POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

Sociology 920:641

Paul McLean

 

Department of Sociology

Rutgers University

Spring 2006

 

 

Location and time: Thursdays, 4:10-6:50, LSH A256

Office Hours: LSH A336, Mondays 12:00-1:30 and by appt.

Phone: 732-445-3705

E-mail: pmclean@rci.rutgers.edu

Website : http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~pmclean/

 

Political sociology encompasses a vast and disparate variety of topics and theoretical perspectives.  As a result, it is hard to find much agreement about just what does or does not belong in a political sociology course, and different instructors will focus on different topics.  The areas studied by political sociologists include political parties, pressure groups, political elites, political culture, voting behavior, comparative political systems, warfare, democracy and economic development, the nature of the state, citizenship, nationalism, revolutions, the welfare state and neoliberalization, globalization, and the nature of power itself.  Political sociologists today may draw on the conflict- and economy-based view of politics articulated by Marx and his followers, the elite- and organization-based political sociology of Max Weber and Robert Michels and their followers, the political culture- and institution-based view of politics articulated by Alexis de Tocqueville, or any of these perspectives in combination.  This class is designed as an overview of some of the different perspectives and key arguments comprising the field, including both classical texts and contemporary books and articles.

 

As a discipline, political sociology is close to political science, because both disciplines address issues related to politics.  However, political sociology does differ from political science in a variety of imprecise yet substantial ways.  First, political sociologists often emphasize the relationships between political institutions and other social institutions and groupings—whether kinship, social classes, prestige groupings, or ideologies—rather than study political institutions on their own.  Second, political sociology often tends to have a broader (especially historical) sweep than political science.  Third, political sociologists tend to adopt more narrative and comparative methods of analysis, rather than formal or mathematical ones.  Finally, political sociology is often (though not always) political in a normative and occasionally partisan way—something that is not seen as typically in political science.  Thus political sociologists aim not only to understand political structures, ideas, and processes, but also to critique them.

 

 

Grading and Class Format

 

                I have decided not to order any books through the bookstore.  Books are typically available promptly through amazon or other sources as you see fit.  I have also placed a hard copy of virtually the entire set of required readings (marked below with an *) in the department library; I will also try to make as much available as possible in electronic format.  Many items listed below are already available online.  If you have trouble finding anything, let me know and I’ll try to help.

 

                This is a seminar, of course.  I am prepared to do some lecturing on the material, but the success of the course depends heavily on your active participation.   To that end, these are the class requirements:

 

1) for EACH session, you are to write a brief “reaction paper”  on the readings.  You may focus on one reading or attempt something more comparative.  [Once in a while, for example, you might wish to incorporate something from my supplementary readings list, or something from outside the class entirely.]  These response pieces should be about one page long.  They should include two or three critical questions about the reading (as József Böröcz puts it, “clearly formulated critical questions you would pose to the authors if they were here”), and/or questions concerning how one author might interrogate another.  These briefs should be posted on the course website and/or distributed via email to all class participants by midnight the Wednesday before each class.  You should also bring one copy to class for me and each of your classmates.  This will foster discussion and provide you with an invaluable skill you will gradually acquire in graduate school: the ability to distill the main argument(s) of important authors and situate them in a body of literature. 

 

2) active participation in class discussions.

 

3) a final paper, approximately 12-18 double-spaced pages in length.  This may take one of three forms: a) an original research paper (preferable, but most difficult); b) research based on secondary sources or an application of theoretical ideas from one segment of our course to material read in another segment; or c) a detailed critical review of a body of literature selected from one or two particular weeks of the course.  Consult with me about your plans by March 2.

 

 

Weekly Reading Schedule

 

Part I: Rudiments of Power

 

Week 1           

 

January 19:       Introduction to the Course, and a brief lecture on Lukes’ and Gaventa’s  three faces of power

 

*John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley, pp. 3-29

 

Other classic material you might want to read some time:

 

Robert Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (Yale, 1961)

Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (Macmillan, 1974)

Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, “The Two Faces of Power,” American Political Science Review 56:947-52

 

Week 2

 

January 26:       Hobbes versus Foucault

 

*Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, author’s introduction, and chs. 10, 11, 13, and 17

*Michel Foucault, “Lecture Two: 14 January 1976,” pp. 92(bottom)-108 in his Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977

*Timothy Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect,” pp. 76-97 in State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn, ed. George Steinmetz (Cornell, 1999)

Some other interesting materials:

 

Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival 35 (1993):27-47.

