Political Sociology - The State of the Art

The book traces the disciplinary development of political sociology and the transdisciplinary research into the overlapping issues involving politics and society. The contributions cover overviews of the history, methodological and theoretical development of this academic discipline. Successes as well as failures in past, unexplored areas and salient issues in ongoing research are also highlighted.

In an age where once unchallenged forms of state authority are coming again under strain from the pressure of globalization, subnationalism and the still unresolved duality of religious and secular authority, the relationships between social and the political phenomena are of great importance. These relationships between politics and society have been at the heart of the issues into which political sociology inquires. In this volume a group of researchers, drawn from the disciplines of political science and sociology, adresses some of the most salient topics in political sociology, such as the role of culture in politics, the changing role of parties and other political organizations, different approaches to studying the state and its relationship to changing societies, as well as the role of elites and classes in the development of modern democracies. It also offers an overview of the history of political sociology as a discipline, its main themes and an assessment of its strengths, weaknesses and possible innovations and the scope for improvements in the models and methods in future research.

From the Contents:

Introduction: Taking Stock of Political Sociology - Subrata K. Mitra and Malte Pehl

Political Culture at a Crossroads? - Dirk Berg-Schlosser

Parties, Interest Groups and Social Movements: Shall Change be Midwife to Truth? - Kay Lawson

    and Mildred Schwartz

Socio-Political Inequalities: Elites, Classes and Democracy - Eva Etzioni-Halevy

Contemporary Approaches to the Study of the State - Prakash Sarangi

Political Sociology: Old Concerns and New Directions - Jan van Deth

The editors.

Subrata K. Mitra (Ph.D., Rochester), Professor of Political Science, University of  Heidelberg, Germany

Malte Pehl is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the College of Charleston. Previously he was a a Visiting Instructor at the College of Wooster (Ohio), Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy of the University of California (Irvine) and at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (Delhi).

Clemens Spiess (Dr. rer. pol.), Lecturer, University of Heidelberg, Germany