This book explains how the Columbia model of sociology, which was based on the methodology of P.F. Lazarsfeld, became a dominant sociological school of thought in American and European postwar sociology.

Providing an overview of Lazarsfeld's inventions and his methodological, organisational, and institutional innovations, it describes the means by which a particular model of sociology was gradually adopted in departments headed by Lazarsfeld and in the work of his successors. With attention to the use by Lazarsfeld of methodological texts published by prestigious publishing houses in his research and teaching, his activity in international organisations – including the UN – his collaboration with figures such as Robert K. Merton and Raymond Boudon, and his attempts to show how the roots of his empirical research methodology lay in the work of early European scholars, this volume shows how a particular sociological paradigm came to prevail over others for more than a decade.

It will therefore appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in the history of the discipline and questions of research methodology.