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Peter Flora (with Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin) (eds.), State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe. The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Comparative European Politics series), 1999. Pp.xviii + 422. ISBN 0 19 828032 7. The Norwegian Stein Rokkan (1921-79) was one of the leading social scientists after the Second World War. An hyperactive scholar, he was committed to international social science and greatly contributed to the expansion of academic organizations such as the ISA (International Sociological Association), the IPSA (International Political Science Association), and the ECPR (European Consortium of Political Research). A much-needed compilation of Rokkan’s prolific work has finally seen the ‘public light’. The task undertaken by the editors has by no means been effortless. Rokkan was a prolific writer and had his works published by the hundreds. But, up until now, no systematic review of his concepts, ideas and models had been attempted. The endeavor carried by Peter Flora, with the assistance of Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin, is to be commended for many reasons. Among these, the systematic presentation of the very core of Rokkan’s academic work is to be underlined, i.e. the attempt to develop a ‘macro-model of European political development. This model was no other than that of state formation, nation-building, and mass politics, as indicated in the tittle of the book. As a Renaissance-type of inquirer Rokkan sought to combine both the old tradition of macrosociology and the new developments of social science databases and methodology. In this respect, he can be regarded as an innovator within mainstream sociology and as one of the main instigators for bringing the ‘territorial dimension’ to the fore of social analyses. For him there was no doubt that functional dimensions of society are of decisive importance in all aspects of human life. But territoriality was also of no lesser significance. The academic interest developed in recent years on the spatial dimension of politics and powers seems to corroborate the soundness of Rokkan’s pioneering research. A long introduction (91 pages) written by Peter Flora serves the purpose of providing the reader with useful insights and interpretations on how to make sense of the vast amount of data and information provided in subsequent chapters. A cascade of concepts and ideas put forward by Rokkan are analyzed in a clarifying manner. As an alternative, the reader is invited to proceed first with the reading of Rokkan’s original works contained in the book in order to make a better contrast of the systematization put forward by Flora in the introductory section. I do not advice to follow such a route. Flora’s pages are the product of several years of meticulous analyses and provide the reader with effective Socratic guidance. Many of the conceptual expressions used by Stein Rokkan have become coined terms of generalized use within the international academia of social sciences. His prime concern was to describe and explain differences in the structuring of political systems in Europe and to make structural comparisons between them. Here functional and territorial differentiation was crucial for him. In his basic model, Rokkan strove to circumscribe the potentially limitless program of such structural comparisons into two main areas of analysis: (1) specific organizations and institutions (party and electoral systems); and (2) center-periphery structures and cleavages. With respect to the latter, he regards them as fundamental oppositions

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within a territorial population, which stands out from the multiplicity of conflicts rooted in the social structure. The interest of Rokkan for explaining the European cleavage structures encouraged him to look further back in history to the early processes of state formation and nation-building. Boundary-building was another key concept developed by Rokkan of an equal significance to that of structuring. The interrelations between internal structuring and external boundary-building became central for understanding the connections between state formation (military an administrative boundary-building) and nation-building (cultural boundary-building) on the one hand, and the development and structuring of mass democracies on the other. According to Flora, the interpretation made by Rokkan of mass political democratization is related to the dismantling of internal boundaries, or the removal of barriers or thresholds prohibiting entry into the political system. Regarding his research program, one of Rokkan’s main objectives was to achieve ‘parsimonious’ explanations and, thus, variance reduction in sorting out his macro-model of Europe’s development. This concern is noticeable throughout all his scattered published texts, chronologically reviewed in the book. Rokkan’s basic approach rests upon four main features: (a) the attempt to spell out region- and period-specific models; (b) the aim of elaborating European configurations rather than hierarchies of factors; (c) the use of retrospective diachronics in the analysis of long-term development; and (d) the concentration on a comparisons of structures. The encompassing context of Rokkan’s region-specific macro-models is the evolution of Europe since the late Middle Ages, and having the Old Continent as a relatively well-defined ‘unity’. He was more interested with the multiplicity of evolving political systems than with the European encompassing entity. Further to this, Rokkan committed his research to accomplish an integrated but not hierarchical model. In order to overcome contextual constraints in dealing with synchronic structural elements and diachronic developmental processes, the Norwegian social scientist put forward notions of critical junctures and freezing of structures and boundaries. However, Rokkan’s approach neglected to a certain degree the role of social actors in historical outcomes and, consequently, the question of available options and motives for action. Further to this, his models can be criticized as static, a general accusation of much comparative research done in the last decades. Likewise, criticism has been raised at the exercise of constraining complex and dynamic objects of study into a typological-topological map of Europe. Indeed, as a complex social evolving system, Europe’s history needs to be further taken into account so that sequencialization (linearity) can be more accurately put into place, if at all possible. There is a variety of evolutionary concepts that we should keep in mind when thinking of social systems as complex-chaotic-adaptative systems, such as non-repetitiveness of history, the role of historical singularities, the non-teleology of dynamics, or the sedimentation of characteristics. All things considered, Rokkan’s admirable effort to engage in deciphering such a vast object of study offers an example for the new generations of social scientists. It also sets the standards in cross-national comparative research to extraordinarily high levels of academic excellence.

LUIS MORENO Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid