Political Sociology in the New Millennium

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introduction

Political Sociology in the New Millennium

Alexander M. Hicks, Thomas Janoski, and Mildred A. Schwartz

Although modern political sociology has ex- 1990, 1991), Pierre Bourdieu (1994, 1998a, isted for more than a century, it came into 1998b), and other poststructuralist or culturally its own during the decades bridging the vic- oriented theorists; of feminism (Butler, 1990; tory at the end of World War II and the anti- Hobson, 1990; Hobson and Lindholm, 1997; Vietnam War movement. Especially important Young, 1990); of racialization theory (Goldberg, in setting the direction for political research 2002; Omi and Winant, 1994; Winant, 2001); with a distinctive focus on “the social bases and of rational choice theories (Coleman, 1966; of politics” was Seymour Martin Lipset’s Po- Hechter, 1987; Lange and Garrett, 1985, 1987; litical Man (1960), published in twenty coun- North, 1990; Tsebellis, 1990, 1999; Wallerstein, tries and deemed a “citation classic” by the So- 1999). Along with other perspectives, these have cial Science Citation Index. The transformative all shaken the theoretical dominance of pluralist, potentials of the social bases of politics were political/economic, and state-centric theories. redirected away from the pluralist theoretical Today, political sociology stands out as one of tradition by William G. Domhoff’s Who Rules the major areas in sociology. Its share of articles America?(1967), which stimulated interest in and books published is impressive. For exam- capitalist power; William Gamson’s The Strategy ple, in 1999, 17 to 20 percent of the articles in of Social Protest (1975), which expanded atten- the American Journal of Sociology and the American tion to the popular bases of power beyond inter- Sociological Review and about 20 percent of the est groups to social movements; and James Petras books reviewed by Contemporary Sociology, the and Maurice Zeitlin’s Latin America: Reform or major reviewing journal in American sociology, Revolution (1967), which excited new interest dealt with political sociology. A number of po- in the politics of labor movements. The 1980s’ litical sociologists, including Seymour Martin ascent of state-centric institutionalism regis- Lipset, William Gamson, and Jill Quadagno, tered a major impact on political sociology with have served as president of the American So- its Bringing the State Back In, edited by Peter ciological Association (ASA). The political so- Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda ciology section of the ASA continues to attract Skocpol (1985). The works of these times had an above-average membership.1 Yet, along with a common focus on the societal determination all this vitality, the ﬁeld remains ﬂuid, stimu- of political processes and outcomes and on how lated by the following processes and theoretical state structures cause varied outcomes in differ- transformations. ent countries. 1 In 2003, membership stood at 560 compared to the Since the early 1980s, political sociology has average of 463 for all sections. Dobratz et al. (2002b) also moved to include the unique and powerful per- report that a high percentage of articles in the Annual spectives of Michel Foucault (1979, 1980, 1984, Review of Sociology are on the topic of political sociology. 1

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2 Alexander M. Hicks, Thomas Janoski, and Mildred A. Schwartz

