Key points:

Power
Authority
Social nexus of economy and politics: trade commerce, property ownership
Political power : border fences, check post and military bases.
The concepts of social caging and social closure provide the foundation for a sociological approach
to the study of politics.
Marx on false consciousness.
Emile Durkheim's (1857-1917) concept of "mechanical solidarity,”

Excerpts:

Max Weber’s definition of Power : provided the classic definition of power (or Macht ni the
original) as "the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry
out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests" (Weber
1978 [1918-20]: 58). In Weber’s definition, what conditions must exist for "power" to be possible,
more interesting questions can be posed.

One actor's "wil" must be distinct from that of another actor. nI Weber's sense, there is no power ni
ahive or "borg," where multiple actors act as one, sharing the same instincts, desires, and strategic
goals. This imagery evokes Emile Durkheim's (1857-1917) concept of "mechanical solidarity,”.

Second, the exercise of power rests on an uneven distribu- tion of resources or the ability to
influence others "despite resistance.

Weber's definition of power presumes that those upon whom power is exercised do not have the
option of exit.

The durable orga- nization of power rests on what sociologist Michael Mann (1986) has termed
a "social cage”.

Tracing a long prehistory of power through the Neolithic revolution (the appearance of agriculture
and the domestication of animals) and early settlements, the archaeological record provides con-
siderable evidence of inequality
or "ranked" societies in varied grave goods and ritual artifacts. But for inequality to be transformed
into a "social cage" requires the "conversion of temporary authority into
permanent coercive power”.

So, according to Mann, durable relations of power tended to emerge in places where the benefits of
sustained cooperation were particularly high or the costs of exit particularly daunting. Once those
escape routes become less accessible, new dynamics develop. Those who benefit from a division of
labor through the exercise of power may organize to protect their advantages. Similarly, those who
get the short end of the stick - or the smaller share of t h e harvest - may begin to talk among
themselves, to rally together, to threaten, in order to shift the distribution of benefits. These
processes represent another basic concept of political sociology: social closure.

Tilly argues The outcome of collective action to preserve, increase, or contest the existing division
of labor or distribution of ben- efits will depend in large part on the social networks available for
mobilization. "Social closure" points to the many ways in which social ties and networks contribute
to the organiza- tion of power. Kinship or family ties have been particularly important for early
efforts at state-making (Adams 1994). Powerful families may require their sons and daughters to
marry into other powerful lineages. This linking of family and the advantages of wealth or status
constitutes a kind of hoarding of power that is reproduced across generations. Shared religious
practices or ethnic backgrounds may be used to determine access into particular occupations or
tocondemn others to work in the least rewarding or respected activities.

Social closure may begin as small-scale clique formation, as mutual protection and aid among those
who share kinship or location, social practices or religious beliefs. Such basic "us and them"
structures, built on the interdependence of a division of labor or mutual defense, can then aggregate
into more durable lines of categorical difference: civilized and barbarian, believer and infidel,
members of distinctive peoples and races (Weber 1978 [1918-1920]: 385-98). These attribu-
tions of groupdifference may be anchored in perception of physiological difference - whether
hairstyle or beards or skin color - but traits such as "race" create "a 'group' only when it is
subjectively perceived as a common trait.

Thus Cohen and McCall argues, race, ethnicity, or any other cate- gorical identity should not be
understood as a pre-existing - much less primordial or natural- source of conflict, but rather as
identities that "happen" through processes of conflict and competition. In some settings, cross-
cutting identities may generate distinctive experiences of "intersectionality"

Those who share a disadvantaged situ- ation often find that their common experience can lead to
mobilization, particularly when it is linked to shared religious beliefs or physical traitsor
occupational settings. Deploying what political scientist James Scott (1987) has described as the
"weapons of the weak," peasants can contest and subvert the authority of the powerful, evento the
point of mobilizing rebellions.

This formation of a group identity based on their common position in an industrial division of labor
would,Marx predicted, fuel the transformations of workers from a "class in itself" (structural
equivalence without shared identity or collective action) to a "class for itself."

Since all actors, even those who are relatively advantaged, are caught up in networks of dependence
on others, al face a question about howto respond to perceived grievances and sources of constraint.
A leading economist of development, Albert O. Hirschman Faced with an unsatisfactory situation,
he argued,individuals could take one of three paths: loyalty, or continuing as before despite
dissatisfaction; voice, or an effort to engage with th source of dissatisfaction in order to improve the
situation; or exit. In a rough sense, these line up with the options available toRousseau's manheld
captive: Submit, stand and fight, or run into the forest?

John Locke to Karl Marx - often began with questions about the origins of property, an adequate
political sociology must address the question of the sources of significant and durable inequality in
the capac- ity to dominate others.

Power, for both Weber and Rousseau, ends at the point where an individual rejects domination in
order to escape into the forest, or away across the windswept mesa, or into the regions beyond the
Great Wall.
The conception of "the political" as a zone of freedom has been an enduring source of confusion
in the relationship between political theory and political sociology.

the concept of civil society is tied up with the Latin terms that also gave us words for city,
citizenship, and civilian.

In Habermas' terms, "the bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of
private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above
against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules
governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange
and social labor" Habermas' understanding of the bourgeois public sphere: they are private realms
in which actors reflect on and develop the skills to act on public issues and to reflect on the "public
good."