Comparative Historical Analysis, Frank Wright, and Northern Ireland

Abstract

Northern Ireland: A Comparative Analysis (F. Wright, 1987, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan) remains the most significant work of comparative historical analysis written on Ireland, yet its reputed difficulty has blunted its impact. This article reconstructs Frank Wright's research design and comparative method and situates the book in the research tradition of configurative macroanalysis pioneered by Barrington Moore. Wright's detailed, processual, analytic narratives comparing the breakdown of communal deterrence systems in Northern Ireland, the US South and Algeria have been relatively neglected in later literature. Those grounded comparisons focused on getting the concrete details of cases right while striving to build middle-range generalizations about ethnic stratification and political authority. His comparisons were morally serious searches for paths out of conflict, which analyzed the unfolding of temporal processes in ways that anticipated recent interest in path dependence; but Wright downplayed political institutions and overstated his categorical distinction between settlement colony and ethnic frontiers. Future comparative research on Northern Ireland should focus even more on variation across conflicts, including institutional change, but would benefit from re-engaging with A Comparative Analysis as a gateway to comparative historical analysis.