Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T10:07:42.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Conflict Theories in Political Sociology

Class, Power, Inequality, and the Historical Transition to Financialization

from I - Theories of Political Sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2020

Thomas Janoski
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
Cedric de Leon
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Joya Misra
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Isaac William Martin
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Get access

Summary

The social organization of capitalism in the twenty-first-century is radically different from in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Scholars from multiple disciplines and theoretical perspectives present this historical transition as a shift from a manufacturing to a finance-based economy. Although scholars from several disciplines examine dimensions of the transition to financialization, they tend to focus on outcomes and give limited attention to the political process of enacting policies and laws that made this transition possible. As a result, the transition to financialization is often assumed to be the outcome of an inevitable historical process moving toward economic equilibrium or the actions of an autonomous state. In contrast, conflict perspectives in political sociology focus on process and demonstrate how the emergent social structure is an outcome of conflict among different power holders.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akard, Patrick. 1992. “Corporate Mobilization and Political Power: The Transformation of U.S. Economic Policy in the 1970s.American Sociological Review 57: 597615.Google Scholar
Akard, Patrick. 2005. “No Room Compromise: Business Interests and the Politics of Health Care Reform” pp. 51105 in Prechel, Harland (ed.) Politics and the Corporation, Research in Political Sociology, Volume 14. Amsterdam: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antonio, Robert. 1979. “The Contradiction of Production and Domination in Bureaucracy: The Contribution of Organizational Efficiency to the Decline of the Roman Empire.American Sociological Review 44: 895912.Google Scholar
Antonio, Robert. 1981. “Immanent Critique as the Core of Critical Theory.British Journal of Sociology 32: 330345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arato, Andrew and Gebhardt, Eike. 1978. The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Urizen Books.Google Scholar
Ashley, David and Orenstein, David. 2005. Sociological Theory: Classical Statements, 6th ed. Boston: Pearson.Google Scholar
Baran, Paul and Sweezy, Paul. 1966. Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 2007. “Beyond Class and Nation: Reframing Social Inequalities in a Globalizing World.British Journal of Sociology 58(4): 679705.Google Scholar
Berle, Adolph A. and Means, Gardiner C.. 1991 [1932]. The Modern Corporation and Private Property. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Robin. 2002. “The Enron Debacle and the Pension Crisis.New Left Review 14: 2651.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Robin. 2004. Banking on Death; or, Investing in Life: The History and Future of Pensions. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Block, Fred. 1977. “Beyond Corporate Liberalism.Social Problems 24: 352361.Google Scholar
Boies, John. 1989. “Money, Business, and the State: Material Interests, Fortune 500 Corporations, and the Size of Political Action Committees.American Sociological Review 54(5): 821833.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bond, Matthew. 2007. “Elite Social Relations and Corporate Political Donations in Britain.Political Studies 55: 5985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, Robert. 2004. “New Boom or New Bubble?: The Trajectory of the US Economy.New Left Review 25: 57100.Google Scholar
Brenner, Robert. 2007. “Structure vs. Conjuncture: The 2006 Elections and the Rightward Shift.New Left Review 43: 3359.Google Scholar
Brick, Howard. 2006. Transcending Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Burris, Val. 2005. “Interlocking Directorates and Political Cohesion among Corporate Elites.American Journal of Sociology 111(1): 249283.Google Scholar
Burris, Val. 2008. “The Interlocking Structure of the Policy-Planning Network and the Right Turn in US State Policy.Research in Political Sociology 17: 342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camfield, David. 2004. “Re-orienting Class Analysis: Working Classes as Historical Formations.Science & Society 68(4): 421446.Google Scholar
Caputo, Richard. 2007. “Federal Taxation of Individual Capital & Labor Income in the United States, 1978–2003.Race, Gender & Class 14(1/2): 266280.Google Scholar
Carnes, Nicholas. 2012. “Does the Numerical Underrepresentation of the Working Class in Congress Matter?Legislative Studies Quarterly 37(1): 534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chu, Johan and Davis, Gerald. 2016. “Who Killed the Inner Circle? The Decline of the American Corporate Interlock Network.American Journal of Sociology 122(3): 714754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clawson, Dan and Neustadtl, Alan. 1989. “Interlocks, PACs, and Corporate Conservatism.American Journal of Sociology 94(4): 749773.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jean and Arato, Andrew. 1994. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Couch, Colin. 2011. The Strange Non-death of Neo-liberalism. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Domhoff, William. G. 1974. Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats: A Study in Ruling-Class Cohesiveness. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Domhoff, William. G.. 1978. Who Really Rules? New Haven and Community Power Re-examined. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.Google Scholar
