Political Sociology

This is a departmental mini-seminar, open to graduate students only. It meets for six times after the spring break.

Where to find the readings:
Free: = Firestone Reserve/Graduate Reading Room (paper). = Electronic reserve/Blackboard course materials.
= World Wide Web (hyperlink from syllabus).

March 25. Power, state-building, and state capacity.

Common readings
Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). [Note: Second edition is drastically different from the first.]
Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results,” in John A. Hall, ed., States in History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). 109-36
Paul Starr, Freedom's Power (New York: Basic Books, 2007), Chs. 1-2.

• Option 1:
  
  Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990 (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
• Option 2:
  
  James Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

• Option 3
  
  Phillip Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

April 1. Social Bases of Democracy

Common reading
Seymour Martin Lipset, "Economic Development and Democracy" in Political Man (1981 ed)
Adam Przeworski, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Material Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Chs. 1-3.
Carles Boix, Democracy and Redistribution (Mew York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1-11.

• Option 1
  
  Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press 1966).
  
• Option 2
  
  Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Random House, 1991).
  
• Option 3
  
  Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1992).

Week of April 8. Political Inequality

Common reading
Jeffrey B. Winters, Oligarchy (New York; Cambridge University Press, 2011), Chs. 1, 5.
Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2011), Chs. 2, 3, and 5.

• Option 1
  
  Larry Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
  
• Option 2
  
  Martin Gilens, Affluence and influence : economic inequality and political power in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
  

April 15. Civil society, religion, and civic participation

Common reading

Philippe C. Schmitter, "Still the Century of Corporatism?" Review of Politics 36 (1974): 85-131.
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (Simon and Schuster, 2000), Chs. 1-3, 15.
Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), selections.

• Option 1
  
  a comparative study of civil society, religion, and civic participation.
  
• Option 2
  
  David Karpf, The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

• Option 3
  
  Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber, Get Out the Vote, 2d ed. (Washington; Brookings, 2008).
  

April 22. Ideology and public opinion: consensus, conflict, and polarization in the U.S.

Common reading
Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (Routledge, 1990), Chs. 1-3.
Rogers M. Smith, "Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America." American Political Science Review (1993), 87: 549-554.
Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), Chs. 1,3, 4, and 9.
Philip E. Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics," in Ideology and Discontent, ed. David E. Apter (New York: Free Press, 1964).
John H. Evans, “Have Americans’ Attitudes Become More Polarized?—An Update” Social Science Quarterly 84 (2003), 71-90.
Pew Research Center for People and the Press, “Trends in American Values, 1987-2012.” (June 4, 2012).

• Option 1
  
  Morris P. Fiorina, with Samuel J. Abrams, The Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009).
  
• Option 2
  
  Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler. Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002).
  
• Option 3
  Alan I. Abramowitz, The Polarized Public? Why American Government Is So Dysfunctional (Boston: Pearson, 2012).
  

April 29. Changes in communications and the structure of the public

Common reading
Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 1-56.
Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic Books, 2004), Chs. 1-3, 12.
Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press, 2006), 1-28 [skim], 29-90, 176-272.

• Option 1
  
  Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy.
  
• Option 2
  
  Phillip Howard, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam (New York; Oxford University Press, 2011).
  
• Option 3
  
  Diana Mutz, Hearing the Other Side (New York : Cambridge University Press, 2006).