Path dependence in historical sociology

Mahoney, J. (2000). Path dependence in historical sociology. Theory and Society, 29(4), 507-548.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

2000

DOI

10.1023/a:1007113830879

Link

https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007113830879

Cited from

economics_finance, political_science

Cited by

3 citations across 3 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Critical Juncture
  • The mechanism—contingency at a moment of high sensitivity—transfers across historical, organizational, biological, and technological domains, as Mahoney (2000) systematizes in his typology of self-reinforcing and reactive sequences.

    This sourceDistinguishes critical-juncture causation (the moment of selection) from subsequent reproduction mechanisms via self-reinforcing and reactive sequences; supports the typology-of-sequences claim in the Structural Signature.

• Historical Determinism
  • Toynbee's challenge-and-response theory (A Study of History, 1934–1961) exemplifies this trade-off: the cyclical structure renders civilizational history intelligible in a unified frame, but at the cost of forcing diverse contingent events (diplomatic accidents, individual leadership decisions, technological surprises) into the procrustean bed of structural cycles.
• Path Dependence
  • This reasoning surfaces the role of critical junctures—moments when multiple paths are feasible and small perturbations can steer the system toward different equilibria, a concept Mahoney (2000) places at the center of historical-sociological causal analysis.

    This sourceDistinguishes critical-juncture causation (the moment of selection) from subsequent reproduction mechanisms (utilitarian, functional, power, legitimation) that perpetuate the locked-in path; separates threshold dynamics from perpetuation structure.

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