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17/02/2012 05:55:51 μμ

Political sociology

Political sociology broadly conceived is the study of power and domination in social relationships. It could thereby include analysis of the family, the mass media, universities, trade unions, and so on.

Three main approaches to political sociology have considerably narrowed its subject area. The first builds directly on Max Weber's notion of ‘politically oriented action’. Weber defined an organization as ‘political’ in so far as its existence and order is continuously safeguarded within a territorial area by the threat and application of physical force on the part of an administrative staff .

In the late 1960s under the influence of Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan a second main approach to political sociology was developed. The subdiscipline now encompassed the comparative and historical study of political systems and nation-building. By analysing the role of political institutions in social development (and revolution) this branch of political sociology has contributed to the comparative analysis of welfare systems, to studies of the relationship between democracy and industrialization, and to charting the role of the state in the creation of national identity. The third focus of modern political sociology is on theories of the state, and here the subdiscipline draws particularly on currents in Western Marxism and contemporary political theory. Building on the Marxist critique of pluralist approaches to the state, political sociologists have focused on the problem of state/society relations and developed detailed empirical studies of the exercise of power both within and between states.

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