Robert Keohane, “The Globalization of Informal Violence, Theories of World Politics, and ‘The Liberalism of Fear’,” pp. 76-91 in Understanding September 11, ed. Craig Calhoun, Paul Price, and Ashley Timmer (New Press, 2002)

Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (Routledge, 2002)

Füredi, Frank, The Politics of Fear (Continuum, 2005)

Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field, Sociological Theory 12,1:1-18 [Reprinted in State/Culture ed. Steinmetz, pp. 53-75]

 

 

Week 3

 

February 2:       Power from Social Exchange, and Power in Social Networks

 

*Richard M. Emerson, “Power-Dependence Relations,” American Sociological Review 27,1 (February 1962): 31-41

*Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics, pp. 37-45, and chs. 2 and 3

*Roger V. Gould, Collision of Wills: How Ambiguity about Social Rank Breeds Conflict, chs. 1-5

*Georg Simmel, “The Triad,” in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, pp. 145-169 (skim)

 

 

Other interesting general material:

 

Peter Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life, especially intro and chs. 4-5 (Transaction, 1986)

Ivan Chase, “Social Process and Hierarchy Formation in Small Groups: A Comparative Perspective," American Sociological Review 45:905-24

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, esp. chs. 3-5

Linda Molm, Coercive Power in Social Exchange (Cambridge, 1997)

John Levi Martin, “Power, Authority, and the Constraint of Belief Systems,” American Journal of Sociology 107,4:861-904

 

There is a ton of work on social exchange networks and power in experimental settings, much of it self-contained and thus unfortunately disconnected from the rest of sociology.  Here I have in mind works by Karen Cook, Linda Molm, David Willer, Barry Markovsky, John Skvoretz, and so on.

 

Some empirical work (mostly on contemporary cases) from a networks-and-power perspective:

 

G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America?: Power, Politics, & Social Change (McGraw-Hill, 2005)

Val Burris, “The Two Faces of Capital: Corporations and Individual Capitalists as Political Actors,” American Sociological Review 66,3: 361-381.

Val Burris, “The Political Partisanship of American Business: A Study of Corporate Political Action Committees,” American Sociological Review 52,6:732-44.

Mark S. Mizruchi, The Structure of Corporate Political Action: Interfirm Relations and their Consequences (Harvard, 1992)

Beth Mintz and Michael Schwartz, The Power Structure of American Business (Chicago, 1985)

Peter B. Evans, “Multiple Hierarchies and Organizational Control,” Administrative Science Quarterly 20,2:250-9.

Ann Holohan, Networks of Democracy: Lessons from Kosovo for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Beyond (Stanford, 2005)

 

 

Part II: Classics of Political Sociology

 

Week 4

 

February 9:       From Power to Domination and Authority: Max Weber

 

*Max Weber, Economy and Society, pp. 53-54; 941-954; 212-30, 241-54

*Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume I, ch. 1 plus one other chapter

 

Supplemental materials:

 

Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (California, 1977), ch. 9

Charles Camic, Philip S. Gorski, and David M. Trubek, eds., Max Weber's Economy and Society: A Critical Companion (Stanford, 2005)

David Beetham, Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics (Allen & Unwin, 1974)

Richard Swedberg, “The Economy and Politics,” pp. 54-81 in his Max Weber and  the Idea of Economic Sociology (Princeton, 1998)

Wolfgang Mommsen, The Age of Bureaucracy: Perspectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber

Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” pp. 169-191 in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge, 1985)

 

 

Week 5

 

February 16:     Marxist, Neo-Marxist, and Quasi-Marxist Theories of the State

 

*Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Tucker, pp. 594-617

*Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 144-53, 167-68, 180(bot)-182(mid), 242-247, and 260-64

*Pierre Bourdieu, “Political Representation: Elements for a Theory of the Political Field,” in Language and Symbolic Power (Harvard, 1991)

 

Some other classic and/or especially intriguing materials:

 

Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (New Left, 1973)

Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” in his Lenin and Philosophy (Monthly Review Press, 1971)

Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Beacon, 1975)

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 2nd edition (Verso, 2001)

Bob Jessop, State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in Its Place, esp. chs. 3 and 9 (Penn State Press, 1990)

Bob Jessop, “Narrating the Future of the National Economy and the National State: Remarks on Remapping Regulation and Reinventing Governance,” pp. 378-405 in State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn, ed. George Steinmetz (Cornell, 1999)

Robert Alford and Roger Friedland, The Powers of Theory: Capitalism, the State, and Democracy (Cambridge, 1985)

Michael Burawoy, “Marxism After Communism,” Theory and Society 29,2:151-74

Fred Block, “Political Choice and the Multiple ‘Logics’ of Capital,” Theory and Society 15:175-92

Fred Block, Revisiting State Theory (Temple, 1987)

Leonardo Paggi, “Gramsci’s General Theory of Marxism,” Telos 33:27-70

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (Harper, 1950)

Adam Przeworski, The State and the Economy Under Capitalism (Harwood, 1990)

Neil Brenner, New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood, esp. ch. 3

 

A couple of classic applications and criticisms of the idea of hegemony:

 

Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism (Chicago, 1979)

Adam Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy, esp. ch. 4 (Cambridge, 1985)

James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak (Yale, 1985)

James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, esp. ch. 4 (Yale, 1990)

 

 

Week 6           

 

February 23:     Alexis de Tocqueville on the Culture and Organization of Democracy

 

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (lots of pages; best off buying it.  I recommend the Penguin (2003) edition, trans. Bevan, introduction by Kramnick)

Volume I:      Part I, author’s introduction

                        Part II, chapters 7-9, plus pp. 370-6, 398-426; 438-42; 464-70, 479-85

Volume II:     Part II, entire

Part III, chapters 1-2, 11-12

Part IV, chapters 1-3, 6

 

 

Part III: Contemporary Strands of Political Sociology

 

Week 7

 

March 2:          Democracy and Civil Society: Neo-Tocquevillean Analysis

 

*Robert D. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6,1 (1995):65-78 (reserve, or http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_ democracy/ v006/6.1putnam.html)

*Jason Kaufman, For the Common Good? American Civic Life and the Golden Age of Fraternity, introduction and chapter 4

 

Other materials:

 

Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000)

Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993)

Theda Skocpol, “Advocates Without Members: The Recent Transformation of American Civic Life,” pp. 461-509 in Civic Engagement in American Democracy, ed. Theda Skocpol and Morris Fiorina (Russell Sage, 1999)

Skocpol Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Oklahoma, 2003)

Dylan Riley, “Civic Associations and Authoritarian Regimes in Interwar Europe: Italy and Spain in Comparative Perspective,” American Sociological Review 70,2:288-310

Pamela Paxton, “Social Capital and Democracy: An Interdependent Relationship,” American Sociological Review 67:254-77

Evan Schofer and Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas, “The Structural Contexts of Civic Engagement: Voluntary Association Membership in Comparative Perspective,” American Sociological Review 66:806-28

Hyeong-Ki Kwon, “Associations, Civic Norms, and Democracy: Revisiting the Italian Case,” Theory and Society 33:135-66

John Brehm and Wendy Rahn,  “Individual-Level Evidence for the Causes and Consequences of Social Capital,” American Journal of Political Science 41,3:999-1023.

McLean, Scott L., David A. Schultz, and Manfred B. Steger, eds., Social Capital: Critical Perspectives on Community and ‘Bowling Alone’ (NYU Press, 2002)

Pamela Paxton, “Is Social Capital Declining in the United States?  A Multiple Indicator Assessment,”  American Journal of Sociology 105,1:88-127.

Simon Szreter, “The State of Social Capital Theory: Bringing Back In Power, Politics, and History,”  Theory and Society 31:573-621.

