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definitely tied to the collapse of democracy. Cabinets in France and Belgium were as unstable as those in Germany and Austria, but only the latter democracies collapsed (British and Dutch cabinets were more stable). Why is cabinet instability not more clearly tied to problems for democracy? One possibility is that cabinet instability simply reflects the severity of problems. Just as electoral volatility may reflect citizens’ desire for change, cabinet instability may reflect elites’ flexible response to the problems. Neither of these need reflect a desire for a regime change, simply for a policy change. Indeed, cabinet immobility might be more damaging to effectiveness and democratic legitimation if problems are severe enough. In this respect, cabinet instability, like electoral volatility, probably has an indeterminate effect on democratic survival.

Oversized grand-coalition governments also have ambiguous effects on liberal democracy. The most important theory is Lijphart’s (1977, 1984) model of ‘‘consociational democracies,’’ plural societies with high levels of intercommunal conflict. In such polities, parties are unwilling to go into opposition because they risk losing too much and because party strength—closely tied to the size of the ascriptive communities—changes too slowly to make their return to office likely. Thus, formal opposition could lead to more extreme conflict. The alternative is a grand coalition government of all major parties, combined with a degree of federalism and proportional allocation of state services according to party or community size. Since potential conflict is too dangerous, open opposition is delegitimated and suppressed. In this respect, consociational procedures are intended to be a method for reducing extreme underlying intercommunal conflict through contact among opponents (at the elite level), which promotes trust. If these measures succeed, the ‘‘game among players’’ can move to one in which moderate conflict and tolerance of opponents becomes legitimated. This appears to have succeeded in the Netherlands and Austria, and failed most miserably in Lebanon. On the other hand, if grand coalitions are formed in societies without extreme underlying conflict, they may initiate a vicious circle of intolerance and delegitimation. To form a grand coalition, prosystem parties generally move closer to the center of the policy spectrum than

they would otherwise do. This move may leave their more militant (but still prosystem) constituents politically homeless, and they may seek harder positions in a more extremist party or movement. These constituents do not so much abandon their party as the party abandons them. Thus, if a grand coalition submerges a moderate competitive structure, it can generate polarization. The grand coalition government of 1966–1969 in West Germany, a country with little intercommunal conflict, was probably largely responsible for the rise of antisystem voting at the time. If the grand coalition government had not ended fairly quickly, it might have caused serious problems for West German democracy.

RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS IN THE 1990s

Research on political parties and party systems has continued to stream unabated in the 1990s, yet many of the basic principles outlined above continue to hold true. Three important research areas may be mentioned. First, scholars have sought to understand the role of party systems in democratization, especially in central and eastern Europe, but in other regions as well. Second, the study of political extremism has been knit more closely with the study of party systems. Third, recent stock taking in the field of political legitimation has highlighted the importance of party systems.

The ‘‘third wave’’ of democratization, beginning with transitions in southern Europe in the mid-1970s, and continuing with transitions in Latin America, East Asia, and central and eastern Europe, is one of the most important social and political developments of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Scholars seeking explanations for the relative success or failure of democratic transition and, especially, consolidation have generally highlighted the importance of well-function- ing party systems. Thus, Huntington (1991, chap. 6) argues that party-system polarization is one of the greatest hazards to democratization (also see Di Palma 1990; Lipset 1994). Theorists of democratic transitions have pointed to the importance of ‘‘pacting’’ between authoritarian-regime softliners and democratic-opposition moderates, and to the exclusion of regime hard-liners and antiregime extremists (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Karl

and Schmitter 1991). The importance of moderation during the transition period, prior to the legalization of a party system, parallels the importance of moderation of a party system within an existing democracy (Weil 1989). Empirical studies of democratization in Latin America (Remmer 1991), Central and Eastern Europe (Fuchs and Roller 1994; Toka 1996; Wessels and Klingemann 1994), and East Asia (Shin 1995) tend to support this thesis—as do general, comparative treatments of democratization (Linz and Stepan 1996).

