Sociopedia.isa© 2011 The Author(s)

© 2011 ISA (Editorial Arrangement of Sociopedia.isa)André Botelho, 2011, ‘Political sociology’, Sociopedia.isa, DOI: 10.1177/205684601131

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One of the most popular views of ‘political sociology’defines it as a specialty which focuses on the study ofpower inherent in social phenomena. This definition,although containing essential elements, remains toogeneral, a fact which led Max Weber – one of the clas-sical social scientists who contributed most to circum-scribing politics as a sociological theme – to prefer thenotion of ‘domination’ to that of ‘power’ (Bendix,1962). In this sense, ‘political sociology’ became moreand more vague a term as it developed within sociol-ogy, especially after political science came to competewith it as its profile as a distinctive discipline achievedclearer demarcation.

Within sociology itself, political sociology wasshaken by several developments; particularly the so-called ‘cultural turn’ (since Michel Foucault’s work[1969, 1971, 1975]) led to significant dislocations.Thus, it now seems unthinkable for studies on theconstitution of cultural identities, public or privatesubjectivities and the construction of modes of classi-fication, and many others, not to be perceived asinstances that mobilize power. This broadening ofscope of the concept of power, to include not only for-mal political institutions but also informal politicalprocesses in the private and market spheres, has obvi-ous theoretical consequences and implies a loss ofspecificity.

As for the relationship of political sociology toother disciplines, the comparison with political

science rather than with sociology itself or other spe-cialties such as political anthropology, has long preoc-cupied those concerned about the impasses andprospects of political sociology (Bendix, 1973 [1968];Bottomore, 1979; Lipset, 1969). Even when seekingcomplementarities rather than just differencesbetween disciplines, the concern with what a specifi-cally sociological approach to politics would be is stillpresent. This raises problems even for definitions ofpolitical sociology as an interdisciplinary area, as inthe well-known distinction proposed by GiovanniSartori (1969) between a ‘sociology of politics’ (‘a sub-division of the general field of sociology’) and ‘politi-cal sociology’.

Even if a definitive solution is never achieved, it ispossible to stake out spaces. Enquiring about the spe-cific research challenges that political sociology has setitself (its ‘research tradition’ [Reis, 1999]) can be aneffective way of facing the problem. And windowsonto the everyday practice of the discipline, by meansof a few significant examples, can give us a more con-crete but also more nuanced view of this research tra-dition. But given that theoretical generalization is partand parcel of sociological work, we must still payattention to the broader relationship between stateand society that shapes the discipline of political soci-ology, in the midst of all its historical variety, themat-ic diversity and theoretical-methodological pluralism.

Political sociologyAndré Botelho Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

abstract Taking the contemporary debate about the status of political sociology as a starting point, thearticle presents some of the alternative views, and discusses the relationships between sociology and polit-ical science. It claims that, despite persistent controversies, looking into the research tradition of politicalsociology is a useful way to grasp the identity of the sub-discipline. Accordingly, the author takes the rela-tionship between state and society as the central issue that everywhere cuts across theoretical and method-ological diversity. Finally, the text takes the nation-state as the most typical configuration of therelationship between state and society in modern history, and one that remains so in the present, despitethe many historical and analytical challenges we observe today.

keywords nation-state u political institutions and social life u political sociology u state and society

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Political sociology: a field in dispute

The relationship between political sociology andpolitical science was the subject of a recent sympo-sium of the Political Sociology Section of theAmerican Sociological Association (ASA). The con-clusions of the event were published in their officialnewsletter, Political Sociology: States, Power andSocieties, in the summer of 2008. The basic questionposed to the participants in the symposium was pre-cisely about the different fields, how they comple-ment and compete with each other, and what definesa study of politics as specifically sociological. Despitesome variation, the answers tend to convergetowards the differences rather than the complemen-tarities between disciplines. Political sociology ischaracterized as having greater breadth or thematicfragmentation (depending on the point of view)than political science: social movements, collectiveidentities and actions, classes, gender and race aresome of the themes of the former. In turn, politicalscience is seen as having greater thematic specializa-tion, with research concentrated on specific politicalinstitutions such as parliaments, the presidency orparties and, at its broadest, electoral behaviour.Second, the replies emphasize the centrality for polit-ical science of so-called theories of ‘rational choice’based on the idea of calculation of interests, especial-ly in studies of voting patterns and of parliamentari-ans, or on the constitution of decision-makingprocesses at various levels. This contrasts with thereduced influence of these theories in political soci-ology, which is still strongly marked by the diverseviews on ‘socialization’ into values and norms inher-ited from classical authors in the social sciences.Finally, the replies stress the centrality of quantitativemethods and data and their intensive and expansiveuse as a crucial characteristic of contemporary polit-ical science, contrasting this with the use of qualita-tive methods and data in sociological research.

The ASA publications offer other significantinsights into the everyday practice of political sociol-ogy. For example, in its fall 2007 issue, the PoliticalSociology Section of the ASA offers a symposium on‘Great books and articles every political sociologistshould know’, with the help of researchers in variousNorth American universities. The results suggest asignificant pluralism, since no author is mentionedmore than once in the symposium with the excep-tion of Gøsta Esping-Andersen on the welfare state.Even so, it is still possible to detect a pattern in thereplies regarding themes: workers and protest, gen-der and, above all, race are the most common themesin the books and articles mentioned, in addition tothe welfare state.

The diversity of themes in political sociology and

the plurality with which it is defined by its practi-tioners also appear in a survey carried out in the UKin 1995. Department chairs and professors of politi-cal sociology were asked to enumerate which from alist of 13 topics were covered by political sociology.No author or study was mentioned more than twicein this survey. The more frequent themes were polit-ical parties, power structures, elites, collectiveprotests and behaviour, legitimacy, electoral behav-iour and gender politics (Rootes, 1996: 122). Exceptfor the fact that electoral behaviour is taught morefrequently in departments of politics (18 to 4), as toa lesser degree are political parties (20 to 11), thereare no great differences in the topics covered betweensociology and politics departments (Rootes, 1996).

