HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

MS. NISHTHA SOMESH GOYAL

LLM 1YR

PG1899003024
 CONTENTS
S.NO. NAME OF THE PARTICUULAR PAGE NO.

1 What is Methodology 1

2 A brief Introduction to Comparative-Historical 1-2

Analysis

3 Comparative-Historical Methodology 3

4 Comparative-Historical Methods in 3-5

Comparative Perspective

5 Historical Methodolgy 5

6 Value of Historical Research 5

7 Steps in a Historical-Comparative Research 5-6

Project

8 Data Sources 6

9 Strengths of Historical Methodology 6

10 Weaknesses of Historical Methodology 7

11 Comparative Methodology 7-8

12 Criticism 8-9

13 Conclusion 10
What is Methodology?

A methodology is a body of practices, procedures, and rules used by researchers

to offer insight into the workings of the world. They are central to the scientific
enterprise, as they allow researchers to gather empirical and measurable evidence
and to analyze the evidence in an effort to expand knowledge. According to Mann
(1981), there is only one methodology. It involves eight steps: (1) formulate a
problem, (2) conceptualize variables, (3) make hypotheses, (4) establish a sample,
(5) operationalize concepts, (6) gather data, (7) analyze data to test hypotheses,
and (8) make a conclusion. He suggests that the only methodological differences
in the social sciences are the techniques used to analyze data— something
commonly referred to as a method. Because particular techniques commonly
require particular types of data, methods are also linked to different strategies of
data collection.

A brief introduction to Comparative-Historical Analysis

Since the rise of the social sciences, researchers have used comparative-historical
methods to expand insight into diverse social phenomena and, in so doing, have
made great contributions to our understanding of the social world. Indeed, any list
of the most influential social scientists of all time inevitably includes a large
number of scholars who used comparative-historical methods: Adam Smith,
Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Barrington Moore, Charles Tilly,
and Theda Skocpol, are a few examples. Demonstrating the continued
contributions of the methodological tradition, books using comparative-historical
methods won one-quarter of the American Sociological Association’s award for
best book of the year between 1986 and 2010, despite a much smaller fraction of
sociologists using comparative-historical methods. Given the contributions made
by comparative-historical researchers, it is apparent that comparative-historical
methods allow social scientists to analyze and offer important insight into
perplexing and pertinent social issues. Most notably, social change has been the
pivotal social issue over the past half millennium, and social scientists have used
comparative-historical methods to offer insight into this enormous and important
topic. State building, nationalism, capitalist development and industrialization,
technological development, warfare and revolutions, social movements,
democratization, imperialism, secularization, and globalization are central
processes that need to be analyzed in order to understand both the dynamics of
the contemporary world and the processes that created it; and many—if not most
—of the best books on these topics have used comparative-historical methods.
Despite the great contributions made by comparative-historical analyses of social
change, there is very little work on exactly what comparative-historical methods
are. Unlike all other major methodological traditions within the social sciences,
there are no textbooks on comparative-historical methods; moreover, present
books reviewing comparative-historical analysis touch on methods only briefly,
focusing most attention on the types of issues analyzed by comparative-historical
scholars and important figures within the research tradition. Thus, comparative-
historical methods have produced some of the best works in the social sciences;
many of the best social scientists use them to analyze vitally important social
issues, but there is little discussion of what such methods actually are.

Comparative-Historical methodology
Comparative-Historical methods are linked to a long-standing research tradition.
This tradition was previously referred to as comparative-historical sociology, but
Mahoney and Rueschemeyer (2003) refer to it as comparative-historical analysis
in recognition of the tradition’s growing multidisciplinary character. In addition to
sociology, comparative-historical analysis is quite prominent in political science
and is present—albeit much more marginally—in history, economics, and
anthropology.

Comparative-Historical Methods in Comparative Perspective

Comparative-historical methods combine comparative and within-case methods,

and therefore have affinities with both comparative methods and within-
case/ideographic methods. Similar to statistical and experimental methods,
comparative-historical methods employ comparison as a means of gaining insight
into causal determinants. Similar to ethnographic and historical methods,
comparative-historical methods explore the characteristics and causes of
particular phenomena. Comparative-historical analysis, however, does not simply
combine the methods from other major methodological traditions—none of the
major comparative methods is very common in comparative-historical analysis.
Indeed, only a small—albeit growing—portion of comparative-historical analyses
uses statistical comparison, and laboratory-style experimental methods are not
used by comparative-historical researchers. There are several reasons for the
marginal position of statistics within comparative-historical analysis. Most notably,
within-case methods have been the dominant method used in the research
tradition, and the basic logics of statistics and within-case methods differ
considerably, with the former focusing on relationships between variables and the
latter focusing on causal processes (see Mahoney and Goertz 2006). As a
consequence, comparative-historical researchers commonly avoid statistics and
simply focus on causal processes. Additional reasons for the limited use of
statistical comparison within the comparative-historical research tradition include
the limited availability of historical data needed for appropriate statistical analyses
and the small number of cases analyzed by comparative-historical researchers.
Ethnography can and is used for within-case analysis and is therefore part of the
comparative-historical methodological toolkit. Comparative-historical researchers
only rarely use it with great rigor, however, because ethnographic methods are
usually used for very descriptive works that attempt to increase understanding
about a particular group of people, their livelihoods, and their culture.
Comparative-historical analysis, on the other hand, usually has a broader research
agenda than understanding culture. Historical methods are much more commonly
employed within comparative-historical analysis. In particular, comparative-
historical researchers frequently use historical methods to gather, assess, and
present data. Yet, because of the breadth of the questions analyzed by
comparative-historical researchers and the multiple cases under analysis,
comparative-historical researchers rely primarily on data from secondary sources,
and many do not use historical methods to collect and assess data. Instead, they
gather data from historical secondary sources and use this data for their
comparative-historical analyses. While using historical methods as sources of data,
comparative-historical methods differ fundamentally from each in their analysis of
the data. Whereas historical methods are primarily descriptive and document the
characteristics of social phenomena, comparative-historical methods analyze data
to offer insight into causal determinants.
Historical methodology:

