Suchergebnisse

Chapter 1 Politics and society -- Chapter 2 Chasing political sociology -- Chapter 3 Understanding political sociology -- Chapter 4 Dimensions and distribution of power -- Chapter 5 Features and developments of the modern state -- Chapter 6 International system and globalisation -- Chapter 7 The paths of political violence -- Chapter 8 Democracy and political participation -- Chapter 9 The parabola of political parties -- Chapter 10 Social movements and political change -- Chapter 11 Ideologies, political cultures and the populist wave -- Chapter 12 Communication and political process.

This Issue collects contributions on the theme of the De-Politicization of [representative] pol-itics in the era of neoliberalism. We consider De-politicization as a set of changes in the ways power is exer-cised. These modes downgrade the political nature of decision-making and, through representation, give legitimacy to actors apparently less able to bear witness to the presence of the "political". Politics appears less responsible for the decisions that affect the regulation of society and the impact of their costs and failures on economic and cultural processes. Political choices conditioned by the market acquire the charac-ter of necessity and inevitability. The attempts to legitimize the investigation of public choices through de-liberative arenas governed by non-political parameters, based on information and knowledge, are not ex-ternal to this aspect of de-politicization. A discursive de-politicization determines the convergence of pref-erences into a single, albeit diverse, cognitive construction of reality (frame for public actions). It is no coin-cidence that the prevailing paradigm in the contemporary liberal political economy has been narrated in the form of a "single thought" demonstrating a clear cultural hegemony of the trans-nationalized and financial-ized capitalism. Policies become inevitable responses lacking rational alternatives to the limits of develop-ment set by previous responses, with which contradictions and conflicts had previously been appeased. De-politicization is probably one of the causes of the growing distance between institutional politics and civil society in Western countries and, unavoidably, it determines certain consequences. We think that, on the social side, some of the consequences can be found in the political indifference on the part of citizens (po-litical apathy) and, by contrast, in growing forms of non-institutional social and political participation through the practices of social resilience and resistance; on the political side, we think that one of the con-sequences is the birth, everywhere in Europe, of populist parties and movements that, in their rhetoric, emphasize the intention to give back sovereignty to the people. The aim of this issue is to highlight these phenomena which, also in a critical, provocative way, can contribute to the description of the many aspects of this process through both theoretical and empirical work.

Our aim is to identify the characters of a real political sociology as a «connective social science» that studies political phenomena by creating fruitful connections with other perspectives. Modern politics may be defined as the set of activities designed to regulate human coexistence in a given social context through a prearranged establishment of a certain order. Such an order can only be guaranteed if a social group is able to acquire the power guaranteed by the exclusive use of force. From this point of view, modern politics, to be explained, must be observed in its complexity. Reasoning on the relationship between social and political structures (and between sociology and political science) is not enough. Political analysts should also pay attention to other dimensions, aware that politics is not made only of social and political-institutional relations. It is also made of individuals, cultures, economic arrangements, territories. For this reason, political sociologists should also consider the typical explanatory variables of psychology, anthropology, economics and geography. The classic topics of political sociology are well known. It is a discipline that, through different approaches, has historically focused on the forms and relations of power wi­thin the territorial dimension of the nation state. The trans-nationalization of social processes, the frequent financial and economic crises, the explosion of new war zones, the crisis of classical political actors ha­ve led to new studies on the relationship between society and politics in a global society, redefining the boundaries of political sociology. The issues are always the same, but the lens through which they are investigated is different. global financial crisis, Ettore Recchi and Justyna Salamońska on the important topic of the European identity in the context of the Euro-Crisis, Juan Dìez Medrano on the individual and collective responses to crisis by providing an analytical framework for the study of social resilience, Klaus Eder on the so-called paradox of political participation that can equally produce civil and uncivil outcomes. The issue will be concluded with my article on the logical structures of comparison in social and political research.