If at first these general characterizations of politi-cal sociology seem limited (because restricted to spe-cific intellectual traditions and/or national contexts),they do point to some important tendencies in dif-ferent contexts. That is what the efforts of thePolitical Sociology Section of the ASA showed whenit sought to classify and deepen some of the discus-sions which had appeared over the decades in itsnewsletters by publishing a significant editorial proj-ect in 2005, The Handbook of Political Sociology, asnoted by the editors in the preface (Janoski et al.,2005: xiii). Bringing together a collection of 32 arti-cles by authors from diverse intellectual traditions,the book covers the following themes: theories thatorient research in political sociology, civil society andpolitical action, the state and its processes, publicpolicies and globalization. In this way, say the edi-tors, the book seeks mainly to reintegrate ‘unrelatedfields’ that we call political sociology and achieve apossible synthesis of new theoretical developmentswith existing theories.

But the more general tendencies of contemporarypolitical sociology, also present in the US, can beseen above all in another significant example, the1996 special issue of Current Sociology titled ‘Politicalsociology at the crossroads’. Edited by BaruchKimmerling, the issue comprises articles on the his-torical, institutional and cognitive developments inpolitical sociology in diverse national and regionalcontexts – Brazil, Great Britain, India, Poland,Russia, Scandinavia, Southeast Asia and the US.Despite significant variations, certain common fea-tures are identifiable. From the institutional point ofview, there are many difficulties in characterizingpolitical sociology as a well-defined field of studies inpolitics in its relationship to political science or evento sociology. Such is the case of Great Britain, whosepolitical sociology has been considered one of themost ‘underdeveloped’ areas of sociology as a whole(Rootes, 1996). This situation stems in part from thefixation with class conflicts and class politics, and

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from the persistence with which politics itself hasbeen used as a variable dependent on economic orsocial factors. In fact, this also contributes to under-standing the controversial nature of the behaviouristempirical studies in Great Britain, which are moreoriented to descriptions of formal political institu-tions and to political philosophy (Rootes, 1996).

The difficulties were even greater regardingRussia, since political sociology did not even exist inthe USSR because of its limited conceptualization asa field of study of the phenomena of political partic-ipation in so-called civil society in democratic sys-tems (Voronkov and Zdravomyslova, 1996). On theother hand, the situation now seems to be verypromising for political sociology there, given thegrowing interest in themes related to the democratictransition. Protests and social movements, constitu-tion of parties, electoral behaviour, constitution of apublic sphere or civil society (as well as ethnic dis-putes) are among the main themes of its politicalsociology (Voronkov and Zdravomyslova, 1996).The same themes of democratic transition are alsoprominent in Poland. However, the existence beforesocialism of some institutionalized sociology, with itscorresponding thematic and theoretical-method-ological pluralism, was not entirely lost, and seems tobe playing a crucial role in the definition of a con-temporary research agenda for political sociology(Kubiak, 1996).

In the case of India, political sociology’s classicalinterest in the social bases of political life is renewedthrough investigation of relationships between thepolitical system and cultural diversity, the role of reli-gion, ethnicity and castes in elections, the legitimacyof democracy and of the nation-state itself (Gupta,1996). Political sociology in Southeast Asia, stillmarked by themes related to democratic transition(as in Russia and Poland) and by its relation to itsown cultural and social traditions (as in India), hasalso shown interest in the relation between democra-tization and economic development (Khondker,1996). This leads to re-examining central questionssuch as whether economic development necessarilyleads to political democratization, or whether Asiandevelopment retains and presupposes non-democrat-ic forms of government. Is there a general conver-gence on classical liberal-democratic democracy?Can the historical and cultural traditions of Asiancountries be an impediment to democracy(Khondker, 1996)? These questions are also crucial-ly important in the Brazilian tradition of politicalsociology, which has been strongly influenced by thethemes of development and underdevelopment. Andthese questions become even more relevant whentaking into account that the current Brazilian con-text is marked by a ‘crisis’ of the principle of the

superiority of the state (especially the developmen-talist state) as a collective actor in organizing sociallife (Reis, 1996; 1998a: 111–36).

Scandinavia is a quite different case. It has animportant academic output on politics linked tomore universal themes such as political parties andelectoral behaviour, alongside other local themessuch as the impact of the European Union, theScandinavian concept of democracy, the attentiongiven to the local community, the fate of its welfarestate (Allardt, 1996). However, this does not meanthe fate of political sociology as a well-defined insti-tutional and cognitive field is less uncertain in theregion. After all, these studies are being developedboth by sociologists and by political scientists whoare clearly identified with the mainstream of theirrespective disciplinary fields, and the expression‘political sociology’ is not even a significant part ofthe vocabulary of their scientific community(Allardt, 1996).

Nevertheless, the continuum between politicalsociology and political science, especially around anempirical interest in the state and its political institu-tions, is certainly broader than the Scandinavian casewould suggest. It also appears in diverse activitiespromoted by the Research Committee on PoliticalSociology (CPS) of the International SociologicalAssociation. Founded in 1960 with Seymour Lipsetas its first president, this same Committee has beenpresent since 1970 in the International PoliticalScience Association (IPSA). The simultaneous pres-ence of the CPS in the international associations ofsociology and political science raises intriguing ques-tions about the relation between these areas and theirboundaries. On the one hand, it points to the diffi-culty in thinking about a consensual cognitive iden-tity for political sociology which traces a clear line ofdemarcation from studies in political science. On theother hand, it indicates a deliberate intention tobring the disciplines closer, to keep them togetherand to establish a common research agenda. That infact is what the 2006 CPS newsletter says in its edi-torial, which claims bringing sociology and politicalscience closer together to be its ‘mission’.

