Corporatism: A Growth Industry Reaches the Monopoly Stage

1988 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 813-818 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Panitch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Structural Differentiation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Capital ◽  
Growth Industry

At the end of the 1970s, the corporatism growth industry in political science passed from its competitive stage (articles in journals) to its organized stage (articles collected in books). In the founding text of the new stage, Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation, Philippe Schmitter explained that corporatism was not itself a theory capable of generating explanations and predictions. Rather, it was a phenomenon that had to be theorized within one of the major competing paradigms of social structure and social change, which he identified as those associated with Durkheimian and Parsonian “structural differentiation,” the historical materialism of Weberian and Marxist-revisionist “organized capitalism,” and the Marxist political economy tradition wherein he located the theories of the state popular at the time. Yet, it was perhaps inevitable, given the accumulation of academic capital associated with growth industries in the social sciences, that Schmitter's (and others') sound advice would be ignored and that grandiose claims would be made for corporatism as a theory in its own right.

Agency, Structure and Causality in Political Science: A Comment on Sibeon

Politics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Recent Contribution ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ontological Turn

Researchers in political science are devoting increasing attention to the ontological commitments of their theories – that is, to what those theories presuppose about the nature of the political world. This article focuses on a recent contribution to this ‘ontological turn’ in political science ( Sibeon, 1999 ). Tensions are identified in Sibeon's account of the causal interplay between agency and social structure. It is argued that these tensions can be resolved by reflecting explicitly on ontological issues, in particular the causal efficacy of social structure, using a particular approach to the philosophy of the social sciences known as critical realism. The value of such reflection for the explanatory power of political analysis is highlighted.

Back to Basics: Class, Social Theory, and Sport

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Bairner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Sociology Of Sport ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Per Se

It is relatively easy to understand why Marxism has been increasingly discredited in recent years both in the sociology of sport and in the social sciences more generally. Guilty by association with the failed attempts to construct communist societies, it has also come under attack from a variety of sources for its economic reductionism and its perceived inability to think beyond class. Even those Marxists such as Gramsci, who are invoked within the sociology of sport by exponents of cultural studies, are lauded not for their Marxism per se but rather for their (mistakenly inferred) willingness to play down the significance of political economy. This essay argues, however, that much has been lost as a result of the retreat from Marxism, and specifically, the abandonment of the belief in the ultimate determinacy of the economic realm and the importance of social class. This is not meant to imply that other sources of identity, together with the various forms of discrimination suffered by a host of different social groups, do not matter or that their materiality cannot be linked effectively to class-based analysis. One might argue, however, that the interests of those groups have been better served in recent years by academic sociologists than have the interests of the poor. With that in mind, the time has come, perhaps, for Marxist sociologists of sport to offer fewer apologies and to replace these with a more robust defense of the subtleties of historical materialism as properly understood. At the very least this means reviving the argument that our identities can best be understood in terms of economics.

A Note on “Public Policy”

1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Vaison
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Government Body

Normally in political studies the term public policy is construed to encompass the societally binding directives issued by a society's legitimate government. We usually consider government, and only government, as being able to “authoritatively allocate values.” This common conception pervades the literature on government policy-making, so much so that it is hardly questioned by students and practitioners of political science. As this note attempts to demonstrate, some re-thinking seems to be in order. For purposes of analysis in the social sciences, this conceptualization of public policy tends to obscure important realities of modern corporate society and to restrict unnecessarily the study of policy-making. Public policy is held to be public simply and solely because it originates from a duly legitimated government, which in turn is held to have the authority (within specified limits) of formulating and implementing such policy. Public policy is public then, our usual thinking goes, because it is made by a body defined somewhat arbitrarily as “public”: a government or some branch of government. All other policy-making is seen as private; it is not public (and hence to lie essentially beyond the scope of the disciplines of poliitcal science and public administration) because it is duly arrived at by non-governmental bodies. Thus policy analysts lead us to believe that public policy is made only when a government body acts to consider some subject of concern, and that other organizations are not relevant to the study of public policy.

Political Science and Public Administration: A Note on the State of the Union

1952 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 660-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roscoe C. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Russell Sage Foundation ◽  
Special Study ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
State Of The Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Original Essay ◽  
The Subject

By tradition public administration is regarded as a division of political science. Woodrow Wilson set the stage for this concept in his original essay identifying public administration as a subject worthy of special study, and spokesmen for both political science and public administration have accepted it since. Thus Leonard White, in his 1930 article on the subject in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, recognizes public administration as “a branch of the field of political science.” Luther Gulick follows suit, observing in 1937 that “Public administration is thus a division of political science ….” So generally has this word got around that it has come to the notice of the sociologists, as is indicated in a 1950 report of the Russell Sage Foundation which refers to “political science, including public administration….” “Pure” political scientists and political scientists with a public administration slant therefore are not alone in accepting this doctrine, which obviously enjoys a wide and authoritative currency.But if public administration is reckoned generally to be a child of political science, it is in some respects a strange and unnatural child; for there is a feeling among political scientists, substantial still if mayhap not so widespread as formerly, that academicians who profess public administration spend their time fooling with trifles. It was a sad day when the first professor of political science learned what a manhole cover is! On their part, those who work in public administration are likely to find themselves vaguely resentful of the lack of cordiality in the house of their youth.

