Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Cross-National Comparative Research—Analytical Strategies, Results, and Explanations

International vergleichende Forschung – Analysestrategien, Ergebnisse und Erklärungen

  • Abhandlungen
  • Published:
KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This introductory article reviews the history of cross-national comparative research, discusses its typical research designs and research questions, and ultimately summarizes the contributions to this special issue with respect to two questions: (i) What are the methodological challenges of cross-national comparative research today? (ii) What typical effects of the national context have been identified up to now?

Zusammenfassung

In diesem einleitenden Artikel wird die Geschichte der ländervergleichenden Forschung dargestellt, es werden die typischen Forschungsdesigns und Forschungsfragen erörtert und schließlich die Beiträge dieses Sonderhefts in Bezug auf zwei Fragen zusammengefasst: (i) Was sind die methodologischen Herausforderungen der ländervergleichenden Forschung heute? (ii) Welche typischen Auswirkungen des nationalen Kontexts wurden bisher festgestellt?

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The analysis of context effects is not only prominent in CNCR, but also in regional science and urban sociology. The 2014 special issue of the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Soziologie discusses predominantly local contexts such as urban districts or other lower-level regional units (Friedrichs and Nonnenmacher 2014).

  2. The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE 2019) and the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS 2019) are two such examples.

  3. Nonnenmacher and Friedrichs (2013) review 22 articles using at least one of these different forms of multi-country studies to explain life satisfaction.

  4. To be precise: it takes account of all unobserved heterogeneity that is uncorrelated with the explanatory variables.

  5. Data are available on request from the first author. The following journals were analyzed: American Sociological Review, European Sociological Review, International Journal of Sociology, American Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Political Research Quarterly, and Social Science Research.

  6. Of course, countries which have the same welfare regime may install councils in order to learn from each other—as the Scandinavian welfare states did. If such councils attain power over their constituent countries, they can become a collective actor in their own right, and the borderline from aggregation to social reality will be transgressed—just as in the case of the European Union. Furthermore, such councils are examples of the interaction between collective actors, which is beyond the purview of CNCR. International relations may be a complementary research arena to cross-national comparison.

References

  • Alderson, Arthur S., and Francois Nielsen. 2002. Globalization and the great U‑turn: Income inequality trends in 16 OECD countries. American Journal of Sociology 107:1244–1299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Andreß, Hans-Jürgen, Katrin Golsch and Alexander W. Schmidt. 2013. Applied panel analysis for economic and social surveys. Berlin: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Blau, Peter M., and Joseph E. Schwartz. 1984. Crosscutting social circles: Testing a macrostructural theory of intergroup relations. Orlando: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blossfeld, Hans-Peter, Nevena Kulic, Jan Skopek, Moris Triventi, Elina Kilpi-Jakonen, Daniela Vono de Vilhena, and Sandra Buchholz. 2019. Conditions and consequences of unequal educational opportunities in the life course: Results from the Cross-National Comparative eduLIFE Project. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00595-w.

  • Bollen, Kenneth A., Barbara Entwisle and Arthur S. Alderson. 1993. Macrocomparative research methods. Annual Review of Sociology 19:321–351.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boomgaarden, Hajo G., and Hyunjin Song. 2019. Media use and its effects in a cross-national perspective. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00596-9.

  • Bornschier, Volker, and Christopher K. Chase-Dunn. 1985. Transnational corporations and underdevelopment. New York: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, Lawrence H., and Gudmund R. Iversen. 1979. Contextual analysis: Concepts and statistical techniques. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryk, Anthony S., and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 2002. Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods. Second edition. Newbury Park: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Careja, Romana. 2019. Immigrants’ labor market outcomes: Contributions from multilevel studies. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00597-8.

  • Cieciuch, Jan, Eldad Davidov, Peter Schmidt and René Algesheimer. 2019. How to obtain comparable measures for cross-national comparisons. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00598-7.

  • CNCR. 2019. Cross-national Comparative Research. KZfSS Special Issue—(website). http://eswf.uni-koeln.de/cncr/ (Date of access: 8 Feb. 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, Jeffrey E. 2004. Economic perceptions and executive approval in comparative perspective. Political Behavior 26:27–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coleman, James S. 1990. Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Context. 2019. ESS Multilevel Data. https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/multilevel/guide/about.html (Date of access: 29 Jan. 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidov, Eldad, Bart Meuleman, Jan Cieciuch, Peter Schmidt and Jaak Billiet. 2014. Measurement equivalence in cross-national research. Annual Review of Sociology 40:55–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davidov, Eldad, Peter Schmidt, Jaak Billiet and Bart Meuleman. 2018. Cross-cultural analysis: Methods and applications, second edition. New York: Taylor & Francis.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Diener, Ed, and Shigehiro Oishi. 2000. Money and happiness: Income and subjective well-being across nations. In Culture and subjective well-being, eds. Ed Diener and Eunkook Mark Suh, 185–218. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diener, Ed, Louis Tay and David G. Myers. 2011. The religion paradox: If religion makes people happy, why are so many dropping out? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101:1278–1290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Easterlin, Richard A. 1974. Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. In Nations and households in economic growth: Essays in honor of Moses Abramovitz, eds. Paul A. David and Melvin W. Reder, 89–125. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erlinghagen, Marcel. 2019. Employment and its institutional contexts. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00599-6.