If the thematic convergence between politicalsociology and political science points to a relation-ship of complementarity, it does not seem enough todetermine what exactly is a specifically sociologicalapproach to politics. Scientific disciplines, or evenresearch fields, are not defined only in terms of theirempirical objects but also in theoretical and method-ological terms. This can be observed with the rein-troduction of the theme of the state in politicalsociology’s research agenda, especially in the contem-porary American field with studies by Charles Tillyand Theda Skocpol.

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Skocpol’s studies (for example, 1985, 1992,1996), more than just contributing to the reinvigo-ration of the sociological interest in the state, havebeen considered especially responsible for the so-called ‘neo-institutionalist’ reorientation in politicalstudies, in which the state is conceived as an empiri-cal reality and an analytical variable that is independ-ent of classes and other social forces. Thus,institutions not only have autonomy as the empiricallocus of politics, but also have the possibility of shap-ing and reshaping political life and broader sociallife. It is no coincidence that this reorientation hasbeen interpreted as a strengthening of political sci-ence, even to the point where it means a dislocationof the bases of political sociology from sociology topolitical science (Orum, 1996). On the other hand,it is true that there are difficulties in directly andexclusively relating the neo-institutionalist orienta-tion to one discipline or even to one general theoryof society explicitly shared by its followers (Skocpol,1985).

Asserting the state as a relevant actor, in Skocpol’swork and partly in Tilly’s as well, may be understoodas a double reaction: on the one hand, to theextremely formal view associated with the tradition-al juridical perspectives on the study of the state(which tend to consider political institutions as vir-tuous or not in themselves); and on the other hand,to so-called neo-Marxist traditions such as in NicosPoulantzas (1968), whose analyses of the state arecentred exclusively on society, characterizing it as aspace in which interest groups ally with or opposeeach other in order to define public policies. Whilethis view of the state and of politics in general mayseem ‘reductionist’ from an institutional point ofview, one should not lose sight of the fact that a for-malist view of institutions does not favour the per-ception of the possibility of policies in the sphere ofthe state being formulated by sectors that manifesttheir interests, or at least that such policies havediverse consequences for social groups (Giddens,1985). Thus, the relation between political institu-tions and social life is inescapable, since the essenceof political life is always (even in democratic regimes)constituted by relations of domination between dis-tinct segments of society.

Therefore, while it is not possible to claim thatrelations between state and society are not also a con-cern of political science, one cannot minimize thefact that they are the basic and perhaps most charac-teristic empirical and theoretical research problem inpolitical sociology (Bendix, 1973 [1968]). Asstressed by the editor of the special issue of CurrentSociology in his stocktaking of the diverse nationaland regional political sociologies which we haveanalysed, the state/society relationship formalizes, in

a sense, the particular experiences of political sociol-ogy. If political sociology is the science that studies‘the political’ (perceived as historically and culturallyconstructed and changeable), there are also corecomponents of the ‘political’ that run through allthese variations (Kimmerling, 1996). However, thisdoes not mean that social and cultural differences, aswell as temporal processes and contexts, should beseen necessarily as a history of unified developmentor a set of patterned sequences, especially since com-ponents of the political constantly interact at thesame time with choices and conditions that delimitsocial and cultural differences in each society.

The distinction between state and society under-girds the possibility of a distinctly sociologicalapproach to politics, even though this does not nec-essarily imply a dichotomous concept of the relation-ship, as if state and society were not intertwinedspheres. In other words, an approach that starts fromsociety or the social structure in order to analyse thestate or the political, is not the only possible socio-logical one. Although this is the basis of the disci-pline’s concern with politics, by identifying the socialbases of political life and specifying the role of socialstructure in institutional arrangements and politicalactions, the opposite is also true. In other words,approaches that attempt to specify the effects ofinstitutions and institutional practices on politicallife and on society as a whole, but which preserve thesignificant connections between politics, social struc-ture and even material life – why would suchapproaches not also be sociological? These are prob-lems of empirical research that cannot be replaced bylogical deductions. In short, it is the relationshipbetween state and society that is of interest to politi-cal sociology, that ignites its curiosity, and that is thedecisive intellectual experience in its research tradi-tion. In sum, the relationship of state and society isan analytical axis that still allows us both to locatespecific historical experiences and to unify the diver-sity of themes in political sociology into a broaderexplanatory framework. As in other cases, evenresearch of more circumscribed empirical politicalphenomena such as political parties has to openlyassume some general image of the state/society rela-tionship, and consequently it adds or subtracts plau-sibility to these images with the specific results thatit reaches. The state/society relationship also has theadvantage of allowing us to fix in a more integratedway the main contemporary theoretical and empiri-cal challenges in political sociology.

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State and society: the axis of politicalsociology

Relations between state and society assumed diversetheoretical, empirical and historical forms in politi-cal sociology throughout the 20th century. None hasbeen more important and specifically sociologicalthan the nation-state – although the valuing of theidea of ‘public sphere’ and the re-emergence of thedebate on ‘civil society’ that goes with it also createmany challenges for political sociology today.

The nation-state (the typical form of politicalcommunity in modern times) was until very recent-ly understood not only as an empirical reference inpolitical sociology but as an interchangeable termwith ‘society’, which is seen as more abstract andgeneric and, in practice, as synonymous with theobject of study of sociology in general. From thepoint of view of political sociology’s research tradi-tion, the nation-state took on very important mean-ings, analytically operating as a sort of catalyst of thedifferent themes involved. In fact, this allowed spe-cific themes of political sociology to gain intelligibil-ity also as part of broader processes.

