Power, Politics and the State

Abstract

This chapter aims to show how political sociology focuses on power in society and on the relationship between state power and social groups. It examines how sociologists, not surprisingly, have traditionally adopted society-centred (and often class-centred) approaches in their analyses of power. But it also emphasises how, more recently, many sociologists have recognised the need to go beyond such analyses: firstly, to give greater attention to the state and state power by taking the state more seriously as an independent source of power and change; secondly, to recognise the diversity and complexity of power relations, political identities and bases of political action; and thirdly, to consider power relations and political processes beyond the nation-state, in the light of processes of globalisation and transnational politics and economics.