First, although state-centered, and later Sprague, 1995). Theories of political delibera- policy-centered, theory associated with Theda tion certainly should play a stronger role, espe- Skocpol and others (e.g., Evans, Rueschmeyer, cially in considering the impact of small group and Skocpol, 1985; Skocpol, 1979, 1992) has democracy, deliberative polling, and electronic garnered a great deal of attention in politi- town meetings (Bohman, 1996; Fishkin, 1991; cal sociology; new developments in pluralist, Fishkin and Laslett, 2003; Habermas, 1984, political/economic, and elitist theoretical tra- 1987, 1996). Process theories of democracy are ditions have largely ﬂown beneath the radar important as well in regard to the transformation these past two decades. With similar stealth, new of political parties and trade unions, multiple approaches to policy domains (Burstein, 1991; and changing political identities, and participa- Knoke et al., 1994) and civil society (Hall, 1995; tion in voluntary groups that cause cross-cutting Jacobs, 2002; Janoski, 1998; Keane, 1988)have cleavages (Manza, Brooks, and Sauder, Chap- emerged without widespread recognition from ter 10, and Schwartz and Lawson, Chapter 13, political sociologists. These developments indi- this volume). Structural and process explana- cate that the time is ripe to move from differ- tions involving political mechanisms need to be entiation of theoretical work to more synthetic brought more into play, and the growing area of theory building by bringing civil society, policy cultural explanation needs to be integrated into domains, voluntary associations, social move- this mix (Diamond, 1999; Fung and Wright, ments, interest groups, and the state into more 2003; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, 2001; Mutz meaningful theoretical relations. and Martin, 2001; Tilly, 2003). Second, although the print and electronic Fourth, the conceptual gulf between the two media have been studied in detail, these institu- vastly different locations in space – “all politics tions have not been adequately integrated into are local” and “all politics are global” – needs to political sociology. Even though political sociol- be bridged, as is being done in the literature ogy may often refer to the media, within its own on antiglobalization movements and perhaps theory it has failed to integrate the media as an with the political slogan to “Think Globally, oblique force that has strong but not always clear Act Locally” (e.g., Khagram et al., 2002; see impacts on political candidates, elections, ide- the McMichael and Evans chapters [Chapters 30 ologies, and legislation, and on the implemen- and 32] in this volume). More attention needs tation and evaluation of policy. Except where to be paid to the urban and local studies of the political parties or candidates control the me- political and neighborhood politics of William dia, such as in Italy with Prime Minister Silvio Gamson in Talking Politics (1992) (see also Berry Berlusconi, the impact of mass media is often in- et al., 1993). Means need to be found that in- direct and not obviously,or at least continuously, tegrate theories as diverse as the world systems in favor of any party. But the media are political theory of Immanuel Wallerstein in The Mod- actors, not just fuzzy ﬁlters of news and views. ern World System (1989) and Michael Hardt and The integration of the media into empirical re- Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000). Finally, efforts search, especially comparative work, is partic- that directly link the local and the global (e.g., ularly important for the comprehension of the Fourcade-Gourinchas and Babb, 2002;Hay, role of mass media in the public sphere (Keane, 2001; Ranney, 2003) need to be encouraged. 1991; Kellner, 1990; Schudson and Waisbord, Fifth, although it is sometimes denied, the Chapter 17, this volume; Wheeler, 1997; Zaller, study of politics is affected by cycles of politi- forthcoming). cal power. On the one hand, politics and poli- Third, some process-oriented subtheories in cies themselves change, depending on whether political sociology have been underemphasized. the right or left is in power. On the other Public opinion needs to be pushed in the direc- hand, social and political hegemony can shift tion of social network and media contexts rather from democratic processes in the community than seen as something that is just out there and the welfare state to privatization and mar- (Burstein, 2003; Gamson, 1992; Huckfeldt and ket processes. This creates oscillations in political

Introduction: Political Sociology in the New Millennium 3

research, such as the leftward and rightward tilts, realism conflates sociology and literary fiction, respectively, in the political scholarship of the whereas the diminution of theoretical domains 1960s and then the 1980s and early 1990s (e.g., (at times to a vanishing point) blurs the distinc- see Hunter, 1991, on “culture wars” and Linz tiveness of sociology from biography, journal- and Stepan, 1978a, 1978b, and Diamond et al., ism, and descriptive historiography. 1988, on “cycles of democratization”). Yet the Seventh, although institutions have always eagerness to explain the expanding welfare state been the mainstay of sociological explanations, is hardly matched by the comparative lack of new challenges have emerged from alternative enthusiasm to theorize and explain its decline perspectives. In recent years, economists and (Korpi and Palme, 2003; Pierson, 2001). More- political scientists have been applying ratio- over, social movement research seems much nal choice theory to the formation of institu- more enthusiastic about the civil rights move- tions and to action in an institutional context ment than the New Right/fundamentalist and (Booth, James, and Meadwell, 1993; Hardin, neoliberalism movements. Still, the mobiliza- 1995; Kiser and Bauldry, Chapter 8, this vol- tion of the religious right has attracted signifi- ume; Knight and Sened, 1995; Lewin, 1988, cant attention from sociologists (e.g., Diamond, 1991; North, 1990; and Tsebelis, 1990). The 1995; Liebman and Wuthnow, 1983; Luker, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 1984; Marshall, 1994). Indeed, the sociolog- has been at the forefront of these efforts, re- ical study of the neoliberal movement looks inforced by the Nobel Prize awarded to its like a burgeoning academic cottage industry preeminent spokesman, Douglas North (1990). (e.g., Campbell and Pederson, 2001; Fourcade- Political sociologists have been stimulated to Gourinchas and Babb, 2002; Simmons, Garrett, move beyond verifying and describing the exis- and Dobbin, 2003; Swank, 2003). tence of institutions to explaining their creation Sixth, the influence of poststructuralist and and transformation (Brinton and Nee, 1998; postmodern theories, and the feminist expan- Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth, 1992), as well sion of the “political,” have broadened the con- as examining how emotions affect political out- cept of power from formal political institutions comes (Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta, 2001; to the informal political processes often in- Hochschild, 1983). Yet we still see the need for volved with the market or private spheres much more theoretical and cumulative work on (Dyrberg, 1997; Foucault, 1979, 1980, 1984, institutions (Boudon, 2003). 1991; Torfing, 1999). Poststructuralist and post- Amidst this swirl of change, there is a need modern authors have also questioned the ob- for intellectual tools that can survey and inte- jectivity and narrowed the empirical scope grate the family of disparate subfields called po- of sociology (at least insofar as any theoret- litical sociology (Turner and Power, 1981). Such ical/empirical correspondence is concerned), a survey needs to do the following four things: sometimes to the extent of denying the pos- (1) bring the diverse contributions to the field sibility of theoretical realism and trading away of political sociology together and place them the theoretical domain to be explained for the within a clear and encompassing conceptual specific case to be interpreted. These authors framework; (2) synthesize, or at least counter- have equated political sociology with nearly “all pose, new developments in theories of political of sociology,” revealing previously neglected as- sociology in ways that still recognize some resid- pects of politics. However, when everything is ual fragmentation; (3) consolidate sociological political, political sociology itself becomes dif- explanations of politics through the “social bases fuse and unfocused. Although researchers, es- of politics” and state institutionalism while ad- pecially those who look for the wide-ranging vancing the recognition of “civil society” as a “social bases of politics,” naturally abhor the key aspect of the state’s social foundations and imposition of boundaries on the political, some achievements; and (4) incorporate the expand- redelineation of what constitutes political so- ing theories of globalization and empire. We ciology is necessary. The denial of theoretical present the Handbook of Political Sociology, partly

