Political Sociology Research Articles

Enhancing South–South Ties: Some Effects of Educational Collaboration between Brazil and PALOP

ABSTRACT This article discusses the dialogue and circulation of scientific knowledge in the South-South context between Brazil and the African Portuguese Speaking Countries (PALOP), focusing on the Political Science and Political Sociology fields. The main questions are: What strategies have been implemented to foster educational cooperation between Brazil and African countries? How much and for whom do these policies provide educational opportunities? Methodologically, the analysis covers historical, political, and diplomatic aspects that have driven collaboration between Brazil and PALOP in education. We based our analysis on a qualitative literature review, triangulated with quantitative data from Brazilian educational policies. The main conclusion is that Brazil has played a relevant role in training PALOP professionals in recent decades through its foreign policy in the educational field, enabling an epistemic dialogue between Africa and Latin America. Therefore, educational cooperation establishes bridges connecting the Brazilian way of thinking and building Social Sciences and the scientific approaches developed in the PALOP, which can serve as an example for other countries that want to strengthen South-South knowledge production.

Decarbonization and the Capitalist State

ABSTRACTDecarbonization is the most important challenge of our time. Though quite modest, states are taking more climate action. How should we approach these efforts? Sociologists have paid less attention to decarbonization overall but frameworks in political sociology can make sense of state power and climate politics. In this review, I first discuss two sets of literature. The first extends “state‐capacity” and institutionalist frameworks. The second is based on radical and Marxist state theories. Following this, I draw from Mann's concept of “infrastructural power” which combines elements of both and can situate state power in a transnational context. Using this concept and recent literature in political economy, I discuss three infrastructures—finance, trade, and energy—and consequential ways states have altered them in recent years. These actions reveal profound geoeconomic contradictions which will undermine decarbonization. Together, this review provides a wide survey of state theories and macroscopic climate politics with the hope of spurring further discussion and debate.

Cleavage theory meets Bourdieu: studying the role of group identities in cleavage formation

Abstract In this paper, we develop a framework for studying the role of group identities in contemporary cleavage formation. Identities, we suggest, hold the key to a central conundrum of current political sociology: the fact that today’s electoral realignments appear to be rooted in the social structure of post-industrial societies, while the decline of mass organizations has dissolved traditional links between politics and social structure. Bringing cleavage theory into dialog with the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, we theorize how group identities may play an important role in stabilizing a new universalism-particularism cleavage emerging in Western Europe today. We identify two key processes of cleavage identity formation: bottom-up processes of “social closure” and top-down “classification struggles” waged by political entrepreneurs. For both processes, we review empirical findings and formulate an agenda for further research.

Conservative turn and political identity: challenges to democracy in Indonesia after presidential election 2019

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to examine the conservative shift and identity politics: challenges to democracy in Indonesia after the 2019 presidential election. In this research, the author uses a political sociology approach as a perspective in conducting the analysis. The research method in this study uses a qualitative approach by emphasizing literature review data or literature studies related to the theme in the article. The available data is used as the basis for exploration by using sentences that are connected to form phrases and qualitative analysis. It is known that in political life, ethnic identity is used as a vote banker. Meanwhile, Islamic conservatism and populism are religious forces that disrupt electoral democracy. Issues of identity politics, conservatism, and Islamic populism will continue to grow if moderate Islamic forces such as Muhammadiyah and NU do not emerge in political and religious life.

A contextual approach to decolonising IR: Interrogating knowledge production hierarchies

Abstract Although calls to decolonise International Relations (IR) have become more prominent, the endeavour becomes infinitely more complex when searching for concrete approaches to decolonise IR knowledge production. We posit that decolonising IR, a global counter-hegemonic political project to dismantle and transform dominant knowledge production practices, must be enacted according to context-specific particularities. Contexts shape practices of epistemological decolonisation, since knowledge hierarchies are enacted and experienced – and must be challenged and dismantled – differently in different sites. Yet although acknowledged as important, contexts are understudied and under-theorised. This raises several questions: how do contexts matter to IR knowledge production, in what ways, and with what effects? This article disaggregates six contexts in IR knowledge production – material, spatial, disciplinary, political, embodied, and temporal – and explores how they impact academic practices. We bring together hitherto-disparate insights into the role of contexts in knowledge production from Global IR, Political Sociology, Feminist Studies, Higher Education Studies, and Critical Geopolitics, illustrating them with empirical evidence from 30 interviews with IR scholars across a variety of countries and academic institutions. We argue that an interrogation of the inequalities produced through these contexts brings us closer towards developing concrete tools to dismantle entrenched hierarchies in IR knowledge production.

