Varieties of Political Experience: Power Phenomena in Modern Society

ISBN-13: 9781907301759 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 202 str.

Gianfranco Poggi

Opis

The management of contemporary public affairs involves many different centres of social power, engaged in complex and mutable relations, ranging from willing cooperation, to competition, to out-and-out conflict. This book emphasises the role played in these relations by political institutions in particular. Generally, these claim a special competence to authorise and regulate the activities of other institutions, but their claim is often contested by other power centres, serving different and sometimes contrasting interests. To explore those processes, the author, after identifying the nature of the political, considers its dealings with other forms of social power. Among these, economic power gets particular attention, in view of the contemporary salience of the state vs market issue. But this book also considers the relations between politics at one end, and law, the public sphere, citizenship, and religion at the other. This book reflects the intellectual trajectory of Gianfranco Poggi; his preferred themes - the relationships between different forms of power, the modern state and its juridical/bureaucratic underpinning, the changing organisation of civil society and its relation to political authority - and his preferred authors, from Weber to Popitz. It also reflects Poggis continuous attention to the main social science debates, which he divests of fashionable conceptual innovations to uncover the old concerns beneath. The book is also testament to the authors ability to frame pressing contemporary issues through classic social theories and concepts, revealing their relevance to our understanding of where we stand, and where we might go. It is a small book, magnificently written and argued. Reading it is pleasure and enlightenment.Stefano Bartolini, Peter Mair Professor of Comparative Politics European University Institute, Florence