"This is an essential disciplinary update for all political sociologists and an exciting guide for all lay observers of politics. Drake offers a fresh look at the world of contemporary politics - itself a contested territory - at a time of global terrorist threats, mass mobilizations, spot insurgencies, spreading democratic aspirations and rapidly changing super-power relations."
--Jan Pakulski, University of Tasmania "Political Sociology for a Globalizing World turns away from the standard approaches of the good old days to engage contemporary social conditions in depth. Drake's focus on present-day political phenomena, particularly the central themes of sovereignty, citizenship, the state and globalization, makes this work stand out as a text."
--Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara
"Michael Drake has discarded many of the conventions of introductory textbooks.
Instead he engages the reader in a challenging set of arguments - an invitation to think and to argue. Political sociology is presented not as a set of perspectives, but as a lively intellectual reflection on key events: May 68, 1989, 9/11."
--Alan Scott, University of Innsbruck
This accessible book addresses one of the twenty-first century's most important issues: the increasing lack of connection between political institutions and the social reality of our everyday lives. A gulf between popular expectations and formal politics has widened continually since the revolts against authority of 1968, the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 and the growth of new social movements. Today, popular disillusion with politics is ubiquitous. Enormous social transformations on a global scale since the 1970s have produced no fundamental change in what are considered normal political institutions, such as the state, or in mainstream political ideologies and parties.
This book provides tools to understand the apparent irrelevance to social life of formal political institutions and practices. In order to enable us to begin to rethink the relations between politics and society, Michael Drake ably synthesizes the new theoretical developments that social transformations have produced, among them the analysis of power, representation, social identities, social movements, sovereignty, statehood, globalization, revolution, risk and security. Ultimately, the book explores the emergent potentialities and problems of this new politics in a world of continuous transformation, where the parameters of the political are continually shifting.