The study of political extremism has taken party systems into account more fully in the 1990s than had perhaps previously been the case. Earlier studies often characterized extremism in terms of psychological predispositions, socialization, or economic dislocations. These accounts tended to focus on personal distress—sometimes in absolute terms, but sometimes in terms of reference groups and relative deprivation—and were often couched in functionalist theories of social dislocation in the course of social modernization. A later wave of extremism research focused more on resource mobilization within social movements. It was not deprivation (absolute or relative) that created extremism, according to this view, but the ability to organize. A third wave of extremism research has emphasized political ‘‘opportunity space,’’ gaps or niches in the opposition structure, which political entrepreneurs can fill if they are skillful. Extremism often arises not so much because conditions have worsened, nor because groups have newly organized, as because existing parties within the party system have vacated certain ideological positions and opened competitive opportunities or niches for extremists. Mainstream parties may vacate these niches because they enter or leave office, or because they feel they need to compete more effectively with another party. The reader will notice that it is not so much that these three accounts contradict each other as that they are nested, with the first most specific and the last most general. Perhaps the most important recent study of right-wing extremism in Western polities is Kitschelt and McGann (1995). Other useful recent collections of essays include Weil (1996) and McAdam and colleagues (1996).

Studies of legitimation, confidence, and trust continue to attend to the effects of parties and

party systems. Recent surveys of the literature show that party systems do not always or uniformly have an influence, but when they do, a moderate opposition structure is most conducive to these forms of political support. Polarization, grand coalitions, and ‘‘cohabitation’’ (‘‘divided government’’ in America) do not tend to promote legitimation, confidence, and trust (see Fuchs et al. 1995; Listhaug 1995; Listhaug and Wiberg 1995).

Finally, a few recent general contributions to the literature may be listed. Important recent books that bring the field up to date include Ware (1996) and Mair (1997). Also, a new journal devoted to political parties and party systems, Party Politics, from Sage Publications, began publication in 1995 and has become a major outlet for scholarship in this field.

REFERENCES

Burnham, Walter Dean 1970 Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: Norton.

Chambers, William Nisbet, and Walter Dean Burnham (eds.) 1975 The American Party Systems, 2nd ed. New York: Norton.

Crewe, Ivor, and David Denver (eds.) 1985 Electoral Change in Western Democracies: Patterns and Sources of Electoral Volatility. New York: St. Martin’s.

Dalton, Russell J., Stephen C. Flanagan, and Paul A. Beck 1984 Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Di Palma, Giuseppe 1990 To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fuchs, Dieter, Giovanna Guidorossi, and Palle Svensson 1995 ‘‘Support for the Democratic System.’’ In H. D. Klingemann and D. Fuchs, eds., Citizens and the State. New York: Oxford University Press.

Fuchs, Dieter, and Edeltraud Roller 1994 ‘‘Cultural Conditions of the Transformation to Liberal Democracies in Central and Eastern Europe,’’ WZB Discussion Paper FS III 94-202. Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Berlin.

Grew, Raymond (ed.) 1978 Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Huntington, Samuel P. 1991 The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Karl, Terry Lynn, and Philippe C. Schmitter 1991 ‘‘Modes of Transition in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe.’’ International Social Science Journal

128:269–284.

Kitschelt, Herbert, and Anthony J. McGann 1995 The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

La Palombara, Joseph, and Myron Weiner (eds). 1966

Political Parties and Political Development. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Laver, Michael, and Norman Schofield 1990 Multiparty Government. The Politics of Coalition in Europe. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lawson, Kay (ed.) 1980 Political Parties and Linkage. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Lijphart, Arend 1977 Democracy in Plural Societies. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

———1984 Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

———1985 ‘‘The Field of Electoral Systems Research: A Critical Survey.’’ Electoral Studies 4:3–14.

Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan 1996 Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lipset, Seymour Martin 1983 ‘‘Radicalism or Reformism: The Sources of Working-Class Politics.’’ American Political Science Review 77:1–18.

——— 1994 ‘‘The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited.’’ American Sociological Review 59:1–22.

———, and Stein Rokkan (eds.) 1967 ‘‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments.’’ In Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan Party Systems and Voter Alignments. New York: Free Press.

Listhaug, Ola 1995 ‘‘The Dynamics of Trust in Politicians.’’ In H. D. Klingemann and D. Fuchs, eds., Citizens and the State. New York: Oxford University Press.

———, and Matti Wiberg 1995 ‘‘Confidence in Political and Private Institutions.’’ In H. D. Klingemann and D. Fuchs, eds., Citizens and the State. New York: Oxford University Press.

McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald 1996 Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mair, Peter 1997 Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations. New York: Oxford University Press.

Moore, Barrington, Jr. 1966 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon.

O’Donnell, Guillermo, and Philippe C. Schmitter 1986

Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Remmer, Karen L. 1991 ‘‘The Political Impact of Economic Crisis in Latin America in the 1980s.’’ American Political Science Review 85:777–800.

Sartori, Giovanni 1966 ‘‘European Political Parties: The Case of Polarized Pluralism.’’ In Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

——— 1976 Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schumpeter, Joseph (1950) 1975 Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper Colophon.

Shin, Doh Chull 1995 ‘‘The Democratization of Korean Politics and Culture in Progress and Repose: Public Opinion Survey Findings, 1988–1994.’’ Paper presented at the International Conference, 50 Years of Korean Independence, 50 Years of Korean Politics. Sponsored by the Korena Political Science Association, Seoul.

Taagepera, Rein, and Matthew Soberg Shugart 1989

Seats and Votes. The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Toka, Gabor 1996 ‘‘Parties and Electoral Choices in East-Central Europe.’’ In G. Pridham and P. G. Lewis, eds., Stabilising Fragile Democracies: Comparing New Party Systems in Southern and East Europe. London: Routledge.

von Beyme, Klaus 1985 Political Parties in Western Democracies. Gower, Wales: Aldershot.

Ware, Alan 1996 Political Parties and Party Systems. New York: Oxford University Press.

Weber, Max 1968 Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Weil, Frederick D. 1989 ‘‘The Sources and Structure of Legitimation in Western Democracies: A Consolidated Model Tested with Time-Series Data in Six Countries since World War II.’’ American Sociological Review 54:682–706.

——— 1996 Research on Democracy and Society: Volume 3, Extremism, Protest, Social Movements, and Democracy.

Greenwich, Conn.: JAI.

Wessels, Bernhard, and Hans Dieter Klingemann 1994 ‘‘Democratic Transformation and the Prerequisites of Democratic Opposition in East and Central Europe,’’ Working Paper FS III 94-201. Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Berlin.

Zimmermann, Ekkart, and Thomas Saalfeld 1988 ‘‘Economic and Political Reactions to the World Economic Crisis of the 1930s in Six European Countries.’’

International Studies Quarterly 32:305–334.

FREDERICK D. WEIL

POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

Two distinct but converging intelllectual traditions have defined the field of political sociology: the social stratification tradition pioneered by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; and the organizational tradition originated by Max Weber and Robert Michels (Lipset 1981). In the first, political sociology is defined broadly as the study of social power in all institutional sectors of society with a primary emphasis on the state and its structural roots in the class system. This tradition takes a holistic view of social structure and change, arguing that the class system determines the organization of the state and political action. The state is conceived as the institutional structure whose central function is maintaining the social order and is thus examined in terms of its functions. The second tradition defines political sociology more narrowly in terms of the organization of political groups and political leadership with primary emphasis on the structure of the state and the groups that compete for control over the state. The state is conceived as the legitimate monopoly on the means of violence. This approach emphasizes the informal and formal organization of political parties, interest groups and social movements, their links to the governmental bureaucracy and formal centers of policy making, the legitimating myths that are used to justify the system of rule, the organization of the legal system, and the sources and impact of public opinion, including the organization of the mass media and electoral politics.