All political sciences share the same logic and methods as the empirical social sciences and therefore produce perceptive knowledge. Empirical knowledge is based on a specific kind of observation driven by a set of theoretically developed concepts related to clearly observable social phenomena. Not all the concepts, however, are readily amenable to observational terms. We usually need to proceed to their operationalization. The formulation and the operational definition of the empirical concepts does not exhaust the analytic process. It is also necessary to observe how the phenomenon occurs in the reality, proceeding to classification or typological constructions and, sometimes, to the production of multi-dimensional models. Only after this process will the formulation of hypotheses be possible. They will later be verified through the use of methods of empirical control. The most frequently used activity in political sociology is comparison, which is the main method of any social science according to most scholars. Comparison can be carried out both among a certain number of cases or within a single case by comparing it in its historical development. The temporal dimension becomes crucial when one wishes to produce historically rooted generalizations and theories, therefore confined to a spatial and temporal dimension. Before proceeding with the comparison we must make sure that the cases selected are actually comparable and that they possess at least one property in common. The objective of this paper is therefore to describe forms and styles of comparison within the logic of social and political sciences

The aim of this paper is to propose a theoretical reflection on the possible transformations of democracy in globalized societies. In this direction, the Author outlines the classical approaches to the analysis of democracy and then proposes a criticism of the static picture offered by the liberal conception. In the wake of Charles Tilly, a process-oriented and dynamic conception is proposed, by declining democracy in terms of democratization (and potential de-democratization). In this paper the different theoretical challenges to liberal democracy are also proposed, starting from the participatory conception that assumes the core of the democratic political process in contentious action of organized civil society. Special attention is also paid to the challenge of deliberative democracy in its two versions, liberal and deliberative. The paper then tries to figure out how to adapt these theoretical proposals to the new conditions of trans-local societies, from a rethinking of the concept of democratic citizenship in a post-national key. The paper ends with a reflection on cosmopolitan democracy and the opportunities offered by the major challenge of rethinking global governance in a democratic and participatory way

This essay represents the first attempt to build the logical and epistemological foundations of Positional Sociology, i.e. a type of sociology that, by placing itself in the tradition of critical and public sociology, seeks to go beyond them by elaborating a new sociological practice that is both transformative and generative. To this end, the authors explain what is meant by positional sociology and then anchor it in the tradition of historical materialism and a Marxism freed from old ideological encrustations. The authors then attempt to combine the macro dimension, which is based on the analysis of historical and structural macro-processes, with the micro dimension and thus on the effects that certain major structural transformations have on the lives of subjects. The fundamental objective is thus to integrate the acquisitions of structuralist literature with post-structuralist sociological literature.

The aim of this paper is to propose an interpretative key to Italy's populist shift in a context of multipopulism. The authors try to analyze the main populist phenomena that have animated Italian politics as variants of the same schema whose point of commonality lies in a shared civil matrix. The hermeneutic thesis is based on the fact that the pattern of multipopulism in Italy has been determined by a succession of populist variants that have only one factor in common: belonging to civil society and, consequently, a marked antipolitical inclination. This anti-political mass attitude and the subsequent cases of populism are associated to the depoliticization process in Italy. By depoliticization the authors mean a set of changes in the ways political power is exercised in the neoliberal era by legitimizing actors less able to witness the presence of the "political". ; El objetivo de este artículo es proponer una clave interpretativa del cambio populista de Italia en un contexto de multipopulismo. Los autores intentan analizar los principales fenómenos populistas que han animado a la política italiana como variantes del mismo esquema, cuyo punto en común se encuentra en una matriz civil compartida. La tesis hermenéutica se basa en el hecho de que el patrón de multipopulismo en Italia ha sido determinado por una sucesión de variantes populistas que tienen un solo factor en común: pertenecer a la sociedad civil y, en consecuencia, una marcada inclinación antipolítica. Esta actitud antipolítica de masas y los casos posteriores de populismo están asociados al proceso de despolitización en Italia. Por despolitización, los autores se refieren a un conjunto de cambios en las formas en que se ejerce el poder político en la era neoliberal legitimando a los actores menos capaces de presenciar la presencia de lo "político".

- The introduction draws a picture of the link between multi-level governance and transnational social movement. The Authors moves from the description of governance polity as a system of political opportunities to social mobilization, then they describe both local and global dimensions, regarding as a field of conflict and legitimacy. The fourth paragraph develops a comparative analysis on two alternative Europe, the one from above (the institutional building suffering a democratic deficit), the latter from below (the process of collective learning built up by Social Forums). In the end, the last paragraph describes the guidelines of the whole Issue. Keywords: Multilevel Governance; Social Movements; Europe; Globalization; Public Sphere