Making Use of the Past: Time Periods as Cases to Compare and as Sequences of Problem Solving

This article examines methodological issues that arise when using information from one historical period to illuminate another. It begins by showing how the strengths and weaknesses of methods commonly used to compare institutions or regions reappear in comparisons between times. The discussion then turns to alternative approaches. The use of narrative and of path dependency to construct explanatory sequences are strategies that strike a welcome balance between causal generalization and historical detail. But these approaches typically fail to identify either the causal mechanisms or the trajectories that link events in different eras. These gaps can be filled by rethinking sequences of events across periods as reiterated problem solving. Successive U.S. industrial relations regimes since 1900 are used to illustrate this methodological strategy.