To state that history matters is at once trivial and highly challenging. It is trivial in the sense that neither humans nor indeed organizations, or even states, can ever be assumed to live entirely in the present, and it is challenging in that it confronts us with a need to show causality. For it to be credible, an argument that history influences current affairs must entail more than simply mapping out striking historical parallels. The true challenge here lies in identifying processes whereby decisions taken in the past, even in the distant past, continue to exert non-trivial influence over decisions that are taken in the present.

In the following, we shall attempt to meet this challenge, and we shall do so by scrutinizing a set of very different approaches to establishing linkage between past and present. Given our overriding focus on the role of economics, it is only logical that economic approaches will be placed on center stage. We shall, however, also look at similar ambitions from scholars in sociology and in political science, all in line with our endeavor to outline how the role of history may be usefully incorporated into social science analysis more broadly.

Given the magnitude of this undertaking, the envisioned outline can be no more than tentative. Yet simply asking the right questions may take us a fair bit of the way toward resolving the multiplicity of problems that have been brought up in previous chapters.