Beyond France: From implicit to explicit comparison

Path dependence and chance steered towards a focus on French politics. After a doctoral thesis on the concept of solidarity in nineteenth-century political thought, my research acquired a political economy emphasis. It broadened out from France and implicit comparison to West European explicit comparison, culminating in a professorship at Oxford University to promote European postgraduate political studies in 1993 until my retirement in 1998, when I returned to Hull University as a Research Professor. Collaboration was a crucial part of comparative work, whose findings were tested by an in-depth knowledge of France.