From the Rule to the Exception: Beyond Developmentalism and Culturalism to the Capabilities of Historical Sociology

Abstract

The paradigm of political development, based the projections of the mid-20th century's idea of progress, left the central position it had occupied in comparative political science after World War II, first in quantitative research where the functionalist perspective was dominant, then in the culturalist approaches that were also nourished from anthropology. Drawing on theories of universalist political development, which purport social change to be uniform and teleogical just like social change, this article places the processes that directly contemplate the culturalist approaches that lean toward particularizing the processes of social change by placing extreme emphasis on tradition under the microscope. In addition, it aims to open these two approaches to debate the possibilities of historical sociology as an alternative. In line with this, the political developmental perspective, which unifies communities, will be examined through different manifestations by first claiming the field of inspiration and change to be an intrinsic process from classical sociology. Afterward, emerging culturalist approaches will be evaluated in parallel with inclusion of the concept of culture in analyses on social change, which in the social sciences has increasingly gained importance in the foreground of anthropology. Last to be emphasized will be the contributions of historical sociology, which stands out over these two poles and expresses a new interdisciplinary organization of social scientific knowledge in studies on the subject area of social and political change.