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...