When Causes are Distant and Effects Persist

• In Event: Varities of Time in Comparative Historical Analysis

Abstract

TThis paper clarifies and elaborates the critical juncture framework, a framework that has contributed greatly to the development of an historically-oriented social science. First, it focuses on the most basic causal ideas of the critical juncture framework: critical junctures are rapid, discontinuous, macro-level changes, that generate legacies or, more precisely, have persistent effects via causal cycles. Second, it discusses more elaborate versions of the critical juncture framework. It shows how this framework tackles both problems of order and change, relying on a dualist perspective that addresses how actors can change structures and how structures condition actors. Additionally, it argues that, though the critical juncture framework draws attention to discontinuous change, and rejects the view that all change is incremental, it is consistent with the view that gradual changes can add up to big change and actually considers gradual change. Third, it highlights the importance of distinguishing between ideas that are necessary to, from those that are optional in, critical juncture research, and makes a case for exploring variations within the critical juncture framework. More specifically, it argues that some common features of critical juncture research—a focus on political institutions and on divergent paths, and the treatment of proximate causes as rival hypotheses—do not exhaust the ideas consistent with the critical juncture framework

Author

• Gerardo L. Munck, University of Southern California