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Why are some policies protested more than others? New data on protest against eight categories of taxation in twenty rich democracies from 1980 to 2010 reveal that economically and socially concentrated taxes are protested most, whereas taxes that confer entitlement to benefits are protested least. Other features of policy design often thought to affect the salience or visibility of costs are unimportant for explaining the frequency of protest. These findings overturn a folk theory that political sociology has inherited from classical political economy; clarify the conditions under which policy threats provoke protest; and shed light on how welfare states persist.

Castells' analysis of the rise of a global network society and information age is underpinned, paradoxically, by a nationalist vision with organic links in a Gramscian sense to Catalan nationalism. This leads to various weaknesses in his theory, especially an over-emphasis on language and nation at the expense of class. Exploring the specifically Catalan origins of his work, and testing its adequacy there, helps us to understand Castells' broader approach. Discussion of Castells has perhaps overlooked his commitment to nationalism because the sociology of identity sometimes unwittingly adopts what Billig has called a banal nationalist perspective. A stricter distinction between the different meanings of the term identity would help sociology to avoid arguments, such as that of Castells, that risk becoming determinist, teleological or both. The article concludes by asking whether the 'sociological imagination' has been alert enough to its banal nationalist form, facilitated by its intimate relationship with the state, its concern for policy relevance and methods of data gathering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the usefulness of the article "Sociology and Political Arithmetic: Some Principles of a New Policy Science," by Lauder, Brown, and Halsey, to social researchers working in government. The synergy between the vision of a new policy science and the work of government analysts to improve the quality of evidence underlying government policy and strategic development, is considerable. The central argument of the article, that sociology needs to be more policy-oriented whilst at the same time challenging government policies and holding them to account, articulates well the important role that independent social science should play in contemporary democratic societies.

The paper reveals contemporary transformations of the interaction between Islam and secular states from opposition to engagement. In-depth ethnographic evidence challenges the predominant juxtaposition of Islam against the secular state. Following micro-sites of interaction between the Gülen movement and the state from Turkey to Kazakhstan, my fieldwork revealed a continuum of engagements between them. The paper analyses the engagements ranging from contestation and negotiation to co-operation. The case illustrates the extent to which scholarly interest in opposition and clash has left a wide-ranging variety of state-Islam interaction understudied with regard to civil society. It also reveals the conditions under which effective Islamic horizontal organizations have provided the platforms of vertical engagements with the secular states. The major argument of the paper is that both civil and uncivil outcomes in the Muslim world are primarily shaped by the nature of state—Islam interaction. The evidence suggests that the key to understanding the relationship between Islam and civil society is the state.

This paper studies the impact of social class and education on political orientation. We distinguish the ‘old’ middle class from a new class of social/cultural specialists. However, the difference in their political orientation may especially be related to the level and field of education; the new middle class is more highly educated and often in fields of study that extensively address social competencies, characteristics independently affecting political outcomes. Analyses on Dutch data showed that education is more important in the prediction of ‘cultural’ liberal issues than social class. Economically-oriented issues are more strongly affected by social class. This means that interests of the new middle class are served by liberal standpoints relating to a strong government and income redistribution policies, but not relating to cultural issues.

This paper advances the position that sociology needs to develop an approach to research which focuses on fundamental social problems. In doing so it shares many of the intellectual values and goals of political arithmetic while seeking to move methodologically beyond it. Since such problems are complex they will require, typically, interdisciplinary input and a concomitant approach to the development and appraisal of theories. We are not, therefore, advocating the primacy of sociology but arguing that it has a distinctive part to play in addressing the fundamental problems of the twenty-first century. However, a policy-oriented sociology has also to take up the task, so clearly defined by the tradition of political arithmetic, which is to hold governments to account. Consequently a central principle of a new policy science is that it should contribute to democratic debate about policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comments on that article "Sociology and political arithmetic: some principles of a new policy science," by Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H Halsey in this issue of "The British Journal of Sociology." Two key issues are addressed in a selective way. First, what is and what should be the role of social science, and sociology in particular, in informing policy making. Second, what is the wider role of social science in facilitating the democratic debate, and in holding policymakers to account. Too little social science research is directed at important issues Incentives in academia are not well aligned to achieving socially optimal goals, whether that be for inter-disciplinary working or policy influencing behavior.

