Structure and Social Action in Stein Rokkan's Work

Abstract

The article discusses Stein Rokkan's research strategy, i.e. that of retrospectively explaining structural variations, in the light of the crucial problem of modern social science, namely: how to reconcile the sociology of structures and the sociology of action. The authors' hypothesis is that Rokkan, who takes as his point of departure how contexts influence and guide human action does not succeed in his efforts to combine these levels of analysis. Through an analysis of the role played by the `counter cultures' in Rokkan's analyses of Norwegian political development the authors argue that Rokkan's lack of success in this respect is a logical consequence of his structural functional models combined with his retrospective method. Even though Rokkan attributes decisive weight to goal-oriented actions of social groups, their intentions and meaning are introduced post festum, and Rokkan never undertakes any real analysis of the ideologies, resources and strategic choices of political groups.

Geografisk bevissthet hos velgere, lokalpolitikere og forvaltningsansatte

“…Geografiske skillelinjer har tradisjonelt vaert viktige i studier av norsk politikk (Berntzen & Selle, 1990;Knudsen, 2019;Rokkan & Lipset, 1967;Stein, 2019). Betydningen av de geografiske skillelinjene for å forklare holdninger og vedtak har variert over tid (Berglund, 2011;Knudsen, 2019).…”

Critical junctures and institutional change

“…This was an important change from the first use of the concept by Lipset and Rokkan: they traced the origins of Western European party systems to three "crucial junctures" located much earlier in the history of each nation, during which "decisions and developments" shaped mass politics in the region for decades to come (Lipset and Rokkan 1967, 37-8). Their analysis, however, was largely couched in macrostructuralist language that left little space for the analysis of decisions and developments and reconstructed, instead, the roots of historical variation ex post, starting from variation in the outcome of interest and looking backward in time (Berntzen and Selle 1990).…”

Values Count but Institutions Decide: The Stein Rokkan Approach in Comparative Political Sociology

“…The blurred boundary between variation-finding and encompassing comparisons is in our view due to a tension between history and generality in Rokkan's political sociology (Berntzen & Selle 1990). Rokkan did not use comparisons to throw light on special characteristics of each single historical case.…”

“…Between the more abstract and the context-specific theoretical elements, there is a void in Rokkan's work (Flora 1992;Berntzen & Selle 1990). Hence, the main critics of Rokkan (Abrams 1982;Alford & Friedland 1974;Seip 1975) point to thc wide gap between theory and empirical facts.…”