Challenges In Thomas Janoski's The Handbook Of Political Sociology

In The Handbook of Political Sociology, written by Thomas Janoski, Robert Alford, Alexander Hicks, and Mildred A. Shwartz, point out the main issues with political sociology theory in modern time and suggest ways to better it. They begin their introduction by pointing out new developments in society that have blurred focus on political sociology. One of the goals of The Handbook of Political Sociology is to sharpen this blurred focus. They then go on to discuss two main challenges to political sociology, the cultural turn and rational choice theory. They criticize both of these, especially rational choice, but see them as no threat to sociology in the long run. Overall, these authors characterize political sociology theory as able to be improved

Post World War Two political sociology theory assumed that the election, legislation, and social and foreign policy outcomes of states were shaped by social cleavages and interest groups. A large focus was put on power structure research and pluralism as well as value consensus and functionalist equilibrium. Then, later in the 1970s and 1980s, much of critical theory shifted toward culture and things like advertising, gender, and the media. These new approaches to political culture were met with severe criticism for their static nature and stereotyping of groups of people. However, Michel Foucalt was able to change critics’ viewpoint to see that cultural processes cause material outcomes. The authors explain that, “Foucault removed the critical aspect of determinism from his theories by talking about ‘what was possible’ in various social contexts between groups and people with varying levels of power/knowledge.” (CITE) The problem they see with this new cultural turn is that it leads from positivistic universalism into institutional and historical specification of theoretical domains and then into somewhere that theory serves only to regulate interpretation of certain events. The authors believe that the middle-range theory provides an appropriate middle point in this slippery slope. They also believe sociologists need to avoid cultural theorizing into particularism. Three different approaches are provided for new cultural sociology. The first of these is provided by Robert Wuthnow’s Communities of Discourse (CITE). He looks to environmental conditions, institutional contexts, and action sequences to show the way ideologies of change are produced. He then examines how subgroups of these ideologies are chosen for institutionalization into roles of world historic importance. Wuthnow’s main focus is on ideologies as change promoting