Reflections on an anniversary

Abstract

My first book, in many ways a lonely project at the time, is now part of a steadily growing body of comparative-historical scholarship in the social sciences. Studying socio-political changes of all kinds – including today’s democratic backsliding in the United States and beyond – is best done, as States and Social Revolutions helped to demonstrate, by probing and juxtaposing fully contextualised cases. It still makes sense for scholars to (directly or implicitly) compare historical trajectories, tease out the intersections of social inequalities and struggles over state power, and address the evolving global contexts as in local, regional, or national episodes play out. This way of studying political conflict and change is what I believe endures from States and Social Revolutions, as new generations of scholars go far beyond the arguments of that book born decades ago.