ABSTRACT
All fields of research in the social sciences have their classics, but few of these classics occupy as prominent a position as Barrington Moore’s (1991[1966]) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (hereafter Social Origins) does in comparative historical analysis. The reason is twofold. First, a great number of subsequent analyses relate to Moore’s results (see Kitschelt 1992). Thus, Downing (1992), to whom we will return in Chapter 9, writes in The Military Revolution and Political Change that it ‘is no overstatement to say that every page of this study was written with attention to Barrington Moore’s classic study of the same questions’ (241).
