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From the Sociology of Politics to Political Sociology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Giovanni Sartori
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THE PHRASE ‘SOCIOLOGY OF POLITICS’ UNMISTAKABLY INDICATES A sub-field, a subdivision of the overall field of sociology – like sociology of religion, sociology of leisure and the like. By saying sociology of politics we make clear that the framework, the approach or the focus of the inquiry is sociological.

The phrase ‘political sociology’ is, on the other hand, unclear. It may be used as a synonym for ‘sociology of politics’, but it may not. When saying political sociology the focus or the approach of the inquiry generally remains unspecified. Since political phenomena are a concern for many disciplines, this ambiguity turns out to be a serious drawback. This is particularly apparent in Europe, where many scholars share Maurice Duverger's view that ‘in a general way the two labels (political sociology and political science) are synonymous’. This view is very convenient, is particularly successful among European sociologists eager to expand to the detriment of political scientists, and for this very reason goes a long way towards explaining the persistent lag of political science in Europe.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1969 , pp. 195 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1969

References

1 Sociologie Politique, Paris, Presses Universitaires, 2nd ed., 1967, p. 24. Duverger has been expounding this view for the last 20 years. Already in his Political Parties (1951) one finds that the laws concerning the influence of electoral systems – indeed the most manipulative instrument of politics – are presented as an instance of ‘sociological laws’.

2 For instance it enables Duverger to publish the same volume (with irrelevant variations) under two different titles, Méthodes de la Science Politique, in 1954, and Méthodes des Sciences Sociales, in 1959.

3 See Smelser, Neil J., ‘Sociology and the other Social Sciences’, in Lazarsfeld, P. F. et al., eds., The Uses of Sociology, New York, Basic Books, 1967, p. 11 Google Scholar. This section is largely indebted to the analytical clarity of Smelser’s presentation.

4 Smelser, loc. cit., p. 15.

5 Loc. cit., p. 5. More exactly, the criteria proposed by Smelser are four: dependent variables, independent variables, logical ordering (cause-effect relationships, models, and theoretical framework), research methods.

6 Smelser, lot. cit., p. 12.

7 This is by no means an original demarcation. Bendix and Lipset make the same point (in less technical fashion) by saying that ‘political science starts with the state and examines how it affects society, while political sociology starts with society and examines how it affects the state’. ‘(Political Sociology: An Essay and Bibliography’, in Current Sociology, vol. VI, Unesco, Paris, 1957, N. 2, p. 87).

8 This is the felicitous wording of Heinz Eulau, The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics, New York, Random House, 1963.

9 Nisbet, R. A., The Sociological Tradition, New York: Basic Books, 1966, pp. 4–6 Google Scholar. Society, power, and class are also mentioned as related unit-ideas.

10 I am confirmed in this judgement in spite of William C. Mitchell, Sociological Analysis and Politics: The Theories of Talcott Parsons, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1967, esp. chaps. V-VIII.

11 This is not to deny that in the last 20 years political science has largely profited from models and theories that have originated outside the field. My argument is that the more rewarding imports have not originated from sociology. The excellent collective volume edited by David Easton, Varieties of Political Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1966, is very much to the point.

12 This is Almond’s presidential address at the 1966 convention of the APS A, now in Contemporary Political Science (infra) p. 17. Actually the statement should be imputed to the comparative expansion of political science into the developing areas, not to most other segments of the discipline. It should also be noted that Almond immediately goes on to say that ‘political science is not science in general and not social science’.

13 See the recent, remarkable symposium edited by de Sola Pool, Ithiel, Contemporary Political Science—Toward Empirical Theory, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1967 Google Scholar. Charlesworth, James C. ed., Contemporary Political Analysis, Free Press, New York, 1967 Google Scholar, testifies also to this intellectual ferment.

14 Smelser, loc. cit., p. 28.

15 Lipset, Seymour M. has contributed more than any other author to this task. See: ‘Political Sociology 1945–55’, in Zetterberg, H. L. ed., Sociology in the United States, Paris, Unesco, 1965, pp. 43–55 Google Scholar; ‘Political Sociology: An Essay and Bibliography’ (together with R. Bendix) in Current Sociology, vol. VI, Paris, 1957 No. 2 ‘Political Sociology’ in Merton, R. K. et al., eds., Sociology Today, New York, Basic Books, 1959 Google Scholar; Political Man, Doubleday, Garden City, 1960, chap. I; ‘Sociology and Political Science: A Bibliographical Note’, in American Sociological Review, October 1964, pp. 730–4.

16 This is not to say that the sociologist does not have other interests, but to sort out the most distinctive concern. Other subjects, such as the problem of inner-party democracy, are of great interest to the sociologist, but are not particularly distinctive, for the political scientist is equally interested.

17 S. M. Lipset, Political Man, p. 220 (italics mine). These are the opening lines of Chapter 7.

18 I underline that this is the case in Political Man, for the emphasis is very different in Lipset’s later writings, as indicated infra, pp. xxx and note 33.

19 Political Man, p. 221 and 223–4.

20 ‘Political Sociology: An Essay and Bibliography,’ in Current Sociology, cit., p. 80.

