| Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis This groundbreaking book represents the most systematic examination to date of the often-invoked but rarely examined declaration that "history matters." Most contemporary social scientists unconsciously take a "snapshot" view of the social world. Yet the meaning of social events or processes is frequently distorted when they are ripped from their temporal context. Paul Pierson argues that placing politics in time--constructing "moving pictures" rather than snapshots--can vastly enrich our understanding of complex social dynamics, and greatly improve the theories and methods that we use to explain them. Paul Pierson is Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books, including Dismantling the Welfare State? which won the Gladys Kammerer Award in 1995 from the American Political Science Association for the best book on American national politics and policy. |