Theda Skocpol

Bio: Theda Skocpol is an academic researcher from Harvard University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Politics & Democracy. The author has an hindex of 64, co-authored 242 publications receiving 27337 citations. Previous affiliations of Theda Skocpol include Rutgers University & University of Chicago.

States and social revolutions : a comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China

Abstract: List of tables and maps Preface Introduction 1. Explaining social revolutions: alternatives to existing theories Part I. Causes of Social Revolutions in France, Russia and China: 2. Old-regime states in crisis 3. Agrarian structures and peasant insurrections Part II. Outcomes of Social Revolutions in France, Russia and China: 4. What changed and how: a focus on state building 5. The birth of a 'modern state edifice' in France 6. The emergence of a dictatorial party-state in Russia 7. The rise of a mass-mobilizing party-state in China Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.

Bringing the State Back in

Abstract: Preface Introduction 1. Bringing the state back in: strategies of analysis in current research Theda Skocpol Part I. States as Promoters of Economic Development and Social Redistribution: 2. The state and economic transformation: toward an analysis of the conditions underlying effective intervention Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Peter B. Evans 3. The state and Taiwan's economic development Alice H. Amsden 4. State structures and the possibilities for 'Keynesian' responses to the great depression in Sweden, Britain and the United States Margaret Weir and Theda Skocpol Part II. States and Transnational Relations: 5. War making and state making as organized crime Charles Tilly 6. Transnational linkages and the economic role of the state: an analysis of developing and industrialized nations in the post-World War II period Peter B. Evans 7. Small nations in an open international economy: the converging balance of state and society in Switzerland and Austria Peter Katzenstein Part III. States and the Patterning of Social Conflicts: 8. Working-class formation and the state: nineteenth-century England in American perspective Ira Katznelson 9. Hegemony and religious conflict: british imperial control and political cleavages in Yorubaland David D. Laitin 10. State power and the strength of civil society in the southern cone of Latin America Alfred Stepan Conclusion 11. On the road toward a more adequate understanding of the state Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol Index.

Protecting soldiers and mothers : the political origins of social policy in the United States

Abstract: It is generally believed that the United States lagged behind the countries of Western Europe in developing modern social policies. But, as Theda Skocpol shows in this historical analysis, the United States actually pioneered generous social spending for many of its elderly, disabled and dependent citizens. During the late 19th century, competitive party politics in American democracy led to the rapid expansion of benefits for Union Civil War veterans and their families. Some Americans hoped to expand veterans' benefits into pensions for all of the needy elderly and social insurance for workingmen and their families. But such hopes went against the logic of political reform in the Progressive era. Generous social spending faded along with the Civil War generation. Instead, the U.S. nearly became a unique maternalist welfare state as the federal government and more than 40 states enacted social spending, labour regulations, and health education programmes to assist American mothers and children. As Skocpol shows, many of these policies were enacted even before American women were granted the right to vote. Banned from electoral politics, they turned their energies to creating huge, nation-spanning federations of women's clubs, which collaborated with reform-minded professional women to spur legislative action across the country. Blending original historical research with political analysis, Skocpol shows how governmental institutions, electoral rules, political parties and earlier public policies combined to determine both the opportunities and the limits within which social policies were devised and changed by reformers and politically active social groups over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life

Abstract: Pundits and social observers have voiced alarm each year as fewer Americans involve themselves in voluntary groups that meet regularly Thousands of nonprofit groups have been launched in recent times, but most are run by professionals who lobby Congress or deliver social services to clients What will happen to US democracy if participatory groups and social movements wither, while civic involvement becomes one more occupation rather than every citizen's right and duty? In Diminished Democracy, Theda Skocpol shows that this decline in public involvement has not always been the case in this country - and how, by understanding the causes of this change, we might reverse it

The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

Abstract: Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in Western societies. Gosta Esping-Andersen, one of the foremost contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role of welfare states in the functioning of contemporary advanced Western societies. Esping-Andersen distinguishes three major types of welfare state, connecting these with variations in the historical development of different Western countries. He argues that current economic processes, such as those moving toward a postindustrial order, are shaped not by autonomous market forces but by the nature of states and state differences. Fully informed by comparative materials, this book will have great appeal to all those working on issues of economic development and postindustrialism. Its audience will include students of sociology, economics, and politics."