Also known as historiography, it is the dominant method in the discipline of

history. Such methods focus largely on finding data, judging the validity of the
data, and accurately presenting the data through narrative analysis. Historical
methods can be used to analyze causal processes but are most commonly used in
history to describe social phenomena.

Value of Historical Research

• It throws light on present and future trends.

• It enables understanding of and solutions to contemporary problems to be

sought in the past.

• It can illuminate the effects of key interactions within a culture or sub-

culture.

• It allows for the revaluation of data in relation to selected hypotheses,

theories and generalizations that are presently held about the past and the
present.

Steps in a Historical-Comparative Research Project

• Conceptualization of an idea, topic, or research question.

• Locate evidence and do background literature review.

• Evaluate evidence.

• Organize evidence.
 • Synthesize evidence and develop general explanatory model.

• Develop a narrative exposition of the findings.

Data Sources

Primary Sources

• First-hand or eyewitness observations of phenomenon.

• Source material closest to the person/information/period/idea being

studied

Secondary Sources

• Second-hand observation, i.e. the author collected the data from

eyewitnesses.

• Document relating to information presented elsewhere

Strengths of Historical Methodology

 It is the only research method that can be study evidence from the past.

 It can make use of a wider range of evidence than most other methods.

 It provides an alternative and perhaps richer source of information on

topics that can also be studied with other methodologies.

Weaknesses of Historical Methodology

  Bias in interpreting historical sources.

 Requires much more than digging up good material thus very time
consuming.

 Historical research can only give a fractional view of the past.

 The absence of technical terminology.

 Lack of control over external variables.

Comparative methodology:

Comparative research is a research methodology in the social sciences that aims

to make comparisons across different countries or cultures.

The term comparative method refers to a specific kind of comparison – the

comparison of large macro-social units. It can be seen as a way of bridging the
qualitative and quantitative research traditions.

Diverse methods used in the social sciences that offer insight through cross-case
comparison. For this, they compare the characteristics of different cases and
highlight similarities and differences between them. Comparative methods are
usually used to explore causes that are common among a set of cases. They are
commonly used in all social scientific disciplines.

Why Compare?
  comparative law as an instrument of learning and knowledge (information
on the law elsewhere and a better understanding thereof),
 comparative law as an instrument of evolutionary and taxonomic science
(common evolutions, diachronic changes, legal families),
 contributing to one’s own legal system (understanding it better, including
the resistance of its traditions, improving it, using it as a means for
interpreting the constitution), and
 harmonization of law.

Criticism

• A primary source is more reliable than a secondary source.

• The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more
one can trust it to give an accurate description of what really happened.

• A source may be forged or corrupted; strong indications of the originality of

the source increases its reliability.

• If a number of independent sources contain the same message the

credibility of the message is strongly increased.

• Since the tendency of a source is to provide some kind of a bias tendencies

need to be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivation.

• If it can be demonstrated that witness /source has no direct interest in

creating bias its credibility increases

External Criticism
  When was the source written/unwritten/produced?[date]

 Where was it produced?[localization]

 By whom was it produced?[authorship]

 From what preexisting material was it produced?[analysis]

 In what original form was it produced? [integrity]

 What is the evidential value of its contents? [credibility]

Internal Criticism

 What was the author attempting to say?

 What thought was the author trying to convey?

 What inferences or interpretation could be extracted from the words?

 Whether the author was biased while recording such data?

 Whether the author is trustworthy to be relied upon for collecting needful

data?

Conclusion

After comparing both the methodologies of research, I came to conclude that

both the Historical and Comparative Research Methods are incomplete without
each other. Historical Methodology provides us to dig out data from the past
events, which can’t be extracted or experienced today by field research.

Comparative Research Methodology let us compare both historical data and

current statistics to form results on the basis of their comparison and know which
period was better.

Though Comparative Methodology is incomplete without Historical Research,

Historical Methodology conculdes no results if such data is just collected and not
compared to the other time periods using Comparative Study.

Thus, both are incomplete without each other.