Reinhard Bendix (1977 [1964]), for example,investigates the constitution of the nation-state in acomparative perspective, connecting it to the issue ofcitizenship. The latter issue is in fact a crucial andenduring one in political sociology, and had alreadybeen dealt with by another influential but controver-sial classical author of the discipline, TH Marshall.Dealing specifically with the British case and notwith a general theory, he understood the develop-ment of citizenship as an evolving sequence (at oncehistorical and logical) of civil, political and socialrights (Marshall, 1950). Bendix’s view of citizenshipis greatly influenced by Weber’s thesis (which heupdates), according to which societies differentiallycombine three basic principles of societal coordina-tion – authority, solidarity and market – which arehistorical options that, once taken, lead to conse-quences that tend to condition subsequent alterna-tives in each society. Thus, he rejects anyunderstanding of social development in terms of adifferentiation from the simpler to the more com-plex, as well as the very idea that social change oper-ates with interconnected and easily generalizablesystemic variables that are independent of the ‘his-torical sequence’ of societies. The comparisonbetween problems of legitimation of authority, artic-ulation of interests and organization of solidarity indifferent societies allows Bendix to interpret nation-al construction as a process in which bureaucratiza-tion of public authority and legal recognition ofbasic rights to members of the political communityare related. In other words, authority and solidarity

are variable principles of social coordination, butrecurrent in relation to the legitimation involved inthe exercise of public authority and its complex rela-tion with social structure. Thus, since the construc-tion of the nation-state does not follow an a priorisingle and systemic pattern, there is also more thanone path to citizenship.

Besides establishing the relation between nation-al state and citizenship, Bendix’s work contributes,from a broader theoretical viewpoint, to a morenuanced definition of modernization and socialchange. Refuting both the notion of ‘prerequisites’and ‘ideal-typical sequences’ for modernity, Bendixopposes: (1) the belief in the universality of evolu-tionary stages, proposing instead that the momen-tum of past events and the diversity of socialstructures lead to diverse paths of development; (2)the dichotomous view of tradition and modernity,proposing instead the understanding that each soci-ety combines elements of both; and (3) the concep-tion that processes of change are internal to eachsociety, proposing instead that they combine intrin-sic components with responses to extrinsic stimuli,always involving state intervention as an importantcharacteristic of these processes.

Charles Tilly, in turn, related the construction ofthe national state to collective action, which also hasdirect consequences for the comprehension of citi-zenship. Although he considers the construction ofthe state as a process that is potentially independentof other social forces, Tilly (1975, 1978, 1986,1996) analyses it in relation to the historically vari-able dynamics of collective action, trying to take intoaccount the innumerable reactions, mobilizationsand negotiations on the part of common people tothe assault of a centralizing and resource-greedystate. The available repertoire of collective action (asthe author calls these mobilizations and negotia-tions) varies greatly as the processes of state construc-tion, capitalist expansion, urbanization and coercion(especially war) advance. Thus, the national stateimplied a great transformation in the ways peopleacted together in pursuit of their interests: sincethere was greater dependence on decisions taken atthe national level (rather than the local), the mostrelevant levels of political power for the interests ofthe common citizen were significantly dislocated,requiring new means and new goals for collectiveaction. In this perspective, the extension of citizen-ship rights should be thought of as possible out-comes of concrete conflicts between social groups.Besides proposing a model for understanding collec-tive action, Tilly intends to overcome one of thedeepest antinomies of social theory: the‘action’/‘structure’ dichotomy. On the one hand, hewants to determine the capacity of agency and

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creativity of individuals in their mobilizations; and,on the other hand, the structural constraints thatlimit the possibilities – or, in his words, the reper-toire – of collective action.

One of the main challenges of contemporarypolitical sociology concerns the destiny of thenation-state as a typical form of political communi-ty in modernity. We live in a context marked by thedramatic pulverization not only of ‘traditional’ cer-tainties but also of the values, practices and institu-tions associated with the political constellation ofmodern society, which seem ‘at risk’ from therestructuring of social relations and processesbrought about by globalization. We are in the field ofthe consequences, some of them unforeseeable, ofwhat Benedict Anderson called the imminent crisisof the ‘hyphen’ that linked state and nation for 200years (Anderson, 1991). This crisis, however, can begiven different answers.

In contemporary sociology, there have beencountless debates on the issue of the empirical ‘refer-ent’ of the discipline. With the intensification ofglobal processes at all levels, the idea that thefavoured field of study in sociology was closed ‘soci-eties’, that is, self-contained and territorialized (evenif internally diverse) totalities, has been subject tomuch criticism. Thus, one of the consequences ofthe process of globalization regards the perceptionthat the nation-state is not a universal experience ora ‘natural’ result of societal dynamics (Wagner, 1994:73), but a very specific and contingent form of relat-ing authority and solidarity.

Thus, Ulrich Beck (1992, 1996, 1999), forexample, claims that global processes produce a rup-ture in modernity, whose driving force (individual-ization) has profound consequences for collectiveidentities such as the dissolution of patterns, codesand rules established by a national society. The ‘sec-ond modernity’ or ‘reflexive modernity’ that we aresupposedly living in has crucial implications for soci-ology, since its very concepts are related to nationalterritory. Hence the need to open the ‘container ofthe nation-state’, get rid of ‘zombie categories’ (cate-gories based on obsolete historical presuppositions)and recreate sociology, providing it with new con-ceptual, empirical and organizational bases as a sci-ence of transnational reality. And one of the mainconsequences and indices of this process is the factthat the political constellation of the first moderni-ty’s national society is becoming ‘non-political’,while what used to be ‘non-political’ in the nation-state domain is now becoming political. In otherwords, politics is not exclusively or principally foundin institutions such as parliaments, parties, unions,etc. It is now found at the centre of private life, sincethe microcosm of the conduct of personal life is

interrelated with the macrocosm of global problems(such as the environmental issue). Thus, politics inthe nation-state structure is no longer the startingpoint for a new territory of the political, the geopo-litical or the global risk society.

