ABSTRACT
This chapter Barrington Moore's standing as a historian and as a sociologist will be assessed with reference to a number of his contemporaries and, subsequently, his contribution to political theory will be considered in the light of the writings of leading figures in this field. Michael Anderson's work may be contrasted with another book whose author, a student of Moore, deliberately organises her argument around a series of macro-sociological comparisons in order to justify a series of generalisations about social revolutions. The object of W. G. Runciman's analysis is not to dismiss Anderson's work, whose importance he rightly acknowledges, but to indicate 'the unresolved tension within it between historical narrative and comparative sociology'. In Social Origins, Moore's skilful comparative analysis of the transformations in social differentiation attendant upon modernisation was weakened at important points by a failure to pay adequate attention to the growth and penetration of liberal-democratic ideology within specific societies.
