The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology

Abstract

The 'Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology' was published in 2000 and established itself as a standard reference within this sub-field. In this follow-up volume the two original editors-Kate Nash and Alan Scott - have been joined by a US-based political sociologist, Edwin Amenta. Rather than simply update the previous volume, we have gone for a substantially new book that both reflects developments over the past decade and will hopefully appeal to an even broader international audience. Thus, of the present volume's 42 chapters only 14 are updated versions of chapters by the same authors; many of these have been very substantially reworked to broaden the topic or include more recent developments while in a couple of cases we have authors from the earlier volume writing on substantially different topics. These changes inevitably mean that there are areas covered by the earlier book that are absent here, even though they remain important to the development of political sociology, and we would still advise anyone who, for example, is interested in rational choice approaches, policy networks or the impact of postmodernism on political sociology to consult the relevant chapters in the earlier volume. New topics covered here, which are in part responses to external events, represent the development of debates within the discipline and/or reflect the interests and expertise-of the new editor. In other respects we have remained faithful to the principles of the earlier volume. Firstly, we have not attempted to impose conceptual order on the area by selecting one of a number of possible paradigms and asserting, or simply tacitly assuming, that the one they have selected is, is becoming, or should be the dominant or only legitimate paradigm. Political sociology remains a highly diverse intellectual endeavour. This volume remains a companion rather than a lexicon or dictionary. It does not aspire to be definitive. It does, however, seek to be comprehensive; to cover both the central themes of political sociology and the various perspectives within that sub- or trans-discipline.