Формирование полицейско-правовой теории: анализ и оценка полицеиста В. В. Ивановского

Introduction. The article is devoted to the work of Viktor Viktorovich Ivanovsky (1854-1926), a prominent jurisprudent of the Russian Empire, specialist in police law, sociologist, whose scientific activity was closely connected with the Kazan Imperial University. The contribution of V. V. Ivanovsky to the development of police and administrative law, political sociology, the theory of local self-government, and the methodology of legal research significantly influenced the development of police law theory in Russia. However, his ideological heritage has not yet received a comprehensive analysis. Methods. Methodological principles of research – the principles of unity of theory and practice, objectivity, complexity, comprehensiveness of the study of social processes and phenomena, the unity of historical and logical – are based on dialectics, acting as a general methodology of scientific cognition. The main methodological approaches of the study were systemic and value approaches. General scientific (historical, functional) and special (formal-legal, historical-legal, comparative-legal) methods of legal research were used. The method of problem-theoretical reconstruction and interpretation of legal ideas was very important. Results. V. V. Ivanovsky has showed himself as a jurist, scientist and historiographer. He characterised the formation of police-legal theory and identified the features of ideas about the means of public administration, models of relations between state bodies and the population of Western European and domestic thinkers.He revealed the interdependence of the sciences of police and administrative law; identified the features of the origin of the dogmatics of administrative law; substantiated the need to change the principle of regulation of public relations and the transition from the rule of law to the principle of administrative law.

How practical is tactical? Political sociology, militarization, and police tactical teams in Canada

Emergency Response Teams (ERT), commonly referred to as Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) teams, are the specialized police unit responsible for mitigating violent and dangerous conflict beyond the capacity of general duty to handle effectively. Debates surrounding the application and effectiveness of ERTs in policing highlight a need to keep ERT members safe due to adequacy and occupational health and safety standards while concurrently managing the expectations of community groups. These groups include those calling for defunding or de-militarization. Explored in the current article, is a thematic analysis of popularized media to unpack the arguments that police, government officials and community activist groups make to help shift opinions on police militarization. However, we frame these media account within Bourdieusian concepts of symbolic power, habitus or field struggle to provide insight into, arguably conflicting, interpretations of police militarization.

Max Weber and Carl Schmitt on Legitimate Domination: Belief in Legitimacy or Acknowledgement of Legitimacy?

This article discusses Weber’s and Schmitt’s diverging interpretations of the legitimate bases of domination. While Weber regards the belief in legitimacy as the source of legitimate domination, Schmitt employs an existentialist interpretation by deriving legitimacy from the acknowledgement of the people. These two distinct sources are preponderant in their understandings of plebiscitary leadership. Weber derives the legitimacy of the plebiscitary leader from charismatic grounds. In contrast, Schmitt maintains that the acknowledgement of the people of the already existing order constitutes the democratic legitimacy of the plebiscitary leader. Weber’s ideal-type of charismatic domination seems to be more appositely applicable to left-wing populism, while Schmitt provides a more adequate framework to analyse right-wing populism in contemporary societies. As a result, this article argues that comparative-historical and political sociologists should take into account these distinct conceptions of legitimate domination in order to comprehend the peculiar features of legitimate government in contemporary societies.

What future for EU foresight? A critical perspective on the institutionalisation of foresight

AbstractWhat are the potential strengths and weaknesses in the current reconstruction of foresight at the EU level? In questioning foresight's institutionalisation processes from both a historical and a political sociology perspective, the article claims that charting the future is an issue of political power and that, hence, foresight's institutionalisation can never be taken for granted. More precisely, we identify two factors that determine how such process plays out. First, it depends on the definition and importance of the future according to specific contexts (war, economic or health crisis, periods of growth, etc.). Second, this changing definition intertwines with socio‐institutional structures and agents that are crucial for this institutionalisation to be sustainable. The analysis is twofold. First, we provide an overview of past international experiences of projections into the future (both foresight and forecast). Second, we illustrate how these issues may resurface and rebound within the EU’s unique power context.

