Quo Vadis,Social Theory?

John R. Hall, Cultures of Inquiry: From Epistemology to Discourse in Sociohistorical Research     

Tocqueville’s Dual Theory of Revolution

Alexis de Tocqueville’s political thought is often seen as inconsistent for offering two apparently dissimilar theories of revolution. The first is universal democratisation, understood as a social phenomenon and a grand revolutionary change; the second sees revolution as the logical continuation and radicalisation of the preceding regime. The following question arises: was Tocqueville inconsistent in his principal works? I argue that this was not the case and that the two processes are complementary elements in Tocqueville’s model, which combines the ancient cyclical science of regime change with modern theories of revolutionary progress. What Tocqueville offers is a powerful political theory with considerable predictive power. Tocqueville, I consequently claim, should be viewed as a theorist of revolution rather than as a theorist of democracy per se.     

Introduction: Conflict-Event Theory––a Proposed Paradigm

Historical Archaeology -     

Religion in Habermas’s Two-Track Political Theory

Abstract

This article argues that Habermas’s position on the relationship between religion and politics reaffirms his two-track political theory of the secular state and civic duty. His “hard-core” theory of secularism coupled with an ethics of citizenship seeks new ways of including religious citizens in modern pluralistic societies. The analysis of secularism both as a concept and as a guiding principle in Habermas’s work shows that most critics have misinterpreted his specific use of the term. The result of this is that most secularist and accommodationist critics of Habermas’s ethics of citizenship disregard his two-track political theory and its co-originality principle that assumes the equal status of public and private autonomies of citizens. My aim is thus to shift critical attention to the central aspects of Habermas’s work on religion, specifically to the task of translating religious reasons into an all-accessible language. This task of translation faces several difficulties due to some points that are left unclear by Habermas, such as determining the line separating the informal and the formal spheres, and how to avert the risk of majoritarian hijacks of democracy that could altogether undermine the Habermasian framework.     

Does EU cohesion policy work? Theory and evidence

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy in the regions of 12 EU countries in the period 1991–2008, on the basis of a spatial growth model, which allows for the identification of both direct and indirect effects of EU funds on GDP per worker growth. We find that “Objective 1” funds are characterized by strong spatial externalities and a positive and concave effect on the growth of GDP per worker, which reaches a peak at the ratio funds/GDP of approximately 3 percent and becomes non‐significant after 4 percent. “Objective 2” and “Cohesion” funds have nonsignificant effects, while all the other funds exert a positive and significant effect, but their size is very limited. EU Cohesion Policy, moreover, appears to have increased its effectiveness over time. In the period 2000–2006 Objective 1 funds are estimated to have a median multiplier equal to 1.52, and to have added 0.37 percent to the GDP per worker growth. Overall, in the period 1991–2008, funds are estimated to have added 1.4 percent to the median annual growth, and to have reduced regional disparities of 8 basis points in terms of the Gini index.     

The “State Idea” in Theory and Practice

Recent anthropology of the state is influenced by sociology's cultural turn—taking up “the state idea” as situated meaning. The works reviewed here pursue the state's idea of itself—in two cases through state projects of extreme social and cultural engineering, in two as a comparative problem. Notwithstanding differences of purpose and approach, the authors evince tacit points of convergence around the state as a form of modernism, as a function of elite interests, and as a localized process of depoliticization, associating dissent with cultural authenticity. The essay relates these points to western state nationalism and current ethnographies of political subjectivity.     

‘The Social’ and Beyond: Introducing Actor-Network Theory

In recent years, it has been suggested (e.g. TAG 2002, 2006; IKUWA3 2008) that it is necessary for the discipline to move beyond the study of ships and boats towards the ‘wider social contexts’ of seafaring and maritime activity. This paper investigates the contours of ‘social’ as an object of study. Two questions are asked: (1) how is this object defined within sociology, classical and contemporary social theory, and archaeology; and (2) what is the status of nonhumans, physical-material things, artefacts, plants, animals, etc.? After taking a look at several different theories, it is argued that it is not necessary for us to move beyond ships and boats. Instead, an alternative approach is offered, one that allows us to move beyond the restrictive ontology of the social.     

Theory of Comparative Advantage: Do Transportation Costs Matter?

In this paper we present a formal analysis that incorporates returns to transportation into a Ricardian framework to predict trade patterns. The important point gained from this analysis is that increasing returns to transportation, coupled with appropriate distances between trading partners, can be shown to reverse Ricardian predictions even when there are no international differences in tastes, technology, or factor endowments. Additional gains from trade may emerge from reductions in aggregate delivery costs owing to scale economies.     

Views and Commentaries: What Difference Does Feminist Theory Make?

This discussion explores what difference a feminist perspective makes in our understandings of the past in two ways. The first section examines to what extent feminist research questions were asked in the preceding papers by Lu Ann De Cunzo, Eleanor Casella, and Susan Piddock. The second section shows what difference feminist theory has made in asking new questions that have produced new gendered understandings of the global historical context of these papers. As a whole, this discussion shows how feminist theoretical approaches change our understanding of the lives of historic women and men in nineteenth century reform institutions within their larger gendered cultural context. While the introduction to this volume presents the broader ungendered historical context, this discussion focusses on the gendered cultural context that was foundational to the gender relationships embodied in the arrangement of architectural spaces and material culture at the sites in the preceding three papers.     

