Epistemological lacunae in conceptualising political structure: a solution from field theory

Abstract

ABSTRACTThree schools of thought – focusing on the party system, political elite networks, and political institutions, respectively – have dominated previous discussions of political structure. In this article, I show that these perspectives share the common weakness of failing to take into account political actors’ points of view on the meaning of politics, making them incapable of explaining the reproduction or the transformation of political structures. The main epistemological insight of Bourdieu’s field theory is that the notion of social structure must be developed by taking into account the viewpoint of field actors competing with each other to define the true meaning of membership in their field. I argue that adopting this insight in the study of politics makes it possible to simultaneously account for both the everyday reproduction of political structure and the potential for its radical transformation.