As societies modernize and become more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish these two traditions. Institutions become more complex and differentiated, thus developing their own distinctive autonomy while at the same time being shaped by the larger system of power. In response, analysts have blended these approaches together, synthesizing arguments drawn from the competing perspectives. We begin with a brief

summary of the classic ideas and their bearing on contemporary work and then examine attempts to integrate these approaches.

KARL MARX AND THE THEORY OF

THE STATE

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels developed two distinct theories of the state: an instrumental theory; and a structuralist argument (Carnoy 1979). In the first, the state is a tool or instrument of the dominant class, used to protect the property system and impose order through force and ideological manipulation. The dominant class is a ruling class, meaning that it simultaneously dominates the economy and the political system. This class is socially cohesive and politically unified, which gives it direct control over the state. The state is the institutionalization of power or, to draw on Max Weber’s conception (1947), the legitimate monopoly on the means for force in society and, as a tool of the upper class, consolidates upper-class power by force and fraud.

In the contemporary period, this argument inspired Mills’s theory of the ‘‘power elite’’ (1956), defined in terms of the cohesive leadership group that unifies the corporate rich, the political directorate, and the military elite, as well as Domhoff’s theory of business dominance (1979, 1990, 1998) and Useems’s inner-circle thesis (1984). In these arguments, the capitalist class is seen as socially cohesive—integrated through exclusive private clubs, prep schools and universities, debutante balls, and interlocking corporate directorships. These networks create an inner-circle leadership group that controls the largest multinational corporations and is central to these various networks. Domhoff (1998) argues that this upper class rules through four processes: (1) policy planning in which leading inner-circle-controlled policy organizations, such as the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Brookings Institution, develop the major policy proposals that are eventually adopted; (2) campaign contributions that select the candidates for electoral office (Clawson et al. 1992); (3) special-interest lobbying for specific firms and industries; and (4) ideological control through publicity campaigns that control the political agenda and mold public opinion so as to minimize opposition. Thus the ruling class

constitutes an organized leadership group with considerable cohesion and political unity.

Marx and Engels also advanced a structural theory of state, treating it as the autonomous product of class struggles. Thus, in his essay The Eighteeth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ([1852] 1964), Marx argued that the political development of the working-class movement combined with disorganization and internal conflicts within the ruling class led to a military dictatorship. The capitalist class was too divided to rule directly and thus had to be protected by a military dictator. Extending this argument, Neumann (1942) explained the rise of fascist dictatorship in Germany during the 1930s in terms of a combination of working-class mobilization, a disorganized bourgeoisie and strong autocratic political traditions. Drawing on Gramsci’s ideas about the ‘‘modern prince’’ of modern bourgeois civil society (1957), Poulantzas (1973) advanced a structuralist theory of the state, arguing that market competition disorganizes the capitalist class, requiring that the state operate as a ‘‘relatively autonomous’’ institution that organizes the capitalist class into a hegemonic bloc while disorganizing the working class. Critics have pointed out that this functionalist argument lacks a specific mechanism for class rule (Skocpol 1981). In response, Offe (1984) and Block (1987) argued that in capitalism the state is barred from entering profit-making enterprise, which makes state managers structurally dependent on capitalists to make investments and thereby create employment, taxes, and economic growth. State managers are thus structurally pressured to create capital accumulation and act autonomously to promote reforms that rationalize and stabilize the capitalist system.

