Comparative Historical Analysis of Revolutions - Employing the Past to Make Sense of the Present
Daniel Ritter, Stockholm University

Revolutions constitute some of the grandest and most consequential of social processes, shaping and reshaping societies and nation-states as we know them. This talk aims to illustrate how social scientists make use of comparative historical methods to theorize revolutions and provide generalizable conclusions about them. What possibilities and challenges are one faced with when seeking to theorize - and generalize about - macro-sociological phenomena like revolutions through the use of historical evidence? How confident can we be about findings and conclusions that are admittedly and intentionally sweeping and broad, and to what extent can such conclusion be extrapolated to additional cases? And finally, are there any credible alternatives to the comparative historical approach, if the explicit objective is to advance new theories? Against the backdrop of the presenter's own comparative historical analysis of revolutions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the Middle East and North Africa, the talk explores how one might go about striking a balance between methodological rigor and theoretical innovation.

Daniel Ritter (Associate Professor) is a political sociologist specializing in revolutions and social movements. He received his doctoral training at the University of Texas at Austin (PhD awarded in 2010) and has held postdoctoral positions at the European University Institute in Florence and at Stockholm University (SU). Prior to returning to SU in 2016, he was Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of The Iron Cage of Liberalism: International Politics and Unarmed Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa (Oxford University Press, 2015), Social Movement and Civil War: When Protests for Democratization Fail together with Donatella della Porta, Teije Hidde Donker, Bogumila Hall, and Emin Poljarevic (Routledge, 2018), and On Revolutions: Unruly Politics in the Contemporary World, co-authored with Colin Beck, Mlada Bukovansky, Erica Chenoweth, George Lawson, and Sharon Nepstad (Oxford University Press, 2022). In 2017, Daniel received Stockholm University’s “Award for Good Teaching” (“Årets lärare”).

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