Non-Resident Scholar, Historical Sociology
University of Washington
Email Steven Pfaff
Steven Pfaff Vitae

Pfaff’s current research projects explore the dynamics of spontaneous mobilization in repressive states, religiously-based collective action, the emergence and diffusion of Evangelicalism in 16th Century Central Europe, the causes of mutiny in Britain’s Royal Navy during the age of sail, mosque-state relations and their consequences for Muslims in Western polities, and the political process of secularization in Europe during the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Steven Pfaff is Associate Professor of Sociology and Directer of the Center for West European Studies (CWES) in the Jackson School of International Studies. He works broadly in comparative and historical sociology, with substantive interests in collective action and social movements, religion, and politics.

He is the author of Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany: The Crisis of Leninism and the Revolution of 1989. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. It was the winner of the 2004 Social Science History Association President’s Award and has been favorably reviewed by sociologists and historians alike. Other recent work includes “The Religious Divide: Why Religion seems to be Thriving in the United States and Waning in Europe” in Jeffrey Kopstein and Sven Steinmo (Eds.); Growing Apart? America and Europe in the 21st Century. New York: Cambridge University Press (in press); “Will a Million Muslims March? Muslim Interest Organizations and Political Integration in Europe.”, Comparative Political Studies 39/7 (2006): 803-28 (with Anthony Gill); “Explaining a Religious Anomaly: A Historical Analysis of Secularization in Eastern Germany.”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44/4 (2005): 397-422 (with Paul Froese); “Exit-Voice Dynamics in Collective Action: An Analysis of Emigration and Protest in the East German Revolution.”, American Journal of Sociology 109/2 (2003): 401-44 (with Hyojoung Kim), “Theory, History and Comparative Political Sociology.”, Research in Political Sociology 12 (2003):285-310 (with Edgar Kiser), and “Replete and Desolate Markets: Poland, East Germany and the New Religious Paradigm.”, Social Forces 80/2 (2001): 481-507 (with Paul Froese).