shaping the Political Arena. It goes beyond these two studies by probing further the analytic dilemmas that arise at each step, as well as reviewing scholarly debates over how to study critical junctures. The discussion centers on three building blocks: the critical juncture itself, the antecedent conditions and cleavage or shock that precede it, and the legacy of the critical juncture. For each step, attention focuses on analytic pitfalls that may be encountered, as well as scholarly debates on how the successive steps should be evaluated. Throughout, the overall concern is with methodological challenges in assessing critical juncture hypotheses. Key points are illustrated by examples from Collier and Collier (1991), as well as from nine essays in the “Symposium on Critical Junctures and Historical Legacies” (Collier and Munck, eds., Qualitative and Multi- Method Research 15, no 1, 2017, pp. 1-47), for which this article serves as the introduction.
This article analyzes the contributions of the institutionalist literature to the understandingof democratic politics in Latin America. It first considers the debate about the institutionalcauses of gridlock and draws attention to key strengths of this literature. Thereafter,the article addresses the question of the quality of democracy, placing emphasis on thecontributions of institutionalists to understand the relationship between citizens, policymakers and policy administrators in terms of the principal-agent model. In addition, it addressessome challenges in the analysis of the quality of democracy linked with the relationshipbetween the preferences of politicians and state capacity, and the level of democraticnessof the political regime.
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