Another perspective defends the thesis of the‘uncoupling’ of state and nation (Eder, 2003), assert-ing that the national state faces a paradox in thecourse of its universalization: becoming a centralactor in the process of globalization while its cultur-al unity (the nation) is being undermined by bothsupranational and primordial forms of solidarity orfeelings of belonging which no longer coincide withnational frontiers. What is left is the national statewithout the nation. In this case, it is not about thedisappearance of the national state – the latter is evengaining space as a rational collective actor and aninterest group on the global scale, but in a way thatis disconnected from national identity, which is nowchallenged by other claims on identity. The issue,then, is to discover if one of the central functionsexercised when state and nation walked together (thetransformation of a collective sentiment into a civi-lized demos) can be taken over by institutionalarrangements that go beyond it. In short, we are talk-ing about a latent separating out of the nation,which now contests and challenges the national state(Eder, 2003; Eder and Giesen, 2001).

Other perspectives ponder whether, independ-ently of the aspect it takes on in a globalized worldand of how distant that is from current referencepoints, the need for adjustment between ‘social soli-darity’ and ‘public authority’ is actually becomingobsolete. This can be illustrated by the fact that theconflicting tendencies that shape the contemporaryworld associated with globalization still seem tangledwith regard to the challenges of coming up withalternatives to the collective political identities stem-ming from the nation-state, or its political innova-tions such as participatory democracy and the relatedidea of citizenship. Another essential fact is that thenation-state, despite the successful efforts of supra-national integration on the one hand and the vigourof more primordial loyalties on the other, is still thereference point for the exercise of sovereignty andimplementation of citizens’ rights (Reis, 1996).

The perspectives which emphasize the mediationrole played by culture in the historical and function-al articulation between state and nation indicatenationalism and political culture as crucial dimen-sions, and have given new vigour to research on thesethemes. The acknowledgement of the contingency ofthe relationship between nation-state and collectiveidentities evidenced by globalization processes hasbeen forcing political sociology to rethink the placeof nationalisms. Thus, for instance, Calhoun (2007)

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proposes that ‘nations [still] matter’ and that oneshould not underestimate the role of nationalism inthe organization of contemporary political and sociallife.

Different perspectives (Delanty and Kumar,2006; Smith, 2010 [2001]; Young et al., 2007) havebeen stressing the persistence of nation and national-ism as social phenomena of renewed interest, the for-mer as a subjective community and the latter as asocial force informing in a theoretical and practicalway both social movements and political agendas ofstates. These perspectives claim, each in its ownmanner, the necessity of taking into account the flex-ible and persistent quality of the idea of nation,which lays deep roots in the imagined and real past,as well as its adaptive capacity to ever changing real-ities.

In the studies on political culture, the relation-ship between socialization processes and politicalbehaviour also becomes central, based on theacknowledgement that the actors’ answers to objec-tive social situations are given by means of subjec-tively mediated orientations. Thus, the idea ofpolitical culture refers to the set of attitudes, beliefsand feelings that give order and meaning to a partic-ular political process, showcasing the rules andassumptions upon which its actors’ behaviour isbased. A classic reference in this debate, Almondand Verba’s The Civic Culture (1963) not incidental-ly seeks inspiration in the Culture and PersonalitySchool developed in the US, whose research agendawas developed during the perplexing moment of theSecond World War, and was directed towards theanalysis of cultural patterns comprising the ‘nationalcharacter’ of different societies. Meanwhile, the con-cept of political culture emerges, strongly linked to aconcern about the developmental conditions ofdemocratic political systems.

In the countries that have experienced authoritar-ian regimes, the political culture studies were direct-ed towards the analyses of the presence and diffusionof democratic values in society. In the specific case ofLatin American transition to democracy, for exam-ple, many researchers had their focus on both thepolitical-institutional transitional process and on thechange (or not) of attitude regarding democracy.They attempted to investigate the presence of valuesand conduct in accordance with the civilian andsocial basis of that system, in the sense the civic cul-tural tradition attributed to them: political, socialand civilian tolerance, belief in the efficacy of politi-cal participation and suitable recognition of civicand political rights (see Diamond, 1994). The studyundertaken by Putnam (1993) on the differences inthe performance of local public institutions in Italyhas accomplished an important theoretical and

methodological renewal by privileging the analysis ofthe conditions affecting the performance of demo-cratic public institutions and their greater or lesserefficiency regarding public interest.

The tensions that the nation-state produces inthe dynamic of social life are central to the scope ofessential empirical and theoretical questions thathave been reformulated by diverse traditions of con-temporary political sociology. Contemporary cri-tiques focus, above all, on normative and teleologicalaspects of the theories that presuppose that the con-struction of the nation-state was to be a universalmodel defined by certain European experienceswhich are, in reality, historically very diverse andcontingent (Balakrishnan, 1996; Bhabha, 1990;Tilly, 1996); or that the construction of the nation-state could in fact produce purely civil ties, therebyminimizing the persistence of more primordial formsof solidarity in modern society such as kinship(Alexander, 1990).

This theoretical valuing of the tensions that thenation-state bestows on the dynamic of social life isrelevant not only for a revision of the European situ-ation, but also for research into other empirical real-ities and the (false) problem of their lack ofadaptation to one or other hegemonic model ofnational formation (Botelho, 2008, 2009). And asone contemporary analyst suggests in the preface tothe Brazilian edition of one of his books, the crucialsociological programme for ‘non-European’researchers of national construction is to understandin what way ‘the export of European state structuresproduced such diverse states in regions of Europeancolonization’; to be done well, the important thing isfor this programme not to ‘mechanically applyEuropean models, but examine the types of causesand effects which produce different things whenapplied in distinct environments’ (Tilly, 1996: 37,40).

