Social Changes: Models

Abstract

Three logical requirements of theories of social change can be identified. First, it should be possible to use the same basic approach in studying both constancy and change. Second, models of social change should incorporate intrinsic sources of change. Finally, social change is mediated through individual actors. Models of change must show how macrovariables or structural characteristics affect individual motives, capacities, and choices and how the choices of actors in turn change macrovariables. Specifying actor assumptions is necessary to understand what they do and why. Specifying the structure they act within is needed to explain what happens and why. What results flows from the actors' choices, not from their motives. These distinctions are needed in order to identify the key aspects of models of social change.