4 Alexander M. Hicks, Thomas Janoski, and Mildred A. Schwartz

based on a “Visions of Political Sociology” ses- Robert Dowse and John Hughes (1972), Arnold sion at the 1998 American Sociological Asso- K. Sherman and Aliza Kolker (1987), George ciation convention and a 2001 conference on Kourvetaris (1997), Kate Nash (2000b), and “Theories of Political Sociology,” as a means to Baruch Kimmerling’s edited volume (1996).2 reorient sociological explanation of politics. We One may also read Richard Braungart (1981), believe that it can advance political explanation Jonathan Turner and C. Power (1981), and An- not only by providing new directions but also by thony Orum (1988) for summary essays on the energizing students of politics with creative in- field. Robert Alford and Roger Friedland did sights from previously unassimilated literatures. an impressive review of pluralist, managerial, and class theories of political sociology (1985), which we examine in more detail shortly, and the place of a handbook Martin Marger followed with a somewhat sim- in political sociology ilar classification (1987). More recently, edited volumes have empha- The purpose of this handbook is to sharpen our sized particular theories or approaches. An em- focus on what has been somewhat blurred by phasis on “state-centered” theories is presented the seven entropic developments just discussed. in the Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol Although political sociology has had consider- book (1985). George Steinmetz (1999) and able success with its focus on “the social bases Julia Adams, Elisabeth Clemens, and Ann Shola of politics” and its new institutional approaches, Orloff (2004) emphasize the fusing of the “cul- it needs to be more inclusive of recent develop- tural turn” and rational choice in political soci- ments while retaining a critical sensibility.Rein- ology. This handbook differs in not arguing for tegration of the field and a possible synthesis of a single perspective. Weshall err toward present- new developments into existing theories, where ing as many points of view as possible, and we practicable, are important ways to extend and indicate where theoretical explorations, synthe- refocus the goals of political sociology. ses, or other responses are needed. The second, most obvious, reason that a Other edited volumes address methodolog- Handbook of Political Sociology is needed to clar- ical approaches. Theda Skocpol (1984) exam- ify political sociology is that one has never been ines historical methodologies. Thomas Janoski assembled before. This handbook is the first and Alexander Hicks (1994) cover a range of its kind to bring together original articles of quantitative methods and formal qualita- covering a coherent range of topics. The gap tive approaches like those presented in Charles it fills was dealt with in the past by a num- Ragin (1987, 2002). In addition, a recent survey ber of edited volumes that included both classi- of historical/comparative sociology by James cal and current readings, including Lewis Coser Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (2003) (1966), Frank Lindenfeld (1968), S. N. Eisen- focuses largely on political sociology. As with stadt (1971), and Kate Nash (2000a). One two- theory, we believe allowing a thousand flowers volume collection by William Outhwaite and Luke Martell (1998) contains classical statements 2 Two widely used textbooks using elite theory, one by Marx, Weber, and Gramsci along with a large in sociology and the other in political science, make little number of reprints of more current articles. attempt to cover a broad range of theories but, nonethe- less, connect to parties, interest groups, legislatures, and These compendia relied on previously published government: G. William Domhoff (1967, 1983, 1998, sources to construct an overview of the field. 2002) and Thomas Dye and Harmon Zeigler (2000). Instructive surveys of the field were also writ- Kate Nash (2000a, 2000b) captures the cultural turn in ten, such as those by Barrington Moore (1962), political sociology but rarely mentions political parties, Morris Janowitz (1970), Edward H. Lehman interest groups, legislatures, or government. She focuses on cultural theory with most of her attention on so- (1977), Tom Bottomore (1979), Mildred A. cial movements, citizenship and rights, identity politics, Schwartz (1990), Keith Faulks (2000), An- international organizations and movements, and the dis- thony Orum (1977), Philo C. Washburn (1982), placement of the nation-state.