Another beloved theme of the political sociologyresearch agenda, which directly articulates the theo-retical issue of social change with the state/societyrelationship, concerns social movements. It is possi-ble to identify at least three major theoretical linesthat explain social movements (Alonso, 2009), all ofwhich had to be adapted in order to face contempo-rary challenges, such as collective mobilizationsreaching global scale, involving violence and tendingto concentrate on identity issues. The first theoreti-cal line is expressed in the so-called resource mobi-lization theory (McCarthy and Zald, 1977), whichvalues rationality over explanations of collectivemobilizations in terms of collective emotions.

The two other major theoretical lines – the so-called political process theory and the new socialmovements theory – derive from the weakness of

Marxist debates about possibilities of revolution.Despite the fact that the former is devoted to a the-ory of political mobilization while the latter isfounded on a cultural change approach, both standup against either determinism and economicist per-spectives on collective action or the idea of a univer-sal historical subject, preferring macro-historicalperspectives, which analytically combine politics andculture in the social movements explanation. Withreference to the political process perspective, SidneyTarrow (1998), for instance, argues that when thereare no changes in ‘the political opportunity struc-ture’, that is, in the formal and informal dimensionsof the political environment, then new channels ofdemand expression are opened and created for socialgroups outside the polity. This may occur throughpolitical and administrative institutions’ increasedpermeability to civil society claims, caused by somecrisis in the political coalition in power; by changesin the political interaction between state and society,particularly reduced repression of protest; and by thepresence of potential allies (Kriesi et al., 1995).Mobilization is grounded in a conflict between dif-ferent parts, one of which occupies the state for themoment, while the other speaks on behalf of thesociety. Since such positions are variable, inasmuchas actors move from one to another, the analyseshave to overcome the conventional barriers whichdefine ‘state’ and ‘society’ as two coherent and sepa-rate entities. Thus, instead of defining the equationin terms of social movements versus state, this per-spective opposes ‘power holders’ (polity members),who have control over and access to the governmentruling a population (comprising the means of repres-sion), and ‘challengers’ who attempt to gain influ-ence over government and to obtain access toresources controlled by the polity (Tilly, 1993).

In its turn, although it is not considered a homo-geneous perspective, endowed with a stable unity,one can discern a common postulate among themain theorists of the so-called new social movements– Alain Touraine, Jürgen Habermas and AlbertoMelucci. If, on the one hand, each of them main-tains the macro-historical approach and the associa-tion between social change and conflict forms, onthe other hand so too does each consist in the elabo-ration of an effective cultural interpretation of socialmovements. Notwithstanding the fact that each hashis own modernity theory, they more or less sharethe same central argument that, throughout the 20thcentury, a macro-structural change would have mod-ified the nature of capitalism, whose centre would nolonger be industrial production and work. Labourconflicts would have been attenuated, either throughdemocratic institutions, such as rights expansionmovements, or capitalist institutions, like salary

increases, and would have become eminently cultur-al, exercised through the control of information by atechnocracy. Furthermore, the change would haveblurred distinctions between public and private, pro-voking shifts in subjectivities and originating in anew conflict zone, by moving claims for redistribu-tion, from the world of work, to quotidian life, call-ing for the democratization of its structures andaffirming new identities and values. There would bea politicization of private life. So the class move-ments would give way to new expressive, symbolicand identitary movements, such as feminism, paci-fism, environmental and students’ movements.

The enhancement of global processes and therelated crisis of the nation-state also pose inspiringchallenges for the political sociology of social move-ments. It is necessary to face the shift of scale inactivism, from the national/local to the transnation-al/global level, as well as its professionalization,which can be observed in the fact that in variouswestern countries social movements have becomebureaucratized, converted into parties, acquired anenterprise culture or assumed the administration ofpublic/state services (Rootes, 2003). Moreover, con-temporary protests involve activists and themes thatcross boundaries and are often directed towards mul-tilateral institutions or to transnational public opin-ion. No less important is the weakness of theassociation between new social movements and post-materialist agendas caused by the recent wave of eth-nic, religious, communitarian and conservativemobilizations.

One ought to note that the analysis of new socialmovements was gradually converted into a civil soci-ety theory. The critics together with the empiricalevidence of the bureaucratization of activism deep-ened the crisis of the distinction between new andold social movements. The theoretical tendency has,then, ceased to relate innovation to an actor, themovements, and has begun to link it to a locus, thecivil society. To a great extent defined negatively –civil society is not state, nor market, nor privatesphere – from civil society would emerge demandsfor autonomy referring not to political-institutionalpower, or to material benefits, or to self-interest.

The rediscovery of the concept of civil societyrestores it to a privileged place for mirroring thespecificity of the state/society relationship from thepoint of view of the effects introduced, at both poles,either by the autonomous dynamic of private inter-ests developed in the centre of the very society or bythe possibility of its harmonious or conflictiveconsociation. Throughout the revival of the debateregarding this concept over recent decades, new ideaswere elaborated and incorporated into the contem-porary lexicon. In response to the prevalence of the

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market, the image of civil society has been strength-ened as an expression of either communitarian soli-darity or of some kind of counter-attack to theeconomic, seen as a place for the realization of theindividual’s potential over the political. With thisinflection, civil society was depoliticized, beginningto be considered either as a shelter for the individualand the voluntary associations against the state, or asan environment capable of reconstructing the civictraditions destroyed by the market. On the otherhand, as a representation of participative democracy’sgrowth, plausibility has been added to the image ofcivil society as a plural sphere of interests which, bymeans of increasing meritorious associative actions,would lead to an almost redeeming ‘general will’, toa ‘program that seeks to represent the values andinterests of social autonomy in face of both the mod-ern state and capitalist economy, without falling intoa new traditionalism’ (Cohen and Arato, 1992: 54).