Political Demography: The Political Consequences of Structural Population Change

This article surveys the growing field of political demography, which explores the political consequences of structural population change. It underscores the importance of integrating demography and political sociology research to better understand the complex and nuanced relationship between demography and political dynamics. The existing research demonstrates profound and multifaceted impacts of demographic shifts on the political landscape, with different demographic factors having distinct political consequences. Notably, population composition and distribution tend to hold greater political significance than sheer population size and growth. Furthermore, while more research is needed, the existing work suggests that the effect of structural demographic factors is neither inevitable nor without limit; rather, the political consequences of demographic change often exhibit nonlinear patterns and interact with prevailing socioeconomic and institutional contexts. As demographic shifts continue to unfold globally, political demography stands as a promising and enlightening area of research that merits further inquiry.

L’analisi scientifica del potere: il contributo della sociologia politica

The article examines the evolving field of political sociology and highlights the need for a modern reassessment in the context of rapid global changes. The aim is to distinguish the framework of political sociology from that of other social sciences such as history, law and economics. The article emphasises the importance of understanding political power and its transformations in the context of crises such as economic downturns, pandemics and geopolitical conflicts. Reflecting on the seminal theories of Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, the discussion highlights how political power, legitimacy and the interplay with other forms of power (economic, technological, etc.) shape contemporary governance. Finally, the article suggests a focus on the dynamics of political power and its legitimacy in the globalised era, noting the growing influence of technological power and the complex challenges posed by modernity.

Values: can science study them? On the history, theory and methodology of the issue

The place and role of values in scientific knowledge in general and in sociology in particular are discussed in the above paper. Values in the light of political sociology (political-ideological values) are compared with values themselves, which in the light of the sociology of knowledge appear as phenomenologically revealed initial givens. They form a core of the worldviews and worldview of each person as an individual. In the interpretation of values themselves, the author relies on his interpretation of the religious and philosophical axiology of M. Scheler. The author proves that, although all kinds of evaluativeness are subject to exclusion, “value neutrality” in social cognition is impossible in principle, therefore it is necessary to strive for its explication and articulation. The author questions the possibility of scientific-discursive knowledge of values, as well as respective attempts to study value consciousness empirically.

The genesis of the development of the category of trust and mistrust in science

The Relevance. The initial manifestations of trust were recorded in the political philosophy of Ancient Greece and Ancient China, on the basis of which thinkers determined the interconnection and interdependence of relations between government and society. Further developing in line with political sociology, trust as the principle of “fides” (“faith”) from the Roman law was conceptualized by M. Weber as an “emotional product” of a social contract, violation of the terms of which does not carry sanctions, with the exception of the loss of business reputation. The category of trust was significantly enriched during the development of sociology of the 20th – early 21st centuries, and thanks to the works of P. Sztompka and F. Fukuyama, it gained understanding of the conditions for sustainable development of society in conditions of uncertainty, in which the individual proceeds from the “credit” of confidence in the respectable behavior of another and absolute confidence in one's own actions. In recent years, a “crisis of confidence” in science as a social institution in modern society has been recorded.The problem of the research is to identify the peculiarities of understanding the category of “trust” by the classics of sociological science and their applicability in modern science.The goal of the research is to study the relationship between the dynamics of trust in Sociology in the scientific community and in science as a social institution as a whole.The methodological basis of the reseearch is a systematic approach and general methods of scientific knowledge, such as analysis, synthesis, generalization.The Research results. The classics of sociological science have enriched the motivational, value and political meanings of the concept of «trust» in modern science.

Stuart Hall's Relational Political Sociology: A Heuristic for Right-Wing Studies

Since 2016, there has been a flood of research on the US right spanning disciplines and methodologies. This article theorizes a conceptual heuristic drawn from the writing of Stuart Hall to integrate this scholarship. To make the case for what I term Hall’s political sociology, I stage a dialogue with Arlie Hochschild, whose 2016 ethnography Strangers in Their Own Land has become a classic in the literature. While both Hall and Hochschild stress the importance of documenting the affective nature of political subjectivities, Hochschild’s investment in a politics of reconciliation prevents her from scaling analysis up to political elites, a move that would enable her to better contextualize her findings. Hall offers a model for such an approach, as he connects political subjectivities to acts of articulation; these acts to hegemonic projects; and the impact of such projects to the conjuncture. I stylize Hall’s four-step conceptual frame as a relational cycle because it reconnects the historicizing work of conjunctural analysis to the felt experience of individual subjectivities. Beyond outlining Hall’s political sociology, I illustrate how its use as a heuristic can integrate recent research on the US right. This scheme corrects for an analytic shortcoming driven by Hochschild’s politics of reconciliation, namely a view that political progress will emerge from small-scale, cross-partisan dialogue. Though Hall offers no easy answers to the political questions of our time, his relational political sociology provides a tool for interlacing the research we have, thus rendering the massive challenges of the moment visible in all their detail.