Introduction: Political Sociology in the New Millennium 5

to bloom is preferable to confining investigative challenge of synthesizing a disparate field. For methods to a few strains. many researchers in specialized areas, this inte- Betty Dobratz, Lisa Waldner, and Timothy grative view should bring cutting edge research Buzzell have recently edited three special issues in adjacent fields and also offer as definitive a of Research in Political Sociology with the intent panorama of political sociology as space permits. of “assessing the state of the field of political In addition to the intellectual need for integrat- sociology at the start of the twenty-first cen- ing theory, delineating the scope of the field, tury” (2003:1). The first, more specialized, vol- and developing multiple perspectives on society ume looks at social movements and the state and politics, a Handbook of Political Sociology of along with a symposium on the 2000 presi- this scope has never been done. We, and the au- dential election in the United States (2002a). thors of subsequent chapters, offer this work as The editors describe the second volume on the- an attempt to provide what has until now been ory (2002b) as “not a comprehensive overview” missing. but a volume that gives “examples of several new promising trends” and “a critique of current approaches” in the areas of pluralist, class, two new challenges elite, world systems, and postmodern debates (Waldner et al., 2002:xiii–xiv). The third vol- In the mid-1980s, the field of political sociolog- ume (2003) is a more general survey of public ical theory was effectively summarized and par- opinion, civil society, electoral politics, social tially synthesized in Robert Alford and Roger movements, and a historical/comparative anal- Friedland’s The Powers of Theory. In their mas- ysis of the state. It also contains a few more terful book, action and structure are analyzed at specialized chapters such as Paul Luebke’s re- three levels (individual, organizational, and soci- flections on being a progressive legislator in a etal) each with its characteristic mode of power very conservative state and Eduardo Bonilla- (situational, bureaucratic, or systemic). Three Silva et al.’s article on the new racism in present- major theoretical perspectives, each closely tied day American society. The result is an important to a level and to a mode of power, anchor their contribution, but one, as the editors make clear, conceptions of theory. One is the pluralist per- without the intention of providing the kind of spective: individualistic, situational, and tied to comprehensive overview that is our objective.3 a characteristic problematic of governance, in This handbook intends to provide readers particular democratic governance. A second is with an integrated overview of major theories the managerial perspective: organizational, bu- and findings, lead them conveniently to top- reaucratic, and focused on problems of state ca- ics of interest, and assist them in the common pacity that is comparative. A third is the class perspective: societal, systemic, and focused on the conundrums of resistance to economic in- 3 There are also a number of handbooks in political science, such as those by Fred Greenstein and Nelson equality and societal “crisis.” To these theo- Polsby (1975), Robert Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klinge- retical perspectives and elements are added an mann (1997), and, in its overall effect, Ira Katznelson and additional emphasis on either politics (politi- Helen Milner (2002). However, political science does cal structure and process) or function (the con- not emphasize the “social bases of politics” to the extent sequences of politics). As with many holistic that sociology does, and much of its approach to political behavior in international, comparative, and national articulations of social science phenomena, this politics involves more psychological and rational choice scheme evokes the metalanguage of systems the- approaches. Although much closer to us in subject mat- ory. Individual and group actions link the soci- ter, a recent handbook in political psychology refracts the etal environment and the organization(s) of the political through the lens of psychology (Sears, Huddy, state. Insofar as modes of power are concerned, and Jervis, 2003). The present handbook responds to our perceptions of what is missing in sociology itself, where situationally embedded actions have their im- we also learn from political science and allied fields and pact as inputs and throughputs on and through borrow freely from their accomplishments. the bureaucratic structure of the state, feeding

