Modeling Complex Historical Processes with Analytic Narratives

The analytic narratives project represents an effort to clarify and make explicit the approach adopted by numerous scholars trying to combine historical and comparative research with rational choice models. In order to understand instances of institutional origin and change, analytic narrativists insist on the combination of deep knowledge of the case and an explicit theoretical model. These requirements do not, in themselves, differentiate analytic narratives from other well-crafted comparative and historical research, however. The focus of this paper is on what constitutes the analytic narrative approach and what, if anything, distinguishes it from other approaches for undertaking rigorous comparative and historical research. In the original book and in responses to critics (Bates et al. 1998, 2000a, 2000b), the authors have tried to outline the key elements of the approach, but there is systematization still to be done.