Thus the stratification tradition has gradually incorporated arguments from the organizational tradition, focusing on leadership groups and the autonomy of political institutions. By conceiving political institutions as independent but structurally dependent on the capitalist economy, these analysts have synthesized Marxian arguments with organizational arguments. Still this position has been subjected to several criticisms. First is that social stratification is not primarily a question of class but one of prestige and exclusionary social practices (Weber 1947; Parkin 1979). As Weber (1947) argued, classes are defined by their market position, which rarely provides sufficient cohesion for successful political mobilization. Status groups,

in contrast, are based on shared values and a code of honor, thus readily mobilizing for political action. Thus the political struggle over the state is typically not about class but about the lifestyles and prestige of status communities. Second, political institutions have their own autonomous logic and interests, operating independent of the interests and action of classes and other organized groups. Thus Michels ([1911] 1962) argued that formal organization creates oligarchic leadership which is able to divert political organizations from their official goals to promoting the interests of the permanent staff. Similarly, Weber (1947) argued that rational-legal authority and bureaucratic organization tend to replace traditional and charismatic rule, thus creating the ‘‘iron cage’’ of the modern bureaucratic state. Both arguments underscore the independent importance of political organizations, to which we now turn.

MAX WEBER, ROBERT MICHELS, AND THE

ORGANIZATIONAL APPROACH

The second major approach is rooted in the work of Weber and Michels as well as the classic elite theorists Gaetano Mosca ([1896] 1939) and Vilfredo Pareto ([1935] 1963). Their core argument is that rule by the few (or the elite) is inevitable. This is due to the scarcity of leadership talent, the psychological need of masses for leadership, and the imperatives of complex organization. The central political question, then, is not the elimination of a ruling class or the creation of a classless society but the institutional mechanisms that regulate elite recruitment and the effectiveness of various formulas for legitimating elite rule. Thus Michels’s thesis about the ‘‘iron law of oligarchy’’ ([1911] 1961) took as its primary target the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), contending that, despite its formal goal of promoting working-class democracy and internationalism, the SPD was in fact controlled by the permanent staff who used it to promote their own careers and positions. This proved prescient when, a few years later, the SPD rallied to the autocratic German Kaiser to support World War I against the French working class. Similarly, Weber’s arguments about the ‘‘iron cage’’ of bureacracy (1947) were borne out by the creation of the Soviet Union which created a highly rationalized political economy more oppressive than any in western Europe. It thus came to dominate human conduct independent of its formal

goals. In a similar vein, Mosca ([1896] 1939) and Pareto ([1935] 1963) argued that participatory or ‘‘direct’’ democracy is not feasible and that, at its core, modern democracy is a system for institutionalizing elite turnover by requiring that elites peacefully compete for popular support in competitive elections. Thus democracy is really a system for selecting among competing elites and thus reducing the risks of incompetent hereditary leaders and violent struggles for power. It also legitimizes the system by encouraging mass to assume that they have a say in their rulers and thus contributes to political stability.

Schumpter (1942) developed this further into the pluralist theory of democracy, arguing that by forcing candidates to compete for popular votes in elections with multiple political parties, providing adult suffrage, and protecting rights to speech and assembly, modern representative democracy also disperses power and creates a degree of popular accountability. Electoral competition means that elites have to mobilize popular support and thus respond to public concerns. Dahl (1957, 1982) and Rose (1968) argued that this creates a countervailing power system that ensures that all significant groups have a voice and a vehicle for countering more powerful groups. In this vein, Duverger (1962) shows that electoral rules determine the number and type of political parties. Majoritarian systems with single-member districts and ‘‘winner- take-all’’ elections (e.g., the United States and Britain) create two-party systems with nonideological parties because voters are unwilling to throw away their ballots to support third parties. Proportional systems that allocate legislative seats based on their proportion to the popular vote create multiple ideological parties. This, in turn, creates different opportunities for political expression with majoritarian systems experiencing more protest and conflict because they are less responsive while proportional systems have greater governmental instability due to the number and contentiousness of political parties (Powell 1982).