6 Alexander M. Hicks, Thomas Janoski, and Mildred A. Schwartz

Figure 1.1. The Directions and Redirections of Political Sociology.

back, in systemslike fashion, on actors and their increasingly assesses politics in complex, even social situations (organization and society). In nested, situations. short, although beginning from some distinc- To some degree, these postmodern and ra- tive roots and moving toward a number of orig- tional choice positions lead in orthogonal or inal objectives, Alford and Friedland echo long- even opposite directions as follows: (1) with a held views in sociology and political science diffusion and deconstruction of power (and do- about how to conceptualize the social and po- mains for its explanation) associated with post- litical world (e.g., Easton, 1965; Parsons, 1969; modernism and the cultural turn and, at times, Wallerstein, 1989). emphasized in feminist orientations toward the But much has changed in the nearly twenty private sphere, and (2) with the integration of all years since they presented their work. From one social science around modes of rational action direction, the epistemology of science has been (that arguably are more psychological and eco- challenged by more contextualized and cultural nomic than sociological) associated with the ra- conceptions of politics and by less positivist (e.g., tional choice approach. These diverse and con- more realist and interpretivist) views of causal tradictory pressures are illustrated in Figure 1.1. origins. Although frequently stopping short of The cultural and feminist paths lie within so- an antiscientific “postmodernity,”a postmodern ciology but may lead to postmodern theory in influence can be seen in the emphasis on sub- anthropology and the humanities, both of which jectivity and “capillarity” (a Foucaultian term strongly emphasize culture. The rational choice for diffused and extensively networked power), approach has seeds in much of power resources a turn to structural and discursive conceptions of and political economy theory but leads outward objective culture, and a major rejection of mate- toward political science and economics. In many rialist and other determinisms. From the direc- ways, both theories lay claim to institutional tion of economics and political science, rational theory. A coherent approach to political soci- choice and game theorists have influenced po- ology would strive toward the sort of rapproche- litical sociologists with an innovative stress on ment between, or even integration of, two of the rational motivation that brackets most forms theoretical orientations that Campbell and Ped- of “subjectivity” – everything beyond prefer- ersen (2001) sketch out for conflicting schools ences, information and rational calculation – and of institutional theory: “rational choice” and

Introduction: Political Sociology in the New Millennium 7

“discursive” institutionalism. These orienta- it was founded on the assumption that social tions differ greatly in their views of how univer- cleavages and interest groups shape the elec- sal or historically specific (or “local”) theories tion, legislation, and social and foreign pol- should be, with rational choice theory at one, icy outcomes of states. The theory’s concep- universalistic, pole and historical and discursive tualizations, much like those stressed by Alford theories at the other, highly particular, pole. and Friedland (1985), are tersely characterized These are at opposite ends as well in their by Adams, Clemens, and Orloff (2004) as in- views of how positivistic or interpretivist the- volving a “double reduction” of phenomena to ories should be. Yet although new theories social (and state) structure and to utilitarian from across the aisle from one’s own preferred action (the last constrained, if not prefigured, side of the universalistic/local and the posi- by structure). In case the quoted use of “reduc- tivist/interpretivist divides often are dreaded, tion” appears pejorative, we note that “reduc- Campbell and Pedersen show how institution- tion” was a respectable theoretical goal for the alists of every stripe are “finding ways to con- modernists in question and remains so to the nect their turf to others” (2001:273). We return many modernists (or perhaps “neomodernists”) to these distinctions when we discuss the chal- who continue in political sociology today, two lenges presented to political sociology by the decades after Alford and Friedland’s (to use a “cultural turn” and the rise of rational choice literary trope) “high modernist” work. theory. Adams, Clemens, and Orloff’s critique is not entirely new, having been anticipated by mi- crointeractionist theories ranging from symbolic The First Challenge: Culture interactionism and ethnomethodology in the (and Postmodernity) United States (e.g., Herbert Blumer, Howard Garfinkel, Anselm Strauss, and Erving Goffman) From the perspective of the new cultural soci- to hermeneutics, phenomenology, and histori- ology, the theory that had dominated sociology cism in Europe (e.g., Edmund Husserl, Al- following World War II was modern in epis- fred Schutz, Paul Ricouer, and Hans-Georg temology (objectivist and scientific) and mod- Gadamer). As described by Stephen Pepper ern in politics (a creature of industrial society).4 (1972), the epistemological basis for this new Epistemologically, it was marked by an antitra- contextualism lies in the meaning created in ditionalist and antireductionist skepticism that small contexts, with its strands dissipating as preceded the postmodern skepticism toward sci- it moves beyond the originating context to entific objectivity certainty yet remained ob- other situations. Such contextualism is com- jectivist (or “realist”) and scientific. Politically, monplace within the more encompassing ori- entation toward social reality sometimes termed 4 The “modernist political sociology” presented by Alford and Friedland articulates not merely a scientifi- interpretivist (Steinmetz, 1999). By and large, cally ambitious concatenation of accounts of theories of the postmodernists, feminists, and race/ethnic the state – that is, of state, state and society, state and social constructionists may be termed interpre- economy, state in capitalist society, and the like – it con- tivists. However, as we shall see, we believe that veys an ontology appropriate to the scientific sociological interpretivism leaves social scientists in need of study of states. The Powers of Theory world is one of action and structure, structure and function, and function an epistemological midpoint between such an- and process, where structures are presumed to be like timonies as explanatory theory and orienting the social relational structure articulated by Peter Blau framework; and between covering law explana- (1964) or Erik Olin Wright (2002, 1997) but not like tion and contextually specific interpretation. the symbolic structures described by Mary Douglas and The path to the assimilation of culture into Baron Isherwoood (1979) or William Sewell, Jr. (1980, 1985, 1992, 1994). And it is from this latter direction political sociology has been a lengthy one. In the that the first major challenge to political sociology has 1950s and 1960s, political sociology focused on come. power structure research and pluralism and on

