Lakatos's meta-methodology is interesting precisely because it matches his methodology: a meta-methodological research programme in the philosophy of science is progressive as long as it continues to make novel predictions.
Thus although historicists might agree on a general meta-methodology, they can and do vary widely in the sort of theory that they produce using that meta-methodology.
Laudan might do better by equating his methodology with his meta-methodology.
In order to understand historicism, one must also understand the distinction between methodology and meta-methodology.
Laudan (1977) presents both an explicit meta-methodology and a normative theory of rationality.
An independent set of problems concerns Laudan's meta-methodology and its link to his theory of rationality.
On the other hand, a meta-methodology provides us with the standards by which we evaluate the theories of rationality that constitute our methodologies.
Laudan differentiates his methodology from his meta-methodology in order to avoid circular and/or self-supporting means of testing a methodology.
His meta-methodology is a foundational fit-the-data affair, while the ground-level criterion rejects the existence of data in a foundationalist sense.
According to his meta-methodology (1977), a successful theory of rationality should respect "our preferred pre-analytic intuitions about scientific rationality" (Laudan 1977, 160).
