historymirroring
Historymirroring is a methodological approach in historiography and social analysis that consists of identifying structural similarities between current events and past episodes and analyzing these correspondences to gain insight into potential outcomes, underlying mechanisms, or lessons learned. The term is used in academic, journalism, and policy contexts, and can be applied at various scales from national crises to organizational change.
Process and criteria: Researchers select past cases with comparable causal structures, actors, institutions, or structural pressures.
Applications: in risk assessment, it helps identify early warning signals by examining whether similar patterns preceded
Limitations: historymirroring risks oversimplification, selection bias, and false analogies. Historical contexts differ in depth and order
Relationship to related concepts: it overlaps with comparative history, analogical reasoning, and counterfactual analysis, but is