8 Alexander M. Hicks, Thomas Janoski, and Mildred A. Schwartz

value consensus and functionalist equilibrium. the previously mentioned neo-Marxist practi- Political culture was often viewed in what has tioners of cultural political analysis. come to be known as “essentialist” national- Despite Weber’s dynamic account of capi- ist terms, which left most cultural variability as talism and Thompson’s nuanced view of the a distinction between nations. Gabriel Almond working class, prevailing approaches to polit- and Sydney Verba set the tone of early cultural ical culture were severely criticized for their studies with The Civic Culture (1963), in which static nature and for their stereotyping of en- they examined the cultural constants affecting tire peoples (e.g., Almond and Verba, 1963). political participation in five nations. Laboring Culture itself became infused with a fixity that long in the gardens of political culture, Ronald clearly overgeneralized. Although Weber and Inglehart presaged some aspects of postmoder- Thompson had shown one way out of this bind, nity through his studies of postmaterialist values cultural studies did not really emerge as a force (1990, 1997). Murray J. Edelman (1964) took until it embraced a vibrant intellectual commu- an early look at symbolic culture from an inter- nity relatively isolated from the kind of social pretivist perspective unusual for American so- science practiced in the Anglo-American world, cial scientists during the first post–World War II namely the French poststructuralist community decades. of Michel Foucault, Frederik Barth, Roland Under the aegis of neo-Marxist concerns Barthes, and (in some ways) Raymond Boudon with capitalism and the rise of the working class, and Pierre Bourdieu, plus such postmodernists various scholars did cultural research in politi- as Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Jacques cal sociology. Edward P. Thompson probed the Lacan, and Jean-Francois Lyotard. meaning of religion and craft in The Making of Foucault removed the critical aspect of de- the English Working Class (1966) and helped cre- terminism from his theories by talking about ate a “social history” movement that explored “what was possible” in various social contexts the meaning of everyday life under the shadow between groups and people with varying levels of capitalism. Basil Bernstein (1975), Raymond of power/knowledge. This changed the analyst’s Williams (1973, 1977), and Garth Stedman- viewpoint toward culture as something of an Jones (1983) examined how language and sym- epiphenomenon of industrialization to one that bols in a social context affected socialization, perceived cultural processes to cause material learning, and action. Later in the 1970s and outcomes or even to supplant the “social as 1980s, much of the upsurge in critical theory material” with the “social as text.” This ap- was oriented toward advertising, gender, the proach allowed the static theories of culture to media, and culture in general. become dynamic and the secondary nature of An important precursor to all of this was culture under capitalism to become primary. Weber’s (1922, 1930) cultural work on reli- It also declared as essentialist both the predic- gion. Weber argued that capitalism was created tions about revolution and the leadership role through the religious insecurities of a band of of the working class in Marxist theory and the religious heretics “irrationally” believing in pre- social scientific laws and generalizations about destination.5 Weber, working largely within the the inevitability of progress or economic devel- German tradition of the “cultural” or “human opment. sciences” (e.g., Dilthey, 1989) and influenced by For many advocates of the cultural turn, Friedrich Nietzche (Turner, 1992: chapter 10), claims for culture’s broad relevance to the con- can be interpreted as equally as antipositivist as stitution and explanation of social reality come laden with epistemological and methodological implications. For them, social reality is 5 The Weberian framework of social action utilizes evanescent – frequently changing and subject four types of rationality – instrumental, practical, sub- jective, and theoretical – but it also recognizes traditional to unpredictable change – as well as geograph- and emotional action as equal components ( Janoski, ically heterogeneous. If culture as a pervasive 1998; Kalberg, 1980). source and constituent of social institutions