21 Alford, R. R., in Lipset and Rokkan eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments, Free Press, New York, 1967, p. 69 Google Scholar. I am not discussing, however, a particular author; the quotations are merely for the sake of illustration.

22 Olson, Mancur Jr, The Logic of Collective Action—Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1965, p. 2 Google Scholar et passim. The italics are in the original.

23 For a summary overview of the technical complexity of the concept, see e. g. my article ‘Representational Systems’ in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, New York, Macmillan-Free Press, vol. 13, pp. 465–74.

24 The specification is necessary because in his more circumstantial writings -especially historical essays or occasional pamphlets, such as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte—Marx is more concerned with empirical details. But the Weltanscbauung of Marx refers us to his historical materialism, or his dialectical materialism, which is outlined in his philosophical writings. In my opinion, the best introduction to the understanding of the philosophy of Marx remains Karl Löwith, Von Hegel bis Nietzsche, Europa Verlag, Zürich, 1940.

25 This is to remind one of the patent derivation of Marx from Hegel’s Phänomenologie ties Geistes, and particularly from the ‘dialectics between master and slave’ (Section A, chap. 4). A classic analysis is Kojève, Alexandre, Introduction à la Lecture de Hegel – Leçons sur la Phénomenologie de l’Esprit, Gallimafd, Paris, 1947 Google Scholar.

26 La Lutte de Classes, Gallimard, Paris, 1964, p. 87.

27 Two sections of the original text are here omitted, ‘Class Voting’ and ‘The Hypothesis Reversed’.

28 Op. cit., pp. 1–64. As the editors of the volume indicate, their introductory chapter ‘was undertaken after most of the articles were completed’ (p. xii). Therefore, in spite of other magnificent chapters (e. g. the two chapters by Juan Linz, or the one by Allardt and Pesonen on Finland) the Lipset-Rokkan introduction stands alone. The assertion that ‘the introduction represents an effort to synthesize the knowledge… presented by the chapter authors’ testifies more than anything else to the modesty of the authors.

29 In Dahl, R. A., ed., Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1966, p. 378 Google Scholar.

30 In Current Sociology, cit., p. 85 and 83.

31 See Party Systems and Voter Alignments, esp. pp. 26–33.

32 Ibid. p. 3. The authors draw the inference that ‘parties themselves might… produce their own alignments independently’. But the suggestion is not really followed up.

33 With Lipset this evolution is already very evident if one compares Political Man with The First New Nation, Basic Books, New York, 1963; Anchor Books ed., Doubleday, Garden City, 1967. In the 1963 volume, Lipset writes that while ‘sociologists tend to see party cleavages as reflections of an underlying structure’, thereby putting forward an image of social systems ‘at odds with the view of many political scientists… An examination of comparative politics suggests that the political scientists are right, in that electoral laws determine the nature of the party system as much as any other structural variable’ (pp. 335–6, 1967 ed).

34 Party Systems and Voter Alignments, p. 26.

35 Ibid. p. 2.

36 Ibid. p. 50.

37 This notion of ‘structural consolidation’, as well as the focus on party systems qua‘channelling systems’, is clarified in my volume, Parties and Party Systems (Harper and Row, forthcoming). See also my article ‘Political Development and Political Engineering’, in Public Policy, vol. XVII, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1968, pp. 261 ff.

38 It seems to me, therefore, that Lipset and Rokkan evade the problem when they conclude the discussion on the ‘freezing of political alternatives’ by saying that ‘to understand the current alignments… it is not enough to analyse… the contemporary sociocultural structure; it is even more important to go back to the initial formation of party alternatives…’ (p. 54). The argument goes around in circles by missing the limits of historical explanations.

39 As Spiro forcibly puts it, the theories that require first development of the substantive substructure, and then assume that politics will be a reflection, ‘reverse the actual sequence of events. In virtually every historical instance, substantive change in economy, society, culture, or elsewhere was brought about by political action’. ( Spiro, Herbert J., in Africa, The Primacy of Politics, Random House, New York, 1966, p. 152 Google Scholar).

40 Converse, Philip E., ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’ in Apter, D. E. (ed.), Ideology and Discontent, Free Press of Glencoe, 1964, p. 260 Google Scholar, note 44.

41 This is, for example, the criticism leveled against the concern of the authors of The American Voter with the ‘perception’ of conflict. Among others, Alford argues that this ‘subjective’ concern only affects ‘short range change’. ( Alford, Robert R., Party and Society, The Anglo-American Democracies, Chicago, 1963, p. 87 Google Scholar).

42 In his already cited Encyclopedia article Janowitz holds that along with the stratification approach there has always been an ‘institutional approach’ to political sociology stemming from the influence of Weber, in which ‘political institutions emerge as… independent sources of societal change’. (Vol. XXI, p. 299). Without denying the influence of Weber, I would rather say that it counteracts on a more sophisticated level the influence of Marx, hardly that the ‘institutional approach’ belongs to the inner logic of development of the sociological focus.

43 Glazer, Nathan, ‘The Ideological Uses of Sociology’, in The Uses of Sociology, op. cif., P. 75 Google Scholar.

44 In Current Sociology, cit., p. 87.