Similar challenges are relevant in the other mainarea in which state/society relations have been exam-ined in political sociology: theories of the ‘publicsphere’ and ‘civil society’. Such is the case with LatinAmerica, for example, whose societies are historical-ly structured around the state or the market, and inrelation to which civil society is both a theoreticalmarker that would aid perception of the limits offashionable political proposals and a third arena tobe strengthened (Avritzer, 2002). On the other hand,if we agree with the argument regarding diverse con-nections between authority, solidarity and interestsin each society and their consequences for its histor-ical course, then the legacy of traditional conceptionsof citizenship will not be without consequences forstrengthening ‘civil society’ or the ‘public sphere’ inthese societies. This is evidenced in the comparativeanalysis of contexts marked by economic scarcity andreduced effective legitimacy and capacity of the state,such as the Latin American and Eastern Europeancases. Thus, the more organic and holistic the tradi-tional conceptions of collective identities, the moreprobable it is nowadays to find feelings of alienation,and the more reasons there are for people to takerefuge in their private networks of relationships,making the public sphere narrower and more indis-criminate and reducing democratic participationeven further (Reis, 1998b: 91–110).

The re-emergence of the idea of ‘civil society’(Alexander, 1993) and the greater value attributed todebates on the ‘public sphere’ that goes along with it,may represent relevant theoretical alternatives to themore historical orientations of political sociologythat are mainly focused on the problem of thenation-state. Not coincidentally, perhaps, there areefforts to bestow greater historical support andbreadth to these alternatives (Cohen and Arato,

1992), even though their Eurocentrism is stillstrongly criticized (Hann and Dunn, 1996). In anycase, it is true that these alternatives may seem ‘min-imalist’ from the viewpoint of the problem of collec-tive identity linked to the nation-state, insofar asthey suggest that people should basically accept theprocedural rules of open and equal debate betweenindividuals bearing interests (Eder, 2003). However,perhaps what is most relevant is to observe that thisrevaluing of ideas of ‘civil society’ and the ‘publicsphere’ has led to significant redefinitions of relationsbetween state and society from the latter’s perspec-tive (considered the locus of democratic organizationand of defence against processes of bureaucratizationand the marketization of social life). This may lead,in some cases, to the return of disjunctive views ofstate and society and therefore, in extreme cases, tocompromising the specificity of political sociology asa research tradition.

Annotated further reading

Bendix R (ed.) (1973 [1968]) State and Society: A Readerin Comparative Political Sociology. Berkley: Universityof California Press. This collection of classical articles written byrenowned sociologists offers an overview of the fieldof political sociology in the 1960s and of its themes,issues and founding theoretical-methodologicalapproaches, which would also largely shape it in sub-sequent decades.

Janoski T, Alford R R, Hicks A M and Schwartz M A(eds) (2005) The Handbook of Political Sociology.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The book presents an overview of political sociology,analysing historical and analytical aspects of its devel-opment as an area of research up to the present time,and also of its main themes and theoretical approach-es. This excellent introduction to more recent devel-opments in political sociology also offers valuablebibliographical suggestions, which give some idea ofthe discipline’s complexity.

Mann M (1986, 1993) The Sources of Social Power, 2vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A comprehensive study of the sources and origins ofpower in human societies from the Neolithic period,through the ancient civilizations of the Near East, theclassical Mediterranean age and medieval Europeuntil the Industrial Revolution in England and on tothe contemporary age. Mann attempts to build ageneralized model and a theory of power based onthis extensive historical material.

Moore B Jr (1993 [1966]) Social Origins of Dictatorshipand Democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.A classical work of historical-comparative analysis inpolitical sociology and in the social sciences in gener-al. Comparing revolutions and modernization inChina, England, the US, Russia, France and Japan,

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Moore studies the conditions for the sociogenesis ofdemocracy and of the fascist and communist regimesin an attempt to explain the ways in which industri-alization and pre-existent agrarian regimes interactedto produce different political results in those differentsocieties.

Reis EP (1998) Processos e escolhas: estudos de sociologiapolítica. Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa Editora. A collection of articles on diverse themes of politicalsociology, ranging from classical themes such as citi-zenship, onto the nation-state and its metamor-phoses, and then to comparative studies ondemocratic transition in different regional contextsand the relations between citizenship and socialinequality. It is an important work both for introduc-ing Brazil and Latin America as historical and empir-ical analytical references, and for the theoreticaldimension it encompasses.

References

Alexander JC (1990) Core solidarity, ethnic out-groupand social differentiation. In: Alexander JC andColomy P (eds) Differentiation Theory and SocialChanges: Comparatives and Historical Perspectives.New York: Columbia University Press.

Alexander JC (1993) The return to civil society.Contemporary Sociology 22(6): 797–803.

Allardt E (1996) Is there a Scandinavian political sociol-ogy today? Current Sociology 44(3): 1–21.

Almond G and Verba S (1963) The Civic Culture.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Alonso A (2009) As teorias dos movimentos sociais: umbalanço do debate. Lua Nova 76: 49–86.

Anderson B (1991) Imagined Communities. London:Verso.

Avritzer L (2002) Democracy and the Public Space inLatin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress.

Balakrishnan G (ed.) (1996) Mapping the Nation.London: Verso.

Beck U (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity.London: Sage.

Beck U (1996) The Reinvention of Politics: RethinkingModernity in the Global Social Order. Cambridge:Polity Press.

Beck U (1999) What is Globalization? Cambridge: PolityPress.

