The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (60 page)

lated theories of these social processes and more rigorous assessments of such

theories will, in all likelihood, take shape. The new sociology of ideas can

already be credited, however, with having cleared the ground for this exciting

possibility.

Part V

Politics and Political

Movements

18

Political Sociology

Mike Savage

Until the 1980s political sociology was one of the leading subdisciplines within sociology. Between the 1950s and 1970s the vitality of political sociology could be seen in its contribution to studies of the social bases of political alignments and party systems (for instance, by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan),

research on community power systems (by Lloyd Warner, Bachrach, and Steven

Lukes) and elites (by C. Wright Mills, Anthony Giddens, and Tom Bottomore),

and historical studies of revolution and social change (by Barrington Moore and

Theda Skocpol).

Despite such intellectual dynamism, the past two decades have seen political

sociology in retreat. Today political sociology is a subdiscipline in crisis. New kinds of sociology have developed ± such as sociology of social movements

and of the state ± which cover similar territory to political sociology, but

there is relatively little connection with older traditions of political soci-

ology. This chapter is a critical study of the reasons for this change of for-

tunes and a consideration of possible ways of reviving interest in political

sociology.

My argument will be that the contemporary problems of political sociology

need to be seen in terms of the unraveling of limitations of what I will term thè`classic political sociology paradigm.'' I begin by exploring the main features of the paradigm, which I claim is organized around à`social base'' perspective.

This paradigm can be seen as the dominant approach to political sociology

during its golden age between 1945 and 1975. It explored the relationship

between social interests and political mobilization, mainly through the ways in

which established political parties and organizations structured class interests.

As early as the late 1960s, Sartori (1969, p. 68) could write, ``There is a widespread feeling that while political sociology has emerged as a core social science discipline, political science is in a serious plight.''

254

Mike Savage

The second part of my chapter examines the challenge to this paradigm. My

main argument here is that the crisis of the classic paradigm is inextricably

associated with the problems of class analysis as a viable intellectual project.

The third part of the chapter explores how we might reinvigorate political

sociology by exploring the sociology of the political field. Rather than looking at the social determinants of political alignments, as in the classic paradigm, this involves examining how the political field itself is socially constructed and

``boundaried.''

In the last part of this chapter I develop this argument by showing how social

movement theory might be drawn upon to revive the terrain of political soci-

ology. I argue that we might develop a viable political sociology that is con-

cerned with the contested and socially specific boundaries between thè`social''

and ``political.''

The Classic ``Social Base'' Paradigm of Political

Sociology

As numerous writers have observed (for example, Nisbet, 1966; Greer, 1969;

Therborn, 1980), the development of sociology as a discipline involved distin-

guishing specifically social relationships from political institutions and processes on the one hand, and from various kinds of `èconomic'' process on the other. A

recognition of the political had been central to the emergence of disciplines of

``statecraft'' from the sixteenth century onwards. From the later eighteenth

century, the maturing of political economy led to a recognition that the political was articulated with the economic. It was not until later in the nineteenth

century that claims for the distinctiveness of thè`social'' emerged. Common

claims in this nascent sociology were the significance of ``community'' (as in the arguments of de Tocqueville and ToÈnnies), the role of a distinctivè`collective

conscience'' (as in the writings of Durkheim, later adapted by Parsons and

American structural-functionalists to mean norms and values), and the irredu-

cibility of microsocial interaction to broader economic and political structures (as in the writings of Weber and their development by phenomenologists and

ethnomethodologists). What united all these different approaches was a concern

to establish that thè`social'' was different from and irreducible to the political or the economic. It was around this recognition that the claims of sociology as a

discipline were founded.

Establishing thè`social'' as a distinct and irreducible realm led logically to

reflections on the relationship between thè`social'' and thè`political.'' Political sociology emerged as the subdiscipline that depended on the idea that politics

could be distinguished from social relationships and that social processes were

related to politics. Political sociology thus emerged as a way of reflecting on the linkages between ``society'' and ``politics.'' The main mechanism which linked

society and politics was generally that of `ìnterests,'' and in particular class interests (see Sartori, 1969). In both European and American research, social

class interests were the crucial conduit between social relations and political

Political Sociology

255

mobilization. Social position gave rise to interests which led to distinctive types of political mobilization. Class became the linchpin of the classical political

sociology paradigm.

Admittedly, class was used in different ways, and indeed it was this mutability

of class analysis that was part of its appeal. For some writers, such as Mosca and Pareto, as well as later writers in the Weberian tradition, the association between political elites and social classes was distinct, and the autonomy of thè`political'' from thè`social'' recognized. But insofar as political sociology was seen as having a clear purpose, it was in exploring how class linked the social and

political. Of fundamental significance in this work was the recognition of the

fundamental division between middle and working class as the key axis of class

politics. This recognition could be found in the USA, where studies such as that of Middletown documented how community politics was riddled by class. In

Britain the emphasis on the central role of working-class culture in defining

politics was evidenced by numerous community studies (see Frankenberg, 1966),

and writers such as T. H. Marshall (1950) emphasized the role of working-class

movements in establishing citizenship rights.

