本书是以色列著名社会学家艾森斯塔德的代表作，比较并分析了人类历史上曾经出现过的几乎所有官僚帝国的政治体系，包括古埃及、古巴比伦、中华帝国、波斯帝国，以及绝对专制时代的欧洲国家等，是古典社会学时期以来第一部进行广泛比较的宏观社会学分析名著。

本书基于结构功能主义的视角并对其加以发展，为读者呈现出蔚为大观的帝国政体的繁多样貌，也指出了各个体系中所蕴含的现代民主制度的萌芽。

Some of the most important questions of the social sciences in the twentieth century have been posed by scholars working at the intersections of social theory and history viewed on a grand scale. The core essays of this book focus on the careers and contributions of nine of these scholars: Marc Bloch, Karl Polanyi, S. N. Eisenstadt, Reinhard Bendix, Perry Anderson, E. P. Thompson, Charles Tilly, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Barrington Moore, Jr. The essays convey a vivid sense of the vision and values each of these major scholars brings (or bought) to his work and analyze and evaluate the research designs and methods each used in his most important works. The introduction and conclusion discuss the long-running tradition of historically grounded research in sociology, while the conclusion also provides a detailed discussion and comparison of three recurrent strategies for bringing historical evidence and theoretical ideas to bear upon one another. informative, thought-provoking, and unusually practical, the book offers fascinating and relevant reading to sociologists, social historians, historically oriented political economists, and anthropologists - and, indeed, to anyone who wants to learn more about the ideas and methods of some of the best-known scholars in the modern social sciences.

This book contributes to emerging debates in political science and sociology on institutional change. Its introductory essay proposes a new framework for analyzing incremental change that is grounded in a power-distributional view of institutions and that emphasizes ongoing struggles within but also over prevailing institutional arrangements. Five empirical essays then bring the general theory to life by evaluating its causal propositions in the context of sustained analyses of specific instances of incremental change. These essays range widely across substantive topics and across times and places, including cases from the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The book closes with a chapter reflecting on the possibilities for productive exchange in the analysis of change among scholars associated with different theoretical approaches to institutions.

这部著作试图对欧洲绝对主义国家的性质与发展作一比较考察，书中介绍了东、西欧的绝对主义国家：西班牙、法国、普鲁士、波兰等。

Distinguishing four sources of power – ideological, economic, military and political – this series traces their interrelations throughout human history. This fourth volume covers the period from 1945 to the present, focusing on the three major pillars of post-war global order: capitalism, the nation-state system and the sole remaining empire of the world, the United States. In the course of this period, capitalism, nation-states and empires interacted with one another and were transformed. Mann's key argument is that globalization is not just a single process, because there are globalizations of all four sources of social power, each of which has a different rhythm of development. Topics include the rise and beginnings of decline of the American Empire, the fall or transformation of communism (respectively, the Soviet Union and China), the shift from neo-Keynesianism to neoliberalism, and the three great crises emerging in this period – nuclear weapons, the great recession and climate change.