Movimiento Hip Hop en Ciudad de Punta Arenas. / Hip Hop Culture in Punta Arenas

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (06) ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
Pablo Tascón España
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Current Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Root ◽  
The City

El presente estudio busca comprender bajo un enfoque naturalista cómo en un periodo denominado por autores de las Ciencias Sociales ( Bajoit, 2009; Sandoval, 2010) de “cambio cultural”, emerge el movimiento Hip Hop y su particular forma de expresión en la ciudad de Punta Arenas. La investigación tiene un objetivo central y busca interpretar la relación entre la expresión contracultural y los jóvenes que son parte de tal, como así también sus significados respecto al ser actores del mismo. La investigación pretende identificar, entonces, la lógica de acción actual de los jóvenes y a su vez dilucidar si existe relación o no con la raíz histórica del movimiento Hip Hop, es decir una expresión de disidencia en razón de la estructura social establecida y las contradicciones que afloran de la misma. The following study aims to understand under the naturalist approach how in a period called for authors of the social sciences (Bajoit, 2009; Sandoval, 2010) of “cultural change”, emerges the Hip Hop movement and its particular form of expression in the city of Punta Arenas. The research has a main objective and seeks to interpret the relation between the expression counterculture and the young people that are part of it, likewise the meaning concerning to be actors of it. The research pretends to identify the logic of current action of the youngsters and at the same time elucidate if there is a relation or not with the historical root of the movement “Hip Hop”, i.e. an expression of dissent aiming with the social structure established and the contradictions that came out from itself.

Politics, Economics, and Political Economy

1973 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-279
Author(s):  
Trevor Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Widespread Adoption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Small Measure ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Critical Literature

DISSATISFACTION WITH ESTABLISHED MODES OF SCHOLARSHIP IS A contemporary manifestation common to all the social sciences in varying degrees. In the terminology of Thomas Kuhn, which in its widespread adoption seems in no small measure to have contribted to the new waves of methodological consciousness, the prevailing ‘paradigms’, which were largely consolidated in the 1950s, are being explicitly and often vehemently challenged. A burgeoning critical literature is readily apparent throughout the social sciences and, for that matter, beyond.

Political Science as a Discipline: A Statement by the Committee on Standards of Instruction of the American Political Science Association

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Almond ◽  
Eric C. Bellquist ◽  
Joseph M. Ray ◽  
John P. Roche ◽  
Irvin Stewart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Conceptual Schemes ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Factual Data ◽  
Science Association

Political science is a basic discipline in the social sciences. Although it must necessarily maintain close scholarly association with the disciplines of history, economics, sociology, anthropology, geography, and social psychology, political science cannot be considered a part of any of these other social sciences. Political science has its own area of human experience to analyze, its own body of descriptive and factual data to gather, its own conceptual schemes to formulate and test for truth.

Area Studies and the Disciplines: A Rejoinder

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-31
Author(s):  
John W. Harbeson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

Robert Bates’ letter entitled “Area Studies and the Discipline” (American Political Science Association, Comparative Politics 1, Winter 1996, pp. 1-2) uses the occasion of the SSRC’s abolishing of area committees to announce that “within the academy, the consensus has formed that area studies has failed to generate scientific knowledge.” As someone who has done some of his most important work on African development issues, Bates deplores declining investment in area studies as a “loss to the social sciences, as well as to the academy,” at an inopportune moment, “just when our [political science] discipline is becoming equipped to handle area knowledge in a rigorous fashion.”

: Nations and Nationalism in British Political Studies

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles King
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
Methodological Eclecticism ◽  
British Study

This chapter attempts to provide a ‘reader’s guide’ to nationalism in British politics. It explores some of the major trends in the British study of nationalism and relates these to broader substantive and methodological concerns within the social sciences. The chapter focuses on most important comparative and conceptual studies of nationalism as a general political and historical phenomenon, rather than research limited to particular countries or periods. The defining features of British political studies, including a respect for methodological eclecticism and historically grounded research, have made British writers uniquely attuned to the importance of nationalism at times when many of their American colleagues dismissed it as the residuum of retarded modernization. The chapter concludes with some reflections on possible future directions for research and modest proposals for thinking about the study of nationalism and its relationship to broader debates within political science.

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