Stein Rokkan Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Stein Rokkan (1921–1979), professor of comparative politics at the University of Bergen, Norway, was one of the world’s leading social scientists. His life work produced a gigantic “historical fresco” of political development in Europe universally acknowledged as being fundamental to the study of the formation of nation-states and the birth of democracy. Rokkan’s theoretical contribution, combined with his indefatigable organization of data archives and scholarly networks and his pioneering promotion of computerized research techniques, make him a “classic” of comparative politics.

Rokkan’s working method consisted of constantly rewriting his pieces and completing them through new data and theories. The continuous evolution that characterizes his thought led to the fragmentation of his writings into a myriad of publications, in which previous conclusions are taken up critically. Rokkan never wrote a systematic and integrated volume. In fact, his intellectual endeavors were never intended as final products. Yet his work is extremely coherent. This unity stems from his concern with two basic phenomena.

The first of these phenomena is the formation of nationstates. Rokkan’s models explain the emergence of the territorial and centralized states controlling peripheries and borders. He was interested in differences of timing between states that formed late in the nineteenth century in the city-belt in the middle of Europe, and old states in the territories surrounding it. His models also describe the building of nations, with the standardization of religion and language. Again, he was interested in variation, the goal being to explain why peripheral identities survived in some countries but not in others.

The second phenomenon Rokkan was concerned with was the development of mass democracy. His models reconstruct the paths from absolutism toward democracy (through thresholds) and how oppositions organize. His most famous model is that of four cleavages (class, state-church, center-periphery, rural-urban), caused by the national and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century, which were expressed in political parties that stabilized in the twentieth century (the freezing hypothesis). Rokkan’s work is characterized by parsimonious modeling of historical processes, political structures, and causal links. Text is accompanied by numerous figures that Rokkan considered useful for model-building.

Rokkan’s intellectual achievements are matched by his entrepreneurial role in organizing international social science. He was secretary of the International Political Science Association (IPSA)/International Sociological Association (ISA) Committee on Political Sociology (1960–1979) and president of UNESCO’s International Social Science Council (ISSC) Committee on Comparative Research (1973–1977). He was also IPSA’s president (1970–1973) and ISA’s vice president and chair (1966–1976). He cofounded the European Consortium for Political Research, of which he was the first chair (1970– 1976). In Scandinavia, he was chair of the Nordic Political Science Association and helped to create the journal Scandinavian Political Studies. Rokkan also founded the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen.

Convinced of the potential of both the behavioral and computer revolutions in the social sciences, Rokkan became the leader of the archival movement for the organization of permanent infrastructures for the collection, dissemination, and classroom use of “ecological” (micro and macro) data produced by collaborative and cumulative research. He organized the Conferences on Data Archives in 1963 and 1964, helped to build the Committee of European Social Science Data Services, and edited European Political Data.

Rokkan was fluent in several languages and traveled ceaselessly for conferences and research purposes. His stature is witnessed worldwide by recognitions in his honor, including lectures, prizes, and chairs named after him. Most importantly, his models have remained a constant source of inspiration for later generations and are employed to interpret democratization throughout the world as well as the process of European integration.

Bibliography:

Allardt, Erik and Henri Valen. “Stein Rokkan: An Intellectual Profile.” In Mobilization, Center-periphery Structures and Nation-building: A Volume in Commemoration of Stein Rokkan, edited by Per Torsvik, 11–38. Bergen, Norway: Universitetsforlaget, 1981.
Flora, Peter. “Introduction and Interpretation.” In State Formation, Nationbuilding and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan, edited by Stein Rokkan, 1–91. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Lipset, Seymour M., and Stein Rokkan. “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction.” In Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-national Perspectives, edited by Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, 1–64. New York: Free Press, 1967.
Rokkan, Stein, Angus Campbell, Per Torsvik, and Henry Valen. Citizens, Elections, Parties: Approaches to the Comparative Study of the Processes of Development. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970.
Rokkan, Stein, and Smuel Eisenstadt, eds. Building States and Nations. 2 vols. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1973.
Rokkan, Stein, and Derek W. Urwin. Economy, Territory, Identity: Politics of West European Peripheries. London: Sage, 1983.
Rokkan, Stein, Derek Unwin, F. H. Aerebrot, P. Malaba, and T. Sande. Centreperiphery Structures in Europe: An ISSC Workbook in Comparative Analysis. Frankfurt: Campus, 1983.

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