Critical juncture theory
Critical juncture theory focuses on critical junctures, i.e., large, rapid, discontinuous changes, and the long-term causal effect or historical legacy of these changes.
Critical junctures are turning points that alter the course of evolution of some entity. Critical juncture theory seeks to explain both the historical origin and maintenance of social order, and the occurrence of social change through sudden, big leaps.
Critical juncture theory is not a general theory of social order and change. It emphasizes one kind of cause and kind of effect. Yet, it challenges some common assumptions in many approaches and theories in the social sciences. The idea that some changes are discontinuous sets it up as an alternative to "continuist" or "synechist" theories that assume that change is always gradual or that natura non facit saltus – Latin for "nature does not make jumps." The idea that such discontinuous changes have a long-term impact stands in counterposition to "presentist" explanations that only consider the possible causal effect of temporally proximate factors.
Theorizing about critical junctures began in the social sciences in the 1960s. Since then, it has been central to a body of research in the social sciences that is historically informed. Research on critical junctures in the social sciences is part of the broader tradition of comparative historical analysis and historical institutionalism. It is a tradition that spans political science, sociology and economics. Within economics, it shares an interest in historically oriented research with the new economic history or cliometrics. Research on critical junctures is also part of the broader "historical turn" in the social sciences.
Origins in the 1960s and early 1970s
The idea of episodes of discontinuous change, followed by periods of relative stability, was introduced in various fields of knowledge in the 1960s and early 1970s.Kuhn's paradigm shifts
's landmark work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced and popularized the idea of discontinuous change and the long-term effects of discontinuous change. Kuhn argued that progress in knowledge occurs at times through sudden jumps, which he called paradigm shifts. After paradigm shifts, scholars do normal science within paradigms, which endure until a new revolution came about.Kuhn challenged the conventional view in the philosophy of science at the time that knowledge growth could be understood entirely as a process of gradual, cumulative growth.
Stephen Jay Gould writes that "Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions" was "the most overt and influential" scholarly work to make a "general critique of gradualism" in the twentieth century.
Gellner's neo-episodic model of change
proposed a neo-episodic model of change in 1964 that highlights the "step-like nature of history" and the "remarkable discontinuity" between different historical periods. Gellner contrasts the neo-episodic model of change to an evolutionary model that portrays "the pattern of Western history" as a process of "continuous and sustained and mainly endogenous upward growth."Sociologist Michael Mann adapted Gellner's idea of "'episodes' of major structural transformation" and called such episodes "power jumps."
Lipset and Rokkan's critical junctures
Sociologist Seymour Lipset and political scientist Stein Rokkan introduced the idea of critical junctures and their long-term impact in the social sciences in 1967. The ideas presented in the coauthored 1967 work were elaborated by Rokkan in Citizens, Elections, and Parties.Gellner had introduced a similar idea in the social sciences. However, Lipset and Rokkan offered a more elaborate model and an extensive application of their model to Europe. Although Gellner influenced some sociologists, the impact of Lipset and Rokkan on the social sciences was greater.
Gould's punctuated equilibrium model
Kuhn's ideas influenced paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who introduced the idea of punctuated equilibrium in the field of evolutionary biology in 1972. Gould's initial work on punctuated equilibrium was coauthored with Niles Eldredge.Gould's model of punctuated equilibrium drew attention to episodic bursts of evolutionary change followed by periods of morphological stability. He challenged the conventional model of gradual, continuous change - called phyletic gradualism.
The critical juncture theoretical framework in the social sciences
Since its launching in 1967, research on critical junctures has focused in part on developing a theoretical framework, which has evolved over time.In studies of society, some scholars use the term "punctuated equilibrium" model, and others the term "neo-episodic" model. Studies of knowledge continue to use the term "paradigm shift". However, these terms can be treated as synonyms for critical juncture.
Developments in the late 1960s–early 1970s
Key ideas in critical junctures research were initially introduced in the 1960s and early 1970s by Seymour Lipset, Stein Rokkan, and Arthur Stinchcombe.Critical junctures and legacies
Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan and Rokkan introduced the idea that big discontinuous changes, such as the reformation, the building of nations, and the Industrial Revolution, reflected conflicts organized around social cleavages, such as the center-periphery, state-church, land-industry, and owner-worker cleavages. In turn, these big discontinuous changes could be seen as critical junctures because they generated social outcomes that subsequently remained "frozen" for extensive periods of time.
In more general terms, Lipset and Rokkan's model has three components:
- Cleavage. Strong and enduring conflicts that polarize a political system. Four such cleavages were identified:
- * The center–periphery cleavage, a conflict between a central nation-building culture and ethnically linguistically distinct subject populations in the peripheries.
- * The state–church cleavage, a conflict between the aspirations of a nation-state and the church.
- * The land–industry cleavage, a conflict between landed interests and commercial/industrial entrepreneurs.
- * The worker–employer cleavage, a conflict between owners and workers.
- Critical juncture. Radical changes regarding these cleavages happen at certain moments.
- Legacy. Once these changes occur, their effect endures for some time afterwards.
The reproduction of legacies through self-replicating causal loops
Arthur Stinchcombe filled a key gap in Lipset and Rokkan's model. Lipset and Rokkan argued that critical junctures produced legacies, but did not explain how the effect of a critical juncture could endure over a long period.
Stinchcombe elaborated the idea of historical causes as a distinct kind of cause that generates a "self-replicating causal loop." Stinchcombe explained that the distinctive feature of such a loop is that "an effect created by causes at some previous period becomes a cause of that same effect in succeeding periods." This loop was represented graphically by Stinchcombe as follows:
X t1 ––> Y t2 ––> D t3 ––> Y t4 ––> D t5 ––> Y t6
Stinchcombe argued that the cause that explains the initial adoption of some social feature was not the same one that explains the persistence of this feature. Persistence is explained by the repeated effect of Y on D and of D on Y.
Developments in the early 1980s–early 1990s
Additional contributions were made in the 1980s and early 1990s by various political scientists and economists.Punctuated equilibrium, path dependence, and institutions
Paul A. David and W. Brian Arthur, two economists, introduced and elaborated the concept of path dependence, the idea that past events and decisions affect present options and that some outcomes can persist due to the operation of a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This idea of a self-reinforcing feedback loop resembles that of a self-replicating causal loop introduced earlier by Stinchcombe. However, it resonated with economists and led to a growing recognition in economics that "history matters."
The work by Stephen Krasner in political science incorporated the idea of punctuated equilibrium into the social sciences. Krasner also drew on the work by Arthur and connected the idea of path dependence to the study of political institutions.
Douglass North, an economist and Nobel laureate, applied the idea of path dependence to institutions, which he defined as "the rules of the game in a society," and drew attention to the persistence of institutions.
A synthesis
Political scientists Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, in Shaping the Political Arena, provided a synthesis of many ideas introduced from the 1960s to 1990, in the form of the following "five-step template":
Antecedent Conditions ––> Cleavage or Shock ––> Critical Juncture
––> Aftermath ––> Legacy
These key concepts have been defined as follows:
- "Antecedent conditions are diverse socioeconomic and political conditions prior to the onset of the critical juncture that constitute the baseline for subsequent change."
- "Cleavages, shocks, or crises are triggers of critical junctures."
- "Critical junctures are major episodes of institutional change or innovation."
- "The aftermath is the period during which the legacy takes shape."
- "The legacy is an enduring, self-reinforcing institutional inheritance of the critical juncture that stays in place and is stable for a considerable period."