  • ESS. 2019. European Social Survey. https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org (Date of access: 29 Jan. 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  • EVS. 2019. European Values Study. https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu (Date of access: 29 Jan. 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  • Flora, Peter. 1983 and 1986. State, economy, and society in Western Europe. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freedman, David A. 2004. The ecological fallacy. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods, Volume 1, eds. Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Alan Bryman and Tim Futing Liao, 293. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frick, Joachim R., Stephen P. Jenkins, Dean R. Lillard, Oliver Lipps and Mark Wooden. 2007. The Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) and its member country household panel studies. Schmollers Jahrbuch 127:627–654.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedrichs, Jürgen, and Alexandra Nonnenmacher. 2014. Die Analyse sozialer Kontexte (An analysis of social contexts). In Soziale Kontexte und soziale Mechanismen (Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie Sonderheft 54/2014), eds. Jürgen Friedrichs and Alexandra Nonnenmacher, 1–16. Wiesbaden: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallie, Duncan, and Serge Paugam. Eds. 2000. Welfare regimes and the experience of unemployment in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gauthier, Anne Hélène. 1996. The state and the family: a comparative analysis of family policies in industrialized countries. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • GGS. 2019. Generations and Gender Survey. https://www.ggp-i.org (Date of access: 29 Jan. 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  • Giesselmann, Marco, and Alexander W. Schmidt-Catran. 2018. Getting the within estimator of cross-level interactions in multilevel models with pooled cross-sections: Why country dummies (sometimes) do not do the job. Sociological Methodology Online First, https://doi.org/10.1177/0081175018809150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goerres, Achim, Markus B. Siewert and Claudius Wagemann. 2019. Internationally comparative research designs in the social sciences: Fundamental issues, case selection logics, and research limitations. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00600-2.

  • Goldstein, Harvey. 1986. Multilevel mixed linear model analysis using iterative generalized least squares. Biometrika 73:43–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grunow, Daniela. 2019. Comparative analyses of housework and its relation to paid work: Institutional contexts and individual agency. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00601-1.

  • Guerin, Daniel, Jean Crete and Jean Mercier. 2001. A multilevel analysis of the determinants of recycling behavior in the European countries. Social Science Research 30:195–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Peter A., and Rosemary C. R. Taylor. 1996. Political science and the three new institutionalisms. Political Studies 44:936–957.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halman, Loek, and John Gelissen. 2019. Values in life domains in a cross-national perspective. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

  • Hank, Karsten, and Anja Steinbach. 2019. Families and their institutional contexts: The role of family policies and legal regulations. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00603-z.

  • Hantrais, Linda. 2008. International comparative research: Theory, methods and practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harkness, Janet A., Michael Braun, Brad Edwards, Timothy P. Johnson, Lars Lyberg, Peter Ph. Mohler, Beth-Ellen Pennell and Tom W. Smith. 2010. Survey methods in multinational, multiregional, and multicultural contexts. New York: Wiley.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Harkness, Janet A., Fons J. R. Van De Vijver and Peter Ph. Mohler. Eds. 2003. Cross-cultural survey methods. Hoboken: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, Joseph, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan. 2010. The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33:61–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Jürgen H. P., and Christof Wolf. 2011. Advances in cross-national comparison: A European working book for demographic and socio-economic variables. New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hosoya, Georg, Tobias Koch and Michael Eid. 2014. Längsschnittdaten und Mehrebenenanalyse (Longitudinal data and multi-level analyses). In Soziale Kontexte und soziale Mechanismen (Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie Sonderheft 54/2014), eds. Jürgen Friedrichs and Alexandra Nonnenmacher, 189–219. Wiesbaden: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Inkeles, Alex. 1960. Industrial man: The relation of status to experience, perception, and value. American Journal of Sociology 66:1–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ISSP. 2019. International Social Survey Programme. https://www.issp.org (Date of access: 29 Jan. 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Timothy P., Beth-Ellen Pennell, Ineke A. L. Stoop and Brita Dorer. 2018. Advances in comparative survey methods: Multinational, multiregional, and multicultural contexts (3MC). New York: Wiley.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Just, Aida, and Christopher J. Anderson. 2012. Immigrants, Citizenship and Political Action in Europe. British Journal of Political Science 42:481–509. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123411000378.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaltenthaler, Karl C., and Christopher J. Anderson. 2001. Europeans and their money: Explaining public support for the common European currency. European Journal of Political Research 40:139–170.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohn, Melvin L. 1987. Cross-national research as an analytic strategy: American Sociological Association, 1987 Presidential Address. American Sociological Review 52:713–731.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kohn, Melvin L. 2015. Change and stability: A cross-national analysis of social structure and personality. New York: Taylor & Francis.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kroneberg, Clemens. 2019. Theory development in comparative social research. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00604-y.

