State Power And Social Forces

Including cases drawn from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, this collection of scholarly essays is relevant to the growing state theory literature in the social sciences, stressing a state-in-society approach to the study of political development.

Morten Ougaard provides a new and distinct theoretical perspective to the analysis of the globalization of politics. The book analyzes global governance as the partial and uneven globalization of different aspects of statehood. It focuses on the institutional infrastructure, highlighting the role of the G7/OECD nexus in providing strategic leadership; discusses an emerging global function of societal persistence or public goods; governance and relations of power between social forces; and finally it discusses American hegemonic leadership in the light of the dual power/persistence perspective.

In this seminal study, Robert Cox offers a new approach to the study of power by identifying the connections between production, the state, and world order.

Bob Jessop presents an up-to-date account of his distinctive approach to the dialectics of structure and strategy in the exercise of state power. While his earlier work critically surveys other state theories, this book focuses on the development of his own strategic-relational approach. It introduces its main sources, outlines its development, applies this approach to four case studies, and sketches a strategic-relational research agenda. Thus the book presents a comprehensive theoretical statement of the approach and guidelines for its application. Key features of the book include: an account of the authors theoretical development; a review of recent developments in state theory and the cultural turn in political economy; critical strategic-relational re-readings of major state theorists Marx on political representation, Gramsci on the spatiality of state power, Poulantzas on the state as a social relation, and the later Foucault on statecraft; applications of the strategic-relational approach to important issues concerning the contemporary state: its gendered selectivity, the future of the national state, the states temporal sovereignty, and the relevance of multi-scalar meta-governance in Europe for the more general future of the state. The book concludes with recommendations for future strategic-relational research in political economy and state theory.

The essays in this book trace the development of Joel Migdal's "state-in-society" approach. The essays situate the approach within the classic literature in political science, sociology, and related disciplines but present a new model for understanding state-society relations. It allies parts of the state and groups in society against other such coalitions, determines how societies and states create and maintain distinct ways of structuring day-to-day life, the nature of the rules that govern people's behavior, whom they benefit and whom they disadvantage, which sorts of elements unite people and which divide them, and what shared meaning people hold about their relations with others and their place in the world.

Robert Cox's writings have had a profound influence on recent developments in thinking in world politics and political economy in many countries. This book brings together for the first time his most important essays, grouped around the theme of world order. The volume is divided into sections dealing respectively with theory; with the application of Cox's approach to recent changes in world political economy; and with multilateralism and the problem of global governance. The book also includes a critical review of Cox's work by Timothy Sinclair, and an essay by Cox tracing his own intellectual journey. This volume will be an essential guide to Robert Cox's critical approach to world politics for students and teachers of international relations, international political economy, and international organisation.

A comparative study of the political economy of public welfare, an analysis of the social forces over the course of a century that have led to the adoption of widely differing social welfare systems, and what these processes indicate about the nature of the state.

Political sociology is the interdisciplinary study of power and the intersection of personality, society and politics. The field also examines how the political process is affected by major social trends as well as exploring how social policies are altered by various social forces. Political sociologists increasingly use a wide variety of relatively new quantitative and qualitative methodologies and incorporate theories and research from other social science cognate disciplines. The contributors focus on the current controversies and disagreements surrounding the use of different methodologies for the study of politics and society, and discussions of specific applications found in the widely scattered literature where substantive research in the field is published. This approach will solidly place the handbook in a market niche that is not occupied by the current volumes while also covering many of the same theoretical and historical developments that the other volumes cover. The purpose of this handbook is to summarize state-of-the-art theory, research, and methods used in the study of politics and society. This area of research encompasses a wide variety of perspectives and methods that span social science disciplines. The handbook is designed to reflect that diversity in content, method and focus. In addition, it will cover developments in the developed and underdeveloped worlds.