The Sector Theory and the Canadian Arctic, 1897–1970

ABSTRACT

Although European discovery in the Arctic began during the Middle Ages, sovereignty issues did not become a major concern until the early twentieth century. At that time, the controversial sector theory was taken up by Canada, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, but opposed by the United States and Norway. This article examines the sector theory in Canadian state practice, clarifying the version of the theory to which Canadian officials subscribed and the aims they hoped to achieve through its use. The international response to Canadian claims is also described.

The article demonstrates that Canadian use of the sector principle during the 1920s was pragmatic and successful, but in later decades, confusion arose both inside and outside the government. Inconsistent public statements were made by government representatives in the 1950s and 1960s; these have puzzled and misled scholars ever since. Differences between the Canadian and Soviet versions of the sector theory, lack of adequate institutional memory in Ottawa, and partisan political rivalries all played a part in creating the confusion, but perhaps the key factor was the inherent difficulty of state control over this remote yet geopolitically crucial region.     

What Is Next for Policy Design and Social Construction Theory?1

The study of policy design has made great progress over the past decade in leading scholars to understand why the American political system produces certain kinds of designs rather than others, and the consequences that policy designs have for democracy. This article outlines the distinctive and important elements of policy design theory—the centrality of policy design, the attention to social constructions, the attention to policy consequences (or feed‐forward effects), and the integration of normative and empirical research and theory. It then suggests how policy design theory can complement other policy theories in guiding research and evaluating the conditions of U.S. democracy, and how in its own right it can be further developed and used to guide important inquiry about public policy's politics and social impacts.     

Zambrano’s poetic reason in the light of Frankfurtian Critical Theory

ABSTRACT

María Zambrano's biggest contribution to intellectual history is, without a doubt, her poetic reason; her unique attempt to overcome the limiting coordinates of the framework of rationality established by the Enlightenment. Having spent forty-five years in exile, the relevance of this Republican thinker has only been acknowledged in recent decades. Since then, the political content of her early work, as well as her engagement with the Republic's cause prior to and during the Spanish Civil War are well known. Nevertheless, although Zambrano still wrote some political books after the Civil War, most notably, Persona y democracia (1958), the political component of her thought after this period has passed largely unnoticed. This article intends to take a wider approach to Zambrano's political engagement by exploring the political significance of her poetic reason. Here I contend, first, that poetic reason, far from being an isolated attempt at developing an alternative rationality, is actually in line with the critique of instrumental reason proposed by the Frankfurt School and, second, that, in fact, there are meaningful parallels between poetic reason and Frankfurtian Critical Theory. Thus, the purpose of this article is to explore such parallels and their significance in revealing the political dimension of Zambrano's thought.     

Can Evolutionary Theory Explain Nationalist Violence? Czecho Slovak and Bosnian Illustrations

Abstract. This study tests whether evolutionary theory can explain the outbreak of ethnic conflict. Microlevel hypotheses of cultural evolutionary theory are developed and applied to the peaceful breakup of Czechoslovakia and the violent collapse of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The more traditional social science approaches of Donald Horowitz and David Laitin are presented as a comparative base to assess the relative explanatory power of evolutionary theory. It is found that in conjunction with Horowitz's and Laitin's work, evolutionary theory can make sense of some patterns of ethnic conflict. However, its central weakness is linking proximate triggering mechanisms of nationalist violence to biological foundations. Without a convincing connection between microlevel propositions and survival and reproductive imperatives, evolutionary theory fails to offer a unique and credible explanation of nationalist violence.     

Political Theory and International Relations: Promised Land or Exit from Eden?

Political theory and International Relations have become increasingly interpenetrated over the last few years. This article traces the evolution of this relationship and the emergence of a literature now termed international political theory. It also suggests that a convergence of contemporary political and economic factors, together with a particular intellectual fashion, run the risk of promoting an unnecessarily and inappropriately narrow international political theory, and closes by suggesting how this might be avoided.     

The Blue Slip: A Theory of Unified and Divided Government, 1979–2009

In recent years, the role of presidential candidates in constructing their own coalitions to secure both the nomination and election has increased as their reliance on their own party organization has decreased. Recent presidents also have devoted more of their energies to building coalitions crucial to the adoption of their program and its policies. Yet in this era of entrepreneurial candidacy, presidential effectiveness has varied considerably. This article suggests that the extent of convergence and divergence of presidential selection and governing coalitions determines presidential effectiveness. It is also suggested that the roots of presidential governing effectiveness lie in the electoral core coalition, the product of the nomination and general election coalitions that supported the presidential candidate. The article (1) describes the developments that make this theory of presidential coalition-building pertinent to the recent presidency, and (2) sketches the theory and illustrates its applicability to Richard Nixon's sponsorship of the Family Assistance Plan.