  • Landman, Todd. 2017. Issues and methods in comparative politics. An introduction. 4th edition. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lazarsfeld, Paul, and Herbert Menzel. 1969. On the relation between individual and collective properties. In A sociological reader on complex organization. 2nd edition, ed. Amitai Etzioni, 422–440. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, Jeffrey B., and Drew A. Linzer. 2005. Estimating regression models in which the dependent variable is based on estimates. Political Analysis 13:345–364.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. Democracy and working-class authoritarianism. American Sociological Review 24:482–501.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. 1989. Rediscovering institutions. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meuleman, Bart. 2019. Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling for Cross-National Comparative Research. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00605-x.

  • Meuleman, Bart, Eldad Davidov and Jaak Billiet. 2018. Modeling multiple-country repeated cross-sections. A societal growth curve model for studying the effect of the economic crisis on perceived ethnic threat. Methoden, Daten, Analysen 12:185–210.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meulemann, Heiner. 2002. Ed. Social capital in Europe: Similarity of countries and diversity of people? Multi-level analyses of the European Social Survey 2002. Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meulemann, Heiner. 2013. Soziologie von Anfang an. Eine Einführung in Themen, Ergebnisse und Literatur. 3rd ed. Wiesbaden: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Meulemann, Heiner. 2017. The secularization theory—not disconfirmed, yet rarely tested. Analyse und Kritik 39:325–355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, John W., John Boli, George M. Thomas and Francisco O. Ramirez. 1997. World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology 103:144–181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Minkov, Michael. 2013. Cross-cultural analysis: The science and art of comparing the world’s modern societies and their cultures. Los Angeles: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nonnenmacher, Alexandra, and Jürgen Friedrichs. 2013. The missing link: Deficits of country level studies. A review of 22 articles explaining life satisfaction. Social Indicators Research 110(3):1221–1244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. 2004. Sacred and secular. Religion and politics worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Opp, Karl-Dieter. 2009. Theories of political protest and social movements. A multidisciplinary introduction, critique and synthesis. London: Routledge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Parsons, Talcott. 1964. Evolutionary universals in society. American Sociological Review 29:339–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pescosolido, Bernice. 2007. Sociology of social networks. In 21st century sociology: A reference handbook, Volume 1, eds. Clifton D. Bryant and Dennis L. Peck, 208–217. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Pförtner, Timo-Kolja, Holger Pfaff and Frank J. Elgar. 2019. The role of welfare state characteristics for health and inequalities in health from a cross-national perspective: A critical research synthesis. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00606-w.

  • Przeworski, Adam, and Henri Teune. 1970. The logic of comparative social inquiry. New York: Wiley-Interscience.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, William S. 1950. Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review 15:351–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saxonhouse, Gary R. 1976. Estimated parameters as dependent variables. The American Economic Review 66:178–183.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saxonhouse, Gary R. 1977. Regressions from samples having different characteristics. The Review of Economics and Statistics 59:234–237.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt-Catran, Alexander W. and Malcolm Fairbrother. 2016. The random effects in multilevel models: Getting them wrong and getting them right. European Sociological Review 32:23–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt-Catran, Alexander W., Malcolm Fairbrother and Hans-Jürgen Andreß. 2019. Multilevel models for the analysis of comparative survey data: Common problems and some solutions. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialspychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00607-9.

  • Schmitt-Beck, Rüdiger. 2019. Political systems and electoral behavior: A review of internationally comparative multilevel research. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00608-8.

  • Schröder, Martin. 2019. Varieties of capitalism and welfare regime theories: Assumptions, accomplishments, and the need for different Methods. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00609-7.

  • SHARE. 2019. Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. https://www.share-project.org (Date of access: 29 Jan. 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  • Siegers, Pascal. 2019. Is the influence of religiosity on attitudes and behaviors stronger in less religious or more religious societies? A review of theories and contradictory evidence. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00610-0.

  • Spies, Dennis Christopher, and Simon T. Franzmann. 2019. Party competition and vote choice. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00611-z.