Domhoff, William. G.. 1979. The Powers That Be: Processes of Ruling-Class Domination in America. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Dumenil, Gerard and Levy, Dominique. 2004. “Neoliberal Income Trends: Wealth, Class and Ownership in the USA.New Left Review 30: 105133.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, Gosta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, Gosta and Korpi, Walter. 1987. From Poor Relief to Institutional Welfare States: The Development of Scandinavian Social Policy. Stockholm: Swedish Institute for Social Research.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. 2013. “A Triple Movement?New Left Review 81: 119132.Google Scholar
Galastri, Leandro. 2018. “Social Classes and Subaltern Groups: Theoretical Distinction and Political Application.Capital & Class 42(1): 4362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson-Graham., J. K. 2006. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Goldthorpe, John. 2006. “Class and Politics in Advanced Industrial Societies” pp. 105120 in Nichols, Terry (ed.) The Breakdown of Class Politics: A Debate on Post-Industrial Stratification. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and Translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Gray, Garry and Silbey, Susan. 2014. “Governing Inside the Organization: Interpreting Regulation and Compliance.American Journal of Sociology 120: 96145.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hacker, Jacob and Pierson, Paul. 2005. “Abandoning the Middle: The Bush Tax Cuts and the Limits of Democratic Control.Perspectives on Politics 3(1): 3353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanappi, Hardy and Hanappi-Egger., Edeltraud 2013. “Gramsci Meets Veblen: On the Search for a New Revolutionary Class.Journal of Economic Issues 47(2): 375381.Google Scholar
Hechter, Michael. 2004. “From Class to Culture.American Journal of Sociology 110(2): 400445.Google Scholar
Hegel, Frederick. 1977 [1910]. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heywood, Andrew. 1994. Political Ideas and Concepts: An Introduction. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hicks, Alexander and Misra, Joya. 1993. “Political Resources and the Growth of Welfare in Affluent Capitalist Democracies, 1960–1982.American Journal of Sociology 99(3): 66710.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horkheimer, Max. 1974. Eclipse of Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Howard, Dick. 1977. The Marxian Legacy. New York: Urizen Books.Google Scholar
Jacobs, David and Dirlam, Jonathan. 2016. “Politics and Economic Stratification: Power Resources and Income Inequality in the United States.American Journal of Sociology 122(2): 469500.Google Scholar
Jacobs, David and Myers, Lindsey. 2014. “Union Strength, Neoliberalism, and Inequality: Contingent Political Analyses of US Income Differences since 1950.American Sociological Review 79(4): 752774.Google Scholar
Janoski, Thomas. 1998. Citizenship and Civil Society: A Framework of Rights and Obligations in Liberal, Traditional, and Social Democratic Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Janoski, Thomas, Luke, David, and Oliver, Christopher. 2014. The Causes of Structural Unemployment. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Keister, Lisa. 2000. Wealth in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kenworthy, Lane. 2009. “Tax Myth.Contexts 8: 2832.Google Scholar
Kolko, Gabriel. 1963. The Triumph of Conservatism. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Korpi, Walter. 1983. The Democratic Class Struggle. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Levine, Lawrence. 1988. Highbrow/Lowbrow. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levy, David and Egan, Daniel. 1998. “Capital Contests: National and Transnational Channels of Corporate Influence on the Climate Change Negotiations.Politics & Society 26(3): 337361.Google Scholar
Lilla, Mark. 2017. The Once and Future Liberal. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg. 1971. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mann, Michael. 2017. “The End of Capitalism.Análise Social 48: 925945.Google Scholar
Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1977 [1867]. Capital, Volume One. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Miliband, Ralph. 1969. The State in Capitalist Society. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mizruchi, Mark. 1989. “Similarity of Political Behavior Among Large American Corporations.American Journal of Sociology 95(2): 401424.Google Scholar
Mizruchi, Mark. 1992. The Structure of Corporate Political Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mizruchi, Mark. 2013. The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Myles, John and Quadagno, Jill. 2002. “Political Theories of the Welfare State.Social Service Review 76(1): 3457.Google Scholar
O’Connor, James. 1973. The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Offe, Claus and Ronge, Volker. 1975. “Theses on the Theory of the State.New German Critique 2(6): 137147.Google Scholar
Olsaretti, Alessandro. 2014. “Beyond Class: The Many Facets of Gramsci’s Theory of Intellectuals.Journal of Classical Sociology 14(4): 363381.Google Scholar
Patnaik, Prabhat. 2004. “Historicism and Revolution.Social Scientist 32(1/2): 3041.Google Scholar
Perrow, Charles. 1986. Complex Organizations, 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Petras, James and Veltmeyer, Henry. 2012. “The Global Capitalist Crisis: Whose Crisis, Who Profits?International Review of Modern Sociology 38(2): 199219.Google Scholar
Piccone, Paul. 1983. Italian Marxism. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. 2001 [1944]. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos. 1978 [1974]. Classes in Contemporary Capitalism. Brooklyn, NY: Verso.Google Scholar
Prasad, Monica, Perrin, Andrew J., Bezila, Kieran, et al. 2009. “The Undeserving Rich: ‘Moral Values’ and the White Working Class.Sociological Forum 24(2): 225253.Google Scholar
