What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

In this innovative approach to the practice of social science, Charles Ragin explores the use of fuzzy sets to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative methods. Paradoxically, the fuzzy set is a powerful tool because it replaces an unwieldy, "fuzzy" instrument—the variable, which establishes only the positions of cases relative to each other, with a precise one—degree of membership in a well-defined set. Ragin argues that fuzzy sets allow a far richer dialogue between ideas and evidence in social research than previously possible. They let quantitative researchers abandon "homogenizing assumptions" about cases and causes, they extend diversity-oriented research strategies, and they provide a powerful connection between theory and data analysis. Most important, fuzzy sets can be carefully tailored to fit evolving theoretical concepts, sharpening quantitative tools with in-depth knowledge gained through qualitative, case-oriented inquiry. This book will revolutionize research methods not only in sociology, political science, and anthropology but in any field of inquiry dealing with complex patterns of causation.

Fuzzy-Set Social Science

Redesigning Social Inquiry Fuzzy Sets And Beyond

ity between and within each country, the former allows the rich in both poor and rich countries to “intermingle” in the calculation of global inequality, which is then fully decomposable into the between and within country components. What the survey data show is that global inequality first increased between 1988 and 1993 and then decreased from 1993 to 1998, reflecting the stagnation of poor rural areas of China and India in the first period, and the slight catching up of poor rural areas in the second period. Furthermore, Milanovic shows that previous attempts at capturing this type of inequality reach conflicting conclusions regarding the trend, which in turn reflect different assumptions and data sources, most of which bias the calculated results downward. The final section discusses the future of global inequality, and what can be done to redress it. Where previous studies express confidence in a declining global inequality trend, Milanovic is less confident, suggesting that we can be certain only that inequality is high. Furthermore, since the trend depends heavily on the performance of one country— China, predictions about future trends are speculative at best. Milanovic is certain about two things. First, global inequality is immoral. Second, redistribution is possible and would be both moral and efficient to the development of humanity as a whole.

Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice:

States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China

Globalization of law may be defined as the worldwide progression of transnational legal structures and discourses along the dimensions of extensity, intensity, velocity, and impact. We propose that a theory of the global penetration of law will require at least four elements—actors, mechanisms, power, and structures and arenas. A comparison of four approaches to globalization and law—world polity, world systems, postcolonial globalism, and law and economic development—indicates considerable variation in perceived outcomes and gaps in explanation, but with possible complementarities in both outcomes and explanatory factors. Research demonstrates that globalization is variably contested in several domains of research on law: (a) the construction and regulation of global markets, (b) crimes against humanity and genocide, (c) the diffusion of political liberalism and constitutionalism, and (d) the institutionalization of women's rights. We propose that the farther globalizing legal norms and practices are loc...

Globalization of law

A state-centered perspective in studies of revolutions holds that international pressures contribute to outbreak of revolutions, assuming that the magnitude and intensity of international pressures vary from case to case. This study argues that in the paradigmatic communist revolutions of the 20th century, such as the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, the role of the exogenous factor of war was paramount. After outlining a war-centered framework for studying communist revolutions, this research shows how the devastating experience of total war against Japan (1937–1945) undermined the Kuomintang state in China and created structural conditions for the communist takeover.

Modernization interrupted? total war, state breakdown, and the communist conquest of china

This article examines the determinants of professional commitment of college-educated specialists in one of the Russian provinces. We analyze the specialists’ professional commitment as determined by two sets of orientations: universalistic instrumental factors (compensation, career advancement and opportunities of alternative employment) and specifically professional noninstrumental factors (professional responsibility, cognitive orientation, and cultural capital). Although both instrumental and noninstrumental factors affect professional commitment of Russian specialists, noninstrumental factors are the most important. The article also identifies significant differences between two groups of Russian professionals, technocrats, and the traditional intelligentsia.

Professional Commitment of Russian Provincial Specialists

This book offers an analysis of the policing of terrorism in a variety of national and international contexts. Centered on developments since the events of September 11, 2001, the study devotes its empirical attention to important police aspects of counter-terrorism in the United States and additionally extends its range comparatively to other nations, including Israel and Iraq, and to the global level of international police organizations such as Interpol and Europol. Situated in the criminology of terrorism and counter-terrorism, this book offers a fascinating look into the contemporary organization of law enforcement against terrorism, which will significantly influence the conditions of global security in the foreseeable future.

The Policing of Terrorism: Organizational and Global Perspectives

Comparisons are a cornerstone of contemporary social sciences and history, and no social inquiry is possible without them.(Slater & Ziblatt, 2013) By examining individuals, families, organizations, or nations we compare them, either deliberately or intuitively, with other individuals, families, organizations, or nations. While some comparisons may be random, indirect, or supplementary to other techniques, there exists a strong tradition of social scientific research where comparative inquiry is the primary method of exploration; that is, comparative historical analysis, which implies a long-standing intellectual project oriented toward explanation of substantively important processes and outcomes by means of systematic and contextualized comparisons. (Mahoney & Rueschemeyer, 2003) Although such a method may be utilized at various levels of analysis, most frequently (and most fruitfully) it has been applied to the processes and outcomes among the nation states. Nation states make rather natural comparative unites, given the abundance of qualitative and quantitative data to perform the various comparisons. In this paper we summarize the accomplishments of comparative historical analysis, review major developments both in case-oriented and variable-oriented comparative research, identify academic challenges to these methods, and examine how the proponents of these approaches confront these challenges. We also provide two separate, yet linked examples of comparative studies that successfully apply comparative methods to examining major historical transformations. The first study, a war-centered theory of the collectivist regimes develops a new interpretation of the origins of such communist states as the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, based on qualitative, small sample analysis. The second study, focusing on the role of democracy as a determinant of military spending during the interwar period, takes a quantitative look at a larger sample, although we will explore the lower limits of such samples, to see what we can learn when the data is limited. Both will feature the use of case studies in order to understand the revolution and evolution of regimes in early 20 th century better, and ultimately we will try to point out that qualitative and quantitative methods can be complementary, thereby leading to new insights in the nature of complicated historical processes.

Pavel Osinsky

Papers

Globalization of law

Modernization interrupted? total war, state breakdown, and the communist conquest of china

Professional Commitment of Russian Provincial Specialists

The Policing of Terrorism: Organizational and Global Perspectives

Comparative Historical Analysis: Some Insights from Political Transitions of the First Half of the Twentieth Century 1