Theda Skocpol

Theda Skocpol is an American sociologist and political scientist known for founding a state-centered approach to comparative historical sociology. In States and Social Revolutions (1979), a structural comparison of the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions, she argued that successful social revolutions result from a conjuncture of state breakdown, brought on by international military and fiscal pressure, and autonomous peasant revolt, rather than from the deliberate mobilization of a revolutionary movement as earlier theories had emphasized. She went on to lead the bringing the state back in movement in the social sciences, insisting that the state be treated as an autonomous actor with its own interests and capacities rather than simply an arena for class conflict, and applied this approach to the historical development of American social policy in works such as Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (1992).