The Sociology of the State / Edition 1

by Bertrand Badie, Pierre Birnbaum, Arthur Goldhammer

Overview

Too often we think of the modern political state as a universal institution, the inevitable product of History rather than a specific creation of a very particular history. Bertrand Badie and Pierre Birnbaum here persuasively argue that the origin of the state is a social fact, arising out of the peculiar sociohistorical context of Western Europe. Drawing on historical materials and bringing sociological insights to bear on a field long abandoned to jurists and political scientists, the authors lay the foundations for a strikingly original theory of the birth and subsequent diffusion of the state.

The book opens with a review of the principal evolutionary theories concerning the origin of the institution proposed by such thinkers as Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. Rejecting these views, the authors set forward and defend their thesis that the state was an "invention" rather than a necessary consequence of any other process. Once invented, the state was disseminated outside its Western European birthplace either through imposition or imitation. The study concludes with concrete analyses of the differences in actual state institutions in France, Prussia, Great Britain, the United States, and Switzerland.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226035499
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	05/15/1983
Series:	Chicago Original Paperback Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	182
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Pierre Birnbaum is visiting professor of Jewish studies at Columbia University. A number of his works and edited collections have been published in English, including Anti-Semitism in Modern France, The Jews of the Republic, and Paths for Emancipation.

Arthur Goldhammer is an award-winning translator who has translated books by Georges Duby, Jacques Le Goff, and Jean Starobinski.

Table of Contents

Translator's Note
Introduction
Part One - The State in Sociological Theory
1. The Classical Theories
Marx's Two Theories of the State
Durkheim, the Division of Labor, and the State
Weber, the State, and Western Rationality
2. The Failure of Contemporary Sociology
The Neofunctionalist Model of the State
Toward a Critique of the Functionalist Model
Part Two - State, Society, and History
Introduction
3. State, Division of Labor, and Capitalism
4. State and Social Structure
5. State, Culture, and the Emergence of the Political System
6. The Transfer of the Idea of the State from Europe to Its Colonies
Part Three - State, Center, and Power in Contemporary Societies
Introduction
7. Government via the State: Power to the Bureaucracy
The State Model: France
A Case of Incomplete
Institutionalization: Prussia
8. Government by Civil Society: The Weakness of the Bureaucracy
The Weak-State Model: Great Britain
The American Case
The State and Consociational Democracy
Conclusion
Afterword
Notes
Index