 

Another vital early strand of work on democracy was one that linked democratization to economic development under the rubric of modernization theory.  Among the luminaries in this line of research were Alex Inkeles, David Easton, Edward Shils, Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba, Lucian Pye, and Seymour Martin Lipset.  Samuel Huntington was an early critic of such theorizing from the right; Guillermo O’Donnell, Juan Linz, and others critiqued it from the left.  A re-evaluation of sorts and empirical reassessment is offered in:

 

Adam Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Material Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge, 2000), esp.  pp. 1-7, 36-51, 78-83, 87-90, 92-109, 136-7, 269-78

 

Although scholars have come to reject the notion that there is something automatic in the relationship between economic growth and democratization, the idea that there are some kinds of social conditions more conducive to democracy than others remains unusually compelling.  This idea, derived from Tocqueville, was neatly explored theoretically and empirically in Seymour Martin Lipset’s classic work, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Doubleday, 1960).  Although dated in many respects, the book remains clear-headed, accessible, and occasionally enlightening.

 

Besides the link to development, Lipset was also interested in social composition, political cleavages, and voting behavior.  Some of the very scarce recent work in that vein in sociology would include:

 

Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza, “The Social and Ideological Bases of Middle-Class Political Realignment in the United States, 1972-1992,” American Sociological Review 62:191-208

Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks, Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions (Oxford, 1999)

Jeff Manza, Fay Lomax Cook, Benjamin I. Page, eds., Navigating Public Opinion: Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy (Oxford, 2002)

Angela Behrens, Christopher Uggen, and Jeff Manza, “Ballot Manipulation and the ‘Menace of Negro Domination’: Racial Threat and Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850-2002,” American Journal of Sociology 109,3:559-605

 

We may read a little of this work together.

 

 

Week 8

 

March 9:          Political Culture and the Poetics of Power

 

*Nina Eliasoph, “‘Close to Home’: The Work of Avoiding Politics,”  Theory and Society 26,5:605-47 (an abridged version appears in Cultural Sociology, ed. Lyn Spillman, pp. 130-140) 

 

Some other material on political culture:

 

Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life (Cambridge, 1998)

Katherine Cramer Walsh, Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life (Chicago, 2004), esp. pp. 1-3, 9-11, 46-52, 91-100, 113-116, 152-3, 156-64

Arlene Stein, The Stranger Next Door (Beacon, 2001)

Margaret R. Somers, What’s Political or Cultural about Political Culture and the Public Sphere? Toward an Historical Sociology of Concept Formation,” Sociological Theory 13,2:113-44

Paul D. McLean, “A Frame Analysis of Favor Seeking in the Renaissance: Agency, Networks, and Political Culture,” American Journal of Sociology 104,1:51-91.

Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets (Cornell, 1994)

William Gamson, Talking Politics (Cambridge, 1992)

Paul Lichterman, Talking Identity in the Public Sphere: Braod Visions and Small Spaces in Sexual Identity Politics,” Theory and Society 28,1:101-41

Nina Eliasoph, “Making a Fragile Public: A Talk-Centered Study of Citizenship and Power,” Sociological Theory 14,3:262-89

 

*Javier Auyero, Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks & the Legacy of Evita, pp. 1-13, chs. 3-5, and “Conclusions”

 

Some other material on political poetics and ritual:

 

Clifford Geertz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power, ch. 6 in his Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (Basic, 1983)

Clifford Geertz, Negara (Princeton, 1980)

Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957)

Jorge Arditi, A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Chicago, 1998)

Kristen Neuschel, Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth Century France (Cornell, 1989)

Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Cornell, 1997)

Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (California, 1997)

Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Harvard, 1995)

Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture

Georg Simmel, Conflict, in Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations (Free Press, 1957)

Mabel Berezin, “Politics and Culture: A Less Fissured Terrain,” Annual Review of Sociology 23 (1997):361-83.

Lisa Wedeen, “Acting ‘As If’: Symbolic Politics and Social Control in Syria,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40,3:503-23

Gil Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites: From Prague Spring to the Breakup of Czechoslovakia (Minnesota, 2003), ch.3, and pp. 135-143

 

March 11 – 19  SPRING BREAK: ENJOY!