Introduction: Political Sociology in the New Millennium 9

is thus impermanent and heterogeneous, then restricted space, confined mainly to the Soviet such cultural volatility undermines the degree era. Not only does much of the pre-Soviet era of social stability needed for the sort of sta- lack “worker” as its revolutionary actor or “so- ble and homogenous domains required for valid cialist revolution” as its dominant revolutionary “universal” theorizing (Adams, Clemens, and project, the Soviet era of class revolutions ends Orloff, 2004; Steinmetz, 1998, 1999). with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, which vi- Culturally induced social-theoretical instabil- tiates the socialist revolutionary vision. In other ity raises some disturbing questions. What if words, theoretical domains can be hemmed in cogent causal regularities, and thus robust the- by history and its cultural infrastructure (Good- oretical domains, are not only institutionally win and Jasper, 1999), leaving them at risk of conditioned, as is typically assumed for middle- sudden and unpredictable terminations beyond range theories? What if institutions themselves which new theory is needed.7 have an irreducibly cultural aspect, as in William If in natural science the history of concepts Sewell’s (1992) Janus-faced view of institution and theories tends to play catch-up with real- and social structure?6 Then class groupings and ity, in social science the histories of scientific actions would be contingent on workers’ own sign and social referent rush forward on separate historically contingent conceptions of them- tracks running in rough tandem. In this latter selves and their labor. case they do so as new social phenomena enter What if the political movements of even class- the world, requiring new concepts and opening conscious workers are dependent on work- the door to new theoretical domains (Somers, ers’ conceptions of the movements in which 1995). True, the challenge of such volatility they participate? Here one outcome is de- may be manageable. Historical and institutional scribed by Nader Sohrabi (1995, 2002), for specificity may, at times, only call for carefully whom revolutionaries in the early twentieth constructed middle-range theoretical domains century (e.g., the Russian of 1905, the Iranian (Paige, 1999), a move anticipated by Merton “Constitutionalist” insurrectionaries of 1906, (1968:39–72). It may merely require the kind of and the Young Turks of 1908) enacted a con- attention to statistical interactions that now per- stitutionalist/parliamentary paradigm of politi- meates institutionally sensitive macro studies of cal revolution while themselves members of the politics (e.g., Esping-Andersen, 1993; Garrett, paradigm’s ecumenical, and by no means sim- 1998; Goodwin, 2001; Pampel and Williamson, ply class, variety of revolutionary coalition. If 1989; Steinmetz, 1993; Swank, 2002). Yet, as workers did not enact socialist revolutions as Janoski and Hicks (1994:10–12) indicate, there members of class, or even cross-class, projects, are times when an explanatory domain may be then the universalizing aspirations of class theo- quite specific, even to a particular nation in a ries to theorize politics for the entire industrial particular era. The degree to which a theoreti- age contracts into a relatively small, culturally cal domain is temporally and spatially localized must be evaluated through the lens of history 6 Moreover, the resulting variance in social regular- (Goodwin, 2001:293–306). ities across time and place appears more perturbed by The cultural turn and the uses of culture cultural volatility if one is a realist who sees social phe- in political sociology come in close associa- nomena as “over determined” (e.g., Steinmetz, 1998). tion with other new directions in sociology, for The same hypervariability reigns for an interpretivist, who will tend to see any given account of social (or regularity) as an artifact of the interpretive scheme in 7 This is not simply a state of affairs unique to a use and who will tend to see the scheme as bracketting few theoretical entities. For example, what appears to the favored foci of other schema (e.g., Steinmetz, 2003). be a quite general “interest group” in one theory may As advocates of the cultural turn have long been and turn out to be a local creation of Progressive Era poli- increasingly are realist, interpretivist, or both (Adams, tics (Clemens, 1997), and the truths about Finanzkapital Orloff, and Clemens, 2004), skepticism toward theoret- (Hilferding, 1981[1910]; Lenin, 1933[1916]) may turn ical universalism in the sense of causal regularities invari- out to be local and transient German truths (Hicks, 1988; ant across wide swaths of time and space is especially rife. Zysman, 1984).