This paper comments on that article "Sociology and political arithmetic: some principles of a new policy science," by Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H Halsey in this issue of "The British Journal of Sociology." The article's main point is that sociology is more open than the other social sciences and therefore more suited to open democratic public debate At the same time the authors argue that openness must not be confused with epistemological relativism because that simply produces argument without any basis for closure except by exhaustion. What is welcome is the argument that policy debates need to engage the wider public The authors' ideal of "political arithmetic" has a democratic pedigree that can hardly be gainsaid.

This article criticizes the analysis made by Nicos Mouzelis against Maclellan for his dogmatic recourse to epistemology as a resolution of the crisis of Marxist political theory. Referring to Weber and to the corpus of concepts for the study of political systems generated by Parsonian sociology, Mouzelis exposes the vacuity of much of what is called Marxist political theory. His remarks are useful because they come from a scholar who has been deeply influenced by what he himself calls Marxist theory and by special versions of it, especially by French Marxism, that left a marked influence on the work of some British scholars. Mouzelis admits, though only implicitly, that Marxists are finally coming to understand the significance of the body of concepts and conceptual models elaborated, most notably, by Parsons, Almond, Eisenstadt, etc., having for years, dismissed this body of work as ideological rubbish. Mouzelis still relies upon highly dubious terminology. Terminologies are significant because they reveal how concepts are framed by writers and the assumptions upon which their discourse is constructed. Mouzelis, for instance, continuously used the term Marxist theory and other variants of this term can be found in this text. It seems that he identifies a theoretical realm which would constitute Marxist political theory in its own right.

This article focuses on the power of social collectivities. The analysis and measurement of social power, particularly that of social collectivities, continues to present difficulties to theorists and researchers alike. In an attempt to resolve some of such problems, an integration of four major theoretical approaches to the study of power has been suggested, and derived from that a predictor measure for assessing power relationships between social collectivities. The utility of the integrated approach was demonstrated by the high correlations found between the predictor measure and the parties' stated readiness to use their potential power. The predictor measure for each party had been defined as the ratio of its relative resources to its relative position amid the contended issues. Questionnaire responses from the management and shop committee of 16 organizations in Israel constituted data base for computing the measure. The original hypothesis was that the extent to which the predictor measure exceeds unity for a given party indicates that party's propensity to use its relative advantage in resources in order to improve its relatively low position by enacting its potential power.

With the collapse of the Leninist project in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the fluid relations between market and state consequent upon the New Right project of the Reagan and Thatcher eras in the West, citizenship analysis has assumed a central place in the political sociology of democratic societies. However, such analysis is presently characterized by a variety of divergent and, on occasion, contradictory positions. This article proposes that the debates around citizenship can be clarified by recognizing the existence of two conceptions of citizenship. The first of these, state citizenship, involves the identification of citizenship with the elaboration of a formal legal status, co-terminous with the emergence of nation-states and their diverse lineages. The article discusses the two main forms in which this conception appears in the relevant literature: that of full formal membership of a nation-state and that of a distinctive welfare-rights version. Some limitations of the status conception of citizenship are considered and recent political developments in relation to its use in the British context are discussed. A second conception, that of democratic citizenship, is then proposed which involves the elaboration of citizenship around shared membership of a political community, in which conception citizens are political actors constituting political spaces. Some implications of this alternative conception are discussed and exemplified with reference to the possibilities for a European political community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology suffers from a myopic focus on change as fashioned by tests of strength between interests that are settled in favour of the most powerful. A contrary view is that more of the variation in institutional form may be accounted for by configurations of modelling than configurations of power. Yet modelling is structured: the periphery models the core more than the core models the periphery in the world system; subordinates model superordinates more than the reverse. Even so, in the political realm 'model mongering' is a more useful technique for the powerless than the powerful. Model mongers float a variety of models until they find one that catches opponents off balance through striking a resonant appeal to the sense of identity of a people. Because the model frames the terms of the debate, clever model mongering can deliver the weak a decisive advantage over the strong. In this sense, the article supplies a concrete analysis of why we should reject what Hindess calls a capacity-outcome model of how struggles are decided - an analysis that enables one to read off the likely outcome of struggles from a knowledge of the resources backing competing interests. A dialectics of modelling is one key to understanding the major institutional changes that sweep the modern world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a content approach to recasting the concept of ideology. The legacy of the encounter of the independent effects of ideology on social development has been scholars' preoccupation with the social functions of ideology and a corresponding disregard of what ideology is. As a result, it is not surprising that the relevant sociological literature reveals a bias towards a functional definition of ideology and, conversely, a lack of concern for a definition based on, or even related to, content. Despite some significant contributions, the sociological understanding of ideology, in particular the adequacy of its definition, has not recovered from such a legacy. Implicit in any attempt to overcome the problem of the sociology of ideology is the assumption that the retention of such a concept is worthwhile. Assuming that ideas and beliefs are the broad subject matter of the study of ideologies, a concept of ideology is worth having because sociologists find it useful to distinguish certain beliefs which are thought to have influence in the social domain. In attempting to arrive at a definition of ideology, it makes sense to look at those situations where there is good reason to believe that certain beliefs have had some impact to see what special properties they have.

This article focuses on nationalism and classical social theory. For all their universal concerns, the social evolutionist remained firmly anchored to their European context. Classical Marxist theory was similarly Eurocentric. Its historical context apart, sociology has always been preoccupied with horizontal or class divisions; and these have overshadowed other, ethnic or national, lines of cleavage. There is very little in the way of a systematic sociology of international relations; even the topic of warfare has merited less attention than it deserves. Sociologists make little attempt to work outwards from social to geopolitical facets; and conversely, hardly ever think it necessary or worthwhile to work inwards from the global interstate system to the rise of nations or nationalism either in general or in specific cases. It may of course be claimed that that would go far beyond sociology of nationalism so then an adequate approach to a subject like nationalism must transgress academic frontiers and recognize the limitation of classical sociology in this important respect.

This article compares social radicalism in the French and British working classes. When stratification theorists began to edge out of the parochialism that had pervaded their work in the 1950s and the 1960s, the culture and patterns of action of the French working class structure became increasingly central to speculation about the determinants of working class radicalism. In different ways some sociologists counterposed the French working class to that of Great Britain as bearing a fundamentally different form of consciousness, and turned the explanation of such differences into a significant theme of textbooks. The attraction of France for stratification theorists was understandable. The second most powerful, and certainly the most ideologically rigid and pro-Soviet, of the major Western communist parties had proved capable of maintaining its electoral support despite the development of a prosperous and highly industrialized economy. The crisis of May 1968, when for three weeks the French economy and machinery of state lay paralyzed by the most powerful strike movement since the war, seemed the best approximation yet to a revolutionary situation produced by their direct action of the working class in an advanced industrial society.

This section comments on the article, Autonomy in the Research Role and Participation in Department Decision Making, by J. Gaston. Gaston is concerned with the problem of role strain produced in situations where professional personnel cannot exercise autonomy in the expression of their occupational activities. Gaston's views of autonomy leads him to erect a further erroneous hypothesis about British and American scientists. He states there is reason to believe that scientists in the U.S. may not feel completely justified in spending time and money doing basic research when that society might prefer them to work on practical problems. This is saying simply that the appropriateness of the research role may be less appreciated in the U.S. than in Great Britain. Gaston's discussion of the autonomy neglects the methodological requirements for defining a scientist and role strain. Gaston states that, while he does not expect scientists to get their day's work assigned as a maintenance or sanitation crew, he does erase any distinction between junior scientists and senior scientists or between post doctoral scientists and Nobel Prize winners. It is difficult to understand where Gaston derives his notion that, the generally accepted model of a scientist as a person who goes about his work is virtually free to choose the scientifically relevant research problems that he wants to attack with few if any major constraints is an exaggeration.