 

Week 9

 

March 23:        Emergent Political Organization: States, Bureaucracies, and Interest Groups

 

*Elisabeth Clemens, The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925 (Chicago, 1997), prologue, chs. 1, 2, 8, and coda  

*Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992 (Blackwell, 1992), chs. 3 and 5

*Ashis Nandy, “The State: The Fate of a Concept,” pp. 1-14 in his The Romance of the State and the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics (Oxford, 2002)

 

Other materials:

 

Gianfranco Poggi, The State: Its Nature, Development, and Prospects (Stanford, 1990)

Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparison of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge, 1979)

Stephen Skowronek, Building the New Ameican State (Cambridge, 1982)

Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, 1985)

Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997)

Philip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 2003)

Hendryk Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, 1994)

Jack A. Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (California, 1991), esp. chs. 1, 2, and 5

Norbert Elias, State Formation and Civilization, volume II of The Civilizing Process (Blackwell, 1994)

Bruce G. Carruthers, “When is the State Autonomous? Culture, Organization Theory, and the Political Sociology of the State,” Sociological Theory 12,1:19-44

Temma Kaplan, Crazy for Democracy: Women in Grassroots Movements (Routledge, 1997)

Daniel P. Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928 (Princeton, 2001)

Peter Evans,  Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, 1995)

Vivek Chibber, Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India (Princeton, 2003)

Paul D. McLean, “Patronage, Citizenship, and the Stalled Emergence of the Modern State in Renaissance Florence” Comparative Studies in Society and History 47, 3:638-64.

 

 

Week 10

 

March 30:        Neo-Institutionalist Analyses

 

*Edwin Amenta, Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton, 1998), Introduction and ch. 3

 

Other materials:

 

James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” American Political Science Review 78,3:734-749

Kathleen Thelen, “Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 1999, volume 2:369-404

Kathleen Thelen, How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan (Cambridge, 2004)

John W. Meyer, pp. in State/Culture, ed. George Steinmetz

Peter A. Hall and Rosemary C. R. Taylor, “Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms,” Political Studies 44,5:936-57

Peter A. Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic Policy-making in Britain,” Comparative Politics 25,3:275-296

Terry M. Moe, “Power and Political Institutions,” Perspectives on Politics 3:215-33

Vivek Chibber, “Bureaucratic Rationality and the Developmental State,” American Journal of Sociology 107,4:951-89

Neil Fligstein and Alec Stone Sweet, “Constructing Polities and Markets: An Institutionalist Account of European Integration,” American Journal of Sociology 107,5:1206-43

Frank Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age (Cambridge, 1994)

James A. Mahoney, “Path Dependence in Historical Sociology,” Theory and Society 29,4:507-48

Gøsta Esping-Anderson, Politics Against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power (Princeton, 1985)

Gøsta Esping-Anderson, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, 1990)

Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, 2004)

Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Harvard, 1992)

Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens, Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets (Chicago, 2001), read conclusions first, not beginning to end

 

 

Week 11

 

April 6: Political Elites and Social Networks

 

*Gil Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites: From Prague Spring to the Breakup of Czechoslovakia (Minnesota, 2003), introduction, pp. 11-13, 26-34, and chs.3 and.4 (ch.5 is really long—you might try to read it, but I won’t hold you to it)

 

Other materials:

 

Paul McLean, “Widening Access While Tightening Control: Office-Holding, Marriages, and Elite Consolidation in Early Modern Poland,” Theory and Society 33:167-212

John F. Padgett and Christopher K. Ansell, “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400‑1434,”  American Journal of Sociology 98,6:1259‑1319

Richard Lachmann, Capitalists in Spite of Themselves (Oxford, 2000)

Peter S. Bearman, Relations into Rhetorics (Transaction, 1993)

Roger V. Gould, Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune (Chicago, 1995)

Julia Adams, “The Familial State: Elite Family Practices and State-Making in the Early Modern Netherlands.” Theory and Society 23,4:505-539.

John F. Padgett and Paul D. McLean, “Economic and Social Exchange in Renaissance Florence.”  Santa Fe Institute working paper 02-07-032.

John F. Padgett and Paul D. McLean, “Elite Transformation and Organizational Invention in Renaissance Florence.” American Journal of Sociology 111,4:forthcoming.