While British research in the 1950s and 1960s emphasized the sheer import-

ance of class as the mediating force between politics and society, American

political sociologists led the way in developing more sophisticated analyses for thinking through the relationship between class and politics. The arguments of

Lipset (1959) concerning thè`democratic class struggle'' were especially impor-

tant. For Lipset (1959, p. 220), `ìn every democracy conflict is expressed

through political parties which basically represent a democratic translation of

the class struggle.'' He showed persistent tendencies across a number of nations in the political alignments of working-class and middle-class voters. By staging an alliance between the Marxist emphasis on the centrality of class and pluralist political science's emphasis on the role of democratic processes, Lipset helped to develop a fertile research agenda that energized not just political sociology but political science in general during the 1960s and early 1970s.

The social base paradigm depended on defining a spatial frame within which

social bases operated. Whereas earlier community power research focused on the

local level, the political sociology of the 1960s championed the nation as the

arena in which social forces mobilized. Thus, Lipset was concerned with explain-

ing the differences (and similarities) between nations, rather than explaining why nations emerged as thè`natural'' political unit. The intersection between class, politics, and the nation-state defines the intellectual frame of classical political sociology. This emphasis on the nation-state was adopted even by more radical

political sociologists. Barrington Moore's (1966) classic book, The Social Ori-

gins of Dictatorship and Democracy, for instance, offered a historically sensitive account of how democratic polities emerged in some countries and not in others.

Moore argued that the three distinctive paths to modernity (democratic revolu-

tion, fascism, and communism) were each related to different kinds of class

coalition. In this historically sensitive way, Moore was able to show how

political change was anchored in social process. His work took a similar line

to that of E. P. Thompson (1963) and a number of neo-Marxist writers in

256

Mike Savage

championing a form of socially based accounts of political change. Thompson's

path-breaking account of the Making of the English Working Class was primar-

ily couched as a critique of functionalist sociologist Neil Smelser's (1959) arguments about how the working class developed passively as a response to

modernizing pressures.

Present in all these different works was an interest in the politics of the

working class. Lockwood (1995) refers to the power of thè`problematic of

the proletariat'' in orienting early sociological studies of class and politics.

Drawing upon Marxist influences, political sociologists were especially inter-

ested in the potential of the working class to effect political change. Orthodox political sociologists, such as Lipset (1959), tended to be critical of arguments suggesting the inherent progressiveness of working-class politics, and emphasized the significance of working class authoritarianism. Nonetheless, it was the politics of the working class which was of central importance to the classic

paradigm. Since the 1970s there has been a steady decline in the appeal of the

social base paradigm. There is increasing difficulty in defining a distinct territory of thè`social'' which is irreducible to politics or the economy. The crisis of

political sociology is a crisis of the social itself.

Three currents of recent work indicate this trend clearly enough. First, and

most important, is the hegemony of institutionalist approaches to politics. Such approaches emphasize the autonomy of organized politics and state formation,

and dispute the idea that there are social determinants of political change. The roots of this new institutionalism run back into the 1960s. Lipset's own work,

and especially that with Rokkan (1967b), ushered in this new institutionalist

approach. Lipset and Rokkan developed a sensitive historical model of the

development of political alignments which recognized that political alignments

could not be simply reduced to class processes, but were related to this historical sequencing of cleavages between center and periphery, state and church, land

and industry, and (only latterly) owners and workers. Thus, while party cleav-

ages were found in every democratic nation, the specific constituencies which

were represented in party cleavages depended on the historical development of

the nation-states, and in particular the period in which modern party systems

were formed. This argument concerning the autonomy of party alignments from

their social underpinnings has been developed by a number of political scientists, perhaps most interestingly by Mair (1997). Mair notes that Lipset and Rokkan's

observations that the party alignments formed in the 1920s persisted until the

1960s can be extended up to the 1990s. He discusses ``the freezing of party

alignments,'' the capacity of party alignments to absorb new kinds of political

issues within them, and notes that during the 1980s and 1990s there was

relatively little change in the appeal of the main parties in most Western demo-

cratic countries. The implication of Mair's argument is that politics operates

largely autonomously from the social.

During the 1970s and 1980s this argument was developed not just to apply to

part alignments but also to shed light on other political phenomena. Theda

Skocpol became a leading exponent of ``state-centered'' accounts of politics,

and she was explicit in her repudiation of ``society-centered'' accounts of

Political Sociology

257

politics. Skocpol's work developed since her account of revolutions in 1979 as a critical engagement with the arguments of Barrington Moore (1966) concerning

the social determinants of revolutionary change. Skocpol argues that revolutions were related to the internal breakdown of the state apparatus, especially the way that foreign tensions led to intense demands on state organization. Such situations could lead to revolutions not as a result of social pressure based around the mobilization of economic interests, but more as a result of internal institutional pressures.

Skocpol's research during the 1980s became a fully fledged attempt to cham-

pion à`state-centered'' account of political change. In the course of this work

she has pioneered accounts of the New Deal (Skocpol et al., 1985) and American

welfare policy (Skocpol, 1992). Her work has a further angle, undermining