Turning to history, appraising diversity and recasting democratization studies: some proposals

This article focuses on an assessment of the implications of a “turn to history” for the study of democratization. The authors refer to the fact that a “turn to history” has been linked to a broad set of standpoints incorporated into various contexts, which complicates any assessment of the impact of these standpoints on the agenda of research into democratization. According to the authors, it is not possible to suffice with a simple juxtaposition of historicizing and non-historicizing or “ahistorical” approaches. It is necessary to progress beyond this dichotomy and place emphasis on a more detailed, more specific identification and differentiation of the theoretical and methodological standpoints contained within the projects. In this spirit, the article focuses on an assessment of the implications of a combination of a “turn to history” and an acknowledgement of the diversity of modes and outcomes of democratization for the development of contextually sensitive approaches, which respect the complexity of the processes investigated and their configurations. This development helps open up a broad arena for a desirable interdisciplinary enhancement of the theoretical background of democratization studies, and for a more pronounced application of the “multi-sited” format of these studies.