The Relationship between Economic Development and Democracy: New Insights from Graphic Analysis

 
03.02.2014
 
Department of Political Science; Department of Sociology

Professor Goldstone — one of the most noted historical sociologist/political scientist among the representatives of the young generation. His first researches were devoted to the study of the revolution of the early Modern period in the European history and became famous because of the provocative argument that it is demographic, rather than class changes that predetermined social origins of the fall of the Stuarts monarchy in England (Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (1991).  His researches on economic macrohistory considerably revised the main arguments both of the North's theory of institutional economics and Wallerstein world-systems theory moving the unprecedented "the Rise of the West" to the end of the 17th century (Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History 1500-1850 (2008). In addition to the substantial conclusions of his projects professor Goldstone is known for the development of the formal methods of the socio-historical analysis: combination of the traditional cliometrics with the various methods of mathematical modeling. His current researches are devoted to the study of political and economic history of the late 20th century. The lecture at the EUSP will be dedicated to one of the classical  issue in comparative social science  — the correlation established by Seymour Martin Lipset between economic growth and democracy in the light of the results obtained by professor Goldstone with the use of the methods of the graphical analysis of the historical data.