Edgar Kiser

The Role of General Theory in Comparative-Historical Sociology

The methodological foundations of comparative-historical sociology have been transformed dramatically in recent years. Arguments against general theoretical models have proliferated, while the complexity and uniqueness of historical events and the virtues of inductive methods have been emphasized. The growing convergence of sociology and history has led to a decline in the use of general theories. This article begins with a description and analysis of the recent transformation of the methodology of comparative-historical sociology. An overreliance on inductive methods has resulted in inadequate specifications of causal relations and causal mechanisms in recent comparative-historical sociology. The concluding section discusses a nascent rational choice research program in political sociology to illustrate an alternative methodology.

Comparing Varieties of Agency Theory in Economics, Political Science, and Sociology: An Illustration from State Policy Implementation

As rational choice theory has moved from economics into political science and sociology, it has been dramatically transformed. The intellectual diffusion of agency theory illustrates this process. Agency theory is a general model of social relations involving the delegation of authority, and generally resulting in problems of control, which has been applied to a broad range of substantive contexts. This paper analyzes applications of agency theory to state policy implementation in economics, political science, and sociology. After documenting variations in the theory across disciplinary contexts, the strengths and weaknesses of these different varieties of agency theory are assessed. Sociological versions of agency theory, incorporating both broader microfoundations and richer models of social structure, are in many respects the most promising. This type of agency theory illustrates the potential of an emerging sociological version of rational choice theory.

The Debate on Historical Sociology: Rational Choice Theory and Its Critics

In the past two decades, many sociologists have denied the use‐fulness of general theories in favor of more particularistic ap‐proaches to historical explanation, which makes it difficult to specify both the causal relations and the causal mechanisms that account for social outcomes. This article offers some philosophical and theo‐retical justifications for the use of general theory in historical analy‐sis and contends that general theory guides the selection of facts, provides a source of generalizable causal mechanisms, facilitates the cumulation of knowledge across substantive domains, reveals anom‐alies that lead to new questions, and creates the conditions under which existing theories can be supplanted by superior ones. The au‐thors further outline the concrete research practices that flow from their approach and discuss several empirical studies that exemplify these five advantages.

Revolution and State Structure: The Bureaucratization of Tax Administration in Early Modern England and France1

This article explores the relationship between revolution and the bureaucratization of tax administration in early modern England and France. Revolution produces bureaucratization only when the monitoring capacity of states is developed enough to make bureaucratic organization more efficient than alternatives such as tax farming and collection by local notables. As monitoring capacity varies across types of taxes and levels of administration, states also bureaucratize at different paces and are differentially affected by revolution. This explains why the revolutions in England and France had greater effects on indirect taxes than on direct taxes and at top levels of tax administration compared to lower levels. Thus, revolution is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for bureaucratization, but it contributes to the process by sweeping away impediments to reform.

Bureaucracy and Efficiency: An Analysis of Taxation in Early Modern Prussia

We use agency theory to analyze the development of the tax collection system in Prussia between 1640 and 1806. The Prussian tax system was one of the most efficient in early modern Europe. Scholars have argued that (1) the Prussian tax administration was highly bureaucratic, and (2) its efficiency was due primarily to its bureaucratic characteristics. We challenge both propositions. We show that the Prussian tax system deviatedfrom the bureaucratic ideal type in important respects. We then develop general propositions about the conditions under which bureaucratic forms of recruitment, monitoring, and sanctioning are more efficient than alternative forms of agency. We conclude that the efficiency of the Prussian tax collection system was caused by specific deviations from the ideal-typical bureaucracy that increased the ability of rulers to control tax officials.

War and bureaucratization in Qin China: Exploring an anomalous case

Why did a partially bureaucratized administrative system develop in Qin China about two millennia before it did in European states? In this paper, comparative historical arguments about war and state-making are combined with agency theory to answer this question. The Spring and Autumn and Warring States eras that preceded the Qin unification of China created the necessary conditions for bureaucratization by weakening the aristocracy, creating a bureaucratic model, facilitating the development of roads, and providing trained and disciplined personnel. Comparative analysis shows that the main factor differentiating Qin China from other states and empires was the extreme weakness of the aristocracy produced by an unusually long period of severe warfare. Although Qin China was more bureaucratic than any other state or empire prior to the seventeenth century, it was far from completely bureaucratic. The persistence of monitoring problems prevented its full development, necessitating deviations such as the use of severe negative sanctions, the creation of redundant positions, and limiting bureaucratization to the top of the administrative system. The further development of the bureaucratic administrative system in the Han dynasty is also discussed.

Determinants of the Amount and Type of Corruption in State Fiscal Bureaucracies An Analysis of Late Imperial China

A principal-agent model of relations between rulers and state officials is used to derive several propositions concerning the amount and type of corruption in state bureaucracies. The model is applied to the fiscal bureaucracies of Ming and Qing China, focusing on how problems rulers faced measuring taxable assets and monitoring and sanctioning state tax collectors resulted in a high level of corruption. Attempts by Ming and Qing rulers to reform their fiscal systems are analyzed, and the causes of the general failure of these reforms and of regional variations in reform success are discussed.

The hinges of history: State-making and revolt in early modern France

The formation of early modern states-combining increases in taxation, warfare, and administrative centralization-was often violently opposed by subjects. A game theoretic model of strategic interactions between rulers and subjects is developed to more fully specify the relationship between state-making and revolt in France between 1515 and 1789. Quantitative analyses of revolts throughout France are combined with a brief case study of revolts in Guyenne (the most quarrelsome French province) to test propositions derived from the model. Offensive war (but not war in general) and administrative centralization increased the likelihood of revolt, while the presence of the Estates General (the national legislative assembly) decreased it. The effect of taxation on revolt depended on the historical context-high taxes and offensive wars tended to incite revolts prior to the Fronde (a cluster of revolts in 1648-1653), but had no effect afterwards. It is argued that the outcomes of significant revolts, like the Fronde, often serve as important turning points in the history of state-making. Potentially similar events in medieval England and early modern Spain are also discussed.

Changes in the Core of the World-System and the Production of Utopian Literature in Great Britain and the United States, 1883-1975

This paper explores changes in the number of utopian novels published in Great Britain and the United States between 1883 and 1975 from a world-system perspective. A time-series analysis indicates that the publication of utopian literature was affected by changes in the world economy and by changes in the organization of the core of the world-system. On the basis of these findings, we argue that the world-system perspective represents a promising approach for the study of cross-national cultural change.

Taxation and Voting Rights in Medieval England and France

We explore the relationship between voting rights and taxation in medieval England and France. We hypothesize that voting was a wealth-enhancing institution formed by the ruler in order to facilitate profitable joint projects with subjects. We predict when voting rights and tax payments will be linked to each other, as well as to the projects inducing them, and when they will become separated. We classify taxes into three types: customary, consensual and arbitrary. Customary taxes that did not require voting were dominant in both countries in the early medieval period. These payments, fixed for specific purposes, were not well suited for funding new, large-scale projects. Consensual taxation, in which voting rights and tax payments were tightly linked, was used to finance new, large-scale collective projects in both England and France. Strong rule-of-law institutions are necessary to produce such taxes. In England, where security of rule remained high, the relationship between tax payments and voting rights was maintained. In France, an increase in the insecurity of rule, and the accompanying weakening of voting institutions, produced a shift to arbitrary taxation and a disjunction between tax payments and voting rights. These observations, as well as many of the details we consider, are substantially in conformity with the predictions of our model.