On the Methodology of Studying Long-Term World Development: The Shadow of the Past or the Role of Individuals?

Abstract

Contemporary social sciences typically refrain from long-term forecasts and attempts at constructing “grand theories” of global dynamics – researches focus instead on specific (and rather narrow) empirical research questions. In some cases, however, these narrow studies could implicitly become foundations for generalized statements concerning the world development. This paper reviews two avenues of research of this type that are rapidly developing in the last decade – persistence studies (arguing that historical factors have an impact on contemporary political, economic and social development even in spite of apparent historical discontinuities) and studies of personal characteristics of politicians and bureaucrats (arguing that biographies of decision-makers can influence political development to the same extent as structural characteristics of the society). The conclusions of these approaches contradict each other but their research logic is built upon similar assumptions. Both approaches use quantitative methods; the choice of cases for research is driven to a large extent by the data availability; in both cases theoretical foundations of research are rather weak; in both cases the multitude of articles reflects not only the potential of the research approaches but also the problems of the incentives in the scientific community. This paper reviews the main conclusions, advantages and disadvantages of both approaches and discusses their potential for studying long-term development perspectives.

Keywords

• persistence studies
• studies of personal characteristics of politicians
• forecasting
• long-term development