Jens Borchert and Jürgen Zeiss, eds., The Poltiical Class in Advanced Democracies (Oxford, 2003)

Bobai Li and Andrew G. Walder, “Career Advancement as Party Patronage: Sponsored Mobility into the Chinese Administrative Elite, 1949-1996,” American Journal of Sociology 106,5:1371-1408

Adam Slez and John Levi Martin, “Political Action and Party Formation in the United States Constitutional Convention,” University of Wisconsin typescript

Henning Hillman, “Structures of Identity: Factional Politics and Credit Networks in Revolutionary Vermont,” Columbia University typescript

G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America?: Power, Politics, & Social Change (McGraw-Hill, 2005)

Alan S. Zuckerman, ed, The Social Logic of Politics: Personal Networks as Contexts for Political Behavior (Temple U Press, 2005)

Bruce Carruthers, City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolution (Princeton, 1996)

 

 


Week 12

 

April 13:           Neoliberalism, Conservatism, and the Erosion of the Welfare State

 

 

*Paul Pierson, “Postindustrial Pressures on the Mature Welfare States,” pp. 80-104 in The New Politics of the Welfare State, ed. Paul Pierson (Oxford, 2001)

*Neil Brenner, New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood (Oxford, 2004), ch. 5

 

A few other materials:

 

Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Introduction, chs. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, and Epilogue

Margaret R. Somers and Fred Block, “From Poverty to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and Institutions Over 200 Years of Welfare Debate,” American Sociological Review 70,2:260-87

Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas and Sarah Babb, “The Rebirth of the Liberal Creed: Paths to Neoliberalism in Four Countries,” American Journal of Sociology 108:533-79

John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen, eds., The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis (Princeton, 2001)

 

 

Week 13

 

April 20:           Participatory Democracy, Publics, and Contentious Politics

 

*Francesca Polletta, Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (Chicago, 2002), chs. 1, 3, 5, 7, and 8 if you can get to it

*Ann Mische, “Cross-talk in Movements: Reconceiving the Culture-Network Link,” pp. 258-80 in Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approahces to Collective Action, ed. Mario Diani and Doug McAdam (Oxford, 2003)

 

Other recent materials [Note:  I am deliberately omitting a huge literature in social movement theory—Tilly, Jasper, McAdam, Tarrow, for example].

 

Robin Wagner-Pacifici, The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict’s End Surrender (Chicago, 2005)

Charles Tilly, “Processes and Mechanisms of Democratization,” Sociological Theory 18:1-16

Mara Loveman, “High-Risk Collective Action: Defending Human Rights in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina, American Journal of Sociology 104,2:477-525

Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford, 2005)

Roger Petersen, Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe (Cambridge, 2001)

Dingxin Zhao, “State-Society Relations and the Discourses and Activities of the 1989 Beijing Student Movement,” American Journal of Sociology 105,6:1592-1632

Dingxin Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement (Chicago, 2001)

Elisabeth Jean Wood, Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge, 2000)

Mustafa Emirbayer and Mimi Sheller, “Publics in History,” Theory and Society 28,1:145-97

 

 

 

Week 14

 

April 27:           Thinking About Political Violence

 

*Roger D. Peterson, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe, chapters 2 and 6

 

Some other materials:

 

Robin Wagner-Pacifici, The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism as Social Drama (Chicago, 1986)

Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge, 2005)

Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Princeton, )

Ashis Nandy, “Terrorism—Indian Style: the Birth of a Political Issue in a Populist Democracy,” pp.132-50 in his The Romance of the State and the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics (Oxford, 2002)

Ashis Nandy, “Development and Violence,” pp. 171-81 in his The Romance of the State and the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics (Oxford, 2002)

Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge, 2003), esp. chs. 2-3

Ruud Koopmans and Susan Olzak.  2004.  “Discursive opportunities and the Evolution of Right-Wing Violence in Germany.”  American Journal of Sociology 110,1:198-230.

Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, esp. chs. 1-3 and 10 (Cambridge, 2003)

R. J. Rummel, “Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 39:3-26

Stacey Gibson, “The Role of Structure and Institutions in th Genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi and theh Armenians of the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Genocide Research 5:503-22

Thomas Cushman, “Is Genocide Preventable? Some Theoretical Considerations,” Journal of Genocide Research 5:523-42

Daniel J. Myers, “The Diffusion of Collective Violence: Infectiousness, Susceptibility, and Mass Media Networks,” American Journal of Sociology 106,1:173-208

Hafner-Burton, Emilie M., and Kiyoteru Tsutsui.  2005.   “Human Rights in a Globalizing World: The Paradox of Empty Promises.”  AJS 110, 5 (March 2005): 1373-1411.