Method for an historical political sociology of religion

Method for an historical political sociology of religion

Fighting over nation or state: States, communal demography, and the type of ethnic civil war

AbstractWe recognise nationalist and centre‐seeking ethnic civil wars as distinct types of conflict and draw on key ideas from political sociology to make hypotheses about the causes of each. First, we argue that the character of states shapes antistate actors in ways that channel ethnic conflict in different ways, with pluralist states promoting nationalist warfare but integrative states contributing to centre‐seeking civil war. Second, we propose that the relative power of communities affects the type of ethnic civil war, arguing that centre‐seeking civil war is most common in situations of communal multipolarity whereas nationalist civil war is concentrated in regions with asymmetric power relations. And because historical statehood promotes elements of pluralist states and asymmetric communal power relations, we hypothesise that the risk of nationalist civil war is high in places with large and longstanding states. To test these hypotheses, we use ethnic fractionalisation to measure configurations of communal power and the state antiquity index to measure level of historical statehood, create a variable measuring the extent to which colonial states were pluralist, and run panel analyses of the odds of civil war onset. With one possible exception, the findings support our hypotheses.

Os Procuradores-Gerais do Ministério Público

Based on the historical look and the political sociology analytic tools, this text aims to discuss the establishment of rules for occupying the highest position in the hierarchy of the state Public Prosecutor’s Office: the position of Attorney General. By analyzing the trajectory of those who held this position from 1891 to after 1988, it was possible to understand the changes in the official and non-official rules regarding the morphological transformation of nominees. The study of 33 cases reveals the political and social tensions surrounding the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s high hierarchy until the 21st century

Penal state power in Latin America: Cases, concepts and questions for the political sociology of penality

AbstractExamining penality across different regions and periods of time allows us to develop both a robust empirical imaginary and conceptual understanding of the commonalities and variation in how penal state power operates. In this article I elaborate key dimensions of penality in contemporary Latin America. Since the late 20th century, Latin American countries have undergone economic and political transformations with profound effects for the organization of their societies and the features and implications of penal state power. First, I situate research on penal state practices in Latin American countries within the broader dynamics of violence and social conflict across the region. Second, I review scholarship on the relationship between the features of penal state policies and reform in the region and the transformative, procedural and cultural dimensions of democracy. Third, I describe initiatives to expand state capacities to incarcerate criminalized people at an unprecedented scale and clarify the relationship of carceral administration to social order and political legitimacy across Latin America. I then conclude by elaborating how penality in Latin America contributes to our broader understanding of the relationship between penal power, state authority, and inequality; and I highlight three lines of inquiry for future research.

The Companion: A Hospital Autoethnography on the Relationship Between Informal and Formal Institutions

The article is an analytical autoethnography that explores the author’s experience of navigating the Turkish healthcare system while caring for his father who underwent emergency bypass surgery. Their atypical positions, at once members of a privileged group but lacking extensive familial connections, helped bring to light the diverse range of tactics that patients use to navigate the hospital, despite reforms that tried to establish greater universalism. By highlighting the relationship between formal institutions and informal practices in the healthcare system and how they survive to include/exclude different status groups, the author’s micro-level observations and background in political sociology help reveal the complex impact that non-universalistic practices have on democratization and political change in Turkey and beyond.

