THE CHALLENGE FOR COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF EUROPE

Abstract

Europe today seems to be undergoing a serious crisis. Its several sub-regions and nations, however, are affected very differently by it. Does Europe constitute a meaningful unit from a social scientific point of view at all? The paper argues that this is the case because of its common historical-cultural heritage and because of the increasing density of direct interrelationships between its nations and peoples. Nevertheless, internal differentiations continue to make of this `continent' one of the most complex and variegated culture areas in the world. Three dimensions are of particular relevance in this regard: (a) the level of socio-economic development; (b) linguistic-cultural and religious traditions; (c) the type of political system. If we allocate 25 of the larger European nation-states to this 3-dimensional typology, we can demonstrate a limited number of relatively internally homogeneous clusters of nations. These are distinguished from each other not only in terms of political system, but also in terms of socio-economic development, language and religion. The paper concludes with the thesis that the macro-context `Europe' constitutes an ideal base for carrying out international comparisons and pleads for making full use of this potential by including all European nations in such comparisons.