The article examines the historical and sociological perspectives of nationalism diffusion from the standpoint of diffusionist theory. The diffusionist theory on nationalism can be better understood by comparison with other theories on nationalism. We may start by opposing the typical historical and sociological perspectives on social movements and social change, of which nationalism may be regarded as a specific application. Generally speaking, the traditional sociological models of social change posses explanatory power, but are barely relevant for nationalism. The traditional historical model, on the other hand, is specifically tailored to the nationalist case, but, even in its more refined versions, possesses little explanatory power. The traditional sociological models are, by and large, structuralist and endogenous in their assumptions. That is, they tend to invoke ideologies and movements like nationalism, as so many reactions, responses or instruments, often deviant ones, of the tensions and dislocations of industrialization or capitalism. The functional version of this is that nationalism is a major theme of modernizing protest movements and a symptom of strain and disturbance in an era of disintegrating traditional societies. In the classic Marxist account, nationalism is treated in an ad hoc manner, as one of the passing weapons of an expanding bourgeoisie in its search for territorial markets during the period of early capitalism. In a more recent Marxist versions, nationalism fulfills a second function: as the vehicle of the progressive native bourgeoisies, proletariats and intelligentzias in their struggle against traditional ruler and capitalist alike. The difficulty with these standard sociological accounts is their failure to recognize a specific problem of the diffusion of nationalism.

The article presents a paper on the theory of working-class Conservatism. In any study of voting behavior in industrial society, social class would figure prominently as a predictor of party choice and political loyalty. Whilst it is obvious that other influences are brought to bear upon individuals which help to shape their political commitments, such as religious, historical, ethnic, regional factors, and so forth, social class membership has proved to be one of the most reliable single indices of voting behavior. This theory of working-class conservatism would make the notions of deference and class perception unnecessary, in so far as it seeks to encompass both of these within its explanatory orbit. These two concepts differ from the ones employed here in that they are essentially socio-psychological in character, in the sense that they focus upon individual attitudes and perceptions as a means of explaining political behavior.

This article profiles Arthur F. Bentley, one of the pioneers in political science, sociology, psychology and the logic of scientific inquiry in the U.S. Like other pioneers he has had to wait for the recognition that is his due, but that recognition has come from the leaders in the fields he has cultivated. Now it is spreading among a wider public. Reviews and discussions of his varied contributions have appeared in Europe and America over the past six decades, especially the last two, but no one has attempted so far to present the leading themes and methods of inquiry that Bentley has been led to develop during his long lifetime. More important than any single work of his is the cumulative impact of his writings, the pattern that his diverse inquiries form. This essay will sketch the main outlines of Bentley's life and try to show how his work grew out of specific conditions, experiences, and interests. The central objectives and results of Bentley's successive investigations were stated so that an overall view of the high points of Bentley's life-work and influence can be obtained. Bentley then can be seen as a part of the social process and cultural setting of America since 1870.

The article presents details regarding the London School of Economics' Sociology's One-Hundredth Anniversary Celebration Conference. The date, time and venue are given along with the list of speakers. This one-day conference will celebrate one hundred years of the teaching of sociology at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Political Science. The conference will have three sessions that successively examine "LSE and British sociology: the early history," "LSE sociology's dominance amid the rise of alternative centres: 1945 to the early sixties" and "The 1960s and thereafter: "new" sociologies and reactions to "the LSE tradition." A final session of the day will be a panel discussion on "The present and future of British sociology." The conference will end with a drinks reception. This event is free and open to all, but pre-registration is required.