This pluralist thesis has come under several criticisms. First, competitive elections and rules protecting freedom of association and speech do not counteract the institutional bias of politics. Thus Schattschneider (1960) argued that the interest groups and parties in the United States overwhelmingly represent the upper class. Business and the professions are well represented, while

workers, consumers, and disadvantaged groups are weakly represented (Schlozman and Tierney 1986; Berry 1997; Form 1995). Second, pluralist institutions provide no guarantee that disadvantaged groups will be able to mobilize and secure access to the system (Gamson 1975; Piven and Cloward 1979). Thus McAdam (1982) and Jenkins (1985) show that movements on behalf of AfricanAmericans and farm workers were politically blocked by their upper-class opponents until the 1960s, when electoral realignments and increased resources for these groups allowed them to successfully mobilize. Thus political opportunities for the excluded and disorganized are historically variable and by no means institutionally guaranteed. Third is the organizational argument that oligarchy undermines the responsiveness of political parties and interest groups to their supporters (Schattschneider 1960; McConnell 1966). Thus, despite a plurality of organizations, these are internally autocratic and largely unresponsive to member interests.

Arguing that pluralists and stratification theorists share a similar ‘‘society-centered’’ approach, ‘‘statecentered’’ analysts have analyzed the role of state managers as autonomous agents of political change (Nordlinger 1981; Evans et al. 1985; Skocpol and Amenta 1986). Thus, instead of being the tools of special-interest groups (pluralism) or of the upper class and class struggles (neo-Marxism), these state managers independently develop policies that promote their ideological visions and politico-admin- istrative interests. This ability is rooted in the growing autonomy and resources of the state, which is becoming more rationalized and more central to contemporary political economies. Bureaucracy and professionalization insulate government agencies from outside control, thus making them more independent. Because many policies are responses to problems that have previously been addressed, policy precedents have a strong positive feedback effect on the development of new policies. Thus the greater the policy development and administrative capacities of governmental bodies, the greater the ability of state managers to initiate rationalizing reforms (Finegold and Skocpol 1995; Amenta 1998).

This perspective (also called ‘‘historical institutionalism’’ [Skocpol and Campbell 1995]) is a useful corrective to society-centered theories. It shares with classic elite theory the idea that policy

making can be independent of societal constraint, and it develops the idea of state capacities. It has been criticized, however, for overemphasizing the autonomy of state managers and failing to specify the conditions under which political institutions are autonomous (Domhoff 1996). In response, Amenta (1998) has synthesized state-centered arguments with resource mobilization theory (Tilly 1978; McAdam 1982; Jenkins 1983) to explain how political institutions mediate the impact of social movements on policy change. Likewise, Finegold and Skocpol (1995) show how political leaders during the New Deal mobilized business support for their policies but also became dependent on business leaders. Some contend that this perspective applies better to the more rationalized stronger states in western Europe and Japan, where state managers and coordinated corporatist bargaining have been central to post–World War II economic policy (Schmitter 1981; Katzenstein 1985). The United States is a strong case for capitalist dominance, thus supporting the stratification approach, while other states display stronger state institutions and thus support the organizational approach.

POSSIBILITIES FOR SYNTHESIS

Since both traditions have proved useful, several have attempted to synthesize them. One approach has been treating these theories contextually, arguing that each theory bears in particular settings or with specific aspects of political change. Thus Laumann and Knoke (1987) argue that some policy arenas are organized pluralistically with multiple competing groups and considerable fluidity, while others are more centralized with a smaller number of actors and a more hierarchical relationship among them. Thus they compare the more pluralistic health care arena with the more centralized field of energy policy. Similarly, Dye (1995) argues that pluralism better explains patterns of elite recruitment while a hierarchical ‘‘power elite’’ model better explains decision making. The challenge for such a contextual synthesis is to develop a rationale for the conditions under which neoMarxist, pluralist, and state-centered arguments are relevant.

