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From The Sociology of Politics To Political Sociology
From The Sociology of Politics To Political Sociology
64, on 25 Mar 2022 at 05:45:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
Giovanni Sartori
THE ISSUE
THEPHRASE ‘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 synony-
This view is very convenient,2 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. None-
theless the view that political sociology and political science largely
coincide hardly applies after the time of Michels and Pareto.
One may complain about excessive compartmentalization among
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the social sciences, but it can hardly be denied that the scientific
progress of the social sciences follows from their proliferation and
specialization. The reason for this is fairly obvious. To borrow from
Smelser’s perceptive analysis, the initial picture in the study of man
is one of an enormous multiplicip of conditions, a compounding of their
influence, and an indeterminag regarding the effect of any one con-
dition or several conditions in c~mbination.~ The scientific picture
is, instead, a picture in which ‘givens’, variables and parameters
achieve some order in this bewildering maze.
Givens are Muse factors which are left in a twilight zone under a
variety of assumptions : the coeteri3parib.w clause, i.e. that the givens
are constant; that the givens are implicitly incorporated in the
formulation of the problem at hand; and that, in any case, g’ivens
exert a ‘distal‘, not a proximate influence. In practice this is the basis
of the division of labour among the social sciences. Whatever is a
‘problem’ for one discipline becomes a ‘given’, an external factor, for
the neighbouring disciplines. For instance, economists assume
political structures to be given. Likewise, sociologists assume
political structures to be given. In a similar vein, political scientists
assume social structures to be given. Each discipline throws light on
a set of variables precisely because other factors are assumed to be
external, distal and equal.
Variables are factors, conditions or determinants which have been
adequately specified and isolated from one another. In practice the
scientific advance of each discipline hinges on its ability to select and
isolate a manageable set of variables. However, the identification and
selection of the relevant variables requires each discipline to make
parameters out of variables. Parameters are variables which are held
constant. The distinction is as follows : ‘Parameters are determinants
that are known or suspected to influence a dependent variable, but,
in the investigation at hand, are made or assumed not to vary.
Operative variables are conditions that are known or suspected to
influence a dependent variable and, in the investigation, are made or
allowed to vary, so that the operation of one or a few conditions may
be isolated and examined.’ *
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S. M. Lipset, Political Man, p. zzc (italics mine). These are the opening lines
of Chapter 7.
la I underline that this is the case in PoZitical Man, for the emphasis is very
different in Lipset’s later writings, as indicated infra, pp. xxx and note 3 3.
lo Political Man, p. 221 and 223-4.
2o ‘Political Sociology: An Essay and Bibliography,’ in Cttrrent Sociology, cit.,
p. 80.
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were self-evident, let me present the view that I find them obscure,
historically incorrect and scientificallyunacceptable.
The first question is: what is the assumption? Surely we are
referred, more or less implicitly, to ageneraltheoy ofpola'tics, according
to which politics is ultimately a struggle between classes pursuing
their class interests. However, this reply does not suffice to clarify the
assumption. The interest of a class can either conflict or coincide
with the interest of other classes. More technically, inter-class
relations may be zero-sum but may also be positive-sum; and,
clearly, a zero-sum class theory is radically different from a positive-
sum class theory. Yet the sociology of politics is seemingly unaware
of the distinction. As a result, we are left to wonder what the theory
of class interest and conflict is supposed to mean, and what each
author is actually trying to say.
If the general assumption remains obscure, the same conclusion
applies to a second, more specific question, namely, what is class
interest ?
Assuming that interest means economic interest, an economic-
minded orientation may be imputed to an actor without being
consciously held by the actor himself, or pursued by the actor
according to his perception of self-interest. In the first case both the
interest and the class are 'reconstructed': we are saying only that all
the people to whom the observer attributes the same economic
interest can be placed in a same categorical class. And the fantastic
distance between these 'reconstructions' and the real world of
politics hardly needs underlining. It is only in the second case, then,
that economic interests may lead to class voting, class parties and so
called class politics. If so the thesis applies to some, not all parties;
and can be applied only, historically, to the post-enfranchisement
developments of party systems.
The third, and even more crucial question, is: What do we mean
by represetztation?Once more, we are confronted with an astonishing
lack of sophistication, for it appears that representation is conceived
as a pure and simpleprojection. The argument seems to run as follows :
since individuals have a 'class position' which is reflected in their
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aa Mancur Olson Jr., Tbe Logic of Collective Action - Public Goods and the Theory
of Groups, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1965, p. z etpassim. 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. I 1, pp. 465-74.
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as Op. tit., 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 intro-
duction 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.
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3a 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
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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.
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35 Ibid. p. 2.
36 Ibid. p. 50.
37 This notion of ‘structural consolidation’, as well as the focus on party
systems qw ‘channelling systems’, is clarified in my volume, Parties ond Party
Systems (Harper and Row, forthcoming). See also my article ‘Political Develop-
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ment 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.
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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’. (Herbert J. Spiro, in Africu, The Primacy of Politics, Random
House, New York, 1966, p. 152.)
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Converse makes the point that ‘if we take as a goal the explanation of
political changes . . . as opposed to questions of more static political
structure, then the explanatory utility of the social-class thread is
almost nil’.40 Now, if we cannot explain change we are even less
likely to cope with forecasting. And there are good reasons for
assuming that the conclusion of Converse applies to most countries.
Assuming that the class thread is actually supplied by an index of
class conditions, we are confronted with this dilemma. If we construct
a ‘soft’ index it will not register interesting variations, and hence will
predict perpetuation rather than change; whereas if we construct a
‘hard‘ index it will account for variations which may not affect in the
least the political system. In any case the trouble is that we are con-
fronted with distal causation, that is, with distal effects that cannot be
predicted, almost by definition, with any useful degree of accuracy.
Hence, objective class conditions may change and the polity may
not - or may react rather than reflect.
The sociologist may concede the foregoing points and yet argue
that his socio-economic indicators are more powerful, in the long
run, than the more subjectiveindicators utilized by political scientists.
But the ‘long run’ argument is a convenient alibi for anyone, for the
political scientist no less than for the sociologist. In long run terms
there is always an ulterior future - beyond the future that has already
deceived us - to which the verification of our predictions can be
deferred. Therefore, either we indicate ‘how long’ the run is sup-
posed to be, or we enter an entirely futile debate. For the sake of the
argument let it be assumed that we agree to a deadline of fifty years.
If so, I find no convincing evidence in favour of the contention that
the sociologist detects long range trends, while the political scientist
is confined by his subjectivism to short range prediction^.^^ Surely
the sociological forecast is more complicated than the forecast
demanded of the demographer. Yet even the record of demographic
predictions is a record of persistent miscalculations - and this before
the advent of birth control techniques.
I would thus rejoin my general point that the widely spread belief
that socio-economic indicators have a higher predictive potentiality
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43 In his already cited Encyclopedia article Janowitz holds that along with the
stratification approach there has always been an ‘institutional approach‘ to
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GOVERNMENT A N D OPPOSITION
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