CONDIS: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Scandinavian Democratization Process
A point of departure for the CONDIS project, Bo Stråth's first major project, was the bias in modernisation theories dominant among comparative social scientists not long ago that economic growth is the ultimate cause of welfare state development, where all states were thought to be caught up in a universal and evolutionist logic of industrialisation. Such theories pay insufficient attention to the political structures and cultural/ideological processes through which highly varied responses to industrialisation come about. During the research process, a critical view of its own historical, sociological point of departure was developed, questioning perspectives of path dependency and intrinsic driving forces in historical processes.