Bendix R (1962) Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait.Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor Books.

Bendix R (ed.) (1973 [1968]) State and Society: A Readerin Comparative Political Sociology. Berkeley:University of California Press.

Bendix R (1977 [1964]) Nation Building andCitizenship. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bhabha HK (ed.) (1990) Nation and Narration. London:Routledge.

Botelho A (2008) The sequences of a Brazilian politicalsociology. DADOS [online] 4, Selected edition.Available at: socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php-

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Botelho A (2009) Passagens para o estado-nação: a tesede Costa Pinto. Lua Nova 77: 147–177. Available at:www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-64452009000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso.

Bottomore T (1979) Political Sociology. London:Hutchinson.

Calhoun C (2007) Nations Matter: Culture, History, andthe Cosmopolitan Dream. New York: Routledge.

Cohen J and Arato A (1992) Civil Society and PoliticalTheory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Delanty G and Kumar K (eds) (2006) The SageHandbook of Nations and Nationalism. London: Sage.

Diamond L (1994) Political Culture and Democracy inDeveloping Countries. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Eder K (ed.) (2003) Collective Identities in Action: ASociological Approach to Ethnicity. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Eder K and Giesen B (eds) (2001) European Citizenship:National Legacies and Postnational Projects. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Foucault M (1969) L’Archéologie du savoir. Paris:Gallimard.

Foucault M (1971) L’Ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard.Foucault M (1975) Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la

prison. Paris: Gallimard.Giddens A (1985) The Nation State and Violence. A

Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Vol.2. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gupta D (1996) Engaging with events: The specifics ofpolitical sociology in India. Current Sociology 44(3):53–69.

Hann C and Dunn E (eds) (1996) Civil Society:Challenging Western Models. London: Routledge.

Janoski T, Alford RR, Hicks AM and Schwartz MA (eds)(2005) The Handbook of Political Sociology.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Kimmerling B (1996) Changing meanings and bound-aries of the political. Current Sociology 44(3):152–176.

Kriesi H et al. (1995) New Social Movements in WesternEurope. London: UCL Press.

Kubiak H (1996) Hopes, illusions and deceptions: Halfcentury of political sociology in Poland. CurrentSociology 44(3): 21–39.

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McCarthy JD and Zald MN (1977) Resource mobiliza-tion and social movements: A partial theory.American Journal of Sociology 82(6).

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Reis EP (1999) Os velhos e os novos desafios da sociolo-gia política. In: Santos JVT (ed.) A sociologia para oséculo XXI. Pelotas: Universidade Católica de Pelotas;Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia, 59–75.

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Rootes CA (ed.) (2003) Environmental Protest in WesternEurope. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States.Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press.

Skocpol T (1996) Boomerang: Clinton’s Health SecurityEffort and the Turn Against Government in US Politics.New York: Norton.

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Tarrow S (1998) Power in Movement: Social Movementsand Contentious Politics. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Tilly C (1975) Reflections on the history of Europeanstate-making. In: Tilly C (ed.) The Formation ofNational States in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

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Tilly C (1986) The Contentious French: Four Centuries ofPopular Struggle. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press.

Tilly C (1993) Contentious repertoires in Great Britain,1758–1834. Social Science History 17.

Tilly C (1996) Coerção, capital e estados europeus,990–1992. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade deSão Paulo.

Voronkov V and Zdravomvslova E (1996) Emergingpolitical sociology in Russia and Russian transforma-tion. Current Sociology 44(3): 40–52.

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André Botelho is a professor of sociology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)and has a PhD in social sciences from the University of Campinas (2002). He coordinatesresearch groups in the area of social thought at the National Association of Graduate Studiesand Research in Social Sciences (ANPOCS) and the Brazilian Society of Sociology (SBS). Hisareas of focus are sociological theory and Brazilian social thought, and main research themes arenation-state, social thought and political culture in Brazil. He has published several articles andbooks, the most recent being ‘The sequences of a Brazilian political sociology’ (Dados 4 (select-ed edition), Rio de Janeiro, v. 2008) and the book (co-edited with Lília Moritz Schwarcz) Umenigma chamado Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009). [email: andrebotelho@digi-rotas.com.br]

résumé En prenant comme point de départ le débat contemporain sur le statut de la sociologiepolitique, l’article présente quelques vues alternatives et discute de la relation entre la sociologie et lascience politique. Il soutient que, malgré les controverses persistants, examiner la tradition de recherchede la sociologie politique se montre comme une ressource utile pour saisir l’identité de cette sous-discipline. Ainsi, l’auteur prend la relation entre État et la société en tant que la question centrale quiimprègne leur diversité théorique et méthodologique. Finalement, le texte prend l’État-nation comme la

configuration la plus typique de la relation entre État et société dans l’histoire moderne, qui se maintientcomme cela, malgré les plusieurs défis historiques et analytiques qu’on observe aujourd’hui.

mots-clés État et société u État-nation u institution politiques et vie sociale u sociologie politique

resumen Tomando como punto de partida el debate contemporáneo acerca del status de la sociologíapolítica, el artículo presenta algunas visiones alternativas y discute la relación entre sociología y cienciapolítica. Sostén que, a despecho de controversias persistentes, examinar la tradición de pesquisa de lasociología política se muestra un recurso útil para aprehender la identidad de esta sub-disciplina. De estamanera, el autor toma la relación entre estado y sociedad como una cuestión central que atraviesa sudiversidad teórica e metodológica. Finalmente, el texto toma el estado-nación como la configuración mástípica de la relación entre estado y sociedad en la historia moderna, que permanece así en el presente, apesar de muchos desafíos históricos y analíticos que observamos hoy.

palabras clave estado-nación u estado y sociedad u instituciones políticas y vida social u sociologíapolítica

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