Varieties of Political Experience: Power Phenomena in Modern Society [Paperback]

This book emphasises the role played in these relations by political institutions in particular.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.ContentsAcknowledgements ixPreface xiChapter One: Varieties of Political Experience 1Chapter Two: Power: An Outline of the Concept and of its Manifestations 15Chapter Three: Political Power Un-Manned: A Defence of the HolyTrinity from Michael Manns Military Attack 27Chapter Four: State and Society: Modern Trends of a ProblematicRelationship 43Chapter Five: Juridical Aspects of European State-Making: A Retrospect 53Chapter Six: Citizens and the State: A Retrospective View and anAttempt at Prospecting 63Chapter Seven: Challenge and Response in the Relationship Betweenthe State and the Liberal Public Sphere 75Chapter Eight: Relations Between Political and Economic Power:A Conceptual Narrative 85Chapter Nine: The Secularization of the State: Aspects of a MajorHistorical Development 111Chapter Ten: The Westphalian Design of the Modern States System 121Chapter Eleven: The Genesis of Webers Talks on the Vocations ofScience and of Politics 139Bibliography lÃ%