10 Alexander M. Hicks, Thomas Janoski, and Mildred A. Schwartz

example the feminist one (e.g., Adams, 1999; articulations establish the mechanisms by which Orloff, 1993). Feminist thought may not only entirely new cultural formations are created: the add new variables, unsettling old theories and selection of new ideas by actors (Protestant min- investigations (e.g., Orloff, 1993), it may also in- isters, philosophes, or labor organizers) who use troduce new cultural dimensions to the analysis specific behavioral scripts to create figural ac- of power with all their potential complications tors (i.e., narrative heroes or heroines of the pil- (Adams, 2003; Misra, 2003). grim, freethinker, or worker) of new ideolo- In short, many participants in the cultural gies and the different institutional carriers of turn – for example, postmodernists, feminists, these ideas (1989:5–18). Wuthnow goes on to and race/ethic social constructionists – may be explain these three ideologies appearing on the regarded as interpretivists, who view theoretical Western stage: the Reformation ( joining the domains as local and evanescent because of the pious in church, as guided from the pulpit, operation of culture (Goodwin and Jasper, 1999). in direct communion with God), the Enlight- This elaborates our earlier claim that participants enment (rational, secular intellectuals based in in the cultural turn need, if their advance is to royal courts and later in bourgeois salons), and strike a healthy balance, to find an epistemo- Socialism (as a party and labor union project logical midpoint between positivist universal- mobilizing employees for revolution and the fu- ism and interpretivist historical and institutional ture leadership of society). Wuthnow’s focus is specificity. The cultural turn directs political so- on ideologies as ideas that promote momentous ciologists down a slippery slope from positivis- change, much as we see in Weber’s (1930) con- tic universalism, through increasing degrees of sideration of the Protestant ethic in promotion institutional and historical specification of theo- of capitalism, Philip Gorski’s (1999, 2003) ex- retical domains, into a realm where theory serves amination of religious pietism in the formation not so much to capture social regularities as of the bureaucratic disciplinary state in Prussia, to regulate the interpretation of unique events. and Steinmetz’s (2003) account of “pre-colonial In our view, middle-range theory provides the ethnographic discourse” in the construction of missing midpoint. Of course, the objects of Wilhemine colonial governance. some quests for theoretical understanding may For a second approach, fusing postmodern prove elusive, receding from the general to and Marxist theory, Ernesto Laclau and Chan- the particular. However, we think sociologists tal Mouffe (1985) present a skeptical two-stage should strive to resist the pull of cultural theo- theory that avoids essentialism by proposing a rizing into particularism. Our methodological pluralist governing scenario and a leftist strat- injunction should be, with due institutional and egy within it. Their politics embody a radical historical alertness, to find the interaction that plural democracy that accepts liberal democ- clarifies the order that lies beneath what at first racy to the extent that the left extends and appears to be confusingly heterogeneous pro- deepens the principles inherent in it (Mouffe, cesses, never to lightly abdicate the search for 1992). Liberal democracy is seen as a contradic- explanatory empirical patterns (Paige, 1999). tion between libertarian norms of unrestricted As one of three different approaches to the rights and communitarian norms of cooperation new cultural sociology, Robert Wuthnow’s (Mouffe, 1993; Torfing, 1999:249–52). From Communities of Discourse (1989) provides an ex- this tension emerges an “agonistic democracy” planation for major political changes. He ex- that gives political space for varied and even amines environmental conditions, institutional contradictory political strategies that allow for contexts, and action sequences to demonstrate a wide diversity of viewpoints without striving how ideologies of change are produced and how for an ultimate utopia (Mouffe, 1993:4, 1996; subsets of these are then selected for institu- Torfing, 1999:255). tionalization into roles of world-historic im- A third approach is supplied by feminist ana- portance. The “performativity” of such cultural lysts of politics who have challenged much that