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24 - Political Parties

From Reflection to Articulation and Beyond

from IV - Civil Society: The Roots and Processes of Political Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2020

By
Johnnie Lotesta  and
Cedric de Leon
Edited by
Thomas Janoski ,
Cedric de Leon ,
Joya Misra  and
Isaac William Martin
Thomas Janoski
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
Cedric de Leon
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Joya Misra
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Isaac William Martin
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Summary

Political articulation is a new approach, albeit with classical roots, that seeks to bring the study of political parties back into sociology. It is a theory of how the components of the social are stitched together, centering on the role of political parties in the formation of social identities and interests. Though Max Weber, Robert Michels, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Seymour Martin Lipset produced the foundational texts in the field, sociologists from the late 1960s onward ceded party politics to political scientists. To the degree that sociologists studied institutional politics at all, they tended to follow the lead of Lazarsfeld and Lipset, who held that social “cleavages” – or divisions within the electorate such as class, race, and religion – determined the content of party politics (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1948 [1944]; Lipset 1960; Lipset and Rokkan 1967).

Keywords

political partiesarticulationknowledgeexpertiseethnic nationalism
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Handbook of Political Sociology , pp. 646 - 665
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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