A second approach is to integrate these arguments into a more comprehensive theoretical framework. Lukes (1974) and Alford and Friedland (1985) have advanced a multidimensional theory

of political power that conceptually integrates these perspectives. The starting point is Weber’s classic conception of power as the ability to secure one’s will against that of others even if against their resistance (1947). Thus power is always relational, involving interactions among at least two or more parties. It is also hierarchical, in the sense that one party or group is stronger or controls the other. It is also a potential or capacity. History shows that power is often based on force—whether physical or psychological coercion—but that such force is inherently unstable. No society can be organized solely on the basis of force because, at the first opportunity, people will break the rules. Terror is not only unstable but also inefficient. Thus power holders attempt to institutionalize their power; that is, they try to make it more stable by being seen by subordinates as legitimate. Authority is power that is widely perceived by subordinates as fair and just, and thus is more likely to be stable. Manipulated authority is power that power holders have attempted to legitimize by controlling information and creating false images among subordinates. Authentic authority is freely accepted by subordinates as fair and just (Habermas 1976).

Lukes (1974) distinguishes three dimensions of power: decision-making power, agenda control, and systemic power. Decision-making power exists when subordinants are aware of an underlying conflict of interest with power holders but are induced to act in the power holder’s interest. Resources, such as wealth, charismatic claims, or the threat of violence, allow power holders to control subjects against their will. Even if compliance is not total, claimants with superior resources will typically control the behavior of subordinates. This is the aspect of power on which pluralists and state-centered analysts focus.

In agenda control, power holders prevail because they control what issues will be decided and what potential issues are removed from the political agenda. Such processes constitute ‘‘nondecisions’’ (Bachrach and Baratz 1970) in that power holders decide not to decide. Agenda control is more subtle than decision-making power, and is difficult to study but is nonetheless central to the political system. Thus, in a community power study of Gary, Indiana, Crenson (1971) found that powerful industrialists pressured local government to ignore local pollution problems created by the

steel plants. Similarly, Perrucci (1994) found that state and local officials mounted joint publicity campaigns with Japanese auto corporations that convinced local voters that the large tax breaks granted to these foreign auto companies would create jobs and tax revenues despite unequal tax burdens. Because the mass media are central to creating public issues, they are typically key. Domhoff (1998) argues that upper-class control over the mass media, the leading universities, and the major policy organizations prevents issues such as unemployment and redistributive tax reform from becoming topics of decision making. News stories are largely created by press releases and interviews with government officials, which gives government officials considerable say over what issues will be aired in the mass media. Subordinates may be aware that power is being wielded, but they cannot force their own perspectives onto the political agenda. Thus this second dimension strongly controls the decision-making process by determining what issues and views get included or ignored. Elite theorists are the key architects of this type of work.

In systemic power, power holders benefit by structural arrangements, such as the distribution of wealth or superior political organization. Subordinates may not be aware of their conflicting interests with power holders and may, in fact, be ideologically indoctrinated to accept the authority of power holders. This may stem from several processes. One is the inability of subordinates to mobilize and press their interests. Disorganized and resource-poor groups are often unable to mobilize (Gaventa 1985; Jenkins 1985). Second are ideologies that legitimize power. Under slavery, slave owners successfully promoted the idea that they were paternalistic ‘‘father figures’’ who cared for and protected their childlike slaves. Insofar as slaves accepted this ideology, they were reluctant to rebel and resisted in ways that were controllable (Genovese 1974). Neo-Marxists advance this type of analysis.

Alford and Friedland (1985) contend that different theories of power have different objects of explanation and different time scales, with systemic arguments focusing on long-term structural change, agenda setting about moderate-term institutional changes, and decision making about shortterm behavior. These are hierarchically organized

with systemic power-setting limits on the agendasetting processs, which in turn sets limits on decision making. Thus studies that focus solely on firstor second-dimensional power without including the systemic context are limited and potentially flawed. Seemingly conflicting theories of political power can be synthesized once we specify their objects of explanation and integrate them into a larger theoretical framework.

