Papers 80 001-312

This article presents the main features and objectives of the so-called «social mechanisms based explanation» or «analytical sociology». This perspective has gained quite considerable attention in contemporary debate, both for its theoretical novelty as well as for its empirical results. In the first part of the article I describe the key concepts, main scholars and institutional strengths of this approach. In the second part, I clarify the relationships between the analytical sociology perspective and the main trends in contemporary sociology, both theoretical and empirical. In the third part, three core principles of the approach are outlined: the idea of causal process, the relevance of multilevel theory and the prominence of formal theories and models.