Culture in action: symbols and strategies*

Abstract: Culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action." Two models of cultural influence are developed, for settled and unsettled cultural periods. In settled periods, culture independently influences action, but only by providing resources from which people can construct diverse lines of action. In unsettled cultural periods, explicit ideologies directly govern action, but structural opportunities for action determine which among competing ideologies survive in the long run. This alternative view of culture offers new opportunities for systematic, differentiated arguments about culture's causal role in shaping action. The reigning model used to understand culture's effects on action is fundamentally misleading. It assumes that culture shapes action by supplying ultimate ends or values toward which action is directed, thus making values the central causal element of culture. This paper analyzes the conceptual difficulties into which this traditional view of culture leads and offers an alternative model. Among sociologists and anthropologists, debate has raged for several academic generations over defining the term "culture." Since the seminal work of Clifford Geertz (1973a), the older definition of culture as the entire way of life of a people, including their technology and material artifacts, or that (associated with the name of Ward Goodenough) as everything one would need to know to become a functioning member of a society, have been displaced in favor of defining culture as the publicly available symbolic forms through which people experience and express meaning (see Keesing, 1974). For purposes of this paper, culture consists of such symbolic vehicles of meaning, including beliefs, ritual practices, art forms, and ceremonies, as well as informal cultural practices such as language, gossip, stories, and rituals of daily life. These symbolic forms are the means through which "social processes of sharing modes of behavior and outlook within [a] community" (Hannerz, 1969:184) take place.

Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research

Abstract: While heated arguments between practitioners of qualitative and quantitative research have begun to test the very integrity of the social sciences, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba have produced a farsighted and timely book that promises to sharpen and strengthen a wide range of research performed in this field. These leading scholars, each representing diverse academic traditions, have developed a unified approach to valid descriptive and causal inference in qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. Their book demonstrates that the same logic of inference underlies both good quantitative and good qualitative research designs, and their approach applies equally to each. Providing precepts intended to stimulate and discipline thought, the authors explore issues related to framing research questions, measuring the accuracy of data and uncertainty of empirical inferences, discovering causal effects, and generally improving qualitative research. Among the specific topics they address are interpretation and inference, comparative case studies, constructing causal theories, dependent and explanatory variables, the limits of random selection, selection bias, and errors in measurement. Mathematical notation is occasionally used to clarify concepts, but no prior knowledge of mathematics or statistics is assumed. The unified logic of inference that this book explicates will be enormously useful to qualitative researchers of all traditions and substantive fields.

Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War

Abstract: An influential conventional wisdom holds that civil wars proliferated rapidly with the end of the Cold War and that the root cause of many or most of these has been ethnic and religious antagonisms. We show that the current prevalence of internal war is mainly the result of a steady accumulation of protracted conflicts since the 1950s and 1960s rather than a sudden change associated with a new, post-Cold War international system. We also find that after controlling for per capita income, more ethnically or religiously diverse countries have been no more likely to experience significant civil violence in this period. We argue for understanding civil war in this period in terms of insurgency or rural guerrilla warfare, a particular form of military practice that can be harnessed to diverse political agendas. The factors that explain which countries have been at risk for civil war are not their ethnic or religious characteristics but rather the conditions that favor insurgency. These include poverty—which marks financially and bureaucratically weak states and also favors rebel recruitment—political instability, rough terrain, and large populations.We wish to thank the many people who provided comments on earlier versions of this paper in a series of seminar presentations. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (Grants SES-9876477 and SES-9876530); support from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences with funds from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; valuable research assistance from Ebru Erdem, Nikolay Marinov, Quinn Mecham, David Patel, and TQ Shang; sharing of data by Paul Collier.