The debate on historical sociology: Rational choice theory and its critics

In the past two decades, many sociologists have denied the usefulness of ge neral theories in favor of more particularistic approaches to historical ex planation, which makes it difficult to specify both the causal relations an d the causal mechanisms that account for social outcomes. This article offe rs some philosophical and theoretical justifications for the use of general theory in historical analysis and contends that general theory guides the selection of facts, provides a source of generalizable causal mechanisms, f acilitates the cumulation of knowledge across substantive domains, reveals anomalies that lead to new questions, and creates the conditions under whic h existing theories can be supplanted by superior ones. The authors further outline the concrete research practices that flow from their approach and discuss several empirical studies that exemplify these five advantages.