ABSTRACT
Although Theda Skocpol published States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China in 1979, it began life as her dissertation in Harvard. But while she would continue pursuing this theme, if only sporadically, throughout her career, it was not to be her primary focus. Her work through the 1990s and 2000s brings her analysis of domestic economy policy forward, as she examines the failure to extend social policy further, and even more recently, beyond "the state" to look at social movements within America. Skocpol argued against "grand" theorists that revolution was an inevitable part of modernisation, she also argued against the point of view that the welfare state was an inevitabile part of the same process. States and Social Revolutions was Skocpol's most important work, and continues to be her best known. Despite being written originally as a sociological treatise, it found its greatest impact in international relations.
