Is Political Sociology Informed by Political Science?
Author(s)
Hicks, Alexander
Abstract
This article maps out some interdependencies between political science and political sociology. It then details some lessons that political sociologists might take from four contemporary literatures in political science: (1) rational choice work on rational individual action in institutional context; (2) the “nonlinear social systems” literature on the contextual determination of intensely embedded social actions; (3) the game-theoretic literature on strategic interactions among large emergent class and state actors; and (4) a more qualitative, inductive, and contextualized approach to the analysis of class and state action extending the tradition of Barrington Moore. The four literatures share a commitment to social action that is decreasingly common among sociologists. Yet they address questions of institutional constraint, contextual dynamics, and macrosocial history akin to those that are engaging their sociological contemporaries. This balance of attention between action and its constraints is the common element drawn from the several instructive political science literatures.
