ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some practical aspects of historical comparisons across sectors and periods. It is not an in-depth reflection on methodological fundaments or typologies. Accordingly, in a first step, the chapter will address the methodological challenges of comparisons across sectors and periods before discussing the conceptual challenges in more detail using a pragmatic approach. In most cases historians hope to achieve a complex explanation of a historical phenomenon or development, avoiding the deliberate reduction to a limited number of variables which is at the core of the comparative approach in the social sciences. 'Monocausality is swearword among historians' to quote Hartmut Kaelble on the subject. For instance each sector has its own model and style of preservation of archival documents as well as a particular character regarding policy, politics and polity. In the infrastructure sectors for example, experts often play decisive role in decision-making process, but in other sectors such as foreign policy this is often not the case.