Prechel, Harland. 1990. “Steel and the State: Industry Politics and Business Policy Formation, 1940–1989.American Sociological Review 55: 648668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prechel, Harland. 1997. “Corporate Transformation to the Multilayered Subsidiary Form: Changing Economic Conditions and State Business Policy.Sociological Forum 12: 405439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prechel, Harland. 2000. Big Business and the State. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Prechel, Harland. 2003. “Historical Contingency Theory, Policy Paradigm Shifts, and Corporate Malfeasance at the Turn to the 21st Century” pp. 311340 in Dobratz, Betty A., Waldner, Lisa K., and Buzzell, Timothy (eds.) Political Sociology for the 21st Century, Research in Political Sociology, Volume 12. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier Press.Google Scholar
Prechel, Harland. 2015. “Organizational Political Economy and Environmental Pollution.Sociology Compass 9: 828840.Google Scholar
Prechel, Harland. 2016. “Organizational Political Economy and White-Collar Crime” pp. 294325 in Van Slyke, Shanna R., Benson, Michael L., and Cullen, Francis (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of White-Collar Crime. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Prechel, Harland and Harms, John 2007. “Politics and Neoliberalism: Theory and Ideology” pp. 317 in Prechel, Harland (ed.) Politics, and Neoliberalism: Process, Structure and Outcome, Research in Political Sociology, Volume 16. Oxford: Elsevier Press.Google Scholar
Prechel, Harland and Hou, Dadao. 2016. “From Market Enablers to Market Participants: Redefining Organizational and Political-Legal Arrangements and Opportunities for Financial Wrongdoing, 1930s–2000” pp. 77112 in Palmer, Donald, Greenwood, Royston, and Smith-Crowe, Kristin (eds.) Organizational Wrongdoing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Prechel, Harland and Morris, Theresa. 2010. “The Effects of Organizational and Political Embeddedness on Financial Malfeasance in the Largest U.S. Corporations: Dependence, Incentives and Opportunities.American Sociological Review 75(3): 331354.Google Scholar
Pressman, Steven and Scott, Robert. 2009. “Consumer Debt and the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality in the US.Review of Social Economy 67(2): 127148.Google Scholar
Resnick, Stephen and Wolff, Richard. 1987. Knowledge and Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Roy, William. 1997. Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ruggie, John. 1982. “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded. Liberalism in the Postwar Economic System.International Organization 36(2): 379415.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg. 1980 [1955]. Essays on Interpretation in Social Science. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda, Evans, Peter, and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich. 1985. Bringing the State Back In. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda and Pierson, Paul. 2002. “Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science” pp. 693721 in Katznelson, Ira and Milner, Helen V. (eds.) Political Science: State of the Discipline. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1978 [1776]. The Wealth of Nations. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Somers, Margaret and Block, Fred. 2005. “From Poverty to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and Institutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate.American Sociological Review 70(2): 260287.Google Scholar
Stearns, Linda and Allen, Kenneth. 1996. “Economic Behaviors in Institutional Environments: The Corporate Merger Wave of the 1980s.American Sociological Review 61(4): 699718.Google Scholar
Stiglitz, Joseph. 2002. Globalization and Its Discontent. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2017. How Will Capitalism End? London: Verso.Google Scholar
Swedberg, Richard. 1998. Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Therborn, Goran. 2012. “Class in the 21st Century.New Left Review 78: 529.Google Scholar
Therborn, Goran. 2014. “New Masses? Social Bases of Resistance.New Left Review 85: 716.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 1980. Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 1999. Durable Inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Treanor, Paul. 2005. “Neoliberalism: Origins, Theory, Definition.” Retrieved March 19, 2018. https://bit.ly/2ugjt56.Google Scholar
Useem, Michael. 1982. “Classwide Rationality in the Politics of Managers and Directors of Large Corporations in the United States and Great Britain.Administrative Science Quarterly 27(2): 199226.Google Scholar
Useem, Michael. 1996. Investor Capitalism. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
van der Waal, Jeroen, Achterberg, Peter, and Houtman, Dick. 2007. “Class Is Not Dead – It Has Been Buried Alive: Class Voting and Cultural Voting in Postwar Western Societies (1956–1990).Politics & Society 35(3): 403426.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein. 1979 [1899]. The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Volscho, Thomas and Kelly, Nathan. 2012. “The Rise of the Super-Rich: Power Resources, Taxes, Financial Markets, and the Dynamics of the Top 1 Percent, 1948 to 2008.American Sociological Review 77(5): 672699.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Edward and Rea, Christopher. 2014. “The Political Mobilization of Firms and Industries.Annual Review of Sociology 40: 281304.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978 [1921]. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda. 1988. “Understanding American Social Politics” pp. 335 in Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda (eds.) The Politics of Social Policy in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Winters, Jeffrey. 2011. Oligarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wodtke, Geoffrey. 2016. “Social Class and Income Inequality in the United States: Ownership, Authority, and Personal Income Distribution from 1980 to 2010.American Journal of Sociology 121(5): 13751415.Google Scholar
Wright, Erik Olin. 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Zeitlin, Irving. 1968. Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Zeitlin, , Maurice, W. Neuman, Lawrence, and Ratcliff, Richard. 1976. “Class Segments: Agrarian Property and Political Leadership in the Capitalist Class of Chile.” American Sociological Review 41: 10061029.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×