  • Stavrova, Olga. 2015. Religion, self-rated health, and mortality: Whether religiosity delays death depends on the cultural context. Social Psychological and Personality Science 6:911–922.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stavrova, Olga. 2019. How much do sources of happiness vary across countries? A review of the empirical literature. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00612-y.

  • Swamy, Paravastu A. V. B. 1970. Efficient inference in a random coefficient regression model. Econometrica 38:311–323.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • The Local. 2015. Danish police: Refugees can travel on to Sweden. TT/AFP/The Local, September 10, 2015. https://www.thelocal.se/20150910/danish-police-allow-refugees-to-continue-on-to-sweden (Date of access: 15 Jan. 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  • Treiman, Donald J. 1977. Occupational prestige in comparative perspective. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. 2011a. The modern world-system III: The second era of great expansion of the capitalist world-economy, 1730s–1840s. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. 2011b. The modern world-system IV: Centrist liberalism triumphant, 1789–1914. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. 2011c. The modern world-system II: Mercantilism and the consolidation of the European world-economy, 1600–1750. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. 2011d. The modern world-system I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, Max. 1980. Soziologische Grundbegriffe (Basic sociological terms). In Max Weber Schriften 1894–1922, ed. Dirk Käsler, 653–716. Stuttgart: Kröner (originally published 1920).

    Google Scholar 

  • Welch, Michael R., Charles R. Tittle and Thomas Petee. 1991. Religion and deviance among adult Catholics: A test of the “moral communities” hypothesis. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30:159–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilkinson, Richard G. 2006. The impact of inequality: How to make sick societies healthier. New York: New Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zapf, Wolfgang. 1994. Modernisierung, Wohlfahrtsentwicklung und Transformation. Soziologische Aufsätze 1987–1994. Berlin: Edition sigma.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ziller, Conrad. 2019. Policy Effects on Political Engagement. In Cross-national comparative research – analytical strategies, results and explanations. Sonderheft Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Eds. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer and Heiner Meulemann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00613-x.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Romana Careja, Clemens Kroneberg, and Conrad Ziller for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Moreover, as editors of this special issue, we acknowledge that this project would not have been possible without the help of colleagues and funding organizations. First of all, we would like to thank the editors and the editorial team of the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Soziologie for discussing and finally accepting our proposal for a special issue on cross-national comparative research, and for their input and practical support in also finalizing it. Second, we thank our authors for their willingness to follow our guidelines for the publication project and for their patience with our numerous revision requests. Third, the contributions to this special issue greatly benefitted from the reviews and discussions during an authors’ conference held in Cologne 2017. Our thanks go to Rolf Becker, Gerhard Bosch, Miriam Bröckel, Hilke Brockmann, Marius Busemeyer, Christian Czymara, Claudia Diehl, Nico Dragano, Malcolm Fairbrother, Jürgen Friedrichs, Catherine Hakim, Loek Halman, Johannes Huinink, Staffan Kumlin, Steffen Lehndorff, Bart Meuleman, Karl-Dieter Opp, Gert Pickel, Ingo Rohlfing, Stefano Ronchi, Sigrid Roßteutscher, Markus Wagner, and Michael Wagner for their valuable input. Fourth and finally, several people helped in organizing and putting the whole project into practice. Ravena Penning together with Lukas Hofheinz organized the conference. She also made sure that all the contributions complied with the KZfSS guidelines, while Neil Mussett did the final English editing.

The authors’ conference on which this special issue is based was partly financed by a grant from the Thyssen Foundation, for which we are highly grateful. All other costs were covered by a grant to the University of Cologne from the German Research Foundation, which supported the Research Training Group “Social Order and Life Chances in Cross-National Comparison (SOCLIFE)” between 2008 and 2017, for which we are also highly grateful. Finally, the idea for this special issue would not have been born without the enthusiasm and academic success of our SOCLIFE students, who have been inspiring us with their PhD projects for almost a decade, this having been—for the three of us—a form of coda to our common ten-year endeavors of teaching—and researching—in SOCLIFE.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Universität zu Köln, Universitätsstr. 24, 50931, Cologne, Germany

    Hans-Jürgen Andreß, Detlef Fetchenhauer & Heiner Meulemann

Authors
  1. Hans-Jürgen Andreß
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Detlef Fetchenhauer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Heiner Meulemann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hans-Jürgen Andreß.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Andreß, HJ., Fetchenhauer, D. & Meulemann, H. Cross-National Comparative Research—Analytical Strategies, Results, and Explanations. Köln Z Soziol 71 (Suppl 1), 1–28 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00594-x

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-019-00594-x

Keywords

Schlüsselwörter

Search

Navigation