Hicks and Misra (1993) advance an alternative synthetic ‘‘political resource’’ theory, arguing that institutional contexts define the infraresources or facilitative conditions that enable specific groups to mobilize and secure their interests (called ‘‘instrumental resources’’). Thus neo-Marxian and pluralist arguments about the political actions of specific groups need to be combined with statecentered and elite arguments about institutional capacities and policy precedents. They show that factors identified by all these theories affect the amount of social welfare spending in Western democracies. Similarly, in a study of the adoption of public venture capital firms by state governments in the United States, Leicht and Jenkins (1998) show that corporatist bargaining between big capital and labor combine with strong administrative capacities of state governments to create new entrepreneurial economic development policies. Thus, instead of specifying a causal hierarchy among theories, this approach identifies interactive combinations of factors identified by these various power theories.

At this point, it is unclear which approach will eventually prevail. The contextual approach has considerable flexibility but needs to explain the conditions under which different power theories hold. The multidimensional power argument has conceptual breadth but lacks clear empirical relevance. Unless competing theories can be tested simultaneously in empirical analyses, it is difficult to evaluate how useful a purely conceptual synthesis is. In effect, Alford and Friedland (1985) have simply demonstrated that structural, institutional, and behavioral explanations refer to different objects. The political resource theory has strong empirical promise but needs greater specification as to the interactive combinations that integrate these power theories. Single-factor theories clearly need to be surpassed so that a broader theory of power and the state can be developed that will account for a variety of contexts as well as different

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J. CRAIG JENKINS

POPULAR CULTURE

Since the 1960s, studies of popular culture in the United States have proliferated and a range of novel arguments have been proposed, linking patterns of popular culture production and consumption to systems of stratification and power. Before the 1960s in Europe, Roland Barthes ([1957] 1972) and Fernand Braudel ([1949] 1966) championed (for quite different reasons) increased attention to everyday culture and its social significance, and members of the Frankfurt school emigrating to the United States brought new theories of mass

culture to American academics (Rosenberg and White 1957; Lowenthal 1961), but American scholars still did not generally see any value in studying popular culture.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, as the American middle class began to be targeted by the mass media as the desired audience, more American educators started to show more interest in mediabased popular culture, even though in much of academia, studying popular culture was either declassé or taboo (Ross 1989). A few hardy souls from sociology and literary criticism looked at popular culture as a realm of interesting fads and fashions, ephemeral cultural forms that plummeted though modern urban life with regularity, gave rise to much cultural entrepreneurship, and left ordinary citizens running to keep up with what was ‘‘happening.’’ Sociologists found it a bit easier to justify ongoing attention to these social ephemera because of the established tradition in sociology of examining urban and suburban communities and their cultures (Park 1955; Lynd and Lynd 1929). By the mid-1960s a quite active community of scholars around Bowling Green University proliferated empirical and descriptive accounts of everything from fast-food restaurants to rock and roll (Keil 1966; Nye 1972; Cawelti 1972; Browne 1982). At roughly the same time, a small group of literary scholars drew on longstanding literary interest in the voices of the people in literature (Shiach 1989, chap. 2, 4), and argued that to understand contemporary uses of language, one had to study commercial language in popular culture (McQuade and Atwan 1974). This work did not have much success in changing either sociology or literature. In sociology, it was eclipsed conceptually by sociological work that linked patterns of popular culture to systems of institutional control (Cantor 1971; Denisoff 1974; Hirsh 1972).This work had greater legitimacy because it addressed the organizations’ literature, but it also reinforced the sense that the study of popular culture was not really important enough to stand on its own.

By the end of the 1960s, as the political climate shifted, radical scholars began to champion studies of popular culture either to understand the world of ‘‘the people’’ (disregarded by elites) or to account for the political passivity of the working class and poor. They tried to resuscitate questions about elite distaste for popular culture itself and its relation to systems of social control. These