by Andrew C. Gould, University of Notre Dame
in Qualitative & Multi-Method Research, Spring 2017, Vol. 15, No.1
“The study of cleavages, critical junctures, and resulting trajectories in the evolution of politics and party systems was launched by Lipset and Rokkan in their classic study of Western Europe. They focused on fundamental societal cleavages: center-periphery, church-state, land-industry, and owner-worker. According to their argument, the resolution of these cleavages crystallized in critical junctures, which in turn set countries on distinctive historical paths. In the intervening decades since 1967, numerous studies have extended, refined, and in some ways corrected their arguments about Western Europe, and a substantial body of research has applied this framework to other regions.
This essay discusses my work on critical junctures, presented in Origins of Liberal Dominance: State, Church, and Party in Nineteenth-Century Europe. This study focused on the politics of liberalism in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany from the restoration of conservative monarchies in 1815 to the outbreak of continental war in 1914. In this historical context, liberals sought to build representative and constitutional government, to develop national economic systems, and to confine clerical authority to religious affairs. Most scholars viewed 19th-century liberals through a prism that emphasized battles over private property and socialism; my work took the religious implications of liberalism as equally decisive.
This brief article traces the lines of influence that shaped my book, emphasizing among other points how the critical juncture framework provided a fresh, powerful, and most welcome new perspective on the study of religion and politics.
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