Концепция О. Шпенглера в ракурсе социологии культуры и политики. Часть 2. «Пруссачество и социализм» и коренной перелом

в статье рассматриваются концепция зрелого О. Шпенглера в ракурсе социологии культуры и политики, изучаемая вплоть до публикации второго тома его нашумевшей работы – «Закат Европы». Анализ социально-политических и социокультурных идей и озарений мыслителя опирался на методы: сравнительно-исторический, компаративистский, структурно-функциональный, системный, культур-социологический, историко-социологический методы. Речь в статье идет о формировании Шпенглера как аналитика в социально-политическом и социокультурных аспектах, дополняющих и определяющих друг друга, коренном переломе в концепции рассмотрения судеб фаустовской культуры, рассмотрения причин краха германской империи, трактовок понятий «истинного» и «неистинного социализма», пруссачества, оригинальном воплощении «воли к власти» в техническом, аксиологическом, литературном и этическом измерении, своеобразной интерпретации социологии цивилизации, националистической модели прусского государственного социализма с опорой на харизматического правителя, пользующуюся советами харизматического историка, критика марксизма как манчестерской школы социальной мысли и неистинного социализма. Выявлено – после создания первого тома «Заката Европы» Шпенглер совершает переворот в своих представлениях о цивилизационном упадке фаустовской культуры, предлагая рецепты по ее спасению и реанимации в духе немецкого консерватизма и национализма, обращаясь в труде «Пруссачество и социализм» не только к интеллектуалам, но и к широким массам, используя сомнительные термины, типа «германская раса», выводимые из духовно-космического единства, которые с позиций биологизма интерпретировали нацисты, взяв на вооружение шпенглеровский язык и риторику, а автор предвосхищал истоки пассионарной идеи Л.Н. Гумилева в период популярности идей космизма в российской и западной мысли (А.Л. Чижевский, К. Э. Циолковский, П. Тейяр Де Шарден). В данной работе националист победил социального мыслителя. Но аргументация мыслителя непоследовательна. Термины социализм и империализм выступили практически синонимами, в первом томе «Заката Европы» политика и культура взаимодополняют друг друга, то в «Пруссачестве и социализм» они уже друг другу противопоставлены. Шпенглеровское видение политики как тотального, по сути, является самой цивилизацией и ее проявлением, со всем набором в духе антигуманизма и жаждой власти как господства над пространствами наперекор укорененности во времени. Техника, превращающая, наперекор Марксу, рабочего в свободную личность и сама есть плоть от плоти часть той цивилизации, против которой в своей концепции выступает консерватор О. Шпенглер, поневоле оказавшийся у истоков идей технологического детерминизма в социологии. the article deals with the concept of the mature O. Spengler in the perspective of sociology of culture and politics, studied up to the publication of the second volume of his sensational work "The Decline of Europe". The analysis of socio-political and socio-cultural ideas and insights of the thinker was based on the following methods: comparative-historical, comparativist, structural-functional, systemic, cultural-sociological, historical-sociological methods. The article deals with the formation of Spengler as an analyst in socio-political and socio-cultural aspects, complementing and defining each other, a radical break in the concept of considering the fate of Faustian culture, consideration of the causes of the collapse of the German Empire, interpretations of the concepts of "true" and "non-true socialism", Prussianism, the original embodiment of the "will to power" in technical, axiological, literary and ethical dimensions, a peculiar interpretation of the sociology of civilization, a nationalist model of Prussian state socialism with reliance on a charismatic ruler taking the advice of a charismatic historian, a critique of Marxism as the Manchester school of social thought and non-true socialism. It is revealed - after the creation of the first volume of "The Decline of Europe" Spengler makes a revolution in his ideas about the civilizational decline of Faustian culture, offering recipes for its salvation and resuscitation in the spirit of German conservatism and nationalism, addressing in the work "Prussianism and Socialism" not only to intellectuals, but also to the broad masses, using dubious terms such as "German race", derived from the spiritual-cosmic unity, which were interpreted by the Nazis from the position of biologism, adopting Spenglerian language and rhetoric, while the author anticipated the origins of the passionary idea of L.N. Gumilev in the period of popularization. N. Gumilev during the period of popularity of cosmism ideas in Russian and Western thought (A.L. Chizhevsky, K.E. Tsiolkovsky, P. Teilhard De Chardin). In this paper, the nationalist defeated the social thinker. But the thinker's argumentation is inconsistent. The terms socialism and imperialism became almost synonymous, in the first volume of "The Decline of Europe" politics and culture complement each other, then in "Prussianism and Socialism" they are already opposed to each other. Spengler's vision of politics as total is, in fact, civilization itself and its manifestation, with the whole set in the spirit of anti-humanism and the lust for power as domination over spaces against rootedness in time. Technics, which, contrary to Marx, transforms the worker into a free individual, is itself a flesh-and-blood part of that civilization, against which the conservative O. Spengler, who unwittingly found himself at the origin of the ideas of technological determinism in sociology, opposes in his concept.