Political sociology
1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis.
[3] This new area drawing upon works by Alexis de Tocqueville, James Bryce, Robert Michels, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Karl Marx to understand an integral theme of political sociology: power.
[4] Power's definition for political sociologists varies across the approaches and conceptual framework utilised within this interdisciplinary study.
Although with deviation in how it is carried out, political sociology has an overall focus on understanding why power structures are the way they are in any given societal context.
Politics offers a complex definition and is important to note that what 'politics' means is subjective to the author and context.
From the study of governmental institutions, public policy, to power relations, politics has a rich disciplinary outlook.
Although feeding into this interdisciplinary area, the body of work by Karl Marx and Max Weber are considered foundational to its inception as a sub-field of research.
The structuralist approach emphasizes the way a capitalist economy operates; only allowing and encouraging the state to do some things but not others (Nicos Poulantzas, Bob Jessop).
Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been, "Why do so few American or European citizens choose to vote?
In Marx's 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, his basic conception is that the state and civil society are separate.
[19] By the time he wrote The German Ideology (1846), Marx viewed the state as a creature of the bourgeois economic interest.
Two years later, that idea was expounded in The Communist Manifesto:[20] "The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
– the arena of political institutions and legal constitutional control – and civil society (the family, the education system, trade unions, etc.)
Gramsci posits that movements such as reformism and fascism, as well as the scientific management and assembly line methods of Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford respectively, are examples of this.
Borrowing from Gramsci's notion of cultural hegemony, Poulantzas argued that repressing movements of the oppressed is not the sole function of the state.
[citation needed] Bob Jessop was influenced by Gramsci, Miliband and Poulantzas to propose that the state is not as an entity but as a social relation with differential strategic effects.
This ties to his broader concept of rationalisation by suggesting the inevitability of a move in this direction,[30] in which "Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge.
[30][31] Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchical organisation, by delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, by action taken (and recorded) on the basis of written rules, by bureaucratic officials needing expert training, by rules being implemented neutrally and by career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by organisations, not by individuals.
[35][36] The outlook of the Italian school of elitism is based on two ideas: Power lies in position of authority in key economic and political institutions.
Pareto emphasized the psychological and intellectual superiority of elites, believing that they were the highest achievers in any field.
While democracy promises impartiality and legal equality before all citizens, the capitalist system results in unequal economic power and thus possible political inequality as well.
Ultimately, decisions are reached through the complex process of bargaining and compromise between various groups pushing for their interests.
Additionally, capital is no longer owned by a dominant class, but by an expanding managerial sector and diversified shareholders, none of whom can exert their will upon another.
The institutions which they head, Mills posits, are a triumvirate of groups that have succeeded weaker predecessors: (1) "two or three hundred giant corporations" which have replaced the traditional agrarian and craft economy, (2) a strong federal political order that has inherited power from "a decentralized set of several dozen states" and "now enters into each and every cranny of the social structure", and (3) the military establishment, formerly an object of "distrust fed by state militia," but now an entity with "all the grim and clumsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain."
The members of the power elite, according to Mills, often enter into positions of societal prominence through educations obtained at establishment universities.
[42] In his introduction, Domhoff writes that the book was inspired by the work of four men: sociologists E. Digby Baltzell, C. Wright Mills, economist Paul Sweezy, and political scientist Robert A.
Marshall's concept defines the social responsibilities the state has to its citizens or, as Marshall puts it, "from [granting] the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society".
Larry Diamond and Gary Marks argue that "Lipset's assertion of a direct relationship between economic development and democracy has been subjected to extensive empirical examination, both quantitative and qualitative, in the past 30 years.
And the evidence shows, with striking clarity and consistency, a strong causal relationship between economic development and democracy.
"[46] Lipset's modernization theory has continued to be a significant factor in academic discussions and research relating to democratic transitions.
