Edwin Amenta Books

We begin by confronting the foundational question: what is power, and how is it distributed? Classical theory provides three towering traditions. Marx saw political power as rooted in economic relations. The state, he argued, was an instrument through which the ruling class maintained its domination...

From The Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology

Modern states did not arise spontaneously. They were forged through war, taxation, administration, and ideological consolidation. Drawing on the sociological insights of Charles Tilly, Theda Skocpol, and others, political sociology sees the state as historically contingent — a social construction sh...

From The Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology

Political sociology emerged from the broader currents of nineteenth and early twentieth-century thought, when European social scientists sought to make sense of rapid industrialization, democratization, and the uneven effects of capitalism. In the first part of the handbook, I draw attention to how ...

From The Routledge Handbook of Political Sociology

In our contemporary chapters, the handbook turns to new theoretical architectures — rational choice theory, new institutionalism, and cultural analysis — that seek to explain how individuals and organizations navigate today’s political landscapes. I position these perspectives not as mutually exclus...

From The Routledge Handbook of Political Sociology