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In contrast to some Second Wave structuralists (e.g., Skocpol, 1979), most contemporary comparative-historical sociologists support the non-reductionist version of methodological individualism (Weber, [1922]1978; Coleman, 1986) suggesting that any complete explanation of social phenomena must include an analysis of individual action as one of its components. However, in part because theoretical training in sociology tends to focus on macro-level causal processes, and in part because it is much easier to get macro-level data about history than good data about the motivations of historical actors, they have usually given less attention to the micro level. As a result, many of the micro-level arguments in comparative historical sociology are incomplete or ad hoc (Kiser & Hechter, 1991). The main exception to this criticism is the growing literature analyzing microfoundations from a cultural/interpretivist perspective. This work often employs complex theoretical arguments oriented to uncovering and decoding the meanings motivating or attached to actions, and sometimes uses rich archival data to illustrate these arguments. At its best, this type of work can allow the reader to see and understand an entirely different historical world from the perspective of participants in it. However, many interpretivists are not interested in doing causal analyses, and most reject the attempt to construct and test causal propositions. For scholars interested in discovering and testing the impact of general causal mechanisms, this is a serious limitation.

This paper seeks to examine why and how M&A activity has been used by UK hotel companies over a 26‐year period and aims to provide a preliminary exploration of its relative success, given that the M&A literature suggests high failure rates or M&A transactions which do not achieve their objectives.

This research is based on a combination of a multiple‐case study and comparative historical analysis to bring out the different levels of analysis embedded in past M&A literature and to identify changes of motives for undertaking M&A activities based on companies and their external environment.

The paper finds that value maximizing motives are prevalent whilst non‐value maximizing motives are not supported. The acquisition of brand names and rights is a major motive for the UK hotel industry, particularly in the light of global competition and the brand power that enables companies to expedite growth while at the same time reducing financial risks.

This longitudinal study serves to reinforce the type of target companies, particularly those that share similar resources or end products, for acquiring companies to select from in order to expect a higher M&A success rate.

This paper provides the first empirical study to integrate the comparative historical analysis approach with strategic management M&A theory to trace and understand how and why UK hotel companies became leading international companies. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the importance of acquiring a brand name is illustrated and identified as an essential motive, specific to the hotel industry.

To demonstrate how awareness of Neo-Marxist critical theory and Neo-Weberian comparative–historical sociology would have been beneficial to U.S. policy planners and decision-makers, especially Presidents.

This study employs qualitative analysis of available sources rather than quantitative data analysis.

Based on its practical application to a specific historical instance, the heuristic value of Max Weber’s ideal-type model of traditional authority (Herrschaft [domination]) is confirmed, as it is apparent that Henry Kissinger’s interpretation of the meaning of Realpolitik harmed U.S. foreign policy.

There is an imminent need to be critical of claims to expertise by advisors of major decision-makers. The practical relevance of possessing an adequate grasp of a given situation as the context in which actors must make choices is evident, as applies with regard to the current crises facing the world, which must be approached and addressed as scrupulously as possible.

Prevailing critiques of Kissinger and American foreign policy have tended to accept the premise that Kissinger was well-informed and giving good advice based on extensive and appropriate scholarship. That was not the case in Vietnam, in Indonesia, or in other regions. There are no available studies that examine Kissinger’s Eurocentric and limited perspective in light of critical theory and comparative–historical sociology.

Purpose – Research on terrorism has demonstrated the importance of state violence as a factor in the adoption of terrorism. This chapter seeks to clarify this previous research by examining the process through which state violence contributes to violence through groups’ narratives and appeals for action.

Methodology – To study how state violence contributes to terrorism this chapter uses qualitative methods that are ideal for clarifying social processes across cases. This chapter uses a mixed-methods approach, first using a comparative-historical analysis of groups involved in the anarchist, anti-colonial, and New Left waves of terrorism. Examining this diverse set of groups highlights the common role and process through which state violence contributes to terrorism. This study is combined with an in-depth analysis of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s online propaganda, which provides a detailed picture of how state violence is featured in terrorist texts.

Findings – This chapter reaffirms the previous research on the role of state violence as a grievance and indication that alternative methods are unavailable. In addition to this, this chapter demonstrates the symbolic importance of state violence, which provides a moral justification for terrorism and martyrs to aspire to and avenge.

Value – This chapter clarifies the role of state violence in the development of terrorism by describing how it is integrated in the narratives of terrorist groups to justify and inspire violence.

This paper aims to highlight the limitations of marketing viewed as a management discipline in addressing contemporary concerns. Widening the scope of marketing enquiry leads directly to the role, nature and dynamics of marketing systems, suggesting that historical studies could often be framed in marketing systems terms, highlighting underlying patterns and interactions.

This paper draws on studies in marketing history to illustrate ways in which a framing in terms of marketing system concepts could be of value.

Framing historical studies in marketing systems terms draws attention to underlying patterns and links marketing history directly to macro-marketing theory, enabling the testing of theory drawing on work in the logic of comparative historical analysis.

This paper draws attention to a new way of thinking about historical research in marketing.

It is hard to imagine more thoughtful and stimulating responses to The Familial State (Adams, 2005a) than the four gathered in this symposium. Mounira Maya Charrad, Ivan Ermakoff, Edgar Kiser and Pavla Miller raise important challenges not only for me but for all those who tackle questions of large-scale comparative history. Rather than arguing about this or that point of specific interpretation – in fact I think that unlike some “Author Meets Critics” sessions, these commentators have the main arguments of the book nailed down – I will immediately turn to those issues. These include the relationship of the argument to today's patrimonial states; patriarchal power and internal family dynamics; the reasons for the decline of hegemonic powers; the microfoundations of collective action and the place of evolutionary biology in comparative historical explanation.

Institutions have the capacity to constrain and regulate behavior. Social problems and their remedies are not exempt from this reality. Consequently, actors attempting to ameliorate pressing problems must do so within the existing frameworks of acceptable and unacceptable paths toward justice. The current study combines the institutional theory and social movement literatures to highlight how this dilemma affects the resource mobilization process. Elites control resources critical to solving social problems. Yet, they often benefit from the very institutional arrangements that have led to a social problem’s emergence. This contradiction then requires those seeking to alleviate social problems to construct a narrative that will simultaneously entice elites to give without challenging elites’ institutional position. The paper empirically investigates the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the United Negro College Fund’s (UNCF) efforts to gain support from the Rockefeller family and its foundations between 1928 and 1954. A comparative historical analysis of correspondence records identifies the critical differences that led to the UNCF receiving millions in support from Rockefeller interests while the NAACP was routinely denied funding.

Geertz is well known for his methodology. Many Symbolic Interactionists refer to his notion of “thick description.” They may not know his work on Indonesia in general, but they often know his famous essay on the Balinese cockfight: “Deep Play” (Geertz, 1972, 1973). That essay is often held up as an exemplary “model” of ethnographic fieldwork. But we need to examine what he calls “thick description” more carefully. After the first few pages of the essay there is actually very little “idiographic description” per se. Much of the paper concerns general description and analysis. We do not get a blow-by-blow account of a cockfight as viewed by Geertz. Instead we get an analysis that is based on Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism (Parekh, 1998). There is a good deal missing from the broader analysis as well. Much of that can be found in other work (Geertz, 1959, 1966, 1980, 1995). Students who only read “Deep Play” often form a superficial impression of the method of “thick description” and a distorted sense of Balinese culture (Howe, 2001; Vickers, 1996 [1981]; Warren, 1993). This essay supplements Geertz’s essay with a discussion of a religious ceremony of far more importance than the largely secular cockfight. I touch on a central feature of Balinese society not emphasized by Geertz: the temple anniversary festival. It is called an odalan (Belo, 1966 [1953a]; Eiseman, 1990; Geertz, 2004). But the problem is not just restricted to the “Deep Play” essay. Geertz’s other work is often also not based primarily on ethnographic thick description. It concerns historical and sociological generalizations. Those are often based on archives and general fieldwork. Geertz also benefits from reading of Dutch research not available in English. The celebrations which take place at a temple are “deeper” than more immediate, largely secular games like a cockfight. Geertz’s oeuvre is well worth reading, but his notion of “thick description” needs to be seen in a broader, comparative historical sociological context. That involves Interpretive research paradigms that Geertz, as a symbolic anthropologist, distanced himself from, including Symbolic Interactionism and Weberian verstehende Soziologie.

Samuel Clark offers a theoretically informed and evidence-based examination of the rise of the centralized state and its implications for the power of the aristocracy in Western Europe during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Making use of extensive empirical evidence and recent developments in comparative historical sociology, he tracks a path midway between the myth making and story telling of traditional narrative histories and the rich complexity of narrower studies. In so doing, he overturns the stereotypical portraits of the aristocracies in France and in England, and challenges us to look again at the fundamental question that dominated classical sociology: how did modern society come into being? The social transformation that occurred in Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries preoccupied thinkers from Karl Marx to Herbert Spencer to Max Weber, and even Emile Durkheim, dismissive as he was of “historicist” reasoning, was primarily interested in how modern society came to be what it is. Samuel Clark documents the